Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

“That’s fine,” Billy T. snarled. “And I’ll make sure you get a really substantial fine for this here.”

  He inserted the key into the lock, and it rotated easily. Carefully, he turned the doorknob and opened the front door. Hit by a smell of stagnant air and decay, he stepped back and stared at the little handwritten card fastened to the doorframe by two drawing pins. “S. Salvesen”. He stood for so long, deep in his own thoughts, that Karl Sommarøy finally coughed and gave him a friendly nudge in the back.

  “Shall we let the caretaker go, then?”

  Billy T. glanced down obliquely at the diminutive old man and nodded calmly.

  “I think we should. He can sit in his apartment and wait until we’re finished. In case we have any questions for him. Okay?”

  It was unclear to the two police officers whether Karlsen considered that acceptable or not. The pint-sized old man padded off along the corridor with a cheerful muttering of incomprehensible words. They stood watching his retreating back until the elevator doors closed again.

  “You were a bit hard on him, don’t you think? An old wartime sailor and all that.”

  Sommarøy did not wait for a response. Instead he entered Ståle Salvesen’s apartment. When he and Hanne Wilhelmsen had been there what seemed like an eternity ago, the apartment had appeared uninhabited. Now it was quite simply abandoned. In the hallway they could discern a pale patch on the wall paneling where the telephone table had been. A dirty line was traced along the living-room wallpaper where the settee back had rested against the wall. There were very few vestiges of human occupation, apart from an air of general, rundown despondency that permeated the entire place. And the stench from the kitchen.

  Karlsen had removed everything that could be said to have been Ståle Salvesen’s personal belongings. The spartan furnishings, the few kitchen utensils and the neatly folded clothes left behind in the apartment after Salvesen’s own efforts at clearing things out prior to his death. The refrigerator, on the other hand, was obviously the property of the local authority. Karlsen had not felt compelled to take with him a yogurt, a carton of milk, a block of yellow cheese that had turned blue, something that might once have been a lettuce, and two tomatoes into the bargain.

  “Damn and blast! Hanne and I agreed to take this lot with us when we were here. We completely forgot.”

  Sommarøy grimaced at the contents of the fridge: the stench had not improved by the door having been left open for some considerable time. Billy T. grabbed the milk carton and the yogurt.

  “Twenty-seventh of February,” he read aloud slowly. “This milk could probably walk by itself. Twenty-third of January. It might be fun to open this yogurt.”

  He handed it to his colleague, who pulled back, holding his nose.

  “Anyway, there’s no sign of a computer in here,” he said nasally. “Let’s look at the phone socket.”

  Billy T. replaced the dairy products and closed the fridge door before opening the window slightly and following Sommarøy out into the hallway. The windowless corridor was almost dark and he ran his fingers over the light switch on the wall beside the front door. The bulb was gone.

  “There’s only one socket here,” Karl Sommarøy groaned, crouching down and struggling to look. “A good old-fashioned phone plug with three pins.”

  Kneeling down, Billy T. let his hand follow the cable from the gray-brown plug along the skirting board to the front door. One cable, one plug. There was scarcely room for the two men and, losing his balance, Karl Sommarøy used his hands to save himself.

  “And here’s another one,” he said eagerly. “A modern socket with one of those plastic gizmos!”

  Billy T. squinted to see the tiny, square plastic holder attached to the wall just above the floor. Then he pushed Karl Sommarøy aside and used his fingers to feel his way along the cable.

  “The entry point seems to be the same as the other one,” he said as he opened the front door and peered at the dirty green wall beside the doorframe. “Yep, both cables are threaded in through this tube here. The phone company’s usual stuff. But the strange thing is …” He peered inside the apartment again. “… the cable then seems to go out of the apartment.”

  Karl Sommarøy farted as he stood up.

  “This does actually merit a fanfare,” Billy T. commented, scratching his moustache. “Let’s see if we can follow the cable.”

  It was obvious that someone had tried to conceal it. Although it must have been relatively new – inside the apartment, the cable shone white against the faded wall – someone had painted over it where it ran down the hallway along a shabby brown skirting board. At the end of the corridor it disappeared into a hole.

  The timber of the window was swollen and it had obviously not been opened in ages. When Billy T. gave it a forceful push with his shoulder, one of the eight tiny panes of glass cracked into three pieces.

  “Look at this,” he said, leaning out as far as he dared before quickly hauling himself in again. “Can you see? It looks as if the cable runs down. How far do you think?”

  “Impossible to say. It just continues until you can’t see it any longer.”

  They closed the window.

  “The basement,” they suddenly chorused.

  “The basement,” Billy T. repeated, grinning broadly. “It looks as if we might need some help from the caretaker.”

  They charged down the stairs. The sound of the iron studs on Billy T.’s boots bounced off the walls, and when they reached ground level, Ole Monrad Karlsen had changed into black shoes.

  86

  Cecilie was possibly fit enough to be at home, but she certainly did not look it. She was stretched out on the settee when Hanne arrived at around five o’clock: drawn, pale and her smile no more than a tug at the corner of her mouth that never extended as far as her eyes.

  “Tone-Marit drove me back,” she said, reaching out her hand to Hanne without making any attempt to stand up. “Her mother looked after Jenny for an hour or so, so that Tone-Marit could drive me home.”

  “But why … why didn’t you call me?” Hanne stuttered.

  “I did. The receptionist or whoever it was said she had no idea where you were.”

  “But my cell phone, then!”

  Hanne was almost shouting as she patted the pocket of the leather jacket with fringes and pearl embroidery that Cecilie had paid a fortune for while they were in the USA. She produced an almost unused Ericsson model.

  “Fuck. For fuck’s sake.”

  She hit herself on the forehead with the phone.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit!”

  “You forgot to switch it on,” Cecilie whispered. “Come and sit down.”

  Hanne wriggled out of her jacket and left it lying on the floor. Then she shoved the coffee table out of the way and knelt down at the end of the settee.

  “Sorry,” she said, kissing the inside of Cecilie’s wrist. “I’m so dreadfully sorry. I promise I’ll never switch it off again. Never. How are you feeling? A bit better?”

  She studied Cecilie’s features. She had dreaded this moment all day long. Hanne had suffered chest pains and stomach ache from anxiety about seeing Cecilie. She carefully followed the lines around her mouth with her finger, those gray-white lips with dried toothpaste in the corners; her finger ran along the sides of her nose and up to the bluish, almost transparent bags underneath her eyes.

  “I love you, Cecilie. I don’t know how I’ll manage to live without you.”

  “You’re going to have to.”

  Cecilie’s voice was hoarse and she coughed warily before curling her hand around Hanne’s head and raking her fingers through her unkempt hair.

  “I don’t want to!”

  Hanne tried to hold back the tears where they belonged, far down inside her abdomen, where they could plague her without bothering Cecilie.

  “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “You’ll never be alone. If you’ll just grow up and realize there are lots of people who are very fond of y
ou, then you’ll never need to be alone.”

  Hanne pulled back abruptly. She remained on her knees, staring at Cecilie, no longer able to keep back the tears.

  “When you die, I’ll have no one.”

  Cecilie smiled again, more genuinely this time. There was a sudden twinkle in her dull eyes as she pulled Hanne close again.

  “What a baby! You’re the best in the world at feeling sorry for yourself. Listen to me, my darling. You’re not yet forty years old. You might live twice as long. At least. There are droves of people who’ll want to be part of your life.”

  “I don’t want them. I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”

  Cecilie kissed her lingeringly on the forehead. In a way her lips already felt dead: cold and dry, with rough flakes that snagged against her skin. Hanne hiccupped through her sobs and leaned her head on Cecilie’s chest.

  “Am I too heavy for you?” she asked, almost smothered by the woolen blanket. “Does it hurt you when I lie like this?’

  Cecilie did not smell the way she used to. Hanne inhaled the unfamiliar scent of soap and hospital. She closed her eyes at the sudden memory of Cecilie sitting in her room poring over math books, her brows knitted and a lock of her long hair in her mouth, sucking loudly and complaining repeatedly about the incomprehensibility of integral calculus. She had smelled so sweet. Her fragrance had been that of a young woman, the whiff of sweet body odor cutting through the cheap perfume, making Hanne lean against her and kiss her mouth ever so gently before quickly pulling back and uttering her very, very first “Sorry.”

  Cecilie had laughed that time, almost twenty years ago. She had laughed softly, the wet lock of hair plastered in an arc above the corner of her mouth until she tucked her hair behind her ear and kissed Hanne again, longer this time, much longer and far more audaciously.

  Hanne was never going to tell Cecilie what had happened last night. Before she arrived home, she had made up her mind. Cecilie deserved the truth. Hanne could not live with such a secret.

  Then she’d breathed in the scent of soap and hospital.

  Cecilie would never get to know. There was nothing to know.

  “Can I get you anything?” she whispered as she rubbed her cheek gingerly on Cecilie’s breast under the woolen blanket. “Is there anything you’d like, my dearest?”

  “Yogurt. I think I’d like some yogurt. If we have any.”

  “Do you know what problem you were struggling with the day we got together?”

  Hanne had hauled herself up.

  “What?”

  “That day. When you came to my house to get help with your math. Do you remember which integral you couldn’t work out?”

  Cecilie cautiously adjusted the blanket, as if her entire body was aching.

  “No …”

  Hanne grabbed an old newspaper and a pen from the bookshelf.

  “This one,” she said, holding up the newspaper to Cecilie’s face.

  Cecilie laughed uproariously. She laughed for a long time, almost the way she had laughed at the time, nineteen years earlier, and when she finally stopped, she shook her head, saying, “You’re so strange, Hanne. My goodness, how strange you are. Do you remember that so precisely, or are you kidding me?”

  “A definite integral. The solution is 34.5.”

  Hanne could still hear Cecilie giggling as she opened the fridge door. She picked up a natural yogurt and checked the date stamp. Four days left of its shelf life. When she peeled off the aluminum foil lid, she suddenly fell into a reverie.

  “Hanne?”

  She must have stood there, lost in thought, for several minutes without making a sound.

  “Hanne, what are you doing?”

  “I’m coming,” she said, producing a teaspoon from the cutlery drawer.

  She poured the yogurt into a dish, adding some strawberry jam in the middle, before setting it down on the coffee table.

  “I just need to make a phone call,” she said casually. “Won’t take long.”

  Cecilie heard Hanne’s most formal voice filtering through from the hallway as she tried to swallow some nourishment.

  “This is Chief Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen. I would like to check some information about a stolen car. Yes, oh yes. It concerns a—”

  A sudden sharp pain caused Cecilie to drop her spoon. The yogurt and jam fell to the floor, and her hand shook as she tried to save the dish from following suit. Very carefully, she brought out the morphine pump from behind her thighs. She administered an extra dose and slowly relaxed as the pain subsided.

  “You mustn’t go to work now,” she said when Hanne returned to the living room. “Please don’t.”

  “No, of course not,” Hanne said sympathetically, going to fetch a cloth to wipe up the mess on the floor. “I’ll wait until tomorrow. But what do you think … shall I open the settee out into a bed, so that we can lie side by side? I’ve bought three new videos. Maybe we could watch one of them tonight?”

  “Lovely. I’d really like that. I’d like it if you could be here at home more often in the time ahead.”

  Hanne took Cecilie’s face in her hands and kissed her softly on the mouth.

  “If I’m the genius everyone says I am, then it won’t be long before I can take time off,” she whispered. “Real time off. So that we can be together all the time. Just you and me.”

  “That sounds terribly new and scary …”

  “Let me help you up. I’ll make the bed.”

  Cecilie chose Casablanca. Hanne wept all through the second half. She had always thought Cecilie looked so much like Ingrid Bergman.

  87

  The corridor in the basement at Vogts gate was long and not particularly narrow. Billy T. discovered to his amazement that he could stand upright without difficulty in the almost fifteen-meter-long corridor. When he stretched both his arms out to either side, he could only just touch the walls with his fingers. Far down at the other end, a harsh beam of light from a rectangular window hit the floor. A naked bulb hung from a light fitting just beyond the staircase, making it possible to see into that part of the basement as well.

  “The storerooms are not labeled,” Ole Monrad Karlsen said grimly. “But these two are mine.” He slammed the flat of his hand on the doors of the first two. “And you’re not rummaging around in there without a search warrant. I know what rights I’ve got. There’s nothing in there that has anything to do with you.”

  “And which of these belongs to Ståle Salvesen?” Billy T. said impatiently. “I honestly don’t give a shit what you’ve got stored down here. Show me Ståle’s storeroom.”

  Karlsen dawdled along the dim corridor. As Billy T. passed the bare bulb, he blocked the light. Karlsen grumbled and whined noisily. Finally he reached a door made of plain wood, marked with a St. Andrew’s Cross and locked with an ordinary padlock.

  “Here.” Karlsen thumped his fist on the timber.

  Billy T. rolled his eyes and asked him politely to open the door.

  “Don’t have a key.” The old man looked down and spat on the concrete floor. A brown gob of chewing tobacco landed beside Billy T.’s boots.

  “And where did you put all Salvesen’s belongings, then?”

  “That’s none of your business. But if you really want to know, most of it’s over in my storerooms.”

  “You’re lying,” Billy T. said without looking at Karlsen. “Of course you’ve got a key.”

  He gestured to Karl, who took up position beside him with his shoulder against the flimsy door.

  “One, two and three,” Billy T. said.

  The door gave at the first attempt. The two police officers had expected greater resistance, and stormed into the cramped storeroom. Karl tripped over a pair of skis and stumbled forward.

  “Bloody hellfire. Damnation! Help!”

  Eventually he managed to regain his footing. He brushed dirt and cobwebs from his blue Catalina jacket, which had probably been fashionable when he was fifteen, and was so tight and faded that
it could easily have dated from back then.

  The storeroom was almost empty. Apart from the old-fashioned slalom skis Karl Sommarøy had tripped over, the rectangular room contained nothing other than a bicycle frame with no wheels or seat, a black plastic bag full of old clothes, and a set of worn summer tires stacked in a corner.

  “Isn’t it possible to get some more light in here?”

  Irritated, Billy T. stepped over the bag of clothes and tried to wrench off the plywood board nailed over what might be a window.

  “A crowbar, Karlsen, have you got one?”

  “Here,” Karl said. “You can borrow my flashlight.”

  He switched on a half-meter-long flashlight he had gone to the car to fetch. Billy T. directed the powerful beam at the nailed-up basement window.

  “Bingo,” he said softly.

  Karl squinted at the spot Billy T. was indicating. He could see the hole clearly. He crouched down, and Billy T. shone the light on the floor in front of him.

  “Fresh brick dust,” the Sergeant said with satisfaction as he licked a finger and dipped it into the dust before resuming an upright position. “That hole is recent.”

  “And here’s our cable,” Billy T. said. “But where does it go from here?”

  The two police officers followed the slender cable along the wall. It was not even fastened properly but hung in a loose loop across to the side wall, where it disappeared into yet another hole.

  “Who owns the storeroom beside this one?”

  Karlsen was making an attempt to salvage the remains of the door they had smashed. He had produced a screwdriver from a Swiss army knife and was trying to remove the wood from the twisted hinges. He took his time before coming out with an answer.

  “That storeroom isn’t Ståle Salvesen’s, in any case. That means you can’t go in there.”

  Billy T. and Karl exchanged looks. The man was right. They faced a diabolical amount of paperwork if they wanted to break down the adjacent door. A simpler alternative would of course be to ask the owner for permission.

  “But who’s the owner?” Billy T. repeated.

  “Gudrun Sandaker. She’s on holiday.”