Harry rang back and squeezed the phone between cheek and shoulder as he tied his boots and noted that it was time he bought some new ones. The iron plate in the sole, so that you could tread on nails without worrying, was hanging off.
‘Bloody hell, Harry. They really hung you out to dry in the papers today. They butchered you. What does your boss say?’
Colbjørnsen sounded ill from overindulgence. Or just ill.
‘I don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘I haven’t spoken to him.’
‘Crime Squad comes out OK. It’s you personally carrying the entire can. Did your boss make you take one for the team?’
‘No.’
The question came after a long silence. ‘It wasn’t … it wasn’t Bellman, was it?’
‘What do you want, Colbjørnsen?’
‘Shit, Harry. I’ve been running a somewhat illegal solo investigation, just like you. So first of all I have to know whether we’re still on the same team or not.’
‘I haven’t got a team, Colbjørnsen.’
‘Great, I can hear you’re still on our team. The losers.’
‘I’m on my way out.’
‘Right. I had another chat with Stine Ølberg, the girl Elias Skog was so taken by.’
‘Yes?’
‘It transpires that Skog told her more about what went on in the cabin that night than I had understood at the first interview.’
‘I’ve started to believe in second interviews,’ Harry said.
‘Eh?’
‘Nothing. Come on, out with it.’
49
Bombay Garden
BOMBAY GARDEN WAS THE KIND OF RESTAURANT THAT DID not appear to have the right to keep going, but unlike its trendier competitors it had managed to survive year after year. Its location at the centre of east Oslo was dire, down a side street between a timber warehouse and a disused factory that was now a theatre. The alcohol licence had come and gone after countless breaches of the rules; the same was also true for its licence to serve food. The health inspectors had on one occasion found a species of rodent in the kitchen they had not been able to identify, beyond declaring it had a certain similarity to Rattus norvegicus. In the comments box of the report the inspector had let rip and described the kitchen as a ‘crime scene’ where ‘murders of the foulest kind had unquestionably taken place’. The slot machines along the walls brought in quite a bit of money, but were regularly vandalised and robbed. The Vietnamese owners did not use the place to launder drugs money, as some suspected, though. The reason Bombay Garden could keep its head above water was to be found at the back, behind two closed doors. Concealed there was a so-called private club, and to be allowed in you had to apply for membership. In practice, that meant you signed an application form at the bar of the restaurant, membership was granted on the spot and you paid a hundred kroner as an annual fee. Afterwards you were escorted in and the door was locked behind you.
Then you stood in a smoke-filled room – as smoking laws do not pertain to private clubs – and in front of you there was a miniature oval racecourse, four metres by two. The course itself was covered with green felt and had seven tracks. Seven flat metal horses, each attached to a pin, moved forward in spasmodic jerks. The speed of each horse was determined by a computer that hummed and buzzed under the table, and was – as far as anyone had ascertained – completely arbitrary and legitimate. That is, the computer program gave some of the horses a greater chance of a higher speed, which was reflected in the odds and thus any eventual payout. Around the racecourse sat the club members – some were regulars, others were new faces – in comfortable leather swivel chairs, smoking, drinking the restaurant’s beer at membership prices, cheering on their horse or the combination they had backed.
Since the club operated in a legal grey area with respect to gambling laws, the rules were that if twelve or more members were present, the stake was restricted to a hundred kroner per member, per race. If there were fewer than twelve, the club’s regulations stipulated it was regarded as a limited gathering, and at small private gatherings you could not prevent adults from making private wagers. How much they chose to bet was up to the participants. For this reason, it was conspicuous how often precisely eleven people could be counted in the back room of the Bombay Garden. And where the garden came into the picture, no one knew.
At ten past two in the afternoon a man with the club’s most recent membership, forty seconds old to be precise, was admitted into the room where he soon established that the only people there, apart from himself, were one member sitting in a swivel chair with his back to him and a man of presumably Vietnamese origin who was clearly administrating the races and stakes; at any rate he was wearing the kind of waistcoat croupiers do.