No Echo

by Anne Holt

  She smoothed her hair from her forehead with the back of her hand: she had grease on her fingers.

  “She was the one who took time off when I couldn’t. It was actually quite … okay?”

  She looked at them both with her eyebrows slightly puckered, as if wondering whether they thought her unfeeling.

  “But Freddy – or Brede Ziegler as he was by that time – I didn’t give him a thought until I was forced to. Daniel needed a kidney. Mine was not suitable.”

  The eggs were sizzling in the pan. She found a packet of cigarettes in her breast pocket and lit a cigarette without asking if anyone minded. Hanne took out her own packet and kept her company.

  “Actually,” Thale said pensively. “Actually it was the only time I had anything that might resemble true feelings for him. I hated him. For a fortnight. We sent a request through the hospital and his doctor, to see if he would allow himself to be examined with a view to organ donation. He turned it all down. Point-blank. Did not even get in touch. But …”

  She flipped the eggs on to three slices of bread. The cocoa was about to boil over.

  “But it turned out all right,” she said lightly, and rescued the brown milk. “Idun’s kidney suited. Daniel received Taffa’s kidney and he’s healthy today. Daniel knows about it all. When he turned eighteen, I told him who his father was. And how he had behaved. That he’s not someone worth having. Here you are.”

  They ate. Thale had ketchup on her fried egg, and Silje had to swallow to avoid throwing up. She pushed her plate away with a mumbled apology.

  “To be honest, I don’t give a damn whether you catch the person who killed Freddy,” Thale Åsmundsen said. “But I want Daniel to have the money. His inheritance. He has a right to that, don’t you think?”

  Once again she looked at Hanne.

  Silje could not understand any of it. She cleared her throat and draped her napkin over her food. She noticed that Hanne’s eyes did not waver from Thale. Finding the silence extremely uncomfortable, Silje tapped her knife against the edge of the table without thinking. Thale, on the other hand, lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, before blowing a perfect smoke ring up at the ceiling.

  “Am I callous, do you think?”

  “You understand that I have to ask,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said. “Where were you on the evening of Sunday December the fifth of this year?”

  Thale smiled vaguely, as if finding the question totally irrelevant.

  “I was toastmaster at a fiftieth birthday party,” she parried calmly. “There’s no performance on a Sunday, and my colleague Lotte Schweigler was celebrating her birthday with twenty-odd guests at her home. The party began at seven o’clock and I didn’t go home until five o’clock the next morning. She lives at Tanum in Bærum. It’s quite far to there. From the police station, I mean.”

  Silje had produced a notepad and tried to be discreet. It was difficult; the silence in the room made it possible to hear the almost dry felt-tip pen on the paper. Hanne glanced surreptitiously at her watch. Almost half past ten. She got to her feet as if to signal that she had reached her final question.

  “I don’t quite understand all this about the inheritance,” she said. “You’ve obviously not bothered about money before now. Brede Ziegler has hardly paid any maintenance, since you never named him as the father. Why is it so important now? So important that you had considered coming to us to tell us about this … this secret?”

  “Daniel is worried about not having any money. I can see that in him. Idun told me that you arrested him the other day.”

  There was no recrimination in her voice, rather a brief statement of fact; as if it did not trouble her in the least that her son had been unlawfully held for hours in a bare cell.

  “Daniel would never have tried to sell his grandfather’s books unless he really needed money. Besides …”

  She began to head for the front door, as if she regarded the visit as over.

  “… it’s about time Freddy paid his share. Don’t you agree?”

  This time she gazed at Silje Sørensen. The young policewoman muttered something inaudible and crammed her notepad into her handbag. She almost knocked over a little bronze figure of a baby curled in a fetal position; it was sitting on a lye-washed sideboard in the hallway.

  “Beautiful,” Hanne said, running her fingers gingerly over the egg-shaped child. “Lovely sculpture.”

  Thale Åsmundsen gave her one of her infrequent, warm smiles.

  “Yes, isn’t it? I got it from Idun when I was expecting Daniel.”

  Hanne noticed a family photograph beside the mirror above the sideboard. An elderly man in an armchair was seated in the middle, flanked by two women and a young man. Thale, Idun, and Daniel smiled at the photographer, but the old man’s gaze was sad and serious.

  “Family photograph?”

  Hanne tapped her finger lightly on the glass.

  “Yes. It’s actually the very last picture we have of us all together. It was taken on Father’s eightieth birthday last winter, just before he died.”

  Hanne leaned forward and studied the picture. Silje had already opened the front door and, tripping with impatience, had her back half-turned as she buttoned her jacket.

  “So this was taken less than a year ago,” Hanne said softly, without taking her eyes off the photo.

  “Yes.”

  Hanne Wilhelmsen did not feel relieved. A faint glow burned below her complexion. She tried to straighten her back, but continued to stand, bent at the hips, studying the barely year-old image. Daniel was smiling broadly as if nothing could hurt him. He was young, strong, and surrounded by people he loved. Hanne let her finger slide over the frame, a black, narrow molding around a sheet of glass that was cracked in one corner. Maybe the picture had once fallen on the floor. It hung slightly crooked and she adjusted it carefully. In the end she stood up, stretching to her full height. She turned to face Thale. Hanne ought to feel relieved. Instead she was engulfed by a sense of great, inexplicable disappointment.

  Even though the case was now solved.

  63

  It was two o’clock on the morning of December 23, 1999 and snow blanketed the streets. The occasional flake still whirled in the air, but the sky had cleared in the last hour. Markveien had been decorated for Christmas for a couple of months now, with transverse garlands of lights between the lamp posts. Artificial stars and plastic moons, however, could not outshine the real thing; Hanne Wilhelmsen looked up and caught sight of the Plough, trundling slowly above Torshov. Out of habit, she let her eye locate the Pole Star, only just visible in the northern sky. Department stores were unstinting with electricity. The snow appeared golden yellow, bathed in all the light. Tomorrow it would vanish into gray, wet slush.

  Billy T. was no longer grumpy. Instead, he seemed apathetic. When she phoned to talk to him, he was not dismissive. Only indifferent. She was not permitted to visit him at home. Tone-Marit and Jenny were asleep. She had the impression that he had given up on that sort of thing. He did not want to meet at police headquarters, either. When she suggested a stroll through Løkka, she was met with a barely audible yes, before the conversation was disconnected.

  He did not say hello. A faint head movement when he emerged from his own front gate showed that he had seen her, across the road, under a street lamp. He did not approach her. Instead he shuffled along the sidewalk on the opposite side. She had to jog to catch up with him. It was the middle of the night and he did not even ask what it was about. He was well wrapped up. The collar of his pea-jacket was turned up and his cap was pulled down over his eyes. Around it all he had wound a huge red scarf. He thrust his hands deep inside his pockets and did not say a word.

  “You can’t stop being a policeman,” Hanne said.

  A one-and-a-half-meter-tall porcelain hound stared blankly at them from an over-decorated window; a red-clad Melchior sat astride a reindeer with elk antlers. Hanne tried to slow the pace.

  “You can be angry at me. I can�
��t deny you that. But don’t give up everything else just because of me.”

  He stopped suddenly.

  “Because of you?”

  He sniffed and had to wipe his nose with his jacket sleeve.

  “That’s rich. As if you mean anything at all in this context.”

  Again he started to walk. He strode out over the pedestrian crossing in Sofienberggata without looking. A taxi tooted, skidding badly. Billy T. paid no attention. He cut diagonally across Olaf Ryes plass.

  “Can’t we sit down?”

  Hanne took hold of his jacket. They were standing beside the circular pond in the middle of the square, half-filled with snow and garbage. A stray dog loped toward them. The boxer was shivering with cold as it wagged its tail optimistically and thrust its squat face up between Hanne’s legs.

  “Shoo!” she said, waving it away. “Here. I brought these with me.”

  She put two thick newspapers on the bench.

  “Always prepared,” Billy T. said, patting the dog. “Our own Girl Scout.”

  But he sat down. First he pushed his mat farther away. Then he turned from Hanne. He stared at Entré. The scraggy winter trees blocked some of the view, but he could see someone switching off all the lights after a long night. So they were still open. Despite one of the owners being murdered and the other locked up in jail, charged with the murder. Billy T. sniffed again, and he followed the boxer with his eyes as it scurried from bush to bush, whimpering painfully and trembling all the way to the tip of its tail. It caught the scent of something and trotted off along Thorvald Meyers gate, before turning the corner and disappearing into Grüners gate in the direction of Sofienberg Park.

  “Can’t we ever be friends again?”

  Hanne let him sit at the far end of the bench. She wanted to move closer, but let him be. She did not even look at him, but threw the question out into empty space along with a gray-white cloud that quickly dispersed. Maybe he shrugged. It was not easy to say.

  “Of course, I can say sorry one more time,” she said. “But it’s probably no use. All I can say in my defense is that I realize I treated you badly. And that I didn’t do it to hurt you. I just couldn’t do anything else. I was in no fit state to …”

  She held it in. Billy T. was not listening. He had closed his eyes and his lips were moving soundlessly and almost imperceptibly, as if in the middle of a contemplative prayer.

  “Have you never done anything you regret, Billy T.? Have you never betrayed anyone? I mean, really betrayed?”

  Her voice broke. All the lights around her drifted together into a fog of stars, and she blinked hard. The tears stung like ice crystals on her cheeks.

  Still he did not respond. However, his lips had stopped moving.

  “I have regrets, Billy T. I have real regrets. So many things. But I can’t just cut out my past and burn it. It is there. All the stupid things. All the times I’ve hurt people I care about. All … all the anxiety. I’m always so scared, Billy T. I’m so scared that someone will …”

  She rummaged in her pocket and found a roll of paper hankies.

  “I’ve always been afraid that someone will see me. Everyone goes about thinking I’m embarrassed about being a lesbian. They think I hide … that. You don’t understand that all the time I’m using my energies to hide my whole self. It’s as if I don’t dare. For me it’s just as dangerous if someone gets to know that I … like having my back scratched. Or that the best thing I know is pancakes with syrup and bacon. That’s me, all of it, and it’s mine. Mine. Mine.”

  Now she was sobbing. She tried to pull herself together, taking a deep breath and squeezing her thumbnail against the palm of her hand inside her mitten. The tears flowed all the same.

  “What the hell,” she said harshly and stood up. “The Ziegler case is solved anyway. That was why I needed to talk to you.”

  At last he looked at her. Slowly he lifted his face to hers and pulled the scarf away from his face. She felt a pang when she saw his eyes. It was as though they did not belong in that dirty, familiar face: pale-blue, they stared at her as if he had never clapped eyes on her before.

  “What,” he said hoarsely. “What do you mean by ‘solved’?”

  It took only five minutes to explain. It was all so obvious after all. The solution was in itself a crying denunciation of Billy T., of the way he had led the investigation, of everything he had not done. Hanne could no longer bear to look him in the eye. She noticed that she tried to put a gloss on it all, that she tried to give him credit for which there was absolutely no justification.

  “That’s it, then,” she said finally, hitting one foot against the other, mostly out of embarrassment. “We’ll make the arrest early tomorrow morning. Or what do you think?”

  She forced out a smile. He staggered as he stood up. His movements were stiff as he began to walk; he obviously wanted to go home. After a couple of steps he wheeled round.

  “You asked me if I had ever betrayed anyone. I have.”

  He wanted to tell her about Suzanne. He wanted to take her hand and sit down again on the cold bench, feel the warmth from Hanne’s body and eyes and hands, and confide in her that the whole investigation had hit the skids when, less than twenty-four hours after the murder, he had bumped into a woman at the door of Entré.

  Suzanne was only fifteen when he had met her. A precocious, beautiful girl from a good family. He himself was an ungainly student at police college, and had already turned twenty-two when he fell head over heels into a love greater than he could handle. One thing was that the relationship between them was a crime. That had in itself scared him to death, as soon as the first, dazzling excitement had subsided. The fear had eventually pushed him away, driven him off. He was a trainee police officer and they were smoking hash. He ran away. Changed his phone number. Moved from one address to another, and yet another, while Suzanne’s health deteriorated. Between the psychotic breakdowns, she found him. He had never understood how. She phoned, usually at night. She sent him letters. Accusing, loving letters in which she begged for help. She called on him: ran away from the hospital and clawed at his bedsit door until her hands were bleeding. Billy T. moved again. At last, after two years of anxiety about being exposed, punished, dismissed from the police in disgrace, it all went quiet.

  He had forgotten Suzanne because he had to. For his own sake, and he had no choice. That was how he had felt it to be.

  “I have …”

  It was impossible. He gasped a couple of times, desperate to talk. Hanne’s face lit up in front of him: in the end it was as if her eyes were all he could see. The cold air tore at his lungs when he caught his breath, but he could not speak. He would never be able to tell anyone about Suzanne, even though for more than a fortnight he had looked over his shoulder wherever he went. The story of his betrayal of Suzanne was his own, and could not be shared with anyone. Instead he pulled Hanne close.

  “Thanks,” was all he managed to say, with his lips against Hanne’s ice-cold left ear.

  64

  She had tidied the office. The superfluous books piled up all over the place were gone. Moominpappa sat on top of a shelf, propped up by a luxuriant potted plant. The desk was bare, apart from a lidless cola tin filled with pens. The notice board was empty. A dark-blue wool winter coat hung on a hook behind the door. She grabbed it as she caught sight of them. She looked better now. Her cheeks had some color, and her hair caught a faint reflection of three large candles on a table in the narrow corridor.

  “Shall we go?” she asked, putting on her coat.

  Billy T. and Hanne Wilhelmsen nodded.

  Before she went with them, she withdrew the nameplate from the metal runners on the glass wall of the office. She stood for a moment, studying her own name. Then, letting the loose letters run down into her hand, she shoved them into her pocket.

  * * *

  Interview with the accused, Idun Franck

  Interviewed by Chief Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen (H.W.) and Chief Insp
ector Billy T. (B.T.). Transcript typed by office colleague Rita Lyngåsen. There are in total three tapes of this interview. The interview was recorded on tape on Thursday December 23, 1999 at 11.30 at Oslo police headquarters.

  Witness:

  Franck, Idun, ID number 060545 32033

  Address: Myklegårdsgate 12, 0656 Oslo

  Employment: Publishing House, Mariboesgate 13, Oslo

  Telephone: 22 68 39 80

  The accused agreed to the interview being taped and a transcript later produced. Provisionally charged with contravention of Criminal Code section 233, subsection 2.

  The accused (I.F.) gave the following statement:

  H.W.:

  As the accused in a criminal case, you have certain rights. I would like to record on tape that you have been made aware of this. You have the right to refuse to give a statement. You have the right to let yourself be assisted by a defense lawyer during this interview. Your defense counsel, Bodil Bang-Andersen, is present. You are also informed of the charge … (Pause, paper rustling.) That is what you have in front of you. You are charged with the premeditated homicide of Brede Ziegler on the evening of Sunday December the fifth, 1999. Do you wish to give a statement?

  I.F.:

  (Cough.) Yes, I am willing to give a statement. (Cough.) I would only say that I don’t really need a lawyer. I am happy to give a statement, and I know what I’m doing.

  Lawyer:

  I don’t think you fully understand what this involves. You are charged with premeditated homicide. Say what you intend to say, then we’ll deal with the question of guilt later. I ask that you respect that, Wilhelmsen. No questions about guilt. Just the plain facts.

  I.F.:

  But it’s quite simple, you see … I have …

  Lawyer:

  I think we’ll do it like that.

  H.W.:

  That’s fine. We’ll do as your lawyer says. But now we’ll make a start. I would like to continue, without interruptions. (Rustling at the loudspeaker, indistinct.) The accused is being shown evidence number sixty-four. Can you tell me what this is?