Odd Numbers

by Anne Holt

  Abid sat down on the saturated grass and began to do sit-ups. His knees were only just flexed, and he kept his hands clasped behind his neck.

  “Karina Knoph,” he groaned. “I remember her well. She was great fun. A bit different. She had blue hair for those last six months, did you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “We hung out together a lot when I was in my second year and she was in her first. To be honest, I think she was a bit in love with me.”

  He began to let his left elbow touch his right knee and then the other way around.

  “It definitely wasn’t reciprocated. I didn’t say no to some necking now and again, but there was never anything more than that. Not my type, but as I said, great fun all the same. Played in a band. Good on guitar, in fact. Not quite as good at school, I think, but on second thought . . .”

  He lay flat on his back and stretched his arms above his head. He slowly raised both legs and torso and sat like that with gritted teeth for ten seconds until he calmly sank back down again.

  “. . . that might well be just a conclusion I came to. Actually, she wasn’t there very often. At Foss, I mean.”

  “No?”

  “Played truant a lot. On the other hand, I took school seriously because I wanted to be a doctor. Or a civil engineer. Or a lawyer.”

  He sprang up in one supple movement.

  “Or to be more precise,” he said, smiling broadly, showing pearly white teeth, and wiped his forehead with the sweatband around his wrist, “that was what my father wanted. The LDE professions, you know.”

  Henrik nodded.

  Lawyer, doctor, engineer. The dream of immigrant parents on behalf of their offspring.

  Abid beckoned Henrik to accompany him across to another tree. He grabbed a rough branch above his head and began to count pull-ups. Henrik regarded him in silence.

  “Ten,” Abid panted. “Eleven, twelve.”

  He dropped to the ground.

  “We went to Pakistan that summer,” he said. “In August. Wasn’t back in Norway until . . . until she had already gone missing.”

  “I know that,” Henrik said.

  He tensed. A dog was approaching, wagging its tail. Off the leash, of course, even though it was compulsory to keep dogs on the leash in the park all year round. It was not a particularly large dog, but that did not matter.

  “Shoo,” Abid said, with menace in his voice, stamping one foot as he waved his arms about. “Away you go, shoo!”

  Stopping, the dog whimpered and turned tail to dash back to its owner.

  “I really can’t abide dogs,” Abid said. “Especially small ones.”

  “Agreed,” Henrik said, nodding effusively.

  “Drugs,” Abid said, taking hold of his foot, before starting to bend from side to side with regular, extravagant motions.

  “What?”

  “I think Karina used drugs. Maybe not very much, and probably not much more than hash.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because that summer, before we went to Rawalpindi, she asked me if I knew anyone who could get some.”

  “And so?”

  Henrik was completely taken off-guard and felt a violent impulse to slam his knuckles into the tree beside him. He managed to desist. Drugs had never been mentioned in the police documents. Not by anyone.

  “What did you answer?”

  “I got really furious.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s a long time ago. I don’t remember exactly what I answered, but it was something along the lines of . . . get lost. Since that conversation—it must have been about a week before my family left—I’ve never spoken to her in fact. I saw her at Løkka a couple of times, but I was grouchy and didn’t want to have anything to do with her.”

  He came to a standstill. Relaxed, even though his breathing was labored.

  “So the last time we met, we had a quarrel,” he said pensively.

  After a few seconds he began to bend and stretch.

  “Did Karina know any other . . .”

  Henrik swallowed and pulled his scarf more tightly around his neck.

  “Pakistanis?” Abid asked.

  Henrik could feel the blush. That damnable, dreadful blush.

  “Take it easy,” Abid said, grabbing a water bottle from his belt. “You know the rules. I can say it. You can’t. And the answer’s yes. She was strangely obsessed with dark skin.” He leaned toward Henrik for a moment and whispered: “Some of them are.”

  Now he looked at his watch.

  “Do you know who?” Henrik rushed to say. “Do you know of any other Norwegian Pakistanis she knew? Went around with?”

  Abid drank all the water that was left.

  “No,” he said, drying his mouth with his sweatband. “Or yes, in fact. I remember a pair of no-good boys she hung out with all that summer. I didn’t know them. Can’t remember their names. They didn’t go to Foss. To be honest, I think they didn’t go to school at all. Just mooched around. Almost certainly petty criminals. I recall that I warned Karina against them before that business of the drugs came up and I broke off contact.”

  “And you’ve no idea what they were called?”

  “No.”

  His face took on an expression of deep concentration.

  “I think one was called Mohammad, no less. Not that that helps you very much, since it’s one of the commonest names in Norway. But the other one?”

  Again he gave it some thought.

  He was an unusually good-looking man.

  His face was symmetrical, and he had big eyes. There was a suggestion of stubble on his chin, even though his job probably demanded a well-groomed appearance at all times. His shoulders were broad and his hips narrow.

  Henrik had almost no shoulders at all. He looked like a bottle of Riesling, a colleague had once said late one night at a seminar. The next day Henrik had gone to the liquor store and had felt so crestfallen that he had cried when he got home. Normally he seldom cried. He had finished with that in his childhood, at junior high school, where, among a lot of other things, they had called him the Worm Boy. He hadn’t understood why until he was an adult.

  “I quite simply can’t remember,” Abid Kahn said at last. “But do you have a card? I can look through some old stuff from school and see if I come across anything, okay?”

  “Fine,” Henrik mumbled as he fished out a business card.

  He had had them for several years, but this was the very first time anyone had asked for one.

  “Thanks,” he added. “Just one more thing. Do you remember . . . Did you know somebody called Gunnar Ranvik?”

  “I didn’t know him, but I remember him well. Wasn’t he in the same class as Karina? At least they were in the same year, I think.”

  Henrik nodded.

  “He was an okay guy,” Abid said. “As far as I recall.”

  “Were he and Karina a couple?”

  Abid shrugged.

  “A couple? Don’t know. Karina was a bit . . . easy, to put it nicely. I doubt whether they were a couple. It might well be that he thought they were. He did hang out a lot with Karina; that’s probably why I remember him. We didn’t have anything to do with each other. He did well at school, I think. He . . .”

  He stood momentarily with a thoughtful, almost astonished, expression.

  “I think he won some kind of research prize for young people,” he said. “It was the Technical Museum that organized it. Young Researchers? Something along those lines. He had . . .”

  Again that openly pensive expression.

  “No, I don’t remember what he won it for. He became a bit . . . retarded, did he not? Some sort of violent attack that autumn? I think I heard something about it. As I said, I didn’t know him, and Karina was gone. Now I’ve just got a couple of exercises left to do. But I’ll phone if I think of anything. Is that okay? Bye, then! Nice to meet you. It’s great to talk about something other than these damned bombs too. Even though it’s not e
xactly a cheerful subject, this case of yours, either.”

  Abid Kahn leaned over quickly and sprang up into a handstand. Slowly and steadily, he embarked on push-ups with his legs slightly extended, up in the air.

  “Bye,” Henrik said, and began to walk away.

  If only he had known where he should go and what to do with all these thoughts.

  If only he had known.

  Håkon Sand had no idea what he had done with his keys. He rooted around in his pants pockets until it sank in that his office door was unlocked.

  “Sorry,” he said, as he opened it. “Do come in.”

  The uniformed figure of the Lieutenant Colonel, his cap held firmly under his arm, stepped into the room.

  “Apologies for the mess,” Håkon muttered as he spat his snuff out into the trash can beside the desk before he took his seat. “As you probably appreciate, it’s a zoo here.”

  “I understand that,” Gustav Gulliksen said, glancing at the visitor’s chair on the opposite side of the desk.

  “By all means,” Håkon said. “Sit down. Shall I get you some tea? Coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  Håkon, like the Lieutenant Colonel, was wearing a uniform. That was actually where any resemblance between the two men ended, though they were the same age. Lieutenant Colonel Gulliksen’s clothes were ironed, with pressed trousers and a tie knot so tight that Håkon didn’t quite understand how he could breathe. He was wearing the dove-gray jacket with two stars on each epaulet like a badge of honor: stiff, proud, and dignified.

  Håkon’s tie was hanging askew, and he had not changed his shirt since yesterday morning. He had discarded his jacket a long time ago and, to tell the truth, he was not entirely sure where it was. He had spilled soda on his dark pants, but fortunately that was not noticeable. Around three o’clock he had become aware of blisters breaking out on both heels. His dark shoes were new, the blisters were painful, and he had changed them for a pair of sneakers. Orange ones with neon-green stripes.

  “I must admit I’m a bit . . . worn out.”

  Håkon leaned across the desk and folded his hands.

  “I’d thought, really, that you’d keep better control of explosives.”

  The Lieutenant Colonel cleared his throat quietly behind a clenched fist.

  “As we’ve already told the Chief of Police, this is an extremely delicate matter. We request that it be dealt with accordingly.”

  “Of course, of course. Delicate and nice and discreet and . . . go to hell, Gustav!”

  “Håkon . . .”

  The officer, now with red patches on his neck above his tight tie, cleared his throat again.

  “It was four days after July 22,” he said softly. “We had hoped for a bit more understanding that there was . . . consideration to be shown.”

  “Consideration to be shown? Consideration to be shown?”

  Håkon groaned dramatically.

  “Consideration, Gustav! That was what we had to show for you and all those allergies of yours. Hay fever and nut allergy, and in the end something completely new that you called food intolerance. That your brother was a bed-wetter and therefore had to sleep in a bed on his own on Boy Scout expeditions and we had to pretend we didn’t notice. It’s in situations like those that people show consideration.”

  He scratched his neck vigorously and pulled a face.

  “You don’t ‘show consideration’ when huge quantities of C4 just vanish.”

  “It was only four days after the tragedies in Oslo and on Utøya. Norway was in chaos, Håkon. Shock and disbelief. Grief and fear. It was quite simply indefensible to come out with the story.”

  “Come out with? Come out with, Gustav? Coming to the police, when huge quantities of C4 go missing after a canceled military exercise, can hardly be called ‘coming out’ with something!”

  “Well, this is water that’s already gone under the bridge. Not much to do about it now. The decision was made at that time, and we still think it was the correct one. If there was something Norway didn’t need, in the days following July 22, it was to learn that dangerous explosives—a considerable quantity—had gone astray. The exercise was canceled for good reasons, taking the circumstances into consideration; it was the only right thing to do. It wasn’t discovered until two days later that the stock of C4 had disappeared. Since then we’ve kept it . . . been discreet about it. And as the Defense Chief has made clear to both the Justice Minister and Police Chief Sørensen, we expect that to remain so.”

  “Expect?”

  Håkon’s voice rose to a falsetto.

  “Don’t try to make any demands here, Gussie. Don’t try it! We want to know everything. Absolutely everything. I want names, places, and quantities. I want a detailed description of . . .”

  He practically fell back into his seat. Putting his hand to his forehead, he opened his eyes wide and then squeezed them tightly shut again. Over and over again.

  “Sorry, Gussie. It’s just . . .”

  “I understand,” Gustav Gulliksen said formally, thrusting his hand inside his uniform jacket. “It’s a difficult time for all of us.”

  He withdrew a plastic folder containing documents. It was not particularly thick, and Håkon took the liberty of rolling his eyes again when he noticed that the plastic cover was camouflage colored.

  “Here,” the Lieutenant Colonel said as he stood up. “This is all we know. Deal with it as what it is: information that could damage the army, and, through that, Norway. The security of the realm.”

  Håkon stared at the folder without touching it.

  “Thanks,” he murmured. “We must get together someday. Have a beer. When all this is over. Go down memory lane.”

  The Lieutenant Colonel did not respond. Crossing to the door, he opened it and exited promptly. He did not even turn to say goodbye.

  It was simply a matter of walking straight on and not looking back.

  He had made the decision when Linus had simply disappeared once more, without a word, only a few hours after coming home to sleep.

  Billy T. could no longer postpone it.

  The phone call to Grete had gone better than he had feared. In fact, she had seemed relieved, almost glad, when he explained why he was phoning. It was merely that he was slightly worried, he had said. A bit concerned about Linus’s “development,” as he had expressed it, and would like to talk. If she had time.

  Indeed she had.

  At once.

  They arranged to meet at the Storo center at Jordbærpikene, the large café on the second floor. Not because it was particularly discreet or peaceful—on the contrary, in fact. Noise was often the best camouflage. Besides, other people were a form of protection against any possible scene. Grete had started enough of them since Linus’s birth.

  Billy T. had hesitated a number of times on his way to Storo.

  He was breaking a promise he had made to Linus by meeting his mother.

  What was most important for him now was to keep Linus within his field of vision. If Linus learned about this meeting, he would move out of his father’s life. Perhaps for good.

  No. Most important of all was to find out what the boy had become mixed up in. A steady course, Billy T. thought, and raised his eyes as he approached Jordbærpikene and found that Grete had already arrived.

  Seated at one of the tables at the far end of the café, she already had a cup of coffee in front of her. He had hoped for crowds of people thronging around them, but it was remarkably quiet there. Billy T. was extremely seldom in such shopping centers, but it crossed his mind that this must be fairly abnormal, all the same. It probably had some connection with yesterday evening’s bomb.

  If there was something Billy T. did not want to think about, it was yesterday’s fatal explosion at Grønnere Gress.

  He crossed to the table, mumbled some kind of greeting, and gave Grete a wooden hug before heading for the counter. He ordered a cappuccino before returning.

  “Brilliant that you co
uld come,” he said as he sat down.

  There was not enough space for his corpulent body, and he leaned over and moved the empty neighboring table a foot or so to make room to stretch his legs.

  “Why aren’t you at work?” Grete asked indifferently.

  “On sick leave,” he muttered. “Something wrong with my knee.”

  “So you’re the one he moved in with, then. I’d never have believed that.”

  “Have you honestly been going around for six months not knowing where Linus was staying?”

  “Well, you’ve been going around for twenty-two years without much idea of what’s happening in his life. You’re not exactly in a position to criticize, Billy T.”

  He held up his hands in a feeble gesture of surrender.

  “He’s a grown man,” she continued, sounding desperate. “I’ve got my own life to attend to. No one can say that I haven’t tried. If he doesn’t want to live with me, I couldn’t stop him. Where he went is, strictly speaking, none of my business.”

  She dropped a sweetener into her coffee.

  “But moving in with you was very unexpected, as I said. Your son doesn’t have an especially high opinion of you.”

  It looked as though she was pondering this before she let another sweetener fall into the brown liquid.

  “On the other hand, he doesn’t hold very many people in high regard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you talk to him?”

  Billy T. was struggling to find a more comfortable position on the chair.

  “N-yes. I try, at least.”

  He lifted his gaze. Grete had grown older. Her hair tint was too harsh, and the shade of red looked like something from a child’s paintbox. She had always been very thin, but now there was a trace of something almost witchlike about her face—a sharp, curved nose and a narrow mouth that she’d tried to enlarge with lipstick. Her cheekbones were so high and distinct that she appeared undernourished.

  “There, you see,” she said. “He’s not easy to have in the house. In many ways, it was easier when he was just messing around. At high school, at least, he was happy-go-lucky. Played football. Hung around with friends who were equally lacking in ambition but nice boys all the same. At that time I got annoyed about laziness and bad work habits. It was, well, much simpler.”