Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

. that Beate Lønn was made of the sterner stuff we hope is typical of our force. Now it is up to us to prove it. In the only way we can honour her memory as she would have wanted it honoured. By catching him. Skål! ’
    Truls stared at his childhood pal as they all raised their glasses to the ceiling, like warriors raising their spears at the chieftain’s command. Saw their faces glowing, serious, determined. Saw Bellman nod as though they were of one mind, saw that he was moved, moved by the moment, by his own words, by what motivated them, the power they had over others in the room.
    Truls went back to the hall by the toilets, stood beside the fruit machine, pressed a coin into the slot of the phone and lifted the receiver. Dialled the switchboard number.
    ‘Police.’
    ‘I’ve got an anonymous tip-off. It’s about the bullet in the René Kalsnes case. I know which gun it was fried . . . fl . . .’ Truls had tried to speak clearly, knowing it would be recorded and played back afterwards. But his tongue wouldn’t obey his brain.
    ‘Then you should talk to the detectives in Crime Squad or Kripos,’ the operator said. ‘But they’re all at a funeral today.’
    ‘I know!’ Truls answered, hearing his voice was unnecessarily loud. ‘I just wanted to give you a tip-off.’
    ‘You know?’
    ‘Yes. Listen—’
    ‘I can see you’re ringing from Kafé Justisen. You should find them there.’
    Truls glared at the phone. Realised that he was drunk. That he had made a huge blunder. That if this was followed up, and they knew the call came from Justisen, they could just summon the officers who had been there, play the tape and ask if anyone recognised the voice. And that would be too big a risk to take.
    ‘Just kidding,’ Truls said. ‘Sorry, we’ve had a bit too much beer here.’
    He rang off and left. Straight through the room without looking to either side. But when he opened the front door and felt the cold blast of rain he stopped. Turned. Saw Mikael with his hand on a colleague’s shoulder. Saw a group standing round Harry Hole, the piss artist. One of them, a woman, was even hugging him. Truls turned back. Watched the rain.
    Suspended. Excluded.
    He felt a hand on his shoulder. Looked round. The face blurred, as though he was peering through water. Was he really that drunk?
    ‘That’s fine,’ said the face with the gentle voice as the hand squeezed his shoulder. ‘Slip away. We all feel like that today.’
    Truls reacted instinctively, flicked the hand off and headed into the night. Stomped down the street feeling the rain soak through the shoulders of his jacket. To hell with them. To hell with all of them.

28
    SOMEONE HAD STUCK a piece of paper on the grey metal door. BOILER ROOM.
    Inside, Gunnar Hagen saw from his watch that it had just gone 7 a.m. and confirmed that all four of them were present. The fifth person wasn’t going to come, and her chair was unoccupied. The new member had taken a chair from one of the conference rooms higher up in Police HQ.
    Gunnar Hagen examined each of them in turn.
    Bjørn Holm looked as though the previous day had hit him hard, ditto Katrine Bratt. Ståle Aune was as usual impeccably dressed in tweed and bow tie. Gunnar Hagen studied the new member extra carefully. The Crime Squad boss had left Justisen before Harry Hole, and at that point Harry had still been on the coffee and soft drinks wagon. But sitting there, slumped into his chair, pale, unshaven, eyes closed, Hagen wasn’t sure if Harry had gone the distance. What this group needed was Harry Hole the detective. What no one needed was the drinker.
    Hagen looked up at the whiteboard where, together, they had given Harry a résumé of the case so far. Names of the victims along one timeline, crime scenes, the name Valentin Gjertsen, arrows leading to earlier murders with dates.
    ‘So,’ Hagen said, ‘Maridalen, Tryvann, Drammen and the last one at the victim’s home. Four officers from the investigations of earlier unsolved murders, the same date and – in three of the cases – the same crime scene. Three of the original murders were typical sexually motivated killings, and though they are distant from one another in time, they were connected even then. The exception is Drammen where the victim was a man, René Kalsnes, and there was no indication of any sexual abuse. Katrine?’
    ‘If we assume that Valentin Gjertsen was behind all four of the original murders and the four police murders,