‘Hm. As a warning perhaps. What do you think?’
‘What do I think? I thought it was only you young
blokes who had been blessed with a bit of
brainpower. That’s the impression they’re trying to
promote in the force nowadays.’
‘Right. Thanks for your help, Weber.’
‘And pack the fags in, Hole.’
‘Bit of a stickler,’ Halvorsen said in the car on
the way down to the city centre.
‘Weber can be hard to take sometimes,’ Harry
conceded. ‘But he knows his job.’
Halvorsen drummed the beat to a soundless song
on the dashboard. ‘What now?’ he asked.
‘Continental.’
Kripos had phoned the Continental fifteen minutes
after they had washed and changed the bedding in
Brandhaug’s room. No one had noticed Brandhaug
had had a visitor, only that he had checked out at
around midnight.
Harry stood in reception, pulling at his last
cigarette while the duty head receptionist from the
previous night wrung his hands and looked
unhappy.
‘We didn’t know that herr Brandhaug had been
shot until late morning,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we
wouldn’t have touched his room.’
Harry gave a sign of acknowledgement and took a
drag of his cigarette. The hotel room was not the
scene of any crime; it would simply have been
interesting to know if there was any blonde hair on
the pillow and to contact whoever may have been
the last person to talk to Brandhaug.
‘Well, if that’s everything then,’ the man said
with a smile and a faint suggestion he was going to
cry.
Harry didn’t respond. He had noticed that the
head receptionist had become more and more
nervous the less he and Halvorsen said. So he said
nothing; he waited and watched the glow of his
cigarette.
‘Er . . .’ said the receptionist, running a hand
along the lapel of his jacket.
Harry waited. Halvorsen studied the floor. The
head receptionist held out for barely fifteen
seconds before cracking.
‘Of course, he did occasionally have visitors up
there,’ he said.
‘Who?’ Harry said without taking his eyes off the
glow of his cigarette.
‘Women and men . . .’
‘Who?’
‘As a matter of fact, I don’t know. It’s none of our
business who the Under Secretary of State chooses
to spend his time with.’
‘Really?’
Silence.
‘Of course, if a woman comes here who is
obviously not a guest, we do take note which floor
she takes the lift to.’
‘Would you recognise her?’
‘Yes.’ The answer came like a shot, no hesitation.
‘She was very attractive. And very drunk.’
‘Prostitute?’
‘If so, then a high-class one. And they tend to be
sober. Well, not that I know much about them. This
hotel is no —’
‘Thank you,’ Harry said.
A southerly wind brought in warm weather and, as
Harry left the police HQ after the meeting with
Meirik and the Chief Constable, he instinctively
knew that something had finished. A new season
was on its way.
The Chief Constable and Meirik had both known
Brandhaug. Only professionally, they both found it
necessary to stress. It was clear that the two had
discussed the matter in private. Meirik opened the
meeting by definitively drawing a line under the
undercover job in Klippan. He almost seemed
relieved, Harry noted. The Chief Constable then
put forward her proposal, and Harry realised that
his dashing exploits in Sydney and Bangkok had
even left a mark on the upper echelons of the
police force.
‘Typical sweeper,’ the Chief Constable had
called Harry. And then she explained the role they
were now going to play him in.
A new season. The warm Föhn wind made Harry
feel light-headed and he permitted himself a taxi
since he was still dragging around a heavy bag.
The first thing he did on walking into his flat in
Sofies gate was to check the answerphone. The red
eye was lit. No blinking. No messages.
He had asked Linda to copy the case file and he
spent the rest of the evening going through
everything they had on the murders of Hallgrim
Dale and Ellen Gjelten. Not that he was expecting
to find anything new, but it might stimulate his
imagination. He glanced over from time to time at
the telephone, wondering how long he would
manage to wait before he called her. The
Brandhaug case was the main item on the TV news.
At midnight he went to bed. At one o’clock he got
up, pulled out the telephone jack and put the phone
in the fridge. At three o’clock he fell asleep.
75
Møller’s Office. 11 May 2000.
‘WELL?’ MØLLER SAID, AFTER HARRY AND