Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

  “Haven’t you heard of trays?” Billy T. said grumpily, immersing himself in his copy of Dagbladet in an attempt to persuade his colleague to find somewhere else to sit; there was hardly another soul in the place.

  Karl Sommarøy did not take the hint.

  “It’s one thing that she’s got a great reputation,” he continued, undeterred, once he was settled on the seat directly opposite Billy T.. “I understand from people who’ve been here longer than me that she’s practically a genius. But that’s no excuse for being rude. You should’ve seen what she—”

  “Shut up,” Billy T. said harshly.

  “But honestly—”

  “Shut your mouth!”

  “For God’s sake. You’d think it was catching!”

  He lifted the bowl of cornflakes to his mouth and shoveled them down. His weak chin disappeared from sight.

  “I must surely be allowed to make a bloody comment,” he said, munching noisily. “The way she behaves toward her subordinates, she should’ve been given an unconditional reprimand. But as far as I can tell, the Police Chief treats her like some kind of mascot. I’ve no idea why. You—”

  Billy T. had already raised the newspaper to his face, and was now leafing through it angrily.

  “They say she was quite a babe in her time,” Karl Sommarøy said in a loud whisper. “Is that true? And that she’s actually … bent? Lesbian, I mean? She doesn’t look like one, but—”

  Folding the newspaper, Billy T. leaned across the table and seized hold of his colleague’s shirt front. His face was only twenty centimeters from the other man’s as he snarled, “Hanne Wilhelmsen’s the best officer in the station. Do you hear? What she doesn’t know about police work, nobody needs to worry about. She knows the difference between right and wrong, she knows more about the law than most of the police prosecutors here, she works about three times as hard as everyone else, including you, and what’s more she’s really beautiful. Right now she’s overworked and has a partner who might die at any moment, so you’ll just have to …” He banged his free hand on the table, splashing the cornflakes. “… fucking put up with her not having the longest fuse in the world right now.”

  Releasing Sommarøy abruptly, he shot him a look that brimmed with contempt before downing the rest of his cola and getting to his feet.

  “But listen here—” Sommarøy said, taken aback and trying to straighten his shirt.

  “No,” Billy T. roared, waving a massive finger in the air. “You’re the one who should listen here. What Hanne Wilhelmsen does in her spare time is none of your business. Understood? If there’s anything she wants you to know about her personal life, then you wait until she tells you herself. In any case, you’re a total idiot to come here making nasty comments about a person you must at least have realized is my very best friend.”

  “Okay, okay, okay!”

  Sommarøy made a peace sign with his right hand and lowered his head.

  “That wasn’t really what I came over here to talk to you about,” he said meekly. “Sorry. I mean that. Sit down.”

  Billy T. was aware he was shaking. For only the second time in his adult life, he felt the urge to weep. Since the morning, he had struggled to find the words he needed to say to Hanne, phrases that could recast last night as an incident that had not actually taken place. He had to say something that would make it possible for them to retain what they had and had always had, together. Billy T. had to keep hold of Hanne: an existence without her seemed as meaningless as a life without his children. His thoughts had ricocheted from Hanne to Tone-Marit: he needed to tell his future wife what had happened. He had to confess his betrayal and obtain her forgiveness so that they could wed without delay, tomorrow, or even better, this evening; they should get married and he would wear a ring and never do anything like that again.

  Billy T. knew that he could never say anything. Tone-Marit was not going to hear about it. This evening she was going to grin at him across the dinner table, ask about news from work, and perhaps tell him that Jenny had produced her first smile. She was going to snuggle up to him tonight and sleep with her hand in his as she had started to do since the baby was born, as if the child’s existence was final proof that they belonged together. Billy T. was never going to tell Tone-Marit about what had happened when he had spent the night with his best friend in order to escape from a shrieking infant and get an undisturbed night’s sleep.

  “What’s it about?” he asked, sitting down heavily in the chair again.

  “I’ve been thinking about Vogts gate 14,” Sommarøy said in a jovial voice, trying to catch his colleague’s eye as he chewed on the iced bun. “The phone company has confirmed that Salvesen had two accounts. One was for the Internet.”

  “Internet,” Billy T. reiterated.

  “Yes. Odd. We didn’t get a glimpse of a computer in his apartment, and besides, what the hell would a guy like that be doing with Internet access? Then it struck me that I should go and have another look. Will you come with me?”

  Billy T. wanted to go home. He felt he could never go home again.

  He wanted to talk to Hanne. Hanne did not want to talk to him. He had knocked on her office door three times, and each time she had turned away when he opened the door. She had not said a word, but it had been impossible to defy those raised shoulders and the icy glance she gave him before turning her back on him.

  “When were you thinking of going?” he asked in a monotone.

  “Around four o’clock. Don’t have time before that. Will you come?”

  “We’ll meet in the garage at four. You can arrange a car.”

  When Billy T. left the canteen, he spotted Hanne Wilhelmsen’s back disappearing into the elevator. Since she had not been to the canteen, he assumed she had been in a meeting with the Chief of Police, whose office was on the same floor. Billy T. continued to stand there as the shiny metal doors slid shut. Then he shuffled down the stairs, very slowly, to allow her time to make an exit before he reached the third floor.

  84

  Sigurd Halvorsrud was sitting on a bunk bed with no mattress in a cell in the back yard of the police headquarters, convulsively clutching at his knees. He dug his nails through the fabric of his jeans and into his skin until his fingertips became numb. Then he relaxed briefly before repeating the exercise.

  “Innocent,” he whispered into the clammy air. “I’m innocent. Innocent. I’m innocent.”

  Chief Public Prosecutor Sigurd Halvorsrud had never killed anyone.

  As far as he knew, he had never done anything worse than break the speed limit now and again. If he had still possessed the ability to reflect properly as he sat there, it would have dawned on him that he had in fact been fined for hitting one of his teenage pals when he was drunk, on May 17 of the year he had turned sixteen.

  However, Sigurd Halvorsrud’s brain had become overheated. During his first period of imprisonment, while all the absurdity was still so recent that it was still possible to draw on his acumen and experience, he had been hopeful. This was Norway. In Norway innocent people were not found guilty. When that did happen, it happened only to vagrants, drunks and semi-criminal losers who may not have done what they were convicted of, but who had only themselves to blame for coming under police scrutiny anyway.

  Sigurd Halvorsrud was himself part of a system he believed in, a conventional, civilized justice administration to which he had dedicated his professional life, and which was also woven into the very fabric of his being, his personality, his ego, everything that was him. His belief in himself and his own strength was to a large degree grounded in confidence in the System. In the first weeks – when the yellow walls had suffocated him and every morning he had argued with the custody officers to be allowed his usual daily shower; when he had dressed in his suit and tie as normal, combing his hair neatly with hair tonic and clipping his nails once a week as was his wont – during this period he had despite everything conducted himself with self-belief and hence a belief in t
he System. Being held for the murder of his wife was nothing but a temporary lapse. Justice would prevail sooner or later.

  That was how the System operated.

  Paradoxically, it was after he was released from custody that he realized he was wrong.

  As the legal ruling was being dictated, Sigurd Halvorsrud had raised his eyes to the judge with the bulldog head, understanding that he was actually being allowed to go home. Incredulous relief mixed with an arrogant sense of victory: justice had finally been done.

  That first evening at home, after Thea had finally fallen asleep, it had dawned on him that this was an illusion. His case no longer had anything to do with the law or justice. His life, his daughter’s life, the entire existence of the Halvorsrud family, had been ruined by a power far stronger than the blind authority of the Goddess of Justice.

  Sigurd Halvorsrud was now carrying a stigma. He might as well have had it printed on his forehead. When he sat leafing through his own notes – elegant, handwritten pages with analyses and facts about everything he had experienced from the murder of Doris to his release the day before – he realized he had to do something. He made a decision.

  Karen Borg was right.

  Judge Bugge was right.

  The police were a considerable distance from a prosecution. Even farther from securing a conviction. When Sigurd Halvorsrud responded to the bare facts in his own case, he saw it was extremely likely that he would never have to face a jury. That made him elated; the blood rushed through his veins and his cheeks burned, until he began to scan the newspapers his sister-in-law had kept for him and placed in a stack beside the kitchen table, in date order.

  Sigurd Halvorsrud was a condemned man.

  He had just been released, but he was nevertheless condemned for the rest of his life. When he was in custody and forbidden all letters and visitors, they had also denied him access to newspapers and radio broadcasts. He had read old magazines and paperbacks, fearing the worst. But this was worse still.

  At times his case had even overshadowed the war in Kosovo.

  His life was smeared across the newspapers like a Picasso painting: twisted and distorted, lacking proportion and in colors he certainly did not recognize. Nevertheless, it was all about him. Unmistakably about him. The journalists had delved into every corner of his past. He was startled when he saw a full-page photograph of himself in his student cap: his naked, eighteen-year-old face with its chin thrust forward and a self-assured smile, as if nothing could prevent him from scaling the heights; his eyes betraying a vulnerable insecurity he still had not learned to hide. Anonymous schoolmates, invisible colleagues, nameless neighbors – they had all, willingly and with ill-concealed glee at having something important to say at last, made known their opinions about Sigurd Halvorsrud the wife-murderer. Strong and stubborn, sly and short-tempered, cunning and unpredictable, family friend and center of their social circle: the characterizations stung his eyes and he shut the papers, rolling them into logs that took him two hours to burn in the fireplace.

  Sigurd Halvorsrud had lost everything.

  He had one way of saving himself and what was left of his family. He could not simply sit still and hope he would never be convicted. He had to get rid of the stigma. Only then could he hope for full restitution. Only then would the newspapers sensibly edit everything they had written up till now and draft new articles in which only positive angles were aired. Only then would the newspapers be forced to beat their chests and say, “Look! We always kept an open mind about the possibility that the man was innocent. Look! We wrote that he was a good father to his family and a respected colleague even when he was being held in custody.”

  Sigurd Halvorsrud had to find whoever had murdered Doris. He knew who it was. It was Ståle Salvesen.

  For that reason he had made a clumsy attempt to investigate the apartment at Vogts gate 14. He had searched for anything at all. Since the police had never believed his explanation, they could quite easily have overlooked something important. As far as they were concerned, Ståle Salvesen was a benefits claimant, presumed dead. Only in his eyes was Ståle Salvesen a murderer.

  Since he had no experience of breaking the law, he had behaved stupidly enough to be taken by surprise by some old man down in the basement. When he’d failed to find anything except moldy food in Salvesen’s apartment, he’d wanted to check if he had a storeroom.

  That was why he had left fingerprints in a place where a dead body had turned up several days later. A beheaded journalist who was known to him, of course: the guy had covered his own area of professional expertise and had done so for many years. They had probably spoken on the phone as well, though as far as he could remember, they had never met face-to-face.

  Then it turned out that Salvesen was dead after all.

  That news had torpedoed everything.

  Salvesen should not be dead. Ståle Salvesen should be sitting on a beach in Brazil enjoying a chilled beer. He should be trekking through the Andes mountains, alone in the magnificent landscape he had always dreamed about. Perhaps he should be lying in the sweaty embrace of a prostitute in the backstreets of Manila; for that matter, he might have taken casual employment as a sheep shearer in New Zealand.

  Instead, he had turned up as a decomposing corpse in the Skagerrak.

  That made Halvorsrud’s brain explode.

  The only thing he could now do was keep hold of his innocence. He clung to it, clutching the sentence he mumbled over and over again: “I am innocent.”

  When the trolley arrived with his dinner, he refused to take any. The custody officer shrugged indifferently and went away. When he returned several hours later to repeat his offer of something to eat, Sigurd Halvorsrud was sitting in exactly the same position as earlier that day: erect, with his hands around his knees, rocking almost imperceptibly from side to side and murmuring something the man in uniform could not catch.

  It was actually quite creepy, and the officer thought it might be best to call a doctor. In the morning, anyway, if the man was no better by then.

  Perhaps the Chief Public Prosecutor was in the process of losing his mind.

  85

  “I’ve talked to his pal before. Let me arrange this.”

  Karl Sommarøy was not quite sure why Billy T. had agreed to accompany him. He appeared totally uninterested, standing there in a well-worn leather jacket, shivering in the chilly spring breeze. Either the big guy was exhausted beyond anything Karl Sommarøy had experienced, or else some other serious problem was troubling him. Billy T. answered mainly in monosyllables. He had fiddled with a key ring throughout the entire journey from Grønlandsleiret to Vogts gate, repetitively and irritatingly. His eyes were dead and his face, which had become inflamed during his terrifying rage in the canteen, was now lifeless and lacking all expression. Every time he moved, Billy T. left a sweaty odor in his wake.

  “That caretaker Karlsen’s a sourpuss, but I don’t think there’s any malice in him.”

  They rang the doorbell for the second time.

  “Yes?” rasped a voice over the intercom speaker.

  “This is Sergeant Karl Sommarøy from Oslo Police District. We’d like to check—” The sound of the door buzzer made him wink conspiratorially at Billy T.. He grabbed the handle and pulled open the door.

  “You see?” he said.

  “Unnecessary,” Billy T. muttered. “We have the keys.”

  He raised the key ring he was holding between his thumb and finger to Sommarøy’s eye level.

  “Bloody hell,” the Sergeant said crossly. “You might have said.”

  “What’s this about?” Karlsen stood, legs astride, in the corridor inside, wearing yellowish-brown slippers with no socks. He was dressed in beige trousers held up by braces, and his shirt had a large grease stain on the breast pocket. Billy T. noticed crumbs on his stubbly face.

  “Everything’s by the book,” Billy T. said, holding up his police badge. “We just want to do a little check on Salvesen’s apart
ment.”

  “Good luck. It’s empty.”

  “Empty?”

  Karl Sommarøy and Billy T. exchanged glances.

  “I emptied it last week.”

  “What did you say you did?”

  “Emptied it. The apartment. Took out all Ståle’s belongings. It’ll soon be taken over by another tenant, I think. Don’t want anyone rummaging through Ståle’s things.”

  Billy T. looked at the ceiling and his mouth moved without emitting a sound. Then he took a deep breath, lowered his head and gave Karlsen a broad smile.

  “Would you be so kind as to escort us up to Ståle’s apartment?” he said, silkily smooth, placing his hand on the old man’s back.

  Karlsen was forty centimeters shorter than Billy T.. He squirmed under his touch, declaring loudly that he was in the middle of eating his dinner. Billy T. changed his grip, instead taking hold of the caretaker’s upper arm as he strode determinedly toward the elevator.

  “What floor are we going to?”

  “The fourth,” Sommarøy said.

  “Let me go,” Karlsen protested.

  “I will. When you’ve learned a few elementary rules about accepted practice. Here.”

  The elevator pinged and gave a heavy groan before juddering to a halt. The three of them stepped out and trudged along the corridor, Karl Sommarøy leading the way and Billy T. following with Karlsen in tow.

  “Look at this,” Billy T. said, placing a grubby finger on the lock where only fragments of the police seal remained. “Might it have been you, for instance, who removed that little whatchamacallit there?”

  Ole Monrad Karlsen again struggled to break free.

  “I’m going to report this,” he said angrily when the grip showed no sign of loosening. “I’m most definitely going to do that.”