by Anne Holt
“Did you know Hans Olsen, the murdered lawyer?”
She declined to assist him further, thanked him politely for calling, and replaced the receiver.
Hans Olsen? Why that question? She’d read the bloodcurdling details in the daily papers, but had put it to the back of her mind, since it didn’t concern her and she had no idea who the man was. It hadn’t occurred to her that the case might have anything to do with her client. Of course it didn’t mean there was any connection anyway; it might just have been a journalistic shot in the dark. She let it rest at that, though with a slight feeling of annoyance. She saw from the screen in front of her that nine people had tried to get in touch today, and from the names she could tell that she would have to spend the rest of the day on her most important client, Norwegian Oil. She pulled out two of the relevant files, bearing the bright red N.O. logo. Fetching herself a cup of coffee, she started making her calls. If she was finished in time she might manage a trip to the police station in the evening. It was Friday, and she had a bad conscience for not having visited her incarcerated client since that initial meeting. She definitely had to follow it up before the weekend.
* * *
Despite nearly a week in custody Han van der Kerch wasn’t any more talkative. He’d been provided with a urine-stained mattress and a blanket. In one corner of the bunk-like platform he’d piled up a number of cheap paperbacks. They were allowing him one shower a day, and he was beginning to get acclimatised to the warmth, stripping off as soon as he came into the cell, and usually just sitting around in his underpants. Only when he was given the occasional opportunity for exercise, or a further attempt was made at questioning him, did he bother to dress. A patrol car had been out to his room in the student residences in Kringsjå to fetch him a change of underpants, some toilet things, and, rather excessively, his small portable CD player.
He was dressed now. Karen Borg was sitting with him in an office on the second floor. They weren’t exactly having a conversation, more a monologue with intermittent mumbles from the other party.
“Peter Strup phoned me at the beginning of the week. He said he knew a friend of yours, and wanted to help you.”
No reaction, just a darker and sulkier look around his eyes.
“Do you know Strup, the lawyer? Do you know what friend he’s talking about?”
“Yes. I want you.”
“Fine.”
Her patience was nearly at an end. After a quarter of an hour of endeavouring to get something more out of him, she was on the point of giving up. Then the Dutchman unexpectedly slumped forward in his chair and in a gesture of despair sank his head in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his scalp, raised his eyes, and began to talk.
“I can see you’re confused. I’m bloody confused myself. I made the biggest mistake of my life last Friday. It was a cold, premeditated, and cruel murder. I got money for it. Or rather, I was promised money for it. I haven’t seen a penny yet, and will probably have my own creditors on my back for years to come. I’ve been in this overheated cell for a week now thinking about what could have come over me.”
Suddenly he burst into tears. It was so abrupt and unforeseen that Karen Borg was taken completely by surprise. The boy—for now he looked more like a teenager—was leaning over with his head in his lap as if he were bracing himself for a crash landing in an aeroplane, and his back was heaving. After a few moments he straightened up to get more air, and she could see that his face was already blotchy. His nose was running, and, being quite unable to think of anything to say, Karen pulled out a pack of tissues from her briefcase and passed it to him. He dried his nose and eyes, but didn’t stop sobbing. Karen had no idea how to console a remorseful murderer, but nevertheless pulled her chair closer and took his hand.
They stayed sitting in that position for over ten minutes. It felt more like an hour—probably for both of them, Karen thought. At last the young man’s breathing became somewhat less ragged. She let go of his hand and soundlessly pushed back her chair, as if to erase the short period of intimacy and trust.
“Perhaps you could tell me a bit more now,” she said in a quiet voice, offering him a fresh cigarette. He took it with a trembling hand, like a bad actor. She knew it was genuine, and gave him a light.
“I don’t know what to say,” he stammered. “The fact is that I’ve killed a man. But I’ve done a lot of other things too, and I don’t want to talk myself into a life sentence. And I don’t know how to speak about one thing without revealing others.”
Karen was in some perplexity. She was accustomed to treating information with the greatest discretion and confidentiality. She wouldn’t have had many clients had she not possessed that quality. But confidentiality up till now had been about finance, industrial secrets, and business tactics. She had never received a confidence about anything unequivocally criminal, and was in a quandary about what she could keep to herself without falling foul of the law. But before she’d even thought through the problem, she decided to put the Dutchman’s mind at rest.
“Whatever you say to me will be between the two of us. I’m your lawyer, and bound by the rules of professional confidentiality.”
After a few final sighs he blew his nose vigorously into a wet tissue and began to tell her all about it.
“I was in a sort of syndicate. I say ‘sort of,’ because quite honestly I don’t know very much about it. I know of two others in it, but they’re people at my own level: we collect and deliver, and sell a little now and then. My contact runs a secondhand car business north of the city centre, up in Sagene. But it’s pretty big, the whole operation. I think. There’ve never been any problems getting paid for the jobs I’ve done. A bloke like myself can travel to the Netherlands as often as he wants without arousing any suspicion. I visited my mother every time.”
At the thought of his mother he broke down again.
“I’ve never been in trouble with the police before, neither here nor back home,” he sniffed. “Oh hell, how long do you think I’ll get?”
Karen knew very well what a murderer could expect. And maybe even a drug courier. But she said nothing, just shrugged her shoulders.
“I’ve probably made about ten to fifteen runs in all,” he went on. “Unbelievably easy job, in fact. I would be given a rendezvous in Amsterdam in advance, always a different place. The goods would be completely sealed. In rubber. I would swallow the packets, without actually knowing what was in them.”
He paused for a moment before correcting himself.
“Well, I guessed it was heroin. Must have known it was, really. About a hundred grams each time. That’s more than two thousand fixes. Everything went okay, and I got my twenty thousand on delivery. Plus all expenses paid.”
His voice was thick, but he was explaining himself clearly enough. He sat tearing at the tissues, which were just about shredded to pieces already. He stared at his hands throughout, as if he couldn’t believe they had so brutally killed another person exactly a week before.
“There must be quite a lot of people involved. Even if I don’t know more than a couple myself. The whole thing’s too big. One scruffy spiv in Sagene couldn’t run it on his own. He doesn’t look bright enough. But I haven’t asked any questions. I did the job, got my money, and kept my mouth shut. Until ten days ago.”
Karen Borg felt exhausted. She was caught up in a situation over which she had no control whatsoever. Her brain registered the information she was receiving, while she simultaneously made febrile attempts to work out what she might do with it. She could feel her cheeks reddening and perspiration beginning to dampen her armpits. She knew she was going to hear about Ludvig Sandersen now, the man she’d found last Friday, a discovery that had haunted her at night and tormented her by day ever since. She clutched her chair tightly.
“I was up with the garage guy last Thursday,” Han van der Kerch went on. He was calmer now, and had finally relinquished the remnants of the tissues and dropped them in the bin on the floor by his s
ide. He looked at her for the first time that day. “I hadn’t done a job for several months. I was expecting to hear something any moment. I’ve had a phone put in my room, so that I’m not dependent on the communal one in the corridor. I never pick up the receiver before it’s rung four times. If it rings twice and then stops, and then rings twice more, I know that I have to meet him at two o’clock in the morning. Smart system. Not a single call is ever registered between us on my phone, yet he can contact me. Well, I turned up last Thursday. But this time it wasn’t about drugs. There was someone in the syndicate who’d got a bit too big for his boots. Had begun to demand money from one of the guys at the top. Something like that. I didn’t get to know much, just that he was a threat to all of us. I was terrified.”
He smiled, a wry, self-deprecating smile.
“In the two years I’ve been doing this, I’d never really thought about the possibility of getting caught. In a way I felt invulnerable. Hell, I was shit scared when I thought someone might step out of line. It had never occurred to me that anyone from within might be a threat. It was actually the fear of being caught that made me say yes to the job. I’d get two hundred thousand kroner for it. Bloody tempting. The idea was not simply that he should die. It was also to act as a warning to all the others in the organisation. That was why I smashed in his face.”
The boy began to sob again, but not so convulsively now. He could manage to go on talking while the tears were flowing. He kept pausing, taking deep breaths, smoking, thinking.
“But as soon as I’d done it, I got into a sweat. I regretted it straight away, and wandered round in a daze for twenty-four hours. I don’t remember much about it.”
She hadn’t interrupted him once. Nor had she taken any notes. But there were two questions she had to ask.
“Why did you want to have me?” she enquired gently. “And why didn’t you want to go into prison?”
Han van der Kerch stared at her for what seemed an eternity.
“It was you that found the body, even though it was well hidden.”
“Yes, I had a dog with me. But so what?”
“Well, despite the fact that I knew next to nothing about the rest of the organisation, you come across things now and again. A slip of the tongue, a hint. I think, yes, I think there might be a lawyer involved. I don’t know who. I can’t trust anyone. But we wanted it to take a long time before the body was found. The longer it took, the colder the trail. You must have found him only an hour after I killed him. So you couldn’t be involved.”
“And prison?”
“I know the organisation has contacts on the inside. Inmates, I assume, but it might be warders as well for all I know. The safest thing was to stay with the cops. Even if it is bloody hot!”
He seemed relieved. Karen, on the other hand, was depressed, as if all that had weighed on the young man for a week had now landed on her shoulders.
He asked what she was going to do. She gave him an honest answer: she wasn’t entirely sure. She would have to consider.
“But you promised to keep all this to yourself,” he reminded her.
Karen didn’t reply, but drew her index finger across her throat. She called an officer, and the Dutchman was taken back to the miserable dingy-yellow cell.
* * *
Though it was gone six o’clock on a Friday evening, Håkon Sand was still in his office. Karen Borg realised that the weary lines he had in his face, that she’d thought on Monday were the result of living it up at the weekend, were actually permanent. She was rather amazed that he was working so late; she knew that no one got paid overtime in the police force.
“It’s stupid to work so much,” he admitted. “But it’s worse to wake up in the night worrying about everything you haven’t done. I try to get more or less up-to-date every Friday. The weekends are more enjoyable then.”
The big grey building was silent. They sat there with a feeling of unusual rapport. Then a siren broke the stillness, a police car being tested in the yard at the back. It ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
“Did he say anything?”
She had expected the question, knew it had to come, but having relaxed for a few minutes she was quite unprepared.
“Nothing in particular.”
She noticed how difficult it was to lie to him. He always seemed to know what was going on in her mind. She could feel a flush creeping up her back, and hoped it wouldn’t spread to her face.
“The Client Confidentiality Act,” he said with a smile, and stretched his arms, linking his hands and putting them behind his neck. She could see sweat under his arms, but it didn’t seem repulsive, just natural, after a ten-hour working day.
“I respect that,” he went on. “Can’t say much myself, either!”
“I thought the defence had a right to information and documents,” she said reprovingly.
“Not if we think it might be detrimental to the investigation,” he countered with an even broader smile, as if amused that they found themselves in a professional adversarial relationship. He got up and poured them some coffee. It tasted worse than on Monday, as if it was the same pot that had been on the hotplate ever since. She contented herself with one sip and pushed the cup away with a grimace.
“That stuff will kill you,” she admonished him. He shrugged and reassured her that he had a cast-iron stomach.
For some reason she couldn’t explain, she felt good. There was a tangible but oddly pleasant conflict going on between them that had never been there before. Never before had Håkon been in possession of knowledge she didn’t have. Scrutinising him, she could see a glint in his eyes. His greying at the temples and his receding hairline made him appear not just older but also more interesting, and stronger. He had actually grown rather handsome.
“You’ve become quite good-looking, Håkon,” she blurted out.
He didn’t even blush, just looked her straight in the eyes. She regretted it immediately; it was like opening a chink in her armour that she had long recognised she couldn’t afford, not for anyone. As quick as lightning she changed the subject.
“Well, if you can’t tell me anything and I can’t say anything, we might as well call it a day,” she concluded, standing up and putting on her raincoat.
He asked her to sit down again. She complied, but kept her coat on.
“To be perfectly frank, this is a far more serious matter than we originally assumed. We’re working on several theories, but they’re fairly vague and without a shred of firm evidence to support them at the moment. I can at least tell you that it looks as if it might be drug dealing on a grand scale. It’s too early to say how involved your client might be. But he’s already in deep enough with murder. We think it was premeditated. If I can’t say any more than that, it’s not that I’m unwilling. We simply don’t know, and I have to be careful, even with an old friend like you, not to come out with unfounded assertions and speculations.”
“Has it anything to do with Hans E. Olsen?”
Karen had caught Håkon Sand off guard. His mouth dropped open and he stared at her. Neither spoke for half a minute.
“What the hell do you know about that?”
“Nothing at all,” she replied. “But I had a call from a journalist today. A man called Fredrick Myhre or Myhreng or something like that. From the Dagbladet. He threw in a question about whether I knew the murdered lawyer. Right in the middle of asking me about my client. It seems that the journalists are fairly well informed about police activities, so I thought I should ask you. I don’t know anything. Should I?”
“The bugger,” said Håkon and stood up. “We’ll talk about it next week.”
As they went out the door, Håkon reached out to turn off the light after them. The movement brought his arm over her shoulder, and suddenly without warning he kissed her. It was a tentative, boyish kiss.
For a few seconds their eyes met, then he switched off the light, locked the door, and without saying another word led her out of the deserted
building.
It was the weekend.
MONDAY 5 OCTOBER
Fredrick Myhreng, the journalist, didn’t feel at all well. He tugged nervously at his rolled-up sleeves and began fiddling with a ball-point pen till he managed to break it and the ink oozed out, staining his hands blue. He looked round for something to wipe them on, but had to make do with sheets from his notebook, hardly ideal. He also got ink on his smart suit. He wore the sleeves turned back, as if he hadn’t realised that this style went out of fashion when Miami Vice disappeared from Norwegian television. A long time ago now. The label on the outside of the right sleeve hadn’t been removed; in fact, the turn-up was so contrived that it stood out like a hallmark. But it was no good; he still felt insignificant and uncomfortable sitting in Håkon Sand’s office.
He had agreed to come willingly enough. Sand had phoned him early that morning, before the journalist’s Monday-morning feeling after a lively weekend had worn off. Sand had been polite but firm when he asked him to present himself as soon as possible. It was ten o’clock, and he was feeling sick. Håkon offered him a sweet from a wooden dish, and he accepted it. He regretted it immediately after it was in his mouth; it was enormous, and impossible to suck without slurping. Sand hadn’t taken one himself, and Myhreng could understand why. It was difficult to talk with such an object in his mouth, and he felt it would look too childish if he started chewing it.
“You’re working on our murder cases, I understand,” Håkon said, not without a hint of arrogance.
“Sure, I’m a crime reporter,” Myhreng answered curtly and with scantly concealed pride in his professional title. He almost shot the sweet out of his mouth in his eagerness to sound self-assured. Sucking it quickly back in again, he inadvertently swallowed it. He could feel its slow and painful progress down his gullet.
“What do you actually know?”
The young journalist wasn’t really sure what to say. All his instincts prompted him to be circumspect, while his desire to exult in his knowledge was irresistible.