Beyond the Truth

by Anne Holt

  Then he had given Erik an apologetic look, as if washing his hands of having to contribute to the noise and fuss to follow, and the roughly handled preliminary procedure that a case like this would be subject to, the moment a high-profile criminal lawyer got his claws into it.

  “Our relationship was absolutely fine, I’m telling you!”

  Now Mabelle was playing discouraged. She smacked her forehead and rolled her eyes dramatically, before suddenly switching to logical argument.

  “I mean, we all have our family quarrels, don’t we? Our disputes and disagreements. With our parents and our parents-in-law. That doesn’t mean that we want them dead, does it?”

  All of a sudden she burst into tears, and once again fixed her eyes on Erik’s: Mabelle turned into a hurt child, unfairly treated.

  “I don’t understand any of it,” she sobbed. “I just don’t understand how this could happen.”

  Impatient, Erik threw his pen down on the desk.

  “Listen to me,” he said, trying to appear relaxed. “This is going nowhere. You haven’t answered anything I’ve asked you. All you say is just disconnected …”

  Drivel, he thought, but checked himself just in time.

  “… fragments of something that bears no resemblance to an explanation. I suggest that we—”

  “We’ll start over again,” Mabelle’s lawyer said firmly.

  He leaned toward his client and laid a reassuring hand on hers.

  “Mabelle, this is something you have to go through. The police officer is entirely correct. You don’t have a duty to say anything. However, it’s my firm conviction that it will benefit your case if you give a statement, and be a little more … attentive and focused, you might say. Now you and I will have a little chat without …”

  He nodded benevolently toward Erik.

  “… Inspector Henriksen here. Could I have a few minutes alone with my client, do you think?”

  Again that smile – almost sympathetic – to Erik, who had already stood up.

  “Of course,” he replied as he left the room.

  Not a word about Mabelle going to wait for a new lawyer, it crossed his mind as he closed the door behind him. She wanted an audience, now as always. Erik had already understood that much. Mabelle had no intention of returning to a foul, deaf cell. If only she could weep, threaten, and beg for long enough, everyone would understand that it was hair-raisingly unreasonable to keep her locked up. Mabelle Stahlberg seemed far from stupid. Probably she had planned to stay silent. It was her self-absorption that ruined this for her, the selfsame egocentricity that had helped her earlier, in situations in which it had been advantageous to be quick-witted, always to the fore, first in line. Reserve was quite simply a strategy she had not mastered.

  Mabelle wants to go home, Erik thought, and so she was going to make a statement at an early stage in the proceedings.

  “Is everything going well?”

  Annmari placed a hand on his shoulder, and he gave a start.

  “Yes,” Erik said. “I think in fact we’re having a bit of luck here. Her lawyer actually seems to be going after …”

  He searched for a word, but couldn’t find the right one.

  “The truth?” Annmari suggested.

  “Exactly,” Erik said in surprise. “But he’ll be replaced shortly.”

  “You’ll have to strike while the iron’s hot, then.”

  She gave him another encouraging pat on the back and went off to find a settee to sleep on. Even if only to snatch forty winks.

  They had already taken three breaks. Carl-Christian had at least begun to take something to drink. It had loosened his tongue a little. The account he gave was disjointed, brief, and so obviously fallacious that Hanne felt an increasingly intense unease at the man’s refusal to permit the assistance of a lawyer.

  “This document,” she said dispiritedly, placing a copy of the disputed letter in front of him for the third time, “has been demonstrably falsified, then. Do you have no opinion about who might have done this?”

  “No.”

  “Did you receive it in the mail?”

  “Probably.”

  “Have you kept the envelope?”

  “No. People don’t usually do that.”

  “But you have received it then, since you were the one who presented it to the court?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you didn’t write it yourself?”

  “No. Mother confirmed that it is genuine. She remembered signing it.”

  “Carl-Christian Stahlberg,” Hanne said, emphasizing each and every syllable, “you see, we have the word of two handwriting experts that neither of your parents signed this letter.”

  “Mother confirmed that it’s genuine.”

  “But then she can’t have been telling the truth. I think she was trying to protect you.”

  “Me? I had taken her to court.”

  “Yes, on paper. But really this conflict was between you and your father. I honestly think she felt a great degree of discomfort about it all. Sorrow, maybe. For sure. That the people she loved most could not get along. I think that …”

  She paused. She had to concentrate intently in order not to disclose her growing irritation.

  “No one will ever know why your mother chose to lie about this matter. But it’s pretty obvious to imagine that she – when she hadn’t been able to stop the escalating conflict between you and Hermann – at the very least wanted to save you from being charged with a crime.”

  “A crime?”

  At last he looked up. His complexion was pale, but tiny patches of red had formed over his cheekbones.

  “It’s a crime to falsify documents, Stahlberg.”

  “But it’s not an official document! After all, it’s only a letter! A lousy little letter!”

  “The minute you present such a letter to a judge and claim that it is genuine, in bad faith, you commit a crime. A man in your position and with your education should both know and appreciate that.”

  “I’ve no idea who did it. Mother said it was genuine. I believed her.”

  Hanne tried to recall whether she had ever questioned a detainee who lied more openly than this. Carl-Christian Stahlberg looked down, to the side, stuttered, mumbled, flushed, and rubbed his feet against the chair leg: he looked like a stubborn, willful ten-year-old, caught red-handed stealing apples, who subsequently claimed that a doppelgänger must have raided the neighbor’s garden.

  “I know you’re lying,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said gently. “And I’ve never ever said that to anyone in an interview before. Just so you know that. Interesting, actually.”

  She stood up, stretching her arms and legs. Slowly, she walked around the interview room and flexed her fingers. The clicking sound was nerve-racking, so she took another tour of the room. Finally she resumed her seat and yanked off her boots.

  “I never usually do that, either,” she said, placing them neatly side-by-side. “In fact, they’re so difficult to pull back on. But I realize we’re going to sit here for a long time. A very long time. And there’s something you should know before we go any further …”

  All of a sudden she switched off the tape recorder and leaned forward. Carl-Christian Stahlberg seemed more afraid now and drew back to the wall, reacting strongly when Hanne pushed the desk after him, so that he was sitting trapped between the desk and the wall.

  “That’s uncomfortable,” he muttered, trying to push it away.

  “In this entire building,” Hanne whispered, finding it impossible to catch his eye, “there’s only one person who can in any way envisage the possibility that you haven’t done what you’re charged with. One person, Stahlberg. Me! All the others – and I really mean all the others – are convinced that you’re the villain of this piece. I, on the other hand …”

  Suddenly she pulled the desk back toward her again. Nevertheless, he remained sitting close to the wall, stiff and motionless, his gaze resting on her navel, as she continued.
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br />   “I think that other answers are feasible. In fact, I have a certain … experience that there can be a considerable distance between planning evil deeds and going through with them. I actually know, just as you do …”

  His gaze was wandering now. He raised his head slowly, and when his eyes met hers for the first time, it was sheer terror that she saw in his large pupils. The man was scared out of his wits.

  “Just like you,” Hanne said, “I know what it’s like to want your father in hell. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you speed him on his way.”

  A small tear spilled from his left eye. The teardrop trickled by fits and starts down his cheek, before gathering momentum and turning into a little damp trail at the corner of his mouth.

  “If I were you, I’d make use of the opportunity,” Hanne said. “The one you have here and now. You’re telling such fucking lies that a young girl at elementary school would have exposed you. The rest of the gang out here …”

  Her hand swept toward the door.

  “They subscribe to the strange belief that whoever lies about one thing is lying about everything. I, on the other hand, know that not to be the case. Now I’m going to switch on the tape recorder again, and then we’ll start all over. It’s up to you how that goes.”

  Then she started the tape again.

  “How long is it since you heard from Hermine?” she began.

  “It simply can’t be true! My God, that girl gets up to a lot of strange things, but this – what in heaven’s name has she done?”

  Erik Henriksen let Mabelle roar and rage without interruption. He had to focus to avoid finding the whole situation downright entertaining. It crossed his mind that it was like being at the theater: a cabaret in which Mabelle played all the roles. She was quite good at it, too. Truly splendid in the more feminine parts, when she appealed to his protective male instinct and played on her appearance, which, despite all the lies she was dishing out, he found increasingly attractive. They had been sitting in the cramped, stuffy room for more than four hours now. He was beginning to feel weary, and Huse the lawyer had eventually been forced to take off his suit jacket and loosen his tie a notch. Mabelle, however, seemed unaffected. Her hair was still light and luxuriant, newly washed. Her make-up looked as if it were a permanent part of her face. On a couple of occasions she had applied fresh lipstick, turning away discreetly, with no mirror, precise and perfect each time.

  Erik opened his mouth to interrupt the vociferous outburst.

  “Wait,” she said, on the brink of tears. “Hear me out! Hermine’s hopeless! She must be the one who told you this. It’s not true! And how did you get hold of her? Has she been hauled in?”

  Only her speech slipped here and there, divulging an upbringing far from shipping companies and filthy rich in-laws.

  Erik did not answer.

  “So, you have absolutely no knowledge of Hermine buying a handgun on the illegal market in November?” he asked instead.

  “No, I’m telling you! My God, a handgun? What on earth would she want with a handgun? And if that were the case, how would I have anything to do with it? I don’t even know what a handgun is! Is it a pistol or something like that? What is Hermine saying?”

  “I just want to have this crystal clear: you have never heard or seen, or in any way known about, anything to indicate that your sister-in-law Hermine Stahlberg has obtained an illegal gun?”

  “No!”

  “But Carl-Christian knows about guns.”

  “Carl-Christian?”

  “Yes.”

  “No – well, I suppose so, if you mean all that stuff about the shooting club. That’s such a long time ago. Word of honor! He didn’t think that was fun any longer. He wasn’t any good, either. Who is it that’s mixed us up in this dreadful story?”

  Mabelle began to cry. Quiet, extravagant weeping; weeping for dead children and irreparable catastrophes. Erik was impressed. For a second or two he felt grudging sympathy for this little creature. His hand rose to stroke her hair.

  Abruptly, he pulled it back as Huse got to his feet and said: “I think we’ll draw a line now. My client needs another lawyer. I can’t allow any further questioning until this situation is regularized.”

  “Okay,” Erik Henriksen said, rattled. “You’re probably right.”

  Mabelle finally looked up. She gave a couple of sobs, wiped her tears and mumbled something incomprehensible as she blew her nose into a handkerchief handed her by her lawyer.

  “Hermine tells lies all the time,” Erik heard her yell as she was escorted back to the custody suite.

  Hanne could not shake off the feeling of melancholy, a dull pressure in her diaphragm that robbed her of her appetite and threatened to make her burst into tears for no reason. Anyway, there was no cause that she could recognize. Once again, her father’s death impinged on her thoughts. That could not be what was niggling her. Not in that way. These past two days she had mostly felt a resigned sense of satisfaction that William Wilhelmsen no longer existed. Hours could pass between each occasion she thought of him. It was as if Alexander’s intrusion into her life was a final end to what remnants there must have been of sorrow over relationships that could never be repaired. Alexander and Hanne had hardly spoken to each other since he had appeared on Christmas Eve, thinly clad and disowned. All the same, she knew that she was the one he had come to, and it was to be with her that he had settled down in Kruses gate. He had stayed up until she was safely home each night. No matter how early she got up to go to work, he came padding through to the kitchen wearing an old sweater and tracksuit trousers; they drank coffee in silence and all he asked was when she would be home again. They secretly watched each other, as if they did not entirely know whether their kinship was something good, or maybe instead something that would destroy everything.

  Hanne touched her stomach, unable to understand her own state of mind.

  “Not feeling too good?” Silje asked, knocking unnecessarily on the door frame. “How did the interview go?”

  “Come in. Fine. Or … badly, in fact. It depends what point of view you adopt. The guy’s lying. That much is clear. Of course he knows nothing about the gun. Hermine has been on a bender, he says. That’s probably true, as far as it goes, but he got himself completely mixed up and lost the thread, when I asked where he thought Hermine might be now. First of all he hadn’t spoken to her since he visited her in hospital. When I hinted that, naturally, we would check his phone calls over the past few days, he suddenly remembered that he had spoken to her on the day before Christmas Eve. I said I found it remarkable that he didn’t know where his sister was on Christmas Eve, since they had just lost their parents and suchlike, and then he went silent on me. So if the aim of this interview was …” she rubbed her face with both hands before finishing: “… to get the man to talk himself into a remand order, it was successful. But—”

  “That’s never Hanne Wilhelmsen’s aim,” Silje said. “She just wants to discover the truth, doesn’t she?”

  She sat down and took a cigarette from a pack of ten.

  “Just for the moment with all this stress,” she whispered. “Do you mind?”

  “By all means. Just before I succumb myself. By the way, have you been in here since the crack of dawn?”

  “Here? No. Why do you ask?”

  “Nothing,” Hanne mumbled. “It’s just … every morning when I arrive, it seems as if someone’s been here.”

  “Well, Hanne. That happens all the time! People collect documents and leave messages and … your door is never locked, is it? Something, as far as I remember, that you got dog’s abuse for from the Superintendent just last week.”

  “Forget it. Any news of Hermine?”

  “No. We’ve been in her apartment, but there’s nothing there to give any pointer to where she might be. Admittedly we haven’t managed to search it properly as yet, we’ll do that tomorrow, but anyway there are signs that suggest she hasn’t gone away anywhere. Her passport is lying
in a drawer, and all her toiletries are on the bathroom shelf.”

  “I’m worried,” Hanne said.

  “You’re always worried.”

  “This case really bothers me. I sort of haven’t … it’s as if I’m getting – really sick. Queasy.”

  “Well, it’s not particularly pleasant to think of four people being liquidated like that. Enough to make you queasy, I’m sure.”

  “You say four. But really we’re only talking about three.”

  Suddenly she leaned forward to the cigarettes. She pulled one out and sat fiddling with it.

  “It’s exactly as if everyone has forgotten poor old Sidensvans,” she said, momentarily holding the cigarette right underneath her nose. “It’s as if he was of no consequence. As if his death is less shocking than the Stahlbergs’. Just because he was a peculiar guy who had neither money nor power. I find it provocative, in fact. In addition to that, I really believe …”

  She resolutely grabbed Silje’s lighter and lit the cigarette.

  “… that it’s a serious slip-up in this investigation not to clarify what he was doing there. In Eckersbergs gate. They were expecting him, that seems clear. Four glasses on the table. Cakes and champagne at the ready. They may have been about to celebrate something.”

  She reclined in her chair and blew three perfect smoke rings at the ceiling.

  “A smoke is always good,” she said, smiling. “Always. Don’t you feel curious, Silje?”

  “About Sidensvans?”