by Anne Holt
Sølve Bang leaned closer. He placed his hand over hers. It was narrow, and the nails looked manicured. Elegant, clean and flesh-coloured. Maggi’s hands were rough and dry, marked by years of dishwater and bleach. She wanted to pull her hand away, but didn’t dare.
‘Zaufai mi,’ Sølve whispered. Trust me.
He became almost like a fellow countryman. And he was a friend of the family, after all. Nevertheless the words stuck in her throat.
‘Does it have anything to do with the drug-taking?’ he whispered.
She did not answer. Merely stared at him, before looking down into her cup.
‘What?’ he insisted, and his grip on her hand grew stronger.
She nodded. One nod.
‘Did you find the offending substance?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘A tube of ointment. In the air vent in Hege’s bathroom.’
This was crazy, she realized. A betrayal. Of Hege, but also of Jan Morell, who despite often using an unfriendly tone had never done her any harm. Quite the opposite: he had given her a home. A sense of belonging, a kind of family, the three of them, Hege, Jan and Maggi: a trinity that should never be broken by her seeking advice and help from a stranger. She was not a real family member, she was well aware of that, she was an employee, a paid help with her own quarters in the basement, but she was important all the same. At least to Hege.
The house in Vettakollen was her home, and the people there were her family.
This was insane.
‘I have to go,’ she said in a low voice, as she got to her feet. ‘Sorry.’
‘No,’ Sølve said, reluctant to release her hand. ‘You’ve done the right thing by telling me this. You know that I wish Jan and Hege nothing but well. They’ve got so much to cope with right now. Far too much. Let me help, Magdalena. Pozwól mi pomoc!‘
She tore her hand free. Wrapping her scarf around her neck, she hoisted the strap of her bag over her shoulder. Without saying another word, she walked out of the café, turned right, and strode towards the subway station at Ullevål.
As fast as she could on the icy pavement.
THE MONEY
‘In the first place,’ Selma said, ‘Haakon can’t have been unfaithful.’
Elise wiped her nose with her sleeve.
‘Yes, he was,’ she said angrily. ‘He must have been.’
‘Now you’re going to listen to me.’
Selma stood up. There were limits to how long she could bear to sit so close to another human being. She pretended she had to stretch her back. Placing two hands flat on her tailbone, she gently swayed from side to side.
‘He simply wouldn’t have had the time,’ she insisted.
‘What?’
The elephant on the poster looked really enraged. Its ears were flared, and the frighteningly human gaze seemed full of hate and wisdom at one and the same time.
A remarkable image to have on the wall.
‘I know most things worth knowing about infidelity,’ Selma said. ‘So many variables can be the background to it. The thrill. Self-affirmation. Vanity. Diversion. Falling head over heels. And true love, which of course are the worst cases. Common to them all, however …’
She turned away from the elephant and looked straight at Elise.
‘Infidelity takes time. A horrendous amount of time. And energy.’
‘Exactly. He was never at home. Who knows what he might have been up to out there, after all he was away for two hundred and forty days a year! And when he was at home, he was hardly in the door before he was rushing out to training or some sponsorship event or TV or … He even took his degree exams last year!’
Elise exhaled with a slow, hissing noise, as if all the air inside her was being expelled.
‘That’s the whole point,’ Selma said. ‘He can’t possibly have had time for another woman. He kept a training diary. Haakon trained more than anyone else. Last year he reached almost eleven hundred hours of training. That’s sheer madness. And as we both know, so many hours of exertion have to be followed with an equivalent amount of rest. Sleep. Food intake. Otherwise there’s no point. Besides …’
Selma perched on the edge of the settee.
‘The requirement to give notification,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘In principle, Anti-Doping Norway wants to know where he is at any particular time. At the very least where he spends the night. Where he trains. When he trains. He must be accessible to the anti-doping inspectors at all times of the day and night. Sneaking a relationship on the side in between a family and elite sports at this level would be really tricky. You know that, Elise.’
Her disheartened eyes finally managed to make contact with Selma’s.
‘He had changed so much,’ Elise whispered. ‘The last couple of weeks. He was irritable and impatient. Even with William. He never had been before, no matter how exhausted he was. The opposite, in fact …’
She sobbed and picked up the bottle of water from the tray. Took a long swig, paused to think and then continued: ‘He was always so pleased to see us. So warmhearted. Haakon always felt guilty about us coming second. William and I. Haakon’s favourite pastime was to plan everything that was going to happen when his career was over. But in the past couple of weeks he was so …short with us. Abrupt, really. He raised his voice to William just because he knocked over a tumbler of milk. A tumbler of milk! He’s fifteen months old and has only just learned to drink out of a tumbler!’
‘A fortnight, you said? Since the change started?’
‘Yes, something like that.’
‘But why did you think of infidelity? I mean, it could have been about something totally different? His sore shoulder, for instance. Worse test results than expected. Disagreements in the team. Squabbles with the coaches, or …’
‘He talked to me about those things. Always.’
A blush suffused her neck, bringing unexpected colour to her pale figure.
‘We’ve been together since I was nineteen and he was twenty,’she said so softly that Selma unconsciously leaned forward. ‘And he has never, not a single time …’
The blush spread to her cheeks.
‘… given me a brush-off. Not once. The very opposite, with so many days spent travelling, it was …’
She ran both hands through her hair and inhaled with a sudden sob.
‘Now he turned his back on me as soon as we went to bed. Because of his shoulder injury, he’d been at home for the past little while. But he’d been training, of course. If he’d just been so worn out that he fell asleep at once, I would have understood that. That happened loads of times – he could fall asleep before his head hit the pillow. But I could hear it from his breathing. He was just lying there. Awake, with his back turned.’
Selma leaned back on the settee. She was thirsty and would have been glad of a Pepsi Max. Maybe she could go and get a bottle herself.
‘Can you tell me more about what had changed?’ she said instead. ‘Did he alter his routines, for example?’
‘No, not that I noticed. But one evening …’
Elise was no longer weeping. On the contrary – she suddenly looked alert. She tilted her head and stared intently into space as she tugged at the holes on the knees of her jeans.
‘There was that first evening, of course,’ she said, sounding almost surprised.
‘Of what? The first evening of what?’
‘Of the change. He sat up unusually late. With his laptop on his knee. Right here.’
She gingerly smacked the settee. Selma rushed to ask another question before the girl was overcome by sobs again: ‘Do you know what he was looking at?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, then?’
‘The bank statement. He was looking at his online account. He doesn’t often do that.’
‘What?’
‘His internet bank. So …’
For some reason she was drumming her fingers as if typing on an invisible keyboard.
‘I see,’ Selma said qu
ickly, though she didn’t understand at all.‘Do you know why?’
‘No. I’m the one who’s always dealt with our finances. That is to say …’
The shadow of a smile crept over her face and then vanished.
‘Haakon was the one who earned the money, of course. I just managed it. Loans, insurance, nursery fees. That sort of thing. Plus I always made sure there was money in his current account. He spends next to nothing, but he does need some, you see. I organize it all. We decided that I should stay at home for as long as his career lasted. To take care of everything, sort of thing. We planned to have more children eventually, and …’
‘Do you know if there was anything in particular he was looking at?’
‘No. Not really. He logged out and closed the laptop as soon as I came in to ask if he wasn’t coming to bed soon.’
‘Did you check later? Since you were the one to take care of the finances, did you later notice anything irregular?’
‘Nothing that had to do with infidelity, at least.’
Selma smiled sympathetically to hide her own impatience.
‘He wasn’t unfaithful,’ she said slowly. ‘But did you find anything else there? Anything out of the ordinary?’
‘Nothing of any significance.’
Selma struggled to keep smiling. It was becoming difficult.
‘Anything at all? Something that might have explained why he was on the bank’s web pages, something you say was out of character, so late one night?’
‘N… yes …’
Elise hesitated. She picked up the bottle of Farris, but left the lid on.
‘Just an incorrect entry.’
‘Oh? What kind of incorrect?’
‘They had transferred a large sum of money to him. Over fifty thousand kroner.’
‘Who do you mean by “they”?’
‘The Cross-Country Skiing Federation.’
‘A payment that was … incorrect?’
Elise nodded.
‘At any rate, it was paid back a few days later. A week or so, as far as I recall. Exactly the same sum. Into exactly the same account that it had come from. So, yes …’
Her narrow shoulders heaved.
‘So I assume it was just an incorrect entry.’
‘Has it ever happened before?’
Elise stood up.
‘No. And I feel terribly tired now. Do you really not believe that Haakon was unfaithful?’
‘I’m completely convinced. Both because I’ve known him since the day he was born, and because I can’t fathom how he would have managed to insert a secret like that into such a transparent and chock-full life. Besides, he loved you.’
‘Are you sure? You can’t really be sure of that. No one can be sure of that kind of thing.’
Her voice grew increasingly weak. Her shoulders were as angular as clothes hangers beneath her chunky-knit sweater. The skin on her knees was dry, Selma saw; the holes in her jeans had enlarged in the past half-hour.
‘Absolutely sure. And Elise …’
She ought to tell her about the drugs test.
When Bottolf Odda had given her the warning during yesterday’s viewing, it was on the cards that she would pass on the information to Vanja and Kristina about the positive result from the post-mortem sample. She hadn’t done so. Selma still couldn’t understand why she had left Pilestredet immediately after the visit by the Federation’s president, without saying a word to anyone. It had something to do with restlessness, she thought. With a picture, the contours of which she was beginning to make out, but the meaning of which she still did not comprehend. When she was visited by Jan Morell on Thursday evening, and offered a wager she could not refuse, she had accepted the craziest odds she had ever bet on. And it was Hege Chin’s life she was supposed to investigate. Hege was the one she was meant to exonerate, and Selma didn’t have any idea where to begin.
This picture was bigger.
Far bigger and far more indistinct.
In a flash she felt a kind of fear, a shot of adrenaline that made her suddenly get to her feet and head out into the hallway.
Elise deserved a warning.
She deserved two, in fact. Both that Haakon had apparently been knocked down on Friday, and that he had died with illegal substances in his bloodstream. Both of these would soon become public knowledge – it could be a matter of merely hours, and it would create an incredible rumpus.
Elise ought to be warned, but in that case Selma would have to stay.
‘Thanks for your hospitality,’ she said, pulling on her coat. ‘We’ll talk again soon, OK?’
A hug, a caress of Elise’s straggly hair, and yet another promise to see her again soon, on Friday at the funeral at the very latest.
And Selma dashed out the door.
THE CERTIFICATE
It was one fifteen p.m.
As usual in Advent, the cold had relented after only a few hours of battle. The world was once again sodden and grey. The clouds were so low above the city that the spire of the Kulturkirken Jacob church had disappeared. Selma stood outside a nine-storey building at Storgata 38.
An exercise studio occupied the whole of the ground floor, but that was not where she was headed.
At home she had a completed certificate stating that she was attending a course of treatment for compulsive gambling. She could give it to Jan Morell and in all likelihood get away with it.
‘In all likelihood’ was far from being a sure thing.
‘One chance’ was what Jan had said. He gave people a second chance.
Selma took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she let the air exhale slowly out of her nose. With a shrug, she decided to go in.
The Blue Cross, a well-respected interdenominational organization, offered a number of options.
Selma did not intend to avail herself of any of them. A certificate was all she needed. Proof of some kind, that she was taking her compulsive gambling seriously. With a certificate in the bag her agreement with Jan had been fulfilled, and no one could force her to go through with it.
All she needed was a wretched certificate.
She opened the door and stepped inside.
THE TRAIN JOURNEY
Hege Chin Morell ran faster than she had ever done before.
She had trainers on her feet, but sprinted without hesitation over ice and slush, on muddy paths and roads, traversing gardens where she had to jump over fences in order to pass through. She had leapt off the tram as soon as it reached Gulleråsen, one stop earlier than her usual.
It was almost time for dinner, and she was running for her life.
She had been awake since four a.m. When she couldn’t fall asleep again, she had got up. With not a single plan for the day, she had crept into the kitchen and taken bacon and eggs out of the fridge.
Admittedly she normally had to consume more than five thousand calories per day, at least during the periods of toughest training, but pork fat did not feature on the list of acceptable food. This morning she had fried a whole packet.
Three eggs. An enormous glass of milk, and for dessert she had helped herself to one of Maggi’s coconut buns from a box in the dried foods larder. Before she was finished, it was nearly five o’clock. Everything was still quiet. She had wrapped up warmly, pulled a cap down over her forehead and gone out. In plain clothes, hat and scarf, she was seldom recognized. Whereas the other girls in the national team quickly gathered a gaggle of autograph hunters wherever they went, Hege was just an ordinary skier.
The best cross-country skier in the world when dressed in national team colours.
But someone scarcely anyone recognized without them.
That’s how it had always been, and anyway, she was all alone in the world when she left the timber house in Vettakollen.
No animals by the apple tree. No journalists down on the road. Not even a stray dog to be seen, and the houses were shuttered all the way down to Smestad.
The subway began to run around half past five
, and she had jumped on the first and best of these.
Hege could barely recollect the last time she had taken the subway.
Her mother had often taken her out in Oslo. Usually on Saturdays, from the moment Hege could walk independently. Mother and daughter packed a knapsack with sandwiches and a thermos and ambled hand in hand down to the station, setting off aimlessly. They had criss-crossed the city for hours on end, Hege with her nose pressed so close to the window that she could draw hearts in the condensation from her own hot breath. Only rarely did anyone see them out there, and smile back.
Her mother had stories from all over the place. Fairy tales, fables, stories and anecdotes from the war, when Hege’s great-grandfather had been a saboteur and awarded a medal by King Haakon when all the vileness was over. They travelled eastwards and southwards, Hege and her mum, then west and finally to the north, to Vettakollen and rice pudding and marking on the map where they had travelled that day.
Mum had called their journeys ‘odysseys’.
It wasn’t the same without her.
Hege Chin had been to Bergkrystallen and Vestli, to Tøyen and Lambertseter. To Brynseng and Hasle and Furuset. For nine hours she had followed the daily rhythms of the city. Almost on her own for the first half-hour, crowded carriages during rush hour, cold in the early morning, sleet dispersed by rain in the course of the late morning hours. She had seen grey blocks in Groruddalen and detached houses on the hillside. People rushing here and there, grumpy children in the morning being pushed into nurseries. Stressed teenagers making their way to and from school, while beggars were the only people who sat still. A sudden impulse made Hege hop on to a train to Drammen around noon, but she had got off in Asker and turned back. She had travelled home in the dark, having watched a grey, short pre-Christmas day come and go.
No one had spoken to her.
For long stretches of the day she had stared straight at a picture of herself. The Aftenposten newspaper carried an interview with a Swedish doping expert who found it unbelievable that Hege had somehow ingested Clostebol without her knowledge. He asserted that Norwegian cross-country skiing had a serious credibility problem, and demanded an uncompromising reaction. A photograph of Hege, taken during the press conference on Thursday, was used to illustrate the misery. Splashed on the front page. She looked sombre, but sat with her head held high.
