Sohlberg and the Gift

by Jens Amundsen

  FROM: KASPER BERGE

  TO: INGEBORG MYKLEBUST

  Yesterday, after finding Ludvik Helland criminally insane, the court remanded him to the care of a psychiatric institution.

  According to the experts, Ludvik Helland’s psychosis will never be cured. Therefore, I never expect the court to order his release.

  The Janne Eide case is closed.

  Thanks to your department’s excellent work I was able to tell the Minister herself that the case is OVER AND DONE WITH.

  Please thank Ellingsen and Thorsen for their superb assistance in the matter.

  Sohlberg knew he was on to something and it was big. Very big.

  Why were the Janne Eide files so thoroughly scrubbed?

  Who sanitized them?

  ~ ~ ~

  Seven hours. Seven hours deep inside a mountain. Seven hours until Atle drove him back to the train station. And yet that was still not enough time for Sohlberg to fully understand the mysterious visit of Astrid Isaksen and her baffling words.

  “I want justice.”

  Those words had gotten his undivided attention. But before she made such an outrageous request of him just how did she ever get inside the Zoo?

  How did she get inside my office?

  The guards downstairs later told Sohlberg that they let her in because they thought she was someone’s relative:

  “She looked so sweet and nice . . . gave us two cookies each from the little food basket she was carrying.”

  Basket. She had no basket when she met me.

  What had she done with the basket after she got inside the Politihuset?

  Did she throw it away? Or did she leave it with someone inside the Zoo . . . someone who had put her up to visiting me . . . to baiting me?

  How much of Astrid Isaksen is a clever ruse?

  Sohlberg considered every word from Astrid Isaksen’s mouth and yet one phrase dominated his thoughts:

  “Then tell me this . . . why was Chief Inspector Nygård kicked off the Janne Eide case? That’s a mighty peculiar turn of events.”

  Sohlberg wondered why she had not come out and told him exactly what she wanted done in the Janne Eide case.

  Why did she throw me a hook that I was sure to bite into . . . Nygård getting kicked off the Eide case?

  He replayed more parts of their conversation in his mind.

  A great detective is a great listener. Every word and every pause and every phrase from a witness or a victim or a suspect means something. Silence also means a lot. Fortunately Sohlberg had been a good listener ever since he had been a child. He had a knack for endlessly repeating his own conversations and other people’s conversations verbatim in his mind. This blessing was also a curse: the remembered conversations would plague him for hours or days and wreck his mental tranquility.

  Sohlberg’s mind focused on one part of his conversation with Astrid Isaksen.

  “Why should I care if a Chief Inspector gets kicked off a case?”

  “Because you care.”

  “How do you know I care?”

  “I saw you . . . I saw you in True Crime. They said you’re the inspector who cares. They said—”

  “A lot. That television show says a lot. There’s plenty of other inspectors who care.”

  “I didn’t see their shows. I watched the one on you. You are the one who cares.”

  Appeal to my ego. That was another well-timed bait thrown at me. Obvious bait. But usually effective on any man.

  “Alright. I care Frøken Isaksen. Now what do you want me to do with all my caring?”

  “Take care of it.”

  “Take care of what?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “How? . . . When?”

  “When you tell me why Chief Inspector Nygård was kicked off the Janne Eide case . . . that was a mighty peculiar turn of events.”

  He wondered where he had heard that unique phrase: a mighty peculiar turn of events. The phrase struck him not only as odd but also as something that Astrid Isaksen was repeating. Sohlberg doubted it was her own wording.

  Was she repeating that phrase consciously . . . intentionally?

  Or was she repeating it subconsciously because the phrase had stuck in her mind?

  The latter was the more obvious choice because Sohlberg felt that he recognized the catchy phrase—a mighty peculiar turn of events. He was positive that he had heard the phrase many months or years before he ever met Astrid Isaksen.

  Yes. That phrase buried itself deep inside my mind long before I ever met Astrid Isaksen.

  A mighty peculiar turn of events.

  His first impression—usually correct—was that Astrid Isaksen was a plant. A shill. Fronting for someone else. But who?

  Astrid Isaksen’s father was the one obvious person that Astrid Isaksen would try to help.

  But what role could Jakob Gansum have ever played in the life or death of Janne Eide?

  Who was pulling the Astrid Isaksen strings in so clever a fashion?

  Who sent Astrid Isaksen and why?

  Is that person inside or outside the Zoo?

  PART TWO: OUR DAILY ROUTINE

  The best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine.

  — Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film dialogue, 1975)

  Chapter 7/Syv

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, OR

  SIX DAYS AFTER THE DAY

  The melancholy maiden. Sohlberg was already thinking of Astrid Isaksen when he arrived at his office. Her siren song was never afar:

  Tell me why Chief Inspector Nygård was kicked off the Janne Eide case. . . .

  Reports had to be typed up and completed. Meetings attended. Phone calls returned. The whirlwind activity of a typical Monday morning at the Zoo.

  Who sent Astrid Isaksen to ask me the puzzling question about why Chief Inspector Nygård had been kicked off the Janne Eide case?

  Why had she been sent to me?

  What is her connection to the Eide case?

  Lunchtime finally approached at one o’clock. Sohlberg looked forward to leaving the office for a quick eat. Afterwards he planned on interviewing potential new witnesses who had cropped up in an unsolved case: an apparent robbery that had left one dead at Frognerparken five years ago. The victim died in the section of Vigeland Park that is dedicated to one of the world’s greatest master of sculpture: the Norwegian genius Gustav Vigeland.

  Sohlberg had always felt that the victim’s missing wallet and watch had been staged to make the crime scene look like a robbery gone bad. Sohlberg remembered the victim—Tom Velta—who had been stabbed once in the heart. The inspector remembered all of his homicide victims. He remembered the well-dressed good-looking 21-year-old Tom Velta. He remembered promising the parents of an only child that he would do his utmost to find out who killed their son and why. He remembered the baby-faced youth curled in the fetal position on the last of the steps leading up to the park’s monumental 57-foot columnar monolith by Vigeland. He remembered looking for evidence around the column and the 36 granite figure groups that line the steps up to the monolith. He remembered how he had also studied Vigeland’s granite figures which represent all stages of a man’s life and all major relationships from birth to death.

  The position of the young corpse by the monolith struck him as sadly ironic given that the single-piece granite tower represents a swarm of humanity reaching upwards from the earthly to the spiritual. The inspector remembered and thought: Tom Velta died on the Monolith Plateau where Vigeland wanted everyone to see how earth-bound humanity yearns for and reaches for the divine—for resurrection and eternal salvation.

  Sohlberg remembered his dead wife.

  Memories of his first wife Karoline flooded and overwhelmed him. Happy times. Three years married. Mountain climbing every summer in Romsdalen valley which is Norway’s Yosemite valley. Then Karoline suddenly gone. Falling.

  The sickening shisssh of the rope going through the carabiner on Karoline’s harness. />
  Her eyes wide and filled with love and acceptance of her fate. Karoline looking straight into his eyes without any surprise or any screaming.

  Falling.

  Down.

  Down.

  Down.

  Dead.

  An accident.

  She was an expert climber but somehow failed to properly tie herself into the climbing rope.

  Gone.

  Sohlberg looked out the office window. Storm clouds clung over the Oslofjord. The approach of the Winter Solstice promised even shorter and colder days. As with most other Norwegians a gloomy if not depressed mood plagued Sohlberg at the end of the year. He looked forward to the cheery and hope-filled relief of the Christmas Season. But Yuletide also invoked a mournful remembrance of the dead. He yearned for Easter and its promise of eternal life in the Great Beyond after death. Sohlberg found it ironic that all these feelings came about because of a baby’s birth so long ago in Bethlehem. Inconceivable and ridiculous to the skeptic. Yet attractive and logical to those left behind by the dead.

  Tom Velta came back to Sohlberg’s mind. The young man had died on the steps under a pair of Gustav Vigeland granite sculptures that represented death and dying—an old bearded man cradling an elderly sick or dying woman. Sohlberg remembered looking up that day and seeing the next group of statues. His eyes met the solemn and all-knowing gaze of a old man—the Ancient One. The bald and bearded elder commanded Sohlberg’s attention with his penetrating eyes. Deep lines furrowed the massive dome of the Ancient’s forehead. The statue of the man reminded Sohlberg of what God must look like—ancient and wise—when He sits on the clouds and looks downwards with his hands clasped around his knees while pondering good and evil among humans.

  “A word.”

  A startled Sohlberg looked up. He expected to see one of the more arrogant higher-ups issuing a command to be immediately heard. Instead it was Ivar Thorsen who was Sohlberg’s equal in title and pay grade but in nothing else. Sohlberg’s heart raced. He wondered in a panic whether Ivar Thorsen had been spying on him or worse yet whether Thorsen knew about Sohlberg’s interest in the Janne Eide homicide.

  “What did you say?”

  Thorsen backed off: “Let’s talk.”

  “I’m busy. No time for chitchat.”

  “Actually it’s not a social call.”

  “Good.”

  The pudgy and pug-nosed Thorsen blushed. The red cheeks made the flabby and pale detective look as if he had applied clown makeup on his pasty face. His thick but abruptly short black eyebrows knitted together like two mating dung beetles. He whispered in a very low voice:

  “I need to know—”

  “I can’t hear your little whisper. Either leave and stop wasting my time . . . or come all the way inside and talk loud enough to be understood.”

  Thorsen stepped inside Sohlberg’s cubicle and kept whispering. He employed the sotto voce affectation of detectives who desperately want to go up the ranks in the Zoo. At the Zoo one rule seemed never to be broken: the higher the rank the lower the voice. Therefore the dumbest detectives whispered in pathetic imitations of their bosses. Mediocre lower-rank detectives also used a quiet voice to announce I’m–going-to-be-a-people-manager-one-day.

  “Speak louder,” yelled Sohlberg. He was not amused by Ivar Thorsen’s pretensions.

  “Sohlberg . . . what’s this I hear about your extra-curricular activities?”

  “What extra-curricular activities are you talking about?”

  “I heard from Lunde in Vice that you asked for permission to go on some fishing expedition at the National Archives.”

  “No fishing. Just a nice picnic up in the mountains.”

  “I see. You have nothing else to say? . . . Is that it? . . . Or is there trouble in paradise? . . . Has Fru Sohlberg kicked you out?”

  “No. Paradise is quite enjoyable with her. Wish you knew just how fantastic. But then again you’re still single . . . right? Still living with Mama? Does she still pick your clothes for you?”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Thorsen . . . unlike you I’ve got work to do . . . got to go. . . . I can’t sit around here like you . . . trolling for chitchat buddies.”

  “Well. There’s a reason for why I’m here. Unlike you I’ve cleared all of my cases for the year.”

  “Rushed more cases to judgement? . . . Found more innocent people to accuse and falsely convict?”

  “Nonsense. I’m just efficient and decisive . . . unlike you who keeps so many cases open forever . . . investigating and re-investigating . . . checking and re-checking . . . interviewing and re-interviewing. Such a waste of time.”

  “And your point is? . . .”

  “Lunde said I could come around and help anyone who needed me since I’m all done with my cases. No open cases you know. I really want to help you . . . especially when I heard you’re asking permission to lollygag around the National Archives to look up closed cases and when I say closed cases I mean very closed cases . . . like the robberies at Nordlandsbanken that you told Lunde you’re interested in and looked up one more time at the archives. . . .”

  “So you’re checking up on me? . . . Tell me . . . just who died and made you boss of homicide?”

  “Sohlberg . . . you’re just jealous that I closed all my cases for the year. And yet you now plan to traipse out of here this afternoon to interview new witnesses in the Vigeland Park stabbing. Give me a break. The kid was a homo. He got what he deserved.”

  “Thorsen.”

  “Yes?”

  “How do you know the kid was a homo?”

  “Obvious man. Obvious. He got what he deserved.”

  Sohlberg shot up from his chair and stood within inches of Thorsen. Sohlberg noticed how carefully Thorsen combed wiggly strands of greasy hair over thinning spots. The cowardly idiot giggled nervously.

  “Thorsen . . . it’s an insult to idiots to call you an idiot. I honestly don’t know what or who you are any more. I used to think you were an idiot . . . then a protein-deprived dim-wit . . . eventually I thought genetics left you borderline retarded. But that’s an insult to every member of those groups.”

  Thorsen giggled again when Sohlberg got closer to him. One inch separated the men’s faces.

  “He got what he deserved?”

  Silence.

  “You Thorsen haven’t the slightest idea exactly what the kid was doing in the park . . . homo or not. So don’t you even begin to think you can come in here and pretend that you are in a position to tell me or anyone else that the kid was a homo or that he got what he deserved.”

  “It was obvious. He was a homo . . . and homos do things in parks.”

  “Nothing in a murder is obvious except for the idiots who think that there’s something obvious in a homicide. . . . Unfortunately every police force has its share of lazy morons like you who just want to close their cases and be the boss’s pet.”

  “But—”

  “But you know nothing,” said Sohlberg who decided that he had to discuss the Vigeland case with Thorsen so as to distract the moron from any discussion about Sohlberg’s activities at the National Archives.

  “Sohlberg . . . you saw the kid. He dressed and looked like a homo.”

  “What I know for a fact is that Tom Velta worked for an accounting firm . . . that he was house-sitting for partner at the firm who wanted his home looked after while he was on a long-term assignment in New York. I found a coworker who may have switched house-sitting duties with him that weekend.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “My point is proved. Thorsen you’re as predictable as a math formula. Matter of fact I know your formula . . . you . . . Ivar Thorsen equals ignorance plus laziness multiplied by bootlicking squared.” Sohlberg knew he had landed a solid punch. Thorsen’s eyes bulged along with his neck veins.

  “No—”

  “Oh yes Thorsen . . . let’s not forget bootlicking. Who do you think you’re fooling? . . . Everyone
in the office knows how you just happen to always have the exact same hobby as your boss.”

  Thorsen took a deep breath and quickly reassembled his shattered ego. He sneered and spat out: