by Holt, Anne
“We also have a couple of other possible theories that we are in the process of scrutinizing more closely. It’s not necessary to go into that in any detail here.”
The Security Service Chief stopped, nodding briefly to the Chief of Police as a signal that the meeting was over. The Chief tugged at his grimy collar, and appeared to be longing earnestly to go home.
“Do you still believe all that guff about a lone madman?” Tone-Marit asked as they left the parade room immediately afterward. “Must be an ingenious guy, in that case!”
Billy T. did not respond, but after staring at her for several seconds, shook his head lamely.
“Now I really must get some sleep,” he mumbled.
09.07, OSLO POLICE STATION
It was impossible to guess the age of the lady in the black dress with a little scarlet scarf around her neck who sat sipping from a glass of Farris mineral water. Police Sergeant Tone-Marit Steen was impressed: the woman looked refreshed and immaculately turned out, despite having been interviewed until four o’clock that same morning. It was true that her eyes were ever so slightly bloodshot, but her makeup was perfect, and the small movements she continually made released a faint, pleasant waft of perfume into the room. Tone-Marit tucked her arms into her sides and hoped that she did not smell too rank.
“Really sorry to have to bother you again,” she said in a voice that sounded sincere. “But in the circumstances, I hope you appreciate that we regard you as a particularly important witness.”
Wenche Andersen, secretary in the Prime Minister’s office, nodded gently.
“It’s all the same to me. It’s impossible to sleep anyway. It’s the least I can do. Ask away.”
“In order to avoid going through what we covered last night all over again, we’ll do a short resumé of what you said. Stop me if anything is incorrect.”
Nodding, Wenche Andersen cradled her hands in her lap.
“Birgitte Volter had asked to be left in peace, is that right?”
The woman nodded.
“And you don’t know why. She was to have an absolutely routine meeting with Supreme Court Judge Grinde, a meeting that had been arranged a week in advance. No one else came to the office after you last saw Volter alive. But you say here …”
Tone-Marit leafed through the papers, and finally found what she was looking for. “You say that she had seemed troubled recently. Stressed, you say. What do you make of that?”
The woman in black gazed at her, obviously searching for the right words.
“It’s difficult to say, really. I hadn’t got to know her very well yet, you see. She was … dismissive? Irritable? A bit of both. Slightly abrupt, in a sense. More so than she had been before. I can’t say any more than that.”
“Could you … Could you give some examples? About the sort of thing that caused her to become irritable?”
Something resembling a smile crossed Wenche Andersen’s face.
“The newspapers are usually delivered by messenger at quarter past eight. On Thursday there was a delay of some kind, so they did not arrive until almost half past nine. The Prime Minister was so annoyed that she … Well, she swore, not to put too fine a point on it.”
The woman’s cheeks had now acquired two small patches of puce.
“Foul language, in fact. I ran out and bought copies of Dagbladet and Kveldsavisen for her.”
She sighed.
“Things like that. Unnecessary things. The kind of thing Prime Ministers don’t usually waste energy on.”
Tone-Marit lifted a half-liter bottle of mineral water and looked enquiringly at the other woman.
“Yes, please,” she answered, holding out her plastic beaker.
The Police Sergeant stared at her for some time, just long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable.
“What was she like, actually?” she suddenly asked. “What kind of person was she?”
“Birgitte Volter? What she was like?” The puce patches grew. “Well … what was she like? She was extremely conscientious. Very hard-working. So, almost like former Prime Minister Gro in that respect.”
Now she smiled broadly, revealing a row of attractive, well-cared-for teeth, with flashes of gold in the molars.
“She worked from early morning till late at night. Really easy to relate to, and always gave clear instructions. Very clear instructions. When something went adrift … with the kind of schedule a Prime Minister has, unexpected things happen all the time, but she always took it in her stride. And then she was quite …”
She was searching for words again, letting her eyes flit around the room, as though the words were hidden somewhere and refused to come into view.
“… warm,” she eventually exclaimed. “I would in fact call her warm. She even remembered my birthday, and gave me a bouquet of roses. She almost always found time to have a natter about this and that.”
“But if you were to say something negative,” the Police Sergeant interrupted. “What would you say then?”
“Well, negative …”
Looking down, the woman fiddled with the edge of her jacket.
“Well, she could be slightly … slightly too … genial? I wasn’t allowed to address her as ‘Prime Minister’, she insisted on being called ‘Birgitte’. That was unusual. And not quite proper, if you ask me. And she could get muddled – when it came to specific things, I mean. Kept forgetting her pass and suchlike. And in the midst of all this geniality, there was something … what should I call it? A kind of reserve? No, now I must be rambling terribly.”
She was now speaking softly, almost whispering, and shook her head dejectedly.
“Anything else?”
“No, not really. Nothing important.”
Someone knocked at the door.
“Busy!” Tone-Marit called out, and faint footsteps disappeared along the corridor as she continued. “Let me judge whether it’s of importance.”
The woman looked her straight in the eye as she quickly ran her hand across her hair in a superfluous gesture.
“No, honestly. There’s no more to be said. Apart from one thing that struck me last night. Or, this morning, in actual fact. A while ago. But it doesn’t really have anything to do with this, not really.”
Tone-Marit leaned forward, clutching a pen that she rocked between the forefinger and middle finger of her right hand.
“Last night I was asked to go through the Prime Minister’s office,” Wenche Andersen continued. “To see if there was anything missing, as the police officer put it. That was after Birgitte had been remo … been carried out, I mean. But I had already seen her, of course. Both when I found her and afterward, when she was lying there, or sitting there, I suppose. Across the desk. I had seen her twice. And—”
She stared expressionlessly at the pen tapping on the desktop with that nerve-racking, staccato sound.
Tone-Marit stopped abruptly. “Sorry,” she said, leaning back. “Do continue.”
“So I had seen her twice. And not to boast … in no way, but I am considered to be quite … observant.”
Now the little puce patches were ringed with dark red.
“I notice things. It is extremely necessary in my work. And I noticed that the Prime Minister wasn’t wearing her shawl.”
“Her shawl?”
“Yes, a large, fringed woolen shawl, black with a red pattern. She was wearing it across one shoulder, like this …”
Wenche Andersen untied her own small scarf, unfolded it into a triangle, and placed it over her shoulder.
“Not exactly like that, because it was a shawl of course, and much larger than this little scarf, but you get the idea I’m sure. I’m not entirely certain, but I think it was fastened with a hidden safety pin, because it never fell off. She liked that shawl and often wore it.”
“And what about this shawl?”
“It wasn’t there.”
“Wasn’t there?”
“No, she wasn’t wearing it, and it wasn’t in th
e room when I inspected it. It had vanished.”
The Police Sergeant leaned toward her again; something had kindled a spark in her eyes, and the woman opposite her instinctively drew back in her seat.
“Are you certain she was wearing it that day? Quite certain?”
“I’m one hundred per cent sure. I noticed that it was hanging slightly crookedly, as though she had put it on without looking in a mirror. One hundred per cent. Does it mean anything?”
“Maybe,” Tone-Marit said in a quiet voice. “Maybe not. Can you give a more detailed description?”
“Well, as I said, it was black, with a red pattern. Provençal pattern, I would call it. It was big, approximately …”
Wenche Andersen held out her hands about a meter apart.
“… and it was probably made of wool. I’m fairly sure it was pure wool. But now it’s vanished.”
Tone-Marit turned toward her computer beside the window. Without uttering a word, she sat writing for ten minutes.
Wenche Andersen drank some more Farris, and glanced discreetly at her wristwatch. She felt fatigue seep through her, and the monotonous, rattling sound of the police officer’s fingers on the keyboard made her struggle to keep her eyes open.
“And you never heard a shot?”
Wenche Andersen was startled; she must have dozed off momentarily.
“No. Never.”
“Then we’ll draw a line under this for today. You can take a taxi home and charge it to us. Thanks for taking the trouble to come back again. Unfortunately, I can’t promise it’ll be the last time.”
After shaking hands in farewell, Wenche Andersen hesitated at the door.
“Do you think you’ll catch him? The killer, I mean?”
Her eyes, until now only very slightly red, seemed full of tears.
“I don’t know. It’s impossible to say. But we’re going to do our very, very best.”
“If that’s any consolation,” she added after a few moments.
However, by that time the Prime Minister’s secretary had already left, closing the door carefully behind her.
12.00, PLENARY CHAMBER, PARLIAMENT BUILDING
The half-moon-shaped plenary chamber in the Parliament Building, which resembled an amphitheater, had never been more crowded. Every one of the 165 seats was occupied, and had been for more than a quarter of an hour. Unusually, no one spoke. The Cabinet members were sitting in the first semi-circle of chairs, at the front; only the Prime Minister’s seat was vacant, except for a bouquet of a dozen red roses that had been placed there haphazardly and looked as if they might fall to the floor at any moment. No one felt inclined to straighten them. The spaces reserved for diplomats were chock-full of bureaucrats and foreign representatives, all in dark clothes and with pale faces, apart from the South African ambassador, who was black and dressed in colorful traditional costume. The only noise, other than the occasional splutter and cough, came from the whirring of camera motors in the press box. The gallery above the rotunda was packed, and two security guards had their hands full holding latecomers outside the doors.
The President of the Parliament entered from the left. She strode across the floor, actually strode, her back erect and eyes swollen. She had been one of Birgitte Volter’s few genuine friends, and it was only long training in official decorum that kept her upright. Her curls trembled sadly on her head, as though they too were mourning the loss of a close friend.
She hammered three times on the table with a gavel before clearing her throat, then stood for so long without uttering a word that the atmosphere in the chamber became even more tense. In the end, she swallowed so loudly and so close to the microphone that the sound could be heard in every corner of the chamber.
“Parliament is lawfully convened,” she said finally, before reading out the list of deputies, for once rather short, which was good, since formalities seemed misplaced on a day such as this.
“Prime Minister Birgitte Volter has passed away,” she said at last. “And in the most brutal fashion imaginable.”
Lost in his own thoughts, Finance Minister Tryggve Storstein missed out on the memorial speech. Everything around him seemed to blur. The golden decorations on the ceiling, the burgundy carpet at his feet, the sound of the Parliamentary President’s voice; a glass bell jar formed around his chair and he felt totally alone. He was going to become Party Leader. Ruth-Dorthe did not have a chance. She was far too controversial for that. But would he also become Prime Minister? He did not even know if he wanted to. Of course, the thought had been there. Earlier. Before the final confrontation in 1992, when Gro Harlem Brundtland had resigned as Leader of the Labor Party, thus launching the cat-and-dog fight that Birgitte Volter had won. But now? Did he want to be Prime Minister?
He shook his head peremptorily. People did not ask such questions. One did what the situation demanded. What the party required. Frowning at the old cliché, he closed his eyes. For one fleeting, liberating moment he considered the possibility of the opposition taking over, but that blasphemous notion was swiftly displaced. They had to retain power. Anything else would mean chaos. Defeat. He was tired of defeat.
“In conclusion, I propose that the costs of Prime Minister Birgitte Volter’s funeral be borne by the state,” the President said.
Tryggve Storstein straightened up.
“Carried unanimously,” the woman at the front declared, hammering the gavel, and stroking her cheek rapidly, in a gesture of vulnerability. “The Foreign Minister has asked to speak.”
The ungainly man appeared even skinnier and more exhausted than he had that morning. Once installed at the Speaker’s chair, he seemed to forget himself entirely, before pulling himself together sufficiently to face right.
“Madam President,” he said with a brief nod, glancing down at a small scrap of paper he had set in front of him. “I have taken the liberty of asking to speak in order to say that, as a matter of course, all members of the government place their positions at your disposal now, since the Prime Minister herself is deceased.”
That was all. Hesitating slightly, he adjusted his glasses, as if he was considering continuing, then stepped from the Speaker’s chair and back to his place without taking the slip of paper with him.
“Then I would like to ask for one minute’s silence,” the President of the Parliament said.
The intense, empty silence lasted for two and a half minutes. Now and again a sniff was audible, but even the press photographers did not disrupt the solemn pause.
“The meeting is closed.”
The Parliamentary President banged the gavel again.
Finance Minister Tryggve Storstein stood up. Thirty-six hours without sleep was now beginning to make him feel intoxicated; he was out of sorts and remained on his feet, staring at his hands, as though they belonged to someone else entirely.
“When’s the Cabinet meeting, Tryggve?”
It was the Minister of Culture, in a charcoal-gray suit and makeup that looked as though it had been a long time since she’d glanced in a mirror.
“Two o’clock,” he said abruptly.
They all immediately left the chamber, in a quiet and orderly fashion, eyes downcast, like a procession of mourners rehearsing for the funeral. The press photographers noticed that the only person who actually looked as though she might be hiding a smile was Health Minister Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden.
However, it might just as well have been a scowl.
15.32, GAMLE CHRISTIANIA RESTAURANT
“The Christer Pettersson sort. Quite sure. Dead cert.”
The man wore a suit that looked as though it had been bought in a Texaco service station, its shiny material reminiscent of Beaver nylon from the 1970s. He raised his almost empty half-liter glass and continued speaking, with a foam moustache above his lip. “The police are going to make fools of themselves. Just like in Sweden. They’re going to get completely bogged down in all kinds of stupid, highly political leads. And then it’ll be some peculiar guy or other
who turns out to have done it. Somebody like Christer Pettersson, the Olof Palme guy.”
“Or a jealous lover.”
The woman with the not entirely original idea was relatively young, around thirty years old, her voice almost falsetto.
“Does anyone know anything about Birgitte Volter’s love life?”
Four of the five others around the table, all men, started to laugh.
“Love life? She was having an affair with Tryggve Storstein, that’s for sure. Bloody hell, he’s also the one who’ll probably take over the whole shooting match, isn’t he! A slightly delicate situation for the police, don’t you think, since he must be on the list of suspects! I know that—”
The Texaco man sounded confident but was interrupted by a booming voice that came from the enormous beard of a man in his forties. His head was completely shaven, but the jet-black beard reached down to his chest.
“That rumor about Volter and Storstein is nothing but nonsense. Storstein’s in a relationship with Helene Burvik now, not Volter. That ended long ago. Long before the big showdown in 92.”
“I thought Tryggve Storstein was happily married,” muttered the youngest of the journalists around the table, a girl from Aftenposten who had still not managed to establish a regular seat in the Gamle restaurant. “How on earth does somebody like that have the time for a mistress?”
The silence was total, as they all froze; even the beer was left sitting for a short while. Though she blushed deeply and unflatteringly, the girl was brash enough to continue. “I mean to say, how do you know it’s true, what you’re saying? If I believed half the rumors I’ve heard in the last six months, most members of the Cabinet have a sleazy past and a sex life we all might envy. That is, the ones who aren’t gay. Or them as well, for that matter. How do they find the time? That’s what I’m asking. For all the sordid goings-on they’re supposed to get up to, I mean. And how do you know all this? And is it actually so very interesting, anyway?”
She raised her wine glass. She was the only one not drinking beer.
As though someone had waved an invisible magic wand, she was immediately pushed out of the group. She was sitting at the edge of the table, on a stool, and the two men on either side of her turned away; their shoulders expanded, forming a wall that separated her from the others.