Odd Numbers

by Anne Holt

  “Or buy it on the Internet. What the hell do I know? It looks as if it’s easy to get hold of anything these days. It just gets worse and worse.”

  “But we can at least say with certainty now that Jørgen Fjellstad was murdered?”

  “Yes. Well, if he didn’t voluntarily ingest a large dose of cyanide. And then dismember himself and let the pieces set out on a longish trip to Marka.”

  “Cut it out.”

  “I’d love to,” he said glumly. “To be honest, I’ve seriously considered handing in my resignation. Sidestepping all this hellish upheaval. Then Karen could apply to serve next time there’s a vacant seat in the Supreme Court. I could set up a small practice. Help sweet little criminals who don’t blow Oslo sky-high or shove cyanide down the throats of black children from Lørenskog.”

  He averted her censure by raising both hands in the air.

  “I take that back,” he said. “And don’t have any plans to quit until this is all over. If it ever is. We’re also working on collection of data on a grand scale. At present we’re gathering traffic information. We’ve taken as our starting point all possible places to park a vehicle in order to reach the hiding place in the rockfall north of Øyungen. Speed cameras and toll recording chips and everything else. There’s a colossal amount of material and—”

  “If the people who hid the body came from the north and kept within the speed limit, then they escaped scrutiny.”

  “Yes.”

  He gazed at Silje. She was pale. She never normally was at this time of year. Last year he had taken his entire family on a visit to her cabin in Geilo, where there were beds for eighteen. This year none of them had gone on any skiing trips.

  “Explosives?” she demanded abruptly.

  “Definitely from the army. Comparative analyses show that they come from the consignment that went missing in Åmot in the summer of 2011. We are giving our investigation there full throttle, but unraveling a crime that took place nearly three years ago naturally brings a few problems.”

  “Is there something in the army’s own documents from the time that might be of help?”

  “One or two things, the boys say. But not much. The military had two things in mind: first, to try to find out what happened, and second, when they realized that they couldn’t get to the bottom of the disappearance on their own initiative, they did their best to bury the whole mess.”

  “Detonators?”

  “There have been three major thefts of high-quality detonators in the past five years. The most recent was from one of the construction sites beside the E18, the new motorway between Tønsberg and Sandefjord. We’re not certain yet.”

  “And the red bag?” Silje continued to quiz him.

  Håkon stood up and, unabashed, began to tug off his uniform jacket after loosening his tie and slipping it off over his head.

  “I still think we should make a public appeal,” he said.

  “If you want to be sure the owner of the backpack that contained the body parts gets rid of it, at the very least, then we can go ahead with that. Personally, I believe we should wait. After all, we’ve already managed to track down three of the purchasers, or so you said this morning. Who are all above suspicion.”

  “Only fifteen left, then.”

  Håkon tugged a T-shirt out of the bag he had left by the door. Thrusting his arms into the sleeves, he stood there like that, only half-dressed.

  “Let’s spend a few more days on that backpack,” Silje suggested. “What can we gain by making it public?”

  “Neighbors who might alert us. Acquaintances. Colleagues. Informers, for that matter.”

  “We’d just be swamped by tips, and the backpack in question would vanish into thin air five minutes after we publicize a picture. Do you propose to stand there half naked for long?”

  Håkon pulled on the T-shirt and stuffed the hem into his uniform pants before producing a hooded top from the bag.

  “I’ll be back at five o’clock. And do think over that business about the backpack, won’t you?”

  When she did not respond, he shrugged, grabbing his uniform jacket with one hand and hooking his bag over his shoulder.

  “To cheer you up,” he said, with a joyless smile, “there was at least one guy who didn’t give up without a fight when one hundred and fifty pounds of C4 disappeared from the military exercise site in 2011. Do you remember that captain I mentioned the other day? In the car, when I drove you home?”

  She nodded slightly and pulled out a desk drawer.

  “From the papers I received from Gustav Gulliksen, it’s clear that the head honchos were extremely annoyed with him,” Håkon Sand went on. “When they made up their minds to put a lid on the case, he kicked up a real fuss.”

  “I see.”

  She had already started reading the postmortem report, making notes in the margin with a pen. Håkon persevered: “Apparently he had a number of theories about what might have happened. Peder Ranvik is his name, and he’s been called in for interview on Monday.”

  Actually he had not secured an appointment with Fawad Sharif until Monday. It had seemed an eternity to wait, and Henrik Holme had tapped five times on his left temple in sheer delight when they phoned from Ullersmo Prison to inform him that Thursday at ten would be acceptable after all.

  Fawad Sharif did not live up to Henrik’s expectations.

  Whatever they might have been, Henrik pondered.

  He thought he had envisaged quite a good-looking man. In the photograph taken in a photo booth in the summer of ’96, the Norwegian Pakistani boy had a brilliant smile and doe eyes. His lashes were still long, but his teeth could not possibly have seen a dentist since that time. His narrow face had almost caved in. He had acne, despite being thirty-five years old. One earlobe was torn off, and there was a serrated scar along one side of his neck, probably measuring three inches.

  Henrik Holme had felt queasy as soon as he was inside the prison gates. It grew worse with every security checkpoint that he was escorted through. Now, in a visitors’ room with cold walls but far too hot, the sweat was pouring off him.

  “As I mentioned,” he said, clearing his throat, “this has to do with a series of car thefts in the summer of 1996.”

  “Don’t understand any of it,” Fawad said, giving him a hostile look.

  He had not done that when Henrik arrived. On the contrary, he had seemed slightly curious. In any case, he had not been downright dismissive. Now he was drumming his fingers and glancing at the wall clock every five seconds.

  “Okay, then. Of course this is a bit of a shot in the dark, but these thefts have suddenly cropped up in a completely different, and in a sense far more important, case.”

  “The terrorist bombs?”

  Once again some sort of interest was kindled in his eyes. Henrik hesitated just long enough, before smiling and shaking his head.

  “I can’t really answer that.”

  Fawad grinned in return.

  “I’ll bet ya,” he said. “I’ve got the best alibi in the world for all that stuff, you know. I’m imprisoned here.”

  “Exactly. In no way are you a suspect in the series of car thefts either. Any connection would be time-barred anyway, so you’ve got nothing to fear.”

  “Has a car turned up or something?”

  Clearing his throat again, Henrik leaned across the table between them.

  “You must understand that I have to—”

  He snapped his mouth shut and pulled an imaginary zip across it. Fawad looked at him as if he had just discovered that Henrik was a total idiot.

  “What the fuck is it you want, then?”

  “Mohammad.”

  “Mohammad?”

  “Yes. He’s a friend of yours. Or was, at least. That summer.”

  Fawad slid ever farther forward on his seat as he shrugged.

  “I know ten people called Mohammad, for sure.”

  “But the summer of 1996, when you—”

  “I don�
�t remember any fucking summer of 1996! Or ’97 or ’98 or even ’99 either! How old was I then?”

  From his eyes, Henrik could see that he was not even trying to work it out.

  “You were seventeen. Did you go to school?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “It was the year Charles and Diana got divorced.”

  “Huh?”

  “And Germany won the European Cup in football,” Henrik swiftly added. “They beat the Czech Republic 2 to 1 after extra time in the final. At Wembley.”

  “You don’t look like someone who’s interested in football.”

  “But you are.”

  Fawad’s eyes narrowed. Henrik could not quite interpret his expression. There could be both interest and skepticism in those dull, dark-brown eyes of his.

  “I was quite a good player,” Fawad said. “I played in the boys’ regional league when I was fourteen. But I don’t remember that match. Don’t like Germany. Maybe that’s why.”

  “What’s your team?” Henrik ventured and immediately regretted the question.

  “What’s yours?”

  Henrik was unmasked.

  “Listen to me,” he said, sitting up straight. “Within the bounds of reasonableness, what is it you miss most of all in here?”

  “My own computer,” was the speedy retort. “Mine is broken.”

  “If I get you a new computer—”

  “A MacBook.”

  “If I get you a new computer, could you do me a favor and try to remember what you and Mohammad were doing during that summer and autumn?”

  “Mohammad’s dead. He died in 1997. He’d stolen a motorbike. Keeled over at the Teisen intersection and was mashed by a truck.”

  Henrik gulped.

  “That head of yours is fucking huge,” Fawad said. “Have you got water on the brain, or what?”

  “No. If Mohammad died in 1997, it should be easier for you to remember the previous year. The last summer you spent together. Try.”

  The man again shrugged his narrow shoulders, without uttering a word.

  “Wouldn’t you like that computer, then?”

  “Yes, I would, but what the fuck is it you want to know?”

  “Tell me about your family.”

  “My family?”

  “Yes,” Henrik said, smiling. “The way it was when you were a teenager.”

  “My dad drove a tram. My mom stayed at home to whine and moan. My two sisters were bitches, and one of them landed in a foster home. I did too. Not that it helped very much. My brother . . .”

  For the first time his smile reached all the way to his eyes.

  “Imran’s a bricklayer. He’s three years older than me. Really wanted to be a car mechanic but didn’t get into that course at Sogn High School. So he became a bricklayer instead. Now he has that house in Mortensrud. Married to a Norwegian girl. Three children. He’s just bought a Tesla S. He drove it up here last week, but I wasn’t allowed to go out to see it.”

  “If he’s three years older than you, he must have left school that summer,” Henrik said. “Okay then. Maybe he’d become an apprentice?”

  Fawad was possibly a hardened criminal. Or maybe not: he had spent longer inside jail than outside since he had turned eighteen. In any case, he was no actor. Something had crossed his mind, Henrik noticed. His face closed down, and he turned visibly paler. The gray tip of his tongue rapidly licked his even grayer lips, over and over again.

  “Don’t remember,” he said, far too quickly.

  “But there’s really nothing to remember,” Henrik interjected as calmly as he could manage. “Your brother must have done some kind of training if he’s a bricklayer. Served an apprenticeship. Probably that happened around the time we’re talking about. It’s no big deal, Fawad. It must be fairly simple to work out what your brother was doing that year. He’d be twenty years old then.”

  “I can’t be bothered,” Fawad said, getting to his feet.

  “That was the summer Karina disappeared, never to be seen again,” Henrik said in a loud voice. “Does that help you any?”

  Fawad was on his way to the green door. With his back turned to Henrik, he began to knock with one hand, using one finger of the other hand to press the small button at shoulder height on the doorframe.

  “You knew Karina?” Henrik asked, still in a loud voice.

  “No.”

  The knocking grew more insistent.

  Unruffled, Henrik stood up and approached Fawad. He withdrew a copy of the photo-booth strip from his back pocket.

  “Yes, you did,” he said softly. “You knew her extremely well.”

  He was half a head taller than Fawad Sharif and leaned closer to his ear.

  “Look at this,” he said, holding the photo up to the slightly built man’s eyes. “Karina, Mohammad, and you. The summer of 1996. There are still seven years before the time limit for homicide runs out, Fawad, and I plan to use those years to the utmost.”

  The door opened so suddenly that Fawad nearly fell out into the corridor.

  “Everything hunky-dory?” the prison guard inquired, taking hold of the prisoner’s slender upper arm.

  “Everything’s perfectly fine,” Henrik Holme replied with a nod. “Thanks very much, Fawad.”

  Fawad did not answer. He willingly accompanied the guard and seemed even smaller than when he had arrived. Henrik, for his part, had such a racing pulse that he fainted.

  Fell flat on the floor.

  Fortunately, he had managed to take a step back into the visitors’ room so that no one saw him. Apart from the surveillance camera. When a guard finally came running, Henrik had come to, pulled his hair down over a fast-growing lump on his forehead, and smiled a defensive refusal in response to the offer of medical attention.

  Now he was sure of his case, and it was well worth the headache that, as it transpired, lasted for several days.

  “Of course I can’t be sure,” Billy T. murmured, “but in a way, a picture is starting to take shape here.”

  “Then you’ll have to make up your mind soon what that picture is going to show,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said in annoyance. “Has Linus become a jihadist or an antijihadist? There’s quite a significant difference, don’t you think?”

  She stacked two plates in the dishwasher.

  “Yes,” he answered. “And I don’t quite know which is worse.”

  He was leaning against the wide window ledge in the kitchen. He was still walking about in that filthy denim jacket, but noticed that it no longer felt quite so tight and the more than two-week-old ketchup stain had started to turn black.

  “And don’t you have a job to go to?” Hanne asked.

  She stared at him with an expression he could not really decipher. These past few years had given her so many new expressions. She was a dear friend and a total stranger at one and the same time.

  “I’m off sick. And this is maybe just stupidity.”

  “What is?”

  “Talking to you. I should clear this up off my own bat.”

  “Billy T. Come here. Now you really must listen to me.”

  There was something disheartened about her voice, but at least it was not brusque. He followed her into the living room where, with an impressive movement, she transferred into an armchair and pointed at the matching chair by her side. He obeyed and sat down.

  “Let’s see what you actually have,” she said coolly. “First of all, there’s the boring fact that Linus’s watch, which luckily the police believe to be yours, was found in the NCIN offices. That could have a simple explanation.”

  “But it—”

  “Shh. Hear me out. It could have a simple explanation. It could have been stolen. It could have been sold. For all we know, it could have been lost in a game of poker. Okay?”

  Billy T. barely nodded.

  “As far as this other . . .”

  She coughed quietly, swallowed, and began over again.

  “What if Linus has quite simply sorted himself
out? What if, at the age of twenty-two, he has decided it’s about time he grew up? Got an education, kept his room clean and tidy. Cut his hair and dressed properly. What if he’s telling the truth? That this Koran was in fact part of his schoolwork? What if . . .”

  She leaned over to the wheelchair and produced a bottle of mineral water from a compartment under the seat.

  “If you want something to drink, you can help yourself from the fridge.”

  He remained seated. Silent.

  “To be honest,” she went on, “it does sound as if—”

  “He’s become racist.”

  “Racist?”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen laughed.

  Billy T. felt his skin contract, like a wave, all the way down his back. Once upon a time, he had been the one who made her laugh. He was one of a very few people who could do that. Not often, because she was a serious person, Hanne Wilhelmsen, but when she laughed, he was the one who had said something. Something funny. Something affectionate—something that played on the bond between them, a bond he had thought for a long time would withstand anything.

  “What on earth do you mean by he’s ‘become racist’?”

  She pronounced become as if her mouth was filled with vinegar.

  “That was why he moved out of Grete’s. I’ve spoken to her.”

  “I still don’t understand—”

  “They quarreled. It started with that kind of . . . everyday racism, Grete told me. At first along the lines of the Progress Party, and then Linus began to take after the worst of them. The ones like that Grønning-Hansen.”

  He suddenly leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. For a moment, he used his hands to cover his face, before tearing them away again and opening his eyes wide.

  “I don’t bloody know,” he groaned. “But Grete told me that . . .”

  He stood up abruptly and headed for the kitchen.

  He felt dreadful. Physically sick. Most of all he wanted to flee, he knew. Really run away. Give up his job and sell what little he owned. Go away. Somewhere or other. He didn’t know where. It mattered little, as long as it was far enough away. When he opened the fridge door, he stood rooted to the spot.

  A family lived here.

  There were milk and juice and Jarlsberg cheese. A packet of fishcakes and a ready-mixed salad in a bowl underneath plastic wrap. Cod liver oil and blueberry extract and an unopened bar of milk chocolate, probably waiting for Saturday. There was low-fat margarine and salami, cooked ham, and a large tray of cold, fresh apples.