Nemesis(7)

Harry didn't answer. He had absolutely no doubt about the kind of legendary status Ivarsson had in mind; he had never made the slightest attempt to hide his view that Harry was a blot on the force and should have been removed years ago.





Ivarsson finally unlocked the door and they went in. The House of Pain was the Robberies Unit's dedicated room for studying, editing and copying video recordings. There was a large table in the middle with three workplaces; no windows. The walls were covered with shelving packed with video tapes, a dozen posters of wanted robbers, a large screen on one wall, a map of Oslo and various trophies from successful arrests: for example beside the door, where two cut-off woollen sleeves with holes for eyes and mouth hung from the wall. Otherwise the room contained grey PCs, black TV monitors, video and DVD players as well as a number of other machines which Harry could not have identified.





'What has Criiime Squad got out of the video?' Ivarsson asked, flopping down onto one of the chairs. He drawled the diphthong in an exaggerated fashion.





'Something,' Harry said, walking over to a shelf of video cassettes.





'Something?'





'Not very much.'





'Shame you lot didn't come to the lecture I gave in the canteen last September. All the units were represented except yours, if I'm not very much mistaken.'





Ivarsson was tall, long-limbed, with a fringe of undulating blond hair above two blue eyes. His face had those masculine characteristics which models for German brands like Boss tend to have, and was still tanned after many summer afternoons on the tennis court and perhaps the odd solarium session in a fitness centre. In short, Rune Ivarsson was what most would regard as a good-looking man, and as such he underpinned Harry's theory about the link between looks and competence in police work. However, what Rune Ivarsson lacked in investigative talent, he made up for with a nose for politics and the ability to form alliances within the Police HQ hierarchy. Furthermore, Ivarsson had the natural self-confidence that many misinterpret as a leadership quality. In his case, this confidence was based solely on being blessed with a total blindness to his own shortcomings, a quality which would inevitably take him to the top and one day make him–in one way or another–Harry's superior. Initially, Harry saw no reason to complain about mediocrity being kicked upwards, out of the way of investigations, but the danger with people like Ivarsson was that they could easily get it into their heads that they should intervene and dictate to those who really understood detection work.





'Did we miss anything?' Harry asked, running a finger along the small handwritten labels on the videos.





'Maybe not,' Ivarsson said. 'Unless you're interested in those minute details which solve crime cases.'





Harry successfully resisted the temptation to say he hadn't gone to the lecture because he had been told by others, who had attended earlier talks, that the sole purpose of his grandstanding was to announce to all and sundry that after he had taken over as Head of the Robberies Unit the clear-up rate for bank robberies rose from thirty-five per cent to fifty per cent. Not a word about the fact that his appointment coincided with a doubling of manpower in his unit, a general extension of their investigative powers and the simultaneous departure of their worst investigator–Rune Ivarsson.





'I regard myself as reasonably interested,' Harry said. 'So, tell me how you solved this one.' He took out one of the cassettes and read aloud what was written on the label: '20.11.94, NOR Savings Bank, Manglerud.'





Ivarsson laughed. 'Gladly. We caught them the old-fashioned way. They switched getaway cars at a waste site in Alnabru and set fire to the one they dumped. But it didn't burn out. We found the gloves of one of the robbers and traces of DNA. We matched them with those of known robbers our investigators had highlighted as potential suspects after having seen the video, and one of them fitted the bill. The idiot had fired a shot into a ceiling and got four years. Anything else you were wondering about, Hole?'





'Mm.' Harry fidgeted with the cassette. 'What sort of DNA was it?'





'I told you, DNA that matched.' The corner of Ivarsson's left eye began to twitch.





'Right, but what was it? Dead skin? A nail? Blood?'





'Is that important?' Ivarsson's voice had become sharp and impatient.





Harry told himself he should keep his mouth shut. He should give up these Don Quixote-like offensives. People like Ivarsson would never learn, anyway.





'Maybe not,' Harry heard himself say. 'Unless you're interested in those minute details which solve crime cases.'





Ivarsson looked daggers at Harry. In the specially insulated room the silence felt like physical pressure on everyone's ears. Ivarsson opened his mouth to speak.