by Anne Holt
“I don’t think Iselin was ashamed,” Hanne said, unruffled. “It was unpleasant, being exposed, just as it must be extremely unpleasant for you to have this door …”
She glanced up at the barely visible abuse.
“… repeatedly vandalized. It must be disturbing and awkward and shouldn’t happen, of course. But it doesn’t make you change your mind, does it? Far from it – it makes you even more convinced of the importance of the battle you’re fighting.”
No reaction. Not a nod, not a word.
“Iselin wasn’t ashamed,” Hanne repeated. “Being unmasked as Tyrfing was distasteful, but it didn’t involve any social disgrace. Quite the opposite, in fact – she was defended by her supporters. Praised to the skies by many of them. And after all, when push comes to shove, it’s our own people who mean most to us in this world.”
Still no reaction.
“But as I said, it’s primarily Maria I’d like to talk to you about. Could I come in?”
“No.”
Hanne made a face. She felt a stab of pain in the small of her back: it had grown more troublesome in the past fortnight. A cold draft from a broken leaded window in the stairwell did not improve matters.
“You’ve been struggling with depression,” Hanne plucked up the courage to say. “You’re taking antidepressants. Anafranil. I’m willing to place a large bet on some of your medication having been stolen.”
Now at last, Kari Thue’s facial expression altered. Her eyes narrowed and a sharp, v-shaped furrow appeared between her eyebrows.
“Wait,” she said abruptly and slammed the door shut.
Hanne was keen to change position in the wheelchair, but now her right arm had begun to ache. It gave way when she tried to hoist herself up, and her shoulder twisted painfully.
“Shit,” she murmured, tugging her jacket more snugly around her.
A minute passed, then two, and nearly three. Fumbling with the chain on the inside of the door.
“You were right,” Kari Thue said, opening the door wide. “Someone has stolen my pills.”
She ran her hand over her face in a gesture of helplessness.
“Come in,” she said, as she disappeared into the apartment.
“I knew you would make something of yourself, Henrik.”
Professor Emeritus Carsten Bru laid a colossal hand on Henrik Holme’s slim shoulder as he ushered him into his home office.
The room was spacious and had originally been one of the enormous villa’s many living rooms. Facing south, bay windows overhung what Henrik knew was an old apple orchard. On good days you could enjoy the sight of a beautiful copper beech by the fence skirting the neighbor’s garden at the foot of the sloping ground. Now it was impossible to see anything except grayishwhite snowflakes dancing in the light cast by an outdoor lamp; it had turned cold again. Henrik had taken the bus to spare his knee.
The massive tiled Swedish stove in the corner was lit. Professor Bru opened the door and tossed a log on the fire before sitting down at his writing desk, placed in the center of the room. All the walls were lined with bookshelves crammed full of books, both vertical and perpendicular. Professional textbooks and novels, travel books and atlases and poetry collections. Henrik had been here once before, and it was one of the most impressive rooms he had ever clapped eyes on. The ceiling was decorated as a pale-blue summer sky, with birds, butterflies and vine branches so detailed that they looked as if they needed watering. A polar bear skin rug covered the floor in front of the stove, with a gaping mouth and terrifying teeth. Professor Bru claimed it had been shot in self-defense on Svalbard in 1963 after it had killed two expedition members, but Henrik did not always place much trust in the old professor’s stories about his many travels and experiences. He was not even sure that the man had ever been to Svalbard.
When it came to professional topics, however, he was firstclass and could always be relied upon.
Carsten Bru was Norway’s grand old man of forensic medicine. Henrik had come across him in the autumn of 2011, when the country was still struggling to recover from that brutal summer, and Henrik’s only friend was dead. In an attack of loneliness and despair, Henrik had applied for a postgraduate course in the forensic investigation of homicide and violent crime. He gained a place on the course, even though he had just finished his elementary training.
Professor Bru had paid him so much attention from the very first class that for a few months Henrik had thought they might become friends. When he finally realized that the seventy-yearold man had absolutely no wish to extend his social circle, and the Professor merely kept an eye open for talented students, he was so embarrassed that he hardly looked up from his notes for the remainder of the course.
When he needed advice in an old murder case that Hanne and he had solved a year or so ago, he had swallowed his pride and paid a visit to Professor Bru. The man had retired on full pension, but was still in great form on all fronts. He held lectures and edited textbooks and in addition sat on the board of Oslo University Hospital. His delight at being visited by a former student seemed so genuine at that time that Henrik had now steeled himself to do the same again.
“Do you think they’ll be found guilty? All of them?”
Carsten Bru pointed at one of the two wing armchairs in front of his desk.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Henrik replied, sitting down. “Hanne Wilhelmsen is convinced. As for myself, I’m a bit doubtful as far as the more peripheral accused are concerned. I think judgment will be passed fairly soon. That’s what the rumors say, anyway.”
“Quite a story,” the old man said, shaking his head. “Quite a story. But how can I help you today, Henrik?”
His eyes glittered under his trimmed, wiry eyebrows. His head was shaved, but he had acquired a well-tended, pepper and salt beard since last they’d met. He must weigh well over a hundred kilos, but carried his bulk with the authority bestowed by a long career as a self-assured star academic.
“A time of death,” Henrik said, with a gulp. “I’m unsure of a time of death. In a case from 2004. Or …”
He gulped again and looked around for something to drink. The Professor had not offered him anything, and he did not dare ask.
“The death occurred in 2003,” he corrected himself. “On New Year’s Eve, just before midnight. Or …”
He lifted his bag from the floor and opened it. He pulled out a bottle of water and unscrewed the lid.
“Excuse me,” he said and took a drink.
“My wife will be here with coffee in a minute,” Professor Bru said with a smile.
“The point was that I wonder whether the police might have been mistaken at that time. They found the body on 1 January 2004, even though the death itself took place the previous year, on–”
“I understand it now. Why do you think they were wrong? If the corpse was found within twenty-four hours, it should have been possible to arrive at a fairly good estimate. That was possible even in 2004.”
Henrik replaced the lid on the bottle and returned it to his bag. “Do you really have time to hear me out?” he asked.
“I’ve all the time in the world,” Carsten Bru answered.
“It’s about a murder for which a man was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment,” Henrik began hesitantly. “But I think it may have been a miscarriage of justice. Actually I think this woman took her own life. The problem is that no weapon was found at the crime scene. That’s why I really need your help. To place a weapon there somehow.”
Professor Bru stretched out his arms before leaning across the massive, solid desk.
“Then I’m damn glad you came,” he said, chuckling, and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. “Now we’re going to have some fun, Henrik. We’ll have a bloody brilliant time, the two of us.”
“I stopped taking them a few weeks ago,” Kari Thue said. “That’s why I didn’t notice they were gone.”
“How many are you missing?”
“Eleven. The ones
that were left. And you’re mistaken. I’m not depressed. I have a panic disorder.”
That was how she looked, Hanne thought. The guarded eyes never lingered anywhere for longer than a second or two at a time. Her eyes were unnaturally wide, as if she was constantly shocked about something or other. Her hands were never at peace. Kari Thue was fiddling with a silver ring, then scratching her arms and pulling her sleeves up and down. Her left leg was shaking slightly and had done so ever since she sat down.
“What a shame,” Hanne said, hoping that she sounded sincere. “Didn’t the medicine help?”
Kari Thue’s eyes looked accusingly at Hanne’s for all of three seconds.
“As you’ve stopped using them, I mean?”
“Side effects,” was Kari Thue’s curt reply. “Anyway it’s none of your business. Do you think you know who stole my pills?”
“No. I can’t claim that. But I do have a theory. Do you see much of Iselin and Maria?”
“Iselin’s dead. I haven’t seen Benedicte … Maria since then. I wasn’t even told about the funeral.”
Hanne noticed a faint quiver in Kari Thue’s voice. Sorrow or anger; it was difficult to tell.
“Yes of course,” she said patiently. “But earlier, I mean. Before Iselin died. Did you socialize much with them?”
Kari Thue stood up abruptly. At Finse 1222 she had been slim, but not skinny. Since then Hanne had only seen her in the media, and then she obviously had help to look better than she did in reality. The contrast between the dour, scrawny figure and her flowing, well-groomed hair was almost comical.
As if someone had placed a highly inappropriate wig on her head.
“I’ve known Maria since I was little,” Kari Thue said. “She was called Benedicte then, as I told your colleague when he was here. She was in my brother’s class and lived not far from us. I got to know Iselin through her. And yes …”
She walked to the kitchen and disappeared inside. “Yes,” she repeated from beyond the doorway. “We’ve seen a lot of one another, all three of us.”
Hanne heard a tap being turned on. She looked around the small living room. If Hanne had counted the total number of doors in the hallway correctly, this was a two-room apartment with kitchen and bathroom. It was pleasant in here, she grudgingly admitted. A seating arrangement in a shade she thought was called petrol blue; Ida loved it and had a feature wall in her bedroom painted that same color. There were houseplants everywhere: Kari Thue obviously had green fingers. A TV set with a cathode ray tube was placed on an abundantly filled bookshelf. Hanne could not remember having seen one like that in years.
The walls were adorned with lithographs of the type the Norwegian Book Club used to give away as recruitment gifts in their heyday. Acceptable, worthless and reasonably decorative.
“I assumed you’d want some,” Kari Thue said, putting down two glasses of water with ice cubes on the coffee table.
“Thanks.”
“Was it my tablets that killed Iselin? Had she taken them from here?”
Hanne thought she could detect tears in the woman’s big eyes. However, Kari Thue had been red-eyed before, and it could be that she was suffering from conjunctivitis.
“That’s not what I believe,” Hanne said calmly. “I don’t think Iselin committed suicide, so it’s beyond me what she would have wanted with your tablets.”
“Do you mean that someone has … killed her? With my pills?”
“Yes, that’s my opinion. But for the present I can’t prove any of it. That’s why I’ve come. Here. To you.”
Her cellphone vibrated in the pocket of her leather jacket; she had not taken off her outdoor clothes. She glanced at the display. Nefis was wondering if she could drive off. Hanne texted a hasty OK.
“Apologies,” she said. “An important message, that’s all.”
“I don’t know who could have taken my pills,” Kari Thue said.
“No. But you know who might have had the opportunity.”
“My brother. He’s here often and has his own key. I can assure you it wasn’t him.”
She lifted her glass of water. The ice cubes betrayed her nervousness.
“My mother.”
Kari Thue drank half the glass of water.
“As a matter of fact,” she corrected herself, “she hasn’t been here since I decided to try life without Anafranil. That was seven weeks ago. So it wasn’t her either.”
“Anyone else?”
“Friends,” she said, mulling it over. “But I haven’t been very sociable recently. The side effects from the medicine have gone, but …”
She clasped her arms around herself, as if she was freezing.
“The positive effects disappear too, of course. It’s quite difficult. To tell the truth, I’m not really in good shape.”
For the first time Hanne felt some sympathy for her. She resembled a mournful bird as she sat there, in her mustardyellow clothes and with her bony hands that were never at rest. A children’s rhyme that Ida had loved entered Hanne’s head. It was about a sad yellow bird that was depressed because he didn’t really exist.
Here and now it was as if Kari Thue had also disappeared. Even though she could obviously take care of herself despite her panic disorder, it was as if there was something indescribably bewildered about her as she appeared now. The stiff-necked behavior when she had answered the door was gone, as was her wellknown fury in countless TV debates. It was inconceivable that this half-dead creature in a knitted sweater several sizes too big was the same woman who had suggested in VG that the refugees in Storskog should be shot with live ammunition.
“Could Iselin or Maria have taken the pills?” Hanne probed.
Kari Thue nodded almost imperceptibly, as if the effort of moving was too much for her.
“Well, they’ve been here three times since I stopped,” she said softly.
“Both of them?”
The hesitation was precisely a fraction too long.
“Yes.”
Hanne leaned back in her wheelchair. She had a strong urge to move into an armchair, but did not want to spoil what she thought she was succeeding in achieving. Instead she put her hands quietly on her lap and made an effort to catch Kari Thue’s eye.
“But not always, eh?”
“What … what do you mean?”
“They didn’t always come together?”
“Yes they did.”
“I don’t think so. I think that Iselin came on her own when Maria didn’t know about it.”
“I think you should leave now.”
There was no power in her voice, and she made no move to get up. She did not even look in Hanne’s direction.
“I will do, of course, if that’s what you really want. First of all, though, I want to reassure you that …”
Hesitating, she rolled her chair one meter closer to the other woman, who did not react at all.
“Whatever you tell me will remain between the two of us. You don’t like me, and quite honestly I’ve never been a great fan of yours either. None of that matters a jot right now. What does matter, and I’m sure we’re in total agreement about this, is that no one should be able to murder other people here in this country of ours. Far less get away with it.”
They were sitting so close that Hanne could see that Iselin’s dry lips had cracked open into tiny cold sores.
“But the police,” Kari Thue began, and now she was twirling one hand round and round on her sweater. “The police said right away that it was a case of suicide. You could read that between the lines in the online press only hours after it happened.”
“Yes. Mostly because there was a suicide note. When you find a letter like that and the circumstances also seem to fit the inference that the person has taken his or her own life, then a rapid conclusion is usually drawn. Sometimes too rapid, unfortunately.”
“A suicide letter …” Sniffing, she wiped her nose with the dirty-yellow angora sleeve. “Then it must have been an old one.”
“If there was a suicide letter there, it must have been an old one.”
“Why is that?”
Kari Thue swallowed, picked up the water glass and drained it in one gulp.
“She suffered from electro-sensitivity.”
“Elec … what are you talking about?”
“Iselin was allergic to electricity. She discovered that years ago. Hypersensitive. She had a box made …”
Kari Thue used her hands to outline a square about the size of a laptop.
“… that prevented the electromagnetism from getting out. Something like that. It fell apart the day after she was … outed. Three weeks before she died. She wrote nothing after that. She couldn’t write without that box.”
When she looked up she seemed almost self-conscious.
“I don’t know very much about that sort of thing. Iselin knew such a lot. She was impressive – she knew so much about everything. She had a device around her cellphone too. That was okay, as far as I know. But she didn’t write the suicide letter on her cellphone, did she?”
Hanne let her chair roll back, as she straightened her spine and gave a stiff smile.
“The letter was handwritten,” she said. “If a suicide letter is typed, then it certainly wouldn’t have the same effect. On the police, I mean. Then it would always be examined with care. Even more carefully, you know. Then someone else may be behind it. But this one was handwritten in Iselin’s own writing. So the fact that her … anti-electricity-allergy gizmo was broken is of no significance.”
“Iselin didn’t write by hand.”
“What?”
“Iselin never writes by hand. She hasn’t handwritten anything for a very, very long time. Several decades, in fact.”
It was as if a fork was being slowly drawn down Hanne’s spine. She shivered, and her back ached insanely.
“Of course she must have written some things by hand,” Hanne said, trying to smile.
It was difficult – she felt hot and as if her chest was being crushed.
