Sohlberg and the Gift
Page 24
Why was Chief Inspector Nygård kicked off the Janne Eide case?
Because he was too smart a detective to be tricked into arresting Jakob Gansum and sending him to an insane asylum as a substitute for Ludvik Helland.
Who is behind Astrid Isaksen and her father?
Answer: unknown.
Who is really paying for Astrid and her aunt to spend four weeks at a luxury hotel?
Answer: unknown.
Who deleted documents from the Janne Eide case files and why?
Answer: unknown.
Who set up Jakob Gansum as a substitute for Ludvik Helland?
Answer: unknown.
The general outlines for solving the Astrid Isaksen and Janne Eide mysteries began to emerge in Sohlberg’s mind. The outlines reminded him of the subtle way that outlines of buildings and bridges and roads slowly materialize out of a fog-bound city. But many parts of the actual details were missing or simply not fitting.
Sohlberg’s logic and imagination stretched and twisted as he struggled to solve the baffling twin mysteries. Most homicide detectives would have avoided or quit the challenge. And yet Sohlberg was at his happiest when confronted with a homicide detective’s version of a koan—a series of paradoxical questions that brought about a state of zen-like meditation which ultimately led to the illumination of a solution.
Mystery upon mystery. All is mystery.
Wait. There’s one more mystery. That’s it. The odd phrase that Astrid Isaksen used when she came to visit me. What was it exactly?. . .
Ah yes.
She said, “Then tell me this . . . why was Chief Inspector Nygård kicked off the Janne Eide case? That’s a mighty peculiar turn of events.”
Where have I heard those words before?
That’s a mighty peculiar turn of events. . . .
They sound so familiar.
That’s a mighty peculiar turn of events. . . .
Sohlberg glanced at a bookshelf that held his childhood puzzles. As a youngster and even as an adult Sohlberg had always been fascinated by jigsaw puzzles and Rubik’s cubes (both the 4-row and 5-row models). But his favorites were the impossibly complex wood puzzles that his mother had bought him and still continued buying him for his birthday. He fondly stared at the wood puzzles that came in the shape of spheres and triangles and animals (elephants and giraffes) and famous buildings (the Eiffel Tower) and landmarks (Rock of Gibraltar).
Mystery upon mystery. All is mystery.
Shortly after five o’clock Sohlberg’s meditative state got a sudden and surprise ending: a visibly upset Emma Sohlberg stomped into the living room.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was out shopping. . . .” She bit her lip.
He instantly recognized the sign of her smoldering anger which often choked off her words.
“Yes . . . you went Christmas shopping with Nora Otterstad. What happened?”
“I bought a gift for your parents and the store clerk rejected our credit card . . . he said our card was declined. . . .Yes . . . declined by the bank.”
“What?”
“Can you imagine what Nora must’ve thought?”
“Who cares what she thinks. What did you find out? Has someone been using our card?”
“Oh. yes. To the tune of seven thousand U.S. dollars.”
“Who? Where?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“A round of D.N.A. tests. . . . Little did I know that all your recent activities over your young mystery visitor . . . all your suspicious sneaking around . . . was because you had to pay for a paternity test at two companies in the United States. So . . . is she your daughter or your lover?”
After 45 minutes Emma Sohlberg understood her husband’s embarrassed explanations. She accepted his apologies and went upstairs to shower and dress for their evening party at the Otterstads. Meanwhile Sohlberg called Dr. Nansen and asked for her assistance the following day. She hesitated but finally agreed when Sohlberg made clear that the patient would not have to leave the Dove Center.
“Is that all I have to do?” she said with barely concealed suspicion.
“Yes. As soon as I text you just call the number I gave you and they will patch you through.”
“Alright. I’ll do it.”
“You’re sure your webcam is working?”
“It’s an Apple. Of course it’s working. Just yesterday I called my mother in Spain. . . . We saw each other on the webcams and had no problems speaking with each other. And she’s all the way down in Malaga.”
“Thank you.”
Fru Sohlberg came down the stairs in a long red dress and said:
“Who was that?”
“My shrink. But forget her. Wow. You’re quite the looker!”
She laughed. They kissed and left for the Saint Lucia festivities at the Otterstad’s home on nearby Malmøya Island.
~ ~ ~
Bright shimmering candles lit all the windows of the Otterstad residence. A row of paper bag luminaries lined the driveway and front steps.
The Otterstads cried “Welcome! Welcome!” as soon as Sohlberg and his wife stepped into the front hallway. “Come on in as the kids are about to start their procession into the living room.”
Sohlberg loved the traditional Nordic celebration of St. Lucia Day and Night which brought back fond memories of large family reunions in which he and his brother and their young cousins dressed in white robes while holding candles and singing Sankta Lucia and other Christmas songs to their grandparents and other elderly family members. He especially loved that part of Lussinatt in the dark winter evenings when he and the other children finished their songs and then handed out sweet saffron buns—lussekatter—to the adults. Bittersweet memories rose in Sohlberg’s mind when he remembered the joy that briefly shined in the dimming eyes of older family members as they received the saffron buns.
The Sohlbergs stood in the back of a crowded living room packed with Otterstad family and friends. Many a “Shhuss!” here and there quieted down the noisy conversation-filled room.
“Oh . . . look,” someone whispered.
Nine-year-old Camilla Otterstad walked into the room. She had been chosen by her Aunt Nora to represent St. Lucia. The shy girl led the procession and she looked positively angelic with her long platinum-blonde hair and white gown and red sash and crown of candles. Each of the boys and girls held candles that symbolize the fire that refused to take St. Lucia's life when she was sentenced to be burned at the stake for her Christian faith.
The children looked celestial with their innocent faces and their white robes. They wore green wreathes of cranberry leaves in their heads and walked in behind Camilla while they all sang the Norwegian lyrics of the St. Lucia song to the melody of the traditional Neapolitan song of Santa Lucia.
Black night is falling in stables and homes.
The sun has gone away, the shadows are threatening.
Into our dark house enters with lit candles
Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia!
The night is dark and silent; suddenly a rush
In all quiet rooms, like the waving of wings.
See, at our threshold stands, dressed in white
With lights in her hair
Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia!
The children sang more Christmas songs. Sohlberg’s throat tightened as he remembered his dead Karoline and what his mother had told him long ago:
“Saint Lucia is a symbol of light and goodness . . . she suffered martyrdom after she spurned her pagan betrothed . . . who denounced her as a Christian to the Roman authorities. Don’t ever forget . . . my darling boy . . . although light and goodness might start out small at the beginning they always win in the end over darkness and evil. Better and better light-filled days will always follow the short dark days of winter in our lives.”
He held his wife’s hand tightly and was immeasurably moved by the thought that Astrid Isakse
n—a veritable Saint Lucia child for her father—had brought light and goodness to her father’s grim and desperate situation.
Chapter 14/Fjorten
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14,
OR TWELVE DAYS AFTER THE DAY
After a 7 A.M. breakfast Sohlberg read his Colin Thubron travel book while his wife undertook a baking project in the kitchen. Sohlberg read travel books which allowed him to travel vicariously to faraway lands. He devoured works by Thubron and Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin and Bill Bryson.
Travel books transported Sohlberg to those warm and sunny climes that Norway lacked and that Sohlberg would never visit. Travel by book also allowed Sohlberg the pleasure of never having to leave behind the many comforts of his country and home. Travel books spared him the endless indignities of travel: cattle cars posing as airlines; price gouging of tourists; surly and resentful natives who confuse Europeans for hated Americans; Ugly American (or Russian) yahoos with loud mouths and loud clothes; arrogant customs and immigration tyrants; bribe-soliciting police officers; dysentery and projectile vomiting; insolent waiters; dirty hotel rooms; and, hotel beds designed as torture racks.
At 9 A.M. Sohlberg rose to shave and shower. Refreshed and wide awake he dressed up in his undercover garb for the day: a gray Anderson & Sheppard double-breasted suit with a cobalt blue woven silk Duchamp tie and white Hackett shirt from his old days as a well-paid lawyer who could afford to routinely buy expensive business clothes—and Crockett & Jones shoes—in London. For cufflinks Sohlberg felt he should make a whimsical if not ironic choice. He put on a set of Burlington parallel gold double bars—subtle symbols for prison window bars.
“I’m getting ready to leave,” said the dapper detective as he went down the stairs.
Emma Sohlberg met him in the hallway. She wolf-whistled her husband. “My . . . my . . . you’re looking mighty fine today. Since when do you go in to work dressed like that?”
“I’m meeting someone who will only take me seriously if I’m dressed like this. This person would never talk to anyone they thought was below their exalted rank.”
“A snobbish suspect?”
“Exactly.”
“Is he or she one of the Empty Suits . . . or Empty Skirts . . . that you love to hate?”
“Yes. The smart and powerful. The amoral if not immoral ruling class. The clueless intelligentsia. Leaders without values.”
From the main hallway closet he grabbed and put on a long black Burberry wool coat. He crowned himself with his favorite hat—a dark grey J. Press wool homburg that he had bought on his first trip to New York City on a long-forgotten corporate merger. He slipped two pairs of handcuffs into his suit’s pockets and for good measure he slid into his overcoat’s interior pocket a telescopic steel baton graced with a bone-shattering titanium ball tip. In case of trouble the German-made baton instantly expanded from 6 to 16 inches and it locked into place with the slightest flick of Sohlberg’s wrist.
“Sohlberg . . . are you planning on breaking some bones?”
“You never know.”
Sohlberg thought about also taking his personal .38 snub-nosed revolver—a Taurus that a New York police detective had given him as a gift. He also thought about taking his service pistol—a 9 mm semiautomatic Glock P80. But the slim and silent baton seemed more fitting and discrete for his boardroom meeting at noon in the luxurious offices of Johansen Olsson & Mortvedt.
Sohlberg sighed. “Alright. It’s ten o’clock. Time to go. I’ll miss you my Love.”
“You look so handsome. It’s been ages since you’ve dressed like this.”
“I must fit in with the crowd I’ll be with today.”
“Exactly what kind of a crowd would that be?”
“Rich lawyers.”
“You be careful. They’re more dangerous than drugged-out back-alley muggers and purse-snatchers.”
“I’ll be okay. I’m going undercover.”
“Isn’t it more like overcover?”
“Cute. Very cute. I should be back in the late afternoon . . . early evening.”
After kissing his wife the accoutered detective drove to the Kastellet tram station. He glanced constantly at the rearview mirror. But no one followed him that sun-washed Sunday which was just like a warmer day in early Spring but for the sub-freezing temperature and wind chill. No one else climbed into the tram with him. In downtown at the Jernbanetorget bus-tram-train junction he switched from the tram to the Metro subway which dropped him off at the Nationaltheatret station. He resented leaving the warmth of the station but at least the streets had no snow or the residual puddles of icy and dirty snow-melt that he hated with a passion.
He needed to get inside No. 10 Haakon VIIs Gate—an imposing H-shaped building located where Haakon VIIs Gate loops on itself between Munkedamsveien and Ruseløkkveien. But to do that Sohlberg had to walk around the block to reach the building’s front door. He marched down the wind tunnel of Haakon VIIs Gate until he reached Munkedamsveien and turned right.
Sohlberg remembered visiting clients and other lawyers at No. 10 Haakon VIIs Gate. The 9-floor building with wide and narrow windows always struck him as an oddly modern castle where Johansen Olsson & Mortvedt lorded over the city’s legal landscape next to its rival for clients and profits—the 190-lawyer advokatfirmaet of Thommessen AS.
“Come in,” said the security guard through a speaker after Sohlberg pressed a button next to the locked glass doors.
The warm lobby welcomed the chilled detective. “I’m Harald Sohlberg . . . I have an appointment with Christoffer Løvaas . . . of Johansen Olsson.”
“Yes. He asked that you not sign in with me and just come upstairs. Please take the elevator on the right. He’s on the seventh floor.”
Løvaas was waiting for him at the main door. “This way.”
The deserted offices—like all weekend-emptied law firms—struck him as the only prison in the world where the inmates voluntarily returned to their cells every Monday.
I’d go crazy if I had to work one hour in this fancy sweatshop.
They passed by endless rows of empty secretary desks and lawyer offices until they reached the massive corner office of the managing partner. The room reminded Sohlberg more of a large living room with its two extra-long champagne-colored leather sofas on either side of a large honey-colored maple coffee table. Two Queen Anne chairs at both ends of the coffee table completed the seating arrangements. The managing partner’s aircraft carrier of a mahogany desk found its berth next to an expanse of windows.
“Everything in place?” said Sohlberg as he took off his overcoat and hat. He hung them on a coat rack behind the door. He stared at the enormous 65-inch flat screen panel that hung on a wall over the managing partner’s credenza near the massive mahogany desk.
Løvaas pointed at the flat screen. “My tech person is recording us right now . . . even as we speak . . . with our top-of-the-line video conferencing equipment. It’s a Tandberg telepresence system from Cisco. Our Prime Minister has it . . . so do the Americans at the Pentagon and the White House.”
“Will it record both sound and images?”
“Yes. The video camera is in that little black box that’s at the top of the screen.”
“But I don’t see that the little red light is turned on.”
“We disabled it just for our meeting so as not to attract any suspicion.”
“Very good.” Sohlberg sat on the chair in front of and to the left of the desk that served as an altar to Christoffer Løvaas.
“I checked with the airport . . . she should be landing in an hour or less.”
Sohlberg nodded. He hid the steel baton next to him in the chair and took out his police-issued cell phone to call Constable Hanna Høiness.
“Yes it’s me. . . . I need you on stand-by for an arrest. Yes . . . an arrest. It’ll be inside an office building . . . Number Ten at Haakon Seventh’s Gate. Yes . . . the building with those windows. No . . . never mind what case. I’ll tell you later.
“There’s no need to follow them from the airport . . . or have anyone waiting out there for them.”