Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

an address?’
    Harry was given it.
    ‘That’s walking distance. I’ll head there right away. Are you coming?’
    ‘Yes, but I’ve been so tense I forgot to eat.’
    ‘OK. Come when you’re ready.’
    It was a quarter to nine when Harry walked up the flagstone path to the empty house. Close to the wall were used paint pots, rolls of plastic and planks sticking out from under tarpaulins. He walked down the little stone steps, as instructed by the owners, and across the flagstones at the back. He unlocked the basement flat and immediately the smell of glue and paint assailed him. But also another smell, one the owners had spoken about and which was one of the reasons they had decided to do some renovation work. They had said they couldn’t work out where it was coming from; the smell was all over the house. They’d had a pest controller in, but he had said that such a strong smell had to come from more than one dead rodent and they would probably have to take up the floor and open up the walls to find out.
    Harry switched on the light. Spread across the hall floor was a transparent plastic sheet, covered with grey heavy-duty boot marks and wooden boxes filled with tools, hammers, crowbars and paint-stained drills. Some boards had been removed from the wall so that you could see through to the insulation. In addition to the hall the flat consisted of a small kitchen, bathroom and sitting room with a curtain concealing the bedroom. The renovation project obviously hadn’t got as far as the bedroom yet; it was being used to store the furniture from the other rooms. To protect the furniture from the dust, the bead curtain had been pulled aside and replaced with a thick, matt plastic curtain which reminded Harry of slaughterhouses, cold-storage rooms and cordoned-off crime scenes.
    He inhaled the smell of solvents and decay. And concluded, like the pest controller, that this was not a single tiny rodent.
    The bed had been pushed into the corner to make more space for the furniture, and the room was so full it was hard to form an impression of exactly how the rape had been committed and the girl photographed. Katrine had said she would visit Irja in case she could give them any more information, but if this Valentin was their cop killer, Harry already knew one thing: he hadn’t left evidence implicating him lying around. Harry scanned the room from the floor to the ceiling and back down again to his reflection in the window, looking out on the darkness in the garden. There was something claustrophobic about the room, but if it really was the scene of a crime it wasn’t talking to him. Anyway, too much time had passed, too many other things had happened here in the meantime and all that was left was the wallpaper. And the smell.
    Harry let his gaze wander back up to the ceiling. Held it there. Claustrophobic. Why did it feel like that here and not in the sitting room? He stretched his full height of one ninety-two, plus arm, to the ceiling. His fingertips could just reach. Plasterboard. He went back into the sitting room and did the same. Without touching the ceiling.
    So, the bedroom ceiling must have been lowered. Typical of the 1970s when people were trying to reduce heating costs. And in the space between the old and the new ceiling there would be room. Room to hide something.
    Harry went into the hall, took a crowbar from a toolbox and returned to the bedroom. Froze when his gaze met the window. Knowing the eye automatically reacts to movement. He stood still for two seconds staring and listening. Nothing.
    Harry concentrated on the ceiling again. There was nowhere to insert a crowbar, but it was easy with plasterboard, all you had to do was cut out a big section and afterwards replace the piece, use a bit of filler and paint the whole ceiling. He reckoned it could be done in half a day if you were efficient.
    Harry stepped onto a chair and took aim at the ceiling with the crowbar. Hagen was right: if a detective, without a blue chit, the search warrant, tore down a ceiling without the owner’s consent, a court would certainly overrule any evidence that this may unearth.
    Harry aimed a blow. The crowbar went through the ceiling with a lifeless groan and white gypsum sprinkled down over his face.
    And Harry was not even a detective, just a civilian consultant, not part of the investigation, a private individual who could accordingly be held to account and found guilty of hooliganism. And Harry was willing to