Lion's Mouth, The

by Holt, Anne

  Suddenly he made eye contact with Billy T. His eyes were deep blue and for an uncomfortable moment, Billy T. felt that he was looking at a ghost: the boy looked so like his mother.

  “Dad was having an affair with Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden.”

  He spat out the name as if it were an effort to enunciate it at all.

  Billy T. said nothing, but felt his heart beat faster: a disagreeable fluttering, and, closing his mouth, he involuntarily touched his chest.

  “I’ve no idea how long it lasted,” Per continued. “But I caught them at it at home last autumn. Dad didn’t know. That I heard them, that is. I told him the other day. For fuck’s sake …”

  Slamming his coffee mug on the table, he put his head in his hands, and leaned his elbows on his thighs, rocking slowly to and fro as he continued to speak into his hands.

  “I don’t even know if Mum knew about it.”

  There was no more. It was too warm in the little room; the heat pressed against his skin, and Billy T. could still feel the frightening stitch under his left rib. He tried to raise his arm, but the pain increased so much it made him stop.

  “I wish I belonged to an ordinary family,” Per whispered, only just audibly. “I wish I didn’t have to read about us in the papers. About—”

  “About your sister,” Billy T. finished for him.

  The pain had diminished somewhat, but his heart was still thumping in an unfamiliar rhythm.

  Per Volter took his hands away from his face, and again stared into Billy T.’s eyes. Now the likeness to his mother was disturbing.

  “I knew nothing about my sister until I read it in the newspaper,” he said in a dull voice. “Nothing! I didn’t even know that I had a sibling! Didn’t I have a right to know that? Eh? Don’t you think they should have told me that I once had a sister?”

  He was almost shrieking: his voice slipped into falsetto from time to time.

  Billy T. nodded, but did not utter a word.

  “I always thought that Mum worked so hard out of … some sort of sense of duty. The party and the country and all that. Now I think …”

  He began to cry yet again. He tried to resist, swallowing and rubbing his eyes, his body really too exhausted to withstand a fresh bout. But it was all in vain. Snot and tears ran down his face, and his sleeves were too wet to be of any use when, time after time, he pressed his face against his forearms.

  “I think she wasn’t really that fond of me. If she could forget a baby so easily that it was never spoken of, then it’s not so strange that she forgot about me now and again. She didn’t love any of us.”

  “I think you’re quite wrong there,” Billy T. ventured, though even he could tell that his voice sounded reedy and unconvincing. “Not talking about someone doesn’t mean that you’re not fond of the person. You must remember that—”

  “Can you imagine what it’s like to read about things like that in the newspaper?” Per Volter interrupted. “Eh? To read innermost family secrets that you didn’t even know about? I hate Dad. I hate that guy!”

  Billy T. did not reply. There was nothing to say. The pain this young man was feeling was so immense and unmanageable that there was insufficient space for it anywhere. The room where they were sitting was overheated and stuffy: it felt as if it might explode at any minute.

  Billy T. knew he ought to let the boy continue his rant. He ought to keep him with him, give him food and drink, then take him to a place where he could continue to talk, to someone he could confide in; Per Volter needed the opportunity to spew out all the pain, now that he had begun the huge task of letting it all out.

  But Billy T. was too weary. He could not cope with any more. Closing his eyes, he tried to think about how he was going to get to bed.

  “I’ll get someone to drive you home,” he said quietly.

  “I don’t want to go home,” Per Volter answered. “I don’t know where I want to go.”

  23.30, VIDARS GATE 11C

  He could not sleep. He thought about the gun behind the jam jars in Mrs. Svendsby’s basement storeroom. Even though it was safer there than in his own storeroom, he was not happy about it. It should really be at the cabin.

  The man with the newspaper bothered him too. He had not looked like the others. He looked uninterested; not interested in that way. But all the same he had kept his eye on him. It bothered him intensely.

  Brage Håkonsen twisted around; in his anxiety he had made the sheet damp. He groaned unhappily and got out of bed. Most of all, he wanted to phone Tage. He needed outside help. That would be the safest thing. But he could not phone. Heaven only knew whether the phone was bugged. His cell phone was a reliable alternative, but, although the police couldn’t eavesdrop it, they could find out what number he had phoned. That was why they stuck to phone boxes. And cryptic letters that were always burned immediately the contents had been read.

  His body felt as though it were covered in ants. His skin crawled and itched, and he scratched his stomach as he roamed restlessly around the small living room. In the end he sat down on the stationary bicycle in his bedroom and pulled the foot straps very tight. He pedaled and pedaled, and after two kilometers felt his muscles start to loosen up. Sticky perspiration clung to his half-naked body, and his breathing was heavy and rhythmic.

  The doorbell rang.

  Brage Håkonsen stiffened; he released his feet from the straps, leaving the pedals to turn the last few revolutions by themselves.

  He did not want to open the door. He had no idea who it was, but his anxiety and the mysterious, uncomfortable tension had returned, sitting like a twinge in his diaphragm and making him tremble all of a sudden. He sneaked slowly back to bed, but did not dare switch off the light. Any change would be noticed from outside the apartment, betraying the fact that someone was at home.

  It rang again, harsh and insistent.

  He lay stiff and silent, refusing to open the door. No one should be calling so late. He was entirely within his rights not to open up. Suddenly he noticed his porn magazines. Unobtrusively he propped himself up on his elbow: the sight of the thick bundle of magazines on his bedside table worried him more than the gun in the basement. Swiftly, softly, he stood up again, lifted the mattress and stuffed the magazines between the wooden slats on the bed base.

  Now the doorbell rang for the third time, briskly and non-stop for one whole minute.

  He had nothing here he could be hauled in for. He had no unfinished business with anyone.

  He had to open up.

  Throwing on a navy blue dressing gown with black stripes, he tied the belt as he approached the door.

  “Okay, okay,” he muttered, sliding back the security chain to open the door.

  Two men stood outside, both around forty: one dressed in a gray-brown suit and tie, the other in jacket and trousers with an open-necked shirt.

  “Brage Håkonsen?” the man in the suit enquired.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re from the police.”

  They each held out a little plastic card with a photo and the lion of the national coat of arms.

  “You are under arrest.”

  “Arrest? What for?”

  Instinctively, Brage Håkonsen stepped back, and the two men moved quickly inside. The casually dressed man closed the door quietly behind them.

  “For unlawful possession of a gun.”

  The man held out a blue sheet, but Brage refused to take it.

  “Gun? I don’t have a bloody gun!”

  “You don’t have a firearms license,” the taller police officer said. “But you still bought a pistol in Stensparken Park this afternoon.”

  Fuck. Damn and blast it. The man with the newspaper was not a bloody homo. He was from the police.

  “I did not,” Brage Håkonsen said, but all the same he went to put on his clothes.

  He was not even allowed to go into the bedroom on his own; the tall man followed him, staring intently at him until he was ready to accompany them to the police
station at Grønlandsleiret 44.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16

  09.15, OSLO POLICE STATION

  “Long time no see,” Billy T. said, grinning at Severin Heger as he bent down to help him retrieve the folder he had just dropped.

  “You should look where you’re going,” Police Inspector Heger responded, though he returned the smile.

  “What are you doing these days?” Billy T. said, looking quizzically at his colleague.

  Severin Heger had been working in the Security Service for nearly four years. He was the only Security Service officer Billy T. was on good terms with, and there was a reason for that. They were the same age, they had been in the same year at police college, both were well over six foot tall, and both rode Honda Goldwing motorbikes. When Billy T. had become unofficial national champion in full-contact karate in 1984, Severin had been runner-up. The day they received their diplomas and became proud owners of a single gold stripe on the epaulettes of their uniform jackets, they had ended up, in company with many others, in the city center. That night, Severin made a clumsy and fairly drunken pass at Billy T. With tact and delicacy, Billy T. had rejected him, but when Severin Heger then suddenly broke down in convulsive sobs, Billy T. had put his arm around his shoulder and seen him home. Billy T. had made three pots of coffee in the course of that long night filled with despair and reassuring words. When the sun broke through the clouds in the east and they were both stone-cold sober, sitting with their feet propped up on the balcony of the tiny apartment in Etterstad, Severin had suddenly stood up, produced a little engraved silver cup, and exclaimed, “I want you to have this, Billy T. This was my very first trophy, and it’s the best one I have. Thank you very much.”

  Since then they had not had much to do with each other, barring a hello now and again and a clap on the shoulder in the corridors, though on very rare occasions they met for a chilled summer beer. Neither of them ever mentioned that spring evening many years ago. The silver cup sat on a shelf in Billy T.’s bedroom, together with an eggcup he had received at his christening and a silvered child’s shoe that had belonged to his eldest son. From what Billy T. could understand, Severin had made his decision that night, contrary to the advice Billy T. had given him. Severin Heger lived celibately, and Billy T. had never heard so much as a spiteful rumor about his old pal.

  “I’m probably working on the same as you, I expect,” Severin Heger replied. “That’s what almost everybody is working on, is it not?”

  “I suppose so. Are you doing okay?”

  Severin Heger bit his lip, and scanned his surroundings. People were rushing past them, some raising a hand in greeting, others calling out a cheerful hello as they went by.

  “Have you time for a cup of coffee?” Severin suddenly asked.

  “Not really, but yes please,” Billy T. answered with a grin. “The canteen?”

  They sat at the innermost table, beside the doors leading to the roof terrace. The weather was cool and the sky threatened rain, so they were left to sit in peace.

  “You must all be in your element up there now,” Billy T. remarked, nodding toward the ceiling. “Never had it so good, eh!”

  Severin looked at him earnestly.

  “I don’t understand why you have such a negative view of us,” he said. “My colleagues are decent, hard-working people, exactly like the rest of you.”

  “I don’t have anything against you. It’s just that I can’t stand all that secrecy and scaremongering. Right now, for instance, I have a strong sense that not even the leaders of this investigation know exactly what theories you are working on. The most frustrating aspect of being on this case is that it seems as though nobody has a complete overview. But the rest of us at least try to keep one another informed.”

  Severin did not answer, but continued to gaze at Billy T. as he scratched the back of one hand with the other.

  “What’s on your mind?” Billy T. said, pouring cola into his glass so hastily that it fizzed over and dark froth streamed across the table.

  “Damn and blast,” he muttered, wiping the tabletop with his hand and drying it on his trousers.

  Severin leaned toward him, looking at the spillage.

  “We took in an extremist yesterday,” he said quietly. “A guy who bought an unregistered gun in a suspicious fashion in a park, and we believe he’s the leader of a group of neo-Nazis. He is definitely in regular contact with a Swede with the same interests, and the Swede …”

  After fishing a handkerchief from his pocket, Severin started to dry the table.

  “… this Swede came to Norway three days before Birgitte Volter’s murder, visited friends here in Oslo, and disappeared back to his homeland the day after the homicide.”

  Billy T. looked as if Severin Heger had told him that he was going to marry Princess Märtha Louise.

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  Severin Heger flashed Billy T. a warning look as two women passed them to see if it might be possible to sit outside, regardless. Having poked their heads outside, they changed their minds and vanished back in the direction of the counter, twenty meters away on the other side of the canteen.

  “And as if that wasn’t enough,” Severin continued, now almost whispering, “we have reason to believe this guy we hauled in yesterday somehow knew the security guard in the government complex. The one who died recently in the avalanche. Do you know about him?’

  “Know about him?”

  Billy T. tried to lower his voice, but his eagerness distorted his tone as he hissed, “I don’t only know about him! I’ve interviewed the guy, damn it! And I’ve continually hassled for the need to take a closer look at him! Is it true? Is there really a connection there?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Severin said, gesturing with his hand to persuade Billy T. to calm down. “But we have reason to believe there might be. Isn’t that what you say when you can’t reveal how you know something?”

  “But did you get anything out of the guy?”

  “Zilch, zero, nothing. We searched his apartment. There was nothing there apart from suspect literature on a shelf and porn magazines under his bed. No gun. Nothing criminal.”

  “But can you hold him?”

  “Doubtful. Progress is so bloody slow on this new gun legislation. At the moment the penalties are so minimal that we’ll have problems holding him much longer than today. Then we’ll put in surveillance and all that kind of thing. Heaven knows what that might lead to. The Swedish Security Police have interviewed Tage Sjögren, the Swede I mentioned, and they held him for two days. Pushed him really hard, but the guy said nothing, and they were forced to let him go.”

  Suddenly he glanced at his watch, and ran his thumb over his glass.

  “Need to go.”

  “But, Severin!”

  Billy T. grabbed Severin’s arm as he was leaving.

  “How’s life?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t have a life. I work in the Security Service.”

  Smiling briefly, Severin withdrew his arm and scurried out of the canteen.

  17.19, VIDARS GATE 11C

  Brage Håkonsen knew that in the days ahead his life would not be his own. There would be eyes everywhere, and everything he did would be duly noted and then filed in a folder on the top floors of the police station. He would have to live with it somehow. He did not feel nearly as upset as he had thought he would; it had been worse when he was mistakenly arrested as an anti-whaling demonstrator. Now at least it was to do with something he believed in, and it would be naïve to think he would never come under suspicion for his activities. He simply had to be even more careful.

  It had been sensible to keep his mouth shut. His attorney had advised that; the old guy had actually seemed like a wimp, but Brage Håkonsen was aware that they shared opinions on various issues. The cop had been damn grouchy about his choice of attorney, and it had taken several hours before they finally allowed them to have a discussion. The last thing the lawyer had said was t
hat he had to be careful in the future. He had winked his right eye from under his bushy eyebrows as he said it.

  The cops hadn’t found the gun. Not that he had dared to go to the basement to check, but they would obviously have confronted him with the pistol if they had known where it was. It could stay there. For a while.

  First and foremost, his arrest meant that the assassination attempt would have to be postponed. That was regrettable, for a number of reasons. One, they would lose some of the impact the longer they left it between the Volter woman’s death and the new attack. Two, it was always a fucking nightmare to alter a fairly detailed plan. On the other hand, he had already decided to change his partner in crime. Reidar could be depended upon, of course, but it had not taken Brage very long to realize that the boy was not particularly bright. So when Tage had said as he’d left that he could be called upon at any time, stressing the importance of cross-border cooperation, it had dawned on him that they should do it together, he and Tage. It might be an advantage to postpone it, since Tage might have ideas about how to amend the plan.

  Just the thought of it made him ecstatic, and he laughed when he peeped out the window and saw two men in an old Volvo on the opposite side of the street.

  He knew how he could get to the cabin without being seen. He just had to wait for a couple of days.

  FRIDAY, APRIL 18

  12.07, PRESS CONFERENCE ROOM IN THE GOVERNMENT COMPLEX

  “We only just made it.”

  Edvard “Teddy” Larsen had to engage his brain to avoid heaving a sigh of relief as he passed the flock of photographers crowding round the door to the large room as they waited for the minister to appear.

  He had had to draw on his many years of finely honed ingenuity and cunning to make her understand that they had to do this his way. Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden had persisted in her intransigence: Teddy should read out a statement on her behalf, and then she would turn up to answer questions for ten minutes.

  “But, Ruth-Dorthe,” he had tried to explain, “it would look really strange if I, an employee in the ministry, were to read out a statement from you, a politician! It would look extremely peculiar!”