Odd Numbers

by Anne Holt

  At the crime scene, there were no traces of anyone other than the victim.

  This case at least was not botched by the police, as the investigation into Karina Knoph’s disappearance so clearly had been. The scene of the crime at the very top section of the Akerselva River had been thoroughly combed. The dog patrol had managed to establish that Gunnar Ranvik had moved away after he was injured—unaided, it definitely seemed, to judge from the footprints that were eventually uncovered, which confirmed an extremely wobbly trail for all of a hundred yards through the undergrowth.

  The problem was that where the trail ended, or had in fact begun, everything was burned down. In a circle thirty or forty feet in diameter, someone had poured flammable liquid and lit it. The circle was on open ground, bordering the cart track that ran alongside the south side of the Maridal Lake. There were so many prints leading from the burned circle that the dogs went completely wild. It was a well-frequented forest track, and the police had reached no further in their search for clues, either at or close by the crime scene.

  The jogger who had found Gunnar had heard faint whimpering sounds and gone down from the path to see what was there, she explained at her witness interview. After that, she had shouted for help, and an old man out for a morning walk had heard her. He lived in the vicinity, at Kjelsås, and had run home to call the police as fast as his arthritic legs could carry him. Neither of the two could offer any more information than that.

  Gunnar Ranvik’s mother, Kirsten, was also interviewed. It emerged from the documents that she had been terribly distressed, both when the case was in its initial stages and three months later, when she reproached the police for not making any further progress in their pursuit of the perpetrators. By this time it was pretty clear that Gunnar Ranvik’s life was going to be entirely different from what he and his mother had anticipated.

  Gunnar too was eventually interviewed, five months after the incident. By then, his speech had returned somewhat, but that was almost all. The seventeen-year-old’s head injuries were so extensive that he had become a child again. He had been interviewed at Sunnås Rehabilitation Hospital, where he spent six months being helped to readapt.

  He remembered next to nothing.

  It had been two boys, that much at least he insisted on. Two Pakistanis, he said firmly, something that had also been the first thing he had tried to say when he had awakened from his coma.

  He did not remember why they had attacked him.

  He had no idea why all three of them had been at the lake.

  And, no, he did not know the names of the boys.

  It was possible he knew them from before, but he doubted that. He certainly couldn’t recall knowing any Pakistanis. He didn’t like “that sort,” he was quoted as saying in the interview, with quotation marks.

  When asked how he knew that the boys came from Pakistan specifically and not, for example, from India or Afghanistan, Gunnar had looked vacantly at the detective and asked to be allowed to sleep.

  A considerable number of other steps had been taken in the investigation, for instance, checking the CCTV cameras at the Coop supermarket beside the tram turning loop and the Seven-Eleven store in Grefsenveien.

  At that time, almost eighteen years earlier, nothing had brought the police as much as a single step further in their search for an answer as to who had been behind the gross mistreatment of Gunnar Ranvik.

  The distant clock struck nine.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen looked up.

  “What do you think?” she asked him, closing the folder.

  “Well . . .”

  Henrik dragged it out, and hid his face in a cup of lukewarm coffee.

  “I’m not sure,” he mumbled. “I don’t think this case sheds any particular light on Karina Knoph’s vanishing act, anyway. Apart from one thing: that Gunnar was attacked the very day she disappeared for good.”

  Hanne still stared directly at him but did not speak. Her glacial eyes made him sweat, and he tried to go on speaking in an effort to gain control of his damnable blushing.

  “Anyway, it’s still incredible that the cases weren’t thought to be linked. No matter what this incident actually was.”

  He laid his hand on the case folder, mostly to control his urge to touch the side of his nose.

  “We can of course think of hundreds of explanations as to why they were up there by the dam. And certainly of ten, as to why Gunnar was beaten up. But the strangest thing about this case, nevertheless, is that Karina’s name isn’t mentioned at all. Several of Gunnar’s friends are interviewed in an attempt to find out why he was at the waterworks that evening. I would have done that too if it had been my case. But Karina is not mentioned—not by Gunnar’s three closest friends or by his mother. I mean, in Karina’s case, opinions are voiced that the pair of them were a couple.”

  “What conclusions do you draw from that?”

  “That Gunnar hadn’t told anyone about her, for whatever reason. That is, before. Before he was attacked. Afterward it may well have been that he actually couldn’t remember her.”

  He gulped down some coffee before replacing the cup on the table, cradling it in both hands.

  “Actually that’s probably the most likely explanation,” he said tentatively, looking at Hanne. “It seems his head injuries were quite comprehensive. He may have forgotten her. When it comes to why he hadn’t said anything about her beforehand either . . .”

  He ruminated for a couple of seconds.

  “At that age it’s probably not unusual to keep girlfriends secret from your parents. Or is it?”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t understand much about parents. I don’t have much of a handle on boys, either, but I do have a suspicion that they, especially around the age of seventeen, are quite eager to tell one another stories about girls. Both true ones and ones that are made up.”

  “Don’t ask me!” he blurted out. “I’ve never had a girlfriend. Never made one up either.”

  Hanne smiled.

  Not mockingly. Not even teasingly. A warm, reassuring smile was what he thought it to be. He sneaked his hands under his thighs and tried to smile back.

  “Do you know,” she said, leaning forward across the table, “I’ll soon be fifty-four and I’ve only had two. On the other hand, they’ve been wonderful. The first one died; the second one I’ve been with for nearly fifteen years. Your turn will come, Henrik.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” he murmured happily.

  “But there’s something else that struck me,” she said so suddenly that he flinched.

  The smile was gone. Leaning down, she produced a case file that Henrik recognized as Karina’s. There must be a shelf below that chair. He had tried to take a look when he arrived, but it was embarrassing to stare.

  “Look at this,” she said.

  He leaned forward and inclined his head.

  “In the interview with Karina’s friend Elisabeth Thorsen, she also mentions another boyfriend. Abid Kahn.”

  “Yes. He was in Pakistan for a while. Quite a watertight alibi.”

  “Exactly. Let’s assume it’s right—that he was in Asia when it all took place. No matter how bad the work is that’s been done in this case, I assume this has been checked.”

  Henrik caught himself biting his nails and thrust both hands under the table.

  “But look here . . .”

  Her nails were obviously varnished, he noticed, when she pointed to something she had highlighted in the text. Quite long, too, he thought, and very beautiful.

  “Karina is described as a ‘faghag, but with darkies instead of gays,’ ” she said quietly. “So someone who hangs out a lot with darkies. I assume that’s what Elisabeth means . . . yes, well, what does she actually mean?”

  “Pakistanis. Maybe people from the Middle East.”

  “People are . . .”

  She shook her head in dismay.

  “. . . strange,” Henrik completed, with a smile.

  “I was going to sa
y idiots. Well. There’s no witness interview with anyone who sounds especially non-Norwegian in this case. Not so peculiar, since in the first place they had decided that Frode Knoph was a bad guy, and, what’s more, they had not seen the connection to Gunnar’s case. But for the two of us, sitting here with them both, it would have been extremely interesting to know what other . . .” she paused, before pulling a sardonic smile and finishing off: “. . . darkies Karina hung out with.”

  “What if she was there?”

  “What?”

  Hanne straightened her back and looked skeptically at him.

  “What if Karina went along to the Maridal Lake,” he said slowly, “together with a couple of . . . her friends?”

  Her facial expression made him anxious.

  “Just a random thought,” he added quickly.

  “I would call that a wild speculation.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize.”

  She had a distinct frown above the ridge of her nose, but she was at least still gazing right at him. Like some kind of challenge to continue, he chose to believe.

  “But listen, Hanne. Oh, sorry. Can I call you Hanne?”

  “What else would you call me?”

  “Apologies.”

  He took a deep breath and buried his hands beneath his thighs.

  “I think,” he said, meeting her gaze, “that it would be a good idea to examine what links these two cases. There’s actually not so very much. First, there’s the date. One goes missing and the other is assaulted at exactly the same time. Second, they were friends. Maybe boyfriend and girlfriend. And third, there’s this attitude toward . . .”

  He hesitated.

  “Darkies,” Hanne said tersely.

  “Yes. While Gunnar says that he doesn’t like that sort—wasn’t that what he said?—Elisabeth Thorsen claims that Karina had some kind of predilection for them. Da . . . darkies.”

  Hanne took off her glasses and placed them carefully on the table.

  “In fact we have only those three connections,” Henrik said.

  “I think that’s a lot.”

  “Yes, true enough. But they could form the basis for a whole heap of quite different hypotheses. And can’t we just . . .”

  He couldn’t bear it any longer and pulled out his left hand to rub the side of his nose three times, before starting to drum his fingers on the table.

  “Do you think you could cut that out?” she said. “Unless you absolutely have to, of course.”

  “I do have to,” he said weakly. “For a short while.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can we just toy with an obvious hypothesis,” he said quickly. “Gunnar and Karina are at the Akerselva River together.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea. Going for a walk. To have . . . maybe to have sex?”

  “Outdoors in September?”

  His blush intensified so rapidly that he didn’t even bother to try to prevent it.

  “Yes. He was seventeen.”

  Hanne gave a faint smile. Henrik took it as a signal to continue.

  “If we assume that Gunnar is telling the truth when he said he was attacked by Pakistanis, then they can either have been with them, as Karina’s friends, or they might have turned up for some reason or other.”

  “Two Norwegian Pakistani boys. Out walking on an autumn evening at Maridalsvannet. I see. It’s a long time since I was able to go for a walk, but I think I remember that the tradition of going walking is probably the very last one our new countrymen have adopted.”

  “Yes, but . . . something could have happened there. Jealousy, perhaps? Elisabeth Thorsen mentions both a Norwegian Pakistani and Gunnar as Karina’s possible boyfriends.”

  “The Norwegian Pakistani has an alibi. He was in Asia.”

  “Yes, but . . . she likes darkies, after all. Maybe they had—”

  “Henrik,” Hanne interrupted, raising her hand.

  He cut off his sentence abruptly.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  He looked at her, perplexed, and forced his hands beneath his thighs again.

  “It’s a long time to lunch,” he said.

  “Yes, it is. But are you hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  She began to roll toward the kitchen. Hesitantly, he followed her.

  “Oh,” he exclaimed when he walked through the wide doorway. “This is fabulous, good heavens. And so . . . practical, isn’t it?”

  He looked at Hanne as she opened a drawer at the appropriate end of the room.

  “Pizza,” she said, though Henrik did not entirely understand whether this was a statement or a question as to whether he wanted any. “From last night, but I made it myself, and it’s damn good.”

  Henrik stole a glance at the clock. He had never eaten pizza this early before.

  “That’ll be super,” he said.

  “You can sit down.”

  He perched on one of the bar stools beside the kitchen island.

  “Do you know what scientific method is about, Henrik?”

  “Uh . . . yes.”

  Hanne rattled a roasting pan and opened an oven.

  “Tell me, then,” she commanded.

  “It starts with an observation. Or an idea. You then form a hypothesis about why this is so. For example, about why a flame goes out when you put a glass over it. Then you make a series of attempts to find out whether the theory is correct. If the attempts support the hypothesis—in this case, that fire requires oxygen and therefore goes out when it doesn’t receive a sufficient supply of it—you have a valid theory. In the opposite case, the theory is proved false. And so you start to look for a new theory.”

  Hanne put half a pizza into the oven and closed the door.

  “Salad?”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “That’s not what I asked you. Would you like some salad with it?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Why did you become a police officer, Henrik?”

  She turned her chair to face him for a moment.

  “Because I was bullied so much as a child.”

  She laughed. He had never heard her laugh. The laughter was subdued and in a sense light and tinkling, like ice cubes in a glass on a summer’s day.

  “Good reason,” she said. “I chose the police because I wanted to torment my parents. Not quite so smart.”

  Without saying anything further, she opened the fridge and pulled out the vegetable drawer. She set out lettuce and avocado on the low counter and selected two fat tomatoes and a cucumber from a basket on the window ledge. Henrik’s eyes followed her in silence.

  “That was a pretty good explanation,” she said in the end.

  The salad was ready.

  She trundled toward him, stopping a few feet away from his chair and folding her hands on her lap.

  “I think you’re clever. Well read and smart. But can you explain why police work has to be the direct opposite of scientific method?”

  He mulled this over. Strangely enough, he felt calm—so calm that his hands were still. One on his right knee and the other on the counter, entirely without him having to force them into it.

  “No. I can’t really, not off the top of my head. In many ways, we do use the same methods.”

  “Many do use them,” she corrected him. “But not us. Not you and me. Not good investigators. We first of all make an observation. Then we do everything in our power not to form a hypothesis about why that is so. About why something has happened. About what occurred. On the contrary, we concentrate on making further observations. Finding more facts. Building a case, layer by layer. In the end, when we are finished, we can draw conclusions. The conclusion might be entirely different from what we envisaged when we started. That is why we shouldn’t envisage anything. Forming theories on a shaky foundation, the way you did in there . . .”

  She nodded in the direction of the living room.

  “. . . isn’t good police wor
k.”

  Henrik did not blush. His left hand felt compelled to tap the stone surface, but it was okay to let it be.

  “But in such an old case,” he objected, “it’s hardly possible to make any fresh observations. We’re almost forced to use what we’ve already got, and then we have to—”

  “You’re going on a trip,” she interjected. “As soon as we’ve eaten, you’re going to conduct an interview that ought to have been done eighteen years ago.”

  The oven pinged.

  “Gunnar Ranvik is still alive,” she went on, without making a move to take out the pizza. “I found his address last night.”

  “Can I just . . . well, can I just go and talk to him? Just like that, without any fuss?”

  “Aren’t you a police officer?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to help me solve the case of Karina Knoph’s disappearance? On the orders of Oslo’s Police Chief?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there’s only one place to start. We’ll eat now, but when we’re finished, you’ve got a job to do. For me.”

  Henrik Holme’s hands went berserk. He made energetic drum rolls with both hands but felt so happy that it didn’t bother him in the slightest.

  Khalil Alwasir’s greatest concern was not simply that he was in danger of losing a fairly new computer crammed with important information, a pair of dress shoes, and a new shirt.

  He stood on the outer edge of a crowd of people whom the police were attempting to move back. Public reaction was extremely varied. While the majority were pushing to extricate themselves from the gigantic doughnut formed by hordes of people who had thronged around an abandoned backpack in the middle of Oslo Central Station’s vast concourse, others felt inquisitive and were intent on pressing forward. The result was that the ring simply increased in size, though the hole in the center did not.

  There must have been ten or more police officers there now, and they had appeared on the scene promptly.

  Khalil Alwasir had finally managed to maneuver himself to the inside of the doughnut, where all his worst fears were confirmed: his backpack was the focus of the commotion.