“All I have on in that picture, I inherited from my uncle,” he remembered his grandfather having said once.
Milo paid no attention to it then, but now he understood. The alternative to the oversize clothing and shoes had been to run around bare-legged in worn-out shorts and undershirts. And now he also understood why the three boys were smiling like that toward the camera.
With the adult clothes on they felt like men. No longer boys.
He picked up another postcard. Sent from Milan not many years before his grandfather died.
Milan, 5/5 1985
Cara Brenda
Only you with your background in Ireland can really understand how poor it is possible to be. How poor I have been. That is our bond. From one poor person to another. That is why it is so strong.
Antonio
And Milo remembered an incident in a shoe store. He and his grandfather had been shopping. Both had found shoes that fit perfectly, but then his grandfather gave them back to the clerk and said, “I’ll take these, but one size larger.”
Both the clerk and Milo had looked uncomprehendingly at his grandfather, who explained.
“I’ve never been able to walk in shoes that fit.”
Milo told his mother, who had shrugged, and the incident disappeared into oblivion.
Until now, when he suddenly felt that he understood.
Milo left the shoes and box where they were, and went back to the living room. He looked around for a place to sit down, and went out on the terrace. He tried to call Corrado to tell him about the apartment and what he had found out about their grandfather, but his cousin did not answer.
There was still some time before he would meet Ingrid Tollefsen’s adviser, Chiara Salvatore, down at New York University, and he remained standing with the phone in his hand. He felt like talking with someone, and called Sørensen.
The chief inspector answered quickly.
“Milo! How’d it go yesterday?”
Milo told him about the meeting with Forum, and that it would probably take longer to get access to Ingrid Tollefsen’s work with the pharmaceutical giant.
“Not surprising. And when are you meeting the professor she visited over there?”
“Soon. In an hour,” Milo replied.
“You sound a little down.”
“Just a bit thoughtful.”
“Okay. Where you are now?”
“I’m in an apartment in Manhattan.”
“Apartment? I thought you were staying at a hotel.”
“Yes, I am. I’m just clearing something up.”
“Family business?” Sørensen asked, and Milo could hear him blowing cigarette smoke past his phone.
“Yes, you can safely say that. Family business.”
31
Professor Chiara Salvatore was a thin, short woman with a large nose, and immediately reminded Milo of a bird, which the piercing voice underscored.
She was dressed in a black pantsuit and beige blouse that revealed two pointed breasts that matched her nose. Milo estimated her age at between forty-five and fifty.
He sat down in a small love seat in her office; the professor herself sat at the desk. After some introductory courtesies he began.
“The murder of Ingrid Tollefsen is being investigated both by the Italian and the Norwegian police, and I’m here because you are one of the last persons she had contact with.”
Chiara Salvatore nodded seriously while she stroked imaginary crumbs away from the razor-sharp crease in her pants.
“It’s really awful to hear that she was killed. I’ve known her a few years now, and we sat right here and talked together only a couple of weeks ago.”
She shook her head as if to underscore how incomprehensible it was.
“What was it that was so important that made her come all the way here just to talk to you?” asked Milo.
Salvatore straightened up in the chair.
“That’s what’s a little strange. In the e-mail it sounded so urgent. But when she came here, it was actually just some of the same worries and problems as before. I didn’t think that much about it then, just thought it was a little odd, but now I’m really surprised by it,” she answered.
“You have to explain that.”
“To be honest I don’t know whether she was in crisis mode about the usual things, or if perhaps she’d changed her mind. Perhaps she didn’t say what she really had on her mind after all.”
Milo slid forward to the edge of the sofa and tried to find a sitting position where he could note down the key words from the conversation.
“What do you mean by the usual things she had problems with?”
“Both personally and at work. I’m sure you know the story of her brother who was killed? About how he got on the wrong track?”
Milo nodded.
“I guess she never stopped blaming herself. She lived in Italy for several years, and probably thought she should have been closer to him.” The professor suddenly smiled mournfully. “My tiny baby brother, she used to call him.”
Milo nodded.
“But what kind of work problems did she mention?”
Salvatore reached her hand out for a tin, supplied herself with a lozenge and sucked meditatively on it.
“It is true that for a capable and honest student like Ingrid, who was really more of a research type, it was a tough transition to go to a commercial pharmaceutical company. An American one on the stock exchange.”
“Tough? In what way?”
“You know. Demands for profitability in the projects. Bosses who nag, colleagues with sharper elbows than her, but not an equally sharp brain. It was a bit of a culture clash, you might say. I always thought she should have stayed in academia.”
“Did she mention any particular colleagues?”
Salvatore thought about it.
“I don’t remember a name, but I gathered that she did not get along too well with her boss.”
“The research director in Oslo?”
The professor nodded and put her hair into place behind her ears. Milo took notes while he tried to reconstruct the conversations he’d had in Oslo. The bosses of Ingrid Tollefsen had been full of praise for her. Had that only been a bluff? Was that why the company had denied him access to the projects she had worked on?
“Did she say anything concrete about what she was dissatisfied about? Were there any projects she worked on where there was conflict with her superiors?” he asked.
Chiara Salvatore shook her head.
“I don’t really know if I can shed any light on this,” she said.
“We have reason to believe that she came to New York to talk with you about something in particular. She asked you to use her personal e-mail address. And then you say that you only had a kind of friendly chat?”
“Yes. But I’m also saying that it was odd. When I think about it now anyway. She couldn’t have come here just to talk with me. Or else, as I said earlier, she pulled back.” Salvatore straightened a bundle of papers on the desk and put a ballpoint pen into a mug with other pens and pencils.
“How did she seem?” asked Milo.
The professor thought for a long time.
“Was she afraid? Stressed? Angry?” he continued.
“Nervous,” Salvatore answered at last.
“Nervous? How?”
“Well, just the way she conducted herself. The way she checked her cell phone all the time. Her eyes. I don’t know. But when you ask me to think back now, I would say nervous. Or uncomfortable. I thought perhaps it was man trouble. You know, a quarrel with her boyfriend or something like that.”
“Do you know if she had a boyfriend?”
Salvatore shrugged her shoulders and smiled at him.
“A beautiful girl like Ingrid? There must have been men in her life. She had a boyfriend in Rome anyway when she lived there.”
Milo wrote that down in his notebook and browsed a little in it.
“Did she mention anything about s
teroids?”
“Steroids? No, why should she have?”
“Think carefully, Professor. If not steroids, perhaps growth hormones?”
She shook her head, and Milo set aside his notebook.
They continued talking about the time in Rome. About how Salvatore and Tollefsen had met each other and what they had worked on. Even if they never developed a friendship, it was clear that there was respect between them. A mentor and her protégé.
“Who is Lucca, by the way?” Milo asked suddenly.
Professor Salvatore looked at him with surprise.
“My husband is named Lucca. Dottore Lucca Salvatore. Why are you wondering about—”
“You wrote in the e-mail that Lucca had asked about her. And then you suggested dinner.”
She swallowed almost imperceptibly.
“Nothing ever came of it,” she said.
“But those two knew each other?”
“Of course. She met my husband on a couple of occasions in Rome.”
“But did they also meet when you weren’t around?”
Milo held her gaze. He was incapable of pretending to be tactful.
“What is it you’re actually suggesting?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m just wondering how well they knew each other.”
“Well enough that we could have gone out and had dinner together, the three of us. Not well enough that they’ve seen each other alone,” she answered readily.
Her irritation filled the small office.
“And what does your husband do?” he asked politely.
“He runs a research company.”
“And what kind of research are we talking about?”
“Medical research. They specialize in clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry,” Salvatore explained.
Milo was startled.
“Don’t the companies do that themselves?”
The Italian professor sighed in disbelief at what she saw as a silly question.
“In the pharmaceutical industry, as in all other industries, it’s about specialization. It’s more cost-effective to have large units that do many tests. At the same time, using a third party ensures independence.”
Milo nodded in understanding.
“I see, but we don’t need to go into detail about that now. It was actually the conversation between you and Ingrid I was wondering about. The whole thing seems so strange. Traveling all the way to New York just to talk about general dissatisfaction with her boss and her job?”
“Absolutely. But as I said, it could be that she changed her mind, that she had more on her mind.”
“Or else you weren’t the one she really came to see,” Milo concluded.
* * *
It was the picture of his grandfather and Brenda with the Statue of Liberty in the background that started him thinking. And Kathrin was not hard to persuade.
He met her at the ferry pier, and together they took the boat, first to Liberty Island and then to Ellis Island, through which all the immigrants had been channeled—or rejected—on their way to the New World.
“It’s really unbelievable. I’ve been in New York so many times, but I’ve never taken the time for this. I’ve just rushed from meetings to dinners, and barely had time for any gallery visits. I should have done this a long time ago,” Kathrin said contentedly.
They stood at the back of the ferry, observing the Manhattan skyline grow steadily smaller.
“I was here when I was little, but I don’t remember much of it. My grandfather often spoke about his admiration for those who left. They had no idea what they were coming to. Perhaps they’d gotten a letter from a relative who said there were opportunities here, and then they were on their way,” said Milo.
They walked along the railing, and looked toward the Statue of Liberty as it came steadily closer, becoming more and more monumental.
“Imagine the feeling of seeing her after weeks at sea,” said Kathrin.
He looked at the enormous landmark and tried to imagine what it must have been like. Leaving everything familiar and arriving in the harbor in New York. Seeing the Statue of Liberty coming closer and closer, with the skyscrapers in the background.
That was what grandfather Antonio also must have thought when he’d visited New York for the first time. Milo recalled the photograph of him and Brenda, taken on the boat on its way out to Ellis Island. While it all had seemed unreal yesterday, it slowly occurred to him that this had really happened. Antonio Cavalli loved his wife and his children and grandchildren, but his entire adult life he had also loved another. An Irish immigrant, or daughter of Irish immigrants who had lived here in New York, and whom he had visited at regular intervals over a period of over thirty years. And who now was gone, and had taken their story with her to the grave.
“What are you thinking about?” Kathrin asked.
“My grandfather.”
“Did he live here?”
“No. Well, he did have an apartment here—”
“Jeepers, he owned an apartment here in New York?”
“It’s a long story. I’m not even sure I know all of it yet,” Milo replied.
They landed at Ellis Island, and as they went through the door to the redbrick building, Kathrin grasped his hand. It was as if they were both filled with a kind of solemnity.
Because the immigration control on Ellis Island was the story about the large numbers. Over five thousand people squeezed through every day in the big arrival hall. Twelve million people who today had over a hundred million descendants in the United States.
But behind the big numbers there were small, heartrending stories. And while they quietly strolled from room to room and looked at pictures and texts, they were captivated by the story of the little family from Ukraine. With their tuberculotic two-year-old son who had to be quarantined, and whom the parents could only visit for a few minutes every Sunday. And who died after eight weeks and never joined the rest of the family on their new start in the United States.
And there were stories about the courage to press forward. About the Polish girl who got so irritated that the men were tested on whether they could solve simple arithmetic problems, while she got questions about how you washed stairs: from above and down, or from below and up? “I didn’t come to America to wash stairs,” she said to the immigration officer who responded by stamping “approved” on her papers.
And at last they stopped at the enormous black-and-white picture of an overfilled rowboat, taken in a Norwegian fjord in 1906. “The beginning of the emigrants’ journey,” it said, and Milo began to understand what courage really was.
“That was powerful,” said Kathrin, as they left the building and went back to the ferry pier.
“Yes,” answered Milo.
* * *
On the ferry back to Manhattan they were both thoughtful.
“Now I really don’t feel like heading out to a customer event this evening, but I have to,” said Kathrin.
“If you have to, then you have to.”
“What will you be doing this evening, Milo?”
“I feel a little worn-out. So I think I’ll order room service and relax in front of the TV.”
“Ah, that sounds nice. By the way, what sort of thing are you really working on? If you can talk about it, that is?”
He told her in brief terms about the murder of Ingrid Tollefsen, and that a few years earlier she had lost her brother.
Kathrin got a worried wrinkle on her forehead, and he spared her the details of the killings. He did not go into the theories about organized crime and steroids either, and how these were produced legitimately by the major pharmaceutical companies in developing countries before they were smuggled to the West.
“So both she and her brother were killed?”
He nodded.
“That’s terrible! And I thought you worked on less dangerous things, like financial crime and people who manipulate the stock market.”
“I do that too. But
who said that financial crime isn’t dangerous?” he said.
“You know what I mean. It’s one thing to be greedy and to be involved in rate manipulation, for example. But it’s another thing altogether to kill people.”
Milo breathed in the sea air and looked at her.
“Greed is a strong motivating force,” he said.
“But greed doesn’t kill people.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No. I’ve never been around anything like that anyway, and I probably work in the world’s greediest industry,” she said.
He did not reply.
“I thought it was affect that was the main reason for most murders. You know, passion, love, hate,” she said.
“That, and economic motives. I’ve worked in the same industry as you, and if you think about it, you know it can also be marked by a certain type of passion.”
“What kind of passion?”
“The passion to accumulate. The passion to maximize. It’s naïve to think that it doesn’t affect some. Or anyone,” he said.
“Sheesh, I didn’t think you were so liberal.”
“I’m not. I’m a realist.”
SUNDAY
32
He woke up early and gave up on trying to sleep longer. Instead he realized that his body was unlikely to adjust to American time, so he put on his workout clothes and found a treadmill in the hotel’s exercise room.
He had slept restlessly and tried to reconstruct parts of an unpleasant dream. He was lying on a gravel track, and felt the small stones poking into his skin. He was shot, and heard voices, and when he rolled over on his back he saw that he was lying on the gravel track at Ingieråsen School. People were standing closely packed around him. His gaze glided from Sørensen’s pale face over to Ingrid Tollefsen, who was standing silently beside him, and on to Oriana, Oliver Trimoni from Forum, Sunniva and Theresa. And he broke into a cold sweat when he saw that each of them was holding a pistol.
But then he heard a loud voice, and Banno pushed his way forward between Sunniva and Theresa, not with a pistol but a sturdy syringe. And suddenly he saw that all the others also had enormous syringes instead of pistols. Banno leaned down toward him, showing teeth, and Milo was completely paralyzed and unable to keep him from putting the needle right into his throat. The image turned fuzzy, and he heard Banno whisper, “Sleep well, boss.”
The Oslo Conspiracy Page 21