by Anne Holt
“Hey presto,” he said instead. “Hey presto, and I was just out of your life. With no explanation. Without so much as a reproach about something or other, something that might have made it a bit easier to—”
“Billy T.!”
Her voice was so sharp that his mouth snapped shut.
“You mentioned that you had a problem with Linus,” she said without taking her eyes from the TV screen. “I suggest you tell me what it is. Then I can draw the obvious conclusion: I can’t help. Then you can leave again. Really, I’d like to watch this program.”
“They’re going to be broadcasting it twenty-four hours a day. Loads of repeats.”
“Yes, of course.”
“There’s something wrong with Linus.”
Picking up a pair of glasses, Hanne perched them on her nose and continued to watch the TV for a few seconds before turning to face him, gazing at him over the frames.
“Is he ill?” she asked.
“No.”
“How old is he now? Twenty . . . one?”
“Two. Twenty-two.”
“And he’s not in such good shape?”
“No. Yes . . . that’s maybe what the problem is. He’d probably answer that he’s in better shape than he’s ever been. If he answered you at all. As far as I’m concerned, well, he’s hardly spoken a word to me in six months.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s repeating his high school certificate. As a private student. He didn’t graduate from high school at the time he should have. Just messed about.”
“Did Iris put up with that sort of thing?”
“Grete. It’s Grete who’s Linus’s mother.”
“Five children with five different women, Billy T. You can hardly reproach me for not managing to tell them apart, after all these years.”
“Six,” he muttered.
“Six? Children? Have you and Tone-Marit had another one?”
“No. Jenny’s the only one I had with her. Tone-Marit and I separated the summer after you were . . .”
He nodded at the wheelchair.
“I had Niclas with . . . someone else.”
Yet again he thought he discerned the suggestion of a smile. In any case, she shook her head gently.
“I remember Linus,” she said after a pause, without asking him who was the mother of his sixth child. “He was a lovely little boy. I don’t quite see what the problem is if he’s behaving well. Going back to school again to make up for—”
“He’s become a different person, Hanne.”
“People change. Especially at that age.”
“Not the way that—”
“It’s already half past ten, Billy T. When the bomb went off, I said you could come back later. Not at night. For me, it’s nighttime now. From what you’ve told me, it’s not just the case that there’s little I can do for Linus. It seems as if he doesn’t need any help at all. What does the boy himself say about it?”
“As I said, he’s not at all talkative. Linus, Hanne! Do you remember how he used to chatter away? Unstoppable, he—”
“Hammo!”
A slim young girl, tall for her ten years, stood in the doorway.
“I can’t sleep. Do you think there’ll be another explosion?”
“Ida,” Hanne said. “Come here.”
The child ran across the floor in her bare feet. Lithe and quick, she crept on to Hanne’s knee.
“Hi,” she said solemnly, staring at Billy T. with the biggest brown eyes he had ever seen. “My name is Ida Wilhelmsen.”
“Hi. My name is Billy T. I’m a friend of—”
“Billy T. and I worked together in the police a very long time ago,” Hanne said placidly. “But he was just about to leave now.”
Kissing Ida lightly on the hair, she stroked the girl’s cheek.
“I think you really have to try to get to sleep, sweetheart. It’s a school day tomorrow. There won’t be another explosion. Go back to bed, and I’ll come soon and tuck you in again. Okay?”
The girl picked her way back across the living room floor and disappeared into the deeper recesses of the apartment just as swiftly as she had appeared. Billy T. thought he could detect a fragrance lingering behind her, of child and bedclothes and maybe shampoo.
“Sweet girl,” he said.
“Yes. She’s like Nefis. Lucky that way.”
“What was it she called you? Hammo? Why that? And why does she have only your surname?”
Hanne demonstratively pulled back the sleeve of her sweater to reveal her wristwatch.
“You’ll be able to find your own way out, I expect?”
He did not budge.
She turned the wheelchair to the flat-screen TV.
“Why did you come here?” she asked in such a soft voice that he doubted whether he could believe his ears.
“As I said, I’m worried about Linus, that he’s mixed up in something—”
“No,” she interrupted him, raising her voice. “Why did you come here? To me, of all people? After all these years, why on earth did you come specifically to me for help?”
Billy T. stood up slowly and pushed the half-empty soda bottle down into his jacket pocket.
“I think Linus is involved in some criminal activity,” he said quickly, and loudly, as if afraid of being interrupted again. “I don’t want to go to the police. I’ve nothing to go to them with, for that matter. At the same time, I need some help to sort my thoughts, to work it out. I need help from someone with police experience. But someone who doesn’t work in the police. Who doesn’t have anything to do with the police. You don’t have anything to do with anyone at all, as far as I understand. What’s more, you knew Linus once upon a time. That time when everything was . . .”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Whatever. I’m pretty desperate. It seemed like a good idea. I see I was wrong.”
“Yes. You were wrong.”
Shrugging again, he began to head for the hallway.
“You were wrong,” she repeated, slightly louder, and he stopped and wheeled around.
“Yes,” he answered, sounding annoyed. “So you say.”
“Not only about me being able to help you.”
“No, I suppose so. Okay then. Listen, I realize this was a waste of time.”
He held out his arms in despair and looked around the spacious living room.
“Hell, Hanne. It’s been your own choice to sit here in this swanky prison. You’ve broken off with all your old friends. You hardly leave this apartment, from the little I’ve heard about you in eleven years. You don’t work. You—”
“Wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Yes. I’ve started to work.”
“What?” His expression changed from skepticism to disbelief.
“Yes,” she repeated. “I’ve started to work again.”
“You? But you were at home this morning and . . . where . . . where on earth do you work?”
“For the police,” Hanne Wilhelmsen answered. “I’m back with the Oslo Police Force, Billy T., and I can’t help you.”
Oslo’s Chief of Police, Silje Sørensen, tossed an empty can of sugar-free Red Bull in the wastepaper basket before crossing to the window and leaning her forehead on the glass. Her breath formed patches of condensation on the pane. It was dark outside, and the weather had changed for the worse. It grew more difficult with the passing of the years, she felt, having to wait like this for spring. April was worst of all. Dense flurries of huge wet snowflakes blanketed the gray grass below Oslo Prison.
“It’s past midnight,” the Deputy Police Chief said as he entered her office without knocking. “One of us at least should go home.”
“You go. I’m not at all tired, in fact.”
“Thanks for the offer. I thought I should give you a run-through first, though.”
Silje Sørensen turned around. One of her three deputies and head of CID, Håkon Sand, gave a protracted yawn, making no attempt to hid
e it.
“Quite a case to land in your lap so quickly,” he said, opening his eyes wide as he shook his head energetically. “It’s been only four weeks since you took up the post, hasn’t it?”
“Five,” she said tersely, and returned to sit behind her desk. “And yes. Quite a case.”
“Provisional number of confirmed deaths,” he began with a slightly overplayed, chanting tone to his voice. “Ten. In addition, there are thirteen missing, presumed dead—a figure that may continue to rise, but that’s unlikely. Besides—”
“I learned that several hours ago, Håkon. If you’ve no more than that to report, then it’s fine for you to go home.”
“Mohammad Awad.”
“What?”
“There are indications that a young man by the name of Mohammad Awad was behind the bombing.”
Lifting his backside, he fished a box of snuff from his right front pocket. Regular use had left a permanent ring on the denim of his jeans.
“Though we’re not very much the wiser as to who he is.”
Silje Sørensen leaned forward, resting her arms on the desk, and clasped her hands. She fixed her eyes on him though she did no more than raise her eyebrows.
“Mohammad Awad,” Håkon reiterated as he used his tongue to tuck a plug of snuff into place. “Twenty-three years old. Born here, of parents from Sudan. Refugees. They came to Norway in 1988. When Mohammad came into the world, his parents had just been allocated a house in Groruddalen, where the boy grew up with two older and three younger siblings. All of them girls.”
Once again he yawned so emphatically that tears welled up in his eyes. Grabbing a coffee cup from the desk, he peered fleetingly into it, before pouring the remains of the room-temperature coffee down his throat without so much as a grimace.
“Intelligent girls. The two oldest are at the university. The younger ones are also well adjusted. The father runs a gas station in Furuset; the mother stays at home.”
The Chief of Police still said nothing.
“Mohammad was a good boy as well,” Håkon Sand went on, while slowly massaging his neck with his right hand. “For a long time. Graduated from high school with relatively good grades. That was four years ago now, and we don’t have a complete picture of what he’s been doing since then. Other than that, there’s reason to believe he’s undergone some kind of radicalization.”
“Sudanese—aren’t they often Christians? Or adhere to some tribal religion or other?”
“Well, Silje. Nearly 80 percent are Muslims. It’s an Islamic republic.”
“What does the Security Service have to say?”
“They’re saying exactly what I’m telling you now. We were lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“The Security Service have had him in their sights. Only just. They have a slim file on the guy, just as they’re starting to keep files of varying thickness on quite a few of Mohammad’s type.”
“Which is . . . ?” The Police Chief opened out her arms to reinforce her question.
“What do you mean?” Håkon Sand asked.
“ ‘Mohammad’s type.’ What’s that, exactly?”
He gave a slight shrug.
“Immigrant boy. Gets every opportunity in this country. Becomes radicalized all the same. Bites the hand that feeds him, in a manner of speaking.”
“From what you’re telling me, it’s almost certainly his parents who have fed this boy. But do continue.”
“As you know, the identification work at the crime scene is going to take time.”
He spat tiny flakes of snuff out on to the back of his hand before straightening his back and continuing: “But they’ve found something to go on in the meantime. The American Church diagonally across the street has CCTV cameras outside. Two of them don’t work, unfortunately. But they have one just here . . .”
Without asking, he rotated the open MacBook Pro on the Police Chief’s desk. After typing for a few seconds, he turned it back and leaned toward her. The screen showed an aerial photo of Frogner.
“There,” he said, pointing at a dot on the church’s northern flank. “And, in addition, by some miracle, it was not knocked out of commission by the explosion. It points slightly to the west and picks up the traffic on Gimle terrasse coming from the west, and some distance along Fritzners gate.”
“Odd building, that church. Looks like a Christmas tree.”
“And there’s a Seven-Eleven store there,” Håkon Sand plowed on, unmoved, and indicated an address on Bygdøy allé. “As you know, they have cameras too. The preliminary cross-check between the footage from both locations shows only one reappearance.”
“Mohammad Awad, I assume.”
“Yes. He’s observed at the Seven-Eleven at twenty to eleven. Fifteen minutes later, only minutes prior to the explosion, he’s strolling along here . . .”
His finger ran eastward along Gimle terrasse and up Fritzners gate.
“. . . and here. Presumably he’s walked along Thomas Heftyes gate from Bygdøy allé.”
“That walk doesn’t take quarter of an hour. Four or five minutes, max.”
“Yes. Agreed. But in any case he was in the vicinity minutes before the blast and has been nowhere to be found since.”
“When did we start looking for him?”
“About five o’clock this afternoon. In the meantime we’ve managed to keep his name—and, for that matter, our suspicions—to ourselves. Of course, it’s just a matter of time before it leaks out: sooner or later his family will tell someone that we’re searching exhaustively for the boy.”
“So he’s assumed to be some kind of . . . suicide bomber, is that what you’re saying? Ambling about in Frogner with a bomb under his arm, dropping into the Seven-Eleven for a can of Coke first, before blowing NCIN and himself sky high?”
“He bought a bottle of water.”
“Very well, then.”
Silje Sørensen puffed out her cheeks and released the air slowly through her lips. Then she opened her eyes wide and drew her forefinger under each, to remove the mascara she was convinced had started to run.
“That’s what we have, Silje. So far.”
“It is at least something.”
“It’s early in the investigation.”
“It’s fucking late, that’s what it is.”
Now she was the one to yawn, with a mouth she struggled to keep closed and also concealed, with a slim hand where a large diamond glittered in the light from the desk lamp. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
“Does he belong to any group?” she mumbled.
“Not as far as the Security Service is aware. He has some kind of loose connection to the Prophet’s Ummah, through a childhood friend from Furuset, but he isn’t registered as any sort of . . . fully signed-up member, or however they organize themselves these days.”
“The Prophet’s Ummah,” she said despondently.
“That lot are crazy.”
“Who do you mean by ‘that lot’?”
“Stop it, Silje.”
Håkon Sand rose from his seat and, placing his hands on the small of his back, swayed slightly.
“You’re really being a bit too touchy. You ought to know me well enough, after all these years, to know I’m not a racist. On the contrary. In all modesty, I’ve worked my socks off to recruit other ethnic groups than us palefaces to the police force, for example. My children have lots of Muslim friends. Lovely children, smart at school and football, and I don’t know what. They go in and out of our house. Get a grip.”
“I don’t like expressions such as ‘that lot.’ ”
“I mean the reprobates, Silje! Exactly the way I don’t like the fucking drug pushers, child molesters, thieves, and violent louts, no matter where on earth they come from. In the same way, I let myself get enraged about young men who, in an international context, have won the lottery by having their parents get them into Norway and give them opportunities they’ve never had themselves, so that they ca
n just throw it back in our faces with their religious claptrap, shenanigans, and hatred.”
“That way of speaking isn’t appropriate for a deputy police chief.”
“Go to hell. I couldn’t care less.”
He headed for the door, narrowly avoiding tripping on the edge of a thick rug that had cost far more than any public sector budget allowed. He stopped short and gazed around the room in annoyance, as if only now, several weeks after Oslo’s new Police Chief had moved into the second-from-top floor at Grønlandsleiret 44, he had noticed its transformation into a showroom for good taste.
“Have you bought all this yourself, or what?”
“Yes.”
Håkon shook his head slowly.
“Some people have all the luck, you know. Inherited wealth and a job as a Police Chief. Despite getting your master’s in law only three years ago. I’m going home, if it’s okay with you. Be back in a few hours.”
He did not look at her.
“How long have we known each other?” she asked his retreating back.
“What?”
“You and I. How long have we known each other?”
“Uh . . . fifteen years?”
“Eighteen. We’ve known each other since I began here as a civil servant and you were a police officer studying law part-time. And we’ve been friends for more than eleven. Since the time when Hanne Wilhelmsen was shot, and you and Karen and Billy T. tried to drum up some sort of collective voluntary effort to knock a hole in that wall she built up around herself.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know how many times you’ve made a point of the fact that I happen to be rich?”
“No. See you at”—he peered up at an elegant wall clock with hands of polished red oak—“seven o’clock.”
“Once a week. At least. Once a week for more than eleven years. A sarcastic dig here, a putdown there. And it’s grown worse, Håkon. You’ve grown worse since I got a job you thought you deserved more than me. Because you have a law degree, and I’ve only got a master of jurisprudence qualification?” Her fingers outlined little quote marks in the air. “Because you’re older than me? Or because you’re a man?”
Håkon Sand shrugged as he opened the door. “I’m the wrong gender. I knew that already when I applied. And if you’re now . . .” he ran his right hand slowly over his face, “going to make out I’m an antifeminist as well as a racist, then I’d remind you that I’ll soon have been married for a quarter of a century to a woman who would have been a Supreme Court judge, if it hadn’t been for my position disqualifying her. Doesn’t exactly demonstrate that I’ve anything against women having careers.”