by Anne Holt
“Sorry,” Henrik let slip.
“On the other hand, if we’re talking about a suicide attempt,” Carsten Bru said with extreme emphasis on the last two syllables, “then you might be on to something. Anna Abrahamsen might have sincerely wanted to end her own life. Pointed the pistol like so …”
His right hand became a gun, with his index finger as the barrel on the underside of his chin. He used his middle finger to pull the trigger.
“Bang. I’m dead. Most definitely and beyond any redemption, in such a short space of time that it’s virtually impossible to measure it. Besides …”
He snatched up the autopsy report again, shoved his glasses further up his nose and read.
“The shot was fired at close range, it says here. There’s no sign of contact between the muzzle and the skin. Okay, then. So …”
He repeated the experiment, using his own hand as a pistol close to his skin.
“Now I’m going to shoot. I’m totally determined. There’s nothing more to live for. But then …”
He drew his finger slowly two or three centimeters away from his chin.
“Some people have second thoughts,” he said. “Not because they miraculously emerge from their depression there and then. Nor because they actually change their minds either, but because the sanctity of life is so deeply embedded within us. And I don’t mean that in a religious sense.”
His voice became a touch distorted because he was leaning his head back.
“Fundamental evolution theory,” he said, still staring up at the exquisite ceiling. “The fight for existence. If all living things didn’t have a really strong will to live, we would never endure this world’s vale of tears. Just think of the Jews in concentration camps. The slaves in American cotton fields.”
He suddenly removed his hand and looked Henrik straight in the eye.
“Losing a child,” he said deliberately. “An experience I’ve been spared. But it’s easy to imagine the pain, if you were ever minded to make the attempt. Why don’t we take our own lives, Henrik, not even when the greatest pain is inflicted upon us?”
Henrik was almost certain the question was rhetorical. Instead of responding, therefore, he lifted the elegant porcelain cup to his mouth and drank.
He had interpreted him correctly.
“The will to live,” the Professor said, raising his voice. “It is embedded deep within us. Lying deep within all of what combines to create the incredibly complicated human psyche, is this one, allimportant element: our desperate will to go on living. And then …”
Yet again he raised the mock pistol to his chin. Drew it terribly slowly a few centimeters down and to one side. The muzzle was now pointing diagonally to the left.
“She could have been struggling with herself,” he said. “Won’t. Will. And then the shot was fired. Bang.”
Once again he pulled the trigger. Henrik could see exactly where the bullet would have gone. Into the chin and through the tongue. It would have shattered the teeth in the upper jaw before exiting through a crater just beneath the eye.
“Not dead,” the pathologist said, with a broad smile. “More tea?”
“Yes please.”
“It’s also possible that the won’t side won. And that the gun quite simply fired by accident. After all, if it was a competition gun she used, their triggers are easy to fire.”
Henrik watched the golden stream as Carsten Bru poured tea from a blue-patterned pot. He felt oddly numb. These were thoughts he had never entertained. He clicked his heels together and tapped both sides of his nose.
“Have you read Albert Camus?” the old man asked. “The Myth of Sisyphus?”
“No, never.”
“Give it a go. Exceptionally interesting, but quite depressing reading, I must say. Very briefly summarized, he claims that the only truly philosophical problem is whether we choose to commit suicide or not. Here …”
He pushed the sugar bowl closer to Henrik, who helped himself to four cubes. He stirred them into his tea and listened with half an ear to the Professor’s not particularly cheerful discourse on Camus, Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre.
It was of no interest to him. Henrik felt ashamed of himself. He struggled against his blushes and possibly also against tears. He had been so terribly caught up with Anna’s clinically clean and tidy house. In her depression. In all the losses she had suffered. And not least in the dismantling of Dina’s little life, that had ended with the clothes she had been wearing on the day she died disappearing into the garbage container at Stugguveien 2B. His visit to Herdis Brattbakk had reinforced his belief that Anna herself had chosen to depart from life. Kjell Bonsaksen’s gut instinct and the experienced Superintendent’s confidence that Henrik could get to the bottom of something that had eluded him had made him think in a restricted and presumptuous fashion. He had taken such a limited view that he had never reflected that Anna, if it really had been a case of suicide, in reality had not succeeded. She had not died of the gunshot wounds. It was the absence of medical attention that had killed her.
“… modernism’s great breakthrough,” Professor Bru concluded, slapping both hands down on the desktop. “But we had a completely different problem, Henrik, didn’t we? The time of death!”
Henrik tapped the teaspoon lightly on the rim of the cup and laid it aside.
“Between half past ten and half past eleven?” Carsten Bru asked, leafing through the documents he had borrowed from Henrik. “Was that when she was killed, according to the pathologist?”
“Yes.”
“Have you lost heart, Henrik? Buck up, boy!”
Henrik tried to straighten up. He smiled weakly and drew back his shoulders. The tea smelled of flowers, and without giving it another thought, he dropped another two sugar cubes into his cup.
“I’m sure you know how we arrive at the time of death,” Carsten Bru said in a gratified tone; he seemed to be enjoying himself more than he had in ages. “Or more correctly, how we try to establish it.”
His cheeks were flushed behind the gray beard, and his eyes were smiling no matter what he was talking about.
“Body temperature,” Henrik said when the old man looked at him encouragingly. “The relationship between the temperature of the surroundings and the rectal and brain temperature. Rigor mortis and livoris, death stiffness and postmortem lividity. Subsequently decomposition and the presence of insects. Entomology. And God knows what else. All with reference to the size of the body, any possible fever, what the body is lying on, whether the corpse has been outdoors or inside. Atmospheric humidity. And now, in recent years, the vitreous humors of the eye. Potassium and hypoxanthine analysis. Which are more precise methods, even though we still rely mainly on the good old temperature tables. At least when the corpse is relatively fresh, that is.”
“Yes of course,” the Professor replied, nodding. “You keep up to date, I see. But in this case …”
He glanced at the papers and raised his cup with a slight nod, as if proposing a toast.
“In this case we’ll go back to basics.”
He opened one of the massive desk drawers and rummaged around for a few seconds.
“Here it is,” he said, sounding pleased. “Henssge’s nomogram. You must remember this.”
The paper he pushed across to Henrik was a folded A3 sheet. Henrik opened it out. The nomogram had seemed completely incomprehensible the first time Henrik had seen it, but when he had participated in the postgraduate course run by Professor Bru, he had finally seen the light. A quarter circle was filled with sectors and numbers, with a scale for rectal temperature on the one side. A corresponding line with specifications for the ambient temperature was drawn on the other side, farther down than the first. Completely asymmetrical in the image, aslant and close to the hub of the quarter circle, something that looked like a bull’s eye. From the marking for normal body temperature, thirty-seven degrees, a line was extended downward at a relatively sharp angle. It ended at a great void.
“I didn’t understand the significance of that illustration on your course,” Henrik said, tapping a swift drumroll with his fingers.
“Yes you did. When I explained it, all of you understood.”
“We no longer need to use it.”
“You’re right there. Everything’s done on computer nowadays, but it can be useful to see what the table looks like when it’s not entered into a machine that produces answers without us having to think for ourselves. What did you say Anna’s rectal temperature was when she was found?”
“Thirty-two degrees. She was lying on a bathroom floor with under-floor heating installed, though it wasn’t switched on, and she was fully clothed. The temperature in the room was exactly twenty degrees. An adjustment factor of one point three was put in for the clothes and flooring.”
“One point three times seventy kilos,” the Professor rattled off. “That was what she weighed? Seventy kilos?”
Henrik nodded.
“Then we have an adjusted weight of ninety. To tell the truth, this is one of the most enjoyable things I know.”
From another of the drawers he pulled out a ruler. It was large and painstakingly made, with a fixed handle mounted in the middle. He closed one eye and calibrated the ruler between thirty-two degrees on the one side of the diagram and twenty on the other. Grabbing a pen, he drew a line from one point to the other.
“Like so,” he said, sounding satisfied, before placing the ruler at a different angle.
Another line.
“There,” he said, evidently pleased with himself, as he pointed at one of the numbers spread out across the semi-circle. “The rectal temperature was taken at twelve o’clock the next day. The table shows that death occurred approximately thirteen hours earlier. But what happens if we do this?”
His experienced hands performed the whole operation one more time.
“Voila,” he said, pointing to a different number. “If the temperature in the bathroom had been thirty degrees, then the time of death you’d arrive at would be around eighteen hours earlier. All other variables being the same. That is to say around six the previous evening. Give or take an hour.”
That specific time caused Henrik to feel a strong impulse to snatch up Henssge’s nomogram and rush out the door. Instead he slapped the back of his head and said, “Stupid!”
A brand new tic, but Carsten Bru pretended not to notice.
“Can I take that away with me?” Henrik asked, pointing at the large sheet of paper.
“Yes of course! But the problem isn’t solved.”
“What do you mean?”
“The police measured the temperature in the bathroom at twenty degrees. Not thirty. We haven’t yet managed to shift the time of death. And we still haven’t located a weapon.”
Henrik picked up his cup of tea and drank it all down so quickly that he burned his mouth.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said with a sharp intake of breath, rolling up the broad sheet of paper before cramming it into his bag. “But if I can prove that the police were mistaken about the temperature in Anna’s bathroom, then I may solve the problem of Anna’s gun at the same time. Thanks a million for your help, Professor Bru. Thank you so much.”
He proffered his hand. The old man stood up and held it firmly.
“Are you claiming that the police crime scene technicians can’t make a good job of reading a thermometer in a serious case of homicide, Henrik?”
“No,” Henrik answered. “But I might be able to find evidence that they were tricked.”
Maria Kvam was forging ahead, building a new life for herself at the age of almost fifty-five.
She had done it before, and she would succeed yet again.
The apartment was almost empty. Working in conjunction with an interior designer, she had chosen new furniture to suit the apartment in Tjuvholm for as long as she lived there, but would also be appropriate for the house at Stugguveien 2B. Maria had already sent notice of termination to the Russian Embassy. By summer it would all be done and dusted, and she would be back where it all began.
In her own childhood home.
The estate agent had been over the moon about the apartment.
The new colors were perfect, he had said, and as soon as the furniture on order was installed, he would send a photographer. The prospectus would be stylish, but not overly high-flown. Elegant and minimalist, but not pretentious. He predicted a sale within twenty-four hours of viewing.
Maria was startled when the doorbell rang. She waited for a moment or two. She and Iselin had prided themselves on an abundance of friends, and scarcely a weekend had gone by without some kind of social occasion in the diary. That had all come to an end when Tyrfing was exposed. In the weeks before she died, Iselin had mainly isolated herself at home, apart from the three times she had sneaked out at night, refusing to say where she had been when she returned at the crack of dawn.
“Meetings,” she had explained crisply, as if Maria was a complete idiot.
Admittedly, she knew that Iselin sometimes had meetings at peculiar hours, in peculiar places, because of the danger of surveillance. You could never be too careful, especially after July 22. All the same, it was inconceivable that she should spend time on political assignations while engulfed in a catastrophic media crisis.
Maria knew where Iselin had been, but she couldn’t bear to dwell on it.
She was never going to think about it again. Instead she went to open the door.
“Hello,” Halvor Stenskar said. “May I come in?”
Maria did not answer, but left the front door open when she returned to the living room. He followed behind her.
“My goodness,” he said, surveying the room.
Six pots of paint were lined up along one wall beside a stepladder. A fat roll of thick cardboard and three rolls of masking tape were lying beside the window. The flat screen TV was still mounted on the opposite wall, and a beanbag was placed there so that Maria could watch TV.
Apart from that, the living room was bare.
“You’re not wasting any time!” he said. “When do you move out?”
“In three months. All that’s needed at Stugguveien is a fresh coat of paint. The Russians have taken good care of the property. I’ll stay here in the meantime.”
“That’ll be dismal.”
“The furniture will be here soon. Would you like anything?”
“Well, maybe a chair?”
Without a word she disappeared further into the apartment and came back with a bright-green folding chair in each hand. She tried to assemble them, but didn’t have the knack. Halvor Stenskar watched her for sixty seconds or so before he intervened irritably, folded them out and placed them a couple of meters apart by the window.
“You haven’t been to the office since the funeral,” he said, sitting down on one of the chairs. “When do you plan to come back?”
“It’s only been a week.”
“Nine days.”
“It’s Sunday, for God’s sake! I’ll come in some time during the week.”
“Things have to be attended to, Maria. We need to appoint a new chairman of the board, among other things. Bjørg Vatne has stepped in until further notice, but she has let me know privately that it’s out of the question for her to take over Iselin’s post on a permanent basis. And since Iselin was the executive chairman, it may be tricky to find a replacement. Unless we discontinue that particular arrangement.”
“And make you the chief executive?”
“I already am in all but name!” he barked in annoyance. “I’m the general manager of VitaeBrass, as I have been ever since you and I met. That Iselin had a sort of … roving commission, suited me fine, but I think the time is ripe to appoint an absolutely ordinary chairman of the board. Iselin’s terms were contingent on her … special skills.”
“Along with the fact that she and I together owned eighty per cent of the company,” Maria retorted. “Which means that I’m now the
one who owns the same eighty per cent. And accordingly should have a suitable position.”
“Don’t put on airs and graces! With the greatest respect, Maria, you have next to no qualifications for heading up VitaeBrass. Neither as a chairman, nor as a chief executive.”
“Strictly speaking, I’m the one to decide that.”
Halvor Stenskar stood up so abruptly that the chair toppled.
“Now I think you should have a really good think before you say anything more,” he snarled, holding a trembling finger out right underneath her nose. “If I hadn’t discovered that you were sitting on an empty, dead company with hidden assets in the form of agencies, you’d still be wandering around, unemployed and idle. Besides …”
Adjusting his tie, he cleared his throat and righted the chair.
“You’d be flat broke if it hadn’t been for me,” he said in a strained voice, and sat down again. “The way you were when Anna died. I’m the one who saw what gold you possessed when you inherited from her, and I’m the one who should take the credit for PureHerb becoming such a success.”
“It was only with Iselin’s arrival and the name change that we became successful,” Maria said in a monotone.
She realized now that she really couldn’t stand the man. For years on end she had treated him well. Did as he said, in the first few years, before Iselin came on the scene, and put up with him ever since then. It was as if Iselin’s demise had released her, making her more complete and sure of herself. Halvor was no more than an arrogant wannabe in a far too expensive suit. When he had looked her up in the summer of 2004, she had completely forgotten about the company Anna had left her. It was merely a piece of paper. The money she had inherited from Anna made it possible for her to live a globetrotting life for a while longer, and the house in Stugguveien had been easy to rent out. Then Halvor had discovered that she was sitting on the rights to Aloewonder and the Peruvian remedy, already becoming a bestseller in countries with less restrictive health authorities than Norway.
She had let herself be coaxed into giving him twenty per cent of the shares in exchange for his labor and entrepreneurship.
