by Anne Holt
The gray-blue veil descended over his eyes. Hanne dried her hands on her trousers. She clasped them and supported her elbows on her knees as she craned forward.
“This is extremely important, Backe. I’d really like you to answer my questions.”
He stared at her, but she was still doubtful as to whether he actually saw her.
“You had a case,” she said tentatively. “You had several – I’ve come across this here …”
She put her right hand under her jacket and flicked through the pages.
“This one,” she said softly as she skirted around the table.
Backe fumbled with his glass, sloshing the liquid, and was left rubbing the armrest with his finger in rhythmic circles. Finally he looked up and grabbed the sheets of paper.
“Unn would have been devastated,” he said quietly. He was right about that.
“Who?” Hanne said.
“I drank too much. I always drank too much.”
As if to underscore his own point, he emptied half the glass in one swallow.
“Unn made allowances for me. She always tried to get me to stop. But it was so … She wouldn’t have put up with this. You understand …”
His face had changed and a sense of calm had settled over his features.
“Drinking is expensive,” he said with a little cough. “I let myself be persuaded to take the money. I regretted it, of course. Regretted it terribly. Wanted to give it back. Wanted to blow the whistle. But he was right. It would have been the death of Unn. Yes, yes, that much is true.”
His gaze slid over the pages. Hanne was unsure whether he was really reading. She crouched down to get a better view of him and he flinched, as if he had only now discovered that she was there.
“But Unn’s not here any more,” he said.
“This is so important,” Hanne whispered, afraid to frighten him, afraid he might retreat again into his failing memory. “What was it that happened?”
“The boy was only eighteen. A good family, you know. And good families in Bergen …”
Now he was laughing. Hanne was struck by how beautiful his voice became, deep and melodious.
“… are better than any others, you know! Drunk-driving. Drove into a lamppost. A trivial affair.”
The rest of his drink went down the hatch.
“But the case definitely shouldn’t have been dropped. He was new, so first of all I tried to do the right thing. I sent it back and said there must have been a mistake. But he didn’t back down.”
Befuddled, he glanced down into the empty glass.
“I just poured some more a minute ago,” he said, his slurring more obvious now.
“What happened?” Hanne asked.
“He still wouldn’t do anything and said the case should be dropped. Typical rich folk, getting off more easily. Just like those …”
He stared fiercely at the wall dividing his apartment from the Stahlbergs’.
“… fucking snobs in there. Thinking they’re better than …”
Backe was becoming genuinely agitated. Spittle sprayed as he spoke and he flung out his right arm.
“And my parents-in-law,” he roared. “I was never good enough for them. For Unn!”
His spouse’s name made him slump back again, exhausted, his breathing labored. He inspected the glass once more, indicating his intention to stand up. Hanne pressed her hand gently on his chest.
“Wait a minute,” she said in a friendly tone. “I’ll get you a refill afterwards. Who told you it would be the death of Unn?”
“It wasn’t really so very much money,” he said as if he had not heard her. “But when I threatened to go further up the ranks, he began to make threats. When that didn’t help either, he burst into tears. Tears! Huh! A grown man—”
“Who?” Hanne asked.
“You can see it for yourself. Our names are there. He had already accepted the money. I got half. I accepted half of it. I accepted …”
His tears spilled over.
“A grown man,” he mumbled. “A grown man sniveling like a child.”
Hanne took his glass. When she returned with more liquor, he had already started talking.
“Of course I understood this wasn’t the first time. But he promised it would be the last. I accepted the money. Twenty-five thousand kroner, that’s what I got. Then I quit. The shame … the shame has never let up. It never ended. An insurance consultant. That’s what I am. Do you think they’re dying?”
He was looking at her now, straight in the eye, a confused gaze that made her want to smooth his hair with her hand and pat him on the cheek. Instead she asked: “Who?”
“The pelargoniums. I’ve tried to water them. Maybe they got too much. Unn was the one who attended to that kind of thing. Well, well.”
Slowly he subsided back into the chair. The clock struck five times, a ragged chime, the workings hiccupping violently. The strong smell of spilt liquor stung her nostrils. Cautiously she loosened his grip on the documents, case papers from an obviously unlawfully-dropped case from Bergen in 1984. She placed them with the three other case files, cases shelved just as hair-raisingly, despite knowledge of the perpetrators and the existence of sufficient evidence. None of them was particularly serious: a couple of cases of drunk-driving, an excess speed violation, and an attack on a taxi driver. Cases that could be made to disappear, that could easily be stamped and archived. They had lain there in the vast archives, unread and unseen, shielded by Backe’s shame, guilt, and love for his wife, until they had surfaced in the course of Knut Sidensvans’s research into crime in major Norwegian cities eighteen years later.
“Do you think she’ll forgive me?” Backe asked under his breath.
Hanne stuffed the papers in the waistband of her trousers and pulled on her jacket. She turned around when she reached the door. The decrepit man seemed so small in that spacious living room, so out of place, as if he had just dropped in accidentally and inappropriately. He raised his glass to his mouth and drank.
“I’m convinced of that,” she said, nodding. “She forgave you a long time ago.”
“Only if …” Hermine whispered, struggling to cough.
Her lungs lacked sufficient strength and her diaphragm muscles let her down. When she continued speaking, Hanne Wilhelmsen could hear the mucus vibrate on her vocal cords.
“Only if you promise me that’s why you’re here.”
“I swear,” Hanne said, raising her hand slightly aloft, as if contemplating taking a sacred oath.
The doctor stared doubtfully from the patient to the Chief Inspector.
“I’m still not sure,” she said. “And to tell the truth, this is the first time I’ve ever been called on by a police officer acting alone.”
“Chief Inspector,” Hanne corrected her, without looking at her. “And now you’ve examined my police ID so thoroughly that it’ll soon disintegrate. Besides, I assume you’re not exactly used to being overrun with police officers. With all due respect, of course. I don’t mean to be difficult, Dr. Farmen. But this is incredibly important.”
“Please,” Hermine said, sucking water through a straw. “She’s said it won’t take very long.”
The doctor still hesitated. Stroking her patient’s forehead, she studied her eyes and checked the instruments by the headboard with deft, neat hands. She seemed genuinely concerned. Once again she inspected Hanne, who immediately felt nonplussed about the coffee stain on the front of her sweater.
“It’s important,” Hermine said. “I really must talk to her.”
“Half an hour is all you’re getting,” the doctor declared. “Thirty minutes, and not a second more.”
At last they were alone. Hanne glanced at the door. Her bladder was so full that she found it difficult to stand still. Even though the room was equipped with its own bathroom, she did not dare to make use of it. She scarcely dared to pull the chair by the window closer to the bed.
“You’re quite sure,” she asked softly as sh
e sat down, “that this is okay?”
“You say you believe we’re innocent. All of us: CC, Mabelle, and me.”
Hermine lifted her hand and moved it halfway toward Hanne’s. Then, feebly, she let it fall, as if she no longer possessed the energy to put her trust in anything.
“I’m absolutely certain,” Hanne said. “Whether I can manage to convince the others is partly up to you.”
“I was so spaced out. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“When?”
“When it all happened. When I went to …”
Once again she struggled to cough.
“Here,” Hanne said, offering her water from a glass with a straw. “I think I’ll just ask you a few questions. That will save time. The first thing I need to know is whether you were in Eckersbergs gate on Thursday December the nineteenth. Last Thursday.”
“Yes. No. I mean, I went there, but something happened. I didn’t go in. I mean, I never went into my mother and father’s house, I …”
Hermine closed her eyes. She seemed so tiny in the massive hospital bed. Her left eye, blue and swollen, was almost glued shut and her lips were cracked, with dried blood in the corners.
“Let’s start at the beginning, Hermine. So you had intended to visit your parents.”
“Yes.”
“Did you have a gun with you?”
Hermine nodded timidly, grimacing as if it were painful to move her neck.
“A pistol,” she groaned. “A pistol with a silencer.”
“Why didn’t you go in, Hermine?”
“It was kept in an apartment that CC and Mabelle have, in Kampen. It was lying there inside a safe.”
“I’d like to know what happened when you got there.”
“The pistol belonged to CC and Mabelle. I’d bought a gun for them, since—”
Tears spilled from her injured eye. Her frail ribcage heaved underneath the quilt, rapidly, and a silent sob made it difficult for her to speak.
“Relax, Hermine. Try to relax. Everything will be fine now, if only you can manage to tell me your story. Do try.”
“I was just so livid. So unbelievably livid. Mother phoned me that afternoon and said that Father was going to change everything. That all the agreements we had made, all the promises, all … he didn’t give a shit about any of it. Mother seemed sorry, as if she didn’t really want to … That’s what Mother was like. Pathetic. She always tried to smooth things over. She let Father decide. Everything. He ruled us. And Mother accepted it. But now she seemed really sad. She … Mother most likely took this whole quarrel terribly to heart. Between Father and CC. But did she do anything? Huh!”
A fit of coughing ensued. Hanne tried to help her. She took hold around Hermine’s back, feeling her shoulder blades, sharp and skinny, against her arm: she lifted her up and moved her forward in the bed.
“It’s not the cough itself that’s so awful,” Hermine said, when Hanne lowered her again on to the pillows. “The problem is that I’ve such a pain in my gut.”
“Why didn’t you go inside, Hermine?”
“I think … at least now I think in fact that Mother wanted me to come. She didn’t say that right out, but why would she actually phone and tell me about this meeting if … Even though Father and I have had dreadful arguments in recent months, it’s as if I’m the one who …”
Her tentative smile made a deep crack on her bottom lip start to bleed.
“I’ve always been the bridge-builder. The little apple of Daddy’s eye, in point of fact. At least that’s how it’s always looked to the others.”
Her smile developed into an ironic grin.
“Maybe Mother thought I could prevent it all. A lawyer was going to come with papers, to complete the transfer of the shipping company to Preben. Father was fed up with the whole argument with CC, Mother said. He would not allow himself to be threatened any longer. He had so much on CC that he no longer believed the court actions would go ahead. He had hired a new lawyer, she told me. Someone who was not linked to the shipping company at all. Father was furious with his regular lawyers, and thought they paid too much attention to CC’s interests in all of this. He felt they concerned themselves too much with Carl-Christian. They were planning almost to have a party, or at least that’s the impression I got. That awful evening. Mother seemed quite scared, in fact. She was so …”
Now the tears were flowing from both eyes and her mouth was puckered tight again, as if to hold back the tears.
“I was just so incredibly spaced out, and so bloody tired of it all. Tired of Father, tired of all his dodges, of him always using money and inheritance to keep all of us down, in our place, where he wanted us. I was sick and tired of Mother always making these sorts of secret phone calls to me, as if I was the one who should take responsibility for preventing him from destroying the family. He wrote a will earlier in the year; it must have been in August. Or September. Mother told me about it. He had written it himself, she said, because he was fed up with these company lawyers who made such a fuss all the time about what was fairest for CC. Mother said that CC was squeezed out entirely. I’ve never seen the will and didn’t want to mention it to CC or Mabelle. It was so awkward; it was so … fucking horrendous. Father had disinherited him, no less. That was when I began to devise this plan about the photographs. The kind of pictures that … I arranged some quite …”
Her grip tightened on the quilt cover and her knuckles whitened. Her whole body seemed tense and Hanne began to worry.
“Relax,” she whispered. “There’s only the two of us here. Everything will be fine now.”
“That no one ever stopped him,” Hermine whispered.
“Your father?”
“Alfred. That no one stopped him. I was only ten when it started.”
Hanne loosened Hermine’s stiff fingers one by one and forced her hand into her own.
“It was as though it didn’t matter too much,” Hermine said. “In the beginning I just had to look at him. When he—”
“Don’t go into details. We’ll do that later. I understand what you mean.”
“I got such lovely rewards. Money. Presents. Jewelry. I suppose that’s what’s bothered me most since then, that it …”
Suddenly she seemed to regain her strength. With a jolt, she sat up straight in the bed, pulling her hand back, and hid her face. Her sobs turned into prolonged, howling screams.
“I didn’t have very much against it,” she sobbed. “That’s why it was never possible to stop. I just let it happen. I was so happy with the presents and it didn’t really matter so much, not in the beginning, when he only … But then, eventually, as I got bigger—”
“I simply can’t go along with this,” Dr. Farmen said firmly. Hanne had not heard her approach. “I must ask you to leave this room at once.”
“I’ll decide that,” Hermine said, surprisingly composed. Taking a deep breath, she dried her eyes and continued: “I’m an adult, and I’m not in prison. You don’t decide things for me.”
“Yes,” the doctor insisted. “This isn’t doing you any good. You are my medical responsibility for as long as you are here. I heard your screams from the far end of the corridor.”
“Dr. Farmen,” Hermine said slowly, with a delicate paradoxical authority: all of a sudden, the wealthy man’s daughter came to the fore. “I wish to speak to Hanne Wilhelmsen here. It’s of crucial importance for my health that I manage to finish what I have to say to her. So in fact I’m the one who must ask you to leave. Now!”
The physician stared at her patient in astonishment, before breaking into an open, warm smile.
“You’re going to be all right, Hermine. I’m pleased about that.” However, her smile vanished abruptly when she gazed at Hanne and declared: “You’ll have to take responsibility for this conversation. Just so you’re aware of that.”
Hanne could swear that the doctor tried to slam the door when she left. It was impossible: it slid slowly closed behind her.
�
�The worst thing is that I never succeeded in extricating myself from it,” Hermine said, as if they had never been interrupted. “One thing led to another and then another. In the end it was as if I had, in a way … accepted it. But Father and Mother …”
Again she slumped weakly on to the pillows.
“Even though I can’t claim they knew about it, there was a lot to suggest that the thought wasn’t entirely remote. I got … Do you know that I received a huge sum of money on my twentieth birthday?”
Hanne nodded.
“I was over the moon of course. Ten million kroner. I had no idea they even had so much money. At least, enough to give away just like that. CC was really annoyed. But after all, he was going to take over the shipping company. And Preben was far beyond the seas. So I took the money. I took the money, even though … Father said that … Father said that I’d been given the money for being a good girl and thinking about the family. The family’s reputation. I didn’t give a damn about it at that time. Pushed it out of my mind, with the thought that he must have meant I should behave decorously and not fool around too much out on the town. That sort of thing. But later I realized that he knew. He must have understood what was going on between Alfred and me. At least to some degree. Probably no more than a suspicion. A thought that grew too uncomfortable for him to take to its conclusion, for what would happen to the family reputation if … Better to ensure that I kept my mouth shut. Actually, I was bought off. Pure and simple. Idiot that I was – idiot that I am …” Her fists hit the quilt with a hollow thud. “I just accepted it and let everything slide.”
“Right up until now—”
“Right up until now. But when I found out about that will earlier this year, I realized it was time to do something. Take responsibility, in a sense.”
She laughed hoarsely.
“So I set up a camera in Alfred’s bedroom. I’ve always had a key. The photographs turned out well. I went to Father. Told him I would circulate them. He got angry. Raging. At me! At me, not at Alfred.”
It seemed as though the story had become easier to tell in the form of a telegram.
