No Echo

by Anne Holt

  “You were actually the one who started this,” Annmari Skar let slip. “I was about to—”

  A commotion caused them all finally to glance over at Sindre Sand, who had been standing still in the witness box for more than half an hour. No one had thought to offer the man a chair, despite the court secretary at least having noticed that he had grown noticeably paler. Now he sank slowly to the floor and took the witness box with him in his fall. The two police officers reached him in one synchronized leap and managed to prevent the large wooden box from falling on top of him. A moment or two later Sindre was sitting on the floor with his head between his knees.

  “Water,” one of the policemen offered. “Don’t get up yet.”

  Sindre murmured, “I don’t give a damn about anything. Let me go. You don’t give a shit about me anyway.”

  The judge looked quizzically at Advocate Boe, who hesitated for a few seconds before nodding. The judge’s gavel banged on the table. They all stood up.

  The break did not have a refreshing effect on any of them. Judge Lund had rolled down his sleeves when he returned and straightened the tie under his dark jacket. It was half past nine before they were finally finished with the remand hearing.

  Advocate Boe’s argument had been deadly. He had not raised his voice like Becker, and he never repeated the points he made. They were too good for that sort of thing, and Annmari felt exhausted and drained when Judge Lund eventually concluded the proceedings by declaring that a verdict would be delivered the following morning.

  She turned to Billy T.

  “If the two of them are released, it’s your fault,” she snarled through gritted teeth. “You and that hellishly confused investigation of yours. I hope you’ve learned a thing or two today!”

  She marched out with only her bag slung over her shoulder. Billy T. could attend to the task of bringing the pitiful detritus of the investigation back to the station. Nearly two thousand pages of documents.

  He knew she was right. He did not have an overview of what was written there, and there was no red thread running through the material. No all-encompassing theories. A whole load of shots in the dark, as Becker had quite rightly screamed. Billy T. nevertheless tried to return all the documents to their rightful places, as if some sort of sense of order would shed fresh light on the case.

  His painful tooth was throbbing like mad.

  58

  Billy T. stared at the young woman in the bed, whose face almost merged into the white sheets, making it difficult to see whether she was breathing at all. The room was dim. Only a faint bluish-white light filtered from the corridor through the half-open door. He picked up a chair and sat down. A wall clock with oversized numbers on a white background told him that it was already two hours into the wee small hours of Wednesday December 22. There were now two days left until Christmas Eve. He had almost given up on sleeping.

  The doctor had burst into dry, irritating laughter. Vilde Veierland Ziegler was not going to be able to make a statement. Not for a long time. Guards outside her door would be completely out of the question. As far as the doctor could understand, Vilde was not remanded in custody. A charge of driving under the influence could hardly legitimize either the police squandering resources or the substantial increase in workload it would involve for both patients and staff to have to put up with uniformed police officers cluttering the corridors. When Billy T. had asked to be allowed to see Vilde, the doctor refused. The patient needed rest. Billy T. had shrugged, pretended to head for the sealed door leading from the locked ward, but instead did a U-turn in the corridor as soon as the doctor was out of sight. A nurse had asked him brusquely what he wanted, but she had backed down when he showed her his police ID and muttered something about permission from Dr. Frisak.

  Billy T. did not want guards in the corridor to keep watch over Vilde. He wanted to have them there to pick up every single sign of improvement. He simply must have an interview. He needed one now.

  Vilde Veierland Ziegler was Brede’s daughter. Billy T. was convinced of that. The doctor had refused to answer questions about Vilde’s medical history – whether she had ever, for example, needed an organ donation. There was no authority for that, Dr. Frisak had asserted bombastically. Deep inside, Billy T. swore that as soon as this inquiry was over, he would take up law. Obviously everyone else had. He sat on a chair at the woman’s bedside, but most of all what he wanted was to search her body for scars. He moved his arm over to the thin quilt, but let it drop.

  Everything had unraveled. At least, most of it had.

  The Italian trail had led nowhere. The report from Økokrim, the financial branch of the police, had decided that a preliminary examination of Brede Ziegler’s business interests in Italy had not given them any grounds for further investigation on the part of the Norwegians. Of course there were limits as to how far they had been able to check matters, because of both time and legal constraints. Nevertheless, everything appeared in order.

  Nothing to note.

  That was how it was written, at the foot of a four-page-long report that had arrived in the internal mail that morning.

  Then it must be Vilde.

  Brede inhabited a strange marriage. When the police had first discovered the bedsit in Siloveien, it was quickly established that in the main Vilde was never in Niels Juels gate. The spouses saw very little of each other, even though their wedding was less than six months ago. Also, Brede had chosen to be sterilized. Only twenty-four, Vilde was hardly capable of making such a serious decision about the future. In all likelihood she had not even known about the procedure. Brede had ensured, entirely off his own bat, that he would not father his own grandchildren.

  But why?

  “Why?” Billy T. whispered, trying to force some moisture into his dry eyes. “Why marry your own daughter?”

  Brede Ziegler had been notorious as a young man. Women had dangled from his every finger. He did not want children. He did not want a wife, either: at least, that was how it had looked. Then all of a sudden he marries his own daughter.

  “Fuck!” Billy T. muttered, yawning; it did not help much to counteract the feeling of having sandpaper behind his eyelids.

  Claudio had discovered the secret. Billy T. did not know how, and had not yet dared to question the guy about the matter. Gagliostro had attempted blackmail. That must be how it had been. The money had not gone from Claudio to Brede, as the Italian claimed. It had gone in the other direction. Brede had paid Claudio to keep his mouth shut. That would make the serial numbers logical. Billy T. would interview the guy until he broke down. But not yet. First he needed to talk to Vilde.

  The question was whether she had known all along. That the man she had married was her own father. Probably not. Something must have happened. Something must have come up. Brede Ziegler had been exposed.

  How?

  Was it Vilde who had murdered Brede? During a late-evening stroll to clear it all up? The Masahiro knife was light, the stabbing had been sudden. She could have done it. Her alibi could be false. Her friend could be lying. Everybody can tell lies. Vilde could have persuaded someone else to do it. Sindre Sand could have done it. Anyone at all could have done it. Annmari was a shit. Hanne was a traitor. Jenny was crying, and everything had gone red: he would have to hurry if he were to catch the train to the Bahamas. He was not wearing any clothes. He tried to run for the train, where he could hear Jenny crying, but his legs would not move and everything was red and he saw Hanne and Annmari at a window, laughing at him. Suzanne stood in front of the train. She had captured Jenny and dropped the child down between the rails, before jumping down herself.

  “This is really extremely serious, Chief Inspector.”

  Billy T., rudely awakened, rubbed his face.

  “Harrumph,” he cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

  “I made it pretty clear that the patient should not be disturbed,” Dr. Frisak said. “But obviously that wasn’t sufficient. I consider it necessary to report you. Could you
at least be kind enough to leave the hospital grounds? This is a closed ward, and you are here without permission.”

  Billy T. stood up stiffly and without a word walked past the doctor and disappeared. He might as well go to Grønlandsleiret 44.

  59

  As a rule, Annmari Skar expressed anger with an exaggerated show of self-control. She spoke if possible even more slowly than in court, as if the words came out of her mouth in enormous, easily read letters. Now she was speaking slowly, admittedly, but her self-control was less well handled.

  “Have you been in Vilde’s bedsit in Sinsen without a blue form? Have you gone sta-rk … rav-ing … mad?”

  She looked daggers at Billy T. and took a deep breath, three times over. Then she slumped back heavily in the chair and gazed challengingly at the Police Chief. When he did not say anything, she suddenly leaned forward again and raised the blue sheet into the air. She held it by the outer edge between thumb and index finger, as if the paper was a foul-smelling dishcloth.

  “I refuse to sign. I don’t make use of trickery and deceit.”

  She slapped the paper down in front of the Police Chief.

  “And to top it all off,” she continued, “the first thing that greeted me this morning was a detailed and extremely formal complaint from a Dr. Frifant or Frilynt—”

  “Frisak,” Billy T. said.

  “I don’t give two hoots what he’s called! The point is that you quite illegally went in to see a patient in the middle of the night, in total contravention of the hospital’s instructions and without so much as the shadow of a court order. What are you giving me?”

  The last sentence was spoken to the Chief of Police. Annmari reclined in her chair, arms crossed on her chest. Her gaze rested on the completed search warrant on blue paper. Only the lawyer’s signature was missing. Annmari’s breathing was labored, before she suddenly cut through the oppressive silence in the Police Chief’s office once again.

  “And only now,” she said; her voice was quivering and Hanne could swear that her eyes were shining with tears. “Now, today, you tell me that some things indicate Brede Ziegler has a child. Let me see …”

  She counted on her fingers with strenuous movements.

  “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Five days. Five days and a bloody horr-en-dous meeting in court, after you had received information that, to put it at its mildest, has significance for the case, you consider it a good idea to share your knowledge with me. With all the rest of us.”

  “I spoke to Karl,” Billy T. said sullenly.

  “Karl! Karl! Hah. I’m the one who’s the lawyer appointed to this case. It is in fact moi …”

  She struck herself on the chest with her fist.

  “… who has to bear the brunt of your … your—”

  “Honestly!”

  Billy T. raised his voice, his red-rimmed eyes blinking repeatedly.

  “It’s hardly the first time an investigator has asked to have a blue form post-dated! It surely can’t be worth making such a bloody fuss over!”

  Annmari put her face in her hands and rocked slowly from side to side. They all stared at her, as if unsure whether she was thinking or crying. Hanne thought she could hear some faint snorts, as if she were actually laughing at the whole situation. The Police Chief ought to say something soon. Hans Christian Mykland kept silent. He did not take his eyes off Annmari. Finally she looked up and drew a breath. “Chief – I would like to give you a report of yesterday’s court hearing. It was a nightmare.”

  Mykland’s eyes blinked. “But it went okay … Four weeks’ remand, with an embargo on letters and visitors for both the accused, was exactly what we had requested.”

  “We got it by the skin of our teeth, and really only because one of the accused was demonstrably lying and the other sweating so much, as if he had a dammed ocean of guilty conscience that simply had to pour forth at that very moment. Anyway, the ruling has been appealed. God only knows what the Appeal Court will say. But it was …”

  She gasped for breath and swallowed noisily.

  “Shameful! It was absolutely agonizing to present such a poor investigation and such an inadequate chain of circumstantial evidence. It took the defense counsel no time to find out that we have arrested and charged people at random. There’s only one thing we can do now. Quite simply not put another foot wrong. When you …”

  Once again her forefinger was trembling in the direction of Billy T.

  “… wander around at night to prove that Vilde is behind her husband’s murder because he’s actually her father, at the same time as you sit beside me when I’m demanding custody on homicide charges for two other people, I lose my last scrap of confidence in …”

  She gasped for air.

  “… you.”

  It began to dawn on Hanne Wilhelmsen why Annmari had phoned for her. She felt hot and cold by turns, and crossed her legs to prevent herself from getting to her feet and leaving the room.

  “This is not a social club,” Annmari said; for the first time there was a note of regret in her voice. “We have to be professional. At present you’re not professional enough, Billy T. I request that you step down as leader of this investigation in favor of Hanne Wilhelmsen.”

  Hanne had been tricked. She gazed at Billy T. to signal that she had known nothing about this in advance. He had closed his eyes and was barely recognizable. The moustache under his nose was pitifully unkempt and he had obviously not had time to shave his head for several weeks, either. A gray-flecked ring of hair around the crown made him look ten years older than he was.

  “That’s out of the question,” Hanne said, unruffled. “End of discussion. Absolutely impossible.’

  The Police Chief looked as if it had only just occurred to him that he was the one who was supposed to chair this meeting, and that they were sitting in his office. Cupping one hand in front of his mouth, he cleared his throat.

  “Police Prosecutor Skar and I have discussed the situation,” he said in a quiet voice. “And I agree it would be advantageous if you resume your old post now. It would have happened anyway, of course, in the New Year. There’s only a week or so until then. Actually, it’s entirely undramatic. And that is a request, Hanne. Not an order.”

  “I see,” Hanne said, standing up. “Cannot comply with the request.”

  Before she had reached the door, she turned quickly on her heel.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with you?”

  She stared alternately at Annmari and the Police Chief.

  “When something gets so difficult that your feet are on fire, you look for a scapegoat. I’ve seen it before, and will probably see it again. You ought to support Billy T. He has a difficult job. Besides …”

  She threw a penetrating look in the direction of the blue form that had ended up in the center of the oval table.

  “… somebody should sign that blue form. Now.”

  She left without even glancing at Billy T.

  60

  “Did anything new emerge from that coordination meeting this morning?”

  Silje Sørensen waved her hand to disperse the cloud of smoke in Hanne’s office, but sat down all the same with her feet planked unceremoniously on the table.

  “Nothing special. How is Sindre Sand doing?”

  “Refuses to give a statement. That’s become so fashionable these days …”

  Silje picked up the cigarette packet and read out loud: “Tobacco causes serious damage to your health.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Hanne said, slightly miffed, and snatched the packet. “What about the investigation into the paracetamol?”

  “A team of technicians are going through his apartment with a fine-tooth comb, and a whole group of police trainees are trawling all the pharmacies in the city to see if they can come up with anything. Something they almost certainly won’t do. Sales of Paracet aren’t registered. It’s well known that it’s a prescription-free medicine.”

  She y
awned behind a slender hand with dark-red nails.

  “Things take time. But we’ll get the better of him sooner or later. We’ll see how he reacts to being locked up for four weeks with no visitors.”

  “I would last for around half an hour precisely,” Hanne said, offering her a pastille from a squashed packet. “Poor Tussi Helmersen will never be herself again after her six hours round the back.”

  “We’ll all be happy about that,” Silje said. “At least, little Thomas will. His mother phoned me this morning to say thank you. Mrs. Helmersen has been in touch with an estate agent. She wants to move to the countryside, she says now. So it was good for something, all that. By the way, she was the one who had written those threatening letters. Fingerprints all over them, as it turned out. She had a nice little wall of hate in her living room, with pictures cut from newspapers of all the people in the public eye who had ever made a positive comment about anything whatsoever from beyond Norway’s borders. Thorbjørn Jagland, for instance, had been given a horn in the middle of his forehead. She’ll get away with a fine. Or a waiver of prosecution, as Annmari put it. No point in persecuting the lady for killing a cat, which she admits, and a few ridiculous threatening letters. What I have learned from this is that our biggest problem in each investigation is all the dead ends we get trapped in. Is it always like that?”

  “Always. Everyone has something to hide. Everyone tells lies, at least in the sense that they never tell us the whole truth. If everyone apart from the guilty party told the truth in every case, then we’d have the easiest job in the world. And then perhaps it wouldn’t be such fun any more.”

  Silje chuckled and scratched her stomach discreetly.

  “But now Tussi’s going to move away. Good for Thomas. Amazing what a stay in a bare cell can lead to. That Daniel boy of yours wasn’t so very sure of himself, either.”

  Hanne did not reply. She tapped an unlit cigarette on the table top as if she had not quite made up her mind whether to light it.