Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

the team sat around Katrine’s computer. When Harry had rung Ståle and asked him to join them, Ståle had sounded relieved more than anything else.
    ‘I said it was difficult,’ Katrine said. ‘But as a rule there’s a mirror image of them somewhere. Which a clever computer man will be able to find.’
    ‘Or woman?’ Ståle suggested.
    ‘Nope,’ Katrine said. ‘Women can’t park, they don’t remember football results and they can’t be bothered to learn the fiddly bits on computers. For that you need weird men with band T-shirts and minimal sex lives, and it’s been like this ever since the Stone Age.’
    ‘So you can’t—’
    ‘I keep trying to explain that I’m not a computer specialist, Ståle. My search engines searched the files of the Norwegian Football Association, but all the recordings had been deleted. And I’m afraid that from here on in I’m no use.’
    ‘We could have saved ourselves a bit of time if you’d listened to me,’ Bjørn said. ‘So what do we do now?’
    ‘I don’t mean I’m no use for anything,’ Katrine said, still addressing Ståle. ‘You see, I’m equipped with a few relative virtues. Such as feminine charm, unfeminine get-up-and-go and no shame. Which can give you an edge in nerd land. The guy who showed me these search engines also got me in with an Indian IT man, known as Side Cut. And an hour ago I rang Hyderabad and put him on the case.’
    ‘And . . .?’
    ‘And here’s the footage,’ Katrine said, pressing the return button.
    The screen lit up.
    They stared.
    ‘That’s him,’ Ståle said. ‘He looks lonely.’
    Valentin Gjertsen, alias Paul Stavnes, was sitting in front of them with his arms crossed. He was watching the match without any visible interest.
    ‘Goddamn!’ Bjørn cursed under his breath.
    Harry asked Katrine to fast-forward.
    She pressed a button and the crowd around Valentin Gjertsen began to move jerkily as the clock and the counter in the bottom right-hand corner raced forward. Only Valentin Gjersten sat still, like a lifeless statue amid a swarm of life.
    ‘Faster,’ Harry said.
    Katrine clicked again and the same people became even more active, leaning forward and back, getting up, throwing their arms in the air, leaving, returning with a hot dog or a coffee. Then lots of empty blue seats shone back at them.
    ‘One–one and half-time,’ Bjørn said.
    The stadium filled up again. Even more movement in the crowd. The clock in the corner was running. Heads shaking and obvious frustration. All of a sudden: arms in the air. For a couple of seconds the image seemed to be frozen. Then people jumped up from their seats at once, cheering, bouncing up and down, embracing each other. All except for one.
    ‘Riise penalty in extra time,’ Bjørn said.
    It was over.
    People vacated their seats. Valentin sat, unmoving, until everyone had left. Then he got up and was gone.
    ‘Suppose he doesn’t like queueing,’ Bjørn said.
    The screen was black once more.
    ‘So,’ Harry said. ‘What have we seen?’
    ‘We’ve seen my patient watching a football match,’ Ståle said. ‘I imagine I have to say my ex-patient, providing he doesn’t turn up for the next therapy session. Nevertheless, it was apparently an entertaining match for everyone apart from him. As I know his body language, I may say with some certainty that this did not interest him. Which of course prompts the question: why go to a football match then?’
    ‘And he didn’t eat, go to the toilet or get up from his seat during the whole game,’ Katrine said. ‘Just sat there like a bloody pillar of salt. How spooky’s that? As though he knew we would check this recording and didn’t want us to miss ten seconds of his damn alibi.’
    ‘If only he’d made a call on his mobile,’ Bjørn said. ‘Then we could have blown up the picture and perhaps seen the number he dialled. Or clocked the split second he rang and checked it against outgoing calls at the base stations covering Ullevål Stadium and—’
    ‘He didn’t ring,’ Harry said.
    ‘But if—’
    ‘He didn’t ring, Bjørn. And whatever Valentin Gjertsen’s motive for watching the match at Ullevål, it’s a fact that he was sitting there when Erlend Vennesla was murdered in Maridalen. And the other fact is . . .’ Harry gazed above their heads, at the bare white-brick wall. ‘. . . we’re back to square one.’

34
    AURORA SAT ON the swing looking at the sun filtering through the leaves of the