Beyond the Truth

by Anne Holt

  “I’m wondering about the keys,” Hanne said.

  “Yes, what was that?” Silje said expectantly.

  “Sidensvans’s body was found with his coat on. He didn’t have a wallet. No keys, either.”

  “No keys?”

  “I read the report before we came here. No wallet. No keys. Damned odd.”

  “Not really. He might have put them—”

  “What have you got with you at the moment, Silje?”

  “With me?”

  “Yes. No handbag. Just like men. What do you have in your pockets?”

  A jangling of coins was heard as Silje took a look.

  “Loose change. Wallet. Cellphone. A small flashlight. And … keys. And this here. Do you want some?”

  She offered Hanne some chewing gum.

  “You see,” Hanne said, without taking any. “We always walk about with our keys on our person. Where are the ones belonging to Sidensvans?”

  She did not wait for an answer, but asked for Silje’s Maglite. After examining the documents, books, and loose papers for a few more minutes, she shook her head slowly.

  “You’re right, of course,” she said. “It’s impossible to say anything for sure. All the same …”

  She stiffened, just as she was about to return the flashlight.

  “But there is something here,” she said abruptly and firmly. “At least it might be something. I’ll request a thorough search of the entire place. Prints. Biological traces. Everything.”

  “We have limited resources, Hanne. Isn’t it more important for us to concentrate on the crime scene? And the Stahlberg family?”

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Hanne said, buttoning her jacket before nodding in the direction of the front door. “We’re going to expend endless time and personnel on the members of the Stahlberg family. But we need to spend some time on this place as well. There were four victims. Not three.”

  Locking up carefully, she hooked the key on her own key ring, before a sudden idea struck her.

  “Would you like to come home with me, Silje? Have some dinner?”

  “Yes! I’d love that. I … oh, no. I have to go home. Tom’s going to a Christmas dinner this evening, and we don’t have a babysitter for Simen.”

  “That’s a shame,” Hanne said lightly. “You’re missing out on something special. Mary’s become a real whizz in the kitchen. Another time, maybe.”

  “Yes, definitely! I’d honestly love to come, but you know how it is with young children, and … it’s no longer easy to do anything impulsive.”

  A taxi stopped at Silje’s signal. She sat inside and waved to Hanne through the rear window, until the vehicle was swallowed up in the afternoon rush. Hanne was left behind, blushing ferociously.

  It was the psychologist’s fault. And Nefis’s. You have to be more direct, Hanne, they nagged. Tell other people what you want –that was what they continually dinned into her. It’s not dangerous. They’ll be pleased. Do it, Hanne.

  Now she had tried. She would have liked to eat Mary’s Friday meatballs and maybe even drink a Pilsner or three with Silje. Nefis would have been delighted about the unexpected guest. Mary would have cursed because Hanne had not phoned first, but would nevertheless set an extra place with the finest porcelain, and maybe even produce some Turkish beer from the cold-storage room.

  Hanne had done as the psychologist and Nefis had suggested.

  The red flush lingered on her cheeks for a long time.

  The deceased Karl-Oskar Wetterland had been an old-school advocate. At his death he owned his spacious apartment in Oslo, his summer cottage with no winter water supply in the Hvaler islands, a 1992 Volvo, and a pretty little portfolio of shares. It had been conservatively accumulated and carefully administered. Together with the three high-interest accounts declared in the envelope that he had left behind, sealed and with his son’s name in elegant handwriting on the outside, they would ensure that his widow would live prosperously during her remaining years.

  His son found comfort in that.

  His father had taken good care of his family while he lived, and his orderly estate showed how well prepared he had been for his death. Terje Wetterland, the advocate’s only child, was not left a single krone. This made him smile as he walked around his father’s office, touching the occasional object. Of course his mother should be the sole beneficiary. Terje was forty-seven and well established in France, with a wife, children, and an income far in excess of what his father had ever earned from his small legal firm. His mother should be comfortable in her old age. They had agreed about that, he and his father. She should have the opportunity to spend money on help in the house. She should be able to spend long summers in Provence with her grandchildren, without having to be subsidized. At least not overtly. They had discussed it one evening about six months ago. Father and son had sat on a rocky outcrop enjoying drinks on Midsummer Eve. The children shrieked from the beach and the night was never-ending. They agreed there and then how everything should be arranged. And that was how it would be.

  Terje Wetterland ran his fingers tenderly over a silver-framed photograph of himself and his father, half naked and soaking wet; it was late summer and they were both dark brown. They sat on the edge of a jetty, him a happy kid of four or five with his father’s arm around his waist.

  He wiped dust from the glass with his shirt sleeve, before stuffing the picture into the document folder. There was nothing else here that he coveted. Although his father still had one or two clients, it was impossible to make any arrangements about them at present. He would ask his mother who they were. There could not be many, since his father had really wound up his whole practice three years ago. Only habit and a few grouchy old clients made him step inside his office a couple of times a week. His son would call the clients from France and straighten matters out. If anything were urgent, they would probably phone his mother.

  He glanced superficially at some documents lying on the desk, before stowing everything into the safe and locking it. Then he switched off the light, locked his father’s office, and returned home to his mother.

  A heavy layer of frost covered the ski trails. The forest was silent. The old man tried to thrust his skis into a snowdrift, but the snow was too hard and compacted. He put them aside instead, just beyond the track. Not that anyone would steal them. After all, it was almost midnight. People were keeping indoors. In any case, nobody spent a night just before Christmas trudging over Nordmarka in the freezing cold. He pulled a crooked grin at the thought. All the same, it was best to set the skis under a spruce tree, a few meters beyond the path, well hidden. You never knew.

  These nocturnal trips of his had become a habit. Thirty years ago, he had returned to the smallholding where he had stayed during his childhood. Now he lived on the landowner’s goodwill and odd jobs in the forest. A walk before turning in for the night ensured a good night’s sleep. In the summer months he plodded on foot in the evening light that was reflected in the many lakes dotting the landscape. As soon as snow took hold in late autumn, he set off on tarred wooden skis. He knew his forest and the tracks that intersected it.

  The cold pinched his cheeks and made his eyes water. It felt reassuring. He took a few tentative steps along a narrow path leading down to a tarn where he often swam in warm weather. Here and there he tramped his way through, almost losing his balance a couple of times. After barely fifty meters he stood beside a rocky ridge jutting beautifully into the ice-covered tarn. All he could hear was the trickling sound of a little stream. Gingerly, trying not to slip on the slick bare rock, he stepped over the point to drink some of the super-cool water. He crouched down and, using his fist as a cup, plunged it into the water. The ice glittered in the blue moonlight. It would take some time for the lake to freeze solid; the cold had only really set in during the past few days.

  He grew aware of a movement on the opposite side of the water. He stopped in his tracks, believing it to be an animal and loath to fri
ghten it off. His hand, halfway to his mouth and covered in water, trembled slightly from cold and tension. Very slowly he stood up to his full height, with the dense spruce forest behind him. His clothing was dark, and he merged completely into the background. The light breeze blew toward him. An animal would scarcely pick up his scent, if he did not move.

  It was not an animal, though. He saw that now. He stood up straight and caught sight of a man, or at least a person, not standing on the edge, but a short distance across the surface of the ice. The being crouched down. Some action was undertaken.

  He strained to listen. His hearing was not quite what it had been and he could make out only his own pulse and a rhythmic rippling of the water in the stream. The person over there finally moved across to the edge of the forest, silently, sometimes staggering, as if creeping back in its own footprints. Soon it had disappeared in an easterly direction.

  The old man hesitated, unable to understand why he had not called out. He had felt uneasy, he was taken aback to admit, and had withdrawn into the darkness to avoid being seen, without really being able to explain why. Once again he strained his hearing, inclining his head and placing his ice-cold, bare hand behind one ear.

  All was silent.

  He was alert now. Slightly afraid, but also keen to find out what had happened, what the shadow had been doing here, at a tarn in Nordmarka on a December night. An old curiosity was awakened, a long-suppressed feeling, forgotten and packed away, since it was something that had only ever led him into trouble.

  It would take just a few minutes to cross the ice, maybe half an hour to walk around it. He cast his mind back to the mild weather that had come and gone since October and set off over the ground.

  He gasped for breath when he reached the spot, asthma squeezing his windpipe. Carefully he followed the other person’s footprints. They were almost black outlines on the blue-white snowy ground. Since the ice had supported the weight of the other person, it would probably hold him too. Anyway, he did not have to walk out far.

  A hole.

  Not large, but wide enough to draw up fish. Someone had been ice-fishing, in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold.

  He chuckled softly, and shook his head at the stupidity of city folk.

  SATURDAY DECEMBER 21

  Hanne Wilhelmsen lay staring at the ceiling. The heat in the room thickened the air with depleted night, and she licked her lips to moisten her dry mouth. Fortunately she had kicked off her quilt during the night. All the same, her skin was coated with sticky perspiration. Stiffly, she sat up in bed and punched her pillow, before lying down again.

  “You really might have told me about the party on Christmas Eve,” she said softly.

  Yawning, Nefis turned to face her.

  “My dear Hanna, if I’d told you about this party, it would never have come to pass! You would have said No, no, no; and then we’d have been left on our own. You and me and Mary.”

  “That’s the way I would have liked it, though.”

  Nefis groaned, smacking herself on the forehead. Her black hair was spread out in sweaty clumps and she smiled broadly.

  “Sweetheart. You are odd. Above all, you want it to be just the three of us all the time. All the time! I want to have a real Christmas! When I’ve been stuck in a wintry country with all these joyful traditions for Christmas Eve, then I want all of it! Lots of decorations and lights, and very, very much people around the table.”

  “Much,” Hanne said, wanting to get up. “It should really be ‘many’, when you’re talking about people. And you could have asked. Anyway, I didn’t know that you felt stuck.”

  “Hanna, honestly.”

  Nefis tried to grab her, but Hanne was too quick as she set off for the bathroom.

  She let the water cascade down her back while she leaned her forehead on the tiled wall. She gradually reduced the temperature of the water. Colder. She felt her skin contract and raised her head.

  Nefis was right. Nefis was always right. The odd family in Kruses gate would have lived like hermits, if Hanne had had her way.

  The thought induced a smile.

  “Hanna, you’re smiling!”

  Nefis sat down on the mahogany toilet seat cover with its inlaid Inca-style pattern: the elaborate wood and metal felt cold and ticklish on her naked thighs.

  Hanne struggled to force the smile away.

  “Aha, you’re laughing,” Nefis called out, clapping her hands. “You’re happy about this party!”

  “No, I’m not,” Hanne said, hiding her face in the shower spray.

  She was looking forward to it. She was not even annoyed that the decision had been taken over her head, the way all decisions of any import were taken by Nefis, and Nefis alone. Nefis who had bought the tickets to the Seychelles and informed her two days in advance; time off work had already been arranged. Nefis who had returned home to the apartment in Lille Tøyen with the prospectus for a sumptuous newly built apartment in Frogner; the purchase had already been made. Nefis organized everything: the removal company and the Population Register, the moving-in party and partnership agreement, the interior decor and shopping. Nefis treated Hanne the way a loving wife treats a bull-headed old husband. And Hanne liked it, grudgingly. She protested loudly and often, but never for long.

  Nefis found solutions Hanne was able to live with. She took Hanne into consideration, but never to such a degree that she had to compromise on her own wishes and needs. The apartment in Kruses gate appeared more like a strange system of communal living rather than a real family; people who seemed to have nothing in common, scraped together hastily and at random. That was how it must look to others, those who didn’t know better, who did not know them and therefore had no idea that Nefis and Hanne were married and that Nefis wanted to have children. Hanne knew none of the neighbors, and there were three names on their door. Not two – that dangerous two that made people draw conclusions about who lived there and what they got up to.

  Sometimes Hanne felt happy. Not often, but now and again, when reality touched her in brief flashes: Mary padding in her slippers through the dark apartment at night, a glance from Nefis when she thought Hanne would not notice, a hand on her back if she woke in the night – at such moments Hanne felt completely secure. Security was her happiness, and she had never truly known happiness before Nefis arrived on the scene.

  Hanne stepped out of the shower.

  “Who’s actually coming?”

  “Everyone! Karen and Håkon, the children, Billy T., Tone-Marit and—”

  “Not all his children,” Hanne said. “Please! It will be pure hell.”

  “No. They’re with their mothers this Christmas. Only Jenny will come with them.”

  “Who else?”

  Hanne dried her hair, fearing the worst.

  “Well …”

  Nefis caressed the small of Hanne’s naked back.

  “Two of Mary’s old friends. Just—”

  “No!”

  Snatching the towel from her head, Hanne flung it on the floor.

  “Do you remember how that went last year? Eh?”

  “But it’ll be better this year! They’ve promised not to bring anything with them and—”

  Hanne angrily interrupted her again, slapping the palm of her hand against the wall of the shower.

  “Nefis, listen. You can never rely on a drug addict. They can swear as long and as loudly as they like, but they will sneak something past you. Besides, it would probably be equal to murder to deny them. They quite simply can’t bear twenty-four hours without a fix. It’s out of the question, Nefis.”

  She trotted resolutely through to the bedroom and quickly threw on the clothes she had worn the previous day.

  “Anyway, they probably have AIDS. It’s far from certain that Håkon and Karen will be particularly keen on their children eating Christmas dinner in the company of sore-infested, ravenous whores with AIDS.”

  Nefis’s hand was only centimeters from Hanne’s cheek when
it came to a sudden halt. Hanne stroked her untouched cheek. They stood there like that, Nefis with her hand raised and Hanne drawing back ever so slightly.

  “That’s a terrible thing to say, Hanna. Terrible. We don’t say that sort of thing in our family.”

  ‘We don’t slap one another in our family, either!”

  “I didn’t slap you,” Nefis said, turning on her heel. “But God knows I wanted to.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen was in a foul mood when, eleven minutes late, she entered the large conference room where the Superintendent had assembled sixteen investigators, two police prosecutors and a couple of clerical staff around the table. Hanne gave a brief nod to the Deputy Chief of Police, who sent a wide smile in her direction. She glibly disregarded Silje Sørensen, Erik Henriksen and Billy T., before taking a seat at the far end of the table, with a trainee officer on either side. Throughout the Superintendent’s report she stared at the table, hiding her eyes behind her heavy fringe. She seemed not to be following what was said at all. Unease spread around her: the others withdrew, as if feeling a physical aversion to her presence.

  “There can be no doubt that the ongoing conflict among the family members was brutal enough,” Billy T. said, when the meeting was opened for discussion. “There’s a great deal of fairly complex case material, but the main quarrel concerned to what degree Hermann Stahlberg had committed himself to leaving the shipping company to Carl-Christian. After Preben’s return home, it was increasingly clear that the elder son had a greater capacity for business activities than his brother. The company was functioning better and expanding, including signing contracts for two new small cruise ships that will be completed in eighteen months’ time. A year ago, all the paperwork was drawn up. The shipping company, an unlisted limited company, wholly owned by Hermann and Turid Stahlberg, was to be signed over to Preben. Admittedly, both Carl-Christian and Hermine were to be provided for with a smaller block of shares each, but big brother would retain all the power. When I say that all the paperwork was ready, it’s important to emphasize that it was never signed. Carl-Christian took out an action against his father, and has produced what he claims to be documentation showing that Hermann had promised, with binding effect, to pass the shipping company to him.”