Sohlberg and the Gift

by Jens Amundsen

  Ask me if I care. Not at all. Who cares what killing could be or should be or might be.

  Don’t you mock me. You listen good because death is the most important thing in life. If you don’t think death is important then maybe you can die right now. Tell me if you care to die right now.

  No I don’t.

  Then you listen real good. Death is so powerful that life can’t fight it and win. That’s why the dead don’t come back here on earth. Death is my old friend. A good friend. Loyal. Dependable. Always there when I need him. You’ll see Death when you catch up with your lady. I wish I was there and see you kill her. The hair will stand on her skin just a few seconds before the falcon comes to take her away.

  You should know.

  They always know when death is coming. Always. Everyone does. Say you walk down a dark and lonely street and my knife comes out for you. Say you are sitting in some faraway war and a bullet or bomb is coming for you. Say you got a clot coming into your heart or lungs or brain. Even if you don’t see it coming the hair will stand on your skin just a few seconds before the falcon takes your soul.

  I don’t care what happens afterwards. That ain’t my business.

  The Falconer smiled. It will be your business. This here ain’t all there is.

  You know.

  I sure do. You know I do.

  He shrugged and looked out at the field and pretended he didn’t care about what happens After Death. But may be just may be the Falconer did know. The killer next door. He has to know.

  ~ ~ ~

  The morning went by quickly as Sohlberg finished reviewing sundry paperwork for an upcoming trial in mid-January. The only other detective in the department had left in a hurry at 10 A.M. to pick up a suspect: a man who had just slashed his wife’s throat because she had served him undercooked scrambled eggs.

  The call on Sohlberg’s private cell phone came in shortly after two o’clock. He looked at the caller’s number and smiled.

  “Hei.”

  “I’m about to take the tram. See you there in a few minutes.”

  “You’ll be alone?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “How’s The Zoo today?”

  ~ ~ ~

  The Zoo. No one knows who came up with that nickname for Oslo’s Grønland police station. The nickname appeared in the early 1980s when the Prime Minister appointed one disastrous and incompetent political hack after the other to serve as the Minister of Justice and the Police.

  The first political hack was a beautiful if not exquisite female appointee whose hideous personality and corrupt administration earned her the nickname wildebeest.

  Nicknames proliferated. Specific types of job positions received the appropriate nickname. Jailers became zookeepers. Detectives became animal handlers and then just handlers. Administrators became animal feeders and eventually feeders.

  Soon almost everyone had a nickname if they worked at the Zoo.

  One hapless politiinspektør was known as Kalashnikov because he stuttered like a machine gun.

  Chief Inspector Bjørn Nygård had been Dumbo because of his large elephant ears.

  Ivar Thorsen was The Janitor or The Mop because his mother had worked as a maid.

  Sohlberg was Chile Verde because of his hot temper which he was usually able to control and cloak under a meek and mild exterior.

  One Police Commissioner and Chief of the Oslo Police District was known as Scarlett because of her obsession with the book and film Gone with the Wind. The Politimeister’s obsession included dressing up in lavish Southern antebellum clothing at her home. She also liked to show up—dressed in character as Scarlett O’Hara—at film theater re-showings of GWTW. Her chief deputies were of course known as Rhett and Ashley and her top-floor office suite was Tara.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sohlberg refused to talk to his caller about the Zoo over the telephone. Instead he engaged in social pleasantries. A minute later Sohlberg nonchalantly headed downstairs to his rendevous. He had asked for and been granted a half-day off work by the acting head of homicide. Lunde in Vice was a pushover for time-off requests. And to prevent any problems down the road—about his unauthorized investigations—Sohlberg sent Lunde an e-mail explaining that he was “following leads on two old homicide cases.”

  As soon as he left the Grønland politistasjon Sohlberg had the eerie feeling that someone was watching and following him. He walked down the driveway to a low round fountain. Sohlberg made sure that he appeared to be admiring the metal sculpture of a fisherman in the fountain. He made sure that no one was tailing him while he circled the fountain. And yet he could not shake off the feeling that someone was watching him.

  Oslo after a winter storm always depressed Sohlberg. New snow piled up on old dirty snow. Snow and more snow; cold and more cold. Snow on the cities and the fields and the forests and the mountains. The snow covered everything and everyone under a clean blanket. But the pure snow—like the innocent souls that come into the world—would soon be soiled wherever men and women tramp about.

  Sin inevitably spots the human path whether it be in pursuit of good or evil.

  Sohlberg wondered if Henrik Ibsen had once said that. It sounded like something the great Norwegian playwright would say.

  Deep snow drifts from an overnight blizzard prevented Sohlberg from walking down to the Cafekontoret by taking a shortcut through the Grønlandspark. In winter the verdant bosky park was but a dim memory. Sohlberg took the longer route down Grønlandsleiret itself because the street was plowed clean. He stopped from time to time and discretely looked around to make sure that no one followed him.

  Sohlberg opened the front door of the Cafekontoret. He could not help comparing the dry frigid air outside with the warm and steamy interior. The waiter took him to his usual booth in a partly-hidden corner at the back of the pub.

  Thanks to its convenient location almost everyone in the Oslo police force had at one time or the other had a meal or quaffed a few drinks at the pub-style Cafekontoret which is appropriately named The Office Cafe. The pub is within easy walking distance of the police station on the corner of Grønlandsleiret and Schweigaards gate where Grønlandsleiret becomes Oslo gate. Reasonable prices and decent pub food made the locale all the more attractive. Maybe too attractive.

  A few years ago the Oslo Police Commissioner issued an official rule that prohibited detectives from meeting informants or witnesses at the Cafekontoret because almost everyone in the criminal underworld knew about the pub’s most favored eatery status among Oslo detectives.

  The Politimeister’s first case in point: after leaving his meeting with a Zoo handler at the Cafekontoret an informant in a major drug case was murdered in the middle of Schweigaards gate in broad daylight. The assailant used a pickaxe on the man’s forehead in front of dozens of pedestrians. The silent but effective killer was never caught.

  The Politimeister’s second case in point: six months after the pickax murder a 19-year-old female witness in a genital mutilation case was fatally stabbed 43 times. The teenager expired less than 30 yards from the Cafekontoret where she had met with the Zoo handler in charge of African genital mutilation cases. The police rounded up the usual suspects that winter. One excellent suspect emerged. But the Politically Correct prosecutor assigned to the murder refused to charge anyone. The prosecutor found a convenient lack of evidence that protected his political reputation for sensitivity to minorities. Of course no one challenged his insensitivity to the murdered victim or her family which had to bury her in a closed casket.

  At exactly 2:30 P.M. the craggy-faced Petra Sivertsen walked in and sat in front of Sohlberg. Both ordered fiskesuppe and brød—fish soup and bread—after exchanging Merry Christmas! greetings.

  “Thanks for coming over to meet me.”

  “No problem,” said the vacationing Executive Assistant who looked as if she meant it. “I needed to come to downtown to shop for some Christmas gifts. See? . . . I’ve go
t my bag right here of Santa’s goodies in case anyone sees us together.”

  “Very convincing. Can I reimburse you?”

  “No. No. I really had to buy this stuff. I’ll keep the receipts to prove my purchases.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And when I go back to work I’ll make sure the right gossips at the office hear about my finding lovely gifts on such great rabatt . . . such excellent discount sales . . . at the Steen and Strøm shopping center on Nedre Slottsgate. And . . . of course I just happened to stop off at the Munkegata station to have a snack here before heading back home on the Number Eighteen tram which . . . by the way . . . is also the line you take home . . . right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if anyone does ask later on I will tell them what a pleasant coincidence and surprise it was to meet you here at the old watering hole.”

  “I appreciate you helping me Fru Sivertsen.”

  “My boy . . . you were the only one from the Zoo who came to visit me when I was sick two years ago . . . you and Heidi . . . the clerk in Evidence.”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “Thank you. It meant a lot to me. Imagine . . . almost forty-two years of service and no one came to visit me from the Zoo . . . not my boss or any of the detectives from Homicide came to visit me at the hospital . . . or at my home when I was recovering. You . . . my Solly wonderful boy . . . came to the hospital God knows how many times . . . and you later came to help me with house chores at home.”

  “It was my pleasure . . . an honor.”

  “Yes. But not everyone respects . . . or helps . . . an old widow like me. I know I get smiles and little office gifts from all my boys and girls because I’m useful. But I know my place at the Zoo. I’m a nobody . . . an insignificant replaceable and expendable employee.”

  “That’s not why I visited you Fru Sivertsen.”

  “I know. You too lost your soul mate . . . just like me. You know what it’s like to be shipwrecked by death on that lonely and invisible island of pain in an ocean of grief.”

  “True.”

  “Now my boy . . . what can I do for you? . . . Why all this hush-hush spy-like business?”

  “I’m interested in getting my hands on a homicide case file that’s considered closed. I have yet to find out where old homicide case files wind up. So . . . where are old homicide files stored?”

  “My Solly boy . . . homicide files get stored in different locations based on the age of the case and whether an appeal is pending before the courts. Eventually all murder case files get moved to the National Archives if more than four years have passed since the case was solved or closed or if all normal appeals have been exhausted after someone has been convicted. Now . . . why do you ask?”

  “I’m interested in an old case.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I understand something was wrong with—”

  “Wait. Are you still interested in that triple homicide?”

  “No no. Actually it’s the Janne Eide case.”

  “Oh good! Very good. Finally someone’s going to look at it. You see . . . I’ve prayed for the longest time for the Janne Eide case to be reopened. I’d almost given up hope.”

  “You remember it well?”

  “Of course. I’m not a stupid secretary or a senile old woman. It’s not every day that lead detective Bjørn Nygård . . . a great detective . . . a sober and intelligent man of integrity . . . gets thrown off a case . . . and then he gets shoved off the Zoo with a miserly early retirement package that he was forced into accepting.”

  “Did he have a choice to stay?”

  “No . . . not unless he wanted to get demoted on some made-up excuse and then assigned to be a lowly cop in some God-forsaken Arctic island town near the North Pole.”

  “Why did all that happen?”

  “They say it was because your friend Ivar Thorsen wanted to get promoted and take Nygård’s job.”

  “They say? . . . Was it true?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “By the way Fru Sivertsen . . . Ivar Thorsen and I used to be childhood friends. We were best friends from elementary school to high school . . . but at the start of our senior year in high school I noticed that he would say nasty things about me to make himself popular . . . I used to be quite a fat kid back then.”

  “Surely not. You’re skeletal now.”

  “I’m on the skinny side nowadays . . . but I’ve gained weight recently since I don’t have the time to run as much as I used to. . . . But back in high school Thorsen would make nasty comments or jokes about me being fat . . . I let the insults slide by since he was desperately trying to get accepted . . . but he crossed the line when he went out of his way to betray me at a debate tournament. You see . . . Thorsen and his debate partner had lost to my team because I had come up with a clever and brand new argument that no one ever expected.”

  “What did the little jerk do?”

  “Went and told all the other teams of all the other schools what my partner and I were doing. That took away our element of surprise . . . it gave the other teams enough time to prepare. We lost on the fourth round. He later denied betraying me.”

  “Everything sounds like something he’d do.”

  “I pretty much cut him off after that . . . my mother begged me to take him back as a friend . . . but I refused to since he wouldn’t apologize.”

  “Well of course. You can’t take someone back into your life if they don’t apologize . . . especially when they’ve betrayed you in big or small ways.”

  “That’s my philosophy,” said Sohlberg. He wanted to add that it was too bad that his own wife’s family—especially his wife’s mother—didn’t see it that way. Sohlberg detested his mother-in-law for coercing her entire family into repeatedly bringing back into the family a toxic and dysfunctional loser of a son-in-law. The jerk always wreaked havoc and triggered awful fights whenever he was allowed back into the family.

  “Good for you Solly. I always knew that you and I think alike.”

  “We do. Anyway . . . I was glad to get rid of Thorsen since we were about to graduate from high school. I thought I’d never see him again. We definitely went our own separate ways when I went into law . . . except for when I gave him a reference to get into the Zoo.”

  “My boy Solly . . . that was my next question. I saw your letter in his file when Thorsen applied. You were with a law firm back then . . . quite a successful up-and-coming young lawyer. Why help him?”

  “Thorsen begged me. In writing. By phone. And in person. Over and over. Told me how hard life was delivering newspapers in the suburbs for a living . . . told me he hated having to sometimes make ends meet by doing janitor work and odd jobs for a pittance. I felt sorry for him. He had no real job or career at the time.”

  “Or education my boy. . . .”

  “Yes. He later told me that he was in one of those first batches of inspectors who didn’t have to have legal backgrounds or higher education to get into the police.”

  “Exactly,” said Fru Sivertsen as she got angrier. “Thorsen has less schooling than I do and I’m just a secretary earning less than half of what he makes! . . . The old boys club . . . they started letting grossly under-qualified men into the force when women started demanding and getting more and more jobs in the sixties and seventies. Another example of mediocrity . . . especially male mediocrity . . . posing as meritocracy in government. Nevertheless . . . why did you help him?”

  “He told me it was his only real chance to make something out of his life. Besides . . . he had already gone to cry to my mother and ask her to ask me. I caved in when she called and begged me to help him. I’ve kept away from him since I gave him the reference . . . we haven’t socialized in more than fifteen years. We’ve grown totally apart. I really have no idea who he is . . . or what he stands for.”

  “But people still think of you two as B.F.F.”

  “What?”

  “Best friends forever . . . i
t’s a girl term. My granddaughters use it all the time . . . it’s some empty Americanism . . . some Hollywood expression.”

  “Forget about us being B.F.F. That’s ridiculous!” Sohlberg’s voice rose an octave. “Please tell me Fru Sivertsen that you will never repeat that ugliness ever again to me or anyone else.”

  Fru Sivertsen merely answered with a coy smile. She was amused at how easily Sohlberg’s anger rose at the slightest provocation.