by Anne Holt
‘Agreed. Calm down.’
‘Calm down?’
Standing up, Jon Mohr stared at Joachim as if he were one of Sander’s deceptive concoctions. They contained everything from great dollops of Tabasco to cat excrement from the garden, but could be made to look very enticing.
‘So I should calm down?’ he said. ‘I see. You, of all people, think that I should calm down. You, someone I’ve had to defend against the other partners more than once, because you certainly don’t know how to “calm yourself down”...’
His fingers drew sarcastic quote marks in the air.
‘...when you’re dealing with people who’re a long way above your head in the hierarchy. You, someone I’ve had to vouch for every single fucking time one of the real bigshots in this office has wanted to throw you out of here on your sorry arse. Even though the vast majority of folk here agree that you’re the best of us all, when it comes to anticipating media hype, it surely isn’t necessary to—’
He deflated. The air whistled out of his lungs as if from the leaky inner tube of a bicycle, and he plumped himself back down on the chair.
‘Sorry,’ Joachim said. ‘I’m very pleased you have trust in me.’
Silence reigned between them. Joachim picked up the orange again. This time he peeled it, in a single, continuous, twisting strand. Jon watched passively, before swivelling his chair again to face the bright summer’s day outside.
‘But at the moment we don’t know anything, you know,’ Joachim said finally. ‘No more than that the financial authorities seem to have been asking some questions to do with a couple of suspicious share purchases, immediately before our respective clients merged and were awarded a massive contract. And that the case has been submitted to the police.’
‘And that’s not enough, in your opinion?’
Jon grabbed a remote control. The windows darkened, as if by magic, and eventually cast the room in far more comfortable shade.
‘I haven’t been party to insider trading,’ Joachim said calmly, chewing on a boat-shaped orange segment. ‘The police are welcome to investigate all my disposals and bank transactions. And you have not been involved in insider trading.’
The sentence rose a notch towards the end, as if he were actually posing a question.
‘Of course not,’ Jon said dejectedly. ‘They can investigate me as much as they like as well.’
‘Then, strictly speaking, we don’t have a problem. Maybe this pal of yours is mistaken, in fact. Maybe we’ve spent four days and nights looking for something that doesn’t exist. Four days and nights when you should really have been at home looking after Ellen.’
‘Maybe, maybe, maybe! Give over!’
‘Jon,’ Joachim said in an undertone. ‘Can’t we just wait for the police to contact you at some point? We’ve done everything we can in this case now. We know both these case files inside-out and back to front.’
He started to count on his fingers.
‘When the assignments were allocated. What we did, and when we did it. What information we got, and when we got it. What security routines we have for sensitive information, and how we deployed them.’
Now he cocked his head, cracking a mournful smile.
‘Until we know for certain that this really is a police matter, we can’t do any more. You’re exhausted. You’re depressed. You’re in the middle of a life crisis, man! Go home and sleep. Have a drink. Stay with Ellen.’
Jon still sat facing the windows. Fine slices of light between the slats etched bars across his face. He remained silent.
‘It’s five o’clock,’ Joachim said softly. ‘It’s summer. The rest of Norway is preoccupied with this awful terrorist guy, and we’re rummaging around looking for ghosts that most probably don’t even exist. We’re alone here, Jon. Shouldn’t we say that’s enough for today?’
‘You can go. I’m staying here.’
‘To do what? Honestly, I don’t think any good will come of—’
‘Go. Just go.’
Joachim got to his feet. When Jon did not say anything further, he crossed to the waste-paper basket and jettisoned half an orange with its skin.
‘Take that with you,’ Jon said.
‘What?’
‘Take it with you. That’s a waste-paper basket, not a rubbish bin. Orange peel stinks after a while.’
Joachim felt a surge of fury, like a jolt, just as quickly gone as it had come. He leaned down and picked up the debris he had just discarded, and headed for the door, where he lingered. Ever since Saturday evening, he had wanted to ask Jon about Sander. Ask what Sander had meant when he sometimes turned up with inexplicable bruises. ‘Only trivial,’ Sander had said a few times, in answer to Joachim’s queries. The words did not fit with the boy’s vocabulary. Or with the rest of his answers, either. As a rule, Sander could account for every scratch, every graze, every single sticking plaster. Fell down from the patio. Tried to cycle backwards. Fighting with Fredrik, but it was his fault. Then, now and again, to questions about a bruised arm, a swollen eye, or traces of blood on his nose when Joachim came to pick him up to go to the cinema or the swimming pool: ‘Only trivial!’
Joachim stared at the door handle.
Once, he had seen him react. Sander had spilled some milk during a visit to a restaurant. The glass was almost empty, and it could hardly have been more than twenty-five millilitres of liquid that ran out over the white tablecloth. The waiter was very pleasant about it. Nevertheless, Jon had stood up brusquely, grabbed Sander by the arm and practically lifted him bodily out of his seat. It probably was not particularly violent, and the boy had barely whimpered. Anyway, his father had let go as soon as Sander was standing beside the table, ready to accompany him politely to the toilets to wipe the milk off his shirt. Nevertheless, something in Joachim bristled as he was left on his own at the table for a few minutes. A vague repugnance, as if he had witnessed something disagreeably intimate.
Jon was a friend. A good friend, who had delighted in the special rapport that had developed between himself and Sander. What’s more, Jon was his boss. Joachim had shrugged it all off. Although Sander was usually both entertaining and charming when the two of them were together, Joachim was well aware how challenging the boy could be. Grabbing a youngster roughly by the arm was hardly child abuse.
Only trivial.
But now, after Sander’s death, he felt an all-consuming compulsion to ask. To confront Jon. Joachim wanted to know what Sander had in fact meant, those times he had come to visit with bruises on his body and just brushed it off with a smile and one of his ‘Only trivial’s.
If it had not been for the fact that all his energy was taken up by pulling himself together, acting as if nothing had happened, behaving normally. Then he would have asked. He would have done so now – now that Sander was dead, and they were claiming that he had fallen from an ordinary stepladder.
A fucking stepladder!
If only it had been possible to turn back time a few days. If only that last of all his idiotic blunders could have been undone.
Perhaps it was not too late after all.
He opened the door.
‘Have a nice evening. As nice as it can be.’
‘No creature is as dangerous as a policeman certain of his facts,’ he heard Jon mutter, with his back turned. ‘No matter what, we mustn’t reach that stage.’
Joachim did not reply. He left the office. The door was new and well oiled, and shut behind him with an almost soundless click.
*
‘So Sander was just like all other boys of his age,’ said Police Constable Henrik Holme, gazing at a steadily emptying cake dish.
The woman sitting directly across from him was Haldis Grande, and she had been Sander Mohr’s class teacher for two years.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘That’s not what I said.’
It was just past five o’clock, and the late-afternoon sunlight flooded into the small house at the edge of the forest north of Oslo. Behind the f
limsy curtains, the sky was still almost white. All the same, Haldis Grande had lit a candle. It sat on a chunky wooden holder, brushed to look like a ladybird. The flame was pale and shimmering, barely visible in the strong daylight.
The cramped living room was cosy, in a grandmotherly style. Embroideries and simple paintings on the walls, an astounding number of ornaments and knick-knacks, bric-a-brac made by children and souvenirs from holidays mainly spent in Scandinavia. An enormous red wooden Dala horse took pride of place beside the kitchen door. A Moomintroll, clutching a faded Finnish flag, was balanced on the horse’s back. The curtains, light and sheer, on the half-open latticed windows, danced daintily in the draught. The windowsills and sideboards were crammed with potted plants. A coat-stand in one corner looked out of place. A flowerpot, also filled with a bushy, bright-green trailing plant, hung from one of the hooks. Where there was spare wall-space, Haldis Grande had displayed the occasional children’s drawing in an IKEA frame.
The interior decor suggested a much older woman, Henrik Holme mused. It reminded him of his great-grandmother, who still lived at home at the age of ninety-two. Haldis Grande was sixty-three. Although overweight, or perhaps because she was, she looked younger. Her clothes were brightly coloured. Both she and her home looked attractive, but in an odd way they did not quite match.
‘No,’ she repeated reprovingly. ‘That’s not at all what I said.’
Henrik Holme gave an apologetic smile.
She lifted the teapot and poured for them both, slowly, as if she needed some time to restore herself to the patient, eloquent woman she had been since Henrik Holme had appeared.
‘Sander is one of a kind,’ she said at last. ‘Or was. I can’t quite get used to the idea that he’s gone. But, you see, all children are unique. In an early-years class there are extrovert children, and children who barely open their mouths. Some have ants in their pants and can’t manage to sit still for a minute, far less a whole lesson in school. Others sit quietly like wee mice and do everything exactly as they’re told. Nowadays they come in all shapes and sizes, and every colour, too!’
The dimples in her round cheeks were so deep they never entirely disappeared. Now they bored fathomless holes on either side of her mouth.
‘It’s all part of growing up, Mr Holme, all part of growing up!’
She raised her cup with a stubby little finger extended into thin air, sipped her tea and shook her head gently. Henrik Holme, who had never in his life heard anyone other than his grandfather referred to as Mr Holme, blushed ever so slightly.
‘I think there must be twenty centimetres difference in height between the tallest and the shortest child in class 2A,’ Haldis Grande continued. ‘Well, they’ll become 3A in a few weeks’ time, I suppose. And almost certainly ten kilos as well!’
‘And what about Sander?’ Henrik asked hesitantly, leafing nervously through the notebook perched on his knee.
Until now he had not written a single word. When the buxom woman had declared that she could not possibly come for interview until the following week, he had asked if he could pay her a visit. Her cat was ill, she explained over the phone, having had an operation recently, and it was quite poorly, so she thought it out of the question to leave the animal for several hours without any supervision. The woman was extremely determined. Henrik Holme had capitulated, taken the subway to Grorud and let the GPS on his iPhone guide him to Haldis Grande’s home bordering Marka. He had felt like a fool on the subway, all on his own, without the regulation cap that should always have been worn outdoors, and with a small red rucksack on his back.
Norwegian police officers did not go out to visit people in this way. Admittedly, as a police student, Henrik had taken part in a couple of door-to-door inquiries, but that was something else entirely. On American and British TV series, the detectives rushed here and there, but it was not like that here. Witnesses should be called in, Henrik knew that, but he could not wait. Anyway, no one was even remotely bothered about what he was doing. The Police Prosecutor had given the green light to all the interviews he had suggested, and so she could not really have any hang-ups about where they were conducted. Besides, the tea was good, and these little cakes sprinkled with nib-sugar tasted divine. Henrik had already eaten five of them, and was wondering whether it would be impolite to take the last one on the plate.
‘Sander was a good boy,’ Haldis Grande said. ‘A kind, cheerful boy. He had some learning difficulties, but it was my distinct impression that he wasn’t stupid. Or...’
A quick smile came and went.
‘“Stupid” is a word I don’t like to use. But Sander was not what we would call smart. He wrote badly and his spelling was imaginative, to put it that way. He seemed more interested in counting, though that didn’t help particularly with his results. It was probably this physical restlessness of his that held him back. Great difficulty concentrating, even though an assistant was appointed for him as early as the middle of his first year at school.’
‘I see,’ Henrik Holme said. ‘An assistant? Someone for Sander, on a one-to-one basis?’
‘Yes. That helped. The assistant – Elin Foss is her name – has a special ability to calm the boy down. The learning environment improved. For all of us.’
‘Isn’t that kind of thing very...expensive?’
Sander’s teacher smiled broadly. Her teeth were small, regular and so even and white that they also made her appear younger than her age. Henrik grabbed the last of the little cakes.
‘Yes indeed. There’s a battle for resources in Norwegian schools, and Sander would hardly have been allocated his own assistant if it hadn’t been for his tremendously enterprising parents. Would you like more cakes?’
She pointed an inviting hand at the empty cake dish and made an effort to stand up, with an almost inaudible moan.
‘No thanks,’ he said quickly, his mouth full. ‘Excuse me. They were so delicious.’
‘You’re welcome.’
She sank back with a quiet sigh.
‘Do I have a duty of confidentiality, by the way?’
A sudden anxiety appeared on her almost wrinkle-free face.
‘Oh dear, this dreadful terrorist incident has knocked me off my perch a bit. And Sander’s death coming in the midst of it all. I didn’t think. Have I done something wrong?’
She covered her mouth with the flat of her hand.
‘Not at all,’ Henrik Holme assured her, though it had not entered his head for a second that he ought to have informed her of her rights and responsibilities before commencing this witness interview, which more than anything else resembled a pleasant tea party, despite the topic of conversation. ‘It’s fine. I am the police, after all.’
‘Are you quite sure? I mean, the law states that teachers have a duty of confidentiality as far as their pupils’ personal circumstances are concerned.’
‘Sander is dead,’ Henrik Holme said, leaning forward in his seat. ‘And I’m from the police.’
Joining his hands, he leaned his elbows on his knees and attempted to make his voice as gruff as possible.
‘As you probably appreciate, I’m not here as a matter of pure procedure. I’m investigating a...’
The word ‘murder’ was on the tip of his tongue, but he stopped himself.
‘...a suspicious death.’
‘I thought he fell off a ladder! You said that he—’
‘But did he fall by himself? Was he pushed off? Pulled down from a height of nearly three metres? Or could it be that this stepladder is nothing but a gigantic red herring? A bare-faced lie that one, or both, of his parents have cooked up to hide something else altogether?’
Haldis Grande stared at him open-mouthed. Her double chin multiplied to four, and then to six. Then she began to laugh, a light and liberating laughter that forced a smile from Henrik Holme too, despite him not finding the situation at all amusing.
‘That is,’ she said, gasping, as she wiped underneath each eye with her chubby hand, �
�that is, with all due respect, the worst piece of nonsense I’ve heard in a long time! Ellen and Jon Mohr? Ellen and Jon are supposed to have killed their son? I think you’re off your rocker, my friend!’
Henrik had fallen from being ‘Mr Holme’ to ‘my friend’ in the course of a few minutes. His Adam’s apple had started its nerve-racking dance, and he straightened his back as he touched his throat.
‘Ellen Mohr is the most dedicated mother I’ve met,’ Haldis Grande went on. ‘And I started out as a teacher in 1971! She couldn’t do enough for her son. Over the past two years she has been the parent representative, sat on the Parents’ Working Committee, arranged outings and the most splendid, imaginative fund-raising initiatives to raise money for class funds. 2A is the richest class in the school, my dear Mr Holme!’
Henrik made an effort not to swallow. Now he had at least been upgraded to Mr Holme once more.
‘And, as I said, Sander would never have been allocated an assistant if it wasn’t for his parents’ continuous, persevering pressure,’ she continued. ‘Ellen took the case all the way to the Director of Education, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘I see,’ Henrik Holme said, licking sugar off his lips. ‘You mention both of them, both Ellen and Jon, but you talk mostly of Ellen. Was she the person you had most contact with?’
Haldis Grande went on smiling. A faint scent of lily-of-the-valley could be detected every time she moved. Now she struggled mightily with the cushions to find a more comfortable sitting position, and a scent reminiscent of a florist’s shop settled over the tiny room.
‘There isn’t very much contact between teachers and parents in Norwegian schools,’ she said, punching an orange settee cushion. ‘There are parents’ meetings a couple of times a year, an equal number of development meetings and the occasional special event. Now and then there’s an exchange of emails, when something crops up. As far as Sander is concerned, naturally there was a bit more. And yes, I’ve had most contact with Ellen. Of course, really. I have the impression that Jon is an extremely busy man, and Ellen stays at home, as you probably know.’