by Anne Holt
“Or woman.”
“Or woman. Motives positively scream out at us, as far as Carl-Christian is concerned, but I’ve worked long enough here in the police force to know that there are … that all families have hidden secrets. Always. I’m just trying not to be drowned out by the obvious. And I want … I want to know what Sidensvans was doing in Eckersbergs gate on Thursday evening. Only then will our picture of the crime be complete, and the motive possible to establish.”
The Head of CID laughed out loud and slowly brought his hands together.
“You’re even better than they say,” he said, grinning. “Off you go now. Thanks for coming!”
“No trouble,” Hanne mumbled in embarrassment as she left.
Silje Sørensen gave a loud, prolonged yawn. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she wiped them away, smiling apologetically, before attempting once again to concentrate on the documents.
“My little boy’s sleeping so badly these days,” she explained as she read. “Asthma. Last night we needed to use a steam tent and everything. It’s this layer of cold air pollution, it—”
“Mmm …”
Inclining her head, Police Prosecutor Annmari Skar used her fingers to comb her gray-streaked hair.
“It’s actually curious that no one has seen anything,” she said, without lifting her eyes. “We’ve had hundreds of tip-offs in this case, but none of them – not one …”
She flicked rapidly through the documents and stretched out her arm to hold up a sheet of paper.
“I need to get myself glasses,” she murmured. “My arms aren’t long enough any more. Not one of the tip-offs says anything about the comings and goings at Eckersbergs gate five. Extremely conspicuous.”
“Not necessarily,” Silje said, yawning again. “In a city we don’t notice very much. We don’t bother; we don’t keep our eyes open. We satisfy our curiosity about other people’s lives and misfortunes by reading gossip magazines and the tabloids. It’s exactly as if … it seems almost as though terrorizing the intimate lives of celebrities has made us less observant about our own surroundings. Of course, it was unfortunate that the street’s busybody was at bingo on that particular night. She won two kilos of coffee, by the way, and a gift card for the GlasMagasin store. She’s over the moon.” She cracked a fleeting smile, adding: “That’s the sort of thing you remember. Good Lord!”
“That’s exactly what the problem is,” Annmari said in frustration. “In a case like this, we’re overloaded with facts that are totally irrelevant. It becomes like a jigsaw puzzle with far too many pieces. Impossible to fit together.”
“Difficult, anyway.”
A candle sputtered in a red wooden candlestick on the narrow window ledge. It was guttering. Darkness had already descended on Oslo. The windowpanes reflected the flickering light. Suddenly the candle decoration caught fire. Paper holly leaves and red cardboard berries burst into flames. Silje grabbed a half-filled cup of tea and tossed the liquid over the little bonfire, which had already left extensive soot marks on the glass.
“It should have burned itself out,” Annmari said, alarmed, staring at the damp stain creeping down the wall below the window. “ ‘Police Prosecutor sets fire to police headquarters in an attack of Christmas spirit.’ Thanks.”
“These candle decorations are dangerous,” Silje said, trying to wipe the worst of it off with a napkin.
“I know that. I’ll tidy up later. Where did you actually get hold of this?”
She flapped a couple of sheets of paper.
“Preben’s widow, Jennifer. She came home from London with the children on Saturday and said that a will had been submitted to Oslo Probate and Bankruptcy Court. She and the children had been Christmas shopping. So they were away at the time of the murders. She’s completely shattered. Not strange in the least. It’s one thing to be widowed so dramatically and left with three small children. It’s another matter … Erik Henriksen visited her yesterday. The lady’s quite … old-fashioned. That was the expression he used. A ‘home-loving’ woman – wasn’t that what they used to say? In the past?”
“Something like that.”
“She has no education, apart from the equivalent of a high-school diploma and something Erik understood to be some kind of girls’ finishing school for the offspring of upper-class parents. A bit of art history and cookery. The art of setting beautiful tables. On the whole, a lot of art. She’s from Australia, as you’ll recall, from a bourgeois but not especially well-heeled family. I dare say Jennifer is the sort of woman that guys in big business often choose.”
“Yes, well, you’d know something about that,” Annmari said, smiling. “Like your own mother, I suppose.”
Silje ignored her. “Jennifer Calvin Stahlberg could have had ‘mum’ as her professional status. She forced herself to regain her composure when the eldest boy appeared, Erik said. The ten-year-old was actually supposed to be at a friend’s house while his mother was being interviewed, but he had run back home again. Jennifer seemed calm, rational, and showed great concern for the boy, until she had managed to phone the friend’s mother and hand her boy over again. Then she broke down completely. She doesn’t speak Norwegian. She has no real friends in Norway – only acquaintances she’s come into contact with through entertaining for her husband, and the parents of her children’s school friends. She actually has nothing here in this country. At the same time, it’s fifteen years since she moved from Australia, and she and Preben met in Singapore, you know. Both her parents are dead. No siblings.”
“But now, of course, a whole pile of money,” Annmari said, studying the handwritten document. “It smells quite scorched in here. Shall we open a window?”
Without waiting for an answer, she opened the window a crack.
“She’s not exactly the one who gets the money,” Silje corrected her. “But I didn’t know this sort of thing was legal!”
“What’s that? Disinheriting your children?”
“Yes.”
“We ordinary mortals can’t do that, either,” Annmari said. “According to the law, an obligatory share must go to the lineal heirs. Two-thirds of the total estate.”
“Exactly!”
“But only up to a certain limit. One million, if I’m not entirely mistaken. So for you rich folk, we’re talking about peanuts. You can quite simply decide that your children get fobbed off with loose change.”
The draft from the window was uncomfortable. Silje closed it without asking permission. She carefully laid the copy of the will in front of her.
“It’s not actually Jennifer who is the beneficiary. It’s her eldest son. Carl-Christian receives the bare minimum he’s entitled to. Hermine gets the proceeds of shares redeemed to the value of five million. The rest – that is, the entire shipping company, all the properties, cars, and household effects – goes to the eldest grandson, with the exception of a few bits and pieces to his siblings. And our dear Hermann must actually have been far-sighted. If Preben was alive at the time of his parents’ death, he would get everything. If he was already deceased, then the estate should be transferred into some kind of fund, with an administrator who would look after it all until the boy—”
“What’s his name?”
“Hermann. Of course. Preben can’t have been entirely lacking in foresight, either. At the time the boy was born, he hadn’t spoken to his father in years. All the same, he chose the oldest trick in the book. Naming his son after his father. Well, anyway, the boy will take it all over on his twenty-fifth birthday, under a lot of conditions.”
“Such as what?”
“Such as that he must have undertaken an education in economics equivalent to a Masters in business and economics, or higher. That he has an unblemished record. And … that he hasn’t married, and doesn’t have children.”
“Doesn’t have children? That can’t be legal, at least! Talk about ruling the family from beyond the grave!”
The window snapped open by itself, sending an icy blast
into the room.
“It’s warped,” Annmari said, struggling to close it again. “It’s almost impossible to shut it.”
Silje pulled her woolen jacket more tightly around herself.
“That man has ruled the family all these years,” she said, shuddering. “He obviously didn’t intend to give up yet—”
“So, strictly speaking, Carl-Christian doesn’t have anything to gain by this homicide,” Annmari said slowly. “Not a shred of motive.”
They continued to sit there, looking each other in the eye, for some time. Silje noticed that Annmari’s eyes were actually green with brown flecks.
“If he was aware of that,” she said finally. “It’s not certain. The will was signed less than four months ago. The father and younger son have hardly spoken to each other since then.”
“But Jennifer knew,” Annmari said, without relinquishing eye contact. “Jennifer knew about the will that favored her son.”
Silje shook her head energetically.
“No, Annmari. It can’t be her. She was away. With three children.”
“There are killers for hire. Even here in Norway.”
“Heavens above, Annmari!”
Silje slapped her forehead and rolled her eyes.
“She knows nobody! She can’t even speak the language, and she has no circle of friends! She—”
“But she’s not an idiot,” Annmari broke in angrily. “The woman could have obtained help abroad, for all I know!”
“And so she’s ordered someone to kill her husband and parents-in-law, the father of her children and their grandparents! There’s nothing – absolutely nothing – to suggest any conflict, apart from entirely everyday things, between Jennifer and Preben! No infidelity, no quarrel about money, no—”
“We’ve investigated this case for four days, Silje. Four days. We know just about nada about this family.”
“Nada! Do you call this ‘nada’?”
Silje used the palm of her hand to deliver a hard smack to the three tall stacks of document folders on the desk between them. The last one toppled over, and a ring binder and four voluminous folders fell to the floor.
“Sorry,” she spluttered. “But there have to be limits. It just can’t be the case that if one of your close relations falls victim to a crime, you immediately get sucked into the vortex of skepticism and suspicion that we whip up.”
“The problem is more likely the opposite,” Annmari said, unruffled. “I agree with Hanne Wilhelmsen. We’re too restrained. We operate with too few suspects. Often, at least. Don’t you agree?”
Her voice was steady, without a trace of sarcasm. Nevertheless, Silje felt provoked. She could not understand the sudden rage she felt on behalf of Jennifer Calvin Stahlberg. Silje had not even met her. Admittedly Erik had seemed unusually and powerfully moved, following his visit the previous day; and from a purely objective point of view, there was every reason to feel great sympathy for the mother of three now left stranded in a foreign country. All the same, Jennifer was only one of the steadily increasing numbers of people involved in Oslo Police Force’s most sensational homicide case in living memory. Maybe it was the vulnerability of the mother’s position with which Silje identified. Maybe she felt empathy with being different and alone, just as Jennifer was alone in a situation that hardly any of them could attempt to comprehend.
“This is what you’re really angry about, isn’t it?”
Annmari held yesterday’s copies of VG and Dagbladet up at face level. The entire front-page splash in Norway’s major newspapers was a photograph of Jennifer and her children making their way through customs at Gardermoen airport. The woman stared open-mouthed, her eyes red and wide in the camera flash. A dark-haired boy smiled meekly at the photographer, while the youngest, a girl clutching her mother’s hand, looked as if she was crying bitterly. The middle child was almost completely hidden behind his mother. Only a snow-white trainer with loose laces protruded from a dark-blue trouser leg.
“Maybe so,” Silje said, sighing almost inaudibly. “It makes me pretty upset. Why do they do that? Why do we allow that sort of thing? I mean, we’re talking about three children! They’ve just lost their father, and then … I just can’t fathom it. How do they manage it?”
“The new surveillance service,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said, laughing sardonically from the doorway. “The Surveillance Service became the Security Service, and the Security Service is bound hand and foot, muzzled and monitored. The Fourth Estate has taken over. They shrink from nothing. No rules apply to them. They have illegal archives; they bribe, persuade, force, and badger their sources. They scream, kick, and yell if anyone mentions the word ‘control’ to them. Of course they’re protecting freedom of speech, you know. Every time they make a fool of themselves, they run a navel-gazing little debate in their professional journals and call it self-criticism. Then they’re at it again.”
“Hello,” Annmari said.
“Hi. Have you lit a bonfire in here, or what?”
Hanne sniffed the air, her brow furrowed.
“Almost. Just a minor accident.”
“Can you make anything of that will?”
Hanne looked with interest at the plastic folder on top of the bundle closest to her, and continued: “I heard old Hermann had written it himself in pen. Is that right?”
“Looks like it,” Annmari confirmed. “Quite strange, really. He has always surrounded himself with a crowd of lawyers at work, and in connection with the family squabble. But he writes the will himself … all the formal requirements have been fulfilled, at least as far as I can judge. The witnesses are completely unknown to me, but if they really were present when Hermann and Turid signed this … then everything’s in order. But there will certainly be trouble all the same.”
“Trouble? Aren’t wills like that only a question of formalities, then?”
“Not only. Some peculiar conditions are stipulated. With such enormous sums and controversial contents, this will is bound to be challenged. Just as well to be poor, eh!”
Once again Silje felt this unfamiliar annoyance.
In fact she liked Annmari Skar. The Police Prosecutor was honest and trustworthy, and had been long enough in the police force not to score points because she, as a lawyer, was senior to the police officers. Besides, Annmari was one of the few who did not seem particularly preoccupied with Hanne Wilhelmsen. When she heard the young trainees’ admiring references to the Chief Inspector, she shrugged indifferently. She refused to listen to gossip from the older ones in the force, but without making a song and dance about it. She simply stood up and walked out. Annmari Skar was competent, without being brilliant; she was approachable, open, and had gradually become one of the most experienced lawyers at police headquarters. Vice-chair of the civil servants’ professional association, she never flinched from essential disputes, and was respected by all ranks in the colossal curved headquarters building at Grønlandsleiret 44.
But she seemed obsessed with money.
She seldom let a chance go by of dropping a hint about Silje’s financial position. As a rule, her comments were sarcastic and almost always hurtful. As soon as Hanne Wilhelmsen had moved to the Frogner district, she too had become an object of the ceaseless sarcasm, though she did not seem to take any notice of it. But then Hanne Wilhelmsen hardly ever took any notice of anything.
Silje, on the other hand, had had enough.
“Can you just stop all that!” she roared, and felt the blood rush to her head.
“What?” Annmari seemed dumbfounded. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Just as well to be poor, eh!” Silje mimicked in a distorted voice, and continued her outburst: “I’m so tired of this eternal mud-slinging of yours, to do with my money. In the first place, we’re talking about absolutely honest money. What’s more, I don’t spend especially much of it. I live well, that’s true, but I can’t bloody help it if my father is rich and generous! He’s a lovely, decent, and loving father, and I’m ce
rtainly not going to feel ashamed of him. At least not because you want it that way!”
She smacked herself on the thigh – too hard, in fact, for it smarted badly.
“Ouch,” she said automatically.
Hanne chortled, wide-eyed.
“There’s more of a temper in you than I thought!”
“And as for you,” Silje snarled in her direction. “You can just keep your mouth shut. You go about pretending you don’t have a penny to your name. I’ve seen the tax return for that professor woman of yours. You’re an inverted snob, Hanne. Take a look at yourself!”
Two eyes bored into Hanne. She glanced down at her own body. The college sweater with NYU emblazoned on the chest was unwashed. A white bleach stain was obvious on the pale blue of her left shoulder. Her jeans were too tight and were worn white at the knees.
“Okay,” she said, nonplussed. “But look at these!”
She lifted one leg. Her boots were dark-brown embossed leather, the toes and heels reinforced with metal.
“Real silver,” she announced, tapping the floor. “Not cheap.”
Annmari burst out laughing. Silje tried to resist, but her mouth twisted into a diffident smile.
“I’m really sorry,” Annmari said sincerely. “I’d no idea I carried on like that. I didn’t mean it. I’ll get a grip on myself. I promise.”
The sparkle had gone out of Silje. She knew that wicked tongues called her “Little-Hanne” as soon as she was out of earshot. Until now she had taken it as a compliment, but it struck her all at once that the nickname might not have so much to do with her competence. Sulky diatribes over insignificant casual remarks would probably only be grist to the mill, if Annmari were one of the bigmouths. Silje consoled herself that she most likely was not.
“I’m the one who should apologize,” she said sullenly. “But sometimes I get my dander up.”
“How many times do I have to tell you not to bother about what people say,” Hanne said, patting her head in a motherly fashion.
