by Anne Holt
• • •
Billy T. was nowhere to be found. One or two people thought they had spotted him on his way out half an hour earlier, but they were unsure. Some were able to say that he had been looking for her. The receptionist spread out her arms in despair, complaining that no one saw the point in the established and frequently ignored system of reporting personnel whereabouts.
“We’re the ones who get it in the neck,” she said unhappily, expecting some sympathy from Chief Inspector Wilhelmsen.
But the chief inspector was preoccupied. First she popped into Billy T.’s office to find the telephone number previously attached to Agnes Vestavik’s telephone directory, but it was impossible to locate it in all the uproar. She gave up after four or five minutes, reassuring herself that he had clearly told her it was the number of Diakonhjemmet University College’s School of Social Work.
Returning to her own office, she grabbed the telephone directory before sitting down. “Diakonhjemmet, the Norwegian” was the nearest she found, but there was a long list of additional numbers, for a School of Social Care, a hospital, something called the International Center, and a foundation with its own phone number. “Diakonhjemmet University College” had its own entry. She dialed the digits, without knowing what the focus of her inquiry would be.
A considerable time elapsed before anyone answered the call. Eventually a nondescript, almost mechanical voice piped up, “University College, how can I help you?” and Hanne wondered for a moment whether it was an automatic answering service. She asked for the dean’s office for lack of any better idea. There she spoke to a secretary whose voice was filled with sunshine and laughter, in stark contrast to the mechanical woman at the central switchboard.
Hanne introduced herself and endeavored to explain what she wanted without revealing too much. The lady was as quick on the uptake as her voice suggested, and she was able to confirm unequivocally that yes indeed, Agnes Vestavik, that poor, poor woman, had phoned several times the previous week. Or perhaps it was the week before that. In any case, she remembered she had called, and they had all been deeply shocked when they read about her murder. How was the family doing?
Hanne could reassure her on that point at least and asked what Agnes had wanted of them. Unfortunately, the secretary could not help her with that, but as far as she remembered, on one occasion she had asked to speak to someone in the examination office. Since they did not have an examination office, she had asked to speak to the dean. That was the first time, she thought. But what they had talked about, no, she was very sorry but she could not help her with that. It was also possible the dean had passed her on to someone else, though she knew nothing about that.
Hanne asked to speak to the dean, but was told that, regrettably, he was at a seminar in Denmark and would not return until Friday.
Hanne Wilhelmsen tried not to express her annoyance, as the woman had really been a great help. Rejecting the offer of assistance to find out where in Denmark he was, she terminated the conversation. Before replacing the receiver, she nevertheless asked the secretary to find out as soon as possible whether Agnes Vestavik had ever worked at Diakonhjemmet’s School of Social Work. The secretary promised, laughing, and chirped a good-bye after noting Hanne Wilhelmsen’s name and telephone number.
Hanne’s ear was still brimful of the happy secretary’s voice when she put down the phone. It lifted her mood to talk to such people, but only for a few seconds.
She had to find Billy T.
• • •
Restlessness had taken its grip on Olav again. It was true he was calm when eating and sleeping, both activities that consumed a great deal of his time, but he was having increasing difficulty between meals. She had bought him some comics, but they did not succeed in holding his attention for longer than a few minutes at a time. The initial subduing fear had obviously deserted him, and he no longer listened to her.
“They’re going to find you if you go out. You’re reported missing. On the TV and radio and in the newspapers.”
He smiled that strange smile of his.
“Just like in the movies. Will they give a reward?”
“No, Olav, they’re not offering a reward. They’re not searching for you because you’ve done something wrong. They just want you back at the foster home.”
He frowned.
“Fuck no,” he said vehemently. “I’d rather die than move back to that dump.”
She couldn’t resist a slight smile, a tired, weary smile. Catching sight of it, he vented his fury.
“You’re laughing, you bitch! But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m not going back there! Do you understand? ”
She tried desperately to calm him down by making hushing gestures and pointing to the wall through to the neighbor’s apartment. It did not perturb him in the least. However, he was at a loss for something to say and instead padded through to the kitchen and started to pull out all the drawers. He yanked them all the way out, tipping the contents onto the floor and yelling piercingly with every single drawer he grabbed hold of.
She knew it would pass. There was nothing to do other than sitting quite still, closing your eyes, and waiting. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She had only to wait. It will pass. In a little while, it will pass. Sit still. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, touch him. Soon, soon, it will pass.
It took some time to empty out all the drawers. She could not see him, but from the noises she knew he was kicking the kitchen utensils about and making a dreadful racket. The neighbors would notice it. She had hardly begun to think of an explanation when the doorbell rang.
The boy immediately stopped in his tracks. He suddenly stood in the doorway, and fear had returned to his eyes. He looked at her, not in a plea for help but with a command for her to wait until he had hidden himself before opening the door. Without a word, he disappeared into her bedroom. She crept after him, closed the door, and dried her eyes on the way to the front door.
It was the downstairs neighbor, an elderly lady who knew most of what transpired in the apartment block. This was not strange in the slightest, since she spent all her time either sitting at the kitchen window where she had an excellent view of all the comings and goings, or at people’s doors with complaints: about noise, about music, about people who were not following the rota for the laundry in the basement or for washing the stairs when it was their turn.
“That was a terrible commotion,” she said suspiciously. “Has your son come home?”
She craned her scrawny neck in an attempt to see inside the apartment. Birgitte Håkonsen made herself as tall and wide as possible.
“No, he hasn’t come home. It was me, I dropped something on the floor. Sorry.”
“Dropped something on the floor for a whole half hour?” the old woman exaggerated. “Yes, I’m sure I believe that. Have you got visitors?”
She extended her neck even farther, and because she was taller than Olav’s mother, could discern the white rectangle at the end of the gloomy hallway. However, that told her nothing.
“No, I don’t have visitors. I’m all on my own. And I’m sorry about the noise. It won’t happen again.”
As she was about to close the door in her neighbor’s face, the old woman muttered about calling the police. She hesitated momentarily before slamming it shut, turning the security lock as well.
Olav was sitting on her bed with his legs in the lotus position. He was remarkably supple for someone so stout. Now he looked more like a Buddha than ever before. She stood there observing him, and neither of them uttered a word. Then he moaned, almost a low howl, before stretching his arms and lifting his face to the ceiling, asking his question into empty space: “What’ll I do?”
She did not answer, because he was not speaking to her. Whirling around, she shuffled back to the kitchen to tidy up. As absolutely quietly as possible.
• • •
It was impossible to get anyone to listen to me as far as the MBD wa
s concerned. I took it up with the kindergarten first, but they simply smiled and said he would probably grow out of it. Again I thought I should talk to the child welfare service, as they could not possibly let me escape for a third time.
Then he started school. It had to go badly. As early as the first day, when all the parents were present, he got up from his desk in the middle of the first lesson and walked off out of the classroom. An odd expression crossed the teacher’s face, and she looked at me in the expectation that I would do something. I knew if someone attempted to stop him, all hell would break loose. So I made the excuse that he needed the toilet and concocted a urinary infection on the spot. Shortly afterward, I sneaked out to find him, but he was nowhere to be found. It later turned out he had entered another classroom, declaring that he would prefer to be in that class.
It wasn’t that he was stupid. On the contrary, he had a good head for math. And later, English. He was exceptionally good at English, but only orally. They said it might be because he was watching far too much television. Typical, really, when he hit upon something he was good at, something he mastered, they succeeded in turning that into something negative as well, something that was my fault.
Before the end of reception year, he was the school’s outcast. The other little school pupils shunned him, the pupils in years five and six teased him and persuaded him to do the most unbelievable things. On May 17, the Norwegian National Day, he managed to lower the flag on the school’s flagpole while everyone was listening to a speech given by a sweet blonde year-five pupil, talking about Wergeland, Norway’s national poet, and the children’s procession and freedom and the war, until suddenly she fell silent and pointed at the enormous flag now flying at half-mast. It had been cut into long strips, waving freely in the wind. Olav was standing beside the flagpole, jumping for joy and brandishing a pair of clippers, looking triumphantly at a group of class-six pupils who were standing doubled up with laughter at the back of the crowd. I couldn’t bear any more and just left. Several hours later, he arrived home clutching a hundred kroner in his fist. He had a wager with the big boys, he explained. When I tried to explain to him that he could have asked me for money, he looked at me in surprise with that strange smile I have never quite been able to fathom.
In the beginning, he was invited to birthday parties. At least, for the first year. He was always good-natured and happy when he returned home, but I never actually discovered how things had gone. Then that came to an abrupt halt, and it broke my heart when he watched the other children in the neighborhood trooping off to parties, dressed to the nines and carrying presents under their arms. He sat at the window on the first few occasions, but when I tried to suggest we should find some fun thing to do, he pushed me away and switched on the TV.
That was the only thing that, strictly speaking, did not fit well with the MBD diagnosis. He could sit for hours in front of the TV screen. He was all consuming, and it was mind-boggling how much of it he understood. As a toddler he had been completely uninterested in children’s television, even though I really tried to get him to watch it. By the time he commenced the year-two class, he was watching everything. It seemed as though he derived just as much pleasure from cartoons aimed at very young children as from the daily news and action films. I knew he ought not to watch all the films, but it didn’t look as if he was ever scared. Apart from one occasion. I was going to bed, but he had started watching a film and refused to go to sleep. I attempted to lure him with a bribe of money, as he had to go to school the following day. But it was out of the question. The film was called Alien, and as far as I could see, a female was the central character. So I thought it couldn’t be too dangerous and went off to bed.
In the middle of the night he came in and woke me. He was not crying but was clearly nervous and asked if he could sleep in my bed, something he had not done since he was tiny. I let him snuggle up to me and put my arms around him. He pushed them away but accepted me lying close to him. He hardly slept all night.
The next day, it was all entirely forgotten. I asked him what had been so creepy, but he only smiled.
At school he had been allocated an aide for fifteen hours a week. Though he had kept up with the work in most subjects in year one and the beginning of year two, his restlessness was so disruptive that he had started to fall behind. First and foremost, the task of the aide was to make him sit still, but he also worked with him on a one-to-one basis for a few hours.
Olav liked the aide, a young man, and he was friendly to me as well. I was afraid of him at the beginning, but he laughed a lot and at least gave me some impression that he liked my boy. Sometimes he accompanied Olav home, and the boy was almost unrecognizable. It was true he didn’t listen to what I had to say any more than otherwise, but when the aide gave him instructions, he obeyed him without protest.
Once the young aide phoned me late one evening. Olav had gone to bed. He was running a temperature and was tired. It must have been when he had just started in year five. The aide wondered whether I found it difficult to set boundaries for my son. He was trying to tell me I was not quite “handling him properly,” as he put it. If I was willing, he could come and talk to me in the morning, when he had no lessons with Olav and I would be on my own at home all the same. He had been in contact with the child welfare service, he admitted, and tried to adopt a light tone of voice as he informed me they had taken a positive view of him undertaking work as a kind of home consultant.
Child welfare service. Home consultant. The words were like knives in my heart. The aide, who had been a guest in my home, eaten meals here, laughed, ruffled my son’s hair, and been pleasant and kind toward me . . . He had spoken to the child welfare service.
I simply put down the receiver.
Two days later, the representatives of the child welfare service were standing on the doorstep.
• • •
Facing Billy T. was a half liter of beer in a glass sparkling with condensation, with a delightful circle of froth on top. Hanne had contented herself with a Munkholm. Lifeless and lackluster, the top was a fine, white layer that could hardly be dignified with the name of froth.
“Talk about withholding important information,” Hanne said quietly in order not to be heard at neighboring tables.
They had sat down at the table farthest back and on a raised area in the innermost recesses of the bar. A more pretentious proprietor had probably called it a mezzanine, but here it was simply known as the platform.
“Yes, it is fairly critical, to put it mildly,” Billy T. conceded, diving into his beer. “Stupid of me not to ask when I had the guy in for the interview.”
Hanne made no comment about his oversight.
“This means in all probability that the perpetrator did not come to kill Agnes,” she continued. “It has been bothering me, this matter of the knife. It’s a clumsy murder weapon. Not at all reliable. Unusual.”
“Well, there is a lot of knife crime here in this country,” Billy T. noted.
“Yes, but not deliberate murders! If you plan ahead of time to murder someone, a knife is probably not going to be your weapon of choice. Knives are about . . . the city center on a Saturday night, fights, drunken nonsense, parties, cabin holidays in the pouring rain when people start to argue. And what’s more, loads of stab wounds. And often a wounded culprit into the bargain.”
“So you think the person in question came for some other reason, that things turned nasty, and he or she grabbed the knife almost on an impulse? For lack of anything better, so to speak?”
“Precisely. That’s exactly what I mean.”
The food arrived on the table. Hanne had ordered a chicken salad; Noah’s Ark was the only place in the city where the chicken in the salad was served piping hot. Billy T. launched himself into a double kebab.
They ate in silence for several minutes, before Hanne grinned and lay down her knife and fork. Looking obliquely at her companion, she asked, “How’s it going with that woman you met in the
Canary Islands?”
He did not deign to respond, instead continuing to eat with undiminished enthusiasm.
“That golden tan of yours is starting to fade. Is it the same with your love affair?”
He prodded her in the side with his fork and spoke with his mouth full of food. “Now don’t you be mean and rotten. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“C’mon, Billy T. Tell me more.”
She waited patiently until he finished his meal, when he finally wiped his beard with his lower arm, emptied his half liter, and, signaling for another, planked down two fists in front of him on the table.
“It was nothing.”
“It was not! You were so elated a week or so ago!”
“That was then, this is now.”
She reconsidered and turned serious. “What’s all that about, Billy T.?”
Appearing irritated, he put an unnecessary amount of energy into trying to catch the waiter’s attention, since he had not responded to his earlier gesture.
“What d’you mean?”
“All that with you and women.”
Billy T. had four children. None of them had the same mother. He hadn’t even stayed with any of them long enough to be anywhere near deciding to move in together. But he loved his sons passionately.
“Me and women? Dynamite, that is!”
He finally received his half liter. Remaining seated, he etched hearts on the dewy surface of the glass.
“I can’t stand any hassle,” he added.
“Hassle?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of hassle?”
“All that female hassle. That can’t-you-pay-a-little-attention-to-me-as-well hassle. I like to do whatever I want. If a woman wants to do that with me, then that’s great. After a while they don’t want to do that any longer. Then the hassle starts. I just can’t deal with that.”
“Damage in early childhood,” Hanne said with a smile.
“Probably.”
“But you. Why . . .” She broke off with a self-conscious smile.
