by Anne Holt
For someone unable to really love anyone, she was actually incredibly social.
And popular.
Selma Falck filled her life with other people, and had been more alone in the past four weeks than the last ten years. Until Monday 13 November, when Jan Morell had confronted her with the continuous embezzlement from his client account, she would have taken a gathering like this in her stride. She would probably have arranged it. Ordered food and organized drinks and been the person who had made the sign in the hallway requesting everyone to switch off mobile phones and put them out of sight.
Before she had been exposed, she would have walked quietly around a room like this. Chatting. Tidying up. Making sure that Vanja and Kristina had everything they needed, at a time when they really wanted nothing except to turn the clock back three days.
But that was before.
Now she felt enveloped in a cocoon of sorrow and great love. In Selma Falck’s life there was no room for any of that. Her inability to cry had always suited her down to the ground. During the World Championship Bronze Final against the DDR in the Netherlands in 1986, with the score at 21-11, she was hit on the nose by a goalkeeper’s elbow. The injury was more serious than it had first appeared. Three operations later, her nose looked fine again, but her tear ducts were destroyed.
Selma could not shed tears, and she was the only one in the room who was not doing so. She stood apart, staring at her deceased godson in the hope that everyone would leave her in peace.
Haakon had been a longed-for and carefully planned child, in every sense of the word. He was loved from the date of his conception, and was still equally adored by his mothers as he lay in state in the most colourful living room in the world.
Selma’s children were born because offspring were part and parcel of a marriage.
She was fond of her children. Admittedly, she liked Johannes better than Anine, but that didn’t matter. Her daughter was just so difficult to understand. Even as a tiny baby Anine had seemed so strange. As soon as she was old enough to hold a ball – Selma had been so looking forward to this and had managed to get one with the Bækkelaget logo on it – the little girl had put the ball to sleep in her doll’s cot and wrapped a little quilt around it and started to sing a lullaby.
Anine and Johannes were the nearest Selma had come to loving anyone.
Maybe she did actually love them. She didn’t know for sure, but doubted it. She didn’t especially miss them. She never had done. Neither on her own travels when they were little, nor when they themselves went on trips once they grew older. She was glad they existed, and she was sometimes anxious when she didn’t know what they were doing. It pained her that they hated her now. She tried as hard as she could not to think about them. It was difficult, even though, deep down in her heart of hearts, she did not believe any of the furious messages they had sent her recently. They were just so angry on their father’s behalf. It would pass. In time. Maybe.
Don’t think of the children. Don’t.
Once in a while she tried to imagine what it would be like if they died. The thought terrified her, but the dull sorrow that overcame her then was so different in intensity from the life-affirming, overwhelming energy it gave her to risk something. To take chances. To compete.
To gamble.
Selma herself felt that it must be some kind of defect, even though she never spoke to anyone about it. In her brain, perhaps. It was called oxytocin, the love hormone, and it was impossible for her to produce enough of it. She was concerned about people, she experienced empathy and felt deep pleasure from friendship. She had been a team player from a young age, and she had liked the fact that in their early years, Jesso had admired, loved and wanted her.
It was just never particularly reciprocated.
Kristina and Vanja had been so head over heels in love that Selma didn’t really understand what became of them at the time they moved in together. She married Jesso because he was kind. They had a good life together, for a long time: he gave her space and was already earning a good salary when they set up house. Since Selma considered children to be a natural consequence, it wasn’t insignificant that Jesso was a fine figure of a man, smart, and also exercised almost as much as she did.
Jesso had good genes, and was a good dad in every way.
Selma had, however, never been in love with him. They had just lived together for almost quarter of a century. The only person she had ever been infatuated with was Morten Harket. By the same token, she had never met him. There was some kind of connection here that she had never really bothered to grasp.
Nils Holm, Kristina’s older lawyer brother, had approached from behind her without her noticing.
‘Hello,’ he said softly, almost whispering.
‘Hello.’
Her eyes were still fixed on the corpse.
‘I’ve been here all weekend,’ he continued. ‘Expected to see you here.’
‘I was here all Friday night. And Friday evening too.’
She tucked her hair behind her ear and tried to look emotional.
‘When the police came.’
He nodded.
‘I heard that. Thanks.’
Selma did not reply. Merely nodded. It must be possible to leave now.
‘There are rumours,’ Nils said. ‘That you’ve sold up. Suddenly.’
She finally turned to face him. Gave a sad smile.
‘It would be nice to have a chat with you, Nils. To catch up, you know. But this is hardly the time, don’t you think?’
He hesitated. Studied her.
‘You left us suddenly as well,’ he said.
‘Yes, a long time ago. A very, very long time ago.’
The doorbell rang.
‘I’ll open it,’ Selma said quickly, gesturing to Vanja and Kristina that they should remain seated.
Not until she was on her way to the door, relieved at escaping from her very first real employer, did she remember the sign someone had attached to the door.
Don’t ring the bell. Just come in.
Of course, it could have fallen off. She emerged into the deserted hallway and took three deep breaths before putting her hand on the heavy brass knob and opening the door.
‘Bottolf Odda,’ she blurted out. ‘So good of you to come. Come in.’
‘Selma Falck,’ he replied, sounding surprised. ‘Oh. Hello.’
The NCCSF president poked his head in and glanced towards the living room.
‘Is there … some sort of … party going on here?’
‘A viewing.’
‘What?’
‘A wake, if you prefer. A lot of people are here to grieve.’
‘Wa … no, no. I just wanted to …’
He retreated a couple of steps.
‘Are his mothers here?’
‘Yes, of course. We’re holding a viewing, as I said. Come on in.’
Selma opened the door wider and spread her arms out in a gesture of encouragement.
‘No,’ Bottolf Odda said firmly. ‘I’m not invited. I just came to …’
He ran a rough hand over his unshaven face. His suit hung badly on him and raindrops glittered on his shoulders. His red tie had a dark stain and he reeked of fast food.
‘I just wanted to give them a little …’ he began, ‘… warning. A heads-up, so to speak.’
‘I see. What about? Or isn’t it a bit silly of us to be speaking out here in the hall?’
He brusquely grabbed her elbow and steered her out into the stairwell.
‘This is probably best,’ he mumbled.
‘What is?’
‘That I tell you. Then you can tell them.’
His hand was raised lethargically towards the front door that had almost slid shut behind them.
‘OK,’ Selma said, nodding obligingly. ‘I’m a sort of family lawyer, you might say. What’s this about?’
‘The A-test,’ he whispered.
‘The drugs test? On Haakon? Was a sample really taken?’
/>
‘Yes. It’s …’
‘He died on Friday,’ Selma interrupted. ‘Surely there aren’t any results yet? It usually takes at least a fortnight!’
‘Jan Morell,’ he said so softly that she had to ask him to repeat it. ‘Jan Morell! He has so many strings he can pull that it’s really scary. As soon as the rumours began to do the rounds on Saturday, after the press conference, he started to work his magic.’
Bottolf Odda pushed his hand under his jacket.
‘Now we’re doing all we can to delay the B-test.’
‘What? Are you planning to sabotage …’
‘No, no, no!’
He waved his left hand about while the right hand was still fumbling for something that was apparently tucked into his inside pocket.
‘Not sabotage. On the deceased’s behalf, we have requested analysis of a B-test. To prevent this becoming public knowledge before the funeral. Or cremation. What is it to be?’
Selma did not answer. She grasped one side of his jacket and held it out.
‘What is it you want to show me, Bottolf?’
‘This.’
He handed her an A4 sheet, and she opened it out. Read. Read yet again.
‘Clostebol,’ she murmured, running her tongue over her lower lip. ‘Extremely minimal quantities. But obviously present.’
She calmly folded the sheet of paper and gave it back to him.
‘The same substance that Hege has been caught using,’ she said. ‘This is starting to turn into a real crisis.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, his voice breaking so much that his answer became a squeak. ‘Not only for Hege and for Haakon’s post-humous reputation. But also for …’
His hand rested under the left side of his jacket for so long that Selma feared momentarily that he was about to have a heart attack. His face was grey and damp, but the moisture could be from the rain outside.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said, stroking his face. ‘Bloody hell, Selma Falck. This is primarily a crisis for the Norwegian Cross-Country Skiing Federation. Death and drug-taking. Damn and blast.’
All of a sudden, he inhaled loudly. Almost gasped for air, and then repeated: ‘Death and drug-taking!’
His eyes were brimming. His lower lip trembled before he abruptly straightened up, adjusted his jacket and tie and ran both hands over the few wet strands of hair he still possessed.
‘And less than two months till the Winter Olympics,’ he said in an exaggeratedly light tone of voice as he forced a grimace that might resemble a smile. ‘I’ve got enough to do, you might say. Thank you very much.’
‘Thank you.’
He began to move towards the stairs. Selma stood there watching him.
‘Now it’s come to me,’ he said suddenly, turning around. ‘Who you look like. A bloody strong likeness, really.’
‘I know.’
His smile was wan, but now at least it seemed genuine.
‘You must have heard it. All the time.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s really striking. I like it, by the way. The series. And the actress.’
He turned up his jacket lapels and trudged down the stairs.
THE CONVERSATION
‘This is actually impressive.’
Jan Morell was a man of few compliments. He had grown up with a single mother who told him every morning, always equally dispassionately, that he would never amount to anything. Just like his father, she said, although Jan never really knew what had become of him. Then his mother tossed in a line or two about Jan being the reason for everything painful and difficult in her life, before lighting a cigarette and going back to bed. Not until he was seventeen years old did Jan meet anyone who spoke nicely to him. Her name was Katinka, and he made up his mind to take care of her for the rest of her life.
She died twenty-five years later.
Jan Morell was a man of action. He had fought his way through his childhood, when he was not skiing or skating with equipment that was old-fashioned and heavy as lead. He bought it himself, with hard-earned cash from bottle deposits, at the Stampen second-hand store in Prinsens gate. Or at a flea market. His mother hadn’t got him so much as a proper cap: for eight winters in a row he had roamed around in a knitted ski helmet he had been given by his hero Knut Johannesen, better known by his nickname Kupper’n, one time when as a little boy he had sneaked on to a tram and a bus all the way to the petrol station in Bøler to get the old speed-skating star’s autograph.
His teenage years, after Katinka came on the scene, became something quite different. He had spent some time in the sin bin at junior high school before they met, and knew little about anything other than playing sports. For two years he re-took subjects he had previously failed, and managed to pass his senior high school exams as an external student. That was in 1981. He was not accepted as a student at the Norwegian School of Economics, but after a year of study at correspondence school by day and working by evening and night, he ended up in Edinburgh. Only ten years later Morell Clear View, MCV, was the eighth-largest consultancy company in Norway.
Today it was the second-largest.
Jan Morell owed nothing to anyone. He had not reached as far as he had through inappropriate boasting, neither about himself nor others.
‘This is really impressive, Selma. As usual, you’re unusually systematic and efficient.’
Jan had spent almost twenty silent minutes leafing through the ring binder she had filled in the course of the night. Although her apartment was a dump, and he scratched himself at the thought of having been there, the block had at least splashed out on broadband provision. Since Google had given her nearly a million results on Hege Chin Morell, most of the work had obviously gone into sifting and sorting. Muckraking and golden nuggets, biography and travels. Rumours, myths and facts. Selma claimed it had taken her ten consecutive hours on the settee with the laptop on her knee and the printer on the floor. He was happy to believe that. Then she had taken extracts from articles that were worth something, and placed them in chronological order in a green, thick ring binder. In addition she had drawn a relationship chart of everyone mentioned on Hege’s own list. The vast majority of these were connected to the NCCSF in one way or another. A summarizing chapter was provided after every section, and finally a conclusion that ran to three pages.
It was unnecessarily long, and actually extremely simple: it appeared that no one really wished Hege Chin Morell any harm.
‘You arrived at that too.’
He carefully closed the ring binder.
‘Which means she might not be the intended victim,’ he went on while Maggi arrived from the kitchen and put coffee cups and buttered bread rolls in front of them.
He waited until she had set out everything.
Selma seemed uncomfortable, sitting there on the settee opposite, constantly pulling her cardigan more snugly around her. Leaning back, he entwined his fingers behind his neck and studied her closely.
‘Or what?’ he asked once the kitchen door had slid shut again.
Selma tilted her head to one side.
‘That thought had struck me too.’
‘That was why I was so set on having Haakon’s sample analysed.’
‘How did you manage that? In such a short time, I mean?’
‘I can manage most things,’ he said gruffly.
‘Yes, but …’
‘When the rumour started to circulate that Haakon might also have fallen foul of drugs, I realized that this could be a straw for Hege to clutch.’
Selma did not react. She gazed at him, searchingly, with her body locked down. Her arms folded over her chest and her legs crossed.
Selma Falck looked like an athlete. Even after so many years. Jan had followed the fourth season of the reality TV show, Champion of Champions, in 2012, primarily because a friend was taking part. A rapid mental calculation told him that Selma must have been forty-six when the series was filmed. She had
ended up in fourth place, as the best woman. And was far more fascinating to follow than Jan’s friend, who had won. Selma was tall and possibly a kilo or two heavier than in her prime. All the same there was fluidity in her movements and strength in the way she conducted herself that did not entirely chime with her real age. Her face was broad, her chin almost square; there was a trace of masculinity that disappeared each time she smiled with wide, full lips that were obviously not the result of any cosmetic trickery.
She had not smiled since her arrival.
Her eyes were slightly too far apart, he noticed now for the first time. Almond-shaped, a little crooked and so dark that in this dim light he could not distinguish the pupils from the irises.
‘What do you mean?’ she said in the end.
‘Look at this,’ he said, pushing a sheet of paper towards her.
She picked it up. Read. A frown bisected her forehead.
‘Haakon was tested six days before he died,’ she said without looking up.
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve managed to come up with those results already.’
Jan sighed. He leaned back again and clasped his hands behind his neck.
‘Don’t sound so surprised, Selma. I was your client for nine years. You know I can pull strings. You know I never do anything illegal. It gets a bit tedious if you’re going to make a song and dance about it every time I …’
Suddenly he leaned forward and grabbed his coffee cup.
‘… get things moving. What else do you notice about that?’
He raised his cup and tilted it carefully towards her before he took a drink. The coffee was too hot and he put it down again before adding: ‘As you see, the sample taken just before he died was absolutely clean. But the post-mortem sample shows a concentration of Clostebol of three nanograms per millilitre. What does that tell you?’
Selma was still staring at the sheet of paper.
‘That he can’t have taken the substance to achieve any kind of performance-enhancing effect,’ she said slowly. ‘Clostebol has, as far as I remember, a half-life of eight hours. He was clean at the start of last week, and with such a low concentration as this only a few days later, he can’t possibly have been on …’
