Sohlberg and the Gift

by Jens Amundsen

  “Sohlberg you’re just jealous. Listen here . . . Mister Mathematician . . . something doesn’t add up . . . why can’t you close your cases? . . . Why do you have so many open cases? You’re making us look bad when the big bosses compare our year-end numbers to Trondheim and Bergen.”

  “Don’t you understand? . . . A case closed prematurely is like a life ended prematurely. Don’t you understand that homicides have a life of their own?”

  “You’re nuts Sohlberg. Nuts. Obsessed.”

  “Yes . . . obsessed with truth. Why do you think I’ve been able to get the most homicide confessions in the Zoo during the past four years? . . . Why do you think I have a zero rate of appellate reversal for convictions when my criminals try to appeal?”

  Silence.

  “Thorsen. Get out of my way. You’ve wasted my time. Go waste someone else’s time.”

  Sohlberg stood up and he began leaving his cubicle. He intentionally bumped hard into Thorsen because Thorsen simply would not move out of the way.

  “Go on Sohlberg . . . go on with your gallivanting.”

  Sohlberg burst out in a loud laugh. He laughed from genuine pleasure over the documents that he had left behind on his desk. Ivar Thorsen was sure to read these papers as soon as Sohlberg hit the down button at the elevator lobby. Many a time he had caught Thorsen snooping around different detectives’ desks.

  Thorsen followed Sohlberg out into the main hallway. “Sohlberg! . . . Gallivant all you want but you’ll never solve the Velte case. You’re wasting your time and the taxpayers’ dime.”

  “We’ll see,” whispered Sohlberg as he waited for an elevator.

  The documents on Sohlberg’s desk included a list of fake witness phone numbers and addresses that would mislead The Janitor into thinking that Sohlberg was going to spend all day at the hipster Aker Brygge neighborhood. Sohlberg actually planned on spending an afternoon tracking down and interviewing potential new witness in the Tom Velte homicide at the former shipyards west of downtown Oslo. That he would do. But first he had a detour. Another promise to keep and mile to go.

  Who sent Astrid Isaksen?

  Why?

  Exactly what connection does Astrid Isaksen have to the Janne Eide homicide?

  ~ ~ ~

  Secrets. Concealed habits. Stealthy thoughts. Covert conduct. Hidden addictions. Everyone has them. Even Sohlberg—a man who was often called the straightest of arrows by his friends and family.

  Sohlberg’s surreptitious habit: two or three times a month he would take a lunch hour off work and proceed to Hydroparken. Sometime he drove there. Or he walked from nearby appointments. Other times he took the tram. He kept this routine secret for years even after he married Emma.

  On this overcast Monday he drove by the park. Even in the dead of winter the lovely five acre park brought back vivid memories of his dead wife Karoline. He could almost see and feel her whenever he went to or drove by the park especially when he passed by the fountain next to Bygdøy Avenue. The park and the fountain had been favorite jaunts of theirs when they had been dating. Passionate hours of kissing and embracing had gone by in thrilling ecstasy at the park.

  Karoline!

  They had also spent many blissful hours together south of the park where they perused out-of-print and rare books at the Nasjonalbiblioteket. Sohlberg drove past the National Library’s elegant building which was built in 1913 to house the Main Library of the University of Oslo. He remembered how after the library they’d spent the endless days of summer strolling down Henrik Ibsens gate all the way to the Slottsparken or Royal Palace Park where they continued their rapturous time together. Sohlberg’s face reddened with lust as he remembered their heated nightly encounters at her rental cottage on Sinsenveien near the Ring 3 Highway.

  A few minutes after he drove past the park and library a thought other than a memory of Karoline lodged deep in Sohlberg’s mind. He remembered that the National Library had once served the function of a National Archive. Royal decrees of the invading Danish kings had required that any and all published material be deposited with the library. The Danish obsession with documents also meant heavy-handed political censorship because the police in Norway used the library to keep track of dissident writings especially those that espoused an independent and free Norway.

  Yes—a document obsessed country like Norway must somehow have saved a copy of the psychiatrist report in the Janne Eide murder. But where is it?

  ~ ~ ~

  Dead ends are part and parcel of a homicide investigation. Some detectives see them as a dreaded waste of time and energy and resources. Others like Sohlberg see an investigation’s inevitable cul de sacs as the equivalent of the blacked-out squares of a crossword puzzle—necessary parts without which the puzzle would be impossible to solve.

  Many years ago at a homicide investigation seminar Chief Inspector Lars Eliassen had said it best:

  “A dead end is a sharp u-turn that leads you back to that road called truth.”

  Sohlberg pulled over and parked his car on a side street as soon as he left Hydroparken and memories of his dead wife behind. He went over the four dead ends that he had run into. The dead end at the home of retired Chief Inspector Nygård. The dead end at the courthouse for the Oslo Tingrett or District Court. The dead end at the Isaksen household turned hospice. The dead end at the National Archives. And yet none of these dead ends deterred Sohlberg. Quite the opposite: they energized him.

  As Sohlberg thought about the case he realized that he had never found an answer to a question that bothered him.

  Where’s the psychiatric report?

  The experts’ report was the only piece of evidence used to send the defendant Ludvik Helland to an insane asylum. And yet the report was not to be found at the courthouse where it belonged in the case files. The report should have been at the Oslo District Court because no appeal had ever been filed in the case. The report should also have been in the police files at the National Archives.

  Sohlberg had two choices: interview one or both of the two psychiatrists who had written the report for the court; or, find someone who had a copy of the report.

  Approaching one of the two psychiatrists was out of the question. Dr. Oskar Penze was Dead End Number Five because he had died two years ago from a heart attack while on vacation in Scotland. His family had closed his office and thrown away all his records. That left the second psychiatrist: Dr. Haakon Norloff.

  Sohlberg got on his cell phone. His Internet research revealed that Norloff was a well-known 64-year-old psychiatrist who had more than 42 years of experience. He got an address for the doctor and drove off.

  The doctor kept elegant offices near the corner of Kristinelundveien and Bygdøy Allé in the elegant tree-lined Skøyen neighborhood which had become Oslo’s Embassy Row. The Swedish Embassy was just a few buildings away. Dr. Haakon Norloff was as polite as he was educated and handsome and well-dressed. After his secretary called him out to the reception room the patrician psychiatrist stood cross-armed at the doorway to his office and said:

  “No. I don’t even want to know why you are here at my office. I do not talk with the police. You must go through my lawyer.”

  Sohlberg did not press the point. He kept his head bowed low and meekly said:

  “Thank you.”

  Sohlberg did not want to attract attention. It was imperative for him to stay below the radar. That’s why he had mumbled his name to Norloff’s secretary. He doubted if either of them would remember his name let alone his face within ten minutes of his leaving the building.

  Now that he was done with Dead End Number Six it was time to think carefully about his next step. He had no idea what to do. He walked aimlessly down the block and went back to his car to eat the sack lunch that his wife had packed for him.

  “Not bad,” said Sohlberg as he devoured two sandwiches of wafer-thin slices of rakfisk while he sat in the police car. Fru Sohlberg always bought him the salted and fermented trout fillets from Valdres wher
e Norway’s best mountain trout is harvested and salted and stored for sale during the Christmas Season.

  I have to get the report from the two psychiatrists.

  The six dead ends forced Sohlberg to go over every single possible option as to the location of the medical report or any copies. Thirty minutes went by before he knew exactly what to do and where to go.

  “That’s it!”

  Sohlberg remembered that copies of every psychiatric report filed with a court in any criminal case must be sent to a panel from the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine or DRK which is run by the Ministry of Justice and the Police. The DRK must approve the report and make sure that the report meets certain standards and safeguards that control the forensic medicine opinions of expert witnesses in criminal cases.

  Internet searches on his cell phone revealed that one member of the panel in charge of psychiatric reports worked at the University of Oslo’s medical school just a few miles north of Embassy Row. He called the doctor’s office number and the secretary confirmed that the doctor would be there that afternoon.

  Perfect!

  Sohlberg turned on his car’s siren and lights and raced off to the University of Oslo Medical School’s Institute of Clinical Medicine. The always impatient Sohlberg got even worse when it came to driving in traffic. Whether in his own personal car or in a police vehicle Sohlberg aggressively tailgated slower cars and honked his horn all the time. He only felt comfortable driving among other frenzied drivers in New York City and Mexico City. He loved how everyone in New York and Mexico blared their horns and roared off as soon as the light turned green. A marked police car was a heaven-sent to Sohlberg. Blaring sirens and flashing lights meant that Sohlberg could force other drivers to open a path for him. He speeded north on Kristinelundveien and shot through the Ring Two Highway which led him straight to the massive campus of the Ullevål University Hospital.

  He found Dr. Bergitta Nansen at her third floor office. He smelled her cloy perfume—Joy by Jean Patou—long before he reached her book-lined den inside the enormous five-floor pink stone building of the Institute of Clinical Medicine. Her credentials included a thriving private practice that treated the children of the wealthy upper classes of Oslo. In other words she mostly treated children and teenagers who are ruined by the troika of affluence: absentee parents; boredom from excessive idleness; and, toxic relationships and lifestyles promoted by the gutter culture of modern society. In addition to her teaching position she served as the Director of the Psychosis Research Center. The PRC studied the many varieties of psychosis by grouping them into major types. The Center had become world-famous for its thematically-organized psychosis research.

  He knocked on the half-open door. The petite 44-year-old doctor smiled and said, “Come in.”

  Dr. Bergitta Nansen reminded him of a raven. She wore an all-black uniform from head to toe. Jet black hair covered her head with a page boy cut. Dark eyeliner and even darker mascara highlighted her pale face. Black stilettos and black leg tights led to a black micro mini-skirt that ended in a black leather blouse. She perched bird-like on a stool next to one of the book-crammed shelves of her claustrophobic and narrow office. A delicate piercing graced her beaked nose with a discrete dot of gold. Her office was books wall-to-wall and books floor-to-ceiling. Most of the book titles seemed to be on homicidal and other psychotic violence. Sohlberg felt he had come to the right place and the right person.

  “I’m Chief Inspector Sohlberg.”

  “Aha. Very good,” she said without any surprise or curiosity as to the purpose of his visit. She slid off the stool and into the desk chair. Aromatic tobacco smoke wisped up from the bowl of a very long stem pipe that she cradled on her right hand. Sohlberg later found out that her pipe from France was a Butz-Choquin in the churchwarden style. “I’m glad you’re here Chief Inspector.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve never had a cop for a client. Who referred you?”

  “No one. I—”

  “Please sit down. Would you like some tea or coffee?”

  “No. Thank you. I—”

  “Don’t. Please. Don’t. There’s no need to explain why you’re here. It’s obvious you’re troubled. Deeply troubled . . . and impatient. And you’re a very angry man. Very very angry. Your eyes. They speak volumes.”

  Sohlberg was about to dismiss her diagnosis with sarcastic words. Instead he smiled. Dr. Nansen made him extremely uncomfortable with her ability to look right through his meek and mild facade. Try as hard as he could Sohlberg could not hide the anger that he still felt against his dead wife Karoline for her careless and inexplicable and fatal mistake of not properly tying herself to the climbing rope. He cleared his throat and said:

  “I just came here to ask you a few questions.”

  “If that’s the way you want to play this then that’s fine. Just fine. I also want to ask you a few questions.”

  “But—”

  “Communication is a two-way street. Okay?”

  The force of her intelligence and personality threatened to overwhelm him in the most pleasant if not seductive manner. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Her exotic and enticing perfume fragrance reached out across the desk to embrace and seduce him.

  “Maybe you can help me Doktor.”

  “I can try.”

  “But before you help me I need some questions answered.”

  “Like I said . . . I’m game if you are. Go ahead. Ask me.”

  “I’m interested in an old criminal case. The court found the defendant insane from psychosis. I’d like to read the report from the psychiatrists.”

  “That’ll be in the courthouse files.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Did you try contacting the doctors who wrote the report?’

  “Dead ends.”

  “Oh . . . I see . . . you’re here because you think that either we treated the patient at the Psychosis Research Center . . . or that I was on some panel of the Board of Forensic Medicine that reviewed the report.”

  “Bingo . . . the latter.”

  “You’re sure that I was on the panel?”

  “Yes. . . .”

  “Who was the defendant?”

  “Ludvik Helland. Charged with murdering his wife.”

  She nodded and sucked long and hard on her pipe. After a long minute she exhaled a large savory cloud that filled the room with intoxicating smells of Black Cavendish blend from America. The tobacco was soaked with a considerable amount of vanilla and a hint of chocolate. Sohlberg felt a pang of hunger and what felt like a guilty conscience over what Fru Sohlberg would say if she could see him now inside Dr. Nansen’s office.

  “Oh . . . yes,” said the doktor casually. “I remember. The heiress.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hhhmmmm . . . I know the doktor who is treating her husband. If you like I can arrange a meeting with him.”

  “Oh really? . . . With Ludvik Helland?”

  “Actually . . . with Helland’s psychiatrist. He’d have to approve any visit with Helland.”

  “Yes . . . I’d like that.”

  “Okay . . . So what else do you want?”

  “A copy of the report.”

  “Can’t find it anywhere else?”

  “Nope.”

  She smoked again and exhaled. This time she blew three perfectly round smoke-doughnuts up into the air. Her throaty laugh sent chills down Sohlberg’s spine. He hated it and would never admit it but he found her extremely attractive if not downright desirable. He started to get up off his chair to leave the scene of his temptation when she suddenly chirped:

  “Sit. I have a copy. I kept one . . . although one of your police colleagues kept pestering me for my copy.”

  “You remember who did the pestering?”

  “A pest.”

  “Named Ivar Thorsen?”

  “Something like that. Looked like a cockroach.”

  Sohlberg smiled and simply said, “Doktor . . . can I borrow your
report?”

  “No. But I will give you a copy . . . to keep.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  “Now it’s your turn to do me a favor.”

  “Yes. But you need to know that I don’t believe in psychiatry or psychiatrists.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Oh.”

  “Freud was for the most part a . . . charlatan. A fraud.”

  “Freud a fraud?”

  “Only Jung got it right.”

  He shrugged. Psychiatry was an subject of which he had little knowledge and he wanted to keep it that way especially with the mental and sexual trap that he sensed in Dr. Nansen. She exuded an intense primal sexuality. Wanting to get away from her as quickly as possible he said: