by Anne Holt
As if her mother had not lived by the motto ‘everything in its place’ for the whole of her life, Johanne thought, heading out to the hall. She stopped in the doorway. The faint ache in her breasts made her work her thumb under her bra through her sweater and tug at it gingerly. As she did so, she got a whiff of her own body odour from the sweater that she had thought cleaner than it was. She stripped it off as she walked to the bedroom to find another one. Jack stood up and loped stiffly after her with his tail wagging from side to side, until he picked up a dirty sock from the floor. He always had something in his mouth when they went out for a walk, a sign that there must be something of the retriever in his extremely chequered pedigree.
‘Stay here,’ Johanne said sternly, pulling the sock out of his mouth. ‘And don’t touch anything.’
Déjà vu.
She had said exactly the same thing to Ellen, Jon and Joachim the day before.
She pulled a bottle-green sweater over her head and froze again.
She felt sure something had been touched, just as had struck her yesterday. Removed, added or shifted. A change, though not major, in the living room, the hallway, the bathroom or kitchen. It was just that it was impossible to remember what it had been.
Probably something totally insignificant, she reassured herself, as she left.
*
In a tiny office at Grønlandsleiret 44, Jon Mohr sat staring at the wall. His narrow face seemed swollen, and his eyes were red-ringed, with slack folds of flesh underneath. He ceaselessly moistened his lips. His right hand fiddled with a loose splinter on the armrest.
‘I appreciate this is difficult for you,’ said the young police officer whose uniform, with its single star on the epaulettes, was on the large side. ‘But as things stand with your wife at present, it would be best to take your witness statement here at Police Headquarters. I don’t think we would have made much progress with her present, to put it bluntly. And, as you must surely understand, we must have clarity about what happened. Since it’s become a police matter, I mean.’
Jon Mohr did not answer. He continued to stare at a pinprick on the wall, just above and to the left of the young policeman.
‘Well then. Let’s see. I am Police Constable Henrik Holme.’
His finger raced across the keyboard of a computer sitting on a makeshift desk.
He did not quite know what he had expected. To tell the truth, he had never interviewed anyone who had just lost a relative. Strictly speaking, he had not conducted many interviews at all. Five maybe, and they had all been in connection with speeding offences.
He felt hot. Quite at a loss, when he thought about it – something he tried not to do.
It had been bad enough the day before, when all of a sudden he had received a message to go on his own up to Grefsen to sort things out, following a damned accident. He had learned one or two things about grief reactions at college, of course, but Ellen Mohr’s hysteria nevertheless exceeded anything he could have envisaged. She must have already been a bit crazy, Henrik Holme had thought privately, since she was frothing and screaming as she clung so tightly to her son’s broken body. The idea of interviewing her husband as a witness today, in peace and quiet as far from her as possible, had at first seemed fairly sensible.
At college he had learned that outsiders were unnerved simply by stepping over the threshold of the police station. This was his home ground – police territory – and that should give him the upper hand initially. It did not feel like that, probably because he had never set foot in this borrowed office before, until he sat here right now trying to look like a professional policeman.
He would have to put up with it. It was not necessary to have the upper hand. In spite of everything, this was simply a poor dad sitting on the opposite side of the desk, tear-stained and feeling awful. He should get this business over and done with as neatly and tidily as possible, get a post-mortem report handed in eventually, and in the end persuade some prosecutor or other to have the whole case dropped, as it was not a criminal act.
Henrik Holme did not want to work on a domestic accident. He wanted to work on the Great Catastrophe.
‘Well then,’ he repeated, making an effort to catch Jon’s eye. ‘First of all, your personal details, and we’ll take it step-by-step from then on. Jon Mohr, is that your full name?’
The man in the visitor’s chair barely nodded. In a low voice he gave his personal ID number and his address.
‘Occupation?’ Henrik Holme enquired.
Jon Mohr finally let go of the armrests and placed both hands on his lap.
‘Managing Director and partner in Mohr & Westberg AS.’
‘Which is what?’
‘A communications company.’
‘A PR business, then.’
‘No. A communications company. We assist organizations, institutions and individuals with strategic management of all kinds of communication. First and foremost, in connection with the authorities. But also the media, yes.’
It sounded mechanical, as if he were rattling off a lesson learned by heart.
‘Exactly,’ Henrik Holme said, letting his hands rest at the side of the keyboard. ‘A PR business, in other words.’
‘No.’
‘And the name of the deceased is... The boy’s full name is Sander Sebastian Krogh Mohr, is that right?’
‘We just call him Sander. Sander Mohr.’
‘Born on the seventeenth of May 2003, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
Henrik Holme smiled. ‘Birthday on Norway’s National Day. That’s too bad.’
Jon Mohr continued to sit with his gaze fixed on the wall at the policeman’s back. His eyes had started to fill up, but he did not utter a sound.
‘Well, then,’ Henrik Holme said, clearing his throat. ‘It would be best if you could tell me what happened then. In your own words.’
He raised his eyebrows encouragingly.
‘Where shall I begin?’ Jon Mohr asked, in a near-whisper.
‘Where should you begin?’ The police officer bit his bottom lip and blushed yet again. ‘Well...’
He scratched his neck and tugged at his already-loose shirt collar. Jon Mohr finally looked directly at him. The policeman gulped.
‘You’ve never done this before,’ Jon Mohr said.
‘Done what?’
‘This,’ Jon said. ‘Taken a witness statement.’
‘Of course I have,’ Henrik Holme said, as the red flush spread down from his cheeks over his neck. ‘Plenty of times!’
‘Maybe so. But never in a case involving someone’s death.’
‘That’s true to some extent, but...’
‘Sander had ADHD,’ Jon said loudly. ‘Mainly the hyperactive, impulsive type.’
‘I see.’
‘In addition, he was a strapping lad, as you saw. Strong, with an extensive reach. It was a constant challenge. He’s not always... Sander didn’t always take good care of himself. We had to look out for him. All the time. Keep an eye on him. Keep an eye on him.’
His words became a whisper.
‘I see.’
A steady murmur from a TV or perhaps a radio could be heard from the neighbouring room, loud enough to disturb them, but too quiet for the words to be distinguished. Henrik Holme wondered whether he ought to go next door and ask them to reduce the volume on whatever it was they were listening to.
‘Sander was on medication,’ Jon Mohr said aloud, before the police officer had managed to make up his mind. ‘Ritalin. It helped a little. But he sometimes sneaked out of it. Didn’t want to take the tablets. Tricked us. Held them under his tongue and spat them out. We kept finding these little pills in places where they—’
He took a deep breath and tried to restrain a sob.
‘I can’t fathom... I really can’t fathom why. The medicine helped him. Made him quieter. Sort of better able to concentrate. It made life better for both him and us. Especially for... Especially for Ellen.’
&nbs
p; ‘Exactly. Was she the one who mainly bore the brunt of it then?’
‘The brunt?’
For the first time during the interview, Jon Mohr showed signs of annoyance. The wrinkles above the bridge of his nose became more distinct, and he leaned forward.
‘You don’t talk about “the brunt of it” when it has to do with your own child! But Sander was restless, from the day he was born, and since we can afford for Ellen not to work, we both thought that the best solution was for—’
‘Doesn’t work?’ Henrik interrupted. ‘Sounds like quite a lot of work, looking after Sander and that vast house and—’
‘It wasn’t meant like that!’ Jon Mohr broke in.
His face darkened.
‘I’d like you to know that I haven’t slept for a single second since half past five yesterday morning! I lost my only child in a terrible accident twenty-four hours ago, my wife is in a state of collapse...’
He leaned so far forward in the chair that Henrik let his roll back, even though there was an expanse of desk between them.
‘I don’t think anyone in this whole world can imagine it.’ Mohr snarled so much that a fine spray of spit spread across the surface of the desk. ‘No one can imagine what it’s like to lose your own child in such a senseless, dreadful, horrible...’
He ran out of words. Slowly he subsided into his chair, clutching his face with both hands until his knuckles turned white.
‘Tragically enough, there are only too many people who can do that, right now,’ Henrik Holme said softly, staring at his computer screen. ‘The difference is that, in this case, there’s a known perpetrator.’
Jon Mohr let go of his face and stared at him. Disbelief, bordering on disgust, caused his lips to quiver and his eyes to narrow in his tear-stained face. Henrik shook his head weakly and raised both palms in a placatory gesture.
‘Take it easy,’ he said.
‘Perpetrator?’ Mohr growled. ‘What the hell do you mean by perpetrator? Sander fell off a ladder! A stepladder in our own living room! There was nobody else there when it happened. What the fuck are you trying to insinuate?’
‘Nothing,’ Henrik said as calmly as he could.
He was now perspiring profusely. He cleared his throat and braced himself. ‘I assume you understand that your son’s death falls under the description “suspicious death”. That doesn’t mean—’
Once again he raised his hands, this time to ward off Jon Mohr’s outburst. The man seemed about to pounce, and his perspiring face was puce with rage.
‘That doesn’t mean we suspect anything at all,’ Henrik said. ‘For the time being. We want to bring some clarity to the circumstances. We’ll interview people of interest, obtain a postmortem report, and the technician will have a closer look at what she managed to gather last night. At the very least we’ll weigh up all the facts we can find. In the end, when that’s all done, we’ll draw our conclusions. OK?’
Now he felt more self-satisfied.
The man opposite him seemed a tad calmer.
He, twenty-six-year-old police officer Henrik Holme, had succeeded in mollifying a devastated middle-aged man and averting him from clawing his eyes out.
Things were going well.
Since he had graduated from Police College only a few weeks earlier, and as one of the luckiest ones had been granted a summer job in Oslo Police District, he had mostly slogged away on traffic cases. Even though this case wasn’t exactly worthy of a master detective, either, it was at least more interesting than the tasks he had been allocated up till now. Besides, it would be quickly done and dusted. He flashed an encouraging smile at Jon Mohr, before placing both hands palm-down on the desk and finishing what he had to say: ‘And unless we conclude that the boy’s death was caused by physical abuse, you’ll be able to get the body removed from the mortuary in order to hold a funeral. It shouldn’t take long.’
It had only just crossed his mind that this might be a rather unfortunate choice of words, when all hell broke loose. Jon Mohr shot to his feet so quickly that the chair toppled over and hit the wall behind him. With a single lithe movement, he had skirted the desk, grabbed the policeman’s chair with his left hand and raised his right fist, ready to strike.
‘My boy died!’ he roared. ‘He died, do you understand that? In an accident! A dreadful, unnecessary accident! If you think a runt like you is going to sit here and drop hints that my wife or I—’
His fist flew forward and miraculously came to a sudden halt, only a couple of centimetres from Henrik Holme’s chin.
‘Do you understand nothing?’ Jon Mohr whispered hoarsely. ‘Do you know nothing about sorrow and loss and pain?’
Henrik could feel his breath on his own mouth, stale and sour with a suggestion of liquorice. It stung him out of shock at the unexpected attack, and made him push his chair back. Quick as a flash, he stood up with his hands in a partly defensive, partly threatening boxing stance.
‘Sit down,’ he said in as firm a tone as he could muster.
His voice was trembling, but his adversary appeared too upset to notice. Most of all, Henrik wanted to call for help. There were plenty of people within hailing distance and it would take only seconds for someone to turn up.
But that would be pretty embarrassing.
This was his very first real case.
‘Sit down!’ he said, louder this time.
‘No, I damn well won’t,’ Mohr said through gritted teeth. ‘I damn well won’t say another word to you!’
He spun on his heel and crossed to the door, where he half-turned with his hand poised on the door handle.
‘And if you’re thinking of reporting me for assaulting a police officer, you can just forget it. I haven’t laid a finger on you. Haven’t harmed a single hair on your head. That’s what I call—’
He swallowed hard and raised a long, narrow finger.
‘That’s what I call impulse control,’ he concluded huskily, and turned to leave.
The door was left wide open once he had gone, and Police Constable Henrik Holme could hear nothing but the sound of his own hammering heartbeats.
It took several seconds before he dared to drop his arms.
*
At the time when Ellen K. Mohr was known simply as Ellen Krogh, she was the one everyone wanted.
Stardust swirled around her.
Just being in the vicinity of Ellen Krogh made the difference between being something or nothing. As a young girl, she was not the run-of-the-mill queen of primary school. She did not play anyone off against anyone else. She did not take advantage of the insecurity of others. Instead she made them feel self-confident. Ellen Krogh was not bossy or bullying; she mainly got her own way because that’s what the circumstances decreed. The petite, childishly pretty young girl’s reign was unusually long-lived. Hanging out with Ellen became, as they all grew older, a substantial step up on the rickety ladder of the sex market. Boys, and later men, were drawn to Ellen Krogh by a force so strong that they happily settled for the ladies of the court, when the queen herself declined their advances.
She was also smart at school.
Immediately after high school she embarked on studies to become a dentist, completed the course in the prescribed time and took over her great-aunt’s private practice just three years after graduating. At the age of twenty-eight she owned a flourishing dental business employing six staff, earning well over a million kroner a year.
That had been fifteen years ago now, and Johanne speculated about when exactly Ellen had fallen off her throne.
Perhaps the change had come with the change of name.
No one at high school would have believed that Jon Mohr would be the one who in the end would walk off with Ellen Krogh. Jon was tall and lanky, no use at ball games, and mostly confined himself to an intimate group of friends. None of the significant people had even noticed him until he won an international writing competition at the age of seventeen, with the provocative essay ‘Rubbish and bullshi
t – the limits of oral communication’.
He won 50,000 kroner, was interviewed by the major newspaper Aftenposten, and at school was thrust forever outside the ranks of the anonymous. Not that this made any particular difference, since the boy was most comfortable in his small circle of clever schoolmates, hunched over their desks building computers, squeezing their pimples and reading the controversial writings of Jens Bjørneboe.
Surprisingly enough, he chose to study law. Something happened to him as soon as he set foot in the university precincts. He was no longer a prisoner of the ruthless teenage high-school hierarchy. Jon Mohr got a fresh start in life, and grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Legal studies were perfect for him. He was quick-witted and fairly conservative and, as early as the second term, was elected to the student council. The professors began to notice him. In his second year he penned a long essay that he called ‘Fourteen pieces of advice for students who want to succeed without making much effort – or how to hide the fact that you don’t know shit’. He distributed the booklet free of charge to anyone who wanted it. Everyone did, and most of them split their sides laughing. Jon became the minor monarch of the faculty, and even started pulling the birds.
However, he never qualified as a lawyer.
In his third year at university he was offered a lucrative job in Norway’s largest PR agency, at a time when its business prospects were so abundant that there seemed no end to them. After four years’ experience, he took the best of his colleagues with him and the bulk of the company’s profitable portfolio and started out on his own.
And met Ellen.
Once again, as he used to say. Like so many others, he had been madly in love with her since their junior high-school days. The difference was that now she also had her eye on him.
It must have been around that time that things changed, Johanne thought, as she parked her mother’s Polo on the forecourt outside the double garage in Glads vei. At least that must have been the beginning of the remarkable process by which Jon blossomed and Ellen slowly, at the start almost imperceptibly, became a different person.