Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

  “I,” he began. “I … I …”

  He did not get any farther. Instead he leaned over to Karen Borg and whispered a short instruction. Her back stiffened and eventually she placed the folder on the floor again.

  “My client wishes to take advantage of his right to silence,” she said firmly.

  Billy T. looked obliquely at Erik Henriksen, sitting on the only other chair in the interview room. He had not as yet spoken a word.

  “Do you hear that, Erik? Our friend here thinks it best not to give a statement.”

  “All the same to us,” his colleague answered with a nod. “Then the application to remand him in custody will go much more easily. I’m sure he’ll explain himself later. ‘If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come’.”

  He yawned and stretched his arms above his head.

  “Hamlet,” he added lethargically. “Act five. I’ll pass the message to Annmari. And then I’ll send in a couple of officers to take the Chief Public Prosecutor over to a cell.”

  Karen Borg followed her client out the door when Halvorsrud was led away. Billy T. laid a heavy fist on her shoulder and whispered, “Jenny.”

  Karen wheeled around. “What?”

  “The little girl is going to be called Jenny. Suitably modern, suitably old-fashioned. Typical compromise. Nice, eh?”

  Karen Borg looked at the floor and began to walk along the corridor. Billy T. strode after her.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, unsmiling. “Jenny is just fine.”

  “Billy T.!”

  A trainee in uniform came running up to them as they both turned round. Breathless, he thrust a yellow slip of paper into the police officer’s hand.

  “From Hanne Wilhelmsen,” he gasped. “She also asked if you would phone her on her cell phone. As soon as possible.”

  Billy T. read the message before folding the note and tucking it into his fob pocket.

  “Strange time to go to Vestfold,” he muttered crossly. “What the fuck’s she doing there?”

  When he turned round again, Karen Borg was gone.

  74

  The location was even more stunning in brilliant spring weather. It struck Hanne Wilhelmsen as she jogged along the paved path leading to Eivind Torsvik’s cottage: Vestfold was the most beautiful region in the country. Smooth, golden rocks crept down to the fresh, gray-blue water. The trees had burst into leaf in the past few days and their emerald crowns reached out to the summer that as of that very moment seemed right around the corner. The grassy ridges overflowed with wood anemones. The piercing light was painful to the eyes and Hanne put on her sunglasses. She paused to look out across the sea from the terrace in front of the cottage. The sparkle of the sun’s reflections played across the flat surface of the fjord. A young boy’s voice broke as he shouted to his friend on the shore from a little islet only thirty meters away. They both began to laugh. The sound carried some distance, echoing across the narrows of Hamburgkilen.

  “Great that you could come! And so fast!”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen was startled to hear his voice, and whirled round. Eivind Torsvik was also wearing sunglasses. The earpieces had been unbent and curved backward, where they were tied with a rubber band.

  “Smart,” she said without thinking, pointing to his glasses.

  He laughed: an engaging, childish laugh that made her smile broadly.

  “Not many people have ever commented on that,” he said, laughing again.

  He pointed to the sunny wall beside the picture window. Two large wooden chairs had been put out there since her last visit, with blue-and-white-striped cushions. Hanne sat down in one and lifted her face to the sun. It was not yet half past three in the afternoon. Her cheeks were burning.

  “What a wonderful spot,” she said softly. “What an amazing cottage you have.”

  Eivind Torsvik sat beside her without responding. He drew a blanket around his narrow shoulders, and Hanne could hear his regular breathing through the sound of a boat slowly passing by. She closed her eyes behind her glasses, feeling drained and unspeakably tired.

  He had been so insistent. When he phoned, she had first asked him to come to Oslo. Eivind Torsvik had expressed great understanding about Hanne Wilhelmsen’s work situation, but had nevertheless rejected her request out of hand. He had not been outside the Sandefjord area for many years, he told her, and that was how it was going to continue. If she was interested in what he had to say about Evald Bromo, she would have to come to the cottage at the far end of Årø. In person and on her own. There was no question of him talking to anyone else.

  Now she was sitting beside the strange boy-man, ready to fall asleep. She felt comfortable in Eivind Torsvik’s presence: the pressure behind her eyes lessened and her shoulders relaxed. Even though they had only exchanged a few words when she had highly inappropriately lumbered into the man’s private space last Saturday, it was as if they had known each other for a long time.

  Eivind Torsvik was a man who insulated himself and his property from the rest of the world. Being a writer made it possible to take this to extremes: he barely needed to have contact with anyone. Eivind Torsvik needed no one. Hanne found herself envying him, before she actually nodded off.

  She must have dozed for several minutes because when she woke, he was standing in front of her holding a steaming cup of tea with an extra blanket over his arm.

  “Here,” he said, handing them both to her. “It can get chilly as the afternoon draws on. Now I’ll tell you about what I really do out here.”

  He fetched a cup of tea for himself and sat down again while he stirred in the sugar. Hanne shook her head when he offered her the sugar bowl.

  “What do you think is the worst thing about working for the police?” he asked mildly, so quietly that Hanne thought for a second that she had not quite caught what he had said. “The very worst thing about being responsible for upholding the law, I mean.”

  “Criminal procedure,” she said without hesitation. “Having so many rules to adhere to. That there’s so much we can’t do, I mean. Even when we’re absolutely certain of people’s guilt.”

  “I thought so,” he said, nodding in satisfaction.

  The tea had a slight hint of cinnamon and apple. Hanne held the cup to her face and inhaled the fragrant steam.

  “Shall I tell you why I write?”

  He gazed at her, and raised his sunglasses so that they rested on his forehead. Hanne nodded calmly as she drank from her cup.

  “Because I have lived a life that it’s possible to write about,” he said, smiling in astonishment, as if he had only just discovered the explanation for something he had been pondering for a long time. “I never write about myself. Yet I do so all the time. Books deal with lived life. I lived more than most before I turned eighteen. Then it was over. I killed a man, and since then I have reconciled myself to the one life I was given being over.”

  Hanne helped herself to more tea from the thermos on the paving stones between them. She opened her mouth to protest; she looked around and raised her hand to shade herself from the strong sunlight.

  “I’m not saying that I’m worthless,” he said resolutely, anticipating her objection. “On the contrary. My books give pleasure to many people. To me too. By writing, I steal a life that’s not my own. Simultaneously, I give something to others that I thought for a long time I wouldn’t be able to. You can gain real satisfaction from writing books. You don’t, however, gain happiness. I have—”

  It was the first time Hanne had heard him interrupt himself. His voice was soft and light. The words always flowed effortlessly. Now he cocked his head, drew his glasses back down onto his nose and reclined in the chair.

  “You’re familiar with my previous history. I won’t bother you with it. But I was not particularly old when I realized I had lost the ability to become attached to other people. ‘Reduced ability to form attachments’. Th
at’s what the psychologists called it in the countless reports that exist on me.”

  He pulled the blanket more snugly around his shoulders.

  “They don’t even have any idea what that is!”

  Hanne could discern a slight trembling as it spread down his arm. His complexion was pale, and she could see a twitch along one side of his nose.

  “Enough of that,” he said dismissively, trying to tie a knot in the thick blanket across his chest. “That certainly wasn’t why I asked you to come. I don’t just write books. I do something far more important. Do you remember Belgium?”

  “Belgium,” Hanne repeated. “Dioxins and Belgian Blue cattle. Corruption and sexual sadism. Political murder. Salmonella and import bans. Belgium: a delightful country in the center of Europe.”

  She glanced across at him. He was not smiling. She shifted her gaze self-consciously out to the fjord. The laughing boys had jumped into a rowing boat and were amusing themselves by rowing in circles with one oar each.

  “Marc Dutroux,” Eivind Torsvik said into empty space. “Do you remember him?”

  Of course she remembered Marc Dutroux, “the monster from Charleroi”. God only knew how many lives he had taken, both literally and figuratively. The pedophile scandal that had rocked Belgium in the late summer and autumn of 1996 had sent shockwaves across the world. Mass arrests followed as the bodies of children of all ages were dug up one after the other from gardens and found starved to death in specially bricked-up cellars. Eventually a picture emerged of an extensive pedophile ring, and police officers and judges and even a handful of important politicians were placed under investigation.

  “The worst thing about the case was not that Marc Dutroux had obviously been protected by powerful people in the system,” Eivind Torsvik said. “When it comes to pedophilia, there are no social divisions. Neither are there limits to what people will do when they feel seriously threatened. No limits at all. No, the worst thing of all …”

  He poured the lukewarm tea out onto the paving stones. The liquid formed a dark pattern on the gray stone. The stain resembled a crab with three claws, and he sat studying the image while flicking his fingers against the empty cup.

  “The really scary thing is that the system lets us down. Marc Dutroux had actually been convicted before. He had been sentenced to thirteen years’ imprisonment for a series of rapes. Do you know how long he served?”

  “Seven or eight years?” Hanne said with a shrug.

  “Three. They let him out after three years. For good behavior. Good behavior! Huh!” He stood up abruptly. “It’s a bit too cold out here now. I’m freezing. Do you have any objection to us going inside?”

  Hanne had no idea how the man could be cold. The air was almost certainly about fifteen degrees Celsius, and Eivind Torsvik had been sitting wrapped in a woolen blanket throughout their conversation.

  “Not at all,” she said all the same and followed him into the cottage.

  “I’ve prepared some food,” she heard him say from the kitchen. “Just a salad and some bread. I assume you won’t have any wine?”

  “I’m driving,” she said, patting her breast pocket. “Is it okay to smoke in here?”

  He poked his head out from between the upper and lower units of the open-plan fitted kitchen.

  “No one’s ever smoked here before. Which means that it probably won’t do any harm. Go ahead.”

  Before Hanne had finished her cigarette, the table was set. The plates were white and the cutlery solid silver. Eivind Torsvik poured Farris mineral water into her tall wine glass, and Alsace wine for himself.

  “Did you know that the liquor store delivers to your door?” he asked as he sat down. “And that the Internet’s full of excellent recipes?”

  “Do you stay here all the time?”

  Hanne helped herself to some caprese salad and a slice of French bread.

  “No. Unfortunately I have to take a trip into town now and again. To the dentist and so on. Also, I cycle to Hasle to do some shopping sometimes. That’s almost all the way into town. Solløkka nearby has more of a large convenience store. Did you know that the Dutroux case actually broke as a result of private investigations?”

  Hanne tasted the salad. The mozzarella cheese was soft and flavorful, and the tomatoes unusually delicious.

  “I have a small greenhouse behind here. You can have a look later, if you like. I lead such an organization. Or rather, in a manner of speaking. We’re a group of twenty-two Europeans and fifteen Americans who work in collaboration. The others have accepted me as a kind of leader, even though there’s never been any sort of election or formal appointment.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen caught herself wondering whether it was some kind of organization to do with vegetables he was talking about. She stopped chewing and stared at him with her fork in mid-air.

  “We monitor pedophiles; no more, no less.”

  Smiling faintly, he stared teasingly, almost challengingly, back at her, his shock of blond hair encircling his oval face, and his eyes taking on a luminosity she had not seen before. His lips appeared blood-red against his white complexion, and she suddenly noticed he had hardly any beard growth. He resembled an angel, like the scraps Hanne had long ago collected in a shoebox – ethereal, beautiful seraphim with blue eyes and glitter on their wings.

  “At this very moment, you look like an angel,” she blurted out.

  He did not move. His gaze did not waver, and it was as if Hanne was looking at something she had nothing to do with, a life she did not want to be part of. Eivind Torsvik was not simply a man who had found a way of living with his loneliness, a way of life she was attracted to and perhaps in a sense envied. As he appeared now, sitting staring at her with the sunlight on his curls like a halo around his head, he was also something else, something she could not quite grasp, but that alarmed her and forced her to put down her knife and fork.

  “I am an angel,” he said. “I am the actual Angel. Our organization is called The Angels of Protection. TAP, in everyday parlance.”

  Hanne wanted to leave. This was not at all what she needed right now. She was in the middle of a murder case she could make neither head nor tail of, and did not want to be burdened by knowledge of an occult organization that might well be engaged in illegal activities in the service of good. She cleared her throat and thanked him for his hospitality while pushing her plate a couple of centimeters away across the table.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  Shaking her head, Hanne fiddled with her napkin. She wanted to go. She did not want to be there, in this cottage that was far too warm and where the buzz of the extensive IT equipment was making her headache flare up again.

  “Me neither. Not at all. God’s a pathetic entity human beings resort to in order to explain the inexplicable. The reason I ask is that I think there’s some kind of significance in you having turned up here on Saturday. I believe your visit was one of those coincidences the like of which history has witnessed many times: sudden, unforeseen incidents that result in innovation or catastrophe. Have you had enough to eat?”

  “Yes, thanks. It was delicious.”

  Hanne drank the rest of her mineral water and glanced at the clock.

  “You mustn’t go yet. I haven’t given you what you need. You’ll have to be more patient, Hanne Wilhelmsen. You’re an impatient soul, I can see that. But don’t leave.”

  “Okay then.” She smiled wanly. “Not yet. But I really can’t stay much longer.”

  “You must understand, I’ve been searching for you,” he explained as he cleared the table. “Well, not you exactly, but for someone in the police force I can rely upon.”

  All of a sudden, he set the plates down on the table with a thud and thrust his torso forward.

  “Do you know how long it took?” he asked.

  His voice had taken on a different tone, a note of indignation that deepened the pitch.

  “From the time I cut off my ears and reported my foster father’
s repeated assaults until the investigation of the case was completed?”

  “No. I don’t know the details of your case.”

  “Three years! Three years! Four psychologists examined me. They all came to the conclusion that I was speaking the truth. Nevertheless, I still had to stand with my backside in the air in a medical examination room surrounded by people in white coats who hadn’t even said hello to me first. They fingered parts of me that should have been my private property. Mine alone! Something they had never been, of course. I was stolen from, time after time, for as long as I can remember. There I stood, my ass in the air, unable even to cry. I was thirteen years old, and the conclusion of the doctors was unambiguous: grievous sexual assault over many years. I was thirteen!”

  Eivind Torsvik sank onto his chair again, rubbing his eyes gently as if he had given everything he had had to give.

  “And it still took three years to bring the case to court,” he added sotto voce.

  Hanne felt the need to say something. Eivind Torsvik’s story was not new to her. She had seen it, heard it, and experienced it. Far too frequently. She searched for the right words, but could not bring herself to speak. Instead she placed her hand carefully on the table.

  “And when sentence was passed, it was absolutely ludicrous.”

  He inhaled deeply, holding his breath for so long that a faint flush spread over his cheeks. For the first time, Hanne could distinguish traces of a grown man in his face. The angel was gone. She was faced with a man in his mid-twenties who had lost everything he possessed before he’d even reached adulthood.

  “We’re all victims,” he said after a lengthy pause. “All of us in The Angels of Protection. We have dedicated our lives to finding them. The molesters. The pederasts. The people who steal souls. We are not constrained by borders. Or by rules. Sex offenders do not recognize any rules, and can only be fought in similar circumstances. We watch them. We monitor them. We find them on the Internet. The majority of them are unable to keep away from the flood of child pornography found there, idiots that they are.”