Harry tapped in Skai’s number.
‘He refuses to say a single word to anyone,’ Skai said, masticating something or other. ‘Apart from his solicitor.’
‘Who is?’
‘Johan Krohn. Do you know him? Looks like a boy and—’
‘I know Johan Krohn very well.’
Harry rang Krohn’s office, was transferred and Krohn sounded half welcoming and half dismissive, the way a professional defence counsel should when a prosecuting authority calls. He listened to Harry. Then he answered.
‘I’m afraid not. Unless you have concrete evidence that can establish beyond doubt that my client is keeping someone locked up or otherwise exposing someone to danger by not revealing their whereabouts, I cannot allow you to speak to Altman at this juncture, Hole. These are serious allegations you’re making against him, and I don’t need to tell you that it is my job to protect his interests as far as I am able.’
‘Agreed,’ Harry said. ‘You didn’t need to tell me.’
They rang off.
Harry looked out of the window onto the city centre. The chair was good, no doubt about that. But his eyes found the familiar glass building in Grønland.
Then he dialled another number.
Katrine Bratt was as happy as a lark, and twittered like one, too.
‘I’m going to be discharged in a couple of days,’ she said.
‘I thought you were there of your own free will.’
‘Yes I am, but I have to be formally discharged. I’m looking forward to it. They’ve offered me a desk job at the station when my sick leave runs out.’
‘Good.’
‘Anything special you want?’
Harry explained.
‘So you’ll have to find Tony Leike without Altman’s help?’
‘Yup.’
‘Any ideas where I can start?’
‘Just one. Right after Tony went missing we checked he hadn’t stayed anywhere around Ustaoset. Thing is, I’ve checked recent years a bit more closely, and he’s almost never registered at accommodation anywhere in Ustaoset, a couple of Tourist Association cabins, that’s all. And that’s weird because he’s been up there a lot.’
‘Perhaps he was freeloading at the cabins, not registering or paying.’
‘He’s not the type,’ Harry said. ‘I wonder if Tony has a cabin or suchlike up there no one knows anything about.’
‘OK. Anything else?’
‘No. Yes – see what you can find out about Odd Utmo’s activities over the last few days.’
‘Are you still single, Harry?’
‘What sort of a bloody question’s that?’
‘You sound less single.’
‘Do I?’
‘You do. But it suits you.’
‘Does it?’
‘Since you ask, no.’
* * *
Aslak Krongli straightened his stiff back and looked up the scree.
It was one of the men in the search party who had called, and he was shouting again now, obviously excited. ‘Over here!’
Aslak uttered a low curse. The crime scene officers had finished, and the snowmobile and Odd Utmo had been hoisted to the top. It was complicated and time-consuming work as the only possible access to the scree was by rope, and even that was hard enough.
In the lunch break one man had told them something a maid at the hotel had whispered into his ear in confidence: there were bloodstains on the sheets in the room occupied by Rasmus Olsen, the husband of the dead woman MP, when he checked out. At first, she had thought it was menstrual blood, but then she had heard that Rasmus Olsen had been on his own and his wife had been at the Håvass cabin.
Krongli had answered that he must have had a local girl in his room or met his wife the morning she arrived in Ustaoset and they had made up in bed. The man had mumbled it was not certain it was menstrual blood.
‘Over here!’
What a lot of hassle. Aslak Krongli wanted to go home. Dinner, coffee, sleep. Put this whole shitty case behind him. The money he had owed in Oslo was paid, and he would never go there again. Never go back down into the quagmire. It was a promise he would keep this time.
They had used a dog to be sure they found all the bits of Utmo in the snow, and it was the dog that had leapt up the scree and stood barking a hundred metres further along. A hundred steep metres. Aslak assessed the climb.
‘Is it important?’ he shouted and set off a symphony of echoes.
He received an answer, and ten minutes later he was staring at what the dog had dug up from the snow. It was wedged in between the rocks so tightly that it must have been impossible to spot from the top.
‘Jesus,’ Aslak said. ‘Who could that be?’
‘Not that Tony Leike anyway,’ said the dog handler. ‘Here in the cold scree it would be a long time before the skeleton was picked that clean. Several years.’