Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

  “But how do you do that?”

  Hanne felt a curiosity she did not really want to acknowledge.

  “We have our methods,” Eivind Torsvik said. “We have many people working on it, and they have pursued them and conducted research over a number of years. We move like shadows in a landscape the police know nothing about. We, on the other hand, were born and brought up there. For us, it isn’t particularly difficult to recognize pedophiles. We have lived with them. All of us.”

  He pointed at the computer beside the window.

  “As for myself, I never go outside. I confine myself to the Internet. That’s where my task lies. Besides, I have a system. Putting together pieces of the jigsaw. And there are lots of pieces, some of them minuscule. But eventually I’ll create a picture. And when that happens – and it will happen fairly soon – we’ll go to the police. Right now I have a list of …” He placed his hand only five centimeters away from Hanne’s. “… eleven Norwegians who have systematically abused children, and about whom the police have not even the faintest idea.”

  “But you must …” Hanne began. “Why haven’t you …? Are you engaged in …?”

  Eivind Torsvik’s information was sensational.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen had heard many rumors about organizations of the kind he was describing. But she had always brushed them aside as sheer nonsense. It was impossible. At least it should be impossible. Of course, the police struggled with chronic under-staffing, institutional inertia, obstructive criminal procedure, and a great deal of incompetence into the bargain, but then they did have the law on their side. They had a system. Expertise. She was not entirely unfamiliar with the phenomenon of individuals taking matters into their own hands when the upholders of justice fell short. In the mid-nineties, she had herself investigated a rape case in which the father and daughter involved had taken forceful revenge for the wrecking of the girl’s life. They were both acquitted, although the police were not suffering sleepless nights over it.

  “But an entire organization,” she said suddenly. “You must be teetering right on the edge of the law? Or else breaking it?”

  “Yes,” Eivind Torsvik admitted candidly. “We break it when necessary. Among other things, we engage in telephone surveillance. Not often. It’s difficult to do, at least in Norway.”

  “You mustn’t tell me that!”

  She placed her hand on his. It was cool and delicate to the touch, and she could feel the knuckles against her palm.

  “Don’t say any more,” she said in a heartfelt undertone. “I don’t want to know this!”

  “Calm down. The material we intend to hand over to the police when the time comes will be unassailable. Witness statements and that sort of thing. When we resort to illegality, it’s only for … investigative purposes? Isn’t that what you call it?”

  Now he laughed again, that musical laughter that was impossible to hear without smiling. He seemed brighter now, and withdrew his hand.

  “And of course you’re not going to tell any tales.”

  Hanne put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want to hear another word, do you understand?”

  “Evald Bromo abused little girls all his adult life.”

  Slowly, Hanne Wilhelmsen let her hands fall from her head. Her ears were ringing, and she swallowed repeatedly.

  “What did you say?”

  “Evald Bromo was a pedophile. He bought and stole sex from girls as young as ten for many years. Mostly bought, as a matter of fact. I’ll give him that.”

  His lips narrowed, and now it looked as though a child had drawn a mouth on him with a felt-tip pen. He stood up and fetched a plastic folder, green and semi-transparent, from a bookcase beside the computer.

  “Here,” he said. “You can have this. He can’t very well be brought to justice post-mortem. When I read in the online newspapers that Bromo had been found murdered, I gathered up everything we had on the guy. You can have it. But it’s for your eyes only. To help you find the killer. Naturally, you can’t use any of it, other than as background material for your broader investigation. I would be extremely grateful if you would destroy everything after you’ve read it.”

  Hanne stared at the green folder as if he had placed a large scorpion on the tablecloth.

  “I can’t,” she gasped. “I certainly can’t accept anything I’m not able to show to my colleagues.”

  “Then read it here.”

  He got to his feet again and took hold of the cutlery and crockery once more.

  “I’ll clear this away and make a fresh cup of tea. You liked it? That’s fine. Then you can have another cigarette and read what’s there.”

  He nodded at the folder before pushing the ashtray in her direction and heading for the kitchen.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen caught herself longing for plastic gloves. The folder in front of her contained information that could be crucial to solving Evald Bromo’s murder. She desperately wanted to tear off the elastic band wrapped around the folder and throw herself into reading the contents. At the same time, this ran counter to all her principles. Eivind Torsvik was the leader of a vigilante organization. Hanne Wilhelmsen was a chief inspector in the police force.

  She fumbled in her breast pocket and produced a cigarette. After lighting it, she leisurely blew the smoke in the direction of the forbidden folder. Then she pulled off the elastic band.

  It took slightly longer than half an hour to read the documents thoroughly, fold them neatly together again and replace the elastic band before pushing the bundle away. As she lit a third cigarette, she barely noticed that Eivind Torsvik had returned from the kitchen and was sitting quietly in a chair in the living room, having apparently nodded off.

  “Was that useful?” he asked with his eyes closed.

  “How have you managed it?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I already explained that to you. Surveillance. Investigation. Over many years.”

  “All the same. All this stuff. How on earth did you get hold of it all?”

  He sat there smiling, and turned his face to hers.

  “Was it useful?” he repeated.

  Hanne did not know how to respond. If Evald Bromo had been murdered because of his perverted sexual preferences, she could not fathom the connection with Doris Flo Halvorsrud’s murder. There was nothing – not so much as a tiny speck of information – to suggest that the Chief Public Prosecutor’s wife was a pedophile.

  “Don’t know,” she said finally.

  Thea.

  Thea! Hanne gulped down some smoke and began coughing. She stood up so abruptly that her chair toppled backward and slammed into a glass cabinet, breaking the door.

  “You must answer me one thing,” she said loudly. “Who else do you have on your list?”

  Eivind Torsvik raised his hands and held his palms up to Hanne in a defensive gesture.

  “You got the folder on Evald Bromo because he’s dead. He’s beyond our reach now. As far as the others on the list are concerned, though, you’re getting nothing. Not until everything is cut and dried. It won’t take long.”

  “How long?”

  Hanne heard her voice breaking.

  “I can’t actually answer that. One month, maybe, or six. It’s too early to tell.”

  She picked up her chair and put it back in its place. Then she ran her fingers over the long crack that had split the glass door in two.

  “But you must answer me one thing.”

  Approaching him, she crouched down in front of his chair and leaned forward with her elbows on the armrests.

  “Is Sigurd Halvorsrud listed? Is Halvorsrud a pedophile too?”

  His eyes were no longer the same. Hanne had felt an affinity with this young man. She had recognized him, deep down; she had seen something of herself in those blue eyes with the distinctive black edge around the iris. Now he was a stranger.

  “You’re getting nothing more,” he said in a harsh voice.

  Hanne broke ey
e contact as she rose stiffly.

  “Then thanks for everything you’ve given me,” she said. “The food and the tea and … everything.”

  Once she had donned the American buckskin jacket with its pearl embroidery and fringes across the chest, she produced a business card and a pen and rapidly scribbled her personal number on the back.

  “Call me if you want anything,” she said, handing him the card. “Any time.”

  “I’ll certainly do that. Sooner or later.”

  Hanne had left a five-hundred-kroner note on the kitchen worktop without him noticing. She hoped he would understand that this was to cover the cost of replacing the glass door. As her car rolled carefully along the bumpy track, she could see him in the rearview mirror, standing at the top of the hill beside the cottage with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, staring after her. Then she turned a corner, and Eivind Torsvik disappeared from sight.

  75

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Billy T.’s voice cut sharply through the cell-phone connection. Hanne had just driven on to Route E18 when it dawned on her that the phone had been switched off since she had left Oslo. On the way down she had needed peace and quiet to think, and she had not thought to switch it on again until now. She had managed to register that she had eight unanswered incoming calls when the phone rang.

  “You gave me instructions to call you!” Billy T. roared. “And I’ve done nothing else for bloody hours! It’s nearly eight o’clock, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Take it easy,” Hanne muttered. “Has someone died, or what?”

  “Yes. Ståle Salvesen.”

  The steering wheel wobbled in Hanne’s hands before she braked violently and turned off the road. She parked on the hard shoulder with her emergency lights flashing.

  “What did you say? Ståle Salvesen?”

  “Hah! And you gave me orders to phone in order to—”

  “Cut it out, Billy T.! I’m sorry. I forgot about the phone. Is Salvesen dead?”

  “We believe so. Two young lads found a body in a pretty bad condition out in the fjord this morning. We’ve already located Salvesen’s dentist. A preliminary identification should be available by ten o’clock tonight.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen rubbed her neck. Almost three days and nights with practically no sleep meant it was totally irresponsible for her to continue driving. As her head began to swim, she gave her right cheek a hard slap.

  “I’ll be there in around an hour and a half.”

  “And one more thing, Hanne—”

  “I’ll be there in just over an hour, Billy T.. We can talk then.”

  She disconnected the call.

  Probably all eight messages were from Billy T.. To be on the safe side, she would check. She had not spoken to Cecilie since the morning. Hanne might as well get everything over and done with while she was parked there.

  The first five messages came from an increasingly angry Billy T.. The sixth was from Ullevål Hospital:

  “This is Dr. Flåbakk from the oncology department at Ullevål speaking. I’m trying to locate Hanne Wilhelmsen. Cecilie Vibe was admitted here this morning, and I would appreciate it if you could call me as soon as possible. My phone number is—”

  Hanne felt a shock run through her entire body. A wave of heat originated in her abdomen and flooded into every one of her limbs. She immediately felt wide awake. Without returning Dr. Flåbakk’s call, she switched off her phone and completed the nearly two hundred kilometers to Oslo in fifty-five minutes.

  76

  Cecilie was unconscious. At least she did not wake when Hanne entered the room, accompanied by the buxom nurse who apparently was never off duty.

  “The painkillers have knocked her out,” the nurse said. “She probably won’t wake till the morning. Dr. Flåbakk asked me to say hello. If you want to talk to him, he said to call him at home before eleven o’clock tonight. Do you have his number?”

  Hanne shook her head. She didn’t want to speak to a doctor.

  “What happened?” she asked instead. “When was she admitted?”

  “She phoned herself. About eleven o’clock, I think. She was so poorly that we sent an ambulance.”

  Hanne sobbed, trying to prevent her tears from spilling over.

  “There, there.”

  Standing behind her, the nurse rubbed her back gently with a hand that was broad and warm.

  “She might be okay again in the morning. That’s how it goes with this illness. Up and down. Always up and down.”

  “What if she doesn’t get better?” Hanne whispered, giving up entirely: the tears now flowed unhindered down her cheeks. “What if—”

  “You mustn’t cross your bridges until you come to them,” the older woman said firmly. “Cecilie just needs to be allowed to sleep for a while. You look as if you could do with a good night’s sleep yourself. I’ll bring you a bed. Have you eaten?”

  Leaning forward, she looked into Hanne’s face.

  “Not hungry,” Hanne mumbled.

  She was alone with Cecilie.

  This morning she had seemed so well. The Easter trip to Ula had done her good. Even though they had traveled home a day early, Cecilie had seemed so contented as she shuffled around the house. Hanne had been afraid it would be impossible to leave her and go to work. But it had been Cecilie who had almost chased her out the door. She got plenty of visitors, she claimed, and anyway, she liked lying on the settee with a good book best of all. Stubbornly, she had insisted that the medication eliminated the pain.

  “I’m not in pain,” she had said with a resigned smile that morning when Hanne had hesitated to leave her. “Tone-Marit is going to pop in with the baby this afternoon. Maybe I’ll manage to finish reading the Knausgård book first. I’m absolutely fine. Off you go.”

  Probably Hanne had just not noticed it. Cecilie’s face had become more difficult to read since she’d been ill. Her features were sharper, her mouth narrower, and her eyes more deep-set. This was a face Hanne did not really know. It left her feeling confused.

  Hanne sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed.

  Cecilie was sleeping with her mouth open. A gossamer trace of blood was outlined where her dehydrated lower lip had split open. Hanne took out a Lypsyl and smeared it on her finger before running it gently over the wound. Cecilie made a faint grimace, but did not wake. She had tubes in her nose and the back of her hand, as well as a cannula on the side of her throat that was more frightening than anything else in the unfamiliar gray room.

  “What’s that there?” Hanne whispered to the nurse, who had returned with a bed. “That tube in her neck. What’s that?”

  “Morphine,” the nurse replied. “I brought a couple of slices of bread. Try to sleep now. Cecilie won’t wake until morning.”

  When morning came, the visitor’s bed was untouched. Hanne Wilhelmsen was sitting on a chair close to Cecilie, with her hand in hers. She had talked all night long, softly and at times completely silently. Cecilie had slept without stirring and was in the same position. Nevertheless, Hanne could swear that every so often a convulsion had crossed her gaunt face, encouraging Hanne to continue.

  When eight o’clock arrived on the morning of April 7, Hanne wrote a short note that she slipped underneath the glass of stale water on the bedside table. Then she left for the police headquarters at Grønlandsleiret 44.

  She had now slept for fewer than four of the past seventy-two hours.

  77

  “You look like something the cat dragged in!”

  As Iver Feirand’s gaze took the measure of Hanne Wilhelmsen, he wrinkled his nose.

  “Come in,” she said. “Thanks. Nice of you to say so.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  He took a seat and his eyes continued to scrutinize Hanne. In the end he stood up and tried to look at her feet under the desk.

  “For heaven’s sake, Hanne. You used to be the best-looking cop in town. What’s happened? Your hair, for instan
ce …”

  Gesticulating with his hands above his head, he used his tongue to make a clucking sound.

  “And you’ve lost weight,” he added. “Not so good. Is it stress, or was it deliberate?”

  “Good of you to come,” Hanne said wearily, fixing the clasp on her hair.

  “Bloody awful,” Iver Feirand said, shaking his head. “Too girlish. Take it off.”

  She left it there.

  “Have you thought any more about the bike?” he asked eagerly.

  Hanne shook her head.

  “Let me know, then. I’m still interested. I thought you were busy with this Halvorsrud case.”

  He folded his hands behind his head and rocked back and forth in the chair. “What do you want me for?”

  Though irritated by the way he was sitting, Hanne decided not to mention it.

  “We’re still in a rush,” she said, lighting her fourth cigarette of the day, “so I’ll come straight to the point. We have reason to believe that Evald Bromo abused young girls over an extended period of time. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Evald Bromo?”

  Iver Feirand frowned as he let the front legs of the chair drop to the floor with a thud.

  “That Aftenposten guy who was decapitated on Sunday?”

  “Mhmm.”

  “What do you mean by ‘reason to believe’?”

  Hanne fastened her hair clasp again as it had started to slide down her forehead.

  “What do we usually mean by that?” she said dispiritedly. “I have a source, obviously. A damn good source. I can’t say any more than that.”

  “Not even to me?”

  He pulled down the corners of his mouth into a theatrical grin of mock disappointment.

  She had quarreled furiously with Billy T. that same morning. When he heard about Eivind Torsvik and his organization, he had been ready to head off to Sandefjord with wailing sirens and a deployment of twenty officers at his back.

  “Fuck, Hanne, don’t you see that this earless imbecile might be sitting on information worth its weight in gold!” he had spluttered at her when she refused. “What if Halvorsrud’s screwing his daughter, eh? That’s a real stinker of a motive, isn’t it? A motive’s exactly what we’ve been lacking, for God’s sake!”