What Dark Clouds Hide

by Anne Holt

  He had not noticed her out there.

  He would not have been able to conceal the fact that he had seen her. Not Jon. Her daughters were smarter at hiding things from their mother, they always had been, but Jon was an open book for her from the day he was born. As a baby he had hardly ever cried, since Helga had anticipated his needs before he was even aware of them himself. Jon had been her dearest joy. He was Wilhelm’s triumph and his elder sisters’ greatest pride and, for Helga Mohr, her son was an extension of all her emotions, all her existence.

  That was how it had always been, and although an eternity had passed since she had been the most important person in his life, there was nothing in Helga’s life more significant than Jon. Helga was quite certain that he had not seen her. Not even when she had staggered back and struck her leg on a patio chair, as she had nearly toppled down the steps, had he known that she was there.

  She would have seen it in him.

  When Helga Mohr, at that time called Axelsen, had married at the age of twenty-two in 1950, her parents were deeply sceptical. Wilhelm was good enough; it was not a matter of money, enterprise or education in the six-years-older man who wanted her. It was a matter of politics. While Helga’s own father had fled to Sweden in 1941 with the whole family and stayed there until the war was over, old Trygve Mohr had skilfully got ahead in occupied Norway. He had never become a Nazi, or joined the Norwegian Fascist Party, but it was not just idle gossip in later years that lent colour to reports of sumptuous parties in the house in Dagaliveien at a time when most other people had to content themselves with meagre rations. When peace came in the spring of 1945, the several-times-larger Mohr fortune was proof that probably could have led to him being prosecuted. By some means that very few people could later explain, he got away with it all the same. At least as far as legal consequences were concerned. In the eyes of the populace, the barracks baron had not yet been forgiven when his son, one summer’s day four years later, knocked on the door at Mr and Mrs Axelsen’s house to ask for their daughter’s hand.

  But Wilhelm was endowed with charm. He was independent and persistent and had set himself up in a completely different business from his father’s. The shipping company entitled Wilhelm Mohr Transocean already had a considerable tonnage, and if Wilhelm had inherited any characteristic from his rough-hewn father, it was the ability to duck and dive. Norwegian shipping was in a period of enormous expansion, and Wilhelm Mohr was here, there and everywhere. Helga’s parents eventually relented, and the wedding took place the following year. By then Trygve Mohr had already died at the age of fifty-nine, and Wilhelm’s substantial financial assets had expanded into a small fortune.

  Helga’s role in life had been that of caretaker.

  She took care of the children and looked after the house. She saw to her husband’s clothes and appearance. They had help, both in the house and garden, but it was Helga who ruled this little kingdom. She arranged hospitality and family dinners, she cultivated the right connections and ensured that her husband was able to do the same. Born and brought up in the exclusive, restricted group that for several decades of the twentieth century could be called Norway’s upper class, she knew what she was doing and she did it to perfection.

  Helga quite simply took care of the family’s assets, and the greatest of them all was the Mohr family’s good reputation. Wilhelm had, by investing in public works and fostering contacts all the way into the royal family, cleared his father’s rather besmirched name. That had been important to him. In fact most important of all, to her also. Even when most of their wealth disappeared. The Yom Kippur War in the autumn of 1973 was regarded by Wilhelm, like so many other shipowners, as a fantastic opportunity. Wilhelm Mohr Transocean made extensive investments in bulk carriers to meet the expected demand for transportation of oil. A short time later, when the red-hot freight prices suddenly began to drop, the ships became tremendous drift-anchors weighing down the company’s finances. At about the same time the authorities got it into their heads that Wilhelm had withheld taxes to almost the same extent as the even more famous shipowners Reksten and Jahre. Running a business in difficult times with investigators looking over his shoulder grew impossible. Three years later, bankruptcy became inevitable.

  Helga Mohr nevertheless held her head high and her back ramrod-straight. They still invited people to parties, and they kept their house, even though the ranks of servants were reduced to one cleaner every second Thursday. The fact that the authorities had been exactly right in their suspicions about a secret fortune held abroad, but were unable to locate it, prevented the family’s total ruin.

  Helga Mohr had never, to any outward appearances, lost face.

  When she was widowed in 1978, the authorities finally left her in peace. Her daughters were almost grown-up, and Jon and his mother continued to live in the huge, eventually somewhat rickety house in Smestad. Hidden assets abroad became increasingly difficult to bring home. Nevertheless the façade remained. Until now, when it was threatened once again. However, Helga Mohr had no plans to pension herself off from her task as the family’s caretaker for the past sixty-one years. She might have many more years left to live, she was sprightly and not bothered by much other than a touch of rheumatism and a bad eye, and it would have been a betrayal of her own life to let herself be caught out by what had happened. Sander was dead, and she was really sorry about that. All the same, nothing could bring him back to life. Her responsibilities were just as clear to her as they had always been.

  Now the most important of them sat on the chair directly opposite, on the other side of the low glass table, looking as if he had expired. Despite it being only three weeks since his return from holiday in Italy, the complexion under the dark stubble looked almost milky-white. His eyes were closed and his mouth gaped.

  ‘Jon,’ Helga said softly, but firmly. ‘Now you must listen to me. I have a plan.’

  ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t want to.’

  Helga considered for a few seconds – no longer than it took for the thought to pop into her head and then be discarded – whether to tell him that she knew.

  ‘Jon,’ she repeated, straightening her back.

  She moistened her lips and saw that he had opened his eyes at least. The sharp voice had awakened a reflex somewhere deep inside, a glimmer of obedience; he sat erect and ran his fingers through his hair before clearing his throat, swallowing and looking her straight in the eye.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You can live with shame,’ she said. ‘As long as it is your own. Everyone can carry their own shame, if they have dignity and strength. There are worse things. Far worse things, and this family has avoided that ever since I was born.’

  His mouth stretched out into a sneer, a painful grimace that vanished when he covered his face with his hands.

  ‘Worse things?’ he said in a muffled voice. ‘What can be worse than this?’

  ‘Jail,’ she answered harshly. ‘And now you’re going to listen to me.’

  *

  Henrik Holme had come to know Oslo well during the years he had spent at Police College. His friends lived in bedsits and shared apartments throughout the entire city, the most fortunate in Majorstua within walking distance of the college. But none in Tåsen, it crossed his mind as he alighted from the bus in Maridalsveien, unsure of which direction to take.

  The day Henrik had donned his first police uniform was one of his most memorable moments. To make the sleeves long enough, the shirt and jacket were too big around the neck, and it was impossible to find a pair of trousers both long enough and at the same time well-fitting at the waist. Nevertheless, the sense of entering into a new, important role was completely overwhelming. An almost sexual frisson had washed over him when, at home in his great-aunt’s girlish bedroom, he had unpacked the clothes and slowly put them on. When he had finally slipped his feet into a pair of new, shiny black shoes and adjusted his collar in front of an oversized mirror that he had hauled into his bedroom from the
hallway, he felt grown-up at long last. This was what he was. This was what he had finally become.

  A few weeks ago he had been able to remove the epaulettes that indicated his student status. When the new ones were in place, embellished with a solitary gold star, his true journey in life had begun. The uniform was his pride and joy.

  Now he was dressed in jeans, a striped cotton sweater and training shoes. When he had diffidently crossed the street and started to search for Nygaards allé, which he had located on a map, he tried to convince himself that he was exactly the same as usual. The difference was only that he was off-duty. All the same, he was on some sort of assignment, and he remembered the advice of an old college professor: ‘As a member of the Norwegian Police Force, you are always a police officer. In all your conduct, behave as if you are wearing your uniform. Always.’

  The other students had sniggered. Henrik had learned the sentences off by heart. Now he was whispering the words to himself, over and over again, until he found Hauges vei and approached the house with the right number displayed.

  Johanne Vik had been distinctly taken aback when he had phoned her an hour and a half earlier. But she had listened, astonishingly enough. He had steeled himself against being rejected and, strictly speaking, it was not exactly wise for him as an off-duty police officer to ask for a meeting with a kind of witness in a case he no longer had permission to have anything to do with.

  That in itself had been somewhat tricky. In advance, he had made countless attempts to embellish the story, make it more palatable to someone who was herself married to an experienced police officer and would certainly have misgivings about Henrik making contact outside working hours. In the end he had given up and decided to tell the truth; he was a lousy liar. He had concluded that it was sink or swim, and she left him in peace to relate the whole story. About his conversation with Elin Foss and the reports to the head teacher, about his meeting with Sander’s teacher in Grorud and finally about Tove Byfjord’s strict instructions to keep out of it all.

  Even when Johanne, near the end of the almost half-hour-long spiel, had asked why he had chosen to contact her, Henrik had kept to the unvarnished truth. He had already recognized her in Glads vei on 22 July. At home in his bedsit there were eight ring binders with newspaper cuttings from important criminal cases of the past fifteen years. He had started to collect these as an eleven-year-old, at first paper copies and later as data files on his computer.

  That was why.

  Not once had Johanne Vik laughed at him. She had simply asked him to come as quickly as he could.

  Now he was standing at the top of a short flight of concrete steps, pressing his finger on the doorbell. From inside he could hear rapid footsteps descending a staircase. The door opened.

  ‘Hi,’ Johanne said. ‘That was fast! Come in.’

  The policeman did not look quite so young in civvies. They fitted far better than his uniform had done, and he had applied something to his hair to make it stand up in some kind of crew-cut. It suited him. He gave a tentative smile as he greeted her politely, before thrusting his hand into his pocket and following her upstairs and into the living room. He still had his small red rucksack slung over his shoulder.

  ‘The dog’s very friendly,’ she assured him when Jack padded towards the visitor, wanting to sniff.

  The young man stood rigidly to attention during his inspection, showing no sign of bending down to let Jack smell his hands.

  ‘Bedroom!’ Johanne ordered, and the dog, delighted, disappeared out of the living room.

  ‘I’m really very pleased you were willing to see me,’ he said, sitting down on the settee where she indicated. ‘I’m really... truly...honestly desperate. It’s exactly as if every door is just slamming in my face at the very time that I’m becoming more and more convinced—’

  He gulped and touched his nose, before grasping the cup of tea without raising it to his lips. He touched his nose again, swallowed and stroked the teacup.

  ‘The guy who has taken over the case has his hands full with all that other stuff, and when this case has been left lying for ages, then he’ll probably go off on holiday. I know I’m not supposed to have anything to do with it, but I really feel Sander’s not getting...’

  At last he lifted his cup halfway to his mouth, before putting it down so abruptly that the tea sloshed over.

  ‘Justice,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘You’ve done the right thing,’ Johanne replied calmly as she followed his movements with her eyes. ‘I’m pleased you came.’

  Again his right hand took the habitual route between nose and cup.

  ‘Would you prefer water?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, please. I don’t really know where to begin.’

  ‘You told me about Sander’s teacher,’ she said encouragingly as she headed off to fetch a tumbler. ‘Haldis Grande, wasn’t it? I must commend you for your deductions about Sander’s time at school. That he seldom sustained any injuries there, I mean, but often arrived there with both broken arms and black eyes. Well spotted. Well figured out.’

  She smiled as she handed him the glass of water. His hand trembled a little and he put down the glass and again almost imperceptibly touched his nose, then the teacup, before finally raising the tumbler to his lips and drinking.

  Johanne felt a prick of guilty conscience. It came to her that the boy was in the process of breaking a whole catalogue of rules, as she resumed her seat. Henrik Holme probably felt he was making use of her. The truth was that she was taking indecent advantage of him. That morning, when she was in the doldrums, with no idea about whether or not to press on and uncover the truth about Sander’s death, this amateur of a policeman had called and provided her with a wealth of information on a golden platter. Some of this she would, in the fullness of time, have been able to acquire for herself. The rest, such as the medical records from the Volvat private clinic, would have been far beyond her reach. He had even mentioned that an investigation would possibly be opened into Jon Mohr’s role in an insider-trading case, although that in itself was rather up in the air. The young officer had not kept a single secret. Adam would have been furious. As Tove Byfjord was also going to be.

  However, neither of them were here.

  ‘You also told me about Elin Foss,’ she continued, when it looked as though he had not quite got into his stride. ‘That was the most significant detail, in my opinion. That she should—’

  ‘Do you know how many children are mistreated by their parents in Norway?’ he interrupted her so unexpectedly that Johanne raised her eyebrows. ‘And by that I mean actual violence, not other forms of ill-treatment or neglect.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither do I! It doesn’t look as if anybody knows. I’ve searched everywhere for an answer. I’ve undoubtedly spent ten hours on the Internet. I’ve contacted the Children’s Commissioner. No one knows for certain. Some sources say more than twenty thousand. Other statistics are higher, some lower.’

  ‘Difficult source material,’ Johanne said, nodding. ‘I would think there are colossal hidden statistics, and it’s extremely difficult to gather the data.’

  ‘Do you know how many people are convicted of inflicting violence on their children?’

  ‘Only a few.’

  ‘A handful each year. If there are even as many as that.’

  When he held out his hand to lift the glass of water, he did not need to touch his nose. He was no longer trembling.

  ‘That’s probably why I’m even more incensed that the head teacher at Sander’s school left both reports of concern from Elin Foss to rot in a drawer.’

  ‘You don’t actually know that’s what he did,’ she countered. ‘He may have initiated investigations off his own bat, without Elin Foss knowing anything about it.’

  ‘No. The protocol for such reports is to call in the person who made the report for further discussion, at least when the person concerned is employed at the school. I’ve checked that out.’
/>   ‘I see,’ Johanne said doubtfully. ‘But protocol is frequently broken. There can be good grounds for doing so.’

  ‘Think about it!’ he said, with one of those smiles that made him appear far more self-confident. ‘Haldis Grande would have known if the school had embarked on an investigation of Sander’s circumstances. She’s been his class teacher for three years. She hadn’t a clue. Quite the reverse. As I explained to you on the phone, she seemed completely bewildered at the idea that Sander might have been exposed to anything.’

  ‘Good point. Of course she would have known. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  His smile grew even broader.

  ‘Did Elin Foss keep copies of these reports?’ Johanne asked. ‘A receipt, or something to prove they were actually delivered?’

  ‘I...I didn’t get round to asking about that. The conversation was quite...quite abruptly terminated, you might say.’

  It was fascinating how quickly Henrik Holme could change colour. From sitting there with a proud smile and fresh summer complexion, he turned peony-red in a matter of seconds. Swallowing repeatedly, his hands shuttled between the teacup, water glass and his poor nose.

  ‘Relax,’ Johanne said softly. ‘We can find that out.’

  ‘She’s in Australia,’ he said meekly. ‘Travelling around, sort of thing. Can’t just get in touch with her at short notice. But I have at least...’

  Crouching down, he picked up his rucksack, opened it and pulled out a plastic folder. The contents were placed neatly before him on the coffee table, in four bundles. One of them was a copy set of the actual police case file, she noted. One of the others looked like a stack of articles that he had read the way a student would have done, with notes in the margin and yellow highlighted text throughout. The third one told her nothing. He handed her the fourth bundle, a few sheets of paper pushed inside a red cover.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Meet Sander’s head teacher.’

  ‘You’re amazingly well organized,’ she said, adjusting her glasses before opening the folder. ‘What’s his name?’