Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

  He had foreseen that something like this might happen.

  He had arranged the fake passport and foreign bank account several years earlier. The itinerary had changed slightly in the past couple of years, but not much. Iver Kai Feirand was a highly educated police officer and knew what was required.

  He had been attracted to little boys ever since he’d reached sexual maturity. Not men. Never men. If he wanted sex with an adult, it would be with a woman. Never little girls. If he was going to have a child, something he regularly had the urge to do, then it was always a boy. He had two daughters of his own. He had never touched them. Not in that way.

  It went without saying that he was a competent investigator of sexual assaults. He knew what he was looking for. He saw it in the eyes of the suspects, and it took him only seconds to decide whether they were innocent or guilty. Methodically and purposefully, he had maneuvered himself into the post he now held. From the time the opportunity arose at the beginning of the eighties, he had known what he was going to specialize in.

  It gave him power.

  It excited him.

  And it taught him exactly where to go to find what he needed.

  Seven years ago, a police patrol had picked up two girls aged around twelve in Strøket. They were plastered in hopeless make-up and one was sobbing so violently that a female police officer took her away to speak to a doctor. The other one had stayed in Iver Feirand’s office, where she sat bold as brass, chewing gum while they waited for the arrival of the child-welfare officer on duty.

  Children taken into custody should not be interviewed without a guardian present. However, no one could deny Iver Feirand the chance to make conversation. Perhaps she was already so damaged that sexualized behavior had become normal. In any case, she made persistent efforts to negotiate her way out of the police headquarters: she would not have any objections if he wanted to go with her to an apartment she knew about where no one was living at present.

  When the woman from child welfare turned up and took the child away, he noticed a business card left behind on the chair vacated by the slim backside of the girl who had just flounced provocatively out of his office. Evald Bromo’s business card. Iver Feirand was keen to know what the man had to do with a twelve-year-old prostitute, and called the journalist in for a chat.

  Bromo had broken down completely.

  He could not comprehend how the young girl had his business card in her possession. Iver Feirand assumed that the guy had been idiotic enough to drop it in his excitement over a pair of narrow, girlish hips. It surprised him greatly. Everything Evald Bromo said indicated that the man was exceptionally careful, and had managed to be so for an unusually long time. However, Feirand said nothing. Instead, he turned the screw; Iver Feirand succeeded in making most people blab within half an hour or so.

  Evald Bromo said too much.

  Evald Bromo spoke about a contact Iver Feirand did not want to hear about. A Latin American with some sort of branch in Copenhagen. This was Iver Feirand’s own personal connection. Evald Bromo knew about Iver Feirand’s own sexual refuge.

  Iver Feirand had a unique insight into the psychology of pedophiles. To start with, he was an outstanding police officer, with good instincts and a sharp brain. In addition, he knew himself. And for fifteen years he had been on the receiving end of the best further education the US and European police could offer. He knew everything worth knowing about pedophile organizations, rings, clubs and individuals. He had never come close to being exposed.

  Not until Evald Bromo made him realize that several others knew Pedro Diez and his cellar in the Danish capital.

  The interview had taken a different turn.

  Bromo was a wimp, one of those people who was continually torn between the paralyzing fear of being unmasked and the underlying need to be stopped from committing what he knew to be criminal acts. When he had first arrived at the police headquarters, admissions and confessions, names, addresses and dates had run out of him like peas from a sack.

  If Iver Feirand continued with his investigation of Evald Bromo, Pedro Diez’s name would come up in connection with others as well. Bromo had so much to tell that he would keep four detectives gainfully employed for a considerable length of time. That would be the end of the cellar in Copenhagen. So be it; Iver Feirand had other contacts, other names and other addresses – farther away and even more secure.

  What was dangerous was that Evald Bromo put all his cards on the table.

  Evald Bromo might give the police a clue that could lead to Iver Feirand himself. If the Danish police were to swoop on Diez’s branch in the venerable old building beside the Lakes in Copenhagen, Iver Feirand’s identity might come up. Not by name, of course, as he always traveled there without papers, but who knew what descriptions might be given? His extremely tall, athletic body and the almost white, blond hair could cause him problems. The best course of action was to let matters lie.

  So he let Evald Bromo go.

  He not only let the man get away, he subsequently took care to keep him walking a tightrope. He always knew where he had him.

  As Iver Feirand sat with a plastic glass of cognac in his hand, surveying the extensive fields of the EU far below, he pictured Evald Bromo in his mind’s eye. He had stood by his desk, totally exhausted and blissfully astonished at Iver Feirand’s decision to let him off this time, even though he had strong reservations. Perhaps, in his innermost recesses, he had understood why. Evald Bromo was an intelligent man, and a journalist to boot. He would naturally have found it surprising that a police officer would let him go after what he had told him. But Iver Feirand was familiar with the psychology of the pedophile. At the very point that Evald Bromo was being allowed to leave the police headquarters as a free man and with an unblemished record, he was already in the process of trivializing the entire affair. Rationalizing it. Pushing everything away.

  “I didn’t catch it,” he had stuttered as he shook Iver Feirand’s hand in thanks. “I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Kai. You can call me Kai. If anything comes up, just call me on this number. I’m nearly always in my office. My cell phone’s always switched on.”

  Evald Bromo had accepted the note and left.

  It had been an enormous mistake to murder Evald.

  But what else could he have done?

  When they were parked beside the lake at Sognsvann, sheltering behind a delivery truck, he had realized there was no point in trying to talk Evald round. A resolute sense of calm had descended on the man, and he was a completely different person from the desperate, disintegrating wreck who had sat in his office seven years earlier.

  Naturally, however, he could not let Evald go to the police. Even if the risk associated with Diez’s cellar was no longer so great – Feirand had changed to pastures new since then – Evald would tell them that Feirand had let him go that previous time. Not with the intention of being malicious or to tell tales; probably he still thought that the decision to let mercy temper justice had been entirely reasonable. Evald Bromo would mention the episode because he wanted to confess. He wanted to come out with everything. All the details, all the facts.

  Maybe Feirand would be able to talk his way out of it. Maybe not. In any case, the situation would become too hot for comfort. If there was one thing all these years as an investigator had taught him, it was that once a case such as this began to unravel, it would unravel completely.

  Since he believed Evald Bromo was entirely unknown to the police, he had felt safe. Stressed and desperate to stop Bromo, admittedly, but safe in the conviction that no one, absolutely no one, would be able to connect him to the murder.

  When Hanne Wilhelmsen had shared the information in her possession, it had been like being caught in an avalanche. He had found it difficult to breathe and he’d felt as if he were falling and falling, incapable of grasping at anything to save himself. He had only just managed to avoid letting his mask slip; it had been extremely helpful that she herself had
seemed rather out of sorts.

  The investigation into Evald Bromo’s death would not focus on Sigurd Halvorsrud, apparently. When Iver Feirand had followed Halvorsrud and watched him disappear into Vogts gate 14 in the middle of the night, he had clenched his fists in triumph. Standing in an entryway, he had waited for half an hour until the Chief Public Prosecutor had come charging out again with an old man at his heels. The following day, Feirand had sought out the old man. He needed to know where in the building Halvorsrud had been. When he later learned that there were actually fingerprints in the basement, he was almost unable to believe his own luck. Until Hanne Wilhelmsen had told him what she knew.

  The flight must be over Germany by now. Glancing at his watch, he asked the flight attendant for a refill.

  The starting point for the investigation would be that the man was a pedophile.

  Iver Feirand could no longer take the chance that he would remain in the clear. For two nights he had tossed and turned, considering all the ins and outs of it. In the end his wife had protested: he was twisting and turning so much that she could not sleep. For the remainder of that night he had sat at the kitchen table. When he applied cold logic, he managed to persuade himself he had nothing to fear. Not much, at least. Evald Bromo – despite his pathetic bad luck with the business card seven years earlier – had been extremely careful. It was quite possible that the police would be knocking their heads against a brick wall if they pursued the theory that he had been killed because of his pedophile leanings. On the other hand, Bromo had not been careful enough. Someone knew. Someone had given Hanne Wilhelmsen the information she had in her possession.

  A source, she had said.

  He must be a good one. God only knew what the guy was holding back.

  That a source existed who was so well informed he knew about Evald Bromo made Iver Feirand reach a decision at six o’clock in the morning of the last day he spent at home with his wife and children.

  He had to follow his instincts and flee.

  He had succeeded in doing so.

  94

  It was late afternoon on Friday April 9 and no one could find Iver Kai Feirand. His wife could report that both he and his car were gone, and that he had obviously left with a suitcase.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen felt it was no concern of hers.

  Evald Bromo’s death was no longer her case to investigate.

  She intended to take an indefinite length of time off, and wanted to go home.

  There was only one task left to do, and she was not quite sure whether she was dreading it or looking forward to it.

  “I’ll speak to him on my own,” she said dismissively to the custody officer who had unlocked the cell where Sigurd Halvorsrud was seated on a bunk bed, rocking slowly from side to side. “You can go. Don’t lock the door.”

  She entered the cell. The man inside was murmuring some kind of mantra. She crouched down and tentatively placed her hand on his. She could feel how tense he was: the sinews on the back of his hand felt like sharp edges against her palm.

  “It’s all over now, Halvorsrud. We’ve managed to get to the bottom of it all.”

  He raised his face a fraction.

  “What are you saying?”

  Smiling faintly, she repeated, “We’ve got to the bottom of it all. You were right. It was Salvesen who murdered your wife. And Evald Bromo’s death had nothing to do with you.”

  For a second or two, she thought that Sigurd Halvorsrud was about to expire. His face darkened, turning almost lilac-blue around his eyes and mouth. He shut his eyes before suddenly pulling his hand free and getting to his feet. He then adjusted his braces and patted his hand awkwardly on his shirtfront.

  Hanne had seen the inside of a remand cell countless times. She did not like them, but had never felt as repulsed by them as she did now. She saw Halvorsrud’s quick glance in the direction of the open door, as if weighing up the possibility of escape. She watched as he moved with tiny sideways steps in the direction of the exit, until he stopped unexpectedly and covered his face with his hands.

  “What have we done to you?” Hanne Wilhelmsen whispered, trying to touch him; a meaningless gesture of consolation.

  The man twisted away, convulsed with sobs, as he pressed his elbows into his body and lowered his head.

  “What have we done to you and your family?” she repeated, inaudibly this time.

  She was directing the question at herself.

  EPILOGUE

  Hanne Wilhelmsen had been on leave for two months. As everything stood at present, she had no idea whether she would ever return to her job in the police force. Provisionally, the Chief of Police had said she was welcome to come back whenever she liked, but she expected that even his authority would come to an end at some point. She would have to make up her mind soon.

  Iver Kai Feirand had still not been apprehended. It had taken only a short time to discover that he had traveled to Madrid via Frankfurt on a fake passport. In Spain, all leads came to an end. He was a wanted man in most countries around the globe, and Hanne was convinced he would be caught. If not sooner, then certainly later.

  She had been into the office only once in all that time, five weeks ago, and only because Eivind Torsvik had phoned her at home, insisting that they meet. He would not allow himself to be fobbed off with another detective. Since he was willing to make the journey to Oslo voluntarily, it had to be something important.

  The material he had presented to her had given the Oslo police their greatest ever triumph as far as the battle against the sexual abuse of children was concerned. “Operation Angel” had been implemented only a week after Eivind Torsvik had slapped five ring binders and twenty computer disks down on the desk in the police headquarters. The material was so detailed, so thorough and so legally compliant that the police had taken only two days to go through it with a fine-tooth comb. Erik Henriksen, who was Acting Chief Inspector with responsibility for sexual abuse, had gained in maturity from the task. Something new and serious had come over the man. Only thirty-three, he was too young for such a job, but Hanne had always believed him to be capable. She had not been much older herself when she was appointed.

  The newspapers had gorged themselves on Operation Angel. There was plenty to choose from. The action had led to nine arrests in Norway alone. One of the people in custody was a well-known politician, two of them established doctors. The story was front-page news for several weeks, until the Whitsun weekend had arrived with a triple homicide in Sørum, forty minutes from Oslo city center, and Oslo Police District got a well-earned break from the intense and sometimes tiresome media focus.

  The Kosovo war was now also history.

  It was Wednesday June 9 and almost midnight. Cecilie had been in and out of hospital since Hanne had gone on leave. She would be up and about for several days and then become so poorly that Hanne would be certain it was all over. But then she’d rally again, remarkably enough, and return home for another week or so.

  They were together the entire time.

  Friends often came to visit Cecilie, both at hospital and at home. Hanne never saw anything of any of them: she simply said a hurried hello in passing and headed out the door. Cecilie left it at that. Perhaps she had spoken to the others, because they no longer made any attempt to detain her. Not even Billy T..

  It was drizzling.

  Hanne had gone for a long walk, through the hospital district, up toward Tåsen, across the intersection where Iver Kai Feirand had been caught by a speed camera, up over Nordberg and all the way to the lake at Sognsvann. She had been away for nearly two hours, and was feeling anxious.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to call anyone?” the plump nurse had said gravely when Hanne returned.

  Her name was Berit, and she was the only person apart from Cecilie whom Hanne had talked to properly in ages.

  “Is there nobody you want here tonight?”

  Hanne shook her head.

  Cecilie was unconscious. As soon as Hann
e sat down beside the bed, she realized that. Cecilie weighed barely forty-five kilos now, and had no energy left.

  Hanne talked to Cecilie all night long. She stroked her hair gently and told her things she had never before found the courage to say. Not to Cecilie, not to anyone.

  When morning came, Cecilie Vibe died.

  It happened without a sound, only a tiny twitch of her eyes, and then it was over.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen continued to sit holding her beloved’s hand for another hour longer, until Berit came and released her grip; gently, as she tried to make Hanne stand up.

  “It’s all over now,” she said softly, in a motherly voice. “Come on now, Hanne. It’s time to let go.”

  When Hanne moved stiffly out into the harsh light of the corridor, Cecilie’s parents were sitting out there, holding hands and weeping silently.

  “Thank you,” Hanne said, glancing at Cecilie’s mother.

  The old woman was so like her daughter. She had the same eyes, set at an angle under broad eyebrows. The same hairline, the same sensual Cupid’s bow that had always made it difficult for Cecilie to apply lipstick.

  “Thank you for letting me be alone with her.”

  And then Hanne Wilhelmsen left the hospital with no idea of where to go or what to do.