Death of the Demon: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel

by Anne Holt

  Fishing out his handkerchief again, the man was far from meticulous in his use of it on this occasion. His knuckles whitened as he held the fabric.

  “Of course there’s no will. No one had planned for Agnes to die. What’s more, we weren’t about to split up.”

  Suddenly he was struck by the logic of his own point and launched into a tirade.

  “Precisely! She hadn’t written any will. That shows we hadn’t fallen out. Nowhere near a divorce, at least. If she’d had plans of that nature, she would probably have made sure I wouldn’t end up with everything. Besides, you’re completely wrong.”

  He broke off and appeared to hesitate before throwing his trump card on the table.

  “I have to share the estate with my children. You don’t retain undivided possession of separate property funds.”

  “But your children won’t eject you from the house, will they?” Billy T. said caustically, placing his palms on the desktop and leaning over toward the interviewee.

  The outburst only partially concealed his annoyance at being mistaken.

  There was loud and repeated rapping at the door, and the widower, startled, collapsed back onto his chair. Hanne Wilhelmsen entered, holding out her hand to the man and introducing herself.

  “It was dreadful, what happened to your wife,” she remarked soothingly. “We’ll do our very best to find out what happened.”

  “Then you need to look somewhere other than the family,” the man sullenly retorted, though obviously disarmed by the chief inspector’s friendly manner.

  “Oh, you know how it is,” Hanne said with a note of regret in her voice. “Police work can be fairly ruthless. But we can’t leave a single stone unturned in a case like this. I’m sure you understand that. It’s only routine, and the faster we finish with you, the quicker you and your family can try to move on after this tragic event.”

  He seemed appeased. Hanne Wilhelmsen exchanged a few words with Billy T. before disappearing out the door.

  The interview lasted for two more hours and proceeded in a reasonably amicable manner. Billy T. learned that the husband was relatively familiar with the foster home, as he had been there several times, naturally. Their own house was only a stone’s throw away, and Agnes had worked there for twelve years. On the night of the murder she had told him at dinnertime that she had to go back later that evening. Neither of their two older children was at home: the eldest attended a folk high school, while Joachim at sixteen was at school camp with his classmates. Agnes herself had put Amanda to bed before returning to the foster home at around half past nine. She had asked him not to wait up, as she might be home late. He had watched some television and gone to bed at his usual time, about half past eleven. Amanda usually slept well at night, but on that evening she had been awakened by a nightmare and was so nervous he had allowed her to lie with him in the double bed. Neither of them had woken up until a minister was standing at the door at around four o’clock in the morning. He had neither made nor received any phone calls the entire evening. He couldn’t quite recall off the top of his head what TV program he had watched, but after Billy T. had provided him with a television schedule for the evening in question, he was able to furnish a concise and accurate account of a film shown on TV3.

  “Anything else?” Billy T. asked in conclusion.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is there anything else you think might be of importance for the case?” Billy T. clarified impatiently.

  “Well, yes. Perhaps one thing.”

  Pulling out his wallet, he searched for a piece of paper that was obviously not there. Then he thrust his hand back into his inside pocket, sighing. It seemed that he was considering whether he ought to inform him of what was on his mind.

  “Some money’s been taken out,” he embarked hesitantly.

  “Money?”

  “From the account. I only know about it from the bank statement. I don’t know where or by whom. But on the very same date, three checks were cashed, each for ten thousand kroner.”

  “Thirty thousand kroner?”

  “Yes.”

  Tugging at his ear, Billy T. stared at the floor.

  “From Agnes’s personal account. You understand, we had a joint account, and then she had one of her own. But of course I opened her statement as well when it arrived yesterday.”

  The widower seemed bashful about interfering with his wife’s mail. Billy T. assured him it was quite in order.

  “Have you any idea what she could have used it for?”

  Vestavik shook his head and sighed deeply.

  “But it might be that she froze the account afterward. I haven’t been able to investigate that yet. Maybe the checks were stolen?”

  “Maybe so,” Billy T. said pensively. “Can we have your permission to check that out, as a matter of routine?”

  “Of course.”

  After the interview had been printed out and signed, Billy T. escorted him from the gray concrete building. He shook the widower’s hand briefly before bounding up three flights of stairs and barging into Hanne Wilhelmsen’s office without knocking on the door.

  “Fucking hell, Hanne,” he exclaimed with a scowl. “You should know better than to come charging in during an interview. What if I’d been in the middle of a confession!”

  “But you weren’t,” she answered coolly. “I was listening at the door. The fact is that the two of you were about to really fall out with each other. So I had to come in, you know, and lower the temperature a little. Did it help?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

  “So you see. Can he be eliminated?”

  “No, not yet. He sounds pretty watertight. Besides, it takes a lot more to murder your old woman, he’s right about that. They have a child who’s barely four years old. And two big boys. I’m not so sure. But he definitely can’t be eliminated yet.”

  “Wife murder is not so unusual,” Hanne said, staring into thin air. “On the contrary. Murder usually occurs in close relationships between the perpetrator and victim.”

  “But in that case it would have had to be deliberate, Hanne. Then the guy would have to be fairly cold-blooded. He didn’t appear to be like that, although the relationship between them must have been relatively frosty. It looks like the lady was swindled out of thirty thousand kroner after somebody got hold of her checkbook, and she hadn’t said a peep to her husband about it.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You heard what I said. He opened the bank statement yesterday, and on the same date three checks for ten thousand kroner had been cashed. After that, nothing at all has been taken out.”

  They looked at each other for a long time.

  “Has he done it himself and realized we would stumble upon it at some point? And then been farsighted enough to cough up right away?”

  “Doubtful. He seemed bewildered himself. Almost quite disconcerted.”

  Rising to her feet, Hanne stubbed out her cigarette and tried in vain to stifle a yawn.

  “We’ll see. Find out what the others have discovered, will you? Ask Tone-Marit to pursue the money angle. And then you report to me again tomorrow. I’m off home.”

  • • •

  Odd Vestavik felt clammy. He tugged at his collar and loosened his seat belt in an attempt to find a more comfortable sitting position, but it did not help in the slightest.

  He had been knocked sideways by all that about the estate. He ought to have told them. On the other hand, it would be digging his own grave if he told them that only three weeks ago Agnes had rather surprisingly approached him with a new nuptial settlement. It determined that all of her separate property and funds should transfer to joint ownership in the event of her passing away. That was how it was expressed: “passing away.” And “demise.” He had taken issue because it seemed even lawyers were unable to employ the straightforward word “death.” That was what Agnes was: dead.

  He had forwarded it for official registration only two days
before Agnes died. It had taken him aback that the police did not know about it. The document must still be lying in an in-box at the city registrar’s office. How long did these things take?

  They would get to know about it. Then it would be suspicious that he had not mentioned it.

  He slowed down and was tooted angrily by a car behind him. He decided to turn around. He had lied to the police.

  Then he speeded up again, continuing on his homeward journey. Perhaps they would never find out. Anyway, he was far, far too tired to make up his mind about it at the moment.

  He would have to sleep on it.

  But he was profoundly perturbed about the thirty thousand kroner.

  • • •

  Maren had assumed the management role entirely, something that had happened automatically. Both the staff and the children treated her as the new boss, without formalities or objections. Although Terje had returned from sick leave on a part-time basis, he did not voice any objections to her doing his job either. The children had fallen back into their daily routine remarkably quickly, playing and quarreling, doing their homework and eating their meals, and only Kenneth seemed anxious about a woman having been brutally stabbed to death only a few meters away from his bedroom. He checked and double-checked his room every night for murderers and robbers, under the bed, in the closets, and even inside a toy box that could not under any circumstances conceal anyone other than a tiny child. Or perhaps a little but extremely dangerous dragon. The staff members patiently allowed him to enact this ritual before lying beside him for an hour until he fell asleep.

  Olav had been away for three whole days now. He had been reported missing to police forces throughout southeastern Norway, and a report would be passed to the media the following day. Even the police were deeply concerned.

  “All the same, they don’t seem to be connecting him with the murder,” Maren Kalsvik said, drumming her pencil on the coffee table in the living room. “I actually find that pretty strange. It’s a totally different set of police officers who’re dealing with his disappearance from those who’re working on the murder case.”

  Terje Welby sighed despondently.

  “They probably realize a twelve-year-old doesn’t kill people,” he responded. “At least not like that. With a huge knife.”

  “If a child is going to kill someone, it’s hardly going to be with a gun,” she commented dryly, before standing up and crossing over to the large double wooden doors with a mirror that separated the “good” living room from what they called the dayroom.

  Pulling the doors together in the middle until she heard a little click, she then returned to her seat on the sofa, lifting the pencil and putting it abstractedly into her mouth. After a couple of forcible bites, it broke in two.

  “There’s one thing I really wonder about, Terje,” she said quietly, spitting splinters of wood. Setting the pencil down and spitting some more, she fixed her eyes on her colleague as she continued, “What happened to those papers lying in the drawer that proved the whole situation?”

  He reacted immediately by turning incredibly red in the face, with sweat trickling down over his tight lips.

  “Papers? What papers?”

  His words were spoken with a snarl, as he glanced apprehensively at the closed doors.

  “The papers proving what you had done,” Maren said. “The papers Agnes had drawn up concerning the matter.”

  “But she didn’t know anything!”

  His desperation etched white spots on all the crimson in his face. He looked ill. He made a sudden violent movement with his upper body and then a moaning sound.

  “Bloody hell,” he thundered, sitting back warily in his chair. “You have to believe me, Maren, she didn’t know anything!”

  “You’re lying.”

  Her assertion was articulated as an incontrovertible truth, unshakable, with no room for discussion. She even smiled, a tired and joyless contortion containing both resignation and irritation.

  “I know you’re lying. Agnes had found out about the theft. Or thefts, I should perhaps say. I can give you all the details, but that’s probably not necessary. She was extremely disappointed. And quite furious.”

  Previously he had been so incensed that she doubted whether higher levels existed in the man’s emotional register, but she was wrong. Gasping and panting for breath, his vocal pitch now resembled that of a child when he managed to force out the words, “Did she tell that to you?”

  Several agonizing seconds elapsed before she replied. She stared out the window, where fresh snow had started to fall, in enormous white flakes that would melt as soon as they reached the earth. Shaking her head gently, she turned to face Terje.

  “No, actually she didn’t. But I know it all the same. And I know she had collected evidence. It wouldn’t be too difficult to find, if you simply began to scrutinize the accounts. The papers were lying in the drawer. The one that was locked. And the papers weren’t there when the police arrived. If they had them, then you would have been hauled in long ago. And that hasn’t happened. You haven’t even been questioned.”

  The final sentence had the inflection of a question, and he shook his head in confirmation.

  “Why haven’t I been? Is it some form of psychological torture, or what?”

  The white on his face had started to meet the fiery red halfway. Now he was pink and dripping wet. The beard on his cheeks was curling from the dampness, and three drops of sweat were running down in front of his left ear.

  “But I’d put most of it back, Maren! I told you that, didn’t I? My God, it’s not as if we’re talking about large sums of money!”

  “To be honest, Terje, I don’t think the police would be particularly bothered about the amounts.”

  Flinging out her arms in despair, she threw him a condescending look.

  “But almost all of it was paid back! I’m quite sure that Agnes didn’t know anything. She didn’t have the foggiest suspicion! But she knew something else, Maren. She knew something else, something that . . .”

  He did not continue.

  Maren Kalsvik leaned back demonstratively in her chair. They could hear some children clattering through the dayroom, laughing boisterously, and there was a faint thumping sound from Raymond’s stereo equipment on the floor above. Outside, the snow was falling more and more heavily, and it seemed as though there would be enough to form a blanket on the ground after all. The temperature had fluctuated wildly over the past two days, up and down, up and down.

  Like a child caught in the act, she thought. Downright denials about something that was so blatantly obvious. Catching his eye, she held his gaze.

  “Terje. I know that Agnes knew. You know that too. I know she had papers to prove it. You know that as well. I’m your friend, for God’s sake!”

  This last was spoken emphatically, and she underlined it further by striking the table.

  “Those papers were there before Agnes died, and they were gone when the police turned up. There’s only one possible explanation: you were there and removed them at some point during the evening or night. Don’t you think you might as well admit it?”

  He sat there, paralyzed, in the chair.

  She stood up and turned away from him before suddenly whirling around again.

  “I can help you, Terje! For God’s sake, I want to help you! I don’t want you to be arrested for something you haven’t done! We’ve traipsed in and out of here every day, eaten meals together, chatted together, we’ve almost lived together, Terje! But if I have to take responsibility for this here . . .”

  She gesticulated expressively with her arms, turning her eyes heavenward and muttering something he couldn’t catch.

  “Honestly. I’m holding something back from the police. I can’t be answerable for that unless I know what happened. And what didn’t happen. Don’t you understand that? You mustn’t go on lying! Not to me.”

  As though he were gathering his strength, he breathed in and out three times, d
eeply and rapidly.

  “I was here,” he whispered. “I was here around twelve o’clock. I was going to take the papers from the drawer. But only to see what she actually knew, Maren! When I saw her dead in the chair, I was totally shocked.”

  He cradled his head in his hands and rocked his body to and fro.

  “You just have to believe me, Maren!”

  “You can’t have had enough of a shock to prevent you from finding the papers and taking them with you, then,” Maren said calmly.

  She had sat down again, and now her right hand was continually running through her hair.

  “No, what should I have done? If the police had found them, I would be the most likely candidate to be the killer!”

  Glenn burst in through the double doors. Startled, Terje kicked his foot against the table in front of him.

  “Sh . . . sugar,” he said through clenched teeth, turning abruptly toward the boy who was requesting money to go to the movies. “How many times have I told you to knock on doors before you go into a room? Eh? How many times have I told you?”

  Enraged, he grabbed hold of the fourteen-year-old’s arm and squeezed it tight. Glenn whimpered and tried to pull himself free.

  “Let me go, you,” he complained. “Have you gone crazy or what?”

  “I’m so sick and tired of you doing whatever you want all over the place,” Terje spluttered, releasing his grip on the boy and at the same time shoving him roughly against the wall. “Now you need to get a bloody grip!”

  “Ten kroner deducted from your weekly pocket money,” the youngster mumbled, rubbing his left upper arm. “I only wanted cinema money!”

  Maren had witnessed these goings-on with an amazement that stunned her rigid. Now she pulled herself together and gave Terje a stern look before escorting Glenn out of the room and handing him a fifty-kroner note.

  “Is he sick, or what?” Glenn asked.

  “He’s got a sore back,” she said reassuringly. “He’s upset too. About Agnes. We all are. What film are you going to see?”

  “The Client.”

  “Is there much violence in it?”