by Holt, Anne
“Fine,” Billy T. said. Turning toward the door, he yelled, “Come in!”
Benjamin Grinde strolled through the doorway, attempting to wrench a smile from the fixed grimace he had worn since his arrival. He nodded to Wenche Andersen.
“I have an appointment with the Prime Minister,” he said.
“Stop,” Billy T. commanded, scratching his ear. “There’s no need to do any play-acting here. Just tell me what you did.”
“All right,” muttered Benjamin Grinde. “So I came in, and said what I just said. Then I was asked to wait for a second, and then …”
He concentrated, and Wenche Andersen rushed to help once again.
“I stood up and went in to see Mrs. Volter, and she just waved him in, and I said to go ahead, and he went past me, just like that.”
Benjamin Grinde moved tentatively toward Wenche Andersen. They could not agree on which side to pass each other, and stood on one spot, swaying from one side to the other like two fighting cocks unsure which was the stronger.
“Stop,” Billy T. demanded again, with a deep sigh and meaningful look in the direction of the Head of CID, who had still not uttered a single word. “As I said a moment ago …”
He spoke in exaggeratedly slow, clear tones, as though faced with five-year-old children who still had no idea how to play Ludo.
“… don’t act it out. Try to relax. It’s not particularly significant how you stood and where you walked in here. So …”
Placing a large fist on Benjamin Grinde’s shoulder, he led him purposefully through the doors to the Prime Minister’s office.
“You entered here, and then …”
Benjamin Grinde willingly allowed himself to be led past the conference table and out to the center of the floor. Billy T. released his shoulder warily, and nodded forward. It was no use. The Supreme Court judge remained standing there, puzzled, and his complexion had turned even paler.
“You greeted her, I suppose,” Billy T. suggested, aware that he was doing far more prompting than they had been taught to do at police college. “Did you give her a hug? Shake hands?”
Benjamin Grinde did not respond; he simply stared at the desk facing him, now clean and tidy, with no trace of the tragedy that had taken place last Friday evening.
“Did you shake hands, Grinde?”
The man flinched: it seemed to have suddenly dawned on him where he was and what was expected of him.
“We shook hands with a little hug. That was what she wanted. The hug, I mean. Personally, I found it a bit unnatural. I hadn’t seen her for such a long time, many years.”
His voice was low, intense and totally flat.
“And then?”
Billy T. rotated his hand in the hope of encouraging Grinde to continue.
“Then I sat down. Here.”
Plumping down on a chair, he placed the burgundy folder on the desk in front of him.
“Did you put that there?”
“What? Oh, yes. My folder. No.”
He picked it up and set it down beside him, against the chair leg.
“I sat like this.”
“For three quarters of an hour,” Billy T. said. “And you talked about—”
“Not necessary to bring that up here, Billy T.,” the Head of CID interjected, clearing his throat. “This isn’t an interview. Supreme Court Judge Grinde has already provided a statement. This is a reconstruction.”
A servile smile was directed at Benjamin Grinde, but the judge’s thoughts lay entirely elsewhere.
“Okay,” Billy T. said, making no attempt to hide his irritation. “And then? When you had finished talking?”
“I stood up. I left. Nothing else happened.”
He looked up at Billy T. His eyes were darker than before, the brown of the iris merging into the black pupils. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth was more pinched than ever.
“There’s nothing more to tell. Sorry.”
Momentarily, it appeared that Billy T. did not quite know what to do. Instead of continuing with the reconstruction, he crossed over to the window. In the daylight, the city seemed more sprawling and gray than it had the last time he’d stood here, when all the twinkling lights had made Oslo almost beautiful. Although the buildings directly opposite were new, a newspaper office adjacent to R5, there was something shabby about the view, something eternally incomplete. The construction projects on the corner beside the Hansen & Dysvik department store reinforced the impression that Oslo was a patchwork of old and new and would never in a million years reach the point of emerging as a fully finished project.
Abruptly, he wheeled around to face the room.
“What did she say when you left?”
Benjamin Grinde, still seated, stared straight ahead and answered, “She said, ‘Have a good weekend.’”
“Have a good weekend? Nothing more, nothing less?”
“No. She wished me a good weekend, and I went out.”
Then he got to his feet, tucking the folder underneath his arm, and walked toward the door.
“Can Judge Grinde be dismissed now?”
This was the Head of CID, and it was intended as more of an order than a question to Billy T.
“Fine,” Billy T. mumbled.
But it certainly was not. This was not right. Benjamin Grinde was not telling the truth. The man was the worst liar Billy T. had ever encountered. His lies came with flashing blue lights and sirens: obvious and conspicuous, though it was still impossible to interpret them.
“Get the security guard,” he requested of a uniformed police officer, as he followed Benjamin Grinde.
Halfway down the stairs, he again put his hand on the judge’s shoulder. Grinde halted suddenly, and stiffened, but did not turn round. Billy T. passed him, and stood two steps below him; when he turned to face him, their eyes were level.
“I think you’re lying, Grinde,” he said softly.
When the judge lowered his gaze, Billy T. surprised both of them by placing his hand under the man’s chin, not roughly, not even in an unfriendly manner, but almost the way he did with his sons when they would not look him in the eye. It was extremely disrespectful, but for some reason, Benjamin Grinde accepted the indignity. Billy T. knew why. He lifted the judge’s head and held his grip while he spoke.
“I don’t believe you’ve told me the truth. And do you know what? I’ve no idea why. I’m fairly sure that you didn’t kill Birgitte Volter. Don’t ask me why, but I am. But you’re hiding something. Something that was said, probably. Something that could help shed some light on this homicide.”
Grinde had pulled himself together. With an abrupt motion, he jerked his chin out of Billy T.’s grasp and took a step back. Now he was looking down at the Chief Inspector.
“I’ve said all I’m going to say on this matter.”
“So you admit there are things you have left unsaid?”
Billy T. did not relinquish eye contact.
“I’ve said all I’m going to say. Now I want to go.”
He stepped past the tall police officer, and rounded the corner at the foot of the stairs without so much as a backward glance.
“Fuck,” Billy T. whispered to himself. “Bloody hell.”
“Now you really must get your act together, boy!”
The guard was not someone whose chin Billy T. felt inclined to hold in a friendly attempt to get some cooperation. Instead, he was the type you really wanted to put across your knee and spank: grouchy, surly and apparently dreadfully nervous.
“Did you touch this door handle or did you not?”
Billy T. and the security guard were standing inside the small restroom between the Prime Minister’s office and the conference room.
“I’ve told you a thousand times now,” the guard replied angrily. “I did not touch that door.”
“But how then can you explain why your fingerprints were found both here …”
Billy T. waved his forefinger in a circular motion around th
e doorframe.
“… and here! On the handle!”
“I’ve been here about a hundred times before, of course,” the guard answered, rolling his eyes. “Do you have time codes for these fingerprints, then?”
Billy T. closed his eyes and started to count. At ten he opened them again.
“What is it with you, actually? Don’t you appreciate the seriousness of this case, or what?”
He banged his clenched fist on the wall.
“Eh? Don’t you understand anything, or what?”
“I understand that you believe I killed that Volter woman, and I certainly did not, bloody hell!”
His voice rose to a falsetto and his bottom lip began to tremble. Billy T. stood staring at the man, without speaking a word, for some considerable time. Then he did it all the same. Placed his hand under the guard’s chin, and forced him to make eye contact. The guard tried to wriggle free, but the grip was too firm.
“You don’t know what’s in your own best interests,” Billy T. said softly. “You don’t understand that we two can help each other. If you can just tell me what happened that night, then both you and I will feel the better for it afterward. And one more thing: if you did kill Volter, then I’ll find out. I can promise you quite sincerely: I am going to find out. But I don’t think you did do it. Not at the moment. But you have to help me. Don’t you understand that?”
His grip around the man’s face was so strong that red marks were forming on Billy T.’s fingers. The Head of CID muttered a warning behind his back.
But Billy T. did not hear. He stared into the security guard’s brown eyes, which were encircled by unusually long lashes. The hairs on the back of Billy T.’s neck stood up when he recognized the gleam in the guard’s eyes: pure anguish.
An unfathomable fear.
“I’m not the one you’re bloody frightened of,” Billy T. whispered, too quietly for anyone other than the guard himself to hear. “If you had your wits about you, you would have told me what’s terrifying you. Because there is something. Just wait. I’ll find out.”
Then he released the guard’s face with a brusque, angry gesture.
“You can go,” he said irascibly.
“At least that lady isn’t telling lies,” Billy T. mumbled, mostly to himself.
Wenche Andersen had – with a lump in her throat the entire time – explained right down to the tiniest detail everything that she had done from the time she had last seen Birgitte Volter alive, up until she found the Prime Minister dead in her office. She had gone to the toilet three times, she related, and, crimson with embarrassment, she had clarified that once it had been a number two, and twice a number one. Tone-Marit smiled disarmingly as she emphasized that it was not necessary to go into so much detail.
“And then I phoned the police.”
Now that she was finished, Wenche Andersen exhaled.
“Excellent,” Tone-Marit praised her; the solid, nursery-school-teacher account was clearer than any she had heard, and Billy T. closed his eyes and rubbed his face.
With a faint smile, Wenche Andersen thanked her for the compliment. Then she suddenly flushed bright red. Tone-Marit could literally see the agitation suffuse the woman: the carotid artery in her throat swelled and throbbed repeatedly.
“I’ve forgotten something,” Wenche Andersen said. “I’ve forgotten something yet again!”
She immediately rushed into the Prime Minister’s office and, uncharacteristically, did not even ask for permission.
“The box,” she whispered, whirling round to face Billy T., who had followed her in. “The pillbox. Have you removed it?”
“Pillbox?”
Billy T. looked quizzically over at the officer in uniform, who produced a list of items that had been removed for closer examination.
“Nothing about that in here,” the officer said, shaking his head.
“What kind of pillbox?” Billy T. enquired, tilting his head to one side as he placed the flat of his hand against his ear: it was aching terribly.
“An exquisite little ornament in enameled silver,” Wenche Andersen explained.
She drew a tiny square shape in the air.
“Enameled and gilded – that’s if it wasn’t actually made of gold. It looked extremely old, and always sat here on the table.”
She pointed.
“I …”
Now she looked completely bewildered, but her bewilderment was mixed with something resembling shame, and she hesitated.
“I may as well just own up to it,” she said at last, looking at the floor. “I once tried to …”
Again she put her head in her hands, and her voice became distorted, as though she were speaking with a damper depressed.
“I tried to open it. But the screw threads were sticky, and before I’d managed to unscrew it, the Prime Minister came into the room, and …”
Now she showed her face again; tears fell and she hiccupped as she tried to catch her breath.
“It’s so awfully embarrassing,” she whispered. “I had no business doing anything like that, and she simply … she simply took it from me and never mentioned it again.”
Billy T. smiled warmly at the woman in the russet suit.
“You’ve done a brilliant job today,” he comforted her. “Curiosity can get the better of all of us on occasion. You’re free to leave now.”
However, he continued to stand there in the Prime Minister’s office after all the others had left.
“A pillbox,” he said to himself at last. “Were there pills in it, I wonder?”
17.10, OLE BRUMMS VEI 212
“I’ll be terribly discreet,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said. “I’ll blend in with the wallpaper.”
“You blend in with the wallpaper? Impossible.”
Billy T. was still unconvinced that it had been right to bring Hanne Wilhelmsen to Roy Hansen’s house.
“Don’t say a word,” he muttered as they trudged up to the front door of the yellow-painted townhouse. “And under no circumstances say anything to anyone at work.”
When they reached the door, Hanne thought she spied something. Something out of the corner of her eye: she wheeled round to face the waist-high hedge running down either side of the narrow front garden. There was nothing. Shaking her head, Hanne followed Billy T., who had already rung the doorbell.
No answer.
Billy T. pressed the bell again, but no one came to open the door this time either. Hanne descended the stairs to peer at the upper story.
“There’s someone at home,” she said softly. “The curtain twitched.”
Billy T. hesitated for a moment before placing his finger on the button yet again.
“Yes?”
The man who stood facing them, who had just opened the door with an angry jerk, had toothpaste at the corners of his mouth and a three-day beard. His small eyes were blinking, as though he had just got out of bed. He had egg stains on his shirtfront: old, dark yellow yolk. Hanne hated eggs, and had to turn away for a second. Breathing deeply through her nose, she smiled at a little apple tree immediately below the steps.
“Roy Hansen?” Billy T. asked, receiving a curt nod in response.
“Police,” Billy T. announced, showing his ID card with his left hand while extending his right to shake hands in greeting. “Very sorry to disturb you. Can we come in?”
The man took a step toward them and looked sharply in both directions.
“Fine,” he muttered. “The doorbell has rung four times today. Journalists.”
Roy Hansen led them through a small hallway into a dimly lit living room where dust danced in the streak of light between the closed curtains. Collapsing onto the settee with a faint groan, he gestured to the two police officers to sit down.
The air was stuffy and clammy, with a faint, cloyingly sweet scent of flowers and decomposing citrus fruits. Hanne stared at an enormous fruit bowl whose oranges had acquired greenish-gray spots of mold. Beside the bowl, on a pine sideboard along the gabl
e wall, sat piles of unopened mail. In one corner of the living room was a mountain of floral bouquets that had not been touched either: forty or fifty huge parcels, most of them wrapped in gray paper, a few in blue cellophane wrappers. The pictures on the walls, popular but tasteful graphics, seemed dull and colorless, as though they had given up trying to bring pleasure to the occupants of this house, which was now on the brink of no longer being a home.
“Shall I help you with the flowers?” Hanne Wilhelmsen asked, without sitting down. “They shouldn’t really just sit there.”
Roy Hansen did not reply. He looked at the flower-filled corner, but the bouquets, which took up several square meters of the room, did not seem to concern him in the least.
“At least we should cut out the cards,” Hanne suggested. “So that you can thank them, I mean. Later. When you’re feeling up to doing that.”
Roy Hansen shook his head dejectedly, and waved his arm toward the flowers.
“It doesn’t matter. The garbage truck comes tomorrow.”
Hanne sat down.
At one time, the living room had obviously been cozy. If the light had been allowed to flood in, the furnishings would have looked bright and cheerful, and the green potted plants alongside the large panorama window would have been very impressive. Though the walls now appeared grayish white, they were actually pale yellow, and with illumination and fresh air in the room, they would have complemented the light pine flooring. Only four days ago, this room had been at the heart of a healthy, pleasant, Norwegian home. Hanne shuddered at the thought of what death could do: it wasn’t only the widower in front of her who seemed lost, but the actual house as well.
“I am so sorry about this,” Billy T. said, and for once he sat completely still, with his legs stretched out politely in front of him. “You’ve been told that we would leave you in peace until after the funeral. However, something’s come up that needs an immediate answer. As a matter of fact, before I mention what I’ve come for—”
A young man in his early twenties came down from upstairs, wearing a jogging suit and black trainers. He was of medium height, and fair, and his face was strikingly ordinary, almost anonymous.