Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

  “Now I’m on my own, I can only think about everything that’s fallen apart. Friendship. Love. Life. Everything.”

  “But—” Håkon began gently.

  “Don’t say anything,” she said softly. “Don’t say a word, please. Just be here.”

  She curled up into a fetal position and he could not resist stroking her hair.

  “You’re right,” she whispered. “I am an idiot. A … a destroyer. Someone who destroys things. The only thing I can do in life is be a police officer. That helps right now. It’s a great help. Cecilie is probably pleased about that.”

  Gingerly, he leaned over her and retrieved the quilt from the floor, before creeping closer to her curled body. He felt her spine against his belly and was struck by how skinny she had become. He pressed her close and whispered meaningless words into her hair. Her hand clasped his and only when the grip was released did he realize she had fallen asleep again. He could barely hear her breathing.

  31

  For more than half an hour she had lain there staring at the ceiling. She counted the seconds to see how long she could avoid blinking. Her reflexes won out over her willpower; each and every time. Cautiously, she turned over in the bed. Håkon’s thinning hair, sweaty, was plastered to his forehead. He was sleeping deeply and awkwardly, still fully clothed. The quilt was rolled like a sausage over his hips, and Hanne noticed that he had not even taken off his shoes. His mouth was open and he was snoring. Probably that was what had woken her. She had remembered nothing. The first flicker of wakefulness had been like every other morning: vacant – neither good nor bad. Then yesterday had come tumbling over her, and she had struggled to breathe. Devastated, she had tried to keep her eyes open forever. She could not even manage to do that.

  She glanced at the clock.

  Half past six.

  She did not want to shower. It was as if the pungent odor of sweat and stale perfume that did not belong to her – though it pierced her heart every time she drew breath – was a suitable punishment. At least the start of it. She hesitated briefly before deciding not to write a note. Instead she placed the spare key in plain sight on the hall table. Still in the clothes she’d not only worn for the past twenty-four hours but had also slept in, she jogged the short distance to Grønlandsleiret 44.

  The police headquarters was there, its curved gray edifice immutable as ever.

  As she swiped her pass through the reader, causing the metal door across the staff entrance on the west side to open, it felt like scrambling aboard a ramshackle lifeboat. She moved through the corridors, finally emerging at the gigantic foyer that soared all the way up to the sixth story, but instead of heading straight for the elevator she stepped out into the middle of the floor. The vast space was deserted, apart from an elderly dark-skinned man in a blue-and-yellow tracksuit who was washing the floor behind the counter in the southeast corner of the building. He sent a nod and a smile in Hanne’s direction, but received no response.

  The police headquarters was not yet really ready to face the day. Now and again a door was flung open on one of the upper floors, and from the crime desk at the main entrance muffled cries could be heard through the bulletproof glass walls. But for the most part, silence reigned in the building, a silence Hanne usually loved.

  She did not even feel tired. Worn out, perhaps; her body was stiff, but her mind felt clear and cold and focused.

  Four piles of documents lay on her desk, neatly stacked side by side, green and pink folders alternating. She placed her Moomins cup of black coffee at the far edge of the table and lit a cigarette. The first drag made her extremely dizzy. In a strange way, it felt pleasant, like an anaesthetizing high.

  She selected the bulkiest folder first.

  Karianne Holbeck had collected the most important witness statements into one bundle. At the front of the folder was an overview listing the people who had been interviewed and the main points of what they had said. Hanne Wilhelmsen flicked slowly through the sheaf of papers, and stopped at interview number three.

  Witness Sigrid Riis considers herself the deceased’s best friend. They had known each other since they were fourteen, and they were bridesmaids at each other’s weddings.

  The sentence reminded Hanne that there was less than three months left until she herself would be best woman at Billy T.’s nuptials. She was uncertain about what that said about the depth of a friendship. She stubbed out her cigarette. It struck her that Cecilie would soon be waking up after her sedated night. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger over the corners of her mouth and licked her lips before continuing to read.

  The witness states that the deceased, Doris Flo Halvorsrud, was an outgoing and happy person. The witness cannot imagine that anyone would set out to harm the deceased. The witness thinks that the deceased had a normal number of friends and a relatively large circle of acquaintances, especially on account of her husband’s profession. The deceased could be temperamental and sometimes obstinate in arguments, but she always had an amusing comment to rescue the situation if anyone felt offended by some pithy remark or other.

  The witness says that, on the whole, the deceased seemed content with her marriage. Recently – for the past six months or so – the deceased and the witness had not had as much to do with each other as before. This was mainly because the witness had been living in Copenhagen for five months because she was working at the Steiner School there. When they did meet, the witness was left with the impression that the marriage was “not at its best”. Among other things, the deceased had once asked how the witness had coped financially after her divorce (the witness was divorced from her husband eighteen months ago). The topic was not discussed in detail, and the witness does not recall particularly well what was said subsequent to this. On another occasion, the deceased suddenly became annoyed and called her husband “hypocritical”. This happened at a dinner the witness and the deceased shared two months ago, during which the witness made a complimentary remark about an in-depth interview with the accused, Halvorsrud. The witness did not think much about the outburst at the time.

  The witness says that the deceased was a good mother. She always had time for her children, and had probably sacrificed a great deal of her own career because of them. Her relationship with her two sons, Marius and Preben, was especially good. Thea, her daughter, had “always been a real daddy’s girl”. The witness says that there was nothing out of the ordinary about that, since it’s not unusual for clever girls to be preoccupied with their fathers.

  Looking up from the papers, Hanne took a swig of her coffee and thought about her own father. She could barely see the details of his face in her mind’s eye any more. Hanne Wilhelmsen was an afterthought and had never felt any connection with her two siblings. She had felt like an outsider since the day she was old enough to think independently. Probably earlier, in fact. When she was eight, she spent the spring building a house in a tree at the foot of the extensive apple orchard. She found planks of wood at building sites and other places nearby. Her neighbor – an old craftsman who was over seventy years old and who made fried pork every Saturday and shared it with the little girl in the blue dungarees – gave her nails and a helping hand now and again. The tree house was beautiful, with real windows that had once been part of a bus. Hanne had placed old rag rugs on the floor and hung a picture of King Olav on the wall. Having something that belonged only to her – something the others in the family hardly bothered to come down and examine closely – had made her realize that she was at her strongest when she was entirely on her own. From then on, she pretty much withdrew from the dusty, academic, family home, where, to cap it all, her parents even refused to install a TV set, “because there are so many good books, Hanne”.

  The witness is shocked by the brutal murder of her friend, but she cannot bring herself to believe that the accused could possibly have done this. In the witness’ experience, he has been a considerate husband and father in the main, even if he of course has “had his faults�
�, something the witness does not feel it reasonable to go into in any detail. The witness cannot think of any information other than what is expressed here that might have any relevance to the case.

  The interview was signed on every sheet and at the foot of the final page, as required by the regulations.

  “An ordinary life,” Hanne said to herself in an undertone as she set the statement aside. “Nice man, lovely children, an occasional quarrel.”

  The coffee had started to go cold and she drained the rest of the cup in a single gulp. The bitter aftertaste lingered on her tongue and she could feel the sour progress of the liquid down her gullet to a stomach that, if the hidden pain behind her breastbone was anything to go by, craved a better breakfast than smoke and black coffee.

  Hanne should have been at the hospital. She should go. Soon.

  The bundle from Karl Sommarøy was also tidy and rational. The name “Ståle Salvesen” had been written on the cover with a felt pen in a perpendicular, left-handed script. At the top were the old papers, printouts from the municipal treasurer and the Population Register. The tax information stretched back a decade and showed that as recently as 1990 Salvesen had earned a personal income of more than eight million kroner. This was followed by an uninteresting, sparse list of current assets and fixtures and fittings. After that, a number of newspaper articles from Aftenposten’s digital archive had been taped in, old reports from the time when the world had begun to turn against Ståle Salvesen. Hanne skimmed through them without finding anything that she didn’t already know. It struck her that the headlines were larger, more numerous and far more dramatic than the case warranted, given it was later dropped. “So what else is new?” she sighed.

  A photograph from 1989 caught her interest.

  Ståle Salvesen was not exactly handsome, but the picture showed a man with a direct gaze and a cocky, crooked smile. His eyes looked straight at the photographer and Hanne shuddered at how alive his face seemed. Salvesen had a high forehead and his thinning hair was combed back; you could discern the shadow of a cleft in his broad chin. The photograph was cropped at chest height but still gave the impression of expensive, understated attire. His suit jacket was dark, and even in a black-and-white newspaper photograph you could see that his shirt was brilliant white against the striped tie.

  There then followed a special report.

  As far as Ståle Salvesen’s financial background is concerned, you are referred to the enclosed newspaper cuttings and tax assessment printouts. It is obvious that he has seen a great deal of money pass through his hands, and that, after having to leave Aurora Data because of the investigation into him and the company, he faced huge losses. It will probably take a considerable amount of effort to discover what actually became of the money. This is on hold, pending further instructions. Nowadays he owns little of any worth. His apartment is rented. His car, a 1984 Honda Civic, is hardly worth its scrap value.

  Salvesen has evidently lived an extremely reclusive life in recent years. He was divorced from his wife in 1994, after having been separated for a year. It has not proved possible to talk to her as yet. She emigrated to Australia in the spring of 1995, but enquiries at the Norwegian Embassy in Canberra suggest that she may no longer be living there. I am continuing my efforts to get hold of her. She may have changed her name, and there are also some indications that she has obtained Australian citizenship. Their son, Frede Parr (he has adopted his American wife’s surname!!!), lives in Houston, Texas, where he works as an IT consultant with an oil company. I spoke to him by phone on Monday March 8, 1999 at 17.30, Norwegian time. He seemed annoyed at being disturbed and remarkably unconcerned about his father’s possible suicide. He claimed not to have spoken to his father for some considerable time, possibly since 1993, though he couldn’t say for certain. Nor had he heard from his mother for a couple of years. He was more definite about the timing of that, since he called her on March 23, 1997 to tell her about the birth of his second son. At that time, Mrs. Salvesen was living in Alice, Australia. Frede Parr has lost her phone number and has no idea whether his mother still goes by the name of Salvesen.

  At a question from me about whether he thought his father might have committed suicide, he replied, “The odd thing is that he didn’t do it years ago. He lived a wasted life. He was a wasted person.”

  Further investigations indicate that Salvesen had no social circle whatsoever, with one exception (see below). None of the neighbors on his floor knew him, even though he moved into the block in December 1995. At the social security office they tell me that he hardly said a word on the few occasions he was there in connection with his disability pension. A kind of general amnesia has grown up around Salvesen with regard to his social-security claim, and they state that he was almost always on his own. He did not cultivate any hobbies as far as anyone knows and nor is there anything to suggest that he abused alcohol or any other intoxicant.

  The apartment block in Vogts gate has a caretaker. Ole Monrad Karlsen is over seventy years old and has remained in post because no one seems to have the heart to throw him out of the tied apartment. Two of the neighbors informed me that they’d seen Salvesen going in and out of the caretaker’s residence on a number of occasions. I spoke to Karlsen on Tuesday March 9, 1999 at 18.00.

  Karlsen was very dismissive, almost angry. He did not want to talk to me. He slammed the door when I told him I was from the police and it was only after having a discussion with him for ten minutes through the closed door that he agreed to a short conversation. Nothing came of it. All the same, I would say that there is reason to believe that Karlsen and Salvesen had some sort of friendship. As far as I could judge, there were tears in his eyes and a faint tremble at the corner of his mouth when I told him that to all appearances, Salvesen was dead. He shut his mouth then too, after having yelled at me non-stop for several minutes.

  Hanne reclined in her chair and closed her eyes.

  There was something there.

  There was a pattern, or perhaps more of a thread. It was fragile and difficult to catch sight of. The noises on the other side of the office door had got louder since the time was now approaching nine. They disturbed her and she lost the overall picture.

  “Australia,” she whispered. “Texas. Vogts gate. A daddy’s girl. A hypocritical Chief Public Prosecutor.”

  The headache struck suddenly and fiercely. She pressed her fingers on her temples; the ringing in her ears was intense and she groaned, “Ullevål.”

  There was a knock at the door. Hanne did not answer. The knocking was repeated. When the door opened despite the lack of an invitation, Hanne had already put on her jacket.

  “Haven’t time,” she said swiftly to Karianne Holbeck as she slipped past her. “I’ll be back in two or three hours.”

  “But wait,” Karianne said. “I’ve got some—”

  Hanne did not listen. She dashed to the elevator, leaving behind only a whiff of perspiration and sour perfume. Karianne Holbeck wrinkled her nose. Hanne Wilhelmsen usually smelled so pleasant.

  32

  Ole Monrad Karlsen, the caretaker, was upset. He had never liked the police. No more than he liked authorities of any kind. At the age of twenty-three, in 1947, he had come home to Norway having been at sea since he was fifteen, only to be called up for compulsory military service. That could not be right, he’d thought; he’d been torpedoed in 43 and January 45 and in his eyes had fulfilled his duty to his fatherland long since. The military authorities took a different view. Ole Monrad Karlsen had to report to the army camp and lost out on a good job ashore that the shipping company had arranged for him.

  The police officer thought Ståle was dead.

  Although Ole Monrad Karlsen had difficulty believing that the only friend he possessed was no longer alive, he could see the logic in it. So much fell into place. As he sat now at the kitchen table drinking strong black coffee with a dash of eau de vie, he wiped away a tear and mouthed a silent prayer for Ståle Salvesen.

 
He had been a good man.

  Ståle had listened to him. Ståle had persuaded Ole Monrad Karlsen to talk about the war. He had never done that before. Not to anyone, not even to Klara, whom Karlsen had married in 1952 and shared a bed with until one winter’s morning in 1979 when she could not be woken. They had not been blessed with children, but with Klara he had come to enjoy a gentle contentment not to be spoiled by futile chat about the catastrophes he had survived so many years ago.

  However, the war had crept up on him. It was as if the strength to keep everything at bay had begun to ebb away, and increasingly he was woken suddenly in the middle of the night by terrible dreams about water: an icy cold ocean of drowning, screaming sailor comrades.

  Ståle had listened. Ståle had slipped him a bottle of liquor now and again; not that Karlsen was a drinker, but he had always enjoyed a drop or two in his coffee. Ståle’s life had been destroyed by officialdom, just as Karlsen himself had lost the chance of a great shore job because the damned bureaucrats could not understand what it was like to have been a sailor during the war.

  Karlsen was pleased that he had not let the policeman into his apartment. He had no business there. Ole Monrad Karlsen had not done anything illegal in his entire life, and ran his life according to his own lights. In a while he would go down to the basement to check that everything was in order. He owed that much to his good friend Ståle Salvesen.

  He wiped yet another tear with the back of his weather-beaten hand and poured a generous dram into his coffee cup.

  “Peace be with you,” he whispered and drank a toast to the empty chair opposite him at the kitchen table. “I hope you’re having a good time wherever you are. Yes indeed, I really do.”