Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

permanently is like trying to remove dog shit from your trainers. Difficult. How do you think we find child porn on computers pervs have handed in voluntarily, thinking they’ve got rid of the lot? Believe me, I’ll find Valentin Gjertsen if he was at the stadium that evening. What was the assumed time of death for Erlend Vennesla?’
    They heard the toilet flush.
    ‘Between seven and half eight,’ Bjørn said. ‘In other words, right at the start of the game, after Henriksen equalised. Vennesla must have heard the cheering up in Maridalen. It’s not far from Ullevål, is it?’
    The bathroom door opened. ‘Which means he could have made it to the match after the murder in Maridalen,’ Harry said, doing up the last button. ‘Once he was in the stadium he could have done something that people around him would remember. Alibi.’
    ‘Valentin was not at the match,’ Katrine said. ‘But if he was I’ll watch the sodding video from start to finish and time him if he so much as lifts his bum off the seat. Alibi, my arse.’
    There was a silence hanging over the large detached houses.
    The silence before the storm of Volvos and Audis returning home after working for Norway Ltd, Truls Berntsen thought.
    He rang the bell and looked around.
    Nicely established garden. Well looked after. You probably had time to do that if you were a retired Chief of Police.
    The door opened. He looked older. The same sharp blue eyes, but the skin around his neck was a little looser, his back not quite as straight. He was simply not as impressive as Truls remembered him. Perhaps it was just the faded casual clothes; perhaps that’s how it is when your job doesn’t keep you on your toes any more.
    ‘Berentzen, Orgkrim.’ Truls held up his ID in the certain knowledge that if the old boy really read Berntsen he would think that was what he heard as well. Lies with backup. But the Chief nodded without looking. ‘I think I’ve seen you before. How can I help you, Berentzen?’
    He gave no indication that he was going to invite Truls in. Which was fine by Truls. No one could see them and there was minimal background noise.
    ‘It’s about your son, Sondre.’
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘We’re running an operation to catch Albanian pimps, and for that purpose we’ve been keeping an eye on movements in Kvadraturen and taking pictures. We’ve identified a number of cars seen picking up prostitutes and we’re intending to bring the owners in for questioning. We’ll offer them reduced sentences if we can act on information they give us about the pimps. And one of the cars we’ve photographed belongs to your son.’
    The Chief of Police raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘What’s that? Sondre? Impossible.’
    ‘I thought so too. But I wanted to confer with you. If you think this must be some misunderstanding, that the woman he picks up is not even a prostitute, we’ll shred the photo.’
    ‘Sondre is happily married. I brought him up. He knows the difference between right and wrong, believe me.’
    ‘Of course, I just wanted to be sure that this is how you see the matter as well.’
    ‘My God, why would he buy . . .’ The man in front of Truls was grimacing as if he had been chewing a rotten grape. ‘. . . sex in the street? The danger of infection. The children. No, no, no.’
    ‘Sounds like we agree there’s no point following this up. Even though we have reason to suspect that the woman is a prostitute, your son may have lent his car to someone else. We don’t have a photo of the driver.’
    ‘So you don’t even have any proof. No, you’d better just forget this one.’
    ‘Thank you. We’ll do as you say.’
    The Chief of Police nodded slowly while carefully studying Truls. ‘Berentzen at Orgkrim, did you say?’
    ‘Correct.’
    ‘Thank you, Berentzen. You officers are doing a good job.’
    Truls beamed. ‘We do the best we can. Have a good day.’
    ‘What was that you said again?’ Katrine said, staring at the black screen in front of her. In the world outside the Boiler Room, where the air was thick with evaporating human being, it was afternoon.
    ‘I said there was a good chance the images of the crowds had been deleted because of the data-archiving directive,’ Bjørn said. ‘And as you can see, I was right.’
    ‘And what did I say?’
    ‘You said that files are like dog shit on trainers,’ Harry said. ‘Impossible to remove.’
    ‘I didn’t say impossible ,’ Katrine said.
    The four members of