Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

you.’
    ‘It says number 11 on this tram. I said 12.’
    ‘It changes number after the Majorstuen crossing, but it’s the same tram.’
    Beate hurried over to the front door, knocked hard and held up her ID. The door opened with a snort and she climbed in. Nodded to the uniformed policeman standing there. He was holding a Heckler & Koch P30L.
    ‘Follow me,’ she said and started walking through the packed tram.
    She scrutinised all the faces as she made her way to the middle of the carriage. Felt her heart beating faster as she approached, saw the doodlings in the condensation on the window. She signalled to the officer before addressing the man in the seat.
    ‘Excuse me! Yes, you.’
    The face turned up to her bore angry red pimples and a terrified expression.
    ‘I . . . I didn’t mean to. I left my travel card at home. Won’t happen again.’
    Beate closed her eyes and swore under her breath. Nodded to the officer to keep following her. When they had reached the end of the carriage without any success, she called to the driver to open the back door and clambered out.
    ‘Well?’ Katrine said.
    ‘Gone. Question the passengers to see if they saw him. In an hour they’ll have forgotten, if they haven’t already. As a reminder, he’s a man in his forties, about one eighty tall with blue eyes. But the eyes are a bit slanted now. He’s got short brown hair, high, pronounced cheekbones and thin lips. And no one touch the window where he was writing. Take fingerprints and photos. Bjørn?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Take all the stops between here and Frogner Park, talk to people working in nearby shops, ask if they know anyone of this description. When people catch trams early in the morning it’s often part of a routine. They’re going to work, school, the gym, a regular coffee bar.’
    ‘We’ve got a few more bites at the cherry then,’ Katrine said.
    ‘Yes, but be careful, Bjørn. Make sure the people you talk to aren’t likely to warn him. Katrine, see if we can borrow some officers to take the tram early in the morning. Get a couple of men on the trams from here to Frogner Park for the rest of the day, in case Valentin should return the same way. OK?’
    While Katrine and Bjørn joined the police officers and allocated tasks, Beate looked up at the window of the tram. The lines he had drawn in the condensation had run. There was a recurrent pattern, a bit like frilly lace. A vertical line followed by a circle. After one row there was another, forming a square matrix.
    It wasn’t necessarily important.
    But as Harry used to say: ‘It might not be important or relevant, but everything means something . And we start searching where there is light, where we can see something .’
    Beate took out her mobile and photographed the window. And remembered something.
    ‘Katrine! Come here!’
    Katrine heard her and left the briefing to Bjørn.
    ‘How did it go last night?’
    ‘Fine,’ Katrine said. ‘I took the chewing gum for testing this morning. Registered it with the file number of a shelved rape case. They’re prioritising the police murders, but they promise to look at it asap.’
    Beate nodded pensively. Ran a hand across her face. ‘How soon is asap? We can’t let what might be the murderer’s DNA end up last in the queue just to get the bouquets for ourselves.’
    Katrine put a hand on her hip and eyed Bjørn, who was gesticulating to the officers. ‘I know one of the women up there,’ she lied. ‘I’ll ring her and do some pushing.’
    Beate looked at her. Hesitated. Nodded.
    ‘And you’re sure you didn’t just want it to be Valentin Gjertsen?’ Ståle Aune said. He was standing by the window and staring down at the busy street beneath the office. At the people hurrying hither and thither. At the people who could be Valentin Gjertsen. ‘Optical illusions are common among those suffering from a lack of sleep. How much sleep have you had in the last forty-eight hours?’
    ‘I’ll count them up,’ Beate Lønn answered, in a way that made it clear to Ståle that she didn’t need to. ‘I’m ringing because he drew something on the window inside the tram. Did you get my text?’
    ‘Yes,’ Aune said. He had just started a therapy session when Beate’s text shone up at him from his open desk drawer.
    See pic. Urgent. I’ll ring .
    And he had felt an almost perverse sense of pleasure when he had looked straight into Paul Stavnes’s astonished face, said there was a call he