by Anne Holt
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘I said I didn’t know. It’s true. I don’t know who she is. But if this might have any significance for the investigation, you have to talk to Stubo.’
‘It can’t possibly have anything to do with my mother’s death! I don’t want any publicity about this. That’s the last thing she would have wanted.’
‘But Lukas,’ she said, pressing his hand once more, ‘why do you think Stubo is so interested in that photograph? He obviously thinks it’s important. And we do want this cleared up, don’t we Lukas? Don’t we?’
He didn’t reply. His stubborn expression and lowered eyes reminded her so strongly of their eldest son that she couldn’t help smiling.
‘Dad put it away,’ he mumbled.
‘When?’
‘The day after the murder. It was there when Stubo came round the first time. He wheedled his way into Mum’s room a few days later, and evidently noticed it had gone.’
He grabbed a handful of tissues out of a box she had placed on the bedside table, and blew his nose thoroughly and for a long time.
‘So how did you get hold of it?’ she asked. ‘If Erik had put it away?’
‘It’s a long story,’ he said, waving dirty tissues around. ‘And now I have to go back to sleep, Astrid. I mean it. I really do feel terrible.’
She stayed where she was. There was such a strong draught from the open balcony door that the newspaper on the bedside table was flapping. It had started raining again, and the patter of heavy raindrops on the balcony floor made her raise her voice as she patted the covers twice and said: ‘OK. But we’re not done with this.’
He shuffled back under the covers and turned his back on her.
‘Any chance you could close the door?’
‘Yes,’ she replied.
The wood had warped during the constant rain, and it was impossible to close the door completely. She left it slightly ajar and went out of the room with Lukas’s dirty trousers and socks under her arm.
Downstairs the telephone was ringing.
She almost hoped it was Adam Stubo.
*
‘Have you spoken to your husband about … Does Adam Stubo know about this?’
Silje Sørensen had been listening to Johanne for almost three quarters of an hour. From time to time she had jotted something down, and once or twice she had interjected a question. The rest of the time she had listened, her body language becoming increasingly tense. A few moments into Johanne’s cogent and incredible story, a faint flush had begun to spread up the inspector’s throat. Johanne could clearly see the pulse beating in the hollow at the base of her neck.
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘He’s in Bergen at the moment.’
‘I realize that, but this is …’
Silje ran her fingers through her medium-length hair. The diamond sparkled.
‘Let’s see if I can summarize this correctly.’
She was balancing a blue pen between her index and middle fingers.
‘So The 25’ers,’ she began, ‘are an organization we know very little about. You think they’ve come to Norway, for reasons of which you are unaware, and have started to murder homosexuals or sympathizers according to a more or less fixed calendar based on the numbers 19, 24 and 27. Which are supposed to be cryptic numbers relating to the Koran and to two Bible verses from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, respectively.’
She looked up from her notes.
‘Yes,’ Johanne said calmly.
‘You realize how crazy this sounds?’
‘Yes.’
‘Aren’t you wondering why I’ve sat here listening to this for almost …’
She glanced at her Omega watch made of gold and steel.
‘… an hour?’
‘Yes.’
Johanne sat on her hands again. She was bitterly regretting coming here. It was Adam she should have spoken to, naturally. Adam, who knew her and how she reasoned and what she knew. Now she was sweating and feeling grubbier than she had for a long time, sitting here with the detective inspector with the long nails and hair that must have been styled by a hairdresser this morning.
Silje Sørensen was on her feet.
She opened a drawer in her desk. She was so short she hardly needed to bend down. It struck Johanne that it must have been difficult for her to fulfil the physical criteria for acceptance into the Police Training Academy. She stood in silence for a while, staring at something. Johanne couldn’t see what it was from where she was sitting. Then the drawer slammed shut, and Silje Sørensen went over to the window.
‘And there wasn’t actually a murder on 27 December,’ she said, her back to Johanne. ‘That’s just a guess, the idea that this …’
The pause lasted such a long time that Johanne mumbled: ‘Niclas Winter.’
‘That this Niclas Winter was murdered rather than died of an overdose.’
Johanne wondered if she should just say goodbye and leave. Her shoulder bag was lying at her feet, half-open, and she could see that she had three missed calls on her mobile.
‘Besides which,’ Silje Sørensen said so suddenly and loudly that Johanne jumped, ‘the experience of the Americans suggests that they murder only homosexuals, not sympathizers. Isn’t that right?’
‘But so little is known about them, and they’ve—’
‘Do you actually know if they feel constrained by those dates?’
‘Yes!’
Johanne almost screamed the answer.
‘I rang my …’
She changed her mind. She had enough problems when it came to credibility without referring to a friend.
‘I rang Karen Winslow, a solicitor at APLC,’ she corrected herself. ‘That’s the centre I mentioned.’
It was true. On her way to police headquarters she had felt the need to put a little more flesh on the bones of her meagre story, and had called Karen in the States. It wasn’t until her friend answered that Johanne realized it was still night in Alabama. Karen had assured her it really didn’t matter, as she was still suffering from jet lag anyway.
‘As I said, it was numerologists who worked out the background to the name The 25’ers,’ Johanne continued. ‘Naturally, they had something to build on. Something around which to base their theories. All six murders currently linked to the organization were committed on the 19th, 24th or 27th. According to Karen Winslow.’
She wiped her nose and added with a touch of embarrassment.
‘Today. This morning.’
Silje Sørensen went back to her desk. Opened the drawer, looked down.
Suddenly she sat down, leaving the drawer open.
‘If you’d come here a week ago,’ she said, ‘I would have politely got rid of you after five minutes. I didn’t do that today because …’
They looked at each other. Johanne bit her lip.
‘I don’t know whether I ought to tell you this,’ said Silje, holding her gaze. ‘You’re not attached to the police. In a purely formal sense, I mean.’
Johanne didn’t speak.
‘On the other hand, I’m aware that you have a kind of general approved status from the relevant authorities in connection with your research project. I presume you must have been given extensive sanctions regarding access to our cases, at least in those instances where we suspect hate crime is involved.’
Johanne opened her mouth to protest, but Silje held up a hand to stop her.
‘I presume, I said! I’m not asking you. I’m simply telling you what I presume. So that I can show you this.’
She took a single sheet of paper out of the open drawer and looked at it for a moment before passing it across the crowded but well-organized desk to Johanne.
She took the piece of paper and adjusted her glasses.
Three names and three dates.
‘I recognize the name Marianne Kleive,’ she said. ‘But I have no idea who the other two—’
‘Runar Hansen,’ Silje interrupted. ‘Beaten and killed in Sofienberg Park on 19 November. Hawre Ghani. Underage asylum seeker who—’
‘Sofienberg Park?’ Johanne broke in. ‘The east or west side?’
‘East,’ said Silje with an almost imperceptible smile. ‘And you might have heard of Hawre Ghani as the body we pulled out of the harbour on the last Sunday in Advent.’
Johanne’s mouth was dry. She looked around for something to drink, but all that was left of her chocolate was a brown, congealed mass in the bottom of her cup.
‘Among many other things,’ Silje said, holding her breath as she paused for effect, ‘he was a prostitute.’
‘I need a drink of water,’ said Johanne.
‘We don’t know exactly when he was murdered, but there is every indication that the murder took place on 24 November. We have a confirmed sighting on that date when he went off with a punter. No one saw him after that. It fits in with the estimate from the pathologist.’
‘I’m just going to the loo,’ said Johanne. ‘I really do need a drink.’
‘Here,’ said Silje, passing her a bottle of mineral water from the cupboard behind her. ‘I can understand how you feel. You put two and two together more quickly than we did. This is all to do with—’
‘There’s a murder missing for 27 November,’ said Johanne. She was getting hotter and hotter. She couldn’t get the bottle open.
‘This could all be coincidence,’ she went on, her voice almost breaking.
‘You don’t believe that. And you’re wrong. There isn’t a murder missing for 27 November. Last Tuesday, when my colleague and I spotted a clear connection between the three cases I’m working on at the moment …’
She quickly leaned across the desk, waving her fingers at the bottle. Johanne passed it to her and Silje opened it with one quick movement. She passed it back and went on.
‘It’s tricky when one inspector is responsible for three murder investigations. I actually had four, but I passed one over to a colleague. I hadn’t done very much work on that particular case before I handed it over. It’s to do with suspected sabotage on a car. It came off the road in Maridalen, and since nobody sticks to the speed limit on what is an extremely dangerous stretch of road, the driver died. At first the case was treated as an ordinary road traffic accident. Then it turned out that someone might have … tampered with the brakes. I knew this before, of course, but what I didn’t know was that the victim, a Swedish woman by the name of Sophie Eklund, lived with Katie Rasmussen.’
Johanne needed a few seconds. She had already drunk half the mineral water.
‘The MP,’ she said eventually. ‘The spokesman on homosexual issues for Arbeiderpartiet.’
‘I think she prefers “spokeswoman”.’
‘Do you think … was the sabotage aimed at her? Was … was her partner murdered by mistake?’
‘I don’t know, and I have no opinion on that. I’m just telling you that your absurd theory seems a little too close to the mark for me to sit here and dismiss it.’
‘It could be someone else, of course,’ said Johanne. ‘Another organization. Or a copycat. Or—’
‘Listen to me,’ said the inspector. ‘I want you to listen very carefully.’
She rested her elbows on the desk and interlaced her fingers.
‘You have a good reputation, Johanne. A lot of people in this building are aware of the work you’ve done for NCIS, without taking any credit for it. I noticed you in particular when NCIS solved the case of those murdered children a few years ago. It’s no secret around here that it was your input that saved the life of at least one girl who had been kidnapped.’
Johanne stared at her, her face expressionless. She couldn’t work out where the inspector was going with this.
‘But people also say you can be quite …’
She straightened her back and her eyes narrowed before she found a word she liked.
‘… reluctant,’ she said. ‘Do you know what they call you inside NCIS?’
Johanne put the bottle to her mouth and took a drink. A long drink.
‘The reluctant detective.’
Silje’s laugh was big, warm and infectious.
Johanne smiled and put the top back on the bottle.
‘I didn’t know that,’ she said candidly. ‘Adam never mentioned it.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t know. Anyway, my point is that you’re sitting here, living proof that your nickname is well-earned. First of all you come out with a theory that’s like something out of an American B-movie, then you try to distance yourself from the whole idea when I tell you there could be something in it. So it’s hardly surprising that—’
Loud voices out in the corridor. A male voice bellowed, then a woman screamed, followed by the sound of running footsteps. Johanne looked in horror at the closed door.
‘Someone trying to do a runner,’ Silje said calmly. ‘Unlikely to succeed.’
‘Shouldn’t we help? Or—’
‘You and me? I don’t think so!’
Someone must have caught the would-be runaway and rendered them harmless, because suddenly everything went quiet. Johanne was fiddling with the cuffs of her sweater when she caught sight of a calendar just behind Silje. There was a red magnetic ring around Thursday 15 January.
‘Irrespective of my theory,’ she said slowly, ‘the fact is that during November and December we have six murders with … some kind of homosexual link, I think we could call it. 19, 24 and 27 November. The same dates in December. And today is 15 January.’
Johanne kept her eyes fixed on the red ring. When she blinked it had etched itself firmly on her mind’s eye as a green O.
‘Yes,’ said Silje Sørensen. ‘In four days it will be 19 January. We may not have much time.’
The thought hadn’t struck Johanne until now. It gave her goose-flesh on her arms, and she pulled down her sleeves.
‘Do you have anything to go on? Anything at all? From what Adam says it sounds as if they’re not really getting anywhere over in Bergen.’
Silje Sørensen pushed out her lower lip and shook her head slightly, as if she didn’t really know whether what she was searching for could really be called a clue. She opened three drawers before she found the right one and took out a pile of drawings. The drawer slammed shut as she stood up. She went to the empty noticeboard.
‘We’ve got this,’ she said. ‘Sketches of the man who was trying to buy sex from Hawre Ghani when he was last seen alive.’
She fixed the images to the board with bright red drawing pins. Johanne stood up and waited until all four sheets were in place: a full-length picture, a full-face portrait, a profile and a peculiar drawing of something that looked like a pin with an emblem on it.
‘Is everything all right?’
Silje’s voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way off.
‘Johanne!’
Someone grabbed hold of her arm. Her head felt so light that she thought it might come loose and float up to the ceiling like a helium balloon unless she pulled herself together.
‘Sit down! For God’s sake sit down!’
‘No. I want to stand here.’
Even her own voice sounded distant.
‘Have you … ? Do you know who this man is, Johanne?’
‘Who did these?’
‘Our usual artist, his name is—’
‘No, that’s not what I mean. Which witness helped to produce these sketches?’
‘A boy. Homeless. A prostitute. Do you know the man in the drawings?’
She was still holding Johanne’s arm. Her grip tightened.
‘I slapped this man across the face,’ said Johanne.
‘What?’
‘Either your witness is playing games, or he’s the most observant person in the world. I’ll never forget this man. He …’
The blood had returned to her head. Her brain felt clearer than for a long time. A remarkable sense of calm came over her, as if she ha
d finally decided what she wanted and what she believed in.
‘He saved my daughter’s life,’ she said. ‘He saved Kristiane from being hit by a tram, and I slapped him across the face by way of thanks.’
*
Kristen Faber’s secretary had finally found the time to open the drawer in her boss’s desk. There had been no need to call a locksmith or a carpenter, of course. All it took was a little skilful poking at the lock with an ornamental penknife that she kept on her own desk. Click went the drawer and it was open.
And there was the envelope. Large and brown, with Niclas Winter’s name written on it just above his ID number. The envelope had an old-fashioned wax seal and, as an additional security measure, someone had scrawled an illegible signature diagonally across the flap where the envelope was stuck down.
When Kristen Faber took over the practice from old Skrøder, there had been a lot to deal with. Ulrik Skrøder had been completely senile for the last six months before his son finally managed to have the poor old soul declared incapable of managing his affairs, and the firm could be sold. At least that was what everyone said. Kristen Faber’s secretary, having taken on the task of going through all the papers and following up every case where the time limit had elapsed or was about to do so, had the impression that Skrøder must have been confused for many years. There was no order to anything, and it took her months to sort out the worst of it.
When everything was finally finished, Kristen realized he had paid too much for the practice. The ongoing cases were far fewer in number than he had been led to believe, and most of the clients turned out to be around the same age as their solicitor. They simply died, one after the other, ancient and advanced in years, with their affairs in pristine order and with absolutely no need of the assistance of a solicitor. Eighteen months later Kristen managed to get back half the money he had paid out.
The secretary could well understand his frustration at having bought a pig in a poke. However, she couldn’t help reminding him from time to time about all the sealed envelopes in a heavy oak cupboard in the archives. Some of them looked positively antique, and Skrøder’s son had maintained that they could be extremely valuable. They had been handed over for safe keeping by some of the city’s oldest and wealthiest families, he told them. His father had always said that the oak cupboard containing these documents provided proof of his good judgement. Every envelope was sealed, with the name of the owner of the contents neatly written on the front, and when he was in deep despair at having bought a portfolio that offered him little profit Kristen Faber had restricted himself to opening a dozen or so.