by Holt, Anne
“You said you would pay,” she slurred, snatching at the collar of a man with thin strands of hair draped over his crown. “Really, Tønna, you promised to treat me!”
The man attempted to wriggle out of the alleged agreement, quite literally, but ended up knocking over an almost untouched half-liter glass of beer. All five people seated around the table stared in shock as the expensive droplets spilled across the table and trickled in a wide waterfall down onto the floor.
“Fuck, Tønna, what are you doing?” the cowgirl whined. “Now you owe me another one at least!”
Øyvind Olve did not spot Hanne Wilhelmsen until she waved at him. Relieved to escape from the rodeo near the door, he planted himself on a seat opposite her, before slapping his briefcase on the table.
“Øyvind, at last,” she said, smiling reproachfully. “When are you going to get yourself something better than that?”
Feeling hard done by, he gazed at the case, a small valise-type affair in red and black nylon with the Labor Party logo in one corner.
“But I think this one’s fine!”
Hanne Wilhelmsen put her head back and laughed uproariously.
“Fine? It’s downright awful! Did you get it at a conference or something?”
Taken aback, Øyvind Olve nodded as he placed his bag at his feet, out of the policewoman’s line of vision.
Hanne nodded toward the glass of beer on the table in front of him: she had ordered for them both.
“Why on earth did you want to meet here?” he whispered, rolling his eyes.
“Because it’s the only place in Oslo you can be absolutely sure nobody’s listening to what you say,” she whispered back, peering conspiratorially around the room. “Even the Security Service folk don’t poke their noses in here!”
“But,” he muttered, staring at the grease-spattered menu, “is it okay to eat in here?”
“We’ll eat somewhere else afterward,” she said brusquely. “The beer is just as good here as any other place. Now, do tell.”
Sipping from her glass, she leaned her elbows on the table as she licked her lips.
“What on earth is this health scandal all about? What’s actually going on?”
“When this sort of thing happens, it usually has to do with a power struggle. And leaks to the press.”
“You mean someone’s leaking information?”
“The stuff that was in the newspapers today,” Øyvind said, drawing a circle in the condensation on his beer glass, “they didn’t even know about in the Prime Minister’s office. It looks as if somebody is out to frame us.”
“Frame you? But isn’t it true, then, what’s in the papers?”
“It may well be. And if it is true, it would have been made public. The point is that this is something that the investigations committee needs to look into, and since so much has already come out, it becomes difficult for us to respond to it rationally.”
“Us? Do you mean the party?”
Øyvind Olve smiled, almost anxiously.
“Yes, to some extent. But mainly the government. I keep forgetting that I’m no longer working in the Prime Minister’s office. Sorry.”
“How can this damage the present government, though? It all happened more than thirty years ago!”
“Everything attaches itself to the government. You must see that. It’s the government that has taken responsibility for investigating this, and it was only by the skin of our teeth that we avoided having the whole of Parliament take control of the enquiry. Fortunately Ruth-Dorthe was quick off the mark and managed to put together a committee of government appointees before the MPs got themselves organized. The case was evidently not of sufficient importance – at that point. But now, as you can see …”
He took a slug of beer and groaned.
“Look at the Security Service scandal, when there was all that heat about them allegedly doing illegal surveillance on communist activists,” he continued, lowering his voice further. “When the Lund Commission’s report was finally published …”
After raising his glass once more, he downed half the contents.
“… didn’t you notice how they tried to turn it into their victory?”
“Who did?”
“The opposition. The Socialist Left and the Center Party. Among others. As if Parliament itself was responsible for all the investigations work, and not an exceptionally competent Supreme Court judge with a good crew on board! As if we in the government were not also interested in a thorough investigation into any possible corruption!”
“But,” Hanne objected, “the government had completed its investigation by then, and very little action had been taken!”
“Yes,” Øyvind Olve said, smacking his glass down on the table. But that wasn’t the government’s fault, you know! Confound it, it wasn’t Prime Minister Gro herself who’d gone searching through files looking for dirt on communist activists and all that stuff!”
He waved irritably for another beer. Instead of the waiter, they were suddenly faced with a man barely four foot seven inches tall, dressed in a tuxedo and with a nose that had most definitely seen better days but had probably never been any larger. His mouth was not visible until he opened it, and, with a sweeping motion of his top hat, declared, “Your Excellencies! It gives me great pleasure for this debauched establishment to receive a visit from upstanding folk like yourselves! May I, on behalf of the proprietor and Tranen’s regular customers, wish you a most sincere welcome!”
Using both hands to replace his hat on his head, he made a stiff little bow.
“My name is The Penguin, and you good people can probably understand why!”
Laughing heartily, he grabbed the edge of their table with his chubby little fingers. His tuxedo was old and worn, and the silky gray cummerbund was stretched precariously around his podgy torso; his arms and legs were too short for the rest of his body.
Hanne began to search for her purse.
“But, my good woman,” the man exclaimed in exasperation, “how could Your Excellencies come to the presumptuous conclusion that my little expedition to your table has a selfish motive? My wretched task is to offer you both a warm welcome!”
As the little man stared furiously at Hanne’s purse, she swiftly returned it to her bag.
“So, yes.” The man nodded contentedly. “Then I’ll leave you to your pleasant conversation and the golden elixir, while expressing a sincere wish to see you good folks here again.”
He clicked his fingers lightly, and the waiter appeared carrying two glasses of beer without either Hanne or Øyvind having ordered.
“Now you really must stop bothering the customers, Penguin,” the waiter said crossly. “Off you go.”
“He’s not bothering us,” Hanne said, but it was futile.
The waiter pushed the little man in front of him and over to the other side of the premises.
“Where were we?” Hanne asked, pouring the small amount left in her old glass into the new one.
“What in the world was that all about?” Øyvind queried, unable to stop staring at the figure in the tuxedo.
“It’s just city life!” Hanne grinned broadly. “You don’t have such things out in the countryside!”
“Oh yes we do,” Øyvind mumbled. “But they don’t wear tuxedos.”
“You were in the middle of a story.”
Øyvind gazed at the peculiar man for some time.
“The art of government is an uncomfortable balancing act,” he said finally. “In every sense. Especially when the wear and tear is as great as it is in our party. Everything is laid at our door. Everything that’s negative, that is. The country is overflowing with milk and honey, but everyone still curses the Labor Party. This health scandal …”
Looking at his watch, he placed his hand on his stomach.
“Hungry?” Hanne Wilhelmsen enquired.
“Mmm.”
“Afterward. Tell me more first.”
“Well,” Øyvind Olve contin
ued. “If it is true that something went wrong in 1965, then of course we’re interested in having it brought to light. We all are. For a number of reasons. Responsibility has to be apportioned, and most importantly of all, we need to learn from any mistakes that were made, even if they happened a long time ago. But it is important that things are well timed. Now that so much of this affair seems to have leaked out to the press, the government has been put on the defensive … Damn it all, Hanne, the Prime Minister’s office didn’t even know about this until it was printed in today’s newspaper!”
“I still don’t understand,” Hanne said. “It would eventually … Who was in government in 65?”
“Gerhardsen was replaced by Borten that year,” Øyvind murmured. “But that’s not the point! The point is that this makes the government look negligent, it makes us seem uninformed with respect to what the newspapers have found out, and that’s always a sign of weakness. Or it’s perceived to be. At least by people in political circles. And that’s what matters.”
He gave a beery belch.
“You’ll have to do something about your digestive system,” Hanne commented.
“And now that they’ve linked the health scandal to Birgitte’s homicide, we really are in trouble.” He leaned across the table, his face only twenty centimeters from Hanne’s.
“But it’s very likely just nonsense,” Hanne protested.
“Nonsense? Yes, sure, but that doesn’t matter! As long as the newspapers spice this up by conflating it into a single issue, then people will regard it as a single issue. Especially when it looks as though …”
He leaned back abruptly and stared at the bar counter. It did not appear as if he intended to continue.
“Looks as though what?”
Hanne was whispering now.
“Looks as though the police don’t have a clue what happened in the Volter case,” Øyvind enunciated slowly. “Or do you?”
Hanne outlined a heart in the condensation on the table where her beer glass had been sitting.
“You mustn’t include me in the police,” Hanne said. “I don’t work there.”
Abruptly Øyvind Olve bent down to lift his ridiculous nylon briefcase onto the table. He struggled with the zipper, then presented Hanne with three A4 sheets.
“Exactly. You don’t work there. Then you can tell me what I should do with this.”
He pushed the documents across to her.
“What is it?” she asked, turning the printed page to take a look.
“It’s something I found in Birgitte’s office. I had to go through all the documents; many of them were of a delicate political nature. This was shoved in between two red folders.”
“Red folders?”
“Classified documents, top secret.”
The sheets contained a list of names, printed in ten-point script, followed by some sort of information about dates.
“Dates of birth and death,” Øyvind Olve clarified. “Obviously, it must be a list of the sudden infant deaths in 1965. And look at this …”
Retrieving the papers, he flicked through to the third sheet, and his eyes scanned the page before he presented it to Hanne again, pointing.
“‘Liv Volter Hansen. Born March 16, 1965, died June 24, 1965.’”
“But what is this?”
“By various circuitous means and a hell of a lot of white lies, I’ve discovered that this overview was produced by the Grinde Commission. The parents of these children were chosen at random by computer, and were to be interviewed in depth about their children’s health, behavior, feeding patterns and so on, prior to the time of death. A random selection, in other words. Sheer chance. And by chance the Prime Minister landed in this group. But the most interesting aspect is that the list was prepared on April 3. The day before Birgitte was murdered. The only way she could have obtained it would have been if Benjamin Grinde had given it to her. I’ve checked every other possibility. Mail records, minute books, absolutely everything. She must have received it from Grinde. And look at this …”
He pointed at something else on the sheets: a few handwritten words in the margin of the first page: “New person???” and “What should be said?”
“What on earth does that mean?” Hanne wondered, more to herself than to her companion.
He answered all the same. “I don’t know. But it’s Birgitte’s writing. What’ll I do?”
“You’ll do what you should have done right away,” Hanne said, in a loud, reproving voice. “You have to hand these papers to the police. Now, immediately.”
“But we were just about to eat,” Øyvind Olve complained.
20.00, OSLO POLICE STATION
Per Volter was just beginning to lose his hair. Billy T. could see that clearly: it was thinning at the crown, and in time the young man would have an actual bald patch.
Billy T. did not quite know what to do. Per Volter had been stretched out across the desk in the Chief Inspector’s office, his head in his arms, crying like a baby, for almost ten minutes. It had all been brought on by a few simple words of speculation from Billy T.
“I think you have a few things to tell me.”
“Do you think I killed Mum?” Per Volter had yelled, before breaking down in a paroxysm of tears.
Nothing had helped. Billy T. had reassured him that this was not the case. In the first place, his alibi was absolutely watertight: twenty soldiers and three officers could swear that the boy had been in a tent on the Hardanger Plateau when the shot was fired in the Prime Minister’s office. Secondly, there was not a single iota of motive. And thirdly, he would hardly have offered up the information that the unregistered murder weapon belonged to him, if he really was the murderer.
Billy T. had told him this repeatedly, but to no avail. In the end he gave up, and decided to let Per cry himself out. It appeared that this would take some time.
Billy T. inspected his nails and wondered whether to pay a visit to the toilet. Just as he was making up his mind, rising from his chair, Per Volter sniffed noisily and sat up half-heartedly, his features blurred, his face red and swollen.
“Do you feel a bit better?” Billy T. asked him, sliding back down into a sitting position.
Per Volter did not reply, but dried his face with his sleeve, which was at least a start.
“Here,” Billy T. said, offering him a paper towel. “Your guns and equipment are remarkably well organized.”
The compliment was emphasized by a smile of acknowledgement, but it did not appear particularly encouraging to Per.
“Have you been there?” he muttered, staring down at the wet paper towel.
“Yes. Two police officers went home with your father, and they’ve written a report stating that the storage arrangements are exemplary. Guns kept separately in a locked cabinet, ammunition in another. All five guns registered with us.”
“That register of yours is such a joke,” Per Volter mumbled. “As far as I know, it’s only for this area, and it’s not even computerized.”
“We’re waiting for new gun legislation,” Billy T. said, pouring coffee from a steel thermos flask into two mugs and pushing one across to Per; he gave him the one with the picture of Franz Kafka. “But why?” he asked, with a note of hesitation.
Looking up, Per made a grimace after burning his tongue. “Why what?”
“Why hadn’t you registered the Nagant?”
Per sat blowing into his mug. The coffee was still too hot, and he put it down gingerly on the desktop.
“I just didn’t get around to it. The other guns were bought. But the Nagant was a gift. On my eighteenth birthday. It belonged to my grandmother. She was quite active during the war, was in Finnmark and all that kind of thing, and we used to say that the Nagant was her war medal.”
Now the young man smiled faintly, and there was a touch of pride in his expression.
“She operated on a wounded Russian and saved his life. She wasn’t even a doctor! The autumn of 43, that was, and the man had nothing
to give her apart from his gun. Kliment Davidovich Raskin was his name.”
He was smiling broadly now.
“When I was a child, I thought the name was so cool. After the war, Grandma spent years trying to find him. Through the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and suchlike. She never located him. Grandma died when I was sixteen. Lovely lady. She …”
His tears threatened to spill again, and Per made a fresh attempt with the coffee.
“I got the Nagant as a present from my mum on my eighteenth birthday,” he murmured into the cup. “It was the best present I had ever received.”
“Have you ever used it ?”
“Yes. The ammunition’s quite unusual, so it has to be specially ordered. I’ve used the gun six or seven times, I think. Mostly just for the sake of it. It’s not a very precise weapon. Old as well. Grandma had never used it.”
Once more he was overwhelmed by the memory of someone who was no longer alive. Tears ran from the corner of his left eye, but he remained upright.
“Why are you so angry with your father, Per?”
Just as Billy T. asked the question, his inner alarm bells rang loudly. The boy should be informed that he did not have a duty to testify against members of his own family. Nevertheless, Billy T. did not withdraw the question.
Per Volter gazed out the window, holding the mug of coffee up to his mouth, without drinking it. The steam seemed to do him good; he closed his eyes and it was obvious that the moisture on his red, streaky face felt pleasant.
“Angry is just the start of it,” he said softly. “The man’s a shit. He was unfaithful to Mum and he lied to me.”