Beyond the Truth

by Anne Holt

  “Not born with. Bred into.”

  Hanne was curt now, as if she had already grown tired of her own argument. After a brief pause, she continued all the same.

  “In the first place, you have to obtain a gun. An unregistered, illegal, and untraceable gun. Would you know who to contact?”

  “No … I, of course I do know—”

  “You’re in the police, Annmari. You know how, but you would never have succeeded. You’ve no idea how to maneuver in that environment. But Mabelle obviously does, from what I’ve picked up about her background. Hermine has got mixed up in all kinds of shit through her dependency on drugs. Those two women there …”

  She suddenly fell silent, and shook her head.

  “Premeditated homicide is rare, Annmari. You know that just as well as I do. At least the obviously premeditated, the ones planned over a long period of time. They’re virtually absent from our statistics. And we both know why.”

  “Why?” Annmari asked.

  “Because we humans step back from murder when we mull it over. We can do it in the heat of the moment. Good Lord, people kill in the heat of the moment every five days in this country of ours, nowadays. Every five days! Some people commit murder to cover another crime, of course, miserable pedophiles who stand with a withered cock in their hands and it dawns on them that the little girl they have defiled might tell her mummy what has happened.”

  “Now you’re really a bit—”

  “Vulgar? Disgusting? Absolutely. My point is not that an upper-class family with a sprinkling of drug-dependent members and doubtful in-laws are necessarily perpetrators of terrible crimes. I’m just saying that gruesome, premeditated crimes are difficult to perpetrate without that kind of family structure.”

  “Do you mean that, Hanne? Do you really believe that?”

  “Not entirely.”

  Grinning broadly, Hanne looked at her watch.

  “But I do mean it just a little, you know. I have to dash.”

  “Wait—”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, Annmari. Go home. Get some sleep. You look bloody awful. You can’t go into court as exhausted as that.”

  “I’ve to take part in the press conference,” Annmari said. “Thanks for the compliment. Beside that drop-dead-gorgeous Head of CID, I’m going to look like a toilet.”

  “No, you won’t. He looks fairly wrecked as well. We all do. Bye!”

  The heels of her boots clicked on the steps as Hanne rushed down the stairs. She left her scarf behind, like a sad little trail on the blue flooring. She paid no attention to Annmari’s shout, and merely waved as she launched herself at the massive steel exit doors. They closed heavily behind her.

  “How … how did you get in here?”

  Billy T. was surprised rather than angry, in fact. In recent years the security systems in police headquarters had been considerably reinforced. It was inconceivable that Sølvi Jotun, with her appearance, could manage to reach as far as his office without challenge or escort. She stood in the doorway, small, slight, and ravaged. First of all came her cough; Billy T. thought he had heard her before she came into sight. She seemed sicker than before. Her face was distinctly tear-stained, and she gasped for breath as she used the door frame for support. Her hair, thin and tangled, was glued to her skull. A herpes sore bloomed angrily on her top lip. Her fake fur was grimy.

  “You shit! You bloody prick.”

  There was no force in the abuse, other than in the words themselves. She was almost whispering, and Billy T. was scared she was about to kick the bucket. He approached her and tried to help her down into a chair.

  “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me, for fuck’s sake!”

  With astonishing strength, she tore herself free from his grip. Then she tottered over to the chair under her own steam and collapsed like a sack. Every breath wheezed nastily, both inhaling and exhaling. Billy T. shut the door.

  “That’s what I think. And I think you don’t want anybody else to know how big a shit you really are.”

  She was properly sobbing now. Enormous tears ran down her cheeks.

  “What … what is it, Sølvi?”

  Billy T. remained on his feet a couple of meters away from her, totally thrown.

  “You said nothing about Oddvar. You said nothing about Oddvar.”

  Finally she looked up directly at Billy T. It startled him.

  “I haven’t been so unhappy in my whole life,” Sølvi said. “And so damned angry with anybody. Why did you say nothing?”

  Billy T. suddenly understood what she meant. He breathed more easily now, but couldn’t quite bear to look in her direction. Instead he sat in his chair and began to sort the bundles of papers scattered chaotically across the entire surface of his desk.

  “You think you don’t need to give a fuck about people like me,” Sølvi said.

  “No,” Billy T. replied.

  “Yes, you do. You and all these folk in here. You think that people like us don’t have feelings. And then you, Billy T. You, who’re actually okay. As I thought, anyway. Now I know better.”

  He didn’t know what to say. Naturally it had struck him, when he had picked her up from the hospital. He should have told her that Kluten was dead. But he was after something. Something important. For him, and for the case he was working on. He didn’t know, either, whether they were still a couple. It wasn’t his business to tell her. She wasn’t really his concern. Sølvi Jotun was not his responsibility, and he had milked her for all she was worth, without telling her anything about Kluten.

  “I didn’t know,” Billy T. ventured.

  He did not get any further.

  There was not much to fix your gaze on. Billy T.’s office was gray and lacked curtains. There had been many changes of office since he had had an almost homely room, with potted plants that Hanne had gifted him. The children’s drawings that had once hung all over the walls had been stowed away long ago.

  “You didn’t know …?”

  Sølvi spat out the words through her sobs.

  “You knew fine well, Billy T. You knew that Oddvar and I have always been together. You should have said something. Instead I get … Here I am, trailing around the city, and all of a sudden I hear … by chance, from some down-and-out or other.”

  Her sobs became increasingly bitter.

  “And I can’t even work, either. I can’t go whining to my customers, can I?”

  Billy T. had had an inkling. Sølvi must have some way of adding to her income from dealing in guns. She was too small-scale. Besides, she had crashed down to the lowest rung of a junkie’s existence. She supplemented her earnings with blowjobs and spread her skinny thighs to get a meal.

  “I loved Oddvar, you know that! Loved!”

  The word seemed strange coming from her mouth. Billy T. did not want to laugh. At any rate, he did not want to cry. He clutched his breast pocket, an impulse, sudden and unthinking.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the betting slip. “Take this.”

  “Eh?”

  “Take this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Money,” Billy T. said.

  “Money?”

  “Yes, take it. A betting slip, Sølvi. You’ve seen ones like it before.”

  “Horses …”

  Her sobs changed to short gasps. Eventually she leaned forward slightly and squinted at the note.

  “And what did you say it was?”

  “This is a betting slip,” Billy T. said, losing his temper. “Take it!”

  He stood up, skirted around the desk, crouched down beside her, and took hold of her hand. At last he managed to look her in the eye.

  “I’m sorry, really sorry. It was fucking stupid of me not to tell you about Klu … about Oddvar. And I can well understand that you can’t work, the way things are just now. With the social-security offices closed over Christmas and suchlike, then it really must be fucking awful. Take this. It’s is more than a hundred and fifty thousand kroner, Sølvi. It sho
uld keep you away from walking the streets for a while. A bit of a holiday – what do you say?”

  She glanced around. Her body shrank back into her seat. She pulled her hand away from his.

  “Is this some kind of conspiracy or what? Hidden camera?”

  “Who would be interested in tricking you on TV, eh?”

  “I’ve been fucked up all my life,” Sølvi said. “Nothing surprises me any more. I just want to make that clear. And this here …”

  She obviously did not dare to touch the paper. She still cast her eyes around the bare room, glowering. There were no curtains behind which to hide a camera. No two-way mirrors. The cupboard door in the corner was locked.

  “And why are you giving me this?”

  Now her tears were held in check. She used the back of her hand to knead her eyes.

  “Don’t ask. I assure you it’s entirely legal.”

  “But where can somebody like me cash a ticket like this, then? My God, Billy T. Look at me! There’s not a bank employee in this city who won’t blow the whistle and bring that whole gang of yours to the counter to haul me in, if I pull a stunt like that.”

  “You can ask them to phone me,” he said, without thinking. “I’ll give you my cellphone number. If that’s too much trouble, I’ll come and vouch for you.”

  Getting to his feet, he grabbed a sheet of paper from the desk, tore off a corner, and scribbled down the numbers.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Sølvi said.

  “You don’t need to, either. Don’t entirely understand it myself.

  A slender hand was extended to Billy T., closing around the betting slip and the phone number.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, before coughing violently. “Maybe I’ll check into a hotel. A real, proper hotel. With a bathtub and everything.”

  “Don’t use it all up at once.”

  “No, of course not. But you, Billy T. …”

  She stood at the door now, about to leave.

  “I’m still really angry,” she said softly, racked by another cough. “Not saying anything about Oddvar, that was – that was … totally mean.”

  “I know that. I know.”

  “So these here …”

  She pulled Billy T.’s red thermal mitts from her pockets.

  “I don’t fucking want them any more. You’re still a shit. Bye.”

  She flung them on the floor and disappeared. Billy T. stared at them, two bright-red specks on a worn blue linoleum floor. He picked them up and stuffed them into the wastepaper basket.

  Jenny had given them to him for Christmas.

  Hanne shivered in the chilly weather, happy that her taxi trip was over. There was a light in the living room on the third floor, a cozy warmth that made her smile. She wanted to have a bath, and soak for a long time in the tub. With a glass of red wine. Music. She jogged beside the low stone dividing wall.

  “Hanne.”

  A tall man stepped from the shadow beneath the trees by the street lamp on the opposite side of the road.

  “Do you have a minute?’

  Hanne slowed down, feeling her anxiety change into an almost uncontrollable anger so sudden it took her breath away. Quick as a flash, she tried to remember when she had seen him last. It had been many years ago. Certainly six. Possibly more. She did not recall. Did not want to recall.

  “Kåre,” she said dully, and regretted it at once.

  To speak his name was to give him acknowledgment. Recognition; it was to admit that he was someone to her. He never had been, even though he had had the chance for so many years.

  “Hanne,” he said again, stiff and awkward.

  His hand was only just extracted from his coat pocket and quickly thrust back down again, as if on closer reflection he did not find it entirely natural to hold out his hand to his own sister.

  “What do you want?”

  Her voice was sharp, loud: she began to walk.

  “As a matter of fact—”

  Abruptly, she turned to face him.

  “I’m not interested. In talking to you. In whatever you want. Bye.”

  “I must really insist.”

  “You can, if you like. It makes no difference.”

  Once again she tried to leave. She wanted to run, but didn’t; she forced herself to step away, quickly, but she simply walked, and now, at last, she found herself in front of her gate.

  He grabbed her arm.

  “You must talk to me, Hanne. Alexander can’t live with you. He has to come home, and you need to talk to me about this. You understand that very well.”

  His grip on her upper arm was hard, almost painful.

  “Let go of me,” she spluttered.

  “Yes, if you promise to stand still. You must appreciate that you can’t just take a sixteen-year-old into your house without discussing it with the child’s parents. For God’s sake, Hanne, you’re—”

  “I discussed it with you on Christmas Eve. That’s enough for me.”

  He laughed despondently.

  “Discussed it? Are you telling me that phone call was a conversation?”

  “You were told where he was. Let me go.”

  He did not let go, but loosened his grip a little, as if he finally understood that he had no right to force her. She tore herself free.

  “You both threw him out,” she said, rubbing her elbow. “You threw out your own son on Christmas Eve!”

  “Indeed we did not. Of course we didn’t throw him out.”

  He suddenly looked diminished. His shoulders slumped in his expensive coat, and his facial features grew sharp in the overhead light from the street lamp. His eyes disappeared below his heavy forehead.

  “We didn’t throw him out, Hanne. We just had a … we quarreled.”

  “About what?”

  “That’s not really anything to do with you.”

  “You wanted to send your boy to see a psychologist because he’s in love with another boy.”

  “That’s not why, Hanne. Because he’s so … Alexander is a confused soul. He’s so … stubborn. Rebellious. I think he’s unhappy. He keeps to himself too much, and he’s no longer doing so well at school. So, we … Hege and I think he could benefit from talking to a professional person. And this homosexuality business …”

  “Homosexuality business!”

  Hanne had to pull herself together to stop herself from hitting him. Instead she threw her arms up and to the side, and took a step back.

  “There you have it! Where have I heard those words before?”

  She placed her forefinger on her cheek in an exaggeratedly thoughtful pose.

  “Hmm … well, then – yes, that’s it. Now it’s come to me. It was Dad, of course, I do believe. That was exactly what he said to me. Or mostly about me, actually. I can barely remember him ever saying anything to me. Homosexuality business. What the hell is “homosexuality business”, Kåre?”

  Her brother ran his fingers over his eyes. There was something helpless about the gesture, something childish and discouraged; her father had never done anything like that, but Kåre was so like him otherwise, as all three of them were: Hanne, her brother, and Alexander, all carriers of the most dominant genes in the universe, as her mother had once said, and for a moment Hanne thought that Kåre was weeping.

  “Don’t you understand that the boy has to be allowed to choose?” she said, to put an end to the unbearable silence; her brother just stood there, opening and closing his mouth, running his fingers over his eyes, shrinking into his coat. “Alexander has to find his own way. He’s in good health, but he’s a teenager. Being a teenager’s a bit distressing.”

  “And you know that,” he said, pulling himself up to his full height. “You, who have almost never spoken to him. As far as I understand, you’ve hardly been home since he turned up. It’s quite typical of you, I have to say. Expressing yourself with the greatest authority about a boy you’ve only just met. Hege and I can just be discarded, of course. We’ve only known the boy
, looked after him, and loved him for sixteen years. I appreciate that you haven’t exactly changed.”

  “Changed? Have you ever known me?”

  “I was twelve when you were born, Hanne. A twelve-year-old boy. You can hardly hold it against me that I didn’t find a snotty little child much fun. And besides … Have you ever considered that it might not have been only our fault, everything that’s happened? That it wasn’t exclusively Mum and Dad who bear the responsibility for you being an outsider?’

  “I can’t be bothered listening to this.”

  “You’re difficult, Hanne. Difficult and moody. You’ve been like that since the day you were born. I remember when you turned three …”

  His laughter, rasping, desperate, nasty, made her listen, yet again.

  “Mum had baked a lovely cake. Bought you a new dress. It was red, as I recall. A red dress was what she had bought, and I was forced to stay at home. I was fifteen and had to stay at home because of a snotty brat’s birthday. Mum had invited some children from the neighborhood. You spoiled it all.”

  The words seared into her back. This was a story she did not remember, that was not hers. Kåre knew things about Hanne that she had no knowledge of herself. He owned a piece of her, of her life and her story, and she did not want to know any of it.

  “You cut the dress to ribbons,” he continued. “I can still remember the thin strips of red fabric. Mum was in tears. You just sat sulking in a corner, staring at her with those eyes of yours, those eyes—”

  “I was only three,” Hanne said slowly, without turning around. “You’re holding something against me that took place when I was three years old. Incredible.”

  Again that laughter of his, hoarse, almost desperate.

  “I could easily mention other birthdays,” he said. “Your eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth. Just give me a number. I could continue all night long with stories about how you never wanted to be part of us. How you always resisted. You wanted to be different, at any cost. If you didn’t get your own way, you just upped and left. You’re the one who runs away, Hanne. Which was demonstrated most forcefully when Cecilie died.”