by Holt, Anne
Nor is it common knowledge that Birgitte Volter and Benjamin Grinde were extremely close friends in their youth. More than thirty years later, that same Benjamin Grinde has now been tasked with investigating what happened in 1965, when a remarkably high number of infants died in Norway.
See also pages 12 and 13.
Lighting another cigarillo, Little Lettvik clicked through to page twelve.
EXTREMELY WORRYING, ACCORDING TO PROFESSOR
Fred Brynjestad aims strong criticism at Grinde
By Little Lettvik and Bent Skulle (photo)
“There is every reason to be skeptical about Supreme Court Judge Benjamin Grinde’s impartiality as chair of the committee investigating what may have been a major health scandal in 1965.” This is the assertion made by Fred Brynjestad, professor of public law and a doctor of law, to Kveldsavisen. The chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Social Affairs, Kari-Anne Søfteland of the Center Party, is deeply shocked by these new revelations, declaring that she and the rest of Parliament have been hoodwinked.
“If it is the case that Birgitte Volter herself lost a daughter in the relevant year, and at that time had a close friendship with Benjamin Grinde, there is every reason for alarm bells to ring,” Brynjestad says. “Prime Minister Volter should have realized, before Grinde was asked to undertake this task, that their relationship placed him in a compromising position,” Brynjestad insists.
“It is far worse, however, that Grinde himself did not appreciate this,” Professor Fred Brynjestad comments. “He is a very competent lawyer, and the problematic nature of this situation should have been most obvious to him.”
Brynjestad adds that he is not necessarily accusing Grinde of prejudice, but there is a possibility that he may be biased, and that is sufficient reason for him to have refused to take on the role.
“This kind of thing has become worryingly common in our society,” Professor Brynjestad continues. “Namely, that members of the social elite increasingly have links to one another, allowing them to operate beyond the usual boundaries and without being accountable to ordinary citizens. We end up with an invisible network of power we cannot control.”
From the investigations carried out by this newspaper in recent weeks, it is clear that Benjamin Grinde is a prominent éminence grise in Norwegian society. He was a childhood friend of Birgitte Volter, and has friends high up in both Parliament and the legal system.
Among other things, he was a member of the same choir as MPs Kari Bugge-Øygarden (Labor Party) and Fredrick Humlen (Conservatives) from 1979 to 1984. During his student days, he counted among his friends Haakon Severinsen, who went on to become managing director of Orkla, one of the largest companies in Norway, and Ann-Berit Klavenæs, chief executive of the National Hospital in Oslo.
MP Kari-Anne Søfteland of the Center Party claims to be quite aghast that these connections have not come to light before now.
“Now we must sit down and decide on an entirely new commission,” she told Kveldsavisen in a phone call from the Seychelles, where her committee is on a visit to study the operation of local infirmaries.
“This demonstrates how important it is for Parliament itself to retain control over such things. Obviously, this commission should have been appointed by Parliament. This setback is extremely unfortunate, as it will lead to major delays in the investigation,” she concluded.
Logging out of the computer, Little Lettvik produced the photo album from the drawer and absent-mindedly browsed through the pages. In several places she noticed empty holes where the tiny paper corners used to hold family photographs in place were displayed like meaningless frames around nothing.
Little Lettvik had only one problem. How was she to return the album?
She sat pondering this for a while, as the room slowly filled with light white tobacco smoke.
It doesn’t really matter, she finally decided. I can just set fire to the whole shebang.
She took the album home with her. For safety’s sake.
07.00, BOTANIC GARDENS, TØYEN
Hanne Wilhelmsen enjoyed the sensation of perspiration dripping off her and her heart protesting. On her way up the gentle slope of Trondheimsveien, she had stepped up a gear and sprinted through the gate to the Botanic Gardens and on up to the Zoological Museum. She chose a bench underneath a tree she did not recognize. The writing on the explanatory sign beside it was unreadable: some hooligan had sprayed his tag there instead.
She had never been so fit. Closing her eyes, she inhaled the scent of the trees that had embarked on the long journey into summer. Cecilie had been right: your sense of smell improved when you stopped smoking.
An old man approached her, with a rake in one hand and a spade in the other.
“Lovely weather.” He nodded, smiling at the peevishly gray sky grumbling above them: it was drizzling.
Hanne Wilhelmsen chuckled. “Yes, you could say that!”
Peering down at her, the man made up his mind quickly. He sat beside her on the bench and fished out a plug of chewing tobacco that he carefully inserted under his tongue.
“This is the best weather,” he muttered. “Rain now in the early morning, and then the sun will come out in the afternoon.”
“Do you think so?” Hanne said skeptically, leaning her head back. The fine rain enveloped her face like a Japanese cloth facemask.
“Heavens above!” the man said, chortling. “Look over there!”
He was pointing to the west, where Sofienberg Church loomed against the gray-white sky.
“Do you see that chink of light over there?”
Hanne nodded.
“When there’s a little chink over there, above Holmenkollen, slightly to the west-southwest, then there will be really good weather in a few hours.”
“But that’s not what was forecast,” Hanne said, standing up to do some stretches. “They’ve forecast rain every day until Wednesday.”
The old man’s hearty laughter produced a spray of brown juice.
“I’ve worked here for forty-two years now,” he said with satisfaction. “For forty-two years I’ve pottered around here with my plants. I know exactly what they need: water and sun and TLC. It’s a grand job, so it is, young lady. People think that all these trees and plants require is scientific treatment, but these plants here, they need more than that.”
He watched her in silence for some time, and she stopped doing her exercises to return his gaze. His face was lined and tanned. She was surprised that he was still in employment: he looked as if he should have been pensioned off long ago. He was a pleasant companion, as he had a kind of stillness that did not require her to say very much.
“It has to do with instinct, you see. They give me all these books and dissertations, or whatever they’re called. But I don’t need any of that. I know what each little flower and every bloody massive tree in this garden needs. I’ve got instinct, you see, young lady. I know what the weather is going to do, and I know what they need. Every tiny little flower.”
He got to his feet and stepped across to a small plant just beyond the bench; Hanne could not quite decide whether it was a tree seedling, or if it was meant to be so tiny.
“Look at this bush here, miss,” the man said. “It comes all the way from Africa! I don’t have to read books to understand that this little lady needs some extra warmth and care, you know. She sits there, poor thing, longing for home and the heat and her pals down in Africa.”
He stroked the stem with his hand, and Hanne blinked fiercely when it struck her that it did in fact look as if the shrub enjoyed the contact. His hand was large and coarse, but he touched the plant with a soft, sensual sensitivity.
“You love these plants, I can see.” Hanne smiled.
He straightened up proudly, leaning on his rake.
“Can’t do a job like this otherwise,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for forty-two years, you know. What do you do?”
“I’m in the police.”
“Well, then you’ve got your hands full! With that poor Birgitte woman who kicked the bucket and all that! Have you got time to be running around the streets, eh?”
“I’m actually on leave,” Hanne began, but checked herself. “But I have to keep fit, you know. Regardless.”
The man produced a sizeable pocket watch.
“My goodness, I have to get on now,” he said. “This is my busiest time, you see, miss. The spring. Bye for now!”
Smiling, he lifted his rake in a parting gesture, but farther down the hill he turned on his heel and made his way back.
“Listen,” he said earnestly. “I don’t know much about these investigations. I just work in the garden. But it must be the same in your job too, mustn’t it? That the most important thing is to follow your instinct?”
Hanne Wilhelmsen had sat down again. “Yes,” she said softly. “I think you’re right.”
The old man raised his rake once more in farewell, and shuffled off.
Hanne Wilhelmsen inhaled deeply. The air was cool and damp, a kind of internal cleansing cream. She felt light-headed and her thoughts seemed clearer, more ordered than in a long time.
She felt like Monsieur Poirot: dedicated to “the little gray cells”. This situation was unfamiliar. Usually, she was in charge. Usually, all the information about a case was at her fingertips. But this time she knew only bits and pieces: even Billy T. had expressed his frustration at having to be part of such a large team with only a very few people in possession of all the information. Unquestionably, Håkon was better informed about the bigger picture, but he was in a spin, consumed with anxiety because Karen had not yet given birth.
The victim had two identities: Prime Minister Volter and Birgitte. Which one of these was the actual victim?
Hanne started running again. Downhill, past the old man, now on his knees digging the earth; he did not even notice her. She increased her speed.
Neither identity was linked to a motive. At least not obviously so. Hanne was deeply skeptical about the international motive continually mooted in the newspapers. The extremists angle seemed more likely, even though the Security Service did not seem to have anything specific to offer on that either. On the other hand, it was always difficult to know what the boys on the top floors were up to.
According to Billy T., Birgitte Volter’s life seemed, not to put too fine a point on it, rather boring. Her personal life. Seemingly, there was no room for scandals; her public life was all-consuming. If she had been involved with a secret lover, then it must have been the most secret lover in all of history. The rumors that attached themselves to her, as to all people in the public eye, were vague and had turned out to be totally unverifiable, and most of those were anyway in the distant past.
There was no real reason to murder the Prime Minister either. People did not assassinate Prime Ministers in Norway. On the other hand, Olof Palme had probably thought the same about his country, when he refused to have bodyguards accompany him on his visit to a movie theater on that fateful February evening in 1986.
Hanne had reached Sofienberg Park, and it had now stopped raining. She peered toward the west. That chink in the clouds the old man had pointed out had increased in size, and now there was a whole little patch of blue over there. Sitting down on a swing, she swayed gently to and fro.
The few people with access to the Prime Minister’s office seemed improbable perpetrators. Wenche Andersen would have had to have killed her boss in cold blood and then given a performance worthy of an Oscar for best supporting actress in her dealings with the police. Out of the question. Benjamin Grinde? Who had gone home to make preparations for his fiftieth birthday party and who, according to the police officers who had picked him up, had been completely calm until they told him that Volter was dead? It couldn’t have been him. All the other co-workers at the office had watertight alibis. They had been at meetings, in radio studios, or at dinner engagements.
The answer had seemed so close when she’d asked to see the autopsy report. She had lain awake all night doing battle with the thought. Suicide. The simplest explanation of all. But how had a suicide victim been able to remove the gun she had used and then send it to the police several days later? Hanne Wilhelmsen did not believe in life after death. At least not such an active life. She had tossed and turned, and come up with a number of theories. Fired up, she had begged to see the postmortem report. However, that shattered her theory with a simple little test. It was impossible to kill yourself without leaving forensic evidence. The pathologist had examined Birgitte’s hands, partly to search for evidence of a struggle, and partly as a routine procedure to exclude the possibility of suicide. Which he did. Her hands were chemically free of all traces of gunshot residue. Her theory had collapsed like a house of cards.
Hanne Wilhelmsen did not have the energy to jog any farther. She stood up from the car-tire swing and began to walk home, to Billy T.’s strange hangout at Stolmakergata 15.
Did the answer lie in why the gun had been returned to the police? Was somebody trying to tell the police something?
Hanne shook her head in irritation. Her brain was getting clogged again; her thoughts whirled around noisily without finding a place within the vague pattern she had spent all weekend trying to put together.
The homicide of Birgitte Volter was a case that lacked a motive. Not an obvious one, at least. Not at present. What on earth did they have? Nothing but an eclectic collection of vanished objects, and a dead body. They did have one returned, cleaned revolver of unknown origin. The ballistics tests had shown it was the murder weapon that had arrived in the envelope.
A shawl had disappeared. And a pillbox in enameled silver or gold. And a pass. Were these items connected?
Hanne Wilhelmsen’s thoughts suddenly returned to the old man in the Botanic Gardens. Instinct. She stopped, closed her eyes, and attempted to check. She was used to trusting her instincts. Gut feeling. Spinal reflex. Now she could feel nothing but the start of a blister on her left heel.
All the same, she sprinted the rest of the way home.
09.10, OSLO POLICE STATION
“Anyhow, it can’t be sheer chance, Håkon!”
Billy T. burst into the Assistant Police Chief’s office, speaking far too loudly. He was carrying something huge and amorphous; it was red and looked like some rubber creature that had deflated.
“What is that you’ve got?” Håkon Sand yawned.
“The whale,” Billy T. said with a grin, propping the expired rubber whale in a corner. “My boys will love that this summer! The biggest floating toy on the beach.”
“Bloody hell, Billy T. You can’t just help yourself to confiscated property!”
“No? Should he just lie there then, this whale …”
As he kicked the toe of his boot in the direction of the red heap, it rustled softly, sadly.
“… and stay all on his own down there in the dark basement? No, he’ll have a better time with my boys.”
Shaking his head, Håkon Sand yawned again.
“Listen to this, Håkon,” Billy T. said, leaning over him. “This can’t be sheer chance. The security guard from the government complex died in that avalanche out in the middle of nowhere on Saturday!”
“Tromsø is a university city with sixty thousand inhabitants. I doubt they’d appreciate you saying the place is in the middle of nowhere.”
“It makes no difference, anyway. Don’t you get it? Now the guy’s dead, we can at least go into his apartment and take a look.”
Billy T. slapped a blue sheet down on the desk in front of the police attorney. “Here. Fill out a search warrant.”
Håkon Sand pushed the sheet away as though it were a box of scorpions.
“How long can they go past their due date before it becomes dangerous?” he mumbled.
“Eh?”
“Women. Pregnant women. How long can they go over their date?”
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br /> Billy T. grinned broadly. “Nervous, are we? You’ve been through all this before, Håkon. It’ll be fine.”
“But Hans Wilhelm arrived a week early.”
Håkon tried to suppress yet another yawn.
“I thought Karen said she was due yesterday,” Billy T. remarked.
“Yes,” Håkon muttered, rubbing his face. “But no baby came.”
“Jesus Christ, Håkon! They can go one or two weeks over the date without it being a problem. Anyway, the doctor might have made a mistake about the date. Relax. Fill out this instead.”
Once more he tried to shove the paper across to Håkon.
“Give me a break!”
Håkon attempted first of all to push the paper back, but when this did not work, he grabbed hold of it and tore it to pieces with abrupt, angry movements.
“I don’t know whether you recollect, Billy T. But I remember fucking well an episode a few years back when I tried to have that attorney, Jørgen Ulf, taken into custody, based on a witness statement from Karen. It was a real nightmare. The judge bit my head off because I had not acknowledged that the dead have the same rights as the living. I’m not bloody going down that road again.”
Billy T. stared open-mouthed at Håkon.
“Stop catching flies,” Håkon continued. “You might not learn from your mistakes, but I certainly do. What’s more, and I’m saying this now for the last time: the guard is none of your business!”
Håkon slammed the flat of his hand on the table, and raised his voice yet another notch. “If you now go off to Tone-Marit to get her to run your errand, then … I’ll be furious! There’s no legal authority for a warrant. And neither is there any reason at all to assume that there’s anything at the security guard’s house that we have legal authority to seize. Here!”
Turning around abruptly, Håkon took hold of one of four statute books on the shelf behind him. He smacked it down on the desk so vehemently that the windowpanes rattled.