Dead Joker

by Anne Holt

  The old man continued his work with the screwdriver without giving the two police officers so much as a glance.

  “Billy T.!”

  Karl grabbed the Maglite and held the beam close to the side wall.

  “Look here. The planks are old and worn. But look at the nail heads!”

  The nails were new. The timber around them had recently splintered, and the paler timber was easy to distinguish from the rest of the dark and dirty wood.

  “Give me that screwdriver,” Billy T. ordered.

  The caretaker stopped working on the damaged door and reluctantly handed over the Swiss army knife.

  The first planks were the worst. It seemed that the wall had been insulated with rock wool on the inside, something Billy T. initially found surprising. Why would anyone go to the trouble of insulating the interior wall of a basement? Eventually, four floor-to-ceiling planks were removed and Karl helped him pull out the first insulation mat.

  The wall concealed a secret room, barely more than half a meter wide. It was insulated in every direction, and now there was no difficulty understanding why. The telltale hum of a computer crept out into the basement storeroom. They tore down the rest of the wall in silence.

  “A computer,” Karl said under his breath. “A completely ordinary computer.”

  “But no screen or keyboard,” Billy T. said, heaving out the final mat of rock wool.

  “They’re not necessary,” Karl said. “No one’s meant to use this.”

  “What the fuck’s it for then?” Leaning forward, Billy T. peered at the green light, confirming that the computer was switched on.

  “I’ve no idea. But I’ll bet what’s in this computer is extremely interesting. No!” Karl Sommarøy grabbed his colleague by the arm and brutally hauled him back. Billy T. had been about to pull the plug out of the obviously newly mounted socket.

  “We’ll have to take the computer with us, don’t you see?” Billy T. said in annoyance, tugging his arm free. “We’ll need to get someone to have a look at what’s inside it.”

  “They’ll have to do it here. For all we know, it might be programmed to break down if the current is switched off.”

  “Then you can call in the experts,” Billy T. said. “I’ll stay here. I’m not leaving here until someone can tell me what this computer contains.”

  Karl Sommarøy nodded and looked at Karlsen the caretaker. “And you can come with me,” he said. “I think you and I have a great deal to discuss.”

  Billy T. could hear the caretaker’s angry mutterings until the basement door was closed. Then he sat down on a pile of wood and rock wool, leaned back against the wall, and fell fast asleep.

  88

  The man Evald Bromo used to call Kai was busy packing. He had looked out a suit, two sweaters, four shirts and a pair of jeans, which he folded neatly and placed in a hard-shell suitcase. On top he added underwear and a toilet bag. He had checked there was nothing in the pockets to betray his identity. Next he emptied his wallet of his personal effects. Photos of the children, a receipt from IKEA, a driver’s license and other cards: everything was cut into pieces and placed in a carrier bag he intended to dispose of somewhere no one would notice.

  Then he refilled his wallet and tucked his new passport into his inside pocket.

  Now he was called something entirely different.

  He felt cold.

  The desperation that had almost paralyzed him in recent days had vanished. What remained was decisiveness: what was done was done, and there was nothing left for him to do but flee. The prospect of abandoning the children forever was something he callously pushed aside as he snipped the photographs into pieces. He could not think. He could not afford to feel anything. He had to take action, and do it fast.

  He would drive to Copenhagen. From there he would take a flight to somewhere far away, a place where he had friends.

  Because he did have friends.

  Over the years he had protected a few chosen ones. Always because he had a use for them. Never because he had felt threatened. The only exception had been Evald Bromo.

  Snapping the case shut, he left the house and placed his baggage in the trunk of the car. He would go tonight. He felt a strong impulse to jump into the car and drive off immediately, but that would be too risky. His wife would raise the alarm within a couple of hours of him still not being home from work.

  By setting off at around 3 a.m., he would achieve a head start of several hours. He did not require much more. He lifted the hood, removed the distributor cap and placed it on a shelf on the back wall of the garage. He could say there was something wrong with the car. Then there would be no chance of his wife going for a drive that afternoon and discovering the suitcase.

  89

  Karl Sommarøy was one of the few people in the colossal gray police headquarters to have genuinely tried to make his office appear welcoming, kitting it out with dark-blue curtains his wife had sewn, pictures of his children in red frames on his desk, and green potted plants on the shelves. On one wall hung a huge poster of a Gustav Klimt reproduction, and on another he had created a collage of children’s drawings behind a sheet of glass. It was as if Karl Sommarøy’s lower jaw, with its hint of girlishness, was not merely a malicious prank by Mother Nature, but also the expression of a strong feminine streak in his otherwise very masculine body. A rag rug in cheerful colors muffled the acoustics, and the penholder on the desk matched the pale leather of the blotter. Like a sort of masculine counterpoint to all that was a wacky cuckoo clock that hung on the wall. Every hour, a uniformed policeman popped out to raise his baton and cry “You’re under arrest!” in a tinny voice.

  “You know,” Karl Sommarøy said as he sat down on the ergonomically correct office chair, “my grandfather was in the merchant navy during the war.”

  Ole Monrad Karlsen grumbled sulkily, moving restlessly in his chair.

  “He was second mate on the MT Alcides. The Skaugen shipping company. Sailed from Abadan with bunker oil en route to Freemantle. Torpedoed in the Indian Ocean in July 43.”

  “My goodness,” Karlsen said, straightening up ever so slightly. “Captured by the Japs, then?”

  “Yes, that’s right. My grandfather spent the rest of the war in a Japanese POW camp.”

  “That was really something,” Karlsen said, shaking his head. “Those boys who ended up with the Japs, they had it worst of all. I was torpedoed twice myself. But never captured.”

  He gazed at the Sergeant. His expression had changed somewhat: he was biting his lower lip and no longer seemed so hostile.

  “Norway treated you wartime sailors really badly,” Sommarøy said sympathetically. “Would you like some coffee, Karlsen?”

  Before the caretaker had time to answer, he poured some into a yellow cup decorated with ladybirds and pushed it across to the old man, smiling as broadly as he could.

  “But you’ve managed all right, haven’t you? A pension too, Karlsen? You must be …” He raised his eyes to the ceiling as he did a mental calculation. “… seventy-six?”

  “Seventy-five. I signed on at Christmas in 39, when I was fifteen. I was allowed to continue with my work in the apartment block. Don’t get paid, you know, but the old woman who owns the whole shooting match lets me keep my apartment in return for doing some work here and there. Cheaper for her, and suits me fine. It was better before, when there weren’t as many of those slobs in the place. After the local authority bought up a lot of the apartments, all sorts of strange folk started drifting in. That pal of yours, that tall guy …” Karlsen covered his head with his hands. “… he’s not a nice person. No respect.”

  “You’ll have to excuse Billy T.. He’s under a lot of stress just now.”

  “That’s no reason to behave like a lout. Police officer and all that. Doesn’t look like one, anyway.” Karlsen inspected the ladybirds on his cup with some skepticism before taking a tentative sip of the coffee.

  “You knew Ståle Salvesen, didn’t you?” So
mmarøy clasped his hands behind his neck. “Were you friends?”

  Ole Monrad Karlsen smacked his lips before putting down the cup and scratching his forehead with his left hand.

  “It’s not against the law to be on speaking terms with people,” he said. The aggressive tone had returned.

  “Not at all. I think Ståle Salvesen was basically a good guy. Someone the world had treated badly.”

  “He was once a businessman,” Karlsen said. “Did you know that?”

  “Yes. There was some nonsense about an investigation and bankruptcy and that sort of stuff.”

  “Exactly. They certainly suspected him! Investigating, reporting, digging and destroying everything, that’s how they went about it! But did they find anything? Not on your life – it all came to nothing in the end. And Ståle sat tight, alone and abandoned. His wife left him, and his son never came back from America. Ungrateful lowlife! After all, it was his father who had given him the opportunity to travel and study and all that jazz. Ståle was in much the same position as me, you see. When I came home from the war and was offered—”

  Karl Sommarøy realized that this was going to take some time. Excusing himself, he disappeared and returned with a Danish pastry and two bottles of soda. By the time there was nothing but crumbs left on the paper plate and both bottles were empty, his patience had worn thin.

  “You’re under arrest!” the cuckoo policeman squawked seven times.

  “Heavens, that gave me a jolt,” Karlsen said, turning to face the clock.

  “That computer system in the basement,” Karl said lightly. “You knew about it, didn’t you?”

  “It’s not against the law to have computer equipment in your own basement.”

  “Not at all. How long has it been there?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  Karl Sommarøy took a deep breath before getting to his feet and standing with his back to Karlsen while apparently scrutinizing the children’s drawings.

  “Listen,” he said slowly, placing the flat of his hand on what was probably supposed to be a racing car. “We’re in the midst of an extremely difficult case. Things would go more smoothly for us if you would just answer my questions. I understand you don’t have much liking for the authorities. But you’re a decent guy and to the best of my knowledge, you’ve never done anything wrong. Let’s make sure it continues that way.”

  He pivoted round to face the caretaker.

  “Help me,” he said. “Please.”

  “Since February,” Karlsen mumbled. “February.”

  “Did Ståle tell you why he wanted to hide the computer?”

  “No.”

  “Did you help him build the wall?”

  “Yes.”

  Ole Monrad Karlsen stared at him with an unyielding expression in his eyes. Nevertheless, his demeanor had become more submissive, and he looked as if he had aged twenty years.

  “Okay.” Sommarøy resumed his seat. “Do you know anything more about that equipment?”

  Karlsen shook his head.

  “Do you know anything more at all? Something that might give us an answer as to why Ståle killed himself? You talked with him a great deal, he must have—”

  “I’ve already told you. Ståle had nothing left here on earth. Everything he had was gone. I already told you that.”

  “Does that mean you knew he was planning to commit suicide?”

  Karlsen’s lower lip trembled, and the tremor spread across his face. His botched shave might indicate he had problems with his sight. Sommarøy had never seen Karlsen wearing glasses.

  “I didn’t know anything,” he said so softly that Sommarøy drew closer. “I didn’t understand much when you came the first time. I thought he’d just gone on a trip without letting me know. But then …”

  His hands were shaking now, and he wiped his eyes with his finger.

  “But I really should have realized something was going on when he gave me that parcel.”

  “Parcel?”

  “He gave me a brown-paper parcel with an address on it. Stamps and everything. Only needed to be popped in the post, he said, if anything should happen to him. I should wait for a couple of weeks or so. After I’d last seen him, I mean. I asked him if he was thinking of going on a trip. He said he wasn’t, and then somehow we were chatting about other things. I didn’t even remember about the parcel. Not until some time had passed, and then I thought that the parcel must have been his way of saying goodbye. He trusted me, did Ståle.”

  Karl Sommarøy gazed down at his own hands, clutching the edge of the table. His knuckles were white. “Did you post that parcel?”

  “Yes, I had to do that.”

  “Who was it addressed to?”

  “I don’t think I could remember the address. But the name …”

  Ole Monrad Karlsen lifted his eyes and looked directly at the police officer. A tiny brown trickle was dribbling from one corner of his mouth, and a tear had come to a halt in the stubble just below one of his nostrils.

  “But the name was Evald Bromo, anyway. I haven’t forgotten that. That was the man who was lying with his head chopped off in my basement.”

  “You’re under arrest!” screeched the cuckoo clock, eight times now.

  90

  Margaret Kleiven’s parents had died a long time ago, and she had no other close relatives. Admittedly, she had a sister who was four years younger, but they had never had a close relationship. Even as children they were conspicuously different: Margaret introverted, shy and cautious, and her sister outgoing and charming. After her sister had married an Englishman and relocated to Manchester, they had eventually lost contact. Even the Christmas cards that had been dutifully sent at the end of November for the first few years had failed to materialize in the past six years.

  Evald was Margaret Kleiven’s whole life. Evald, and her work as a teacher of history and French. She was under no illusions that her students spared her much thought. She was probably too boring and curriculum-oriented for that. But she was far from unpopular. In a sense, the teenagers respected her traditional teaching methods, aware that they would pay dividends. Last year, two students had changed classes purely in order to have Miss Kleiven for French. Both had achieved top marks in the final exam. After the results were announced, a little bouquet of sweet peas wrapped in orange cellophane had sat waiting for her in the staffroom. Such incidents gave her a sense of cautious anticipation ahead of the next school year.

  Margaret Kleiven was not one to indulge in great emotions. When she married Evald, she was old enough not to have unrealistic expectations. Eventually she found some kind of dull contentment in her existence. Life with Evald was quiet. As the years passed, they became increasingly isolated, but in Margaret’s eyes, they were fond of each other and had a good life despite the child that never arrived.

  Now Evald was gone.

  The shock had subsided into a paralyzing despair in the course of the first twenty-four hours. Five days and nights had gone by since the policewoman with the flickering eyes had told her that Evald was dead, probably murdered. Now it was the morning of Friday April 9, 1999, and Margaret Kleiven was furious.

  It was already 6 a.m., and she had not slept a wink.

  It was of no interest to her who had killed Evald.

  The copies of Dagsavisen and Aftenposten had been lying beside the shoe racks in the hallway for four days and she had not even opened them. On Monday there had been a photograph of Evald on the front page of Aftenposten, an old image of a running, slavering man she barely recognized. She brought in the newspapers from the doormat every morning, laid them down on the floor, and returned to bed.

  Evald was dead, and nothing could change that.

  The mysterious circumstances of his death – which, according to the slightly overweight policewoman, had seemingly happened in Torshov – reminded Margaret that there had been a dark side to Evald’s life that he had never shared with her. Of course, she knew that there was somethin
g – a burden he carried and could never quite get rid of. During their first years together, she had wondered what it was, and on a couple of occasions had tried to talk to him about it. Her initiatives had only led to him running more and talking even less. And so she had let it drop.

  It should be allowed to rest forever.

  Margaret Kleiven was angry with her deceased husband. He had gone running at night, despite her repeated warnings. She would never forgive him.

  Standing up, she crossed the floor unsteadily.

  There was a small chest beside the bathroom door. It was decorated with traditional rosemaling painting, and it would probably be more accurate to call it a large box. When they had phoned from the nursing home to tell her that Olga was dead, she’d felt nothing. She had never had any feelings for the old woman. In fact, she had not seen her for more than two years. When her mother-in-law had descended into total senility, Margaret had considered there was little point in paying hypocritical visits when Evald already visited her almost every day. However, the nursing home had no one else to contact. They had called Margaret and Margaret had come. Olga Bromo had owned nothing other than a dresser full of linen and a few little silver spoons, and a small chest with her name in blue lettering on the lid. The care assistant had looked down at the floor as he cleared his throat, explaining that they needed the room more or less immediately, there was a waiting list of sick old people and he hoped she would not take offence if he asked her what he should do with Olga’s personal effects.

  Margaret Kleiven had taken the chest with her and let them do whatever they wanted with the rest.

  Now, wearing a pale-pink dressing gown, she crouched down in the beam of morning light that had crept into the room through a gap in the curtains, inserted a wrought-iron key into the lock and turned it.

  She was startled when she opened the lid. It was like being struck by a gust of stale air that confirmed what she had always known: she had not really known him. Gingerly, she lifted out two old school report cards. A pink box contained a cameo brooch she had never seen before. There was a stiff speckled red Post Office savings book in Evald’s name, though the dates for the deposits were from when Evald was a small child and could hardly have known what it was to save money.