Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

field day.’ Harry drew a rectangle in the air with his thumb and forefinger: “P OLICE C HIEF S USPECTS O WN O FFICERS ”. “P OLICE T OP B RASS L OSING I T ”.’
    ‘Doesn’t sound very likely,’ Katrine said.
    ‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘say what you like about Bellman, but he’s not stupid and he knows which side his bread is buttered. If we can make a case for the murderer being a policeman and sooner or later we catch him, whether Bellman’s with us or not, he knows it will look really bad if the Chief of Police is seen to have delayed the whole investigation out of sheer cowardice. So what we have to explain to him is that investigating his own officers shows the world that the police will leave no stone unturned in their efforts, whatever corruption it reveals. It shows courage, leadership, mental agility, all good things.’
    ‘And you reckon you can persuade him with that?’ Katrine snorted. ‘If my memory serves me correctly, Harry Hole is pretty high up his hate list.’
    Harry shook his head. ‘I’ve put Gunnar Hagen on the case.’
    ‘And when will it happen?’ Bjørn asked.
    ‘It’s happening as we speak,’ Harry said, looking at the cigarette. It was almost down to the filter already. He felt an urge to throw it away, watch the sparks arcing into the darkness as it bounced down the shimmering marble slope. Until it landed in the black water and was immediately extinguished. What was stopping him? The thought that he was polluting the town or witnesses’ disapproval of his polluting the town? The act itself or the punishment? The Russian he had killed in Come As You Are was a simple matter; it had been self-defence: the Russian or him. But the so-called unsolved murder of Gusto Hanssen, that had been a choice. And yet, among all the ghosts that regularly haunted him, he had never seen the young man with the girlish good looks and the vampire teeth. An unsolved case, bollocks.
    Harry flicked the cigarette. Glowing tobacco swept into the darkness and was gone.

37
    THE MORNING LIGHT filtered through the blinds over the surprisingly small windows in Oslo City Hall where the chairman coughed the cough that meant the meeting had started.
    Around the table sat the nine councillors each with their own responsibility, as well as the ex-Chief of Police, who had been summoned to give a brief account of how he would tackle the case of the murdered police officers or ‘the cop killer’ case as the press was consistently referring to it. The formalities were dealt with in seconds, with brief minutes and nods of agreement, which the secretary acknowledged and noted.
    The chairman then moved on to the business of the day.
    The former Chief of Police looked up, caught an enthusiastic, encouraging nod from Isabelle Skøyen and began.
    ‘Thank you, Mr Chairman. I won’t take up much of the council’s time today.’
    He glanced over at Skøyen, who appeared to be less enthusiastic about this unpromising opening.
    ‘I’ve gone through the case as requested. I have examined the police’s ongoing work and their progress, the leadership, the strategies that have been applied and their execution. Or to use Councillor Skøyen’s words, the strategies that may have been applied, but have definitely not been executed.’
    Isabelle Skøyen’s laughter was rich and self-indulgent, but somewhat curtailed, perhaps because she discovered she was the only person laughing.
    ‘I have employed all my skills accumulated over many years as a police officer and reached an unambiguous conclusion about what has to be done.’
    He saw Skøyen nod – the glint in her eye reminded him of an animal, though which, he couldn’t say.
    ‘Now the solving of a single crime doesn’t necessarily mean that the police are well managed. Just as an unsolved crime is not necessarily down to poor management. And having seen what the present incumbents, and Mikael Bellman in particular, have done I can’t see what I would have done differently. Or to make the point even clearer, I don’t think I could have done it as well.’
    He noted that Skøyen’s jaw had dropped, and, feeling to his surprise a certain sadistic pleasure, he continued.
    ‘The craft of criminal investigation is evolving, as is everything else in society, and from what I can see, Bellman and his staff are cognisant with and adept at utilising new methods and technological advances in a way which I and my peers would probably not have managed. He enjoys