In Dust and Ashes

by Anne Holt

  Christel had become famous.

  At the start it was only among girls aged from twelve to twenty. Her blog was among the most popular in the country long before she was seventeen. Now she was an outstanding, top exponent in a world Jonas knew little about and understood even less: Christel’s blog was the only one he ever read. And he did so often. It had begun as what they called pink blogs, with subdued images of interiors, clothes and most of all Christel. Gradually she added material about films and TV programs, and when as an eighteen-year-old she posted a perfectly timed initiative opposing the breeding of animals for the fur trade, she was immediately called in to take part in a TV debate. She came across exceptionally well on screen, and the blog had reached a total of 50,000 unique daily readers before the year was out.

  Christel had become a professional celebrity.

  The fact that she became a single mother at the age of nineteen boosted the wind in her sails. Contrary to what all her readers had expected, she never posted pictures of the baby. Far from it – in a contribution to the Dagsnytt 18 news roundup on TV the day after Hedda’s second birthday, she elaborated on a fiery blog post in which she stated that all children needed to be protected from the Internet until they were old enough to understand what it was.

  Just after that she was offered the leading role in a drama series for NRK.

  It was now shooting and being discussed almost daily in the online newspapers. And Jonas followed them all.

  He noticed she had dyed her hair.

  He was not keen on that. It looked dark brown, with a glimmer of reddish chestnut, possibly – it was difficult to be certain in the twilight. Maybe it was for her film role.

  She did not have the toddler in tow. Hedda was probably asleep at this time of day, and her grandfather would be looking after her. Christel had talked about that, time after time, both in her blog and in interviews. For a long time, it had been only her father and her. Her parents had divorced when she was a mere six years old. Her mother had returned to New Zealand, where she came from. Now there were three of them again.

  Her father, Christel and Hedda.

  Without her father she would never have made anything of herself, she had declared, and he had welcomed his grandchild with open arms. Even though it had arrived somewhat inconveniently and totally lacking a Daddy.

  Noise could be heard when she emerged from the apartment. Blaring music and boisterous laughter, despite all the windows being closed. Half an hour ago he had seen her up there, leaning toward the window with her hand above her eyes, as if looking for something outside. It was just after midnight when she opened the heavy door and took a right turn. Her footsteps were determined and fast, not as rhythmic as usual, and there was something tense about the way she held her shoulder bag close to her body, as if it were a weapon.

  Or something she was very fond of, perhaps, and afraid of losing.

  Jonas considered for a moment whether to follow her. At some distance, as always, as he was unwilling to make her feel more anxious. He took a step on to the sidewalk from the small entranceway where he had stood huddled for more than an hour. Christel looked back unexpectedly, and Jonas turned his back on her with indifference.

  He could hear her boots behind him, tapping on the wet asphalt, picking up speed now. Jonas Abrahamsen had followed Christel’s life from a distance for nearly fourteen years, but had never allowed her to catch sight of him. He had not done so tonight either.

  Calmly, he began to walk in the opposite direction.

  It had never been his intention to frighten her.

  Nothing was her fault, and now Jonas was anxious to go home.

  SUNDAY JANUARY 10, 2016

  Maria Kvam had made up her mind to replace the furniture. The energy in the living room was all wrong. It was Iselin’s life that vibrated throughout the apartment, between all the nuances of red and orange, among all the ornaments and furnishings and soft cushions.

  And all that infernal brass.

  Now Maria flitted from one shelf to another collecting objects in a big cardboard box. It grew far too heavy even before it was half filled, so she put it aside and sank into the deep settee.

  It crossed her mind for the very first time that she really hated this room. In fact she was fond of cool colors, straight edges and right angles. From the time she was little, she had drawn imaginary lines between all the objects as soon as she stepped into a new room. Like a chess player across the board, she fancied, and the pattern had to work out. She sought symmetry and restfulness on the eye.

  She had decided the previous evening that everything would have to go. She had scarcely slept since Thursday. At night she had surfed the net and watched the occasional film, the contents of which she barely took in. The night before last she had inadvertently smashed a ceramic jug from Morocco on her way to the bathroom. When she stooped to pick up the pieces, she was overpowered by such a sudden rage that she threw several other items on the floor. She had left the mess lying until yesterday evening, when she had finally pulled herself together sufficiently to clear it up.

  More changes had to come in the wake of all this change.

  After the funeral, she had decided, and carried the half-filled box of candlesticks and small sculptures to the massive wardrobe inside the bedroom.

  Iselin had wanted to be cremated, expressing a wish to have her ashes scattered to the winds. Years ago she had applied to the authorities for permission to use the sea beyond Reine in Lofoten, where she had spied a sea eagle for the very first time. The response had been positive, and the relevant papers were kept in the safe inside the wardrobe.

  That’s where they would stay, Maria thought, as she set down the cardboard box in front of the metal door.

  Even though the authorities in the north had been well disposed to the idea of scattering Iselin’s ashes on the sea, Maria could not imagine that any obligation was implied in the application. After all, people sometimes changed their minds, and bureaucracy probably had far more to do than follow up to what extent people had their wishes respected in the hereafter.

  Iselin did not deserve to have any wishes fulfilled, and everything would be arranged with great simplicity, as appropriate following a suicide. The police had given the green light for Friday, when the formalities regarding the examination of the corpse would certainly be completed. Maria hoped that no one would turn up. The death notice would not be printed until Saturday, including the text that “a private funeral has taken place in accordance with the deceased’s request”.

  Maria had chosen the cheapest casket. The man at the funeral directors had raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly when she had pointed at it, an unpainted coffin made of particleboard, costing less than 4,500 kroner.

  Iselin and Maria had been an item for so many years now. They had been lovers and sweethearts, business partners and the closest of friends. Maria had taken Iselin into her life when Iselin needed everything. She had made Iselin healthy. Given her a fresh start when otherwise she would have gone to the dogs. They had promised each other so much. Maria had kept her promises, but Iselin had chosen to disappear.

  Maria was now entirely on her own, and when she suddenly grew aware of Iselin’s perfume wafting from a silk poncho on the hanger above the safe, she burst into tears. She subsided on to the floor, where she was convulsed by sobs. Snatching the multicolored garment, she rolled it up into a ball that in the end she tried to hurl at the wall. It collapsed into fronds of feather-light fabric as soon as she let go, and fell softly on her legs.

  Maria screamed. She forced air out through her throat and gave a long-drawn-out howl, yelling over and over again until she lacked the strength for any more; her chest was aching and her voice trailing into nothingness. The sudden silence impelled her to open the top drawer of a chest of drawers and grab a pair of scissors. Quickly and methodically, she attacked Iselin’s side of the wardrobe and refused to desist until she stood in the midst of a heap of rags, and all the racks and s
helves on the right-hand side were empty.

  The scissors made a soft landing on the pile of remnants.

  She struggled to breathe evenly. Her hands lightly smacked her thighs, and she opened her eyes wide, lifting her face to the ceiling to stop her tears.

  “Pull yourself together,” she whispered through gritted teeth, well aware that this was exactly what she had to do.

  Otherwise everything would go awry.

  MONDAY JANUARY 11, 2016

  Hanne Wilhelmsen caught herself looking at the time.

  He was late, something he had never been before. It made her incredibly anxious, and she glanced yet again at her watch. Ten minutes past eleven.

  Henrik Holme was a gift.

  Nefis was the one who had first said that, in the days that followed May 17, 2014, and Hanne had objected at first. It was true that she liked him a lot, if not at first sight then certainly after a couple of meetings. He had been foisted on her even though she had not asked for anyone and did not see any point in having an errand boy.

  She had been wrong.

  In the first place it was practical to have an assistant who could take care of most of the work outside her spacious apartment in Kruses gate. Besides, he was the cleverest police officer she had ever met.

  Henrik Holme was brilliant, and Nefis had been right.

  He was a gift.

  The young policeman came and went at her command. Gradually he had become a sort of friend of the family. Ida idolized him and had suggested to her parents several times that he might as well just move in with them. Nefis had shrugged and looked at Hanne, who for her part had put her foot down emphatically. At first Ida had not given in and had argued enthusiastically how wonderful it had been when Mary had lived there. The prostitute that Hanne had stumbled over in the course of a police investigation in the nineties and later took under her wing had died when Ida was nine years old. The grief had been almost unbearable for Ida and Nefis.

  Hanne had taken it far more lightly.

  While the others had been genuinely fond of old Hairy Mary, Hanne’s emotional repertoire had not been able to extend quite so far. Mary had barged in on her at a time when she had neither Nefis nor Ida, and it had been difficult to throw her out. Little by little as the aged whore began to make herself useful with housework and food preparation, Hanne eventually made peace with the idea of having a limping scold as a lodger. When she had met Nefis and the cramped apartment in Tøyen was replaced by a shameless number of square meters in the best area in Oslo’s city center, Mary had simply followed as part of the furniture. Like a dog, in a way, Hanne had sometimes thought, without ever daring to say so out loud.

  A street mongrel you didn’t have the heart to throw out.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen herself acknowledged that she had a restricted amount of love within her. Throughout her childhood she had expended all her efforts on trying to be loved for the person she really was. By her parents, who regarded this unwelcome afterthought of a daughter with irritation, and later almost with revulsion. By her siblings, a brother and sister who were so much older and had never paid her any attention at all.

  Throughout her first eighteen years on earth, what Hanne Wilhelmsen had wished for more than anything else was to be acknowledged and loved. All through her adult life she had tried to hide away from everyone. Both of these efforts had drained her of energy, and she had no more love to offer than what she felt for Nefis and Ida.

  That was sufficient.

  She had not grown fond of Henrik Holme, but she liked him well enough. Even admired him, without ever mentioning that to anyone.

  Now he was in fact a quarter of an hour late, and Hanne was weighing up whether or not to phone him when at last she heard a key inserted in the front door lock. It was Ida who had given it to him; the little girl could not understand why he should have to ring the doorbell when for one thing he was here so often, and for another he was a policeman and therefore, as everyone knew, entirely trustworthy.

  Hastily and without a sound, Hanne rolled toward the massive dining table and began to read. A book and three stacks of printouts sat on the table in front of her.

  “Hello,” she said nonchalantly without looking up from the papers. “You’re late.”

  “Sorry,” he shouted back from the hallway. “Something turned up at the last minute.”

  “What was that?”

  “Just some things at work. But I’m here now!”

  He hovered in the doorway, in his stocking soles as usual. It was unusual to see him in uniform. Hanne glanced up and noticed that his shirt was sitting better. His shoulders were still so narrow above his skinny body that he bore a resemblance to a bottle of Rhenish wine. Nonetheless it seemed as if his sleeves were straining over muscles where previously they had unforgivingly revealed that his upper arms were barely any thicker than his wrists.

  “Did you come on foot?” she asked superfluously.

  “Yes,” he replied, tugging slightly on the shirt fabric at the armpits. “Fast as I could, too. What was it you wanted?”

  With a smile, he rapped his knuckles on the door frame before entering the living room.

  Hanne gave no answer. Once again she was hunched over the literature in front of her.

  “Have we been allocated any new cases?” she asked when he drew out a chair and sat opposite her.

  “No. Odd, really. There are plenty of unsolved cases here in Oslo. Should I go to the Police Chief and ask?”

  “Not yet. What do you know about suicide?”

  “About suicide?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  With a sigh of resignation, Hanne stared at him.

  “I mean exactly what I say. What do you know about suicide? Or taking one’s own life.”

  “More men than women,” Henrik answered swiftly. “Nearly three times as many.”

  Hanne nodded and waited for more.

  “In Norway, the suicide rate is slightly higher than ten per one hundred thousand people,” he went on. “And the majority who take their own lives are between twenty and seventy years old.”

  “What?” Hanne looked quizzically at him.

  “From a purely statistical point of view,” he explained. “If you look at those graphs, you know …”

  He drew a zigzag pattern with his narrow index finger.

  “The ones that are divided according to age. Then you’ll see that there are relatively few very young or very old who commit suicide, but otherwise there’s a pretty even distribution among all the age groups.”

  Hanne shrugged and looked down again. “More?” she said. “Method, history …”

  “Women are over-represented when it comes to use of medicines, that is to say poisoning. Men when it comes to the use of guns. They shoot themselves. Not only them, of course. But more often than women. On the other hand, women drown themselves far more often than men.”

  “More?”

  “The suicide rate has remained reasonably stable for the past fifteen years. And then …” He reflected for a moment. “I don’t know very much more than that.”

  “Heavens. I thought you knew everything.”

  “What are you working on, actually?”

  “Reading, as you can see.”

  “About what?”

  She peered at him above the rims of her glasses. “What do you think?”

  “About suicide.”

  “Exactly.”

  She let her gaze rest on him. The habitual red roses had appeared on his cheeks, where he was definitely in the process of cultivating something resembling a beard. Unbecomingly wispy, she felt. The hairs seemed soft, like on a teenager, and just below the corner of his mouth on the left side there was a totally naked area about the size of a twenty-kroner coin.

  “That beard of yours is a bad idea,” she said, and now his whole face turned puce.

  “Apologies,” he replied, despite the fact that for almost two years now she had tried to
rid him of his bad habit of apologizing for everything. “I’ll shave tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry about that scar under your chin. It really doesn’t show at all.”

  A fleeting, shy smile made him seem even younger than he was.

  “I can’t comprehend how Iselin Havørn could have taken her own life,” Hanne said. “She’s definitely not the type.”

  Henrik repeatedly ran his tongue over his bottom lip.

  “I understood that it’s an open-and-shut case,” he said softly. “Also, it’s not a case that concerns us in any shape or form. Strictly speaking. Was it because of this that you asked me to come?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Why?”

  ‘I just wanted to play catch. Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “I am. Could you be bothered making me a sandwich? Cheese and ham, no butter, and with a slice of red pepper on top?”

  Henrik stood up and padded out into the kitchen. Hanne placed the printouts in a single bundle that she pushed to one side as she adjusted her glasses and opened her book. The title was quite simply On Suicide. The work had been written by an American authority on modern psychiatry and ran to more than eight hundred pages. It had been at the back of her mind somewhere, meaning a box of professional literature in the basement she had spent an hour struggling to find before getting Nefis to fetch it.

  Henrik rummaged in the kitchen, and Hanne found herself smiling. She heard some rattling in the cutlery drawer and the fridge door being opened and closed twice. Henrik had grown familiar with her home. She had come to know him. To put it bluntly, the sounds from the kitchen indicated that he was annoyed. There was a sharp edge to them. Purposeful movements, quite different from the circumspect and unassuming, almost hesitant, way he normally behaved.

  “Here,” he said peremptorily as he placed a plate before her.

  “Thanks. Why are you annoyed?”

  “I’m not annoyed.”

  She smiled again, more broadly now.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to make me something to eat. But I’m pleased you came. What makes people commit suicide, Henrik?”