by Anne Holt
‘But why? You don’t work for the police.’
Johanne leaned a bit closer to him, with both palms on the table top.
‘When did you Google me?’
‘What?’
He adjusted his glasses by pushing them closer to his face. Johanne stared at her own double reflection and repeated, with a suggestion of a smile, ‘You just admitted you had Googled me. When did you do that?’
‘I...I don’t really remember. Why do you ask?’
‘Last week, wasn’t it?’
Joachim kept stirring the undrinkable coffee.
‘Maybe. I don’t recall. Does it matter?’
‘I phoned you precisely three hours ago. You were in your office then, and we hadn’t spoken to each other since the twenty-second of July, at Ellen and Jon’s house. We met here only half an hour ago. I don’t have any problem with you Googling someone you’re going to meet and whom you didn’t know previously. I often do the same. But if you did it today, it’s astonishing that you don’t remember it.’
Joachim did not answer.
A faint blush spread underneath his suntanned complexion. He tried to conceal it by lifting the cup and drinking. He put it down again with a grimace and started to scratch a nonexistent beard.
‘You were the one who sent me the text message,’ Johanne said, unruffled. ‘On Friday. The one that said I ought to look more closely at Sander’s death. You most certainly didn’t Google me before we were to meet – that is to say, today. It was last week, probably because you had some idea that I had previously been involved in some major crime cases. You Googled me before you sent that message. Didn’t you?’
He did not respond. Did not nod his head. He sat completely still.
‘Come on, Joachim.’
She peered at him over the top of her glasses with an indulgent smile.
‘I don’t understand why that should be something you need to keep secret. I can’t fathom why you should have to send a text message at all. Couldn’t you simply have contacted me?’
He sucked in air through his teeth for a moment or two, before finally looking up.
‘It kind of seemed so...disloyal.’
‘Disloyal? To whom? Jon? It’s surely Sander who’s owed your loyalty! And would it all of a sudden be less disloyal to hide yourself by sending an idiotic text? Honestly!’
The two blonde women, both wearing skimpy tops, thigh-length denim skirts and shoes in which Johanne would not be able to walk ten metres, had begun to take an interest in their conversation. Johanne lowered her voice: ‘You assume I have certain abilities as an investigator. That’s quite correct. I’ve helped the police in so many cases that it’s not entirely unusual to receive the strangest of messages, both via email and text. By post as well, in fact. Over the years I’ve become used to not giving a damn. I delete them, and don’t give a toss. I did that with yours too, actually. But how long do you think it would take me to discover who it was from, if I really made an effort to find out?’
Now the red flush could not be concealed. His glasses misted up and he turned round to sit with his back to the girls.
‘Not very long,’ he admitted, mumbling.
‘No, I can promise you that. Do you have a car?’
Joachim looked at her in bewilderment.
‘Yes.’
‘With you, I mean? Are you driving?’
‘Yes. It’s parked just over there.’
‘Let’s go,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Please drive me home. We can talk en route. There are fewer eavesdroppers in a car.’
She glanced obliquely at the pair of identical twenty-somethings.
‘Thanks for the coffee and cake,’ she added. ‘Don’t forget the drawing.’
They traipsed through tables and chairs, crossed Åsengata and the wide pavement leading to Nordkappgata.
‘My goodness,’ she said, stopping as a BMW cabriolet emitted a high-pitched peep and briefly flashed all its lights. ‘It’s...impressive.’
Johanne knew nothing about cars. She normally characterized them by colour and size, was fond of her Volvo because it always started, and disliked the Golf because it seldom did so. Nevertheless, even she could see that this car was something out of the ordinary. Joachim cast a glance up at the sky, opened the door for her and settled into the driver’s seat. He must have pressed something or other, because the roof lifted with a low, buzzing sound and disappeared.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Hauges vei in Tåsen. Just drive up in the direction of Nydalen.’
Johanne already regretted her decision. She felt out of place in this enormous vehicle, with its luxurious leather seats and smell of money. Joachim, on the other hand, had regained his old persona. With a self-confident smile, he accelerated out of the cramped parking space.
‘Why did you send the text message?’ Johanne asked him again.
‘I’m not quite sure,’ he said glibly. ‘Just a bit uneasy. It was stupid.’
Leaving the café was really a blunder. They no longer had eye-contact. Their fragile sense of near-intimacy was broken. Probably the two long-legged girls had been more interested in Joachim than in what they were talking about. In a few minutes the car would draw to a halt in front of the white maisonette in Hauges vei and their conversation would be over.
‘You said you’d never suspected anything wrong at Glads vei,’ she ventured all the same. ‘Not until now. Why is that?’
‘I never had any reason to. I probably don’t now, either.’
She had lost him, she realized when they stopped at a red light at the intersection beside the Nordpolen building.
‘You can continue with this nonsense if you like,’ Johanne said. ‘But it’s stupid of you. Incredibly idiotic.’
The light changed to green, but he stared at her for so long with such a look of astonishment that the car behind began to toot its horn. Joachim shifted into first gear, but was so clumsy with the clutch that he stalled the engine.
‘Fuck!’ he whispered, struggling to start it again.
The car jolted forward before the motor died again. Now they were halfway across the intersection with even more cars around them, all tooting their horns.
‘Brand-new car, I see!’ Johanne smiled, adding, ‘It doesn’t really suit this kind of driving. Are you more used to an automatic?’
‘No,’ he growled through gritted teeth, finally managing to get the engine going again. ‘It’s just something...’
The tyres squealed on the asphalt as they accelerated over the intersection. Johanne was pressed against Joachim on the gradual bend leading to Sandakerveien, and their speed must have been almost eighty kilometres an hour, when he suddenly slammed on the brakes and continued at a more law-abiding rate.
‘What do you mean by “stupid”?’ he asked.
‘You forgetting why you sent me that text in the first place. I have not inconsiderable experience as a kind of...investigator. There are also some articles on the Internet where it is more than suggested that I have a background in the FBI. The ones you’ve seen, clearly, and they’re correct as far as they go. In a number of Norwegian articles I’m described as a “profiler”. That’s a crazy, imprecise description, but there is a grain of truth in those articles as well.’
She smiled and knew he was aware that she did, despite his eyes being intently fixed straight ahead on the traffic. Though that did not help much, because at the roundabout below the Norwegian Business School they just missed crashing into the number-30 bus by only a few centimetres.
‘In other words, I’m quite good at reading people’s behaviour,’ she said. ‘And right now I’m reading yours.’
He did not say a word, but she noticed he was waiting for her to continue.
‘Fact number one,’ she said, counting on her fingers. ‘You want me to investigate the circumstances surrounding Sander’s death, but you don’t want me to know that the initiative comes from you. Fact two: you had nothing against the r
oles being reversed – that is, that I drew you into my investigations. On the contrary, when I phoned this morning, you insisted on meeting as soon as this morning. Fact three, or at least what I for the moment choose to assume is a fact: you were fond of Sander and very good with him.’
At the bridge across the Akerselva river at Kristoffer Aamodts gate, a bin lorry had broken down and was blocking the west lane. The traffic contraflow was one continuous stream and they were stuck fast.
‘Fact four,’ Johanne went on, pointing at the pinkie of her left hand with her right forefinger. ‘You were just about to tell me something worrying about Sander’s life, when you abruptly changed the subject. You were scared. Sceptical and anxious.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Joachim said peevishly, sounding his horn.
The oncoming traffic was too heavy to allow them to overtake the bin lorry. The driver stood smoking only a few metres from Joachim’s black BMW, shaking his head at Joachim’s impatience. He shouted something that Johanne did not catch.
‘More facts than that I don’t have,’ she said. ‘But shall I tell you how I interpret them?’
Joachim had wound down the window and thrust his head out of the car as far as it would stretch. Without answering, he turned the steering wheel abruptly and stamped his foot on the accelerator. The refuse-collector jumped back as the BMW shot to the side and past the bin lorry. It squeezed back on to the road, averting a head-on collision with a Rema 1000 supermarket van by only a split second.
‘Vacillation,’ Johanne said into thin air, as if nothing had happened. ‘When you feel as torn as you do, then it’s obviously because you’ve got something to gain, and something to lose, no matter what you choose. You want me to dig around in the circumstances of Sander’s death, but not at your instigation. You want to tell me about the suspicions you’ve started to mull over since Sander’s death, but you don’t dare voice them, when push comes to shove. Because you have something to hide yourself. In reality you want to keep as far away as possible. Away from everything.’
They were approaching Maridalsveien. Fortunately the traffic was congested here too, and they drove towards the roundabout at a snail’s pace.
‘You don’t know anything about this,’ Joachim said softly.
Johanne noticed his knuckles whiten as they gripped the steering wheel.
‘Yes, I do. I know a little, as I’ve just enumerated. But I don’t know nearly enough. That’s why I’d appreciate it if you would help me.’
He did not answer. She said nothing further. Instead, she leaned back and studied his face, partly from behind, without him being able to see her. The muscles in his cheek vibrated under the smooth-shaven skin, and she could hear through the rustle of the wind and the smooth, deep rumble of the engine that he was grinding his teeth. His eyes were narrow behind the pilot sunglasses and he was nervously biting a dry flake of skin on his bottom lip.
Joachim Boyer was afraid, she could see that.
When he stopped in front of the gate, on her directions, she remained seated. He did not say anything and made no sign of going to open her door, as his old-fashioned courtesy demanded. She could hear Jack’s hoarse barking from the house; he always registered her approach, even when, as now, she was driven by someone else.
‘We all have our secrets,’ she said softly. ‘We’ve all done daft things. That’s what makes investigation so difficult, Joachim. We’re all, at the end of the day, a bit worried about getting involved. Very few lives can stand to be put in the spotlight.’
‘I’ve never laid a finger on Sander.’
He still avoided her gaze. Did not switch off the ignition. His hands still had a tight grip on the leather steering wheel.
‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘But you’ve done something else that’s stupid, eh?’
She did not expect him to answer, and nor did he. Jack was still barking inside. A stray dog scurrying from Blåsbortveien responded with a couple of sharp barks before lifting its back leg, peeing on the gatepost and sauntering off.
‘That’s why you tried to bring me in, instead of going to the police. You wanted justice for Sander, but not for that same justice to catch up with you. Whatever it is you’ve done. If it has nothing to do with Sander, then you’re safe from me, at least.’
‘Sander sustained a lot of injuries,’ Joachim finally said, exhaling slowly with his cheeks puffed out. ‘They rarely happened at my house, and he explained many of them away.’
He let go of the wheel, pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine.
‘Tell me more,’ Johanne said, loosening her seat belt.
*
Helga Mohr had never previously visited the new premises of Mohr & Westberg AS. Under normal circumstances, she would have looked forward to coming. The size, design and, not least, location conveyed in total an outward sign of her son’s considerable professional success, in this new part of the city that had risen from the sea to cover an area that, in her early youth, had been no more than a garish collection of gigantic warehouse buildings. She would have admired the Danish furnishings in Jon’s office, and would have stroked the silky-soft calfskin on the sofa arrangement, where he had seated her with a cup of tea. Helga Mohr would in other circumstances have fallen into a reverie at the view and the technical solutions that made it possible to transform the clear windows into tinted sunglasses at the touch of a button.
Now she hardly noticed anything at all.
She had not even taken off her Burberry cape and felt too hot. The tea sat untouched, still with the teabag floating in it. Soon it would be full of tannin and completely undrinkable. She fiddled with her wedding ring, which had become noticeably slacker on her finger in the past week.
‘Can’t you talk to her yourself?’ she said for the third time.
‘No,’ he repeated dolefully. ‘I don’t want Johanne involved in this business at all. Do you understand that, Mother? Now you really must cut this out.’
He stood up and began to pace the floor restlessly.
‘The funeral’s on Friday. We just have to get through that. After Friday it’ll all be over. We have to move on, Mother. We just need to make it through Friday.’
‘Moving on is exactly what I want to do,’ she said, in a tone sharper than she had intended. ‘But in order to move on, we need to make sure that the police don’t trample through our lives, the way that revolting brat of a policeman has already done. You know what your father used to say: There’s no mention of guilt or innocence, right or wrong; it’s a question of what the police decide. Nothing’s as dangerous as a—’
‘Cut it out!’
Touching his head, Jon pulled a face, as if in sudden pain. He looked so dreadful. Normally he was really good-looking, she thought, with his father’s boyish, narrow bone structure, without seeming scrawny, just healthy and slim. Now he looked skinny, just like Ellen. Helga Mohr wondered whether they had both stopped eating. The worst thing was looking at his eyes, the few times she managed to get a glimpse of them. They had always been his most handsome feature – big, dark-blue eyes with long, black lashes. Now they were disappearing into his skull. It looked as if his cheekbones had become higher, with dark shadows like hollows on either side of his pinched, drawn face.
‘Better safe than sorry,’ she said, after a pause long enough to allow him to resume his seat. ‘Stealing a march on the police, so to speak. Johanne has long experience of that kind of thing, and she would probably listen more to you than to me. You are old friends, sweetheart, after all, and she isn’t going to refuse, if you ask her nicely. A case like this can get completely out of control. You don’t remember what happened to your father, you were far too young, but I can assure you...’
Folding his hands behind his neck, Jon leaned his head back.
‘Mother... Mother!’
He sat up abruptly and leaned forward, resting an elbow on each knee.
‘This isn’t a case, Mother! Sander died in an accident. He’s had a post-mor
tem, we’ve got him back, we’re holding the funeral on Friday. There hasn’t been a cheep from the police since 23 July, and they’ve got plenty of other bloody things to attend to, for fuck’s sake!’
His eruption drained the room of sound. Helga sat without moving a muscle, apart from the fingers of one hand twisting her wedding ring round and round on the other. Jon used a teaspoon to retrieve the teabag, squeezed out the almost-black liquid and placed both spoon and teabag on a glass dish in the centre of the table. Only now did she notice a large, flesh-tinted sticking plaster on the outside edge of his hand. It looked dirty, and she had to restrain herself to avoid commenting on it.
‘In this case, the best course of action is to sit quiet,’ he said at last. ‘Life is difficult enough as it is. Let it be, Mother. Let it all lie.’
His voice sounded so husky. So worn out. Most of all she wanted to get up and go to him. Put her hand on his neck, that thin, sinewy neck which her hands knew so well. She wanted to hold his head against her body and whisper the foolish words she had used to pacify him when he was a child. More than anything she wanted to help Jon, and reassure him that everything would be all right. She wanted to soothe him with warm hands and assurances that everything could be fixed – the way she had fixed everything for him until he was sixteen and, like most boys, became impossible to talk to. Since then she had been forced to do it on the quiet.
Jon did not know that she knew. That was obvious.
She had been quite sure he had not spotted her, on the terrace, on the afternoon of 22 July, after the front door in the hall had closed behind her and it dawned on her that she had left her book behind in the living room, the novel of which she had only twenty pages left to read and was desperate to finish that same evening. She had got as far as her car in Glads vei when she discovered her forgetfulness. She retraced her route across the space in front of the double garage and down the wide slate steps, realizing that it would be easier to descend the outdoor flight of stairs to the terrace, where she herself had opened the door to the living room only ten minutes earlier.