Lion's Mouth, The

by Holt, Anne

  “Going out for a run,” he said quietly, heading for the hall door without even a glance in the direction of the two police officers.

  “Per! Wait!”

  Roy Hansen opened his arms wide, as though to detain his son.

  “You know they’ll try and talk to you,” he said, looking helplessly at Billy T. “They stop us every time we go out!”

  Irritated, Billy T. got to his feet.

  “Bloody journalists,” he mumbled, crossing to the verandah door. “Can’t you go out this way? And then just jump over the hedge into the neighbor’s garden?”

  He opened the door and stared out.

  “There,” he said, pointing. “Over that fence there?”

  Per Volter hesitated briefly; then, with a decisive air, and his eyes on the ground, he crossed the living room and made his exit through the verandah door. Billy T. followed him.

  “Billy T.,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m from the police.”

  “I knew that,” the young man said, without taking his hand.

  “Condolences,” Billy T. said. It was obvious he found the unfamiliar word difficult, but he could not think of anything better. “Dreadfully sorry.”

  The boy did not answer, but starting jogging on the spot instead, as though he actually wanted to leave but was too well brought up to be more impolite than he already had been.

  “Just one thing before you go,” Billy T. continued. “While you’re here. Is it true that you’re a member of a gun club?”

  “Marksmanship club,” Per Volter said. “I’m the vice-chairman of the Groruddalen Marksmanship Association.”

  For the first time, something approaching a smile crossed the young man’s face.

  “Do you know everyone there?”

  “Virtually. At least all the ones that are fairly active.”

  “And you compete?”

  “Yes. Though at the moment it’s mostly military championships. I’m at military college.”

  Billy T. nodded before pulling out a photograph. A Polaroid picture, taken without authorization, and without the security guard from the government complex having had the chance to protest.

  “Do you know this guy here?”

  He held out the picture to Per Volter, who stopped running on the spot, and examined the photograph for several seconds.

  “No,” he said hesitantly. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  Per stared at the photo for a while longer. Then he shook his head vigorously, handed back the picture, and looked Billy T. directly in the eye.

  “Quite sure. I’ve never seen that guy before.”

  Nodding briefly, he sprinted out into the garden and across to a one-and-a-half-meter-high fence, which he vaulted with an elegant hop before disappearing into the shrubbery on the other side.

  Billy T. frowned as he watched him go, then returned to Hanne Wilhelmsen and Roy Hansen.

  “Have you found the pass?” he asked as he sat down.

  “No. Sorry. It can’t be here.”

  Billy T. and Hanne exchanged a brief glance, and Billy T. could not manage to sit still any longer. He leaned forward, though the armchair was so low that his posture was painful, and he was almost on his hunkers.

  “Do you know whether Birgitte had a pillbox in silver or gold?”

  “Enameled,” Hanne added. “A little enameled box about this size.” She crossed her thumbs and forefingers.

  Roy Hansen looked from one to the other.

  “A pillbox? What’s that?”

  “A tiny container,” Hanne explained. “Probably very old. An heirloom, perhaps?”

  Cocking his head, Roy Hansen scratched his cheek and the other two could hear a faint rasping sound. Then he stood up unexpectedly to fetch an album from a well-filled bookcase. When he sat down again, he leafed through it.

  “Here,” he said abruptly. “Could this be it?”

  He bent over the coffee table and placed the photo album between himself and Hanne Wilhelmsen, pointing to one of the black-and-white photographs. An enlargement, it had obviously been taken by a professional photographer with large-format film: even the tiniest details were clear. A very young and extremely happy Birgitte Volter was standing in a bridal gown and veil beside a beaming Roy Hansen, who sported a fine head of hair and black horn-rimmed glasses. The bridal couple were standing beside a table laden with presents that included two irons, a large glass bowl, silverware, two tablecloths, a cream and sugar set made of something that might have been crystal, and a great many other objects difficult to distinguish. And right there, at the very front of the picture, a tiny little box.

  “It’s almost invisible,” Roy Hansen apologized. “And to be quite honest, I had forgotten about it. I haven’t seen it for many, many years. I can’t even remember who gave it to us.”

  “Do you recall the color?”

  Roy Hansen shook his head.

  “And not where it came from? Absolutely sure?”

  The man continued to shake his head. His gaze was far away, as though trying to retrieve memories of the wedding from a forgotten, dusty corner of his brain. His eyes were fixed on the photograph, that happy photograph, and a tear lay trembling in the corner of his left eye.

  “Well,” Billy T. said, “we won’t disturb you any longer.”

  The doorbell rang. Roy Hansen was clearly startled: the tear ran down his cheek and rushed toward the corner of his mouth; he wiped it away quickly with the back of his hand.

  “Shall I answer it?” Hanne asked.

  Roy Hansen rose slowly and laboriously, rubbing his hands several times over his face.

  “No, thanks,” he whispered. “I’m expecting my mother. It might be her.”

  It was as though the dust, the dim light and the oppressive air had affected the acoustics. The flagging tick-tock from the old mantel clock made it sound as if the inner workings were wrapped in cotton wool; the entire room seemed padded. Everything was so soft and muffled that the voices from the hallway cut through sharply, like dissonant knives.

  “Who are you?” the two police officers heard Roy Hansen say, almost yelling, like a cry for help.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen and Billy T. promptly jumped up and rushed out to the hallway. Over Roy Hansen’s stooped shoulders, Billy T. could see a tall man in his early forties, with an untidy shock of hair. He was thrusting a gigantic, unwrapped bouquet of flowers at Birgitte Volter’s widower, and the latter had moved a few paces back in confusion. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the man with the flowers was now almost inside the door. Billy T. pushed past Roy Hansen and placed a huge fist on the interloper’s chest.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Who am I? I’m from Kikk og Lytt magazine – we just want to offer our condolences, and maybe have a little chat?”

  Billy T. wheeled round to look at Roy Hansen. The man had looked dreadful when they arrived and had wept in their presence. Billy T. had hated bothering him, but it had been so important to clear up the question of the pillbox that he hadn’t seen any other option. Now Roy Hansen was ashen, and his forehead had broken out in a sweat.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, turning up like this?” Billy T. thundered. “Don’t you understand anything!”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen dragged Roy Hansen back with her into the living room and closed the door.

  “Get out,” Billy T. snarled. “Get out of here, for God’s sake, and away from this whole area right now!”

  “Heavens, what a ruckus. We were just trying to be nice!”

  “Nice,” Billy T. said, shoving the other man’s chest so fiercely that he staggered and dropped the flowers. “Get out of here, I said!”

  “Take it easy! I’m going. I’m on my way!”

  The man bent down to retrieve the bouquet first, before taking a step back.

  “Could you see that these are put in water?”

  Billy T. did not strike him. Billy T. had destroyed many odds and ends
in bouts of rage: wastepaper baskets and lampshades, windowpanes and car mirrors. However, Billy T. had not laid a hand on a single person since the time when, as a young lad, he had fought with his sister. He did not hit this man either, though a powerful swinging blow was only a hair’s breadth away. But with his fists raised in the man’s face, he continued to boom: “If I ever see you anywhere near here … If I as much as get wind of you or anyone else from that scandalous rag of yours, then …”

  Closing his eyes, he counted to three.

  “Get going. Now.”

  As he was about to slam the front door shut, the bouquet of flowers was thrust through the opening.

  “Can you makes sure that they get these flowers?” he heard the journalist say.

  Billy T. used the door to whack the arm holding the bouquet. The man outside let go of the flowers, howling, “Bloody hell! Do you want to kill me?”

  Billy T. opened the door for a second, and the arm was swiftly pulled away. He then slammed the door furiously, taking rapid deep breaths in an effort to regain his self-control.

  “You can’t stay here,” he said to Roy Hansen when his head finally felt clear enough for him to re-enter the living room. “Do they carry on like this all the time?”

  “No, not all the time. Today’s been the worst. It’s as though … it’s as though they expect me to have finished grieving now. As though three days was all I was granted, in a sense.”

  Leaning forward over his own knees, he burst into heartbreaking sobs.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen wanted to leave. She felt an uncontrollable urge to go outside, away from this clammy, stuffy place and its two grieving occupants who could not talk to each other. Roy Hansen needed help, but neither she nor Billy T. could give him that.

  “Can I call someone?” she said softly.

  “No. My mother’s coming soon.”

  The two police officers exchanged looks, and decided to leave Roy Hansen to the despair it was impossible for them to share. However, they sat in their vehicle outside the house at Ole Brumms vei 212 for three quarters of an hour, until an old woman, with the help of a taxicab driver, made it safely to the front door. Without any journalists getting hold of her.

  They had obviously been scared off by the blue light sweeping its warning from the roof of the patrol car all the way along the street.

  On their way out, Billy T. had stuffed the beautiful bouquet from Kikk og Lytt into the garbage. It must have cost almost a thousand kroner.

  18.30, BOMBAY PLAZA RESTAURANT

  They sat at the far end of the Indian restaurant, munching poppadoms while they waited for the tandoori chicken. The thin, crisp crackers were spicy, bringing a touch of color to Øyvind Olve’s face. He had hardly slept since Friday morning and felt his three gulps of beer go straight to his head.

  “Lovely to see you,” he said, raising his glass to Hanne Wilhelmsen. “When’s Cecilie coming?”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen was not sure whether to be insulted that everyone who knew both her and her partner enquired when Cecilie was coming home before they even asked about anything else. She decided not to let herself be riled.

  “Not until Christmas. I’m going back to the States myself. In a while. This is just a kind of vacation, you might say.”

  At almost forty, the man facing her resembled a cuddly teddy bear. Not because he was particularly large, stout or burly, but his flapping ears protruded cheerfully from a head that was round as a dishpan and crowned with a coal-black crew cut, and the eyes behind his small, circular glasses were warm and reassuring, as though they had never seen anything of the misery in the world. Which was an illusion, since he was an extremely experienced politician.

  Until last Friday, he had been Birgitte Volter’s Chief of Staff. State Secretary in the Prime Minister’s office, and a close friend of Cecilie Vibe. He came from Kvinnherad, where he had grown up on the farm beside Cecilie’s parents’ summer cottage. Cecilie’s relationship with her past was less complicated than Hanne’s, and she had included Øyvind and his sister Agnes, the summer friends of her childhood, in her adult life. Hanne Wilhelmsen had cut all links with her own childhood. There was a distinct dividing line in her life marked by the day on which she and Cecilie had moved in together, a very, very long time ago. To compensate for the loss of her own friends, she shared Cecilie’s.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  He did not answer immediately, but remained seated, staring at his beer glass as he spun it round repeatedly on its own axis. Then he stroked his head lightly and smiled.

  “Only the gods know. Back to the party office, I expect. But first … first of all, I’ll take a vacation.”

  “A well-earned one! How’s it actually been going, the past six months?”

  Before he had managed to reply, she beamed. “Go and see Cecilie, then! California’s fabulous at this time of year! We’ve plenty of room and it’s only five minutes to the beach.”

  “I’ll think about it. Thanks. But it might not be convenient – for Cecilie, I mean.”

  “Of course it’ll be convenient! Honestly, she’ll be so delighted. Everyone says they’re going to come and visit us, but nobody does.”

  He smiled, but dropped the subject.

  “This has been the most turbulent six months of my life. Everything that could possibly go wrong has done so. But …”

  He ran his hands through his hair once again, a bashful gesture he had been making for as long for as they had known each other.

  “… it’s really been thrilling, as well. It builds solidarity. Believe it or not, all the negative criticism did not crush her. Birgitte, that is. She managed to hold us together. Us against them, in a sense. The responsible ones versus the lightweights.”

  A tall, dark man arrived with the food. The fiery red chicken in front of them steamed and gave off an enticing aroma, and Hanne Wilhelmsen realized that she had not eaten since breakfast. She grabbed hold of a chunk of naan bread and talked with her mouth full.

  “What was Birgitte Volter like? In real life, I mean. You’ve worked closely with her for many years, of course, isn’t that right?”

  “Mmm.”

  “What was she like?”

  Øyvind Olve was a steady man from western Norway. He came from a working class background and had progressed through the party ranks as a result of honest hard work and having the wit to keep his mouth shut when he should. Now he had no idea what to say. It was true that Hanne Wilhelmsen was a good friend, but she was also a police officer. He had already been interviewed twice, once by an enormous giant who, in other clothes, could have stepped out of a 1930s poster from Nazi Germany.

  As he hesitated, Øyvind Olve could feel his head spinning from the alcohol.

  “She was one of the most exciting people I have known,” he said eventually. “She was considerate and capable; she had dreams and vision. The most remarkable thing was perhaps a quite extreme sense of accountability. She never let anything lie. She always took responsibility. And she was also … very kind.”

  “Kind?” Hanne laughed. “Is there such a thing as a kind politician? What do you mean by kind?”

  Øyvind Olve looked reflective for a moment, before waving to the waiter to order another half liter. He looked quizzically at Hanne, but she waved her hand in a negative response.

  “Birgitte wanted to do good. She was genuinely engaged by the idea that politics is concerned with creating a better society for as many people as possible. Not simply in her speeches. Not only on paper. She was really interested in people. For instance, she insisted on reading every single letter that came in, from anyone, anywhere in Norway, who wanted to bring their problems to her attention. And there were quite a lot of them, I can tell you. Not that we could do very much. But she read every single one of them, and some of the circumstances she read about made a real impression on her. On a couple of occasions she did also intervene. To the great irritation of the bureaucrats. Boundless irritation.”

  �
��Was she unpopular with them? The bureaucrats, I mean.”

  Øyvind Olve stared at her for some time before resuming his meal.

  “Do you know, it’s almost impossible to say. I’ve never come across anyone as apparently loyal as the civil servants in the Prime Minister’s office. It’s quite honestly impossible to say whether or not they liked her. And maybe not of such great interest either.”

  He rubbed his eyes with his fingers bent at the knuckles, like a tired child.

  “What about her personal life?” Hanne asked.

  The question caught him off guard, and, removing his fingers from his face, he gazed at her with an almost shocked expression.

  “Personal? I can’t say I knew her personally.”

  “You didn’t know her? But you’ve worked closely with the woman for years!”

  “Worked, yes. That’s not the same as knowing somebody personally. You ought to know that.”

  Smiling, he noticed that Hanne blushed slightly. She had worked at Oslo Police Station for thirteen years, but only two of her colleagues had ever set foot in the apartment she shared with Cecilie Vibe.

  “But you have social events and that kind of thing,” Hanne insisted. “In the party, I mean. And you’ve traveled all around the world with her, of course, haven’t you?”

  “Not much. But what is it you actually want to know?”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen put down her knife and fork and wiped her mouth with a large white linen napkin.

  “Let me begin with something else,” she said softly. “Was it Birgitte Volter who chose Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden as Health Minister?”

  Now it was Øyvind Olve whose cheeks were red. He fumbled with a piece of naan bread as he dipped it in the sauce, and red stains dripped on to his shirt.

  “I wouldn’t have told you this if it weren’t for the fact that she’s dead now,” he muttered, trying to clean off the stain; it only increased in size from all his scrubbing with a dry napkin. “Perhaps it’s difficult to understand.”

  “Try me.” Hanne smiled.

  “Putting together a government is a tremendously complicated jigsaw,” Øyvind Olve began. “Naturally it’s not up to the Prime Minister alone to choose Cabinet members. A whole lot of different considerations have to be weighed. Geography, gender …”