Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

  “Of course. But that’s only speculation. His fingerprints are also on the flashlight that to all appearances was used to knock his wife unconscious. His, and no one else’s. He totally denies having ever seen the flashlight, even less having picked it up. The pathologist’s preliminary findings indicate that she was killed between ten and eleven. The phone call from Halvorsrud did not come until ten past twelve. Midnight, that is.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen leafed through the papers on her lap, more in agitation than because she actually needed to refer to them.

  “So, Halvorsrud sat with his dead wife for one to two hours before calling the police. His clothes were spattered with blood. As if that wasn’t enough …” She closed the green folder and pushed it across the massive desk in front of the Police Chief. “We found one hundred thousand kroner in used notes hidden in his basement. Together with computer disks dealing with cases he has worked on at Økokrim. He flatly denies having any knowledge whatsoever of all that.”

  “But,” the Police Chief interrupted, taking hold of the papers she had offered him, “yesterday I was informed that the interview with Halvorsrud hadn’t been completed. He fainted, I was told. And was admitted to hospital.”

  “Just temporarily,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said tersely. “He’s fit as a fiddle today. Stubborn as a mule into the bargain. We authorized another twenty-four hours in hospital, but the guy refused. He wanted to go back to the cells again. ‘Just like all the others,’ as he put it. I interviewed him for several hours this afternoon.”

  She got to her feet and stood observing the magnificent view from the sixth floor of the police-headquarters building. The leaden afternoon was toiling its way toward evening. Gray-black clouds were racing southward. It would be a cold night. The imposing, shapeless mass of Ekebergåsen hill lay to the east. Oslo Fjord was churning white, and a dilapidated Danish ferry was heaving laboriously to its usual berth at Vippetangen.

  “I used to love this city.”

  Hanne was not sure whether she actually said this or whether the thought just passed through her head. She used to feel at home there. Oslo was Hanne Wilhelmsen’s city. Admittedly she was nineteen when she’d first moved to the capital, but that was when her life had begun. Childhood was a partially erased memory of something that though not exactly unpleasant had been totally insignificant. Hanne Wilhelmsen’s life had taken off with Cecilie and their tiny apartment in Jens Bjelkes gate. Two years later they had moved from the thirty square meters with its toilet on the landing and an acrid smell of dead rats in the walls. Three apartments had come and gone since. Bigger and better each time, as it should be.

  Hanne was aware of a gnawing sensation in her diaphragm. She longed to go back to Jens Bjelkes gate. To the beginning, and the way everything had once been.

  Now I live here, Hanne Wilhelmsen thought, realizing that the police headquarters at Grønlandsleiret 44 was the only place in the world where she felt truly at home.

  “How’s he taking it all?” she heard the Police Chief say, and turned to face him again.

  “Quite strangely,” she answered in a laconic tone.

  Resuming her seat, she asked for a cup of coffee. The Police Chief went off into the outer office himself and returned with two white cups and an ashtray. Hanne Wilhelmsen took one cup and left the ashtray unused even though she had a ten-pack in her pocket.

  “Until today, he was up and down. Changeable. One minute distant and almost in shock. The next resolute and lucid. The fluctuations were so sudden that … that I found them convincing. But today …” Her fingers played with the contours of the cigarette packet through the material of her right trouser pocket. Then she capitulated. “Today, you would think he had decided to conduct his own case. Honestly.”

  Savoring the cigarette smoke, she suddenly wondered why the Police Chief was wearing uniform on a Sunday in his office. On the other hand, when she thought about it, she could not recall ever having seen him in plain clothes.

  “He was exactly as we have always known him. Precise. Insistent. Persistent. Quite arrogant. Logical too, for that matter. Why would he remain sitting beside the body, pick up the sword, be spattered with his wife’s blood if he really had killed her? And so on. Why didn’t he arrange an accident instead, if he’d wanted to get rid of her? He raised all the questions a competent member of the prosecution service would ask in such a case. Not to mention a defense lawyer. As far as the money and computer disks were concerned, he was rock solid. He had no idea about them, he said, with his eyes fixed on mine. Didn’t even blink. To cap it all, he claimed he hadn’t been inside that messy storeroom for at least two years.”

  “Any fingerprints on the money?”

  The Police Chief’s chair needed oiling. A grinding noise accompanied his monotonous swiveling.

  “Don’t know yet. We’ll have the results tonight or tomorrow.”

  “What about the children? Was the boy asked about the money?”

  “I don’t think so. We’ve decided to keep that particular card as close to our chests as we can. Fortunately the newspapers haven’t heard about it.”

  “So far.” The Chief of Police had started to clean his nails with the letter opener. His hands were rough, more like those of someone who did manual labor than someone who shuffled paper and went to protracted meetings.

  “He was like a new man today,” Hanne said, stubbing out her half-smoked cigarette. “Or should I say, back to his old self. He did not budge a centimeter. On Friday, he seemed a little hesitant about the Ståle Salvesen story. For a while I thought he had lied and understood that it was all over when he learned that Salvesen is probably no longer alive. But today—”

  “Dead certain,” Mykland mumbled.

  “Absolutely.”

  “What about you?”

  “Very …” Hanne Wilhelmsen faltered. Stroking the scar on her forehead, she pinned her gaze on the ashtray. The cigarette was still smoking slightly, and she stubbed it out again with an expression of distaste. “Extremely uncertain.”

  Putting the letter opener aside, the Police Chief folded his hands over his stomach. The grinding noise from the chair grew louder.

  “Do you remember the case of the boy from the children’s foster home?” Hanne said softly. “You were head of CID then, weren’t you? Was it in 93?”

  “94,” the Police Chief replied.

  The case of the murdered foster-home director had made a greater impression on him than most other cases. Perhaps especially because it culminated in a patrol car knocking down and killing a twelve-year-old runaway boy. The driver had been shattered, and resigned three months later. Nerves.

  “I’ve never felt entirely certain about that,” Hanne said.

  “Maren … Kvalseid? Kvalvik? She confessed.”

  “Kalsvik. Maren Kalsvik. Yes, she confessed. And was sentenced to fourteen years in jail. It bothered me for a long time afterward. Still bothers me, in fact. I’m not at all sure she was guilty.”

  “Let’s not waste our worries on that kind of thing, Hanne,” the Police Chief said wearily. “She confessed, and as far as I’m aware, she’s never gone back on that. There are enough prisoners sitting in Norwegian jails protesting their innocence year after year. A couple of them have even turned out to be right.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking slightly irritated, before taking a gulp of coffee.

  “But what about Prime Minister Volter, then!” An insistent tone had crept into Hanne Wilhelmsen’s voice and she ignored the Police Chief’s skeptical expression. “If her husband hadn’t come to us with those ancient letters, we’d have easily gained a conviction against that neo-Nazi upstart for her murder.”

  “Where are you going with this?” Mykland asked.

  “Going?”

  She flung her hands wide, half in resignation, half in annoyance.

  “I’m not really going anywhere with it. I just think it’s becoming increasingly important to realize that we can make mistakes. That i
nnocent people can be found guilty because we jump to conclusions far too hastily. That we … that some of us can get lost in the details of circumstantial evidence and close our eyes to the fact that sometimes strange and remarkable incidents do occur. Sometimes incidents are incidental.”

  “You’re getting old, Hanne.”

  His smile was friendly now, almost comradely.

  “Your youthful eagerness has subsided. That’s a good thing. Your capacity for doubt and reflection has grown. That’s also a good thing. It makes you an even better policewoman. If that’s possible.”

  Now the expression on his face was almost flirtatious.

  “You’re the best we have, Hanne. Don’t take off now and go all soft. We’ve got defense lawyers for those kinds of scruples.”

  “Scruples,” she repeated slowly. “Is that what we call it?”

  Silence fell. Even the irritating sound of the unoiled office chair ceased.

  “The point is though that I believe him. I have a feeling that Halvorsrud might be telling the truth.”

  The Police Chief nodded. His cheeks were even darker now, as if his beard had grown even as they sat there. There was a knock at the door. Mykland barked a response and Karl Sommarøy entered the room.

  “I think you’ll be interested in this,” he said, smiling as broadly as he could with his babyish mouth.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen took the sheet of paper he offered her. Her eyes ran over the short text. Then she looked up, and let her eyes meet the Police Chief’s for a moment before she announced, “Halvorsrud’s fingerprints are on the bag of money.”

  She stood up and returned to her own office to prepare the case documents for the next day’s remand hearing.

  “Police Prosecutor Skar can at least take a brighter view of tomorrow’s hearing after this,” she said sardonically to Karl Sommarøy before she closed her door.

  It was now seven o’clock on Sunday evening and she was unlikely to make it home before eleven. There was really little point in phoning Cecilie. She certainly would not be expecting her home before night. In all probability.

  Hanne lit her seventh cigarette of the day, feeling dreadful.

  19

  “Fucking bitch!”

  The stones were slippery with green algae. The gulls squealed in disdain as they tossed wildly in the gusty wind. The boy spat out his wad of snuff and wiped the black saliva with his jacket sleeve.

  He had hardly been able to believe it when Terese had phoned the day after the party. It was one thing that she had made out with him; there had been hardly anyone else left there, apart from him. But then she had been on the phone. The next day. He hadn’t understood shit.

  He didn’t now, either. He had been ready for Terese for ages. They all were. And then it was his turn. For three weeks she had made the boy believe that the world was rosy. But he was only seventeen. He had no money, and he didn’t drive a car.

  Terese had been sitting in Anders Skog’s car yesterday. A new Volkswagen Beetle.

  “If I jump across to that little rock and don’t fall flat on my face, she’ll realize that pansy coach is an idiot.”

  The boy shouted into the wind, and his tears mixed with sea spray to form a viscous mask over his face.

  He fell, injuring himself badly.

  He thought the red object floating among the clumps of seaweed between the reefs and the shore might be blood from his own leg. Then he understood what it actually was.

  “What an idiot you can be,” he muttered as he dragged the waterlogged anorak ashore.

  There was something in the breast pocket. The zipper was tricky to open, but the struggle at least gave him something else to think about.

  “Oh fuck … More than thirteen hundred smackers!”

  The banknotes were soaking wet, but whole and genuine, as far as he could see. “Ståle Salvesen” was written underneath the blurred photograph on the driver’s license.

  There wasn’t another soul in sight out there in that weather. Only him. Two five-hundred-kroner notes, three hundred notes and a fifty-kroner note went straight into his pocket. He lay on his stomach and shoved the anorak into a cavity the sea had spent thousands of years carving out under the rock. Then he placed three large stones on top. He put the driving license back into the wallet, glanced down at his torn trouser leg covered in bloodstains and green algae, straightened his back, strained his rib cage and hurled the wallet belonging to some Ståle guy all the way out to sea.

  “Fuck you, Terese!” roared the boyish voice as he jumped from the rocks on to dry land.

  20

  “She got a real scolding,” Billy T. said, helping himself to the lasagne. “But it would probably have been worse if you had made more of a fuss. Anyway, the guy was remanded in custody for four weeks. If he’d been anyone other than the Chief Public Prosecutor, we’d have got eight. Agreed?”

  He passed the flameproof casserole to Karen Borg.

  “She’s quite smart,” Karen said, unperturbed. “Is she completely new?”

  “She’s been with us for three months now. Great girl. Annmari Skar. Started at police college and then went on to study law. That’s what makes a good police prosecutor.”

  Tone-Marit Steen shook her head and touched her belly when Karen offered her food. Her face contracted into a grimace.

  “When are you actually due?”

  Håkon Sand put more wood onto the fire in the soapstone fireplace and swore under his breath when he burned his fingers on the fireguard.

  “In one week’s time,” Tone-Marit groaned, her face suddenly becoming red and moist. “But I think she might arrive early.”

  “He,” Billy T. said so quickly that tomato sauce sprayed from his mouth across the white tablecloth. “Oh fuck. Sorry. The boy’ll come when he’s good and ready. Don’t believe for one second in all that due-date stuff.”

  “Oi,” Tone-Marit said.

  A puddle spread rapidly between her legs, the liquid making a dark stain on her red maternity tunic.

  “Oops,” Karen responded.

  “Doctor!” Billy T. bellowed. “Hospital! Håkon!”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” Håkon screamed, a log of wood in one hand and a poker in the other. Stretched across his now quite substantial stomach he wore a green apron with “Chef Sand” in childish felt letters across the chest. On his head he wore an old-fashioned chef’s hat that made him look like a chubby candlestick.

  “She’s on her way,” Tone-Marit moaned.

  “He’ll have to wait, for God’s sake,” Billy T. wailed, crashing out into the hallway to fetch his jacket and car keys.

  “Karen. She’s coming.” Tone-Marit had lain down on the floor. She opened her thighs and let Karen pull off her tights and underpants.

  “Heavens above,” Håkon said.

  “No, bloody hell,” Billy T. countered.

  “Boil some water,” Håkon suggested.

  “Why?” was Billy T.’s whining response.

  “Get some bed linen,” Karen requested. “And yes, boil some water. Not too much, it takes too long. Put the poultry shears into the water.”

  “Poultry shears,” Håkon muttered, grateful for having finally landed in his own sphere of competence. “Bed linen.”

  “Phone the hospital, Billy T..” Karen Borg got up from her knees and gave him a push. The enormous figure was standing there bewildered, rattling his car keys. “Get an ambulance here. We can still make it, I think.”

  “Nooo,” Tone-Marit hissed through gritted teeth. “Can’t you hear me? She’s coming! Now!”

  “You’ve already got four children,” Håkon yelled at Billy T., who had turned visibly pale. “You need to pull yourself together!”

  What none of them knew was that Billy T. had never been present at any of his children’s births. The youngest, Truls, he hadn’t even known about until the boy was three months old. He was – like his three elder brothers, Nicolay, Alexander and Peter – the result of a short fling
that was over long before nine months had passed. Billy T. had quite simply not heard word of the births until they were done and dusted. As far as he was concerned, a newborn baby was a sweet-smelling, freshly washed little poppet in white clothes and a woolen blanket.

  “The head’s on its way,” he said softly, feeling the blood slowly returning to his brain.

  “Sit down here,” Karen said irritably as she dashed into the kitchen to make the phone call herself.

  Billy T. knelt down beside Tone-Marit and held her hand tightly.

  “It’s a girl, Billy T.,” she moaned, her breath making a grunting noise. “Tell me it doesn’t matter that it’s a girl.”

  He leaned across and put his mouth to her ear.

  “I’ve wanted a girl all my life,” he whispered. “But don’t tell anyone that. It kind of doesn’t suit me.”

  She began to break into a strained smile that disappeared in a violent contraction. The baby’s head was fully out now, and Billy T. moved to place his hands carefully around it. Håkon Sand had stepped closer, still holding the log and poker in his hands.

  “Are you planning to kill the child, or what?” Billy T. said in a fury. “Put them down and boil those fucking shears!”

  “They’ll come as fast as they can,” Karen said, entering with a pillow and two large white sheets. “I’ve put the water on. Here!”

  She tucked the pillow under Tone-Marit’s head and helped her to find a more comfortable position.

  “Shit,” Håkon Sand said.

  His five-year-old son was standing in the doorway.

  “Billitee,” the boy said, sounding delighted. “Can you put me to bed again?”

  “Come here, young man,” Håkon said, trying to shield the boy from what was taking place on the floor in front of the fireplace. “You’ll have to make do with Daddy tonight.”

  “Let the boy come,” Billy T. said with a smile, and before either of his parents managed to intervene, Hans Wilhelm was kneeling down, staring wide-eyed at the baby that was now halfway out.

  “This is my little girl,” Billy T. said. “This baby is mine and Tone-Marit’s.”