What Dark Clouds Hide

by Anne Holt

  ‘Yes, and isn’t it a fucking murder case we’re all working on?’ he said, spraying saliva in the air. ‘Bloody hell, what a guy!’

  ‘A different case,’ Henrik Holme muttered. ‘A sort of—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  Freddy Monsen waved his huge fist impatiently.

  ‘Why did you want to speak to me?’

  ‘It has to do with a case of insider trading,’ Henrik rushed to say, since it did not suit his purposes to offer detailed information about the case he was working on. ‘It was registered on the computer system as recently as last week.’

  ‘That one, yes!’

  The Sergeant crossed his legs, clasped his hands on his knees and thrust out his bottom lip.

  ‘Do you know what case I’m referring to?’ Henrik enquired. ‘Just like that, without any more information?’

  He ran his thumb and forefinger over the corners of his mouth. He wished Monsen would do likewise, since the snuff had formed black half-moons on either side of his mouth.

  ‘There aren’t so many cases of insider trading,’ Freddy Monsen said. ‘Last week I recorded only one. Haven’t managed to get to it yet. What little I know about it, I carry inside my head. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘In this—’

  Henrik checked himself. The danger of someone taking over the case from him made him even more uncertain than he already felt.

  ‘I’m busy investigating certain circumstances in connection with one of the names that came up on the computer system,’ he said instead. ‘Jon Mohr. Manager at Mohr & Westberg AS. Calls himself Managing Director, actually. Some kind of PR agency, you know.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Monsen said, snapping his fingers. ‘He’s listed because we don’t really have a specific suspect. A bit sloppy of me, in fact. As I said, we haven’t really got properly to grips with it.’

  ‘No specific suspect?’

  ‘No, that is...’

  It looked as if Freddy Monsen was enjoying himself. Not at Henrik’s expense, not at his dancing Adam’s apple or the fact that the twenty-six-year-old was sitting all on his own in an empty office harbouring vague questions about a case of insider trading, while the rest of the world was preoccupied with entirely different matters. Freddy Monsen simply appeared to be a man with a cheerful disposition. Laughter lurked in his brown eyes, and the corners of his mouth were turned up in an eternal smile. He was pleasant, not to put too fine a point on it; an affable, agreeable man of the type Henrik Holme had always aspired to be.

  ‘The stock exchange, you know.’

  Looking round for a waste-paper basket, Freddy Monsen ran his finger under his top lip and removed a huge clump of snuff.

  ‘The stock exchange is ever-vigilant, you understand. When they detect some suspicious transaction or other – for example, a purchase or sale just before an event that affects the exchange rate – they pounce on it. The threshold is pretty low, which means that everything usually turns out to be above board. On the few occasions they don’t get to the bottom of things through a couple of routine inquiries, on the other hand.’

  His snuffbox had outlined a permanent circle on the fabric of the right-hand pocket of his trousers. He tried to grip the box, but the expanse of his stomach rested on his belt, making it necessary to stretch his whole torso at an awkward angle.

  ‘Then they send it over to the financial authorities,’ he groaned. ‘They have greater powers than the stock exchange. If they believe there’s evidence of foul play, then they pass the case on to us.’

  ‘And this case?’

  ‘As I said, I haven’t got as far as looking at it in much detail yet. It has to do with two share purchases, as far as I recollect. One took place the day before it became common knowledge that two large IT companies, Klevstrand and Shatter, were to merge. The shares went through the roof, as you might expect!’

  His right hand flew up to the ceiling before he opened the snuffbox lid.

  ‘The other one, as far as I remember, had to do with HeliCore. They had landed a considerable transport contract in the North Sea. Really lucrative. That sort of thing makes share values explode. Someone had a good enough nose to sniff out what was in the wind, and bought shares for a million kroner three hours before the news broke. Sold up immediately afterwards, and made a pretty little profit of two hundred and fifty thousand kroner.’

  He crammed another wad of snuff under his lip and wiped his hands on his thighs.

  ‘A really good nose, or else illegal information. That’s what we’re going to find out.’

  ‘But what has this to do with Mohr & Westberg?’

  Using his tongue to slip the snuff in place, Freddy Monsen smiled even more broadly than usual.

  ‘All these companies were clients of theirs. Mohr & Westberg knew what was about to happen. That sort of PR firm does the rounds and gets to know a whole bloody lot, in actual fact. I have a suspicion there was plenty of damned cheating going on in the past. It still happens, but attitudes have probably improved a bit. The fear of being caught is also greater, I expect. We, the good guys, are now far more competent.’

  He tapped his chest lightly with his fists.

  ‘Does that mean one of the staff at Mohr & Westberg bought these shares?’

  ‘No, no! There has to be a limit to their stupidity! The buyer is on the outside, of course, and it’s our job to discover whether the person concerned has any kind of link to one of the employees at Mohr & Westberg.’

  ‘So it’s far from certain that Jon Mohr has done anything wrong?’

  ‘Definitely not! He’s the Managing Director of the company and, according to the papers from the Financial Supervisory Authority, it appears that he personally dealt with both accounts. But whether he’s committed an offence, it’s far too early to tell. In all likelihood he doesn’t even know he’s under investigation. And now, when the whole fucking Finance Section is tasked with searching for the money belonging to that—’

  For the first time since he had entered the room, the corners of his mouth pulled down in disgust.

  ‘So Jon Mohr has no idea he’s under investigation?’ Henrik Holme asked, oblivious to his colleague’s change of mood.

  ‘Well, I haven’t said anything, at least!’

  He rammed the snuffbox back into his pocket as he got to his feet, hoisting his trousers a little and spraying saliva in mid-air again.

  ‘I won’t get the chance to look more closely at that case for quite a while yet,’ he declared, heading for the door. ‘But it won’t go away, that’s for sure. Unfortunately. What you think one of these fancy folk from Tjuvholm has to do with a murder case is something I can’t even be bothered asking. We’ve all got our hands full these days.’

  Now he flashed another broad smile as he raised his right hand in farewell.

  ‘It’s a bit dismal in here,’ he said. ‘Hang up a poster or something! If there’s anything further, just give me a call. Good luck, whatever it is you’re up to!’

  ‘Yes,’ Henrik answered lamely. ‘Thanks, then.’

  The door slammed shut and he was on his own again.

  More alone than ever, he felt. He thrust a pen in his ear and twisted it round, all the time peering with a crestfallen expression at the papers on the desk. So much for the theory that Jon Mohr was under stress through being subject to investigation. In the first place, the guy didn’t know about the case; and secondly, it was far from certain that he had done anything wrong.

  Wide of the mark.

  Two arm fractures, an injured back and a burn were what Henrik Holme was left with. Not much to make a fuss about, at least not as the basis for suspicion of child abuse. Naturally, he ought to check with the municipal accident-and-emergency service, but Jon Mohr had said that they always went to Volvat. The chances of him lying about something like that were minimal, since the guy didn’t exactly seem to be an idiot.

  He removed the pen from his ear.

  In a way, he could not fathom why this case h
ad become so important to him. In the initial phase of the investigation, during his lonely expedition last Friday, he had been paralysed by anxiety. If the Police Prosecutor had not turned up to adopt some kind of systematic approach to it all, Henrik was uncertain how things would have panned out. Afterwards he had at first been disappointed that he wasn’t working on the same case as everyone else, until he realized that this case could offer him a route out of all those tedious traffic offences. He was able to investigate for the first time in his life, and the dreadful circumstances offered him the opportunity to do it all off his own bat. It was exciting, as a matter of fact. He felt like a real policeman, something that did not happen very often. Never, to tell the truth.

  But something had happened. As the days passed, an uncomfortable feeling developed that there was indeed something in those suspicions that he had rather clumsily confronted Jon Mohr with on Saturday evening.

  Admittedly, the conversation with the boy’s grandmother had not provided Henrik with the least thing to go on. All he had gained from the visit to Vinderen was a glimpse of Sander. A picture hung in the old woman’s hallway, and something about the boy’s expression had moved him. From every source Henrik had heard that Sander had been cheerful, boisterous and strong. He looked completely different in the photograph. There was something about his smile: a reticence Henrik was unable to interpret. It dawned on him on reflection, moreover, that there had not been a single photograph of the boy in Jon and Ellen’s home. Not even in the kitchen, where people usually used magnets to attach a variety of snapshots to the fridge.

  Curious, Henrik Holme thought, but hardly relevant to the case.

  If he were honest, he had hardly anything of relevance to the case. The only thing he had built upon was a vague unease connected to a year-one picture of Sander, and a schoolteacher’s reluctant account of a boy who continually came to school with injuries of varying degree.

  ‘Only trivial,’ the boy was in the habit of saying.

  Henrik thumbed rapidly through to the record of the last arm fracture.

  ‘Only trivial’ was how Sander had responded to Haldis Grande’s enquiry about what had happened. On occasion he could come out with the most detailed and thrilling stories about the cause of an accident, the teacher had explained. But this time – a dramatic tumble from a ladder, when his sweater had snagged and his father had cushioned his fall, just like in the movies – was something he had not wanted to talk about.

  ‘Only trivial,’ Henrik whispered to himself.

  Or a story that was nothing but a lie. That Jon must have invented. He had been the one who took the boy to the doctor.

  His pulse-rate accelerating, Henrik opened the drawer. He withdrew the least suspicious records of illness from their cover and noticed that his hands were shaking as he quickly skimmed through the papers. Only once had both parents accompanied Sander to Volvat Medical Centre, when they had sought help for sleeping problems. At other times it had been Ellen who had gone with the boy, both after the wasp stings and in connection with the ear infection, chickenpox and stomach-ache. She had also taken Sander to the doctor after the accident on the sledging hill at school.

  Not Jon.

  Henrik stuffed the papers back inside the folder, and picked up the bundle dealing with the more suspicious injuries.

  Jon Mohr had taken Sander to the doctor when he fell down the patio steps. And when he had broken his arm, both the first and second times. It was Jon Mohr who had come to Volvat with his son when he sustained second-degree burns on his arm after a toy train had toppled into the fire. There was a pattern here, a clue at long last; it was almost too significant, and Henrik Holme swallowed repeatedly.

  When stories had to be cooked up and the boy kept quiet, it was the father who took him to the doctor.

  Not Ellen.

  ‘Yesssss!’ Henrik declared through gritted teeth.

  He was miles from a conviction. Far from an indictment. He was not even close to a charge, but this couldn’t be sheer coincidence. At last Henrik Holme was confident of his case, and Jon Mohr was most definitely going to appreciate how it felt to be faced with a policeman certain of his facts.

  *

  It was now ten o’clock on Friday night. When they returned home from their trip to the Maridal Alps, Johanne’s mother had already popped in with a casserole of home-made beef-and-vegetable stew. In the past, before she was widowed, her mother would have let herself in, uninvited, with the spare key she had surreptitiously appropriated and sat there waiting. Now she had sent a text message to say that she had cooked enough food to feed an army, but did not have room for it all in her freezer. If it was OK with Johanne, she would like to pop in with a dinner for two. She would use the spare key and let herself in and out again while they were out for the day.

  Before her mother was widowed, Johanne would have said no thanks.

  Now she was grateful.

  Adam ate in silence without noticing he had left no food for Johanne. Afterwards he took a shower, draining all the hot water from the tank, before collapsing into bed.

  Jack played dead underneath the coffee table. The walk had tired him out too, and only his faint, slow snuffling indicated there was still life in the beast.

  Isak had just phoned.

  Johanne had spoken to Kristiane for ten minutes. Surprisingly enough, she had not mentioned the terrorist attack this time, either, something she had neglected to talk about all week. Usually she was inconsolable about far less dramatic events. A newspaper article about an elk that had gone astray, wandering on to the railway tracks, and been shot dead had knocked her for six for several days prior to the summer holidays. On Kristiane’s finely tuned scale of sad incidents, the double attack on the government quarter and Utøya island broke all bounds, and she chose therefore to ignore it completely. Isak would not pressurize her, and Johanne had agreed. Ragnhild was far too busy in the swimming pool to have time to talk to her mum. Johanne was on the point of saying that the youngster should have been in bed some time ago, but fortunately restrained herself.

  She was overjoyed that the children were in France in a house with no access to Norwegian TV or the Internet.

  It struck Johanne again how unusually quiet it was.

  She poured herself a glass of wine from the box on the kitchen worktop.

  The pregnancy test crossed her mind and she stared despondently at the glass.

  She could not wait any longer. She threw the wine down the sink, rinsing it away with water, and put the glass into the dishwasher. Although she would not be able to keep this child – there was no room, no time, impossible to allow a baby into existence – it begged her not to drink. It was true that she’d taken half a glass on Sunday, but she had been so exhausted then that she had done so without thinking.

  All week she had come up with excuses for not taking the test. It was only eight weeks since she had last had her period, so there was still plenty of time left before she would reach the deadline for a termination. Besides, the whole idea of pregnancy was quite absurd. She was too old. Her cycle had been irregular for at least a year, and her mother had always complained that her own menopause had come far too early. That sort of thing was hereditary, Johanne thought she had read somewhere. She was not pregnant. It was just that her body was changing to assume a menopausal shape. Women like Ellen, who exercised herself to death, became skinny and scrawny at that age. Johanne’s physical activity was restricted to her walks with Jack. Not exactly enough to withstand the forces of gravity, and it was well known that your metabolism diminished with the passing years. She hadn’t even felt any nausea today, and it was time to get this idea about a new baby out of her head. She sneaked into the bedroom.

  Adam was unusually quiet. He lay on his side, curled up with the quilt tucked in round him, despite the room being warm and the atmosphere stuffy. Johanne was sure he had closed the window: it was a constant battle between them whether or not it should be kept open. She needed some time
to herself, and was reluctant to risk waking him by opening it, so it would have to wait until she came to bed herself. Instead she picked up the laundry basket with care and carried it out to the bathroom.

  Her desperate urge to lock the door was something she would just have to resist. After Ragnhild had locked Kristiane in the bathroom twice, Adam had hidden the key. It couldn’t be helped; he was sleeping so soundly and, anyway, he always knocked. Johanne pushed her arm down into the dirty clothes that filled the basket. Her fingers finally grasped a cardboard box at the bottom and she pulled it up.

  She had never seen such a test before, far less used one. With Kristiane and Ragnhild, she had gone straight to the doctor’s when her hopes of pregnancy had been sufficiently well grounded. Now what she felt most of all was a paralysing fear and she unpacked the test carton with fingers that refused to cooperate with her intent. She tore the box to shreds, fearing for a moment or two that she had also destroyed the list of instructions.

  Fifteen minutes later, Johanne was no longer scared. She sat dejectedly on the lid of the toilet seat, fully aware that she was expecting another child. A boy, she was sure of that, a little boy who could be named Tarjei, and she pressed her right hand on her stomach, feeling so certain that she gasped aloud: they were expecting a son.

  The test lay on the edge of the basin, the display illuminated: Pregnant 3+.

  Three weeks or more.

  For at least three weeks she had walked about with what would become a child inside her. She calculated ahead in her mind. Sometime in March. Adam and Johanne were going to have a spring baby. She was sure everything would be OK. She knew Adam – it had been stupid of her to catch him off-guard on Gaupekollen; his answer had come automatically, a heedless refusal that would turn into a yes as soon as she had told him what lay in store. Adam would be delighted, she knew that, just as her own anxiety had turned into anticipation by the time the hourglass had materialized on the display.

  However, she would have to wait.

  She stared again at the tiny indicator that showed she was carrying a new baby. She did not want to throw it away, did not have the heart to let it disappear, so she jammed it into the box containing the unused test and replaced the package at the foot of the laundry basket.