A Grave for Two

by Anne Holt

  ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen to you, Jan?’

  Selma was still holding the decanter. She lowered her gaze. Turned the beautiful decanter around. Shades of deep yellow and brown danced and vibrated behind the intricate pattern on the crystal. He did not answer.

  ‘The very worst thing,’ she repeated.

  ‘Losing Hege.’

  ‘Yes, but after that.’

  ‘For Hege’s career to lie in tatters. In other words, I’m living a nightmare.’

  Selma nodded.

  ‘Have you enemies, Jan?’

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘Bitter foes?’

  ‘More than likely. I don’t spend much time thinking about that sort of thing. I apply my energy to MCV instead. It goes without saying that I’ve broken a few eggs along the way.’

  ‘Can I have a look at your office, please?’

  He had raised his glass, but froze on the spot.

  ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘Can we?’

  Selma made a peremptory gesture towards his office door.

  ‘Preferably not,’ he muttered, but all the same he put his glass down on the mantelpiece. ‘Come on, then.’

  The last time Selma had been in Jan’s home office, it had smelled of aftershave and furniture oil. Now there was a faint residue of cigarette smoke in the room.

  ‘Klaus took that picture,’ Jan said, pointing lethargically at the large photograph of Hege and Katinka. ‘I like it.’

  ‘It’s fantastic. But this one here …’

  Jan was standing with his posterior against the substantial writing desk in the centre of the room, his arms crossed and his eyes fixed on the portrait of mother and daughter. Selma stood just inside the door, pointing.

  ‘This is you, Morten Karlshaug and Arnulf Selhus, isn’t it?’

  Yet again the corners of his mouth curled into something resembling a smile.

  ‘Yes. It was taken just before I met Katinka. It was in the newspaper, after a cross-country competition in Marka. I was seventeen, and the others a year younger.’

  ‘Had you been together throughout your childhood?’

  ‘Yes, in a way.’

  ‘In a way?’

  Jan came across to her. Studied the picture. His stubby finger touched the ski helmet.

  ‘I got that skiing cap from Kupper’n himself,’ he said. ‘And wore it out. I wore out a cap, Selma, wore it until it fell apart. That was what my childhood was like.’

  ‘I’ve noticed you don’t talk about it.’

  ‘About the ski helmet?’

  ‘About your childhood.’

  ‘My childhood is a closed chapter. Has been for a long time. Come on, let’s go back.’

  He pushed her ahead of him out of the office and closed the door emphatically behind him.

  ‘You must speak to Hege,’ he said imperiously. ‘That’s why I asked you to come.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  He stopped and surveyed the room, slightly confused, as if he had only just noticed his daughter’s absence.

  ‘Maggi!’ he shouted.

  The kitchen door slid open immediately. The scared, slight figure took a couple of tentative steps into the living room.

  ‘Where’s Hege?’

  ‘At the cinema.’

  ‘At … the cinema? Without telling me?’

  Selma wanted to let him know that his daughter was twenty-four years of age, but held back the comment.

  ‘Yes,’ Maggi said submissively.

  Jan dismissed her back into the kitchen. The door slid shut.

  ‘Sorry,’ he murmured to Selma. ‘I’ve wasted your time.’

  He fetched his tumbler from the mantelpiece and sat down again.

  ‘No,’ Selma said. ‘You haven’t. But now you’re going to answer my questions.’

  As he sipped the whisky, he glanced at her over the rim of the glass.

  ‘That depends what they’re about,’ he said.

  Selma perched on the edge of the seat. Straightened her back and let her hands grasp her knees.

  ‘You said the worst thing that could happen to you, apart from Hege dying, would be her career being destroyed. Why is that?’

  His frown made his eyebrows join together.

  ‘That should be obvious. She’s my only daughter. I love her. She’s the best female cross-country skier in the world. A successful career will open up the world to her. What’s happened now …’

  He swung the glass in a haphazard arc.

  ‘It makes everything difficult for her. Impossible. She will always be known as the one who cheated. Who fell. This will follow her for the rest of her life. It’s not a fate you wish for your only child.’

  ‘Why didn’t you have a skiing career of your own?’

  ‘That can hardly have anything to do with this case. I really don’t have time for this.’

  ‘What would be the worst thing that could happen to Morten?’ Selma said quickly. ‘Klaus, I mean. To die? Was he particularly … afraid of dying?’

  Jan shrugged with one shoulder.

  ‘No more than the rest of us. Death is probably what we all fear most of all. If we’re not terribly ill or aged. Sometimes even then, I expect. But as far as Klaus is concerned …’

  He gave a faint smile.

  ‘Klaus would actually have chosen to die rather than be locked inside anywhere. Many people believe that claustrophobia …’

  The rest of the whisky disappeared, and he got up to pour some more.

  ‘… is a kind of worried scepticism about confined spaces,’ he went on as he headed for the drinks cabinet. ‘But it’s not really just an aversion. Most of us are capable of feeling that, with heights and tunnels and enclosed cupboards. For Klaus, we’re talking about sheer panic. Really deep, destructive anxiety. I never saw it at its worst, because he always went around … in a state of readiness? Isn’t that what the psychologists call it? Always plan a few moves ahead, to avoid placing yourself in a position where you could be locked in.’

  ‘He’s been to Mount Everest. How did he manage that without being able to sleep in a tent?’

  A brief little guffaw, an appreciative glance over his shoulder as he poured the whisky.

  ‘Smart thinking! He managed without one. He got Bergans to make a special tent for him, with two transparent walls. Which was a bit of a challenge, as far as I understood. To obtain the same extreme qualities as the professional tents, in transparent material. But it worked. And he managed it.’

  ‘Do you mean that quite literally? That he would have preferred to die?’

  ‘Yes. Or to be honest, it would have killed him. After a while, at least. But where the hell are you going with all this?’

  Selma did not answer. She was still perched on the edge of the settee, her back ramrod straight. She felt the heat from her hand penetrate through her trousers. Wrote out a mental index card and filed it away in the right place.

  ‘Selma?’

  ‘Now it’s important that you’re exact, Jan. Do you seriously mean that Morten Karlshaug could have died from being locked inside somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, I really do think so. I mean, I’ve never seen him completely shut in anywhere, but we hung about together for years. He was always the one who had to know where all the doors were situated. Windows. Escape routes. On cabin trips and building sites, school basements and all the other places that young hooligans might think of going into in the seventies.’

  Again Selma was a million miles away.

  This time Jan let her be. She suddenly realized that he was studying her.

  ‘You’ve formed a theory,’ he said slowly. ‘What’s it based on, and what on earth does it have to do with a photograph in my office?’

  ‘Arnulf Selhus,’ she said in a loud voice. ‘What’s his greatest nightmare?’

  Jan’s face closed down again.

  ‘No idea,’ he muttered. ‘But he’s acquired a gaggle of children through three marri
ages. Five or six, I think. Losing them is probably his worst fear, just as much as for you and me.’

  ‘But apart from death?’

  ‘Don’t know, as I said. I no longer know him.’

  ‘You did at one time. Both when you were young, and ten years ago when you got a job for him as Finance Director at the NCCSF. Did the break with Arnulf come before or after you put in a good word for him?’

  Jan stood up and looked at the clock. Drained his glass in one gulp and slammed it down on the polished concrete table.

  ‘This has nothing to do with the case, Selma. You’ll have to go.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure Hege’s been sabotaged.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure…’

  ‘I heard what you said. But why do you say that? What have you found out?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I have more to go on. If I’m to make further progress with this, I really need you to answer my questions.’

  He grabbed the glass and began to move towards the drinks cabinet again. Changing his mind, he called out to Maggi. She stood in the living room three seconds later.

  ‘Did you buy Pepsi Max, as I asked you to?’

  Maggi nodded.

  ‘A bottle and two glasses, then. With ice cubes.’

  She hurried from the room. Selma felt the usual prick of shame at never voicing any protest about Jan Morell’s behaviour towards the Polish home help. During her first visit to Vettakollen, almost exactly a week ago, Maggi had seemed upset about the doping allegations and flustered about everything that was going on. However, at that time she had clearly felt at home in the timber villa. She had been quiet and friendly and showed Hege motherly concern. Now she was cowed, scared and jittery.

  You’re not very nice to her, was what Selma wanted to say.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she sat in silence, waiting until Maggi returned with glasses and a litre and a half of Pepsi Max. The ice cubes made it fizz explosively when she poured out the cola, since she forgot to tilt the glass.

  ‘Sorry. Sorry.’

  Her skinny legs rushed through the living room, into the kitchen and returned with a cloth. The spilled liquid had formed dark, irregular blotches on the highly polished concrete table.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said for the third time, as she wiped up the spill and then made herself scarce.

  ‘Why did you get Arnulf Selhus the job at the Cross-Country Skiing Federation?’

  Selma picked up a glass and wiped the bottom of it on her trouser leg.

  ‘Because everyone deserves a second chance,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘What had he done wrong?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’

  Selma sighed. She stood up. Stood for a few seconds staring at him. He stared back, his expression that of a sulky teenager.

  ‘You know me as an easy-going woman,’ Selma began, still on her feet. ‘Most people do. Very few have seen me angry. No one has seen me cry since 1986. I hardly ever swear, I smile a lot, I have a pleasant manner. I seldom voice my opinions, other than in legal matters. I’m popular, Jan. I’m looked up to, and not just because I’m in better shape than most twenty-five-year-olds. I’m very well known, idolized by many and well liked by most. And proficient at my job, irrespective of how hair-raising the embezzlement was. No matter how many lies about my own penchant for thrills and gambling I’ve whispered in my own ear down through the years. I’m competent. I’m smart, Jan. That’s why you chose to enter into this bet. I’m Selma Falck, and it’s Selma Falck you chose to get you out of your life’s worst …’

  Katinka crossed her mind, and she checked herself.

  ‘… second-worst crisis. Ergo you agree with me about most of what I’ve just said about myself.’

  Still their eye contact was firmly locked.

  ‘But if you think for a moment,’ she went on, a bit louder now, ‘that I can’t lose my temper, and that I can’t speak my mind straight out …’

  Her hand shook when she leaned over to pick up the glass. She didn’t care. She drank half the contents before she put it down again, and continued: ‘… then you’re terribly mistaken. And now I’m angry.’

  She felt the trembling subside. Her cheeks were burning. Jan Morell sat there on the leather settee, more relaxed than he had been all evening, with something that was beginning to look like a smile at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Smirk away,’ she said, fuming. ‘Be my guest. Sit up here in this pathetic, fading timber palace with its tasteless furnishings and acre of ground while you rot away in your sorrow-filled widow-hood.’

  His eyes narrowed. Not much, but she noticed it. He drew his thighs slightly closer together. Hoisted himself up a little on the settee, but still maintained eye contact with her.

  ‘If, on the other hand, you would like to find out who sabotaged your daughter, and if you want me to tell you what I think has happened, and what might be about to happen, then you must …’

  She let herself drop down on to the settee. Took a deep breath and slammed both fists on the table as hard as she could. A freezing pain shot up from both pinkies, all the way to her shoulders. The concrete hardly made a sound.

  ‘Bloody hell, pull yourself together! And answer my questions!’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘OK?’

  Her hands were incredibly sore.

  ‘Maggi!’ Jan roared at the kitchen door. ‘Bring two bags of frozen peas!’

  It took less than half a minute before Selma was sitting with a bag of peas tied to each hand with dish towels. Maggi tied the last knot and disappeared just as fast as ever.

  ‘He stole from me,’ Jan said calmly. ‘Arnulf Selhus. Exactly like you. And exactly as with you, I felt he deserved another chance. Just not at MCV.’

  ‘There seem to be a lot of people who steal from you,’ Selma said, her pulse stabbing rapidly and painfully on both hands.

  ‘Not so very many. And I always find out.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Sent me fake invoices. Sent them to the company, that is. Which on MCV’s behalf at that time is to say Finance Director Arnulf Selhus. From himself, to himself, but disguised as genuine debts. He transferred just over three million kroner to his own account by authorizing invoices that looked bona fide.’

  ‘What were the conditions?’

  ‘Conditions?’

  ‘To avoid reporting it to the police. I had to fulfil loads.’

  ‘He wasn’t able to repay the money. He was recently divorced and had a new baby on the way with his new wife. A lot of changes, and the youngest son had contracted leukaemia. But I have a promissory note. A claim for the entire sum will be made if he commits another crime. Also, he knows that I’d have him fired from the Federation on the spot. And that it would be impossible to get another job. At least within finance, which is his field. One incorrect entry from that guy, and he’ll lose everything in his possession. He knows that, so I expect that the NCCSF actually have the most compliant, thorough and meticulous finance director in the world. From that point of view, I’ve done everyone a favour.’

  ‘This was before I became your lawyer?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Just before,’ he said.

  ‘How many people knew about the cheating with invoices at that time?’

  His head rocked from side to side.

  ‘Well, only a few. But what one person knows, nobody knows, what two people know, everybody knows. As they say.’

  ‘How many? Just a ball park figure.’

  ‘Three or four people anyway. His two immediate subordinates in the finance department, at the very least. They knew of the agreement I came to with him as well, unfortunately. I probably wasn’t very quiet when I had it all out with him. In fact, DG had picked up a whiff of something for a couple of days. I smoothed it over by praising Arnulf in public. It did the trick at that time, but to tell the truth, on a couple of occasions in subsequent years I’ve had questions about what happened.
Such specific questions that several people must actually know the story by now. As I said, what one person knows, and all that. But what has all this to do with Hege?’

  The dark stains on the concrete table were drying out. Selma’s hands felt progressively worse.

  ‘She’s not who it was intended to damage,’ she said. ‘It was you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Someone’s out to punish you. To punish Morten Karlshaug, Arnulf Selhus and you.’

  ‘But … how can you … What would …’

  ‘I don’t have many answers at the moment. But I have a whole raft of questions. I want to ask one of them right now. And you have to answer. Honest and true.’

  The hair had fallen over his forehead again. His lip was damp with perspiration. He nodded.

  ‘Did the three of you ever do anything serious to harm anyone in your youth? In your childhood? Something really serious? You, Arnulf and Morten?’

  His mouth had dropped half-open. His lips were dark-red and moist.

  ‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘We did a lot of crazy things, but never anything serious. Never anything illegal.’

  He did not blink. Not a flicker on his face. His eyes were fixed on hers, and she was the one who had to yield in the end.

  Never before had Selma Falck come across such a good liar as Jan Morell. He was even better than she was.

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘If you think of anything, give me a call.’

  She stood up. The bags of peas fell off. When she bent down to pick them up from the floor, it hurt her right hand so much that she wondered if she’d broken something.

  ‘Let me get them,’ Jan said. ‘Do you really mean it? That it’s all just window dressing? That Hege’s been sabotaged in order to damage me? Are we talking about some sort of revenge, then? Some kind of …’

  ‘See you later,’ Selma broke in, as she headed for the door.

  ‘Someone like that would have to be mad,’ Jan said as he helped her on with her jacket. ‘Totally mad!’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re wrong,’ Selma replied curtly, opening the front door. ‘Let’s hope, sincerely and wholeheartedly, that you’re wrong, Jan.’

  EINAR FALSEN

  ‘There are so many gypsies here,’ Einar whispered.