In Dust and Ashes

by Anne Holt

“Dad,” she answered through her tears, running to greet him.

  When she had related the story, sobbing all the while, and he firmly pulled the curtains aside to check who was loitering outside in the street, he found it deserted.

  “I didn’t see a photographer when I arrived,” he said, giving her a quizzical look. “Strange. You must have been mistaken. I would have noticed a photographer, my dear.”

  Christel could not recall the last time her father had not believed her.

  It felt absolutely dreadful.

  TUESDAY JANUARY 12, 2016

  “Come in!” The policewoman’s invitation sounded friendly.

  Henrik Holme tugged at his high-necked sweater and tried to be discreet when he tapped the knuckles of his right hand three times in quick succession on the door frame before responding to her encouragement by stepping inside the small office.

  “How can I help you?” she asked.

  Henrik was easily knocked off his perch, by many people, but especially by women. Most women, but worst of all were ones like this.

  Probably no more than thirty-five years old, she was already a chief inspector. Her hair was blond, long and glossy, just like a TV advert, and her teeth were even and brilliant white. When she smiled, something she had still not stopped doing, her dark-blue eyes became narrow slits in her apparently ecstatic face.

  “Lovely to meet you,” she said, getting to her feet. “Amanda Foss!”

  He shook her hand: warm and dry, and the firmness of her handshake was just right.

  “We’ve met before,” she said. “But we’ve never been properly introduced.”

  “Henrik Holme,” Henrik muttered: it dawned on him that he should release her hand.

  “I know that, of course,” Amanda Foss said, resuming her seat. “Your reputation precedes you, you know. Coffee? I’ve just been to the canteen and filled the thermos.”

  She picked up a Marimekko-patterned thermos and brandished it in the air, as if it was a triumph to be able to offer relatively freshly brewed coffee.

  “I have a sort of little … special arrangement!”

  She smiled even more broadly and leaned toward him, as if disclosing a secret.

  Henrik could easily understand why this chief inspector would be granted special arrangements.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “Yes please. I mean … yes please.”

  He sniffed loudly as she poured the coffee into two cups she had produced from a drawer. The coffee aroma combined with the scent of fresh flowers. It must be her perfume, because he did not see any sign of a potted plant anywhere. But the office was attractive. The windows faced southwest, and even though the interminable gray weather had still not capitulated to snow and real winter chill, it was brighter than in his office. A poster he recognized, a black and white photograph by Robert Capa taken during the Spanish Civil War, hung on the wall. On the shelves behind her, three framed children’s drawings were displayed between tidily arranged folders and books.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked, carefully moving a steaming cup toward him. “Here. Have a biscuit too.”

  “I don’t know whether you can do anything at all,” Henrik began. “It’s to do with one of your cases.”

  “I see. I thought you dealt mainly with old, unsolved cases, though! A far as I’m aware, I don’t have any old cases. Unsolved, yes, but that won’t last long once I get stuck into them!”

  Her laughter was just as beautiful as the woman herself.

  It seemed that Chief Inspector Amanda Foss really did have a cheerful disposition.

  “It’s about this suicide,” Henrik said tentatively. “Iselin Havørn.”

  She was still smiling, but her eyes widened ever so slightly.

  “It’s not especially interesting. It’s clear cut – she took her own life.”

  “How?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Henrik reached his hand out to the small cake dish, but changed his mind. He would only make a pig of himself and drop crumbs, and they were coated in chocolate.

  “Because …”

  Before he met Hanne Wilhelmsen, he had never told a lie. At least not since he had been a really small boy. Henrik Holme was an honest soul, and deep down he thought everyone ought to be the same. Hanne, on the other hand, had a far more pragmatic relationship with the truth. That was what she called it herself: pragmatic, as if there were something positive about lying. If it was easier to arrive at something of merit by twisting reality a little, then she considered that not only acceptable but also morally justified.

  In Henrik’s experience, she was spot on as far as results were concerned. They materialized more smoothly if you didn’t always feel the need to tell it like it was. He found following her example in practice more problematic.

  “Hanne Wilhelmsen and I are working on a minor … research project.”

  A blush rose from his neck at such speed that it would suffuse his entire face in a matter of seconds.

  “Oh?”

  “We’d like to take a closer look at hidden suicides. Accidents. Involving cars and boats, as well as in the mountains. Falls and drownings and that sort of thing. We really know remarkably little about that kind of thing. Did you know, for example, that each year around six hundred Norwegians die abroad without the Norwegian authorities ever getting to know the cause of death?”

  “No,” she said, and her smile had vanished.

  He had no idea how he had dug up all this information, but his appetite was whetted. Hopefully she would interpret his red face as a sign of enthusiasm.

  “Many of these may be suicide.”

  “I guess so. And this has … and how has this anything to do with Iselin Havørn?”

  “Extending the scope,” he said desperately, raising the cup to his lips.

  His hand was shaking so badly that he had to put the cup down again.

  “Extending the scope?”

  “Yes. From the obvious suicides at one extreme … Did you find a suicide note, for instance?”

  “Yes.”

  When she nodded, tiny sparkles flashed from diamonds on her ears.

  “Precisely. An open-and-shut case, then. We want to try to examine the entire range, from obvious to concealed suicides, and by learning more about the former, we hope to be able to recognize the latter more easily.”

  “That sounds like an extraordinarily ambitious research project,” she said, and now there was little sweetness and light left in her manner.

  On the contrary – the laughter lines had disappeared to make way for a highly skeptical frown between her well-groomed eyebrows.

  “And wouldn’t that be a more appropriate subject for psychologists, anyway? Or even psychiatrists?”

  “We’re working in cooperation with them,” he said, closing his eyes. “Hanne and I are looking at the more police-oriented aspects. The others …”

  He waved vaguely at the door, as if a whole pack of shrinks waited outside in the corridor.

  “… deal with the psychological facets, so to speak.”

  He was about to bite his tongue. Quite literally.

  “Ouch,” he said under his breath as he opened his eyes again.

  Amanda Foss studied him for a few seconds before she gave a shrug.

  “I haven’t heard anything about that,” she said. “And I can’t hand out photocopies without the express permission of the Police Chief. But if you can …”

  A manicured finger pulled back her left cuff and she glanced at her watch.

  “I have a meeting along the corridor in two minutes flat. It won’t take long, I hope.”

  Letting her chair spin one hundred and eighty degrees, she opened a cupboard and removed a slim, green folder and laid it before him on the desk.

  “There are still a few formalities missing, but most of it should be there. You can sit here and have a look at it while I’m gone. As long as you make all of it anonymous, I don’t see any reason why you can’t take notes for this
…”

  Once again an unbecoming furrow appeared between her eyes.

  “… research project of yours.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a million.”

  Henrik yanked the neck of his sweater so hard that he heard a seam rip.

  “Thanks,” he repeated.

  And before he had composed himself, she was gone, trailing a faint fragrance of some kind of flower behind her. He breathed slowly, mouth open and eyes shut, before sitting up straight and opening the folder.

  It took him no more than six or seven minutes to skim through all of it.

  Not so strange, then, that the police, only hours after finding Iselin Havørn, had hinted that the woman had taken her own life. It was the most cut-and-dried suicide he could think of, with an indisputable suicide letter, referring to the witch-hunt of the past few weeks, as she chose to call it. The deceased had been discovered in bed, neatly dressed in immaculate clothes, lying on her back with her hands folded over her chest. Like a macabre lying-in-state, Henrik thought as he scrutinized the photograph. She had been found dead by her wife, Maria Kvam, who had rung the alarm telephone exactly forty seconds after she had chatted with the receptionist on the ground floor, a facility that was no longer totally foreign in Norwegian apartment blocks of the more exclusive type. Maria Kvam had been out since the morning thirty-six hours earlier, on a business trip to Bergen. The death had occurred at some time the previous evening, in any case no earlier than ten to ten. At that time, Maria had phoned home to say goodnight from her suite in the Hotel Norge. Iselin Havørn had seemed depressed, but no worse than since the notable unmasking of the right-wing radical blogger, Tyrfing.

  The cause of death was cardiac arrest.

  Provisional blood analysis showed a blood alcohol count of 0.9.

  Not excessive for a mature woman, but considering that Iselin Havørn seldom or never drank alcohol, she must have been excessively intoxicated when she died. Apparently what had caused her heart to flutter before eventually coming to a stop, however, was a considerable overdose of a tricyclic anti-depressant.

  Henrik could well understand that Iselin Havørn was down in the dumps. It was nevertheless odd that she had persuaded a doctor to prescribe anti-depressants after only three weeks of being hassled by the media.

  Maybe she had already been depressed.

  He glanced at the clock on the gable wall. Amanda Foss might come back at any moment. Henrik would really have liked to read the folder more thoroughly. Most of all he would prefer to have a copy. More than likely, Hanne would have thousands of questions and get wound up about something he had forgotten.

  Without giving it another thought, he produced his iPhone from his back pocket. With rapid and surprisingly calm dexterity, he placed each and every document in front of him, zoomed in with the camera on his phone and clicked – a total of twenty-four pages, five of them pictures. When he was finished, he heard Amanda’s black pumps approach on the corridor floor. As fast as he could, he returned all the papers to the green folder and lifted the coffee cup to his mouth, feigning nonchalance.

  “Did you find anything of interest?” Amanda Foss asked, a heartfelt smile back in place. “Or do you need more time?”

  “It’s fine,” Henrik said. “I’ll talk it over with Hanne Wilhelmsen. If she thinks it might be of interest in connection with our … project, I’d prefer to ask the Police Chief for permission to take a copy. Thanks for your help.”

  Henrik downed yet another generous mouthful of coffee before setting down his cup.

  “I didn’t do much,” Amanda Foss answered.

  Henrik took a chance on getting to his feet. He was no longer shaking. Quite the opposite – he felt unexpectedly calm and even remembered to proffer his hand for a quick farewell handshake before exiting the door and closing it softly behind him.

  His delight at achieving something Hanne would accord a nod of acknowledgment was so intense that he had to resist the temptation to break into a sprint and phone her from his own office. At the thought of what his mother would have said about his actions, he came to a sudden halt.

  And remained rooted to the spot.

  It was incredible that he had allowed himself to be tempted into breaking the rules, if not actually committing a crime, and he made up his mind not to phone Hanne at all.

  He was already thoroughly ashamed of himself.

  Jonas Abrahamsen was to drive to Linköping with a cargo of salmon.

  In fact, it would be a pleasant trip. He was to load up in Vinterbro, and the roads to Sweden through Østfold via Ørje were becoming acceptable. From the border it was mostly a straight road all the way to Marieberg, before a couple of tricky hours on narrower roads lay ahead. He usually took less than six hours for the journey, including stops to fill his stainless steel thermos with coffee and perhaps eat a banana or two.

  His vehicle would not be ready until four o’clock: it was having an oil change.

  Jonas sauntered aimlessly in Grünerløkka. He did not like being in the city center, and mostly avoided going there apart from when he felt the need to see Christel. Now his needs lay in a totally different quarter: he required new trousers and a couple of shirts. At the Storo shopping center he had found what he wanted in record time. When he saw that he still had an hour or two to kill before he could pick up his trailer truck, he had turned up his lapels and headed to the city center, no particular destination in mind.

  He was ready for a coffee. Actually he preferred boiled coffee, and at home had a coffee pot so old that it was almost black. Once he had walked a good stretch down Thorvald Meyers gate, he stopped in front of the Godt Brød bakery, where the smell of freshly baked bread and cakes wafted from the low, yellow stone building every time the door opened and closed. Jonas saw shelves of bread and cakes through the huge windows. And a coffee machine. Two women were parking their pushchairs beside the door, and the interior was crowded with people. Pulling on their brakes, they placed their sport buggies with hoods facing the street and handles close to the windowpane.

  “That’ll be fine,” one of them said. “We can watch the whole time. Come on, then.”

  She had long, dark hair beneath a blue hat trimmed with leather. Even though she was smiling, Jonas could detect a trace of irritation as she impatiently waved at her friend with extravagant, almost angry gestures.

  “They’re both sleeping like logs,” she said in dismayed tones just as Jonas realized the identity of the other woman. “We’ll be standing only two meters away from them! Honestly, Christel!”

  Jonas turned away slightly. Calmly. He took out his cellphone and began to surf at random. When he spotted from the corner of his eye that the door had slammed behind the two women, he leaned resolutely against the dirty, yellow stone wall. Still with his cellphone in hand, only thirty centimeters away from his face.

  But he was watching the child.

  Hedda was the one lying nearest him. She had acquired a new three-wheeler sport buggy: bright red and wheels bigger than her old one. The toddler was dressed in a snowsuit – he thought he could make it out under the woolen blankets tucked around her. Although the hood was up, he could still see her soft, sleeping face from where he stood.

  She wore a pink hat and slept with her mouth open.

  Jonas took a step closer. Stuffing his phone into his pocket, he thrust a hand down into the pushchair. He threw a rapid glance over his shoulder, but the two women were standing in a chaotic queue inside, Christel on tiptoe to keep an eye on the buggy. When an athletic guy in a sheepskin jacket opened the door, she was momentarily out of sight.

  Jonas ran the back of his index finger over the little one’s cheek.

  It was warm and soft. At the same time he felt a slight roughness against his finger, the typical winter complexion of Norwegian kids. He felt a jolt in the pit of his stomach as he remembered: Dina’s face that was given a lavish application of cream after her evening bath but was just as dry and frostbitten again after the next day�
��s outdoor activities at kindergarten.

  He withdrew his hand and started walking.

  Tears had begun to roll down his cheek, combining with sleet that gained momentum from a north wind forecast to be gale force by that evening.

  He had never touched Hedda before.

  His finger burned inside his jacket pocket and he wept, heart-broken.

  WEDNESDAY JANUARY 13, 2016

  As Henrik Holme let himself into Hanne Wilhelmsen’s apartment in Kruses gate, he felt an absence of anticipation so strong that he froze to the spot in surprise.

  This was something entirely new. For almost two years now, he had arrived here at her least command and dutifully left again whenever she ordered him to. Their unwritten contract applied to both work and leisure time; Hanne decided when he should come and how long he could stay.

  He always looked forward to his visits. No matter whether it was just the two of them and they had hours of work ahead, or Ida was going to bake pizza and a Friday evening was to be spent playing cards and maybe watching a movie – visiting Hanne’s had become the very meaning of his life. At least it was the part he liked best of all.

  Now he felt no pleasure whatsoever.

  Far from it: he peered at the key with something reminiscent of reluctance. He had managed to stay away yesterday. He had not phoned her, which had been his initial, exhilarated impulse after securing a photocopy of the contents of Iselin Havørn’s folder by illegal means.

  Of course, Hanne had called him only a couple of hours later.

  Now he was standing here, and could hardly do anything other than turn the key.

  “You’re late again!” he heard her shout as the door opened. “Don’t make it a habit.”

  He did not answer. Instead, he flipped off his sodden boots and grabbed a newspaper from the bundle of old ones beside the door, waiting to be thrown out, and stuffed each boot full of paper before setting them aside on a shoe rack. Today he paid special attention to arranging his laces so that they lay exactly parallel beyond the toe and hung down at the wall. As usual, both were of equal length.

  “Are you coming in?”