Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

  The baby was born.

  Billy T. had become father to a big, healthy girl. Tone-Marit wept and laughed and tried to find the face of the baby who was wrapped in an enormous sheet and had the rubber band from a pot of jam around the stump of her umbilical cord. Karen was sitting with Hans Wilhelm on her knee; the boy was sucking his thumb and agitating to hold the new baby. Håkon stared in consternation at what he held in his hands, and finally put them down.

  Since no one apart from his mother had ever seen him cry, Billy T. excused himself meekly before locking himself in the toilet.

  He stayed there until the paramedics rang the doorbell.

  21

  It was nine o’clock on Monday evening and the apartment was clean and tidy. Since Billy T. had taken care of the custody hearing together with Police Prosecutor Annmari Skar, Hanne Wilhelmsen had headed home from the office early, at two o’clock. There were flowers in a ceramic vase on the dining table, and a cheese quiche on the point of collapse in the oven.

  Cecilie had still not arrived home. Hanne felt a touch of anxiety, but brushed it off. If some experiment or other had gone awry, things could take some time. Cecilie was hoping to complete her postgrad thesis by the autumn and Hanne had grown accustomed to the possibility of late evenings. In fact it suited her down to the ground.

  Suddenly she was standing there. Hanne must have dropped off in front of the TV. Cecilie stood in the center of the living room, pale and drawn and still wearing her outdoor clothes.

  “I’m ill,” she said.

  “You’re not well?” Hanne got slowly to her feet. “Lie down here, then.” She pointed at the settee. “Would you like some food all the same?”

  “I’m really ill, Hanne. Seriously.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen blinked, attempting to swallow the sense of dread that threatened to rob her of her breath. “Seriously,” she repeated hoarsely. “How serious is it?”

  “Cancer. I’ve got cancer. I’m being operated on this Wednesday. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, I mean. Wednesday.”

  She continued to stand there, motionless, without showing any sign of taking off her bulky winter coat or sitting down. Hanne wanted to approach her, wanted to put her arms round Cecilie, smile and say that it was all nonsense, of course it was; no one was sick, just lie down and you can have something to eat. But Hanne was about to keel over. She had to stand totally, totally still or she would fall down.

  “Where are you having the operation?” she whispered.

  “At Ullevål.”

  “I mean where on your body? Your head? Stomach?”

  “You haven’t wanted to listen to me.” There was no hint of reproach in her voice. Cecilie was simply stating the fact. The way they both knew things had been, for a long time.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The phrase was meaningless, and Hanne wanted to eat her words. Instead she repeated them, still without moving anything other than her lips. “I’m sorry, Cecilie. I’m sorry.”

  Then she lifted her hands to her face and burst into tears, behavior so foreign to her that it scared them both. Her body shook violently and she dropped to her knees.

  Cecilie stood observing her. She wanted to make physical contact with the imploring, begging figure. For a second she tried to raise her hand; Hanne was so close that she could have stroked her head – some kind of blessing. But her arm was too heavy. Instead she turned around, walked back to the hallway, pulled off her coat and left it lying on the floor.

  “Cecilie,” she heard Hanne sob.

  It was impossible to answer. Not now, and perhaps never. As a matter of routine, she crossed to the kitchen and switched off the cooker before going to bed. When Hanne followed her, at some point during the night, Cecilie withdrew so far over to her own side of the double bed that she nearly toppled onto the floor.

  If only she would touch me, she thought. If only she would snuggle into my back.

  When the first light of daybreak appeared, Hanne Wilhelmsen and Cecilie Vibe had listened to each other’s breathing all night long, but they had not so much as brushed against each other.

  22

  Exhaustion sat like barbed wire around her head, stabbing and aching, and Hanne Wilhelmsen felt as if she would never get to sleep again. She massaged her forehead and must have swayed because Karl Sommarøy made a grab for her.

  “Hey,” he said. “Are you feeling poorly?”

  “Just tired.” Smiling feebly, she raised her hand to reassure her colleague. “Slightly dizzy. It’s gone now.”

  The apartment looked like a shell encasing a life that had barely existed. The beige settee was old but not shabby. The coffee table was bare; only a fine layer of dust indicated the passage of time. The walls were blank and white. No pictures, no bookshelves. Not even an old newspaper visible anywhere. Even the noise of the city sounded distant and unreal through the closed windows, as if someone had switched on a half-hearted sound effect.

  “I’m beginning to think that all this Ståle Salvesen business is just bloody hogwash,” Karl Sommarøy muttered. He had rubber gloves on his hands and was at a loss about what to do. “Halvorsrud has demonstrably lied about so much. About the separation. About the packet of money. He’s probably lying about this as well. Besides, the guy’s dead. Very likely.”

  Hanne did not reply. Instead she entered the bedroom.

  Ståle Salvesen had obviously not envisaged entertaining many female visitors. The bed was only seventy centimeters wide. The bed linen appeared clean. A pair of navy-blue pajamas, neatly folded, came to light when she lifted the quilt. There was no bedside table, and nor were there any books or magazines. Ståle Salvesen did not even possess an alarm clock. Then again, perhaps he had not had very much to get up for in recent years.

  The walls were deep yellow, but there were no decorative items hanging on them either. She took her time opening the three drawers, one by one. The top drawer contained socks, neatly folded into four pairs, all black. The next one was empty, and the third was full to the brim with underpants and white undershirts.

  “Are there any other drawers in the apartment?” she asked in an undertone.

  “Only in the kitchen,” she heard Sommarøy answer from the living room. “Two of them are full of cutlery and utensils, and the rest are empty.”

  “How many drawers do you have at home?” Hanne Wilhelmsen asked almost absent-mindedly.

  “What?” Sommarøy stood leaning on the doorframe.

  “Drawers,” Hanne repeated. “How many do you have?”

  “Well … Five in the bedroom. Six in the unit in the living room. A few more in a sideboard the wife inherited, I don’t know exactly how many. And then the kids have lots. Yes, and there are a couple in the bathroom. That’s about it.”

  “How many of them are empty?”

  “Empty? None!” Sommarøy laughed. His laughter was in keeping with his microscopic lower jaw: shrill and high-pitched, like a child trying to pretend something was funny when they hadn’t quite understood the joke.

  “My wife’s not too damn happy about it,” he added.

  “Exactly,” Hanne mumbled as she opened the bedroom closet.

  It had double doors: one side was divided into shelves, and the other was open, with a rail for coat hangers. Both sides were half filled with neatly organized clothes that smelled faintly of tobacco. She pulled two suits aside to check if anything was hidden behind them, but found nothing.

  “Don’t you see what this is?” she asked. She pushed past him to get back to the hallway where a solitary bare light bulb was suspended from the ceiling, shining a bluish-white light on a single winter overcoat hanging on a peg beside the front door.

  “What it is? It’s an apartment that hasn’t exactly been a very bright or cheery place to live—”

  “There’s something missing here.” She was standing in the kitchen now. The units were from the fifties, with lopsided sliding doors and greasy shelf paper stuck down with old-fashioned thumbtacks. Th
e worktops were worn and covered in scores and scratches, but there was a faint odor of detergent, and the immaculate dishcloth draped over the mixer taps smelled of bleach. Hanne opened one drawer after another.

  “What are you looking for, actually?”

  Like everyone else in the division, Karl Sommarøy had become used to Hanne Wilhelmsen participating far more actively in an investigation than was usual for a chief inspector. Rumors circulated that she had even come to an agreement with the Chief of Police. Apparently she had threatened to resign when there had been terrible grumbles from the lower ranks. Karl Sommarøy was one of those who thought Hanne’s approach entirely acceptable. However, recently she had become increasingly grumpy and at times annoyingly taciturn.

  “I’m looking for something that isn’t here,” she replied, leaning down into an empty drawer. “Look here.”

  She ran her right forefinger around the curved edges of the drawer insert. When she lifted her finger to show him, he saw specks of dust and crumbs on the tip.

  “So?” he said, wrinkling his brow.

  “There was something here. This apartment is too empty to be true. Ståle Salvesen has lived here for more than three years.”

  “A helpless bum,” Sommarøy muttered.

  “No. A bankrupt hotshot. A man who obviously has intelligence, and who once ran a business that carried him some distance. He hasn’t lived four years in a vacuum. He must have had interests. Something or other. Something to kill time at least. The point is that he has taken the trouble to remove absolutely every trace of the life he lived. When all is said and done, this apartment looks like a crummy hotel room. With no identity.”

  “But,” Sommarøy objected, “it’s quite usual for suicidal people to clear up after themselves. First, I mean. Before they—”

  “Clear up, yes. But this place is more than that – it’s virtually autoclaved.”

  Karl Sommarøy kept his mouth shut.

  “Disinfected,” Hanne explained. “Sterilized.”

  “There are some items in the fridge,” Sommarøy mumbled, slightly disgruntled.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen opened it. A smell of stale food hit her, and she screwed up her nose.

  “Why hasn’t this stuff been removed?” she said irritably.

  “Who would have done that?” he answered, indignant.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen gave a faint smile. “Not you in any case. We’ll take it with us. And you’re right. It’s odd that he didn’t empty the fridge before he topped himself.”

  For a moment or two she stood peering into the milk carton and staring at a moldy unwrapped yellow cheese, a yogurt long past its sell-by date, a withered lettuce and two tomatoes that had gone soft. Suddenly something crossed her face, a twitch Karl Sommarøy could not interpret.

  “Of course,” she said under her breath.

  “Of course what?”

  “Nothing. I’m not sure. Let’s take a look in the bathroom.”

  It was minuscule. It would have been perfectly possible to sit on the toilet and shower and brush your teeth all at the same time. The linoleum on the floor was loose around the drain, and even the strong aroma of bleach could not disguise the smell of mold from the concrete underneath. The basin was cracked. The empty cabinet beside the mirror was askew. Only a lone frayed toothbrush in a glass tumbler suggested that anyone had actually lived there.

  “Let’s go,” Hanne finally said.

  The phone was located in the hallway, on a rickety little table. Hanne Wilhelmsen lifted the receiver and pressed the redial button before putting the phone to her ear.

  “Hello, Directory Enquiries here,” she heard after three rings. She replaced the receiver without speaking.

  “Directory Enquiries,” she said softly. “The last thing he did was to call Directory Enquiries. Find out if the conversation can be traced. If we can discover what he enquired about. What number he wanted.”

  “A number he then didn’t actually call,” Karl Sommarøy said impatiently.

  “At least not from here,” Hanne replied.

  She caught sight of a bundle of papers that had fallen to the floor as she lifted the receiver. They must have been caught between the table and the wall. She crouched down to retrieve them. Four or five bills held together with a large paper clip. She produced a plastic bag from her pocket and inserted the bundle of receipts.

  Beside the phone there was a small blank notepad, with a ballpoint pen lying obliquely on top; it almost seemed staged. Hanne removed the pen and took the notepad through to the living room. She held the top sheet up to the light. Something had been written on the sheet that had been torn off. A faint impression became visible when she held the paper at a certain angle.

  “01.09.99,” she read out slowly. “The first of September 1999?”

  “The first of September,” Karl Sommarøy repeated, intrigued. “What the hell’s happening then?”

  “That’s what I would like to know,” Hanne said. “Now we’re leaving.”

  She folded the sheet of paper neatly, pushing it inside another plastic bag before tucking everything inside her pocket. Her headache was really plaguing her, but she no longer felt so tired.

  23

  “A girl!”

  Billy T. crashed through the door, and before Hanne had got as far as looking up, he had yanked her from her chair.

  “A beautiful, black-haired girl who’s the spitting image of me!”

  He screwed up his eyes and gave her a smacker of a kiss before returning her to her seat. Then he produced two enormous cigars and offered her one.

  “She was born at Karen and Håkon’s house,” he roared, puffing energetically to get the cigar properly alight before sitting down himself. “I was the midwife, Hanne! It was …” The smoke poured out of his mouth in a gust of satisfaction. “It was the damned loveliest thing I’ve ever experienced. Ever. But—”

  He stared at Hanne.

  “Congratulations,” she said dully. “Brilliant. The girl, I mean.”

  “What on earth is wrong with you?”

  He stubbed out the cigar with vigorous movements before leaning closer to her.

  “Are you—”

  He leaned back without warning.

  “You’ve spoken to Cecilie,” he said slowly.

  “I speak to Cecilie every day,” she said in a dismissive tone. “How is Tone-Marit?”

  “Nothing is certain yet, Hanne.”

  “Certain? Isn’t she well?”

  “I’m not talking about Tone-Marit. I mean Cecilie. The cancer.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen fiddled with the cigar.

  “So you knew about it,” she said sharply. “That’s great. That you and Cecilie can share secrets, I mean. Fantastic. Maybe you could start sharing some secrets with me as well. For instance, you could begin by telling me where you are. You should have been here five hours ago.”

  The cigar broke in two. She took one half in each hand and crushed both of them. There was a dry crunch of tobacco leaves.

  “Hanne Wilhelmsen!”

  Billy T. rolled his eyes and tried to grasp one of her hands. She pulled it away brusquely and demonstratively as shreds of tobacco scattered in every direction.

  “Hanne,” he said again, trying to make eye contact with her. “I really want to talk to you about this. Please!”

  If she had returned his gaze, she would have caught sight of something she had never seen in his eyes before: a desperation bordering on fury. His eyes had turned gray, and his mouth was hanging half open, seemingly discouraged, as if he did not know whether he should speak or remain silent.

  “Please,” he repeated in earnest.

  Hanne rubbed her hands together. “I understand you have good reasons for being late. Forget it. All the same, I’d like you to …”

  Handing him a sheet of paper, she stared out the window.

  “I’d like an overview of every grotesque murder in the past decade. In the whole of Norway. By that I mean mutilation, severed ext
remities … that sort of thing. I want details, perpetrators, motives, the outcome of the cases and so on. ASAP. Which means immediately.”

  The room fell totally silent for several seconds before Billy T. stood up abruptly and hammered both fists on the table. The ashtray jumped and tumbled onto the floor.

  “It’s broken,” Hanne said tersely. “I’ll expect you to get me a new one.”

  Billy T. drew himself up to his full height. White blotches appeared around his flared nostrils. His cheeks were red and mottled, and his eyes welled up with tears.

  “You’re pathetic,” he spat. “You’re fucking pathetic, Hanne Wilhelmsen.”

  “Right now I can’t waste much time on what you think of me,” she replied, pushing her hair away from her forehead. “I’m particularly interested in decapitations. If there are any, that is. Go further back in time if necessary. And you can ask Karl to investigate Ståle Salvesen. I want to know all there is to know about that guy. And by that I mean more than you’ve managed to gather for that …”

  She snapped her fingers at the two sheets containing sparse information from the Population Register.

  “… that pathetic report there. And one more thing …”

  She looked him in the eye. He was trembling with rage, and she felt a stab of satisfaction when she noted that the tears in his eyes were threatening to spill over.

  “From now on I suggest we keep our private lives to ourselves. At least during office hours.”

  She smiled briefly and made a peremptory hand signal to indicate that he could leave.

  “Dismissed,” she said insistently when he made no move to obey.

  “You fucking need help,” he finally spluttered as he approached the door.

  “Lovely news about your daughter,” Hanne said. “I really mean that. Say hi to Tone-Marit from me and tell her I said that.”

  The noise of the slamming door sang in her ears.

  It was Tuesday afternoon, March 9, and Hanne Wilhelmsen swore a silent oath. She would solve the mystery of Sigurd Halvorsrud’s beheaded wife within three weeks. Four at most.