by Anne Holt
“Well, he’d probably been pretty shaky for more than a week already.”
“Exactly. He must have been shit scared when Sidensvans wanted to talk to him the first time. Probably Sidensvans himself didn’t appreciate what a bombshell he had stumbled upon. I think they must have met. Puntvold would most likely have wanted to see this man. Check out the threat he posed, in a manner of speaking. Maybe Sidensvans originally just wanted to talk. Question him a little. And then he would have grown more suspicious.”
The forest path finally leveled out. Despite the heavy clouds of mist that drained all their surroundings of color and light, the location was a perfect spot. The small valley opened out just here, at an elevation that extended a kilometer or so in the direction of the crest of a hill farther north. The place was more of a smallholding rather than an actual summer cottage. Two houses, one larger than the other, were pleasantly situated beside a stream; they could hear the gurgling of water over ice. The red buildings seemed well maintained, even though they could both have done with a coat of paint.
Leaving the path, they drew back toward the trunks of the pine trees.
“Dropping the case was a really stupid idea,” she said under her breath as she studied the buildings for any sign of life. “Conspicuous in all four cases, but totally illogical as far as the rich man’s son accused of drunk-driving was concerned. All of them minor affairs. Precisely the kind of case that can easily be dropped without much fuss being made. No one enquires about them. If it hadn’t been for the tenacious Henrik Heinz Backe.”
“Minor affairs,” Billy T. repeated. “But letting yourself be corrupted is no minor affair.”
Hanne shuffled her feet, teeth chattering, in an attempt to keep warm.
“Definitely not. A policeman is finished as soon as he accepts more than a cup of coffee. Here we’re talking about fifty thousand kroner. And Sidensvans was on his tail. You see, he’d phoned the Head of CID twice more. Last Wednesday afternoon. That matches the timing of that sudden appointment with Aftenposten to write a story about confiscated guns. Then Sidensvans called again.”
A magpie squawked as it took off from a tree at the edge of the forest to fly past them.
“At half past two on the day of the murders,” Hanne said. “Of course for the time being we can only take a guess at what was said. Anyway Puntvold realized that everything he had worked for, all he had dreamed of – his entire existence was at stake. Everything, in a way, that … was CID Chief Jens Puntvold.”
Grinning, Billy T. used his hands to warm his ears. “What a damn situation he was faced with! Maybe the first shot was no more than a reflex action. Pent-up anxiety and fear somehow. After all, he must have been worried all these years.”
“He probably kept up with things,” Hanne said pensively, trying to watch for movement on the smallholding a couple of hundred meters in the distance. “Henrik Backe was the only one who posed a threat. Puntvold has followed his progress, Billy T. Believe you me. He has seen the old sergeant go to the dogs. Noted his alcoholism and the first signs of senility. Gradually felt more secure. Until Unn died. The guarantee of Backe’s silence has gone now. But nothing was really dangerous, not yet. Puntvold is familiar with Backe’s condition. He must have been. But then Sidensvans pops up. It was not only Puntvold’s professional career that was at risk. We’re talking about Jens Puntvold’s whole life, Billy T. His entire existence. In fact, I don’t have any difficulty picturing him firing the first shot at Sidensvans. My God, just look at what it takes for people to commit suicide!”
“It’s easier to commit suicide than to kill other people.”
“Some people kill their own children,” Hanne said, stopping again. “It was when I first thought of men who actually choose to take the lives of their own children …”
A strong gust made her stoop into the wind.
“Only then was I able to imagine that it was possible to kill others to avoid falling yourself, to avoid losing your honor. When the first shot has been fired there’s no way back. Everyone in the apartment had to die.”
“Do you call that an … honor killing?”
“Not really. According to the traditional honor killing – to the extent that such a thing exists – the perpetrator will stand by his actions, at least in his own circle. Honor is achieved, or restored, through the murder. The crime in itself is the point and therefore not really a crime, in the perpetrator’s eyes. It’s more of a … duty. In our culture we are … more cowardly, perhaps.”
She shook her head. “No. Not more cowardly. But for us too, murder can be committed in order to defend honor. Suicide can be committed to stop an investigation, shift the focus, and displace sympathy. Murder can be committed to prevent compromising facts from becoming known. Honor-shattering facts.”
“Such as that the probable next Police Commissioner in Norway allowed himself to be thoroughly corrupted at the start of his career?” Billy T. suggested.
“Such as that sort of thing, yes.”
Faintly and at a distance, from behind the hills that rose south of the level elevation, they could hear a rhythmic, pounding drone.
“How many are coming?” she asked.
“Six armed officers.”
“Ridiculous to use a helicopter, though. They’re just pissed off because I insisted on doing this myself. So much drama! Totally unnecessary. Puntvold is sitting down there, waiting. He knows that the battle is lost. He has no honor left to defend.”
She smiled as she gently nudged his shoulder.
“They could have come on foot like us! Now he’ll be able to hear them from a long way off.”
“Not really,” Billy T. said, loath to let her go. “Listen!”
All was silent once again. Only the water in the stream could be heard over the rustling in the treetops. Billy T. put his arm around Hanne’s shoulders and she leaned heavily against his body. They stood like this, drawing warmth from each other, as they waited.
“Did you get rid of that betting slip?” she said into the wind, barely audible.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Has he been following you, Hanne?”
“Probably not. He’s just been afraid. Hardly slept. Gone through my office. Read my papers. Wanted to know what I was up to. Whether I was closing in. I’m not the one who had reason to be worried, really. It was Jens Puntvold. Scared of me. Terribly scared. Returning the keys to Sidensvans’s overcoat, for example, was idiotic. I’m one hundred percent certain that I checked the lining. It was the very first thing that made me look inward. Into headquarters. Into the police force. Not convinced perhaps, but that was when I became really troubled.”
“Why do you think,” Billy T. began, kissing her hair as he pulled her even closer to him, “that he picked up Hermione’s pistol? He didn’t need it. It only made—”
“Difficult to say,” Hanne said. Her eyes followed a narrow gray plume rising from the chimney, almost merging into the sky.
“Reflex. What would you have done if you’d spotted a gun on the street?”
“Picked it up. You’re right – he is at home. There’s a fire on. Do you know where his lady friend is?”
“She’s been taken care of. Come on.”
Hanne pulled out of his arms and began to walk. The path sloped down gently before snaking around a clump of trees and broadening out, almost becoming a little road, up to the courtyard.
“Wait!” Billy T. hissed, afraid to shout. “The guys aren’t in place yet. Wait!”
“Puntvold isn’t dangerous,” Hanne said. “How many times do I have to tell you? He killed to retain his honor. He won’t kill out of shame.” She turned around just as Billy T. lost his footing. He tried desperately to catch hold of a small tree, but missed. His other foot slipped away from underneath him.
“You’re falling too often these days,” Hanne said. “You’ll have to invest in crampons.”
“Shh,” he said peevishly, struggling to get up. “
For fuck’s sake, Hanne! Now you’re being insanely unprofessional. Puntvold has a number of guns. Wait … we should wait for the others. They’re going to land on the small football pitch, and we have to … Hanne! Wait!”
She had broken into a run.
When she reached the door of the larger of the two red buildings, she stopped for a moment. She caught herself thinking of Cecilie. She ought to have visited her parents at Christmas. Visited the grave, maybe with flowers, lanterns, and candles. The garden of remembrance in the corner of the vast graveyard was always so quiet, so well kept. Hanne had finally started to visit it. It brought such peace, she thought; it’s peace that I want, and I want to go home to my people.
She grasped the door handle as Billy T. arrived, running along the path, and stepped inside.
Jens Puntvold sat in a chair with his face turned to Hanne. When he raised the gun, she smiled in surprise and it crossed her mind that Nefis had been acting so strangely of late. She sometimes went quiet all of a sudden, without any reason; she no longer drank alcohol and seemed so vulnerable, so sensitive. All the same, everything would be better now, once Hanne had taken a holiday. Perhaps she would resign from the police force. She was so obstinate, so headstrong. Could no longer cooperate, not with anyone. Her brother was right. She was defective. It was time to quit.
The shot pitched her backward.
Her torso twisted and her left shoulder was dislocated by the powerful rotation. In the fall, the bizarre fall that took so much time, she ended up feeling astonishment that she was still able to see. Billy T. was standing in the doorway. She saw his face, distorted, and in the most fleeting second before she hit the floor, she smiled.
“If only she had,” Jens Puntvold began to speak, tossing his gun away, “if only she had …”
But Hanne Wilhelmsen could not hear him.
And many miles away, along a low wall outside a newly constructed building in Frogner, a mangy dog scurried around. It was old and resembled a hyena. Its neck was broad and high, its tail slung low. The creature had lived all its life in an area no larger than fifteen or sixteen blocks. Lots of people had tried to do away with him over the years, but he was an experienced dog, shrewd and strong, and he knew his territory far better than the people who lived there.
The animal was limping badly. Along his left flank, a wound glistened in the light from the street lamp; pus and bacteria had eaten their way deep into the flesh. The dog was shivering from cold and fever. He had not had anything to eat in three days. His strength was ebbing. The aroma of greasy food hovered above all the garbage sheds and back yards, but he lacked the energy to open the lids, to topple the bins. He was only able to drink, rainwater and half-melted snow from puddles on the sidewalk.
Slightly farther along the street there was a cellar with a damaged trapdoor. The dog could no longer bear to set his back paw on the ground. He hobbled across the road in the shelter of the shadows of the massive oak trees. A whimper became a rasping growl as he negotiated a tear in the mesh fence. The metal wires dug deep into the cut and it began to bleed again. He did not pause to clean the wound: he had already licked his haunch so much that he had no fur left. Instead he dragged himself on, around the building, behind a pile of wood, underneath a tarpaulin, and finally: the trapdoor was askew.
Far inside the cellar on a rug someone had thrown out, in the depths of a corner where water was dripping down the ice-cold wall, he lay down.
And so he fell asleep, never to wake again.
PRAISE FOR
‘Step aside, Stieg Larsson, Holt is the queen of Scandinavian crime thrillers’ Red
‘Holt writes with the command we have come to expect from the top Scandinavian writers’ The Times
‘If you haven’t heard of Anne Holt, you soon will’ Daily Mail
‘It’s easy to see why Anne Holt, the former Minister of Justice in Norway and currently its bestselling female crime writer, is rapturously received in the rest of Europe’ Guardian
‘Holt deftly marshals her perplexing narrative … clichés are resolutely seen off by the sheer energy and vitality of her writing’ Independent
‘Her peculiar blend of off-beat police procedural and social commentary makes her stories particularly Norwegian, yet also entertaining and enlightening … reads a bit like a mash-up of Stieg Larsson, Jeffery Deaver and Agatha Christie’ Daily Mirror
ANNE HOLT is Norway’s bestselling female crime writer. She spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway’s Minister for Justice between 1996 and 1997. She is published in 30 languages with over 7 million copies of her books sold.
Also by Anne Holt
THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES:
Blind Goddess
Blessed Are Those Who Thirst
Death of the Demon
The Lion’s Mouth
Dead Joker
No Echo
Beyond the Truth
1222
THE VIK/stubo SERIES:
Punishment
The Final Murder
Death in Oslo
Fear Not
What Dark Clouds Hide
First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2016 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Anne Holt, 2003
English translation copyright © Anne Bruce, 2016
Originally published in Norwegian as Sannheten bortenfor. Published by agreement with the Salomonsson Agency.
The moral right of Anne Holt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
The moral right of Anne Bruce to be identified as the translator has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 816 6
Paperback: 978 0 85789 231 7
E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 238 6
Printed in Great Britain.
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