Death in Oslo

by Anne Holt

  The wallet could be opened like a small book. The right side was adorned with a gold-coloured metal badge with an eagle on it, spreading its wings over a shield with a star in the middle. It reminded him of the sheriff’s badge he’d got from his father for Christmas when he was eight, and now he was no longer laughing.

  On the left-hand side, in a plastic pocket, was an ID card. It belonged to a man called Jeffrey William Hunter. A good-looking man, judging by the photo. He had short, thick hair and a serious expression in his big eyes.

  The middle-aged man, who had just lost his only remaining parent, was a taxi driver. His shift had long since started, but his car stood idle outside. He had not sent a message to say that he couldn’t work. In fact, he had thought that driving around in town would be just as good as sitting here at home, alone with his grief. Now he was no longer so sure. He examined the painstakingly made badge. He could not for the life of him fathom why his mother was in possession of something like that. The only answer that he could come up with was that she had found it in the forest. Someone must have lost it there.

  There were plenty of Secret Service agents in town right now. He had seen them himself, around Akershus Fort, when there was that official dinner there the other night.

  He studied the unknown man’s face again.

  It was so serious that it almost looked sad.

  The taxi driver suddenly stood up. He left his mother’s belongings lying on the table and grabbed his keys from the hook just inside the front door.

  A Secret Service badge was not something you could send in the post. It might be important. He would drive straight to the police.

  Now.

  XXIII

  ‘You are truly unbelievable,’ Adam Stubo said.

  Gerhard Skrøder was lying more than sitting in his chair. His legs were wide apart and his head was laid back, his eyes fixed on something on the ceiling. The dark bags under his eyes were in stark contrast to his white skin, and made his nose seem even larger. The man whose nickname was the Chancellor had not touched the coffee or the bottle of mineral water that Adam Stubo had given him. ‘I wonder,’ the detective chief inspector continued, pulling his ear, ‘whether you boys actually realise how idiotic that advice actually is. Don’t tip your chair!’

  The legs of the chair crashed to the floor.

  ‘What advice?’ the man asked reluctantly. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the floor. The two had not had any eye contact yet.

  ‘The rubbish that your lawyers feed you about keeping your mouth shut when you’re being questioned by the police. Can’t you see how stupid it is?’

  ‘It’s worked before.’ The man laughed and shrugged without sitting up in the chair. ‘And in any case, I haven’t done anyhing wrong. It’s not illegal to drive around in Norway.’

  ‘There you go!’ Adam chuckled. For the first time he glimpsed something that looked like interest in Gerhard Skrøder’s eyes.

  ‘What the fuck do you mean?’ Skrøder asked and grabbed the bottle of water. He was looking straight at Adam Stubo now.

  ‘You always keep your mouth shut. And then we know you’re guilty. But that’s just a red rag to a bull, you see. We don’t get anything for free from you boys, so we’re even more focused on making sure that we do. And you see . . .’ he leant over the old, worn table that separated them, ‘in cases like this, where you actually think you’ve done nothing illegal, you can’t help yourself. Not in the long run. Let’s see, it took . . .’ he looked up at the clock, ‘twenty-three minutes before you were tempted to speak. Don’t you realise that we broke that stupid code of yours years ago? A person who is innocent always talks. A person who talks is often guilty. A person who is silent is always guilty. I know what strategy I would have chosen, put it that way.’

  Gerhard Skrøder ran a dirty index finger down the ridge of his nose. The nail was black and bitten to the quick. He started tipping his chair again, backwards and forwards. He was more uneasy now, and pulled his cap down over his eyes. Adam reached over for a pad of A4 paper, picked up a felt tip and started to scribble something down without saying a word.

  Gerhard Skrøder had not been difficult to find. He had been enjoying himself with a whore from Lithuania, in a tenement in Grünerløkka. The flat was one of many in the extensive police register of places where criminals hung out. The patrol that had been sent out to find him hit bull’s eye on the third attempt. Only a few hours after he had been identified by Adam on a grainy CCTV recording from a twenty-four-hour petrol station, he was in a cell. He had stewed there for an hour or two and had sworn out loud at the sight of Adam Stubo, when he came to collect him.

  Since then, he had said nothing. Until now.

  Silence was obviously harder to deal with than all Adam’s questions and accusations and references to photographic evidence. Gerhard Skrøder chewed at the remains of his thumbnail. One of his thighs was shaking. He coughed and opened the bottle of water. Adam carried on drawing, a psychedelic pattern of blood-red stripes and stars.

  ‘I’ll wait for my lawyer, that’s for sure,’ Gerhard said eventually and sat up in the chair. ‘And I have the right to know what you’re accusing me of doing. I was just driving around with a couple of people in the car. Since when’s that been illegal, eh?’

  Adam took his time putting the top back on the felt tip and then put it down. He still did not say a word.

  ‘And what the fuck has happened to Ove Rønbeck?’ Gerhard complained, obviously having thrown his original strategy overboard. ‘You’re not allowed to talk to me without my lawyer being present, you know!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Adam said. ‘I am. I can, for example, ask you whether you would like a fresh coffee. You haven’t even touched that one and it’ll be cold by now.’

  Gerhard gave a sullen shake of the head.

  ‘And I can do you another favour.’ Adam stood up and walked along beside the table for a couple of steps, then sat down on the edge, half turned away from Gerhard.

  ‘What’s that?’ muttered the arrestee into his bottle.

  ‘Are you happy for me to do you a favour before your lawyer gets here?’

  ‘Fuck it, Stubo! What the hell are you talking about?’

  Adam sniffed and wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve. It was unexpectedly cold in the room. The air-conditioning must have been put on the wrong setting. Perhaps it had been done on purpose, to expel the heat of so many officers working round the clock in the building. Even now, at half past seven in the evening, when the corridors were normally pretty deserted, with rows and rows of closed rooms, you could hear doors slamming and footsteps, voices and the jangling of keys; as much noise as on a busy Friday morning in June.

  His jacket was hanging over the chair. He slipped down from the table and grabbed it. As he put it on, he smiled and said in a friendly tone: ‘I have never liked you, Gerhard.’

  The man picked at a scab and didn’t answer.

  ‘And perhaps that’s why,’ Adam continued, straightening his jacket, ‘for once, I’m quite happy that you’re keeping your mouth shut.’

  Gerhard played with his cap and opened his mouth to say something. He changed his mind a little too late and the word mutated into a strange grunt before he clenched his teeth. He slouched back in the chair again and vigorously scratched his crotch.

  ‘Very happy.’ Adam nodded in emphasis. He was standing with his back to the arrestee now, as if he was speaking to an imaginary third person. ‘Because I don’t like you. And because you’re behaving in the way that you are, I can just release you.’

  He spun round and made an inviting gesture towards the closed door.

  ‘I can let you go,’ he said. ‘Because the people out there use completely different methods from the ones that I’m allowed to use. Completely different.’

  He laughed, as if the thought of letting Gerhard Skrøder go pleased him greatly.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I think I’ve made up my mi
nd,’ Adam said, again as if he was talking to someone else. ‘Then I don’t have to put up with all this nonsense. I can go home. Call it a day.’ He patted down his jacket, as if to check that he had his wallet and keys with him before leaving. ‘And then I’ll never have to see you again. One crook fewer for the police to waste resources on.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  Gerhard slammed his fist down on the table.

  ‘You said we should wait for your lawyer.’ Adam smiled. ‘So you can sit here and do just that. Only alone. I’ll make sure that his job is simple. You’ll be released when the paperwork is done. A very good evening to you, Gerhard.’

  He walked over to the door, unlocked it and was about to open it.

  ‘Wait. Wait!’

  Adam paused with his hand on the door handle.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Who are you talking about? Who is it who . . . What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Gerhard, come on . . . they call you the Chancellor, don’t they? I would have thought you’d have some idea about international relations with a name like that.’

  ‘Fuck, I . . .’

  A thin layer of sweat had appeared on his pallid face, and finally Gerhard pulled off his cap. His hair was flat and greasy, and a matted lock fell down over his eyes. He tried to blow it away.

  ‘D’you mean the Americans?’ he asked.

  ‘Bingo,’ Adam grinned. ‘Good luck.’

  He pressed down the door handle.

  ‘Wait. Wait a moment, Stubo! The Americans don’t bloody well have any authority to—’

  Adam burst out laughing. He threw back his head and roared. The bare walls in the sterile room made the laughter sound sharp and hard.

  ‘Americans? Authority? The Americans!’

  He was laughing so hard that he could scarcely speak. He let go of the door handle and clutched his stomach, shook his head and hiccuped.

  The arrestee sat watching, with his mouth open. He had a long history with the police and had lost count of the number of times he had been questioned by some idiot pig or other. But he had never experienced anything like this before. His pulse started racing. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears, and his throat tightened. He saw red specks in front of his eyes. He twisted his cap in his hands. When Adam Stubo had to put his hand against the wall to stop himself from collapsing with laughter, Gerhard Skrøder frantically rummaged in his pocket for his inhaler. It was the only thing he had been allowed to keep when he was searched and his belongings were confiscated. He put it to his mouth. His hands were shaking.

  ‘It’s a long time since I’ve enjoyed myself so much,’ Adam gasped and wiped his eyes.

  ‘But what could the Americans do to me?’ Gerhard Skrøder asked in a feeble voice, high as that of a pubescent boy. ‘We’re in Norway . . .’

  He tried to stuff the inhaler back in his pocket, but missed. It fell on the floor and he bent down to pick it up. When he straightened up, Adam Stubo was standing in front of him, fists firmly planted on the table, with his face only ten centimetres from Gerhard’s. His paunch and his unusually broad shoulders made the policeman look like a fair-haired gorilla, and there was not even a hint of humour in his pale blue eyes.

  ‘You think you’re king of the world,’ Adam snarled. ‘You think you’re a star out there. You con yourself into believing that you’re one of the big boys, because you move on the periphery of the Russian mafia. You think you can look after yourself. You think that you’re hard enough to deal with hardboiled Albanian criminals and other Balkan bastards. Forget it! It’s now . . . It’s now . . .’ He raised a finger and stuck it up right under Skrøder’s nose. His voice was much louder. ‘It’s now that you’ll discover that you’re small fry. If you for one moment believe that the Americans will sit still and watch us release a shit like you, you are so fucking wrong. Every day, several times a day, we inform them about where we are in the investigation. They know that you’re here right now. They know what you’ve done, and they will—’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything,’ Gerhard Skrøder protested. He was wheezing and obviously found it difficult to speak. ‘I . . . only . . .’

  ‘Breathe deeply,’ Adam said briskly. ‘Take more of your medicine.’

  He pulled back a touch and lowered his finger.

  ‘I want to know everything,’ he said while the arrestee inhaled from the round blue receptacle. ‘I want to know who gave you the job. When, where and how. I want to know how much you got paid, where the money is now, who else you’ve talked to in connection with the job. I want names and descriptions. Everything.’

  ‘They won’t send me to Guantomo?’ gasped Gerhard.

  ‘Guantánamo,’ Adam corrected him and had to bite his lip hard to stop himself laughing, and this time it would be real. ‘Who knows? Who knows these days? They’ve lost their president, Gerhard. And in practice, they view you as a . . . terrorist.’

  Adam could have sworn that Gerhard’s pupils dilated. For a moment he thought that his arrestee had stopped breathing. But then he gulped and gasped in deep breaths of air. He wiped his forehead again and again with the back of his hand, as if he thought some fateful word was written there in big letters.

  ‘Terrorist,’ Adam repeated and smacked his lips. ‘Not a particularly nice label to have in the US.’

  ‘I’ll talk,’ Gerhard stuttered. ‘I’ll tell you everything. But then I can stay here. I can stay here, can’t I? With you lot?’

  ‘Of course,’ Adam said in a friendly voice and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘We look after our own, you know. As long as they cooperate. We’ll take a break now, though.’

  The clock on the wall said that it was thirty-nine minutes to eight.

  ‘Until eight,’ he said and smiled again. ‘I’m sure your lawyer will be here by then, so we can talk without any fuss. OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ mumbled Gerhard Skrøder, who was breathing easier now. ‘Fine. But I’ll be kept here, won’t I? At the station?’

  Adam nodded, opened the door and left the room.

  He shut the door slowly behind him.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Bastesen, who was leaning against the wall, reading a file that he closed quickly when Adam appeared. ‘Same old routine? He said nothing?’

  ‘Yep,’ Adam replied. ‘But he’s ready to sing now. We’ll hear it all at eight o’clock.’

  Bastesen chuckled and punched the air in a gesture of victory.

  ‘You’re the best, Adam. You really are the best.’

  ‘Apparently I am,’ Adam muttered. ‘At acting, at least. But now this Oscar winner needs some food.’

  And as he disappeared down the corridor to find something to eat, he didn’t hear the ripple of applause as the news spread that Gerhard Skrøder had cracked.

  Johanne still hadn’t phoned.

  XXIV

  The woman now hobbling down the long corridor in the cellar, swearing and muttering under her breath, jangling her keys to keep ghosts at bay, had once been Oslo’s oldest lady of the night. She was called Hairymary back then, and had miraculously managed to keep herself alive for more than half a century.

  ‘May all the good forces that be protect me,’ she muttered, dragging her bad leg behind her. She had to go right to the bottom of the endless corridor. ‘And all that is devilry be gone. Damn and doggy-do.’

  From the moment that she was born on the back of a truck in war-torn Finnmark, one night in January 1945, Hairymary had defied Fate’s frequent and repeated attempts to break her. She had no parents, and had never settled with any of the foster families she was forced into. After a couple of years in a children’s home, she ran away to Oslo to fend for herself. She was twelve years old. With no education, the literacy of a six-year-old and an appearance that would frighten most, her career was a given. She had borne four children – a hazard of the job – and they had all been taken from her at birth.

  But at the turn of the century, fortune
had smiled on Hairymary for the first time.

  She met Hanne Wilhelmsen.

  Hairymary had been the key witness in a murder case, and for reasons that neither of them could later explain, she moved in with the detective inspector. She had not left the flat since. She started to use her real name and became a hard-working housekeeper and cook. And she wanted only three things in return: methadone, a clean bed and a pouch of tobacco every week. Nothing more, nothing less – until Nefis and Hanne had a daughter. Mary then stubbed out her last cigarette and demanded to have a stock of business cards instead of tobacco. They were gold cardboard, with napped edges, and they said:

  Mary Olsen, Governess

  She had chosen the font herself. No telephone number, no address. She didn’t need them either, as she never went out and never had visitors. The pile of business cards lay on her dressing table, and every evening she would pick up the top one, kiss it lightly and then close her eyes with the card pressed to her heart and say her evening prayer: ‘Thank you, God in Heaven. Thank you for Hanne and Nefis and my little princess, Ida. Someone has use for me. Thank you for that. Good night, God.’

  Then she would sleep soundly for eight hours, always.

  Mary was almost at the right storeroom now. She had the key ready.

  ‘Load of rubbish, eh,’ she told herself. ‘You’re an old bag, frightened of a stupid cellar, eh! Pathetic!’

  She swung her thin arm out, as if to brush away her fear.

  ‘Now just you get into that storeroom,’ she said in a shrill voice. ‘And get out those duvets and things for Johanne. There’s nothing dangerous in there, is there, eh? Jesus and Joseph, Mary! You’ve seen worse things in your life than what you might see in there.’

  She finally found the keyhole.

  ‘Has to be posh,’ Mary said and opened the door. ‘Couldn’t be just one of them ordinary storerooms here in the West End, could it! Oh no . . .’

  She fumbled for the light switch.

  ‘Here they’ve got to have real rooms with proper doors and walls and things. None of that chicken wire and padlocks stuff here, no.’