A Grave for Two

by Anne Holt

  If both the best female and the best male Norwegian cross-country skiers were exposed as cheats, it could signal the end for the Federation. At least in the short run.

  ‘In the short run’ also included the Winter Olympics. Only a few days ago, the International Olympic Committee had excluded Russia from the games in PyeongChang. If the weirdo from DG really had anything to go on, and hadn’t just been on a crazy fishing expedition, that could lead to chaos. And a rupture between Statoil and the Cross-Country Skiing Federation.

  Sølve touched the mouse. The screen lit up. The word count box still told him that the manuscript so far contained 69,562 characters. His plan was to spend all evening and much of the night knitting together some of the fragments he had already written.

  It didn’t work. He was too restless. Overexcited, almost, at the thought that he might be able to avoid submitting anything at all.

  It was certainly worthy of a good dinner, he thought all of a sudden, and put the computer into sleep mode. He hung the yellow memory stick around his neck, and before he reached as far as the hall, he had already decided on a restaurant. The Statholdergaarden, Oslo’s gourmet restaurant, always had a table for him whether or not he had a reservation. Even now in the pre-Christmas season. For a moment he considered phoning someone, but then dropped the idea.

  There were plans to make, thoughts to think, and maybe everything would go his way for once.

  It would be high time.

  THE MANUSCRIPT

  301 OUTSIDE, OSLO CITY CENTRE, DAYTIME

  The MAN goes through a gateway from a busy street. Looks down, is preoccupied with avoiding stepping on the lines on the pavement. A scattering of dry, yellow leaves indicates that autumn has just begun. The MAN stops at a closed door.

  He rings the doorbell and from habit places his hand on the door, as if he is used to it opening immediately.

  WOMAN’S VOICE (metallic): Yes?

  MAN (smiles): You know who it is.

  WOMAN’S VOICE: Didn’t you get my message?

  MAN: What message?

  WOMAN’S VOICE: I sent you both a letter and an email.

  MAN: Saying what?

  WOMAN’S VOICE: I can’t discuss that with you here on the entry phone. I suggest you check your letterbox. And your email.

  MAN: Can’t I just come up and … Let me speak to …

  WOMAN’S VOICE: No. Sorry.

  A sharp click, the conversation is over. The MAN hovers for a few seconds before ringing the doorbell again. No one answers. The MAN hesitates briefly and then returns to the entrance door and disappears with hurried steps.

  MONDAY 11 DECEMBER 2017

  QUI BONO

  ‘I think you’re absolutely crazy. Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Yes. But you probably don’t, Einar.’

  It had only just become Monday.

  Selma Falck had rounded off the weekend by going for a walk with Darius. An embarrassing idea. Someone or other, probably Anine, had stuffed a cat harness and neon-coloured chain into one of the boxes. It had taken Selma an eternity to get the contraption on the recalcitrant animal. Under cover of darkness, with a woollen hat and scarf covering half her face, she had carried the cat under her arm down to Sofienberg Park. There, she had let it toddle around for twenty uncomfortable minutes before dragging it unwillingly behind her back home again. A stray Alsatian had almost acquired an evening snack along the way, but Selma had surprised herself by delivering a well-aimed kick to the mutt’s nose.

  Suitably hard.

  After sleeping all day it was pointless going to bed. Her elation after the night of poker playing was dwindling, and Selma was far from being as cocksure as she’d been when she fell asleep. Her phone displayed six missed calls. Five of them seemingly from Vanja and Kristine. She ought to call them back. Jan Morell had also tried to contact her.

  The only person she wanted to contact was Einar.

  He was asleep when she approached, but woke before she reached him.

  ‘Around …’

  Einar Falsen scrambled up from lying on his side in the cardboard box between the boulders under the Sinsen interchange. He tilted his head and ran his mitten over his face.

  ‘Half past twelve,’ he said firmly. ‘I can tell by the sound of the traffic.’

  It was in fact twenty-five minutes to one, and Selma sat down breathlessly. She had been running. Clouds of condensation wafted around her when she took off her running top. She pulled out a folded down jacket from a small Camelbak rucksack, along with a thermos and a blue lunchbox. She poured coffee into both of their plastic mugs and opened the lunchbox before placing it on a stone in front of Einar.

  ‘A midnight snack.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ve made a list. And also some choices. Thought I could discuss them with you.’

  Einar sat up, leaning on a rock, still enveloped in his sleeping bag. A rank odour of sweat with a hint of urine was thrown off by the rifle-green sleeping bag when he pulled it up to his waist as he grabbed a sandwich with butter and brown cheese.

  ‘Good. What kind of list?’

  ‘Of possible perpetrators.’

  ‘Perpetrators? Have you already established that the girl was sabotaged? What was it I said to you about an open mind? Guilt, innocence. Sabotage, accident, deliberate attempt at cheating. You can never decide in advance, Mariska. I told you so.’

  He attacked the sandwich as if he intended to murder it.

  ‘Of course.’

  Selma tried to find a comfortable position on the jagged stones. It was never easy.

  ‘I tried that,’ she said. ‘But it was pointless. I’m too short of time. I simply have to begin with the hypothesis that she’s been sabotaged. I have to take any shortcuts going. If she wasn’t sabotaged, but has taken drugs either intentionally or by accident, I won’t be able to get her exonerated anyway. At least not in time for the Winter Olympics.’

  She licked her lips. Hesitated.

  ‘And then I found an interesting chapter in that book of yours.’

  Einar smiled broadly with his mouth full of food.

  ‘The Investigator’s ABC,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Brilliant! What are you referring to? Which of my many pearls of wisdom did you find interesting this time?’

  Selma Falck didn’t read literature. She’d barely opened anything other than textbooks all her life. Seldom went to the cinema. If she had a free evening, something she rarely had, she watched TV. Eight years ago she had come across the first season of The Walking Dead, a post-apocalypse series so full of action that she actually succumbed to its fascination. Deeply enough that she had watched every season since, twice over, and she had an expensive figure of Michonne on her office desk. Purchased in London and brought home with a good deal of loot. When Selma had read in a newspaper article somewhere that the series was strongly inspired by Albert Camus’s The Plague, she had bought a novel for the first time ever. And never got further than page six.

  If she wasn’t keen on written fiction, she was nonetheless good with facts. She had completed her law degree in the normal length of time in parallel with a handball career, and had ended up among the top ten per cent in her year.

  That had won her 50,000 kroner in a bet with her brother.

  Selma knew her professional literature, and The Investigator’s ABC was a piece of junk.

  Muddled and unfocused, repetitive and pretty badly written into the bargain. She suspected the so-called publisher of being a kitchen worktop affair. Even Einar’s spelling mistakes had survived editing and correction. Since Einar Falsen had undoubtedly been a competent and clear-thinking policeman, Selma assumed that his illness had already affected him at the time the book was issued.

  ‘Qui bono,’ Selma said.

  ‘Who benefits,’ Einar replied, nodding. ‘Marcus Tullius Cicero’s speech in defence of Titus Annius Milo. Who was actually convicted, despite Cicero’s efforts.’

  Tossing the rest of the s
andwich into his mouth, he chewed it up and washed it down with the scalding-hot coffee.

  ‘Have you brought any dessert?’

  Selma handed him a packet of Smil chocolates she took from the bottom of the Camelbak bag.

  The Investigator’s ABC was full of platitudes. In the chapter on the significance of motive, Einar had dealt comprehensively with the most obvious causes of crime. Revenge, money and sex. Or a combination of these three. An apparently self-drawn graph also showed that most cases of homicide in Norway were deplorably uninteresting: murders committed in the heat of the moment, usually when drunk, and committed against family, friends or acquaintances.

  Selma picked up a thin cushion and a Co-op carrier bag. She pulled one over the other before tucking the bundle under her backside.

  ‘This afternoon I tried to track Hege Chin Morell’s life as well as I could,’ she said, catching herself on the point of taking out her mobile to show him the documents she had produced.

  Einar ripped open the Smil packet. Three chocolates fell between the stones. He swore under his breath and emptied the rest into the Mesta mitten.

  ‘And to make a long story short, I think we can ignore sex in this case.’

  ‘Oh? Don’t you think the Chinese girl has sex, Mariska?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, and it’s none of my business. I just mean it’s difficult to imagine her being mixed up in any drama of that sort. She’s been linked to romantic liaisons only twice. The gossip magazine Se og Hør reported on an alleged relationship with an Austrian three years ago. He was a skier too. Only a year ago there were rumours circulating that she was involved with one of the wax technicians. As far as I can see, both of them were wrong. All the same …’

  Her coffee had finally become lukewarm enough to drink.

  ‘As I said I don’t have much time and I have to take a few chances. I’m going to forget sex.’

  ‘Now you’re getting bloody confused,’ Einar said, plunging his hand into the mitten full of chocolates.

  ‘Yes. I’m no good at this.’

  ‘You’re starting at the wrong end.’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘You have to look at the crime. If a crime is involved, but then you’re assuming that, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes …’

  Einar seemed totally preoccupied with the chocolates. He stuffed more into his mouth before he’d swallowed the first ones. Sucking and chewing, he swallowed and went on sucking. It took him less than two minutes to finish the whole packet.

  A thick layer of chocolate coated both corners of his mouth.

  ‘You’re working from a hypothesis that she was drugged without knowing for sure,’ he mumbled, peering down into his mitten with one eye. ‘That someone has deliberately harmed her as a skier.’

  He turned the mitten over and shook it.

  ‘You don’t have any more, do you?’

  ‘No. And not necessarily. Someone wanting to harm her as a skier, I mean. Cross-country skiing is her whole life. If someone wanted to harm her, regardless of the reason, using drugs to sabotage her career would be particularly effective. We can see that. She’s completely shattered.’

  He no longer seemed to be listening. He was twisting and turning the mitten, already stiff with dirt and perspiration, in his search for more chocolates.

  ‘Back to qui bono,’ she said, placing her hand on the bony knee that jutted up inside his sleeping bag. ‘That chapter’s actually good.’

  ‘The entire book is good.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but that part in particular was …’

  ‘Who gains from the crime?’ he broke in. ‘Who benefits from Hege Chin Morell not going to the Winter Olympics?’

  ‘All the other female skiers in the whole world.’

  Einar grinned.

  ‘Then you’ve got quite a job ahead of you.’

  Selma did not answer. Einar was still smiling. More of a grimace, really: lopsided and with three missing teeth on the side of the mouth that hadn’t quite managed to take part in the smile. His beard was unusually unkempt, even for him. The chocolate on his face was beginning to solidify. His cap was askew, with the earflaps mournfully teetering on his shoulders. His brown eyes looked sideways with crow’s feet so deep they divided his face in two.

  He reminded her of an aged cocker spaniel.

  ‘Yes,’ Selma said, sounding discouraged. ‘That’s why I made the list.’

  She thrust her hand down into the rucksack.

  ‘Mariska.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If I ask you the question the other way round …’

  ‘The other way round?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She remained seated with her arm in the rucksack.

  ‘Who loses by Hege Morell not coming to the Olympics?’ Einar asked.

  ‘Er … she does, of course. And the Federation. Norway, for that matter, if we presuppose that we want to win as many medals as possible.’

  His head gave a jolt, and he clutched at his ear.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said softly. ‘Have you brought that bloody phone with you?’

  ‘No!’ she lied. ‘Word of honour, Einar. I left it at home.’

  She showed him two open palms, as if that might prove something.

  ‘Who loses most of all?’ Einar asked, still with his eyes tightly shut and a hand clamped like an ear defender on his left ear. ‘Absolutely most of all?’

  ‘Hege.’

  ‘Are you sure of that, Mariska?’

  ‘Yes.’

  All of a sudden he looked at her again. He stretched out to the arsenal of plastic bags and carriers between the stones and rummaged around until he located a bundle of newspapers.

  ‘I’ve followed that girl Hege,’ he muttered. ‘Who hasn’t? And in the autumn there was an interview …’

  He leafed repeatedly through the papers.

  ‘What do you call that kind of thing?’ he murmured. ‘Those interviews where there are two …’

  ‘A double portrait.’

  ‘Yes. A double portrait, that’s it. Of the Chinese girl and her dad. Here!’

  He handed her something that might be a copy of A-Magasinet, the weekend supplement from Aftenposten.

  ‘Read that.’

  Selma did not reply. She did not accept the magazine when he handed it to her.

  ‘Selma!’ he said angrily.

  She could not recall the last time he had called her by her correct name.

  ‘Read the interview!’

  ‘I have read it,’ she said. ‘Shh.’

  The interview was from the autumn and was one of more than twenty she had skimmed through when she had finally awoken some time in the afternoon.

  But they were not what had struck Selma with astonishment all of a sudden.

  It was the thought of yesterday’s conversation with Hege in Jan Morell’s home office.

  Selma Falck knew what it took to be a winner.

  Handball in the previous century could not, of course, be compared with cross-country skiing in 2017, but the principles were the same. You had to train. And train. Put up with pain, put up with boredom, repetition and more pain. You had to sleep. Eat. Recover. Miss out on most of the things that did not have to do with this one, single, overriding concern: to be the best possible athlete. All the time, and constantly improving. Better than yourself, and better than all the others.

  Selma herself had cheated. She had quite simply trained too much. More than was good for her, more than her coaches allowed. She had sneaked away when her teammates were finished, both at her local club and the national team. Run and pumped iron. Always more than the others. Trained too much, trained in and out of the injuries that had afflicted her. At her best, between the World Championships bronze and the first Olympics silver, she had realized that she was partly driven by compulsive thoughts. If she just punished herself enough, she would be the best. If the others used indoor treadmills in November, she would run through the woods. Beyond
the paths, in varying terrain, faster and faster, increasingly steep, at first until she grew hot and on until she felt so cold that she quite literally couldn’t flex her fingers.

  For more than fifteen years of her life she had been driven by something she later appreciated was founded in self-loathing. You had to be over the top, or else you were nothing. Run on Christmas Day. Do strength training as usual on birthdays and Norway’s National Day; even on the day of her grandfather’s funeral she had felt nauseous at the thought that she had missed a hard session. In tests, the incessant tests, with maximum pulse and lactic acid up to her ears, she always managed more. Ten more minutes. Five. In two more minutes of intense pain she would be the very best.

  Otherwise she was nothing.

  You never skipped anything. You played on with blisters as big as 20-kroner coins and hoped that no one would find out. There was a deep sense of satisfaction to be gained from having the strength to do it, especially if no one saw it, especially when the sacrifice and self-control were only her own; she was in charge of herself, she owned her body through what she could make her five foot eight frame and more or less constant sixty-eight kilos withstand.

  Only in this way could she become the best handball player in the world.

  She never made it, but she became really, really good.

  ‘Everything comes from within,’ she said into thin air.

  ‘What?’

  Einar finally replaced the A-Magasinet in the bundle.

  ‘The enthusiasm for training. The will to make sacrifices. When I played handball. It was all about a deeply rooted, inner … desire? Need? I don’t entirely know. But it comes from inside you.’

  ‘I suppose it must for everyone. Performing well at international level must be bloody boring more than anything else.’

  Selma nodded as she struggled to make herself more comfortable on the cushion inside the Co-op bag.

  ‘Playing ball is always fun. Strength training can be OK. Cardiovascular is … pretty awful, really. Boring, essentially, you’re right there, but also painful at times. Extremely so. And it must …’