by Anne Holt
“He may have done just that,” Adam said. “He may have gone out last night.”
“I’ll call the police,” the woman said with some force. “If you won’t believe that I know Rudolf Fjord well enough to know that something is wrong, I will call the authorities.”
She turned around and walked back toward her own door.
“Wait a minute,” Adam said in a calm voice. “Mrs. Helleland, we are from the police.”
She spun around.
“Excuse me?”
Her agile hands quickly brushed over her hair again before she smiled with relief and added, “Of course. It’s that awful business with Victoria Heinerback. Terrible. It did so affect poor Rudolf. Of course, you’re here to get more information. But then . . .”
She cocked her head to one side, then the other—small, quick movements. Now she really did look like a weasel, with a pointed noise and small, darting eyes.
“Then we should go in,” she decided. “But first I must ask to see your ID. Just a moment, I’ll go and get the keys.”
Before the two policemen could say anything, she’d disappeared.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Adam said.
“Of what?” Sigmund asked. “She’s got the key! And you can say what you like, the woman talks a lot of sense.”
“I don’t want to think about what we might find.”
Eva Helleland reappeared. She glanced at the ID cards that the two men held up and nodded.
“Rudolf had his bathroom renovated last autumn,” she explained and put the key in the lock. “It looks super now. But with the workmen coming in and out, it seemed best that I had a set of keys. You never know who you can trust. And I’ve just kept them. There!”
The door was open.
Adam went in.
It was dark in the hallway. All the doors to the rooms were shut.
“The drawing room is this way,” Mrs. Helleland said, meeker now.
She slipped under Adam’s arm and walked to the end of the hall. Then she stopped in front of a double door.
“Perhaps it’s best . . .” she started and nodded to Adam.
He opened the door.
A chandelier lay on the table. The crystals were tangled. One lonely crystal dangled over the edge of the table. Rudolf Fjord was hanging from a rope slung over a hook in the center of an enormous ceiling rose, to which the chandelier had obviously until recently been attached. His tongue was blue and swollen. His eyes were open. The body hung absolutely still.
“I think you should go back to your own apartment and wait there,” Adam said. Mrs. Helleland had not dared to look into the drawing room yet.
Without asking, without even so much as glancing into the room, she obeyed. The front door was left open behind her. They heard her steps crossing the hall. Her door closing.
“Shit,” said Sigmund Berli as he walked over to the body.
He pulled up Rudolf Fjord’s pant leg and touched the white skin.
“Completely cold.”
“Do you see a note?”
Adam didn’t move. He just stood there, frozen, and watched the movement that Sigmund had set in motion. The body turned incredibly slowly around its own axis.
An overturned chair lay on the floor.
“Johanne was certainly right about one thing,” Adam thought. “She was right about the price of this case. The cost is too high. We’re stumbling around in the dark. Lifting up a corner of someone’s life here, pulling a thread there. Then it all goes to pieces. We can’t find what we’re looking for, but we keep going. Obviously Rudolf Fjord couldn’t. Who told him? Was it Ulrik? Was it Ulrik who called to warn an old customer, to say that his secret was out? That there was no point in parading around with women anymore, pretending to be a man of the world?”
“No letter, not here anyway.”
“Keep looking.”
“But I have—”
“Keep looking. And call the officer on duty. Immediately.”
Rudolf Fjord had not killed Victoria Heinerback, Adam was sure of that. He couldn’t bring himself to move. “He had dinner with some party colleagues in Bærum on the night she was murdered. His alibi was good. He was never a suspect. But we still couldn’t let him be. We can never let anyone be,” he thought to himself.
“There’s no note here.” Sigmund Berli sounded irritated. “He hanged himself because he was scared of being caught with his pants down. Not much to write home about, maybe.”
“And that . . .” Adam said, and finally managed to walk over to the body, which had stopped turning. “The fact that Rudolf Fjord may have paid for sex with Trond Arnesen’s lover is something that we will keep to ourselves. There are limits to how much damage we can do to other people’s lives and”—he looked up at Rudolf Fjord’s face. The broad, masculine chin seemed bigger now, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like a stranded deepwater fish—“reputation,” Adam finished. “We’ll keep that to ourselves. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sigmund agreed. “Fine by me. Oslo police are on their way. Ten minutes, they said.”
They got there in eight.
When Kari Mundal answered the phone four hours later, annoyed that someone should call at half past ten on a Friday night, it only took a minute before she sank down onto the chair by the little mahogany shelf in the hall. She listened to what the party secretary had to say and barely managed to answer his questions adequately. When the conversation finally ended, she stayed sitting where she was. The chair was uncomfortable, and it was dark and cold in the hall. But she couldn’t get up.
She had called Rudolf yesterday. There was nothing else she could do. She had tossed and turned on Wednesday night, weighing the pros and cons of blowing the whistle, and by Thursday morning, she had made up her mind.
And it had been fatal, she realized that now.
Without having decided how she would pursue the matter, she had called him. Without having thought about how the party, and thereby Kristian Mundal, would cope with such a scandal, she had told him what she knew.
“I was so angry,” she thought, hearing only her own breathing, shallow and fast. “I was so disappointed and angry. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just wanted him to know that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He needed to know that his secret hadn’t gone to the grave with Victoria. I was so angry. And so very disappointed.”
“What’s the matter, dear?”
Kristian Mundal emerged from the living room. Light flooded through the double door and nearly blinded her. Her husband was a dark figure in the doorway, with his pipe in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
“Rudolf is dead,” she said.
“Rudolf?”
“Yes.”
Her husband moved toward her. She could still hear only her own breathing, her own pulse. He turned on the light, and it hurt her eyes. She was crying.
“What are you talking about?” he asked and took her hand.
“Rudolf committed suicide,” she whispered. “They’re not sure when. Yesterday, possibly. They don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Committed suicide? Taken his own life?” Kristian Mundal bellowed. “But why in the world would that idiot go and take his own life?”
The party secretary had told her that no note had been found. Not in the apartment, nor on his computer. They would, of course, keep searching, but for the moment, nothing had been found.
“No one knows,” Kari Mundal said and let go of his hand. “No one knows anything yet.”
“I hope you didn’t leave a note, Rudolf,” Kari Mundal thought. “I hope that your mother, poor soul, never finds out why you were so frightened that you had to take your own life.”
“I need a drink,” Kristian Mundal said and swore savagely. “And so do you.”
She followed him without saying any more.
It was a busy evening, with telephone calls and lots of visitors. No one noticed that the normally vivacious woman was completely silent for the first time in
her long life. Everyone talked at once. Some were desperate. Some cried. People came and went far into the night. Kari Mundal made coffee and tea, mixed strong drinks, and prepared sandwiches at midnight. But she said nothing.
As dawn approached, when Kristian had finally fallen asleep, she got up and went downstairs. In her handbag, in a compartment of her voluminous purse, was a copy of the incriminating invoice. She took it out and went over to the fireplace. There she lit a match. Only when the flames licked her fingers did she let go of the paper.
Two days later, she made up an excuse to look at the old accounts again. She immediately found what she was looking for. The original invoice was torn to shreds and flushed down the toilet on the third floor, an old-fashioned toilet with a high-level tank and a porcelain hand pull on a gold chain.
No suicide note was ever found. For a while, a couple of policemen in Oslo thought they knew why Rudolf Fjord had hanged himself in his own living room so soon after he’d been elected as the much-celebrated leader of one of the largest political parties in Norway. They never said anything. After some years, the episode faded and was forgotten.
An elderly lady on Snarøya, to the west of Oslo, was the only person who knew the reason he had committed suicide.
And she never forgot.
Fifteen
Leap year,” shouted Kristiane. “Leap bound bang bang!”
“No pretend guns in the house,” Johanne reprimanded and took the plastic spatula she was brandishing out of her hand.
“Honestly, you can’t seriously call that a pretend gun,” Adam said, irritated.
“Bang, bang! What’s a leap year?”
“It’s a year that has a day like today,” Adam explained as he hunkered down beside her. “The twenty-ninth of February. Days like this come only once every four years. Maybe they’re shy.”
“Shy,” repeated Kristiane. “Leap year. Peep here. Bang!”
She stopped and put her hair behind her ears, like her mother had just done.
“But what’s the scientific explanation?” She was serious. “I want to understand, not just be told something funny.”
The adults exchanged looks; Johanne’s was anxious, and Adam’s was proud.
“Well, the Earth takes a bit longer than 365 days to . . .”
He stroked his head and looked over at Johanne for help.
“To go around its own axis?”
“That takes twenty-four hours, Adam.”
“To go around the sun?”
Johanne just smiled and wrung out a cloth.
“To go right around the sun,” he said with conviction to Kristiane. “That’s what we call a year, but it’s a tiny bit longer. So, every now and then, we have to gather together all the extra bits that add up to make a full day. Every fourth year. And then there was something about Gregory and Julius, but I can’t remember that.”
“You’re smart,” Kristiane said. “Julius is a chimpanzee in the zoo, Adam. I’m going to play leap years with Leonard, and today Daddy is coming to get me. You’re not my daddy.”
“No, but I love you very much.”
Then she shot off, with Jack at her heels. The small feet clattered down the stairs, and the door slammed behind them. Adam snorted and got up with pride.
“I wonder how many times we’ll have to go through that whole rigmarole that I’m not her father,” he said. “We’ll have to get the custody agreement figured out soon. It’s been chaotic this winter. Wasn’t she supposed to stay at Isak’s on Friday?”
“What’s the matter with you?” Johanne asked and stroked his hair. “Is it just the Rudolf Fjord case, or is it—”
“Just? Just?” He pulled his head away, a bit too abruptly. “It’s fucking not ‘just’ when your job forces people to commit suicide.”
“You haven’t driven anyone to suicide, Adam. You know that.”
He sat down on the nearest bar stool. A half-eaten celery stick was lying on a dirty plate. He picked it up and took a bite.
“No, actually, I don’t know that,” he said and took another bite.
“My love,” she said, and he had to smile.
She kissed him on the ear, on the neck.
“You haven’t killed anyone,” she whispered. “You catch spiders and then let them out into the garden. Rudolf Fjord took his own life. He chose to die. By his own volition. Of course it’s”—she stood up and looked him in the eye—“of course it’s not your fault. You know that.”
“I miss you,” he said, chewing on the celery.
“Miss me? I’m here, you fool.”
“Not quite,” he answered. “None of us are all here. Not like before.”
“It will get better,” she thought. “Soon. I’ve finally started to sleep now. Not a lot, but a lot more. Spring will soon be here. Ragnhild is growing. Getting stronger. Everything will get better. If only this case were over and you—”
“Have you considered taking some time off?” she asked lightly as she started to stack the dirty plates in the dishwasher.
“Time off?”
“Yes, take your paternity leave. For real.”
“As if we can afford that . . .”
He chewed and chewed and stared at the green, half-eaten stick.
“I could start working again,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be good to have this case off your hands? To forget it? Let someone else take over, someone else take—”
“No way.”
He scratched his groin.
“Isn’t it strange,” he said with his eyes narrowed. “Isn’t it strange to choose death rather than—”
“Don’t change the subject. Have you actually considered it?”
“You’re entitled to more leave, Johanne. Which is only fair and reasonable. You’ve just given birth, you’re breast-feeding. It’s good for Ragnhild. So it’s good for us.”
He threw the remains of the celery at the garbage can in the cabinet under the sink, as if to underscore that the conversation was over. He missed.
“But isn’t it peculiar,” he continued and opened out his hands, “that a person should choose to take his life because he risks being outed as a homosexual? In 2004? For Christ’s sake, they’re everywhere! We’ve got hordes of lesbians at work, and they don’t seem to feel persecuted or bothered, and we—”
“Actually, strictly speaking, you don’t know much about that,” she said as she picked up the celery. “You barely know them.”
“Come on, the finance minister of Norway is gay, for Christ’s sake. And no one seems to be too bothered about that!”
Johanne smiled, and it annoyed him.
“The finance minister is a . . . soigné gentleman from the west end,” she said. “Discreet, professional, and according to what little we know of him, an excellent cook. He’s lived with the same man for centuries. That’s a bit”—she held her index finger and thumb together in an exaggerated gesture—“different,” she continued, “from someone who buys sex from young boys while parading around with blondes on his arm whenever there’s a camera nearby.”
Adam said nothing. He put his head down on his arms.
“Why don’t you get a little sleep?” she said quietly and stroked his back. “You were up all night.”
“I’m not tired,” he said into his sleeve.
“What are you then?”
“Depressed.”
“Can I do anything for you?”
“No.”
“Adam—”
“The worst thing is that Rudolf was cleared as a suspect so early on in the case,” he said angrily and sat up. “His alibi was fine. There was nothing to indicate that he was behind it. Quite the opposite—according to his colleagues in the Storting, he was devastated. So why couldn’t we just leave the man in peace? What the hell does it matter to us who he’s fucking?”
“Adam,” she tried again and held his neck between her hands.
“Listen to me,” he said and pushed her away.
“I’m listening. It�
��s just a bit difficult to answer when what you’re saying isn’t very sensible. You had every reason to investigate Rudolf Fjord in more detail. Especially after the argument you heard between him and Kari Mundal. At the memorial service out at—”
“I remember it well enough,” he cut her off, cross. “But it can’t be more than five days since you sat here and drew a profile of a killer that was nothing like Rudolf Fjord. Why did I then have to pursue—”
“You never believed in that profile,” she said curtly and got out the dish soap. “Not then and not now. And to be honest, I think you should stop moping.”
“Moping? Moping!”
“Yes, you’re moping. Feeling sorry for yourself. You can just stop it now.”
She slammed the dishwasher shut, put the box of detergent back on the shelf in the cabinet, and turned to face him, with her right hand on her hip. And grinned.
“Meanie,” he mumbled and smiled reluctantly back. “Anyway, you said yourself that the profile had a number of weak points. Vegard Krogh didn’t fit. He wasn’t well-known enough.”
Johanne picked up Sulamit the fire engine, which had been abandoned on the floor. The eyes on the radiator grill had lost their pupils and stared blindly at her. She fidgeted with the broken ladder.
“I’ve been doing some more thinking,” she said.
“And?”
“Do you remember . . . do you remember when we were sitting here with Sigmund? Not last Tuesday, but a few weeks ago?”
“Of course.”
“He asked me what would be the worst imaginable murder.”
“Yes.”
“And I answered that it would have to be something like a killer without a motive.”
“Yes.”
“They don’t exist.”
“Right. So what did you mean then?”
“I meant . . . I still think my reasoning stands, by the way. A killer who chooses his victims completely arbitrarily, without a motive for the individual murders, would be extremely difficult to catch. Assuming that a number of other factors are in place, of course. Such as the killer doing a good job, to put it simply.”
“Aha . . .”
He nodded and put his hand on his stomach.