Sohlberg and the Gift

by Jens Amundsen

  “Hei. I need to return two candle holders I bought here yesterday.”

  The young woman ignored him. She stared at her perfectly manicured nails. She looked right past him. He waited and made noises with the shopping bag and yet she paid him no attention.

  Sohlberg moved closer to her and said:

  “Excuse me . . . I need to return two candle holders I bought here yesterday.”

  “Oh! . . . Hello!” she said as if he had suddenly materialized out of nowhere. “What did you say?”

  “I need to return two candle holders I bought here yesterday.”

  “Sorry they didn’t turn out right for you,” said the lovely young woman whose attractiveness was enhanced by the charming manner in which she bit her lower lip at the end of each sentence. “Would you like a refund or do you want to exchange them?”

  “Exchange please. I need the ones that are two inches taller.”

  A telephone call to the right department produced the desired set of candle holders.

  “These new ones are more expensive,” she said before biting her lower lip. “Twenty percent more. Is that all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Sohlberg paid the balance for the new set of candle holders.

  “Can you please hold them until I come back from my lunch appointment?”

  “Yes,” she cooed enthusiastically as she stared right past Sohlberg at her next client who just happened to be a handsome young man who could have walked straight out of photo shoot for Armani or Ralph Lauren Polo or some other impossibly expensive brand hawked by impossibly good-looking people.

  “Thank you,” said Sohlberg who was greatly satisfied that he was an invisible nonentity to her and everyone else around him. He was the cellophane man. That’s the way he wanted it. That’s the one-man show that he worked hard to produce every day. To be seen and yet not seen. To be seen as a non-threatening nonentity who can earn the suspect’s trust. That’s how Sohlberg got close to his suspects and deep inside their minds. That’s how he got them talking. Arguing. Sharing. Bragging. Explaining. Dismissing. Confessing.

  The cloudless day threw a harsh Arctic sunlight on the people and buildings on the street. The majority of pedestrians frowned at the intense sub-zero cold. But Sohlberg was beaming. His return expedition to Hansen & Dysvik and the candle holder re-purchase served three purposes in the most discrete and effective manner.

  First: the return trip and the re-purchase gave him a legitimate and credible excuse to be back in the area.

  Second: the return trip and the repurchase allowed him to carefully and discretely check if he was being followed.

  Third: the H&D shopping bag and credit card receipts enhanced the credibility of his cover story if he ever needed to use the story especially if he needed the story when he returned to the Zoo later that afternoon with the shopping bag.

  Sohlberg walked along Apotekergata. The street swarmed with human bears and seals and walruses bundled in enormous coats and hats and gloves and mufflers to ward off the sub-zero weather. Sohlberg blended perfectly into the crowd.

  He was everyman and forgettable. Within seconds of seeing him no one would remember him: a see-through nobody.

  Faceless.

  He was the ultimate nonentity of a boring and timid low-level bureaucrat. He wore unassuming clothes of faded or fraying or stained polyester blends and other fabrics and accessories befitting the discount store patron.

  In the eyes of most people he passed for one of life’s losers. Sohlberg also passed for one of those cowered employees who are soon to be fired in a round of layoffs. He looked like the typical target of corporate cost-cutting measures in the business world. His meek and bland appearance matched that of the many victims of corporate measures to trim off older and more experienced employees who must be sacrificed on the altar of Cash Flow and Free Trade.

  All this was Sohlberg’s public and official persona—a purposeful put-on show. He had learned the act from his mentor: Chief Inspector Lars Eliassen—a man who could and did get deep inside a suspect’s mind long before the suspect could put up any mental defenses to a line of carefully-planned questions.

  The biting December weather was as warm and appealing as a rabid pit bull. Sohlberg nevertheless took a long stroll down Apotekergata towards Kristian Augusts gate. Most of the buildings along Apotekergata had big windows on the ground floor. The windows allowed Sohlberg repeated opportunities to stop and pretend to look at stores or restaurants while he was in fact scanning the crowd in the window reflections to spot who in the crowd might be trailing him.

  Sohlberg’s surveillance and counter-surveillance tricks came courtesy of Norwegian taxpayers who paid for continuing education consultants hired by the Norwegian Police Service. The consultants had Russian names (or Westernized or Americanized versions of such names) and they haled from the KGB of the old communist Soviet Union. The Russian consultants found new careers and wealth by sharing their expertise with police and spy agencies and large corporations throughout the world. When it comes to discrete street surveillance few countries can exceed the expertise of the KGB.

  During Sohlberg’s stroll on Apotekergata he watched for watchers from the Zoo. None appeared in reflections on storefront windows. None showed themselves during Sohlberg’s well-timed turns here and there on the street. The area around the courthouse vaguely reminded Sohlberg of shabbier areas of Prague with the crisscrossing narrow streets and short colorful buildings from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

  After taking all necessary counter-surveillance measures to throw off anyone who might be tailing him Sohlberg headed straight to the Oslo tinghus courthouse at C.J. Hambros plass 4. Before going inside Sohlberg frowned. The silver-coated building always struck Sohlberg as one of those architectural monstrosities that mediocre architects pass off as “post-modern”.

  Once inside the building Sohlberg headed to a dingy back office of the Oslo Tingrett or District Court which hears civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. A rotund man with thick black-frame glasses waited for Sohlberg by a metal door with a sign that read:

  DO NOT ENTER << >> ONLY COURT EMPLOYEES.

  Sohlberg entered and walked down what appeared to be the rear hallway of a warehouse for documents and files. The large man closed the door behind him.

  “Thanks for helping me,” said Sohlberg. “I was here yesterday to look at a case file and was rather surprised that the judge had sealed it.”

  “It happens. Rarely. But it happens.”

  “Did you get it?”

  “With difficulty. I put it over in that inspection room. You have forty minutes before anyone starts coming back from lunch.”

  “Thanks,” said Sohlberg with sincerity.

  “Also . . . don’t call me at home again . . . even if you did call my cell phone I don’t want anyone to be able to trace any calls back to you or me.”

  “Don’t worry. That’s taken care of. I called you from a disposable cell phone that I bought some months ago. I only used it for that one call to you. I wiped clean all of the phone’s software and hardware and then busted the phone into smithereens . . . and I threw the parts away in three separate locations.”

  “Fine. When you’re done leave the file box on the desk. No fingerprints anywhere please! Make sure you use the gloves I left for you. When you’re done . . . take the gloves with you and dispose of them as soon as you can. I’ll be back for the file in exactly . . . thirty-five minutes. If you’re caught—”

  “You and I don’t know each other except for when I showed you a false I.D. to get in here. You thought I worked for your bosses at court administration headquarters.”

  “Hope you find what you’re looking for . . . good luck.”

  Sohlberg went inside the inspection room and received a shock. He expected at least four boxes packed with thick pre-trial and trial notebooks. Instead he stared in disbelief at just one blue box marked SEALED: NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE.

  He opened the box and
got a second and even more upsetting surprise: the blue box only held one slim if not flimsy blue manilla file with a couple of documents.

  “What the—”

  The court docket itself in the Eide case should have at least amounted to ten or twelve pages listing every activity in the proceedings and every document filed in the case. Instead the court docket consisted of less than half of a page. Sohlberg was amazed at the minuscule official list of every single hearing and every single motion or response filed by the prosecutor and the defense and every single court order along with all other papers filed in the case.

  A half page!

  Sohlberg was stunned at the scarcity of hearings (just two) and the small amount of motions and responses and court orders and other papers filed in the case.

  Sohlberg again reviewed the court file to make sure it only held three documents in addition to the court docket. That was unusual—very odd—for a murder trial.

  The first document: an indictment or charging document alleging the date and time and place and manner of the death of Janne Eide in her bedroom at 3:00 A.M. by homicidal violence resulting from her husband Ludvik Helland intentionally shooting her in the head (right temple) after he unexpectedly came back from a business trip.

  Sohlberg wondered why the court file had been sealed when everyone who had a newspaper or radio or television or Internet access knew all of the facts set forth in the charging document.

  The second document: the husband’s Not Guilty plea later changed to an Insanity plea (with the prosecutor’s agreement).

  Now that was strange in the extreme.

  Since when do prosecutors throw in the towel so quickly and go along with an insanity plea?

  Perhaps this controversial decision by the prosecutor was why the court file had been sealed. And yet nothing in the court file indicated who had asked for the court file to be sealed or why.

  The third document: a court order finding the victim’s husband to be insane and “suffering from psychosis at the time of the murder as more fully set forth in the 243-page Medical Psychiatric Report by two recognized psychiatric experts”. The order went on to commit the defendant to a high-security psychiatric ward for treatment during a three-year term that was renewable until the defendant died or was permanently cured of his insanity. The judge also ordered that the defendant would not stand trial in light of the experts’ report and the defendant’s insanity plea agreed to by the prosecutor.

  The court’s order caught Sohlberg’s attention.

  If there’s a judicial finding of insanity . . . or psychosis then where’s the psychiatric report mentioned by the judge?

  Sohlberg looked at the court docket and quickly found an entry for a 243-page report from two psychiatrists. One thing was certain: the flimsy file did not contain the psychiatrists’ report.

  Where’s the psychiatric report?

  It should be here . . . inside this blue box . . . next to the blue folder .

  Why is the psychiatric report missing?

  Who took the report? Why?

  Twenty minutes later he finished re-reading the file and making notes in green ink on his leather-bound Rhodia pocket journal notebook with his favorite Waterman Phileas fountain pen. He dressed modestly but he prized and indulged in small luxury totems. His scribbles filled five pages of 90-gram Clairfontaine paper that captured the fountain pen’s green ink smoothly and with the cleanest of edges. The elegant and expensive pen and notebook were remnants of Sohlberg’s days as a well-to-do lawyer before he joined the police. He kept these and other little luxuries hidden from plain view.

  As instructed Sohlberg left the folder in the box on the table. He exited the courthouse without any problem. He threw the gloves into a garbage can inside the men’s bathroom at Hansen & Dysvik.

  The lovely young woman at the H&D customer service desk again ignored Sohlberg after he again waited for her at the customer service counter for a long time. Sohlberg coughed gently. She finally took notice.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m back for the set of candle holders I bought an hour ago.”

  “Here you are,” she said without looking at him while she handed him the shopping bag.

  “Thank you.”

  “Yeah. . . .” she said giving him a dead-eye blank look that lasted less than a second. Her eyes reanimated when they darted back to her fingernails which merited closer attention. She was about to say the required “Thank you for coming to—” when she realized that Sohlberg had already fled the store with his shopping bag.

  In a daze Sohlberg rode the tram back to the Zoo. He almost missed getting off at the Munkegata station. His mind reeled from the implication of what was and was not in the court’s case file. He could not even begin to comprehend the enormity of what was missing from the court’s file.

  Where’s the psychiatric report?

  Indeed. Where was the one solitary piece of evidence used to condemn the defendant Ludvik Helland to what was probably a lifetime sentence at an insane asylum?

  More questions hit Sohlberg.

  Where’s Ludvik Helland?

  What mental institution is holding him?

  Is Helland being treated or just warehoused?

  Is he alive?

  Oddly enough these questions were exactly the same questions that his mystery visitor had asked him with slightly different words that morning not so long ago.

  The back of his head tingled. Sohlberg turned around quickly to catch whoever was watching him. He shot quick glances at all the passengers but none stood out as the culprit. He nevertheless could not dismiss the tingling on his head or the constant paranoid sensations that had crept into his soul ever since Astrid Isaksen’s visit.

  Chapter 5/Fem

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, OR

  FOUR DAYS AFTER THE DAY

  December in Oslo means cold and snow and six measly hours of daylight coaxed from the stingy sky. The sun struggles to briefly hover low over the southern horizon from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon. It was therefore imperative for Sohlberg to embark early enough in the day to perform his “to do list” because he hated driving in the dark through snow and ice. Ever since he had finished breakfast at 8:15 A.M. Sohlberg had been peeking at his wristwatch. To his everlasting relief he heard the crunch of a car’s tires and snow chains.

  Nora Otterstad’s Jaguar pulled into the Sohlberg driveway at exactly nine o’clock.

  “Alright,” said Fru Sohlberg. “I should be back by seven at the latest. We should be done with our dinner by six.”

  “Very Good. Don’t forget . . . I have to interview a couple of witnesses out in the East Side . . . Østkanten . . . and tomorrow I have to check out some old police archives.”

  They kissed. Fru Sohlberg hurried out the door to join Nora Otterstad. The two best friends had agreed to go on a joint shopping expedition to buy gifts for their husbands. Their gift-giving experiences with their husbands had never been happy or stress-free.

  ~ ~ ~

  Every December a grumpy Sohlberg declared that his Christmas gift was too costly and could not be afforded on his policeman’s salary and thus had to be returned immediately for a cheaper substitute. Emma Sohlberg inevitably countered rather angrily that she would buy him whatever gift she felt like buying him because she earned a bigger salary than his as an occupational health nurse.

  At the Ottersatd household Matthias Otterstad objected loudly to any Christmas gifts that his wife got him. He reminded her that he was a wealthy money manager for the ultra-wealthy and that he already owned more than any man could ever want. Herr Otterstad nevertheless smiled and accepted her gift when the former hospital nurse would say:

  “You’d better accept my Christmas gifts since a divorce would be very expensive for you. Remember . . . you sold me and I still own fifty percent of your company since I gave you the money to keep the business afloat when you couldn’t break even the first two years.”

  ~ ~ ~

  As
soon as the sleek Jaguar purred away Sohlberg turned his mind to her. She had been the first thing on his mind that Saturday morning.

  Astrid Isaksen . . . mystery visitor.

  Why did she pick me from all the other homicide detectives at the Zoo?