Sohlberg agreed: “My thoughts exactly.”
“So we’ve decided,” said Jorfald, “to study how your participation in Ludvik Helland’s psychosis will affect him . . . and you. We find it fascinating when an authority figure such as yourself wants to go along with the delusions of a psychotic.”
Without a trace of irony Sohlberg said:
“You’d be surprised how often we have to go along with other people’s delusions . . . especially when we’re investigating a homicide. Almost everyone lies to us . . . with outright lies or half-truths . . . or even worse . . . by omission. You’d be surprised how even the most upstanding of citizens will lie. If we challenged people’s lies and delusions at the start of an investigation we’d get nowhere fast in a homicide.”
”Alright then,” said Jorfald. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten-thirty for your first meeting with Ludvik Helland.”
Jorfald stood up and stretched out his hand in order to shake Sohlberg’s hand in a not too subtle hint for Sohlberg to get out of his office.
~ ~ ~
Later that evening Sohlberg and his wife had dinner together—another weekday rarity in their marriage.
“So how was your trip to the insane asylum?”
“Interesting and productive.”
“Anything you care to talk about now that you’ve told me a little about your exciting journey of a knight-errant who’s made promises to some young damsel in distress?”
He averted her penetrating gaze and sharp words. Fru Sohlberg was far more formidable than Bergitta Nansen. He merely muttered, “I’m going back there tomorrow.”
“So you’re calling in sick again at work?”
“Already did that.”
“And you don’t think they’re going to find that suspicious?”
“Why should they?”
“You’ve never taken a sick day in your life.”
“I told them that the bleach fumes must’ve weakened my lungs . . . that I then caught a bug that you brought over from one of your patients at the clinic.”
“That’s it? . . . They won’t believe a word.”
“That’s why I scheduled an appointment later tomorrow to see Doktor Thyssen.”
“How clever. You get one of my friends at the clinic to cover for you.”
“One of the many perks of being married to you . . . my Love.”
“Hah!”
~ ~ ~
As usual insomnia plagued Sohlberg. He stayed up late reading Colin Thubron in bed long after Fru Sohlberg had gone to sleep. Sohlberg devoured the Colin Thubron travel masterpiece The Lost Heart of Asia. The superbly written account of Thubron’s 7000 mile trip from China to Turkey thrilled and satisfied Sohlberg. He loved to travel as an adult and had gone far and wide as a child and teenager with his parents. When he began feeling sleepy the peripatetic detective postponed sleep because he worried about having nightmares in which he was trapped inside the Dove Center asylum.
At 2:11 A.M. a heavy thud woke Sohlberg up from a deep sleep. He was sure that he had been woken up by a car door slamming shut. Or perhaps a car’s chained-up tires had slapped the snow and ice hard as the car sped on the flat portion of Måkeveien. With a soft groan Sohlberg left the warm comfort of bed because he thought that perhaps someone was again injured out in the street. A few weeks ago a speeding and intoxicated young man had slid out of control going downhill on Vargveien and smashed at 50 mph into a parked car.
Sohlberg was about to part the bedroom’s heavy curtains to look down on Måkeveien but his training and paranoid intuition took over. He reached under the bed for his .38 revolver and then tiptoed downstairs. Inside the guest bathroom he stood on the toilet bowl so he could look out of a long horizontal window. The double-pane window sat high up on the wall and it had no curtains.
A dark BMW had parked on Måkeveien—less than 40 yards from the intersection with Vargveien. The car looked much like the one that had followed him on the Rv159 highway to Lillestrøm when he went to visit the former and now incapacitated Chief Inspector Bjørn Nygård. An odd tingling sensation spread from Sohlberg’s hands and arms to his shoulders and then to his neck and head. The car had not been there at 9:30 P.M. when Sohlberg had checked all the downstairs windows and doors to make sure that they were locked. At the time a blue Audi had been parked in the same spot now taken by the BMW.
The Audi . . . it just didn’t belong here.
Sohlberg had not recognized the Audi as one that belonged to his neighbors. Three years ago he had followed the advise of Georg Klimt—one of the Russian “security” consultants—who suggested that each Oslo detective memorize the make and color and first three license plate numbers (or letters) of every car that belonged to every neighbor within 200 yards of each detective’s home. Sohlberg remembered seeing a man and a woman in the Audi. But he had assumed that the passenger was one of his neighbors who was being dropped off. Sohlberg also knew that the BMW had been there a short time because it was not covered by snow.
Did this BMW driver relieve the Audi driver?
Am I under surveillance by a team?
Sohlberg was about to dismiss his paranoia and climb down from the toilet seat when he saw a bright light flicker in the driver’s side of the BMW.
Someone just lit a cigarette!
After standing and spying for 30 minutes Sohlberg knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was indeed under surveillance. The driver never got out of the car. The shadowy driver lit a new cigarette about every 10 minutes. A steady cloud of tobacco smoke snaked out of the car’s rear passenger window which the driver had cracked open.
At first an enraged Sohlberg felt like confronting the driver but that would alert whoever had ordered the surveillance. No. It was far better—if not frustrating in the extreme—to bide his time and slowly find out who was behind the surveillance that Sohlberg had long suspected.
An old but always reliable pair of Steiner Nachtjäger binoculars easily gave Sohlberg the license plates for the BMW as well as a good idea of what the driver would look like in daylight. Sohlberg’s anger subsided and sleep finally came courtesy of a melatonin pill that he took at 3:30 A.M.
Chapter 11/Elleve
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11,
OR NINE DAYS AFTER THE DAY
Two hours of sleep left Sohlberg in a foul mood that only dissipated after a hot shower. He plotted multiple ways on finding out who was spying on him. After breakfast Sohlberg packed his wife’s lunch and walked her down the front yard steps to their detached two-car garage. The shed was off to the side of Måkeveien because that was the only space on the long hillside lot where a garage could fit. He glanced discreetly: the BMW and its driver had not left.
After kissing his wife and wishing her a good day Sohlberg went back to the house and dialed on his private cell phone.
“Good morning.”
“Glad to hear you’re still alive,” said Fru Sivertsen. “You must be deathly ill to have called in sick twice in a row.”
“There have been developments. I need to find out who’s the registered owner of a car.”
“Fine. Give me the plates. I’m on my way to the Zoo right now. As soon as I get there I will text message you with the results.”
He gave her the license and then said:
“Thank you for helping. Everyone you sent me to has been very helpful.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Yes. But you don’t have to do this if you feel you could ever be found out.”
“A person’s secret deeds can always be found out. The issue is . . . can I take the heat? . . . And the answer is yes.”
“But you could get fired.”
“Unlikely. But my pension is vested. They can’t touch it.”
“What if they charge you with something?”
“They won’t. I know where a lot of skeletons are buried. I can pull down a lot of high-flying careers. Or call a dozen spouses and let them know what their other half did away from home. I
n some cases they even did it at home . . . with the babysitter!” Fru Sivertsen giggled.
“Remind me to send you a nice Christmas gift.”
“My boy. You need not worry. I know you very well. Quite the straight arrow you are.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen you with the younger good-looking women at the Zoo.”
“And?”
“You don’t even look their way. Don’t even give them the time of day. I know you. We’re quite alike. Hopeless romantics who’d never even come close to cheating.”
“You should tell Fru Sohlberg.”
“No need. She knows you quite well. Now . . . what’s the job to be done?”
“Get inside Ivar Thorsen’s e-mail and voice-mail. Find out who he’s been in contact with during the last four weeks . . . look for anything or anyone unusual.”
“Like . . . anyone related to the Janne Eide case?”
“Exactly. Or look for coded messages . . . like something about him picking up cookies or a cake . . . or look for very very short messages. Those are always the most suspicious. For example . . . anything like ‘Call me now’ or ‘Meet me at two’.”
“Good. Will do.”
“Fru Sivertsen . . . is there any chance you could get caught?”
“Only if they really really tried looking to see if anyone was poking into his stuff.”
“Be careful.”
“Always. Actually . . . I’m going to have one of my young computer wizards down at I.T. do this. He’s a genius at hacking.”
“Is he good?”
“Oh yes. After he got assigned to testify at a rape-homicide that was going to trial I called his school to verify his attendance and grades. I didn’t want some clever defense lawyer sandbagging us by discovering that . . . for example he had never gone to that school. You know . . . that happened a few years ago. Anyway . . . I found out that he had indeed gone to the school but I dug deeper.”
“As always.”
“I spoke to all of his professors and discovered from one of them that our boy had hacked into the school’s computers and changed his grade in philosophy class from an F for excessive absences to an A-plus.”
“That’s our man to snoop on Thorsen. Very good.”
“Just how badly did the idiot Thorsen botch the Janne Eide case?”
“It’s a doozy.”
“As always with Thorsen.”
~ ~ ~
Sohlberg left his home at 9:15 A.M. and the BMW immediately followed his Volvo. He went east to the nearest drug store in the Nordstrad neighborhood near the Holtet tram station and bought bottles of cough syrup and aspirin at the Apotek One pharmacy on Kongsveien. Sohlberg shuffled as if he was ill and he made sure that the BMW driver saw the bottles in his hand when he left the store.
The detective then headed south on Ekerbergveien into a residential area near the Kastellet tram station where Cappelens vei branches off into six dead ends and other streets. Sohlberg pulled his disappearing act by whipping into one of the dead ends that he had found a few years ago after getting lost in the labyrinth of dead ends and narrow streets around the tram station.
With lightning speed and dead aim he backed into a blind spot—a narrow dogleg of a driveway—between two homes and their detached garage sheds. A low hedge of evergreen barberry shrubs and a steep downward slope at the end of the dogleg made the blind spot all the more effective. The hedge and the slope created an optical illusion that made anyone looking in from the street believe that no vehicle sat at the end of the driveway next to the home on the right.
Sohlberg waited patiently in his driveway lair for 45 minutes. He called Dr. Nansen and told her he’d be a little late. Cautious as ever he left his hideaway and then took plenty of circular routes and u-turns to make sure that no one followed him. The detective was confident that no one had planted a GPS tracking device on his car. Strong alarm systems and pick-proof Millennium locks protected his home and garage shed. He had also searched the car’s interior and even gotten under the car in the garage to look for devices after his wife left him that morning.
Jorfald and Nansen didn’t look particularly happy when they shook hands with Sohlberg in the lobby of the Dove Center.
“You’re fifteen minutes late,” said Dr. Jorfald. “We’ve been waiting here for you.” He had the petulant and deeply insulted posture that men of his caliber assume when they are made to wait for a table at a favorite restaurant.
“Sorry. I had to take care of a cockroach infestation.”
“Uugghh. . . .” said Dr. Bergitta Nansen. She twisted her face and still managed to look charming.
Jorfald hissed: “Shall we?”
They met Patient # 1022 at the same conference room with the same attendant hovering in the background. Sohlberg noted that the white-uniformed attendant turned on a switch in the wall which Sohlberg assumed was to start an audio recording or maybe even an audiovisual recording of the meeting for subsequent analysis by Jorfald and Nansen.
“I’m glad you’re back,” shouted the patient. “I started wondering if I had hallucinated yesterday’s meeting.”
“No,” said Dr. Jorfald. “This is reality Ludvik.”
“Excuse me . . . you mean Jakob Gansum.”
“We wish you would stop—” said Jorfald who was about to order the patient to stop referring to himself as Jakob Gansum. But Dr. Nansen quickly cut in and said:
“Yes . . . we wish you would stop and remind us of your real name. We’re so used to calling you Ludvik Helland.”
“Alright. I’ll forgive Doktor Jordy this time.”
“Now . . . Jakob,” said Dr. Nansen as she diplomatically took control of the meeting. “We’re going to talk today about the issues you mentioned to Chief Inspector Sohlberg when he was here yesterday on December the tenth.”
Sohlberg almost smiled at the predictability of the two doktors. Jorfald was determined to keep Gansum believing in the false reality of Ludvik Helland. Nansen on the other hand was obsessed with gathering material for her study of psychosis in the police and the criminal element.
“We,” said Jorfald, “want you to tell the Chief Inspector about your life before you came here. We think it’s important for you to talk about yourself. . . .”
Blinding sunlight poured into the conference room through the enormous window. Dr. Nansen raised her hand to shield her eyes. The incandescent reflection from the white field of snow required the attendant to lower a roll of dark mesh. The solar shade afforded immediate relief to everyone.
Jorfald droned on and on with an endless speech about the benefits of talk therapy. Sohlberg again noticed that Jorfald spoke with the grand imperial we used by popes and emperors.
Patient # 1022 interrupted the verbose psychiatrist:
“Alright. I get it Doktor Jordy. I heard your bit. Now let the cop hear me out.”
“That’s what we want you to do.”
“Yeah . . . sure you do. Now . . . let me make it perfectly clear to you Chief Inspector that I am not Ludvik Helland. My name is Jakob Gansum. I sent a letter to my daughter Astrid Isaksen. I asked her to contact you.”
“Why me?”
“I saw you on the news . . . on the television. Maybe it was N.R.K. Maybe it was in the newspaper. Or both. I don’t remember. You were asking the public to help with any information about the murder of the young man in Vigeland Park. That’s when I figured that you’d care about me if you cared enough to remember this dead guy years after he got killed.
“Anyway. . . . Before we go on I also want to make it perfectly clear that I’m no angel. I’ve done bad bad things. Done real ugly things. Done things I would’ve never done if I’d been in my right mind. But when you’re on drugs . . . you do disgusting things . . . you hang around disgusting people you wouldn’t have ever been caught with before you started doing drugs.
“You think . . . I won’t and can’t go lower. But after your next high you’ve gone far far lower than what y
ou thought was the bottom of the barrel. I got low. Real low. Most times I wanted to die. Heck . . . I’d rather be dead most days. And nights. I was dead. I was dying. It was suicide but in slow motion.
“The Old Devil had a hold of me. A grip like you’ve never felt. It’s a grip deep inside of you. Owns your mind and body and soul. You can feel him start squeezing your heart and soul and brain when he wants another drop of your life.
Sohlberg and the Gift Page 17