by Anne Holt
She shuddered again.
“Sindre was not even sure that Brede was going to die. He just wanted to torment him, he says. Torture him, in a way. The worst thing is that he is right. People react differently to paracetamol. Although Brede Ziegler must have felt quite indisposed on Sunday, he didn’t necessarily suffer such terrible pain. But enough to try to get hold of a doctor, obviously. He might have thought it was all due to the awful binge-drinking of the previous night. When Monday came round and Sindre read in the newspaper that Brede had been stabbed to death the previous evening, he could hardly believe his own luck. It made him over-confident. Brazen. You saw that yourself in the first interview. And … he was telling the truth, concerning the hole in his alibi. Sindre, that is. He bought cigarettes and met an old school friend outside the gas station. We tracked the friend down in the end.”
The little girl down below had been comforted by a huge bag with something exciting inside it. The orchestra was taking a break. The aroma of Christmas cake and mulled wine was overpowering now and displaced the usual reek of floor polish, stress, and police uniforms. A nun dressed in black waited at the counter for a new passport, and Hanne gave a faint smile.
“Did you know that many nuns wear gray?” she said into thin air.
“What?”
“Nothing. Whereabouts in Italy was Sindre offered that job?”
Silje wrinkled her nose.
“In Vilana … No, I’m talking nonsense. Oh … what was it called again?”
She tapped her forehead lightly with the palm of her hand.
“Verona, of course. Romeo and Juliet. Just outside Verona. It had been some kind of convent.”
Hanne Wilhelmsen felt a pleasant heat course through her body. An ice-cold sensation ran down her spine in the midst of all the heat, and she felt the fresh running water in a deep pool filled with plump carp.
“What was the name of the place?” she asked softly.
“Don’t remember.”
“Villa Monasteria, perhaps?”
Hanne straightened her spine and massaged the small of her back with both hands.
“Yes,” Silje exclaimed excitedly. “Villa Monster … yes. What you said. Brede bought it a couple of months ago and thought it had fantastic potential. Was going to spend millions renovating it and creating an exclusive hotel.”
Silje twisted the diamond round to the palm of her hand and fell silent.
When Hanne closed her eyes, she could feel the anxious eyes of the nuns on her face. She heard il direttore’s hurried steps on the floor whenever she entered a room. She remembered that they had all stopped talking to her.
She knew they had mistaken her for someone else.
67
Actually she had not planned to go. Silje had insisted. Even though Billy T. was sulking and had stayed away, that was no reason for Hanne not to come. A message from the front desk had made her pay a visit to the office first.
Håkon Sand had phoned.
She phoned him back: immediately, so that her courage would not fail her. He did not want anything. Not really. He did not want to meet her, and neither did he want to invite her to the traditional Christmas breakfast that Cecilie and Hanne had always attended, on Christmas Day from twelve till twelve. He just wondered how she was. Where she had been for all that time. When he hung up, she could not really remember what they had talked about. But they had talked. He had phoned.
If there was an end to everything here on earth, Hanne thought, then there must also be new beginnings.
For once the buzz of voices did not die down when she entered the room. The faces that turned toward her were friendly, and Severin Heger drew out a chair.
“Sit down,” he invited. “Annmari! Pass a mug of mulled wine!”
Several of the police’s regular benefactors had sent boxes of sandwiches, Christmas cakes and two huge Lukket Valnøtt marzipan cakes. Karianne Holbeck had cream on her chin and was laughing at a joke that Karl Sommarøy had obviously spun out. Someone had brought a CD player. Anita Skorgan’s voice rasped from the broken loudspeakers and Hanne bent toward Severin’s ear: “Turn off the music. It sounds awful on that machine.”
“No, certainly not,” he said lightly, raising his mug. “Cheers! And congratulations!”
“Why the hell have you released Gagliostro?”
Klaus Veierød suddenly appeared in the doorway, dressed for a party, in a dark suit shiny at the knees. His tie hung loosely around his neck, and his hair was disheveled. He was waving a car key, but no one caught on to what he meant. He fixed his gaze on Annmari Skar. The Police Prosecutor put down her fork and swallowed carefully, before returning his smile.
“There’s no longer any danger of him tampering with evidence,” she said calmly. “He definitely didn’t murder Brede Ziegler, and as far as Sebastian Kvie is concerned, I’m afraid it all ends with the case being dropped. His defense lawyer is right. Sebastian climbed up on scaffolding in the middle of the night. Gagliostro can hardly have sat there in his pajamas waiting for him. Doubtful case, if you ask me.”
She raised her mug to her mouth.
“Do you realize one thing,” Klaus spluttered, pulling a small plastic bag out of the wide pockets of his suit trousers. “Here’s the tape from Brede Ziegler’s answering machine. Billy T. impounded it as early as day three, when he and our friend here …”
He glared contemptuously at Severin, who shrugged and smiled broadly.
“… were in Ziegler’s apartment. Our absolutely splendid Chief Inspector Billy T. …”
He scanned the room wildly. When he could not spot Billy T., he raked his hand through his hair and snorted like a horse.
“… had forgotten that he had taken it out of the machine. Just as he had forgotten to develop three rolls of film that he had … seized from the deceased’s fridge. But to take first things first—”
“We know that already,” Annmari broke in, still completely unruffled. “There was a message from Gagliostro there. About him expecting to see Brede at eight o’clock, as arranged. The guy was interviewed about this. He admits it now. Brede had found out about the wine scam. Gagliostro obviously suffers from what we might call wine kleptomania. They talked to each other that Sunday evening. Brede threatened to report Claudio, and to throw him out of the whole business. In the end they came to an agreement, all the same. Claudio was to return the bottles before opening time the next day, and Brede would get some money. Some sort of compensation. He got sixteen thousand kroner as a down-payment. Claudio managed to trick him into thinking that he didn’t have any more. Brede left at half past ten. You are right, of course, that we ought to have … We should have listened to this tape earlier. But it wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other, as far as solving the case is concerned. More likely the contrary. It would have reinforced our suspicions of Claudio. Considerably. And …”
Once again she gave a faint, almost provocative smile as she looked around.
“… he had not killed his colleague. Just cheated and swindled and lied.”
“And that’s the guy you’ve released!”
Klaus waved the car keys frantically, still without anyone understanding why.
“Yes. He’ll probably be charged with both fraud and a lot of other minor stuff. Giving false evidence, for one thing. Of course he hadn’t yet been charged when he was questioned the first time. But all the evidence has been secured. His apartment has been searched. So he could be released. It’s Christmas, Klaus! Sit yourself down and have some cake!”
“I’m going to my mother-in-law’s,” he snapped. “The car’s broken down, and my mother-in-law’s waiting in Strømmen. I don’t have a fucking present for my wife yet, and what’s more, I’d forgotten that I was supposed to see to the turkey for tomorrow.”
He glared angrily at the keys as if they were the cause of all his problems. Then he took out three envelopes from his inside pocket and threw them down on the table.
“Here are the pictures yo
u impounded,” he growled at Severin. “Just a fucking building. A gray building with little gnomes around it. And dry, yellow grass.”
Then he turned on his heel and left. Both car keys and photographs were left behind. As the door slammed behind him, the buzz of voices returned. After a few minutes the festive atmosphere was back. Karianne gave a loud, protracted laugh, and Silje had her hands full struggling to turn Severin down, as he tried to ply her with mulled wine with added raisins and almonds. Anita Skorgan had reached “Silent Night” and three police trainees joined in at the far end of the table.
Hanne picked up the envelopes containing the photographs. Her fingers trembled as she opened the first one. All the others around her were left to their own devices, and she put the bundle down in front of her without quite daring to look.
The pictures must have been taken in the autumn. The grass was withered, but the occasional obstinate flower still glimmered red in all the brownish-yellow. The sky was low and gray. All the pictures must have been taken on the same day. Hanne could sense rain in the air above the graveled courtyard. The hat on the faceless gnome that stood in front of the chapel on the southern side, which she had stroked with her hand every time she walked past, was dark and damp.
The Villa Monasteria had been photographed while she was still staying there. She had never noticed anything at all. Her hands grew quieter as she leafed slowly through the bundles.
Daniel would inherit the convent. Only a DNA test remained to be done, and three-quarters of Brede’s estate would be his, Annmari had explained to her that morning. Hanne had derived some kind of comfort from that, as if all the wealth in the world could make up for Taffa being in jail. The boy was inconsolable. He had sat in her office for more than two hours without saying very much, but he hadn’t wanted to leave, either. In the end he had stood up stiffly and taken her hand. When he wished her Happy Christmas, she had not had the energy to answer.
Daniel Åsmundsen was not going to build a swimming pool at the Villa Monasteria. He was going to fall in love with the deep pool with its crystal-clear water. Maybe he hadn’t heard of freshwater prawns, either. He would saunter through the bamboo thicket: the green stalks on one side, black on the other. Then he would sit on the stone wall beside the oval pool and watch the carp, the indolent beasts that suddenly, quick as a flash, made a beeline for something he could barely see.
“Happy, Happy Christmas, Hanne.”
Silje kissed her lightly on the hair. Hanne half-turned, and when Silje grasped her hand, she did not want to let go.
“Happy Christmas to you too,” she said quietly. “Have a really lovely time.”
“Are you going to be alone this evening?”
Hanne hesitated: it seemed as if the answer was sticking in her throat. Then she swallowed noisily and forced herself to speak.
“No. There’ll be three of us. My girlfriend, a good friend, and myself. It’s sure to be great fun.”
“Sure,” Silje said softly. “There’s Billy T., by the way.”
She let go her hand and left.
The others had stood up, some fairly unsteady on their feet. Two empty bottles of vodka sat beside the pot of mulled wine. The cake plates were empty, the candles had guttered. Billy T. looked at her over Severin’s shoulder, between the heads of two drunken trainees who completely ignored him. He snaked past them and held out his hand to her.
“I thought you would like this,” he said dully. “It is Christmas Eve, after all.”
Then he turned round and disappeared just as abruptly as he had arrived.
Hanne Wilhelmsen waited until they were all gone and the CD player was silent. The police orchestra had long since packed up all their instruments. Even around the back of the building everything was quiet; most of them in the enormous police headquarters had gone home and left Oslo to its own devices for twenty-four hours or so.
She unfolded the sheet of paper he had handed her.
It was a detailed map of the Østre Gravlund cemetery. At the top corner, some distance from the chapel, beside a gravestone marked with a red cross and a tiny little heart, he had written:
Cecilie’s grave. I’ve been there this morning and left flowers and lit candles. Cecilie’s parents came while I was there, and they were very pleased. I hope you are too. If not, you can just throw out all the crap. Billy T.
She slowly folded the sheet again.
It was now five o’clock on Christmas Eve. The church bells began to ring, heavy and rhythmic, throughout Oslo.
She would take a detour on the way home.
PRAISE FOR
‘Step aside, Stieg Larsson, Holt is the queen of Scandinavian crime thrillers’ Red
‘Holt writes with the command we have come to expect from the top Scandinavian writers’ The Times
‘If you haven’t heard of Anne Holt, you soon will’ Daily Mail
‘It’s easy to see why Anne Holt, the former Minister of Justice in Norway and currently its bestselling female crime writer, is rapturously received in the rest of Europe’ Guardian
‘Holt deftly marshals her perplexing narrative … clichés are resolutely seen off by the sheer energy and vitality of her writing’ Independent
‘Her peculiar blend of off-beat police procedural and social commentary makes her stories particularly Norwegian, yet also entertaining and enlightening … reads a bit like a mash-up of Stieg Larsson, Jeffery Deaver and Agatha Christie’ Daily Mirror
ANNE HOLT is Norway’s bestselling female crime writer. She spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway’s Minister for Justice between 1996 and 1997. She is published in 30 languages with over 7 million copies of her books sold.
Also by Anne Holt
THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES:
Blind Goddess
Blessed Are Those Who Thirst
Death of the Demon
The Lion’s Mouth
Dead Joker
No Echo
Beyond the Truth
1222
THE VIK/stubo SERIES:
Punishment
The Final Murder
Death in Oslo
Fear Not
What Dark Clouds Hide
First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2016 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Anne Holt and Berit Reiss-Andersen, 2000
English translation copyright © Anne Bruce, 2016
Originally published in Norwegian as Uten Ekko. Published by agreement with the Salmonsson Agency.
The moral right of Anne Holt and Berit Reiss-Andersen to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 815 9
Paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 230 0
E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 237 9
Printed in Great Britain.
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
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