Harry didn’t answer.
Torkildsen gave a bitter laugh. ‘I understand. It’s the same old cowardly blackmail number. If I don’t give you info, contrary to regulations, you’ll make sure my colleagues get to hear about my conviction.’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘No, I won’t talk. I’m simply asking you for a favour, Klaus. It’s personal. My ex-girlfriend’s boy risks life imprisonment for something he didn’t do.’
Harry saw Torkildsen’s double chin jerk and create a wave of flesh that rippled down his neck until it was absorbed into the greater body mass and was gone. Harry had never addressed Klaus Torkildsen by his Christian name before today. Torkildsen looked at him. Blinked. Concentrated. The beads of sweat glinted, and Harry could see the cerebral calculator adding, subtracting and – at length – reaching a result. Torkildsen threw up his arms and leaned back in the chair, which creaked under the weight.
‘Sorry, Harry, I would have liked to help you. But right now I can’t afford that sort of sympathy. Hope you understand.’
‘Of course,’ Harry said, rubbing his chin. ‘It’s completely understandable.’
‘Thank you,’ Torkildsen said, clearly relieved and beginning to struggle up from his chair, so as to escort Harry out of the glass cage and his life.
‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘If you don’t get me the numbers it won’t just be your colleagues who find out about your flashing but your wife as well. Any kids? Yes? One, two?’
Torkildsen slumped back in the chair. Staring at Harry in disbelief. The old, trembling Klaus Torkildsen. ‘You … you said you wouldn’t …’
Harry shrugged. ‘Sorry. But right now I can’t afford that sort of sympathy.’
It was ten minutes past ten at night and Schrøder’s was half full.
‘I wouldn’t have wanted you to come to my workplace,’ Beate said. ‘Heimen rang me and said you’d been asking about a list of phone calls, and he’d heard you’d been to see me. He warned me not to get mixed up in the Gusto case.’
‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘it’s good you could come here.’ He established eye contact with Rita who was serving beer at the other end of the room. He held up two fingers. She nodded. It was three years since he had been here, but she still understood the sign language of her ex-regular: a beer for the companion, a coffee for the alcoholic.
‘Was your friend any help with the list?’
‘Lots of help.’
‘So what did you find out?’
‘Gusto must have been broke at the end; his account had been blocked several times. He didn’t use his phone much, but he and Oleg had a few short conversations. He called his foster-sister, Irene, quite a bit, but the conversations suddenly finished some weeks before he died. Otherwise the calls were mostly to Pizza Xpress. I’ll go to Rakel’s afterwards and google these other names. What can you tell me about the analysis?’
‘The substance you bought is almost identical to early samples of violin we have examined. But there is a small difference in the chemical compound. And then there are the brown flecks.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s not an active pharmaceutical ingredient. It’s quite simply the coating that’s used on pills. You know, to make them easier to swallow or to give them a better taste.’
‘Is it possible to trace it to the producer?’
‘In theory, yes. But I’ve checked, and it transpires that medicine manufacturers generally make their own coating, which means there are several thousand of them over the globe.’
‘So we won’t make any headway there?’
‘Not with the coating,’ Beate said. ‘But on the inside of some fragments there are still remains of the pill. It was methadone.’
Rita brought the coffee and beer. Harry thanked her, and she left.
‘I thought methadone was liquid and came in bottles.’
‘The methadone used in the so-called medicine-assisted rehabilitation of drug addicts comes in bottles. So I rang up St Olav’s Hospital. They research opioids and opiates and told me that methadone pills are used for the treatment of pain.’
‘And in violin?’
‘They said it was possible that modified methadone could be used in its manufacture, yes.’
‘That only means violin is not made from scratch, but how does that help us?’
Beate curled her hand round the beer glass. ‘Because there are very few producers of methadone pills. And one of them is based in Oslo.’
‘AB? Nycomed?’
‘The Radium Hospital. They have their own research institute and have manufactured a methadone pill to treat severe pain.’