Blessed Are Those Who Thirst

by Anne Holt

  * * *

  It took only an hour and a half to organize a face-to-face. There appeared to be a surprising number of broad-shouldered, blond men with receding hairlines in the police. Five of them were now standing in company with Cato Iversen in the identity parade room. On the other side of a one-way glass window, Kristine Håverstad stood biting her nails.

  This was not why she had come, of course. She had almost collided with the freckled police officer as she diffidently approached the police station. She still had time to retreat from her purpose when he, beaming with pleasure, had confirmed her identity and brought her inside. Luckily, she hadn’t needed to say anything at all.

  Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen appeared far more exhausted than she had barely a week prior. Her eyes seemed paler, her mouth tighter and more determined. The previous week, Kristine Håverstad had thought her strikingly beautiful. Now she was an ordinary woman with attractive features, wearing no makeup. She did not seem terribly enthusiastic either, though she was friendly and welcoming enough.

  The six men followed one another into the room, like a flock of well-fed geese. When the first had reached the far end of the floor, they all turned to stare blindly into the windowpane. Kristine knew they could not see her.

  He wasn’t there. They all looked alike. But none of them was the man who had attacked her. She felt tears well up. If only . . . if only it had been one of them. Then he would have been safe from her father. She could attempt to patch up her life again. She would be spared from warning the police that her own father was planning to commit a murder. Life would have been so totally different if it had only been one of them. But it wasn’t.

  “Perhaps number two,” she blurted out.

  What was she doing? It was definitely not number two. But by forcing them to hold one of them, she would be able to buy herself some time at least. Some time to think, some time to dissuade her father. A few days, perhaps, but something was always better than nothing.

  “Or number three?”

  She looked questioningly at Hanne Wilhelmsen, who however was sitting like a sphinx, looking directly ahead.

  “Yes,” she decided. “Number two or number three. But I’m not at all sure.”

  Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen thanked her for her assistance, ushered her out, and was so disappointed she forgot to ask Kristine Håverstad what her original errand had been. It did not matter. Slinging her bag across a narrow shoulder, Kristine Håverstad disappeared from the police station, in the sure knowledge she would never have been able to bring herself to tell tales on her father.

  Number two in the lineup was office worker Fredrik Andersen of the Subpoena section.

  Number three was Police Sergeant Eirik Langbråtan, a pleasant fellow who was a crime desk operator. Cato Iversen, who had been number six in the row, received a handshake, a lackluster apology, and permission to leave.

  Having reached the far end of Grønlandsleiret and out of sight of anyone watching him from the enormous curved building, Iversen entered the Lompa restaurant, where he bought himself two liters of beer all at once. Sitting down at a table tucked inside the premises, he lit a cigarette with trembling hands.

  On the night of May 29, he had been on board the Danish ferry with a pickup loaded with smuggled liquor. That would never, ever happen again.

  * * *

  Virtually an entire working day had been wasted on a dead end. It was nothing less than disheartening. But this would not turn out to be the most dominant event in A 2.11 that day.

  Chief Inspector Hans Olav Kaldbakken entered Hanne Wilhelmsen’s office for his daily briefing. He did not look good at all. Sitting down in the chair with stiff, labored movements, he lit himself a cigarette, his twentieth that day, though it was not yet half past three.

  “Are we getting anywhere, Wilhelmsen?” he inquired hoarsely. “Have we anything else to go on apart from this . . . this Cato Iversen? For it can’t be him, can it?”

  “No, it can’t be, true enough,” Hanne Wilhelmsen answered, massaging her temples.

  The confirmation was a considerable understatement. Cato Iversen possibly had his own skeleton in the cupboard, but that would have to wait for another day. Hanne had a gut feeling Kristine Håverstad would have recognized her assailant. It puzzled her why the young woman had picked out two people who so evidently had not done her any harm. It may have been a deeply subconscious desire to give them something. But it had been worthy of note. She’d have to think about it another time.

  “Saturday is approaching,” Kaldbakken said ponderously. “It’s getting terribly close to Saturday.”

  He had a peculiar dialect and swallowed his words before they were completely enunciated. But Hanne Wilhelmsen had worked with the same boss for many years and always understood what he meant.

  “It is indeed, Kaldbakken. It’s getting near to Saturday.”

  “Do you know something,” he said, leaning toward her in an unusual display of familiarity. “Rapes are the worst things I know. I just can’t stand rapes. And I’ve been a policeman now for thirty years.”

  He was momentarily lost in thought but quickly pulled himself together.

  “For thirty-three years, to be precise. I started in 1960, which doesn’t exactly make me an old man.”

  Giving a stern smile, he coughed violently.

  “The sixties. Those were the days. It was good to be a policeman then. Well paid, so we were. More than industrial workers. Quite a lot more. People had respect for us in those times. Gerhardsen was still prime minister, and people were all pulling in the same direction.”

  The smoke was already clogging the room. The man rolled his own cigarettes and was spitting tobacco in between his soft-spoken mumblings.

  “At that time we had about two or three rapes a year. Terrible commotion. We usually got the bastard too. It was mostly men here then, and rapes were the worst crimes we knew. All of us. We didn’t give up until we’d caught them.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen had never experienced this. She had worked with the chief inspector for seven years and had never talked about anything more intimate than an upset stomach. For some reason, she took this as a bad sign.

  Kaldbakken sighed deeply, and she could hear the gurgling in his overexerted bronchial tubes.

  “But on the whole it’s been good being in the police,” he commented, gazing dreamily into space. “When you go to bed at night, you know you’re one of the good guys.

  “And girls,” he added with a cautious smile. “It gives a meaning to your existence. At least it has up till now. After this spring, I don’t know, to tell the truth.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen well understood him. It had really been a dreadful year. For her, despite everything, things were going fairly easily. She was thirty-four years old, only just born when Kaldbakken, stiff and straight in his newly pressed uniform, had been patrolling along the long, quiet streets of Oslo. She had a lot going for her. Kaldbakken did not. She came around to wondering how old he was. He looked well over sixty, but that couldn’t be right. He had to be younger than that.

  “I haven’t got much left to give, Hanne,” he mumbled.

  It scared her that he called her Hanne. Until today she had never been anything other than Wilhelmsen to him.

  “That’s nonsense, Kaldbakken,” she ventured, but gave up when he brushed her aside.

  “I know when it’s time to give in. I—”

  A terrifying, violent paroxysm of coughing suddenly gripped him. It lasted for a disturbing length of time. Finally, Hanne Wilhelmsen stood up uncertainly and placed her hand on his back.

  “Can I help you? Do you want a glass of water or something?”

  When he leaned back in the chair, gasping for breath, she became seriously alarmed. His face was gray and pouring with sweat. Moving to the side, he struggled for air and then fell heavily. There was an awful crunching sound as he hit the floor.

  Standing with her feet apart above the crumpled body, Hanne Wil
helmsen managed to turn him around and shout for help.

  When there was no response after two seconds, she kicked the door open and shouted again.

  “Call for an ambulance, for God’s sake! Phone for a doctor!”

  She then set in with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her old, worn-out boss. Two breaths, then heart massage. Two breaths, and heart massage again. There was a snapping sound inside his chest, and she realized she had broken some ribs.

  Erik Henriksen was standing in the doorway, bewildered and redder than ever.

  “Heart massage,” she commanded, concentrating her efforts on his breathing.

  The young lad squeezed and squeezed. Hanne Wilhelmsen blew and blew. But when the paramedics stood at the door nine minutes later, Chief Inspector Hans Olav Kaldbakken was dead, at only fifty-six years of age.

  * * *

  In a drab, unattractive room in a boardinghouse in Lillehammer, the little Iranian woman from Kristine Håverstad’s block was sitting, brokenhearted. She was on her own, terribly far from home, with no one to ask for help. She had chosen Lillehammer completely by chance. Far enough away but not too expensive on the train. Moreover, she had heard of the folk museum at Maihaugen.

  She should of course have spoken to the police. On the other hand, you couldn’t always rely on them. She knew that from hard-earned experience. Quite intuitively, she had felt confidence in the young female officer who had spoken to her briefly the previous Monday. But what did she know, a little woman from Iran, about who could be trusted?

  Taking out her Koran, she sat leafing through the pages. She read a little here and there but found no words of comfort or advice. After two hours, she fell asleep and did not wake until it struck her she had hardly eaten anything in two whole days.

  * * *

  As expected, her boss had been as cross as two sticks. She had apologized, promising him a doctor’s note. Wherever she would get that from now. The emergency doctor, perhaps. At the Rape Crisis Center they had been friendly and courteous when she had gone there for the most humiliating examination imaginable the previous Sunday. All the same, she was reluctant to go there and ask. Well, she’d have to deal with that problem later. Grumpy and dismissive, her boss had muttered something about the youth of today. Kristine couldn’t be bothered being provoked. She had never been out sick before.

  “Kristine!”

  Radiant with happiness, one of them grabbed hold of her. It was unbelievable that he was eighty-one years old. Unbelievable, since he had been in the navy for five years during the war and after that an alcoholic for almost fifty. But he stood his ground, in obstinate protest against the lack of recognition afforded to him and his long-dead shipmates.

  “Kristine, my lass!”

  She managed to break free after a quarter of an hour. She had not chosen the time of day at random. It was the change of shift, and she was able to sneak unseen into the storeroom where the medicine cabinet was situated. She wondered fleetingly whether she should lock the door. Then it dawned on her it would be more difficult to explain a locked rather than an open door. Although she shouldn’t be in there, she could always come up with some plausible explanation or other. She fished out the keys to the medicine cupboard. They rattled too much, so she clutched the key ring and held her breath. What nonsense. With the hubbub in the corridor outside, there was little chance anyone would hear her. And what she was going to do would not take long either.

  The packs of Nozinan were directly in front of her, in large quantities. She wondered whether she should choose injection or pill form. Without further thought, she grabbed the former. She didn’t need syringes; she had some at home. Quick as a flash, she shut the cabinet behind her and crept over to the door. Holding her breath for thirty seconds, she stuffed the medication in her pocket and strolled nonchalantly out the door. There were only two clients in the corridor, and they were so inebriated they barely knew what day of the week it was.

  On the way out, she reassured her boss once again that she would send a sick note, and that yes, of course, she would soon be back at work. Only a few days. He let her go with a sarcastic comment under his breath, which she could hear plainly.

  It had gone well. The next part was more difficult.

  It didn’t seem as though she had been away for very long. Some nodded and smiled over their books, others stared blankly at her and buried themselves in their studies once more. Then she caught sight of Terje. He was sitting in the common room with five others she knew well, and she received a warmer welcome here. Especially from Terje. Four years her junior, he was a first-year student. Since the beginning of term, he had been clinging to her like a limpet. In umpteen different ways, he had declared his great love for her, paying hardly any attention to either the difference in their ages or the fact he was eight centimeters shorter. He was really sweet, and for the most part she took a kind of pleasure in his courtship.

  “Persistence wins the day.” He brushed her aside gallantly on the occasions when she, irritated, had felt that enough was enough and attempted to tell him the lay of the land.

  She collapsed into a vacant chair.

  “Heavens, what do you look like,” commented one of her close friends. “You must’ve been really ill, I can see that!”

  “Much better now.” She smiled.

  The others didn’t look very convinced.

  “And I’d really like to celebrate being back on my feet again. A little jaunt into town. Tomorrow. Wednesday night. Anyone want to come?”

  They all did. Especially Terje. That was the point.

  * * *

  It had to happen on Wednesday. The best day. On Friday he would run a number of risks. The guy could be planning a weekend in the country. Or a party at home, for that matter. What’s more, people stayed up late on Fridays. He needed peace and quiet, so it would have to take place on Wednesday evening. He could do it on Thursday but couldn’t muster the patience. It had to be Wednesday.

  Moreover, there was another important point about that day. He had told his daughter it would take place on Thursday. Now she would avoid having to wait. On Thursday morning he would waken her with the news it was all over.

  The closet was locked, in accordance with the regulations. It was of course unnecessary now, since Kristine was grown up and did not touch his belongings. Indeed, she had hardly been inside his bedroom since she had been at high school.

  Three Home Guard uniforms were hanging neatly in a row. With three stars on the epaulettes. He was a captain. Even the green field uniform was smoothly pressed. Two pairs of boots were lined up on the floor beneath the clothes. There was a faint smell of shoe cream and mothballs.

  At the very back, behind both shoes and uniforms, lay a little steel case. Crouching down, he dragged it forward. Then, placing the case on the nightstand, he sat on the bed and opened it. The service pistol was made in Austria. Glock. Nine-millimeter ammunition. He had plenty of that. He could not touch his service ammo, but he had two broken boxes from the last shooting practice. To be persnickety, it was theft, but the top brass shut their eyes to it. It was so easy, of course, for boxes of ammunition to disappear underneath a car seat.

  With unaccustomed fingers, he dismantled the gun, oiled it, and then dried it thoroughly with a rag. He placed the pistol by his side on the bed, wrapped in the polishing cloth. Then he took five cartridges from one of the boxes, replacing the remainder inside the steel case, locking it, returning the whole kit to the back of the closet and turning the key.

  Stopping momentarily, he wondered where he should store his gun in the meantime. Finally he decided simply to stash it underneath the bed. The cleaning lady did not come until Friday, and by that time the weapon would be back in its rightful place.

  He undressed and stepped into the bathroom adjacent to his bedroom. It took some time to fill the bathtub, so he threw on a dressing gown and went to mix a strong drink, although the afternoon was too young, strictly speaking. When he came back, the foam had r
eached almost the top of the bathtub rim, and it spilled over when he lowered himself into the scalding hot water.

  Only yesterday had it really struck him that what he intended to do was a punishable offense. To put it mildly. The thought struck him like a hammer blow, for a split second, and then he pushed it away. He would not acknowledge it. Now he let the certainty that he was about to turn himself into a criminal sink more deeply.

  It had never, not for a single moment, dawned on him that he could go to the police with what he knew. Actually, he was infuriated that they apparently were incapable of investigating as well as he had. It had all been frighteningly easy. It had taken him a few days. What were the police actually doing? Nothing? They had told him they had obtained fibers and traces of semen. For analysis. But what would they do with the results when they had no register to compare them? When he had asked the police officer that very question, she had shrugged her shoulders in resignation without giving an answer.

  The police would have done something, right enough, if he went to them. He had no doubt about that. Probably the man would be arrested and subjected to tests of one kind or another. Then they would be able to prove it was him, and after that he would be put in prison. For a year or eighteen months. Minus a third of the sentence for good behavior. It meant the man could get away with less than a year behind bars. Less than a year! For having broken his daughter. Destroyed, humiliated, and defiled her.

  Going to the police was out of the question. They would have to get on with their own business. Which was more than enough, if the newspaper headlines were anything to go by.

  Naturally he could try to get away with it. Concoct an alibi of some kind. But he did not think much about that sort of thing. What’s more, he wasn’t interested.

  Finn Håverstad was not concerned with getting away with the homicide he was planning of the man who had raped his daughter. He would ensure he managed to carry out his intention in peace. Then he would spend a few hours with Kristine, before giving himself up to the police and telling them what he had done. No one would condemn him for it. Of course he would be dealt his punishment, by a court of law, but no one would really condemn him. He would never have condemned himself. His friends would certainly not do so. And when all was said and done, when push came to shove, Finn Håverstad did not give a toss what others might say. It was essential for him to kill. It was justice.