Death of the Demon: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel

by Anne Holt

  But at least the boy was alive. That offered some comfort.

  • • •

  Two days after the aide phoned, the child welfare service representatives were standing there. Olav had just turned eleven. I was not expecting them. I thought they would call me in for a meeting and had already looked in the Yellow Pages for an attorney. You’re entitled to that, free of charge, I knew that from before. But there was so little information listed about what they specialized in, and there are so many different kinds of attorney.

  And so they were standing there. Two of them, a woman and a man. I hadn’t met either of them previously, but then it had been many years since I’d had any contact with child welfare. They were friendly enough, I suppose, though I don’t recall very much about it. An investigation had been initiated, they told me, on the basis of something they called “reported concerns.”

  Reported concerns! Here I was with continued concerns about the boy for more than eleven years, and then they turned up now! They asked if they could come in and looked around in the same way as the lady from social services had done that time long ago, when Olav was still a little baby. Stolen glances, in a way, but at the same time so barefaced.

  It was a Thursday, and I had just cleaned the whole apartment. They certainly wouldn’t be able to get me for that. I put out coffee and cookies, but they didn’t touch a thing. Did they think I would poison them?

  Then they told me everything I already knew from before. About Olav’s deviant behavior and aggressive conduct, and that the older children lured him into doing all sorts of strange things. About his erratic school attendance, and that he spoiled things for the others. About him being excessively overweight. They wondered what we were eating. I became furious, I remember that quite clearly. I dragged the woman with me out to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Milk, cheese, fish cakes from the previous day. Margarine and onions and a bag of apples.

  She jotted notes on a writing pad, and I could see she had written “full-fat milk.” Then I gave up. The boy refused to drink semi-skimmed or skimmed milk. Did they think it was better that I didn’t get any milk into him at all?

  They stayed for a long time, and as I say I don’t remember much about it. Fortunately Olav was out, though they began to glance at the clock when it turned evening and he still had not appeared. They wanted to obtain information from various sources, they said, and it might take several months. Then they wondered whether I had any objections to an expert assessment being conducted. A psychologist or a psychiatrist would talk to both of us, so the child welfare service “would be in a better position to find out what we required.”

  Objections? I had tried for more than five years to persuade someone to examine the boy’s head, without receiving help from anywhere. Of course I didn’t have any objections. I already knew there was something wrong. Something that should have been discovered ages ago. “Better late than never,” I said, and noticed that they exchanged a look. But why a psychologist would want to talk to me was completely incomprehensible. Going along with something like that would be admitting it was all my fault. So I turned it down flat.

  When the expert eventually set to work, I nevertheless went along with her being present in the apartment with Olav and me on a couple of occasions. “Observations of interaction” was what she called it in her subsequent report. I did not recognize myself at all. Everything was twisted and distorted. I tried to get my lawyer to understand it wasn’t my fault that Olav went to bed so late. I could certainly try to force him, but that only led to a shouting match, and it was obviously better that things were pleasant and quiet than that the boy should toss and turn without being able to fall asleep. “Serious boundary-setting issues” was what the psychologist wrote.

  Precisely as I had expected, they discovered he had minimal brain dysfunction, MBD. To be sure, only that “symptoms were found consistent with a minor degree of MBD,” but my attorney assured me this was simply the way they normally expressed it.

  I had known that the entire time. No one had listened to me. Now, when it had been scientifically proved there was something wrong with the boy, the child welfare people were insisting that in any case I could not take care of him. He was so difficult. Besides, they thought it was not certain he was ill, all the same, since the symptoms of MBD could also indicate a failure of parental care.

  They were insistent that they wanted to saddle me with a home consultant. I said I was open to anything at all to help Olav, but that I didn’t need any help myself. I wasn’t the one who was sick. I’m not the one there’s something wrong with.

  Finally the case ended up at the council committee and they wanted to take the boy from me.

  I hadn’t slept for several nights. When I arrived there, I noticed I smelled, even though I had showered that morning. I felt as though my clothes were too small and regretted wearing the blue polyester blouse rather than something made of cotton. But the attorney had said it was important that I was smartly dressed. For the first hour, I was totally preoccupied by my awareness of the odor gradually worsening and the rings of perspiration under my arms becoming increasingly noticeable. I felt dizzy. A large, plump woman with a ponytail and glasses and a confused mixture of dialects droned on about everything that had gone wrong down through the years. She was the lawyer for the child welfare service. There were five people serving on the committee, four women and one man. Three of them took notes, while the man farthest to the left nodded off through the entire procedure. One of the women, who had to be more than sixty years old, sat the whole time gazing at me with a look that made me feel even more dizzy. I had to ask for a break.

  My lawyer took far less time than the one representing the council. That was probably a bad sign, but I didn’t have the temerity to ask why that was so. Besides, the council had loads of witnesses. I had none. My attorney said it wasn’t necessary. I couldn’t think of anybody, either, when he asked me in advance.

  After two days it was all over. The chairman of the committee, who had been friendly the entire time, asked me if I felt that everything of significance had been discussed, or whether I had anything I wanted to add. Inside me there was a massive lump of words that had not been spoken. I wanted so much to make them understand. I wanted to take them back in time, show them all the good things, get them to see how much Olav and I love each other. I wanted them to understand that I had done everything for my boy, that I had never drunk alcohol, never taken any kind of drugs either, that I had never slapped him, that I had always, always been afraid of losing him.

  Instead I shook my head and stared at the floor.

  Twelve days later I was informed that they had taken my son away from me.

  • • •

  Olav Håkonsen was sprawled in a garbage container behind the multistory car park at the Storo Center, wondering how long he had been lying there. He had a thumping headache and was aware of a terrible stench. He tried to raise himself but collapsed back onto all the trash bags. It had become totally dark. When he attempted to see what time it was, he realized his Swatch had disappeared. It was impossible to remember whether he had it with him earlier. He was overwhelmed by nausea when once again he endeavored to balance himself in an upright position, and he puked out the cake and cola. That alleviated matters slightly.

  The container was half full, but the garbage was unevenly distributed, and he was lying so high up he almost reached the ice-cold metal edge. His mittens were gone as well. Eventually he succeeded in hauling himself up but quickly lost his balance on the squashy layer beneath him. He tried to recall what had happened.

  He had jumped. Six or seven meters above him he glimpsed the edge of the top story. It had been the only solution, he remembered. Then he remembered nothing more.

  Instead he dug himself deeper down among the black stinking bags of garbage and dozed off into a blessed, dreamless void.

  • • •

  Erik Henriksen’s working day had been long, and it w
as going to be even longer. They still had five interviews left, and it was something of an illusion to believe that they would have them finished by tomorrow, as Hanne Wilhelmsen had requested. At least not if Tone-Marit and he were to manage them on their own.

  God only knew how Hanne and Billy T. actually passed their time. Not that he in any way suspected them of shirking their duties, but it would have been uplifting to know what they were up to. They weren’t in the office very often, and even Billy T., who should really have been just as actively involved in dispatching the interviews, was constantly impossible to locate. Sometimes Erik Henriksen felt that he was not properly included. That they didn’t entirely trust him. Not particularly inspiring. Now and again he felt a stab of irritation, almost anger, directed toward Hanne Wilhelmsen. That was something quite novel, and he did not know how to deal with it.

  Tilting his head from one side to the other, he felt his neck muscles contract. He was exhausted, out of sorts, and fed up. Now he longed to go home.

  Tone-Marit was standing in the doorway, saying nothing and simply smiling.

  She was very ordinary. Quite sweet, really. Her face was round, even though she was slim. Her eyes were narrow and lopsided, and when she smiled, they disappeared altogether. Her hair changed color from time to time; during this year he had known her, it had changed from blonde to copper red to dark brunette, as it was currently. He did not know whether the curls were her own, or whether they had been purchased too.

  She did not usually say very much. He did not know very much about her. But now she was standing here, and it was late in the afternoon. Billy T. was out and about. Hanne Wilhelmsen was a lost cause. Tone-Marit stood in the doorway smiling.

  “Shall we go to the cinema?” he suggested before he had time to consider it deeply, and she did not even seem surprised.

  “Yes, we could,” she said. “What would you like to see?”

  “It’s all the same to me,” he answered, feeling less tired already.

  They sauntered into the city center, too late to make the seven o’clock screening and with all the time in the world until the one at nine.

  Tone-Marit walked beautifully. A determined, self-assured gait, with a little feminine swing of the hips that did not seem to be an affectation. She carried her head erect, although she was almost as tall as he was, and he was a six footer. She was wearing a short leather pilot’s jacket over painfully tight denim jeans, and quite pointed shoes with laces that disappeared up under her trouser hems. She was not saying very much now either, but that was of no consequence.

  It took them half an hour to reach Klingenberg. By then he knew at least where she stayed and that she lived alone. What’s more, she played soccer in the premier league, trained five times a week, and had played in six international matches. He was extremely impressed, and taken aback that he had not known these scraps of information before.

  As they rounded the glass cases beside the cinema entrance, he spotted Hanne Wilhelmsen. The old familiar feeling of his heart beating just a tiny bit faster caught him off guard, but for the first time it was combined with something negative, almost depressing, that anger he had not quite managed to shrug off. Slowing his pace, he rubbed his freckled face with his finger and weighed the possibilities of going to the cinema at Saga instead. However, they had already decided on this movie.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen was standing fiddling with her cinema ticket and chatting to three other women. Two of them had cropped hair and looked quite similar, one in an old anorak and the other in a dun-colored shapeless jacket and rubber boots folded over at the top, just like an old sea dog. Both were wearing old-fashioned student glasses. The third woman was totally different. She had midlength pale blonde hair and was almost as tall as Hanne. Underneath an open maxicoat in some kind of expensive-looking fabric, she wore a dark red dress with buttons down the front. The two top buttons were unfastened, and the collar was turned up. Now she was throwing her head back and laughing at something one of the short-haired women had said. Hanne, standing half turned toward Erik and Tone-Marit, nudged her shoulder and smiled in a way he had never seen before. Her face was so open, she seemed younger, she seemed happier, more uncontrolled, in a sense. Suddenly, she caught sight of him.

  Erik was here. And Tone-Marit. She had of course experienced this on many previous occasions. Colleagues out and about in the city. Oslo was not such a huge place. She had her strategies. A brief nod or a slight wave before hurrying off in the direction of something or other that seemed a very important destination. Something urgent that prevented any intimate conversation. It occurred frequently, although Cecilie usually became annoyed, or at least dismayed.

  But here, outside a cinema where the movie would not begin for another twenty minutes, casually huddled together with all the other people standing waiting, waving their cinema tickets, it would be no use. They were her immediate subordinates. People she worked in close contact with. Day in and day out. She had to talk to them.

  She beat them to it by taking the initiative and leaving her friends to approach her two colleagues. Too late, she discovered Cecilie had followed her. Karen and Miriam fortunately read it all so rapidly that they headed for the doors, departing the scene. Why on earth they insisted on looking so much like lesbians was unfathomable. And sometimes uncomfortable.

  She had no idea what she was going to say. So she said it like it was.

  “This is Cecilie.”

  The earth stood still for three whole seconds before she added, “We share an apartment. We live together.”

  “Oh, yes,” Erik Henriksen said, holding his hand out to Cecilie. “I’m Erik. We work together.”

  His left hand made a circular motion that included himself, Hanne, and Tone-Marit.

  “Are you a colleague as well?” he asked doubtfully, scrutinizing Cecilie’s face.

  “No, far from it.” She laughed. “I work at Ullevål Hospital. And so you’re Erik. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Hanne noticed Erik was struggling with his perennial blushing and said a thank-you to higher powers that she was therefore more easily able to conceal her own. She did not even dare to look at Tone-Marit.

  “Did you manage to complete most of those interviews?” she asked cheerfully, taking an imperceptible step to one side to avoid standing too close to her girlfriend.

  “Five left to go,” Tone-Marit replied. “We’ll probably finish them tomorrow. By the way, the boy was spotted this afternoon.”

  Hanne pulled herself together.

  “Was spotted? By our people?”

  “Yes, at the Storo Center, but he made a successful escape,” Erik confirmed. “He’s a tough little nut. He’s been on the run for a fortnight now. They’re searching the entire area up there. It’s not far, you see, from that villa where he spent a few days. The boys think he’s found himself a new hiding place, so they’re investigating abandoned farmhouses and that kind of thing. Farms scheduled for demolition.”

  “Well,” Hanne said lightheartedly, trying to bring the unwelcome encounter to a conclusion, “I want to get myself a poster!”

  “She’s hopeless,” Cecilie said apologetically with a smile. “She loves movie posters!”

  “That last remark was bloody unnecessary,” Hanne hissed when they were out of earshot.

  “I thought you were clever, Hanne,” Cecilie said calmly, taking the cinema tickets from her to hand over to the inspector.

  “I’d no idea Hanne shared an apartment with anybody,” Erik whispered once he and Tone-Marit had found their seats. “Really lovely girl too.”

  Tone-Marit fiddled with a straw that refused to fit into her carton of juice.

  “I don’t exactly think they just share an apartment,” she said serenely, finally managing to push the reluctant straw into place.

  But by then Erik was already tucking into a bag of chocolates and had started to look forward to the movie.

  10

  At ten o’clock on Friday morning, Ma
ren Kalsvik phoned Billy T. again. Kenneth was unwell. He was crying and did not want her to leave the house. Normally he would have to accept it, she explained, but there had of course been so much lately. The boy was afraid, brokenhearted, and was running a temperature of thirty-nine degrees Celsius. She realized it was a lot to ask, but since the other members of staff were sitting in a queue at the police station waiting to be interviewed, she thought she would take the liberty of asking if he could come over to conduct her interview there. At the foster home.

  Billy T. liked Kenneth. Besides, he knew what sick children could be like.

  At twenty minutes to eleven he parked his own car on the road leading down from the Spring Sunshine Foster Home. He had not been able to contact Hanne, and that made him slightly ill at ease. He had been on the point of phoning her home to check whether she was there but had rejected that idea.

  As he opened the gate on his way up to the large house, a skinny woman emerged from the main door. Catching sight of him, she halted and waited until he reached her.

  “You’re from the police?” she asked skeptically, looking him up and down.

  When he confirmed her supposition, her eyes affected an expression of concentration, as though struggling to call something to mind. Then she shook her head briefly, obviously casting the thought aside. Without another word, she held the door open until he was inside before scurrying away along the gravel path.

  Raymond came thundering down the stairs, almost colliding with Billy T. as the police officer was about to pop his head around the door of the dayroom.

  “My goodness, are you not at school?” he asked.

  “I’d forgotten my gym clothes! Maren’s in the conference room,” the seventeen-year-old called out, slamming the front door so violently behind him it could have wakened the dead.

  Fortunately it did not wake Kenneth, who was sleeping on the first floor.