by Anne Holt
To Hanne Wilhelmsen, police work was actually quite sad. She liked her job, found it meaningful and sometimes satisfying, but many years had passed since she had felt anything resembling enthusiasm or happiness in her work. Being a police officer fundamentally concerned reaching the truth in an increasingly complex reality, where possibly nothing was any longer entirely true or entirely false.
“Wait a minute,” she said slowly in a loud voice. “Surely neither of you believes that Carl-Christian Stahlberg would be such a monumental idiot as to shoot his family with his own gun? His own, officially registered revolver?”
“No,” Erik admitted. “But it does mean that he knows something about guns. That he knows how to get hold of that kind of thing. That he knows people in shooting circles.”
“Shooting circles in Norway,” Hanne said, trying not to seem patronizing, “as far as I know, are a collection of extremely stable people with decent, age-old Norwegian interests: hunting and often fishing as well. Shooting circles in Norway take good care of their guns, meet at conventions, and maybe drink a bit too much moonshine in their camper vans.”
“Now you’re being narrow-minded,” Silje said. “Now you’re talking about the sort of people who go to National Shooting Competitions. That’s mainly people from rural areas. Here in the city it’s different, as you well know. Lots of immig… completely different people.”
“And who’s being narrow-minded now?” Hanne flashed a smile, before adding: “Of course, this is of interest. Especially the stuff about the forgery. I agree that Carl-Christian’s motives are mounting. It wouldn’t surprise me if Annmari and Co. are soon writing out a charge sheet.”
She shrugged.
“Even if I’d prefer it if we waited.”
“Wait?” Erik said angrily. “Why should we wait? The more time that passes, the more opportunity he has to cover his tracks.”
“But I’ve—” Silje ventured, before being interrupted by Hanne.
“It’s not certain he has any opportunity to cover his tracks. If he gets rid of the gun, for instance, then he knows he’s in a damned tight corner. You know just as well as I do that pulling someone in, before we have a watertight case, can be far more damaging than letting them hang loose out there. The best approach is to bring them in for interview. Press them, drop them. Haul them in, then let them go. They know we have them in our sights. They get worried. They don’t sleep, and they get tired. Scared, exhausted people make mistakes. Arrest them, and they mobilize energy and resistance. I would wait. At least until after Christmas. After the funeral. I really think …”
“I’ve found—” Silje ventured again, but was unable to continue this time, either.
“… the best thing would be to wait,” Hanne concluded, before smiling at Silje. “What was it you wanted to say?”
“I’ve found an apartment,” she answered, sounding miffed. “It’s all a bit strange.”
Something gleamed in Hanne’s eyes.
“An apartment? What kind of apartment?”
“I’m going through the estate. Actually I was supposed to concentrate on the old folks. The … deceased, I mean. But then I was sitting there with this search engine, and it struck me that it might be useful to get an overview of what the others in the family owned also.”
Hanne nodded in approval.
“And then, when I was finished …”
Silje gave a quick smile.
“… I remembered that Mabelle was originally called May Anita Olsen. So I did a search on that name, too. She owns an apartment in Kampen.”
“Eh?”
Erik tugged so energetically at his collar that his top button fell off.
“What is that used for?” He balanced the button on his right index finger. “Can either of you sew?”
“I don’t know what the apartment is used for,” Silje said, irritated. “You can surely sew a button on yourself! Anyway, it’s Mabelle’s apartment. It’s the right personal ID number. Why it’s registered in her old name, and why they’ve kept it, is anybody’s guess. No one lives there, in any case. Not according to the Population Register.”
“An empty apartment in Kampen,” Hanne said slowly into midair, as if thinking aloud and trying to ascertain what purpose something like that might have. “An office? A guest apartment? An investment?”
“A guest apartment in Kampen, when you live on the other side of the city?” Silje pulled a disapproving face and added: “Neither of them needs a private office. Not as far as I can see, anyway. And if the apartment was intended as an investment, then they would have rented it out.”
“I’m going straight to my mother-in-law’s,” Erik complained. “Seriously, can neither of you sew a button on for me?”
Hanne drew on her jacket, pulled a hat down over her ears, and stood in readiness to leave, before either of the others had got as far as standing up.
“Your mother-in-law probably won’t notice your button, Erik.”
“Where are you going?” Silje asked.
“Me? I’m going out to buy presents.”
“Now? In the middle of … Christmas Eve?”
“Never too late,” Hanne said, heading for the door. “By the way …”
She wheeled around to face Silje again.
“That stuff about the apartment’s bloody fascinating. Write a special report and make sure that Annmari knows about it. Now. Before you leave for the day.”
Then, her face shining, she addressed herself to Silje’s forehead.
“Merry Christmas! Enjoy yourselves.”
She turned on her heel and disappeared.
“Is she just going to … leave? Now we’re approaching an arrest and everything?”
Silje was whispering.
“No one’s going to arrest anybody in this case yet,” Erik said, struggling to attach the top button to his shirt with a stapler. “No one’s going to be arrested without Hanne being informed. Believe me. I’d like to see the prosecutor here in headquarters who would dare to do anything of the sort. Bye, then!”
He tossed the button into a corner of the room.
“Merry Christmas!”
Silje was left sitting on her own in Hanne’s office. It was so curiously quiet everywhere. The vast building was about to empty for a couple of days’ holiday. She sank back into the chair and breathed deeply through her nose. Over and over again, in an effort to capture Hanne’s perfume, which she refused to acknowledge.
Sølvi Jotun was not difficult to locate. She was quite simply at home. At least in a purely physical sense. Billy T. had obtained her address late the previous night. He had postponed his visit, since he was in no fit state to do anything other than sleep. He had hardly said goodnight before collapsing into bed. After being in an almost comatose condition for eight hours, at least he did not feel so tired.
When, without the duty sergeant’s permission, he had picked open the lock on the door in Mor Go’hjertas vei in Sagene, where he found Sølvi Jotun lying in a corner like a discarded bundle of clothes. Otherwise the apartment was remarkably tidy. The bathroom, where he fetched some water in a toothbrush glass because the kitchen door was locked for some reason, had recently been cleaned. In the poky little living room, everything was in place. A well-worn settee covered with a throw and two mismatched chairs. A coffee table that reminded him of the sixties. A blue glass bird perched on the TV set. To top it all, there was even some sort of bookcase in the room: old brewery cases stacked one on top of the other, crammed with crime novels and a series of Dostoevsky’s collected works.
On a good day, the apartment might well be termed cozy. Now it was icy cold. Billy T. was worried about the price of electricity himself, but there had to be limits to saving power. He squinted at a thermometer on the living-room wall: eleven degrees Celsius.
“Hi,” he said in a friendly tone, hunkering beside the curled figure and tentatively nudging her shoulder. “Sølvi! Hi there!”
She groaned and clicked her dry tongu
e.
“Water,” Billy T. said, lifting her head carefully to allow her to swallow.
Sølvi Jotun tried to take a drink. Half the water ran outside her mouth, but in the end she managed to open her eyes.
“Oh, hell,” she moaned. “Is it you?”
“Take it easy,” he said calmly. “Nothing to worry about this time, Sølvi. Just want to talk to you.”
The woman slumped back and he got his arm trapped between her head and a switched-off radiator. It was difficult to break free because his leather jacket was caught on a pipe. Eventually he succeeded in settling the woman into a stable position on her side. The little welcome scene had obviously used up her strength. He forced her eyes open with two fingers. Her pupils had contracted, but were not terrifyingly tiny. Though her breathing was shallow, it was regular enough that there was no real need for him to feel afraid. People had ended up in remand cells despite their health being in a worse state than this. All the same, this time Billy T. did not want to take any chances.
“I’ll get you to hospital,” he said softly, hoisting her up. “Then we can have a chat tomorrow.”
Sølvi Jotun’s face took on a surprised, almost incredulous look, before she passed out again.
It took him an hour and a half to get her admitted to Ullevål Hospital. He had to berate a doctor in the most disparaging terms, charm two nurses, and knock over an IV-stand into the bargain. Fortunately it was not in use at the time. In the end he had threatened them with the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The doctor began to laugh, discouraged and stressed after hours of overtime, and they finally promised to care for Sølvi at public expense for twenty-four hours. Not a minute longer, Billy T. was told. And the doctor could not guarantee what would happen if, in the meantime, the patient took it into her head to leave.
Billy T. felt weak, once he was able to sit in his car at last.
He took a note of the time. Quarter to twelve. He would have to collect Sølvi Jotun before ten the next day, to be on the safe side. Christmas Day, he thought despondently, and could not bring himself to work out how he would effect his escape from breakfast with his sister’s family.
The betting slip was still in his breast pocket. He hadn’t even taken it out to examine it.
The police trainee was only twenty-two and everything was still exciting. Even sitting by a telephone receiving tip-offs from the public. As a rule, they were cloaked in excessively long stories and seldom had any real value. Nevertheless the young man felt important. He had not yet completed his studies, but despite that he was participating in the investigation of Oslo’s most brutal homicide inquiry in ages, perhaps of all time.
As soon as the murders in Eckersbergs gate became public knowledge, the tip-offs had started to flood in. The department had to conscript extra staff, two officers on two daily shifts. The young trainee took meticulous notes and sorted the incoming calls exactly as he had been told to do. Normally he contented himself with scribbling down three or four lines about what the caller had to say, together with the name and telephone number. He had made a habit of checking whether the number given matched what appeared on the display. After that he placed the sheets of paper in three different piles. One for drunken drivel and nonsense, one for what was of little apparent interest, and one for tip-offs that ought to be checked further.
The last pile was depressingly scant in comparison with the other two.
“Police,” he said automatically, accepting another call.
“Good day,” a gruff voice spoke at the other end.
“Good day, who am I speaking to?”
“Err … hmmm. I wondered if that mattered.”
“We’d prefer to have a name.”
The police trainee glanced up at the display and jotted down the number on a Post-it note.
“I’d rather not say,” the voice mumbled into the receiver: it sounded tense and hesitant. “Prefer not.”
“What do you want to report, then?”
“It’s to do with this murder.”
“Yes. The Stahlberg case.”
“Yes. I was just thinking that … this gun—”
“Yes?”
“I just wanted to say that on that day – or that night, really; the day after the murders – somebody drilled a hole in the ice up here. Strange business. Don’t know if it was a man or a woman, but it was pitch dark, and there’s no fish there.”
“Wait a minute now. Where was this, did you say?”
“I was just out for a … well, I was going out for a breath of air, you see. On skis. And the conditions were so lousy that I started walking instead. Went down to the lake, and that was when I saw him. The hole was there, when I checked later. But there were no other signs of ice-fishing, exactly. And it was the middle of the night, you see. I’ve never heard of people ice-fishing in the middle of the night.”
“Now I’ll need to ask you to wait for a moment. Let us take this from the beginning.”
Tingling with excitement, the police trainee stole a glance at the computer screen to assure himself that the tape was running. Then he took out a fresh sheet of paper and began over again.
“Where are you calling from?”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know, you see.”
“And we’re very pleased about that. But we need to take this right from the beginning, okay?”
“That’s fine,” the voice said, sounding less tense now.
Seven minutes later, the trainee disconnected the call and sat idly lost in thought, even though the phone kept ringing incessantly.
The worst aspect was that he was no longer sure he could rely on Mabelle. He tried to convince himself that his suspicion was a result of lack of sleep. Since Thursday, he had hardly slept a wink. That impaired his judgment and filled him with doubt and fear, and he knew that. Hostile to everyone, he thought disconsolately, as he stared at himself in the mirror above the bathroom basin. He was thinner already. His eyes seemed even more prominent and a greasy film of stress had spread over his face.
“Mabelle,” he said hoarsely as he tried to push out a non-existent chin.
Hermine, of course, could not be relied upon. She had always been the sweet little bunny rabbit of the family, hopping now here, now there. There was something predictable about her unpredictability. Mabelle, on the other hand, was the anchor in his life. She could be depended upon. She had always been someone who could be depended upon.
The farcical family gathering of the previous evening had turned into the Christmas party from hell. No one wanted to speak to the flabbergasted and deeply offended Alfred. The more distant relatives could barely control their curiosity; they overtly studied the apartment and everything in it, as they chatted quietly in tones of voice characterized by scandal and malicious pleasure. Getting rid of Andreas had almost been worst of all. He had strutted about with unaccustomed pomposity and was slightly too eager to assure Carl-Christian of his belief in his innocence. When all the others were finally out of the apartment, Andreas had wanted to have a strategic discussion, as he called it. Carl-Christian had pretended to faint and smiled wanly from the floor with a rather nasty cut above his eye, pleading to be left in peace.
When they arrived at Hermine’s apartment, it had been more than two hours since her phone call.
She was no longer in the apartment. At least she never opened the door. She did not answer any of her phones. Hermine had simply disappeared and Carl-Christian had no idea what he should do.
Mabelle wanted to alert the police.
Mabelle no longer understood. Hermine was sitting on a new will. Hermine was the only one who knew about the unregistered gun in the safe in Kampen. They had to talk to Hermine before the police had reason to interview her again. Carl-Christian had to know what she intended to say, he had to track down the missing pistol and secure the new will, the contents of which he did not even know.
Hermine might have thrown the pistol away.
Of course she hadn’t th
rown the pistol away.
Where do you dispose of a pistol?
Carl-Christian’s laughter was forced and he bit his lip to prevent himself from losing his composure. Slowly he began to smear shaving foam over his jaw, using his fingers to outline little pathways in all the whiteness, drawing the foam up over his nose and around his eyes: he covered his face in foam.
“What are you doing?”
Mabelle was totally transformed. He knew, of course, that the fragile, sorrowing figure of the previous evening was a fabulous concoction, though it seemed as if most of them had been taken in by it. Despite all of them knowing about the destructive conflict between the family members, it was as if Mabelle’s convincing performance had reinforced the family in their belief that there were limits to what a member of the Stahlberg dynasty would permit himself be forced into.
Mabelle had mastery of her own face. Now her eyebrows were well defined, her lips a deep red. A touch of rouge on her cheeks signaled energy and resolve.
“What on earth are you doing?” she repeated.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You look absolutely crazy!”
Without answering, he washed all the foam away.
“You need to shave,” she said harshly. “Those little stubbly whiskers of yours aren’t very becoming.”
“That’s what I was in the midst of doing,” he said, lifting the Gillette aerosol.
“You’re in the midst of falling apart, CC. We can’t afford that.”
Indolently he began to soap his face again. Mabelle continued to stand there.
“Hermine’s a problem,” she said in a monotone. “You’re right, of course. But we’ll have an unbelievably worse problem if the girl has really disappeared and we haven’t reported it.”
“We don’t need to have known anything about it,” Carl-Christian said.
Mabelle took a step forward into the bathroom and leaned toward him.
“Now you’ll really need to pull yourself together!” she roared. “We’re being watched! When are you going to understand that? The police probably already know that we were outside Hermine’s apartment last night. They’re most likely taking continuous printouts of all our phone conversations. They know we’ve tried to reach her. And they know … they know …”