Mia Krüger carried her coffee cup back to the table and picked up a newspaper along the way. She flicked through it, but the articles depressed her, so she put it down and focused on something positive. The taste of her cortado. And the fact that she had struck gold with her first attempt. She was always reluctant to call other departments for help, but the investigator from Kripos had been more than willing.
Police clueless.
Who killed Camilla Green?
She got this feeling every time she flicked through the tabloids, that it was a kind of battle. The police versus the killer. It was childish. Firstly, if the police did not catch the killer immediately, they were vilified. Secondly – and this was possibly her pet hate – this adulation of criminals. No matter how dreadful their crimes, endless column inches were devoted to them. Mia took another sip of her coffee and started to think that Munch might have a point after all: he despised reporters. She had never really minded them before. Even when they had hounded her back when she shot Markus Skog and she had been forced to hide out in a hotel in Majorstuen. Idiots, did they not see they were part of the problem? That there were people out there who would do anything for their fifteen minutes of fame?
Mark Chapman, who had shot John Lennon.
Just to get his name in the papers.
John Hinckley, who had shot Ronald Reagan in an attempt to impress the actress Jodie Foster.
Were reporters really that ignorant about recent history? Did they not realize the part they played?
Ritual murder unsolved.
Police outwitted.
She tried not to read the headlines, but it was hard not to. She had put down her newspaper, but people around her were still holding theirs up, normal people out for lunch, with an unswerving belief that the media told the truth.
Mia had never seen him before, but he was not difficult to spot; he might as well have worn a sign as he came through the doors and scouted for her across the room.
Kripos.
Cybercrime Unit.
The man in the suit nodded when he saw her, made a beeline for her table, and they shook hands.
‘Robert Larsen,’ he introduced himself, and sat down.
‘Mia Krüger.’
‘How nice to finally meet you.’ The man smiled. ‘And how convenient that you called today, of all days.’
‘Why?’
‘Kristian Karlsen,’ Larsen said with another small smile.
‘You mean Skunk?’
‘Yes, Skunk,’ the Kripos investigator said, then summoned the waiter and pointed to Mia’s cup to indicate that he wanted the same.
He took a file from his briefcase and placed it on the table in front of her.
‘I must admit that I was surprised to get your call. We’ve had him on our radar for a while, but I didn’t know that it was that serious.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Murder,’ Larsen said. ‘I mean, we have a lot on him, but nothing that points in that direction.’
‘Like I said on the phone, we don’t know very much yet,’ Mia said. ‘But we thought it was worth checking out.’
‘I get it.’ The Kripos investigator smiled and winked at her. ‘Top secret, eh?’
Mia did not like much about this man, but she decided not to let on.
‘So what have you got?’
‘Kristian Karlsen.’ Larsen cleared his throat and opened the file in front of him. ‘A black hacker. You’re familiar with the term?’
Mia nodded. Skunk had used the term himself, so she had looked it up. There were different types of hackers. She believed that Gabriel was a white hacker. One of the good guys.
‘And you have heard of the group Anonymous? Lulz-Sec?’
‘I’ve heard about Anonymous,’ Mia said.
‘They’re becoming quite the celebrities these days,’ Larsen said, as the waiter brought his coffee. ‘They came from a place called 4chan/b/. Have you heard of that?’
‘Definitely not.’ Mia smiled, sensing this was the way forward with him. Feign ignorance, even though Gabriel had explained some of it to her. The man opposite her seemed to enjoy showing off, and all she cared about was the contents of the folder on the table.
‘The long or the short version?’ Larsen asked her.
‘Short version, please.’
‘OK. The website 4chan. Nothing but a bunch of young idiots, really. Misfits. Right up until they realized how many they were.’
Larsen took a sip of his coffee.
‘I see,’ Mia said.
‘Yes, I’m talking about people who don’t fit in,’ he explained. ‘Who now hold the power. I mean, these guys, teenagers, they might be only fourteen or fifteen years old, but they can bring society to a halt if they want to.’
‘How?’
‘Air traffic, streetlights, banks, water supply – seriously, everything is computerized now; nothing is written down on paper these days. Do you follow?’
‘Oh, I see.’ Mia nodded.
‘DDOS,’ Larsen said.
‘What?’
The man in the suit smiled. ‘A DDOS attack? Do you know what that is?’
‘No idea.’
The suit from Kripos grinned again. He seemed enormously pleased with his opportunity to hold forth.
‘Basically, it’s what happens when hackers send an extreme number of requests to a website, so many that, ultimately, it can’t cope with them and it crashes. They’ve done this with big companies, who have been forced to take down their websites temporarily.’
‘I understand,’ Mia said and glanced at the file on the table in front of her. ‘But what does that have to do with Skunk?’
‘We believe that Kristian Karlsen is one of the people here in Norway who was behind these attacks. And the FBI has asked us to make sure that he’s punished for it.’
‘Do you have any actual evidence?’
‘About what?’
‘That Skunk was a part of this?’
‘We’re almost one hundred per cent sure,’ Larsen said, taking another sip of his coffee.
‘That means no.’
‘Oh no, we’re just biding our time.’ The man in the suit winked at her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What you have to realize is that these people are incredibly good at hiding. Online, I mean.’
‘But you already know where he is?’
‘In real life?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course. We have had him under surveillance for a long time.’
‘So you know where Skunk lives?’
‘We would be pretty rubbish at our job if we didn’t, don’t you think?’
‘Any chance that I, well, that I might be …’
Mia had not even completed her sentence before Larsen took a sheet of paper from his file and pushed it across to her.
‘That’s where he is?’ Mia said, staring incredulously at the address in front of her.
The man in the suit nodded.
‘You owe me one.’ Larsen raised the coffee cup to his lips and winked at her again.
‘Definitely,’ Mia said, and forced a smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘Any time. You’ll keep me posted?’
‘Absolutely. Again, thank you.’ Mia smiled, emptied her coffee cup, left the café as quickly as she could, found her mobile and rang Munch.