Harry had not doubted for a moment, even though he hadn’t found anything suspicious in Stig Nybakk’s flat. Quite the contrary, it was so utterly devoid of compromising objects that Harry had assumed at once that Nybakk had to be keeping his bad conscience elsewhere. The parents’ house that stood empty and he could not sell. The red house on the hill above Harry’s family home.
‘Did you kill Gusto?’ Harry asked.
Stig Nybakk shook his head. Heavy eyelids. He seemed sleepy.
‘Alibi?’
‘No. No, I don’t have one.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I was there.’
‘Where?’
‘In Hausmanns gate. I was going to see him. He had threatened to expose me. But when I got to Hausmanns gate there were police cars everywhere. Someone had already killed Gusto.’
‘Already? So you planned to do the same?’
‘Not the same. I don’t have a pistol.’
‘What have you got then?’
Nybakk shrugged. ‘Chemistry studies. Gusto was suffering from withdrawal symptoms. He needed violin.’
Harry looked at Nybakk’s tired smile and nodded. ‘So whatever white stuff you had you knew Gusto would inject it on the spot.’
The chain rattled as Nybakk raised his hand to point to the door. ‘Irene. May I say a few words to her before …?’
Harry watched Stig Nybakk. Saw something he recognised. A damaged person, a finished man. Someone who had rebelled against the cards fate had dealt him. And lost.
‘I’ll ask her,’ he said.
Harry found Irene upstairs in the sitting room. She was in a chair with her feet tucked up underneath her. Harry fetched a coat from the hall cupboard, draped it over her shoulders. He spoke to her in a whisper. She answered in a tiny voice, as though afraid of the echoes from the cold sitting-room walls.
She told him Gusto and Nybakk, or Ibsen as they called him, had worked together to trap her. Payment had been half a kilo of violin. She had been locked up for four months.
Harry let her say her piece. Waited until he knew she had run out before asking the next question.
She didn’t know anything about the murder of Gusto, beyond what Ibsen had told her. Or who Dubai was, or where he lived. Gusto hadn’t said anything, and Irene hadn’t wanted to know. All she had heard about Dubai were the same rumours about his flitting around town like some kind of phantom and that no one knew who he was or what he looked like, and that he was like the wind, impossible to catch.
Harry nodded. He had heard that image rather too often of late.
‘HC will drive you to the police station. He’s a solicitor and will help you to report this. Afterwards he’ll take you to Oleg’s mother where you can stay for the meantime.’
Irene shook her head. ‘I’ll ring Stein, my brother. I can stay with him. And …’
‘Yes?’
‘Do I have to report this?’
Harry looked at her. She was so young. So small. Like a baby bird. It was impossible to say how much damage had been done.
‘It can wait until tomorrow,’ Harry said.
He saw the tears well up in her eyes. And his first thought was: At last. Was about to lay a hand on her shoulder, but changed his mind in time. A strange man’s hand was perhaps not what she needed. But the next instant her tears were gone.
‘Is there … is there any alternative?’ she asked.
‘Such as?’ Harry said.
‘Such as never having to see him again.’ Her eyes would not release his. ‘Ever.’
Then he felt it. Her hand on top of his. ‘Please.’
Harry patted the hand, then placed it back in her lap. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to HC.’
After Harry had watched the car go, he went back into the house and down to the cellar. He couldn’t find any rope, but under the stairs hung a garden hosepipe. He took it to the storeroom and threw it at Nybakk. Looked up at the beam. High enough.
He took the bottle of Zestril tablets he had found in Nybakk’s pocket. Emptied the contents into his hand. Six.
‘You’ve got a heart condition?’ Harry asked.
Nybakk nodded.
‘How many tablets do you have to take a day?’
‘Two.’
Harry put the tablets in Nybakk’s hand and the empty bottle in his jacket pocket.
‘I’ll be back in two days. I don’t know what your reputation means to you. The shame would certainly have been worse if your parents had been alive, but I’m sure you’ve heard how other prisoners treat sex offenders. If you don’t exist when I return then you’re forgotten, your name will never be mentioned again. If you do, we’ll take you to the police station. Got that?’
Stig Nybakk’s screams followed Harry all the way to the front door. The screams of someone who was totally, totally alone with his own guilt, his own ghosts, his own loneliness, his own decisions. Yes, there was something familiar about him. Harry slammed the door hard behind him.