Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

their systematic work had led to a breakthrough in the investigation. The breakthrough was both pleasing and painful because there was a chance that the guilty party might be someone from their own ranks. But they couldn’t turn their backs on that. They had to show the public they were willing to look under every stone, whatever they might find there. Show that they were not cowards. He was prepared for a storm, but in such situations it was all about showing courage, genuine leadership and mental agility. Not just at Police HQ, but also at City Hall. He was ready to stand proudly at the helm, but he needed the council’s confidence to take up arms.
    He had noticed that his language had become a little pompous at the end, more pompous than it had seemed when Gunnar Hagen had used it in his living room at home last night. But he knew that he definitely had a few of them on board, a couple of the women had even coloured up, especially when he hammered home the final point. Which was that when all the service pistols in the whole country were checked against this bullet, like a prince with a shoe searching for his Cinderella, he would be the first to hand in his gun for ballistic examination.
    However, what counted now was not his way with women but what the chairman thought. And he was rather more poker-faced.
    Truls Berntsen put the phone in his pocket and nodded to the Thai woman to bring him another cup of coffee.
    She smiled and was gone.
    Obliging, these Thais. Unlike the few Norwegians left serving at tables. They were lazy and moody and looked aggrieved at having to do an honest day’s work. Not like the Thai family running this little restaurant in Torshov, who jumped into action if he so much as raised an eyebrow. And when he paid for a lousy spring roll or a coffee, they beamed from ear to ear and bowed holding their palms together as though he were the great white God who had descended from the skies. He had vaguely considered going to Thailand. But it wouldn’t happen. He wanted to work again.
    Mikael had just rung and told him their ploy had worked. His suspension would soon be lifted. He hadn’t wanted to specify exactly what he meant by soon, he had just repeated it, ‘soon’.
    The coffee came, and Truls took a sip. It wasn’t particularly good, but he had reached the conclusion that he didn’t really like what other people called good coffee. This was how it should taste, percolated in a well-used percolator. The coffee should have a hint of paper filters, plastic and ancient toasted coffee-bean grease. But probably that was why he was the only customer here. People drank their coffee elsewhere and came here later in the day to have a cheap meal or to buy a takeaway.
    The Thai woman went to sit at the corner table where the rest of her family looked over what he presumed was the bill. He listened to the buzz of their strange language. Didn’t understand a word, but he liked it. Liked sitting near them. Nodding back graciously when they sent him a smile. Feeling he was part of this community. Was that why he came here? Truls rejected the idea. Concentrated on the problem in hand again.
    The rest of what Mikael had said.
    They had to hand in their service pistols.
    He had said they were going to be checked in connection with the police murders, and he himself – to show the summons applied to everyone, high and low – had handed in his gun for ballistic examin-ation this morning. Truls would have to do the same as quickly as possible, he said, even though he was suspended.
    It had to be the bullet in René Kalsnes. They had worked out it had to be from a police gun.
    He wasn’t too worried himself. Not only had he swapped the bullet, he had also reported the gun he had used missing, stolen. Of course he had waited for a while – a whole year in fact – to be sure no one would link the weapon with Kalsnes’s murder. Then he had wrenched open the door to his flat with a crowbar to make it look convincing and reported a burglary. He had listed loads of things that had been taken and got forty thousand off the insurance company. Plus a new service pistol.
    It wasn’t that that was the problem.
    The problem was the bullet in the evidence box. It had – how did it go? – it had seemed like a good idea at the time. But now all of a sudden he needed Mikael Bellman. If he was suspended, he wouldn’t be able to lift Truls’s suspension. Anyway, too late to do anything about that