by Jo Nesbo
“I …” Støp’s gaze began to roam.
“You?”
“I have … nothing else to say.” Støp fell forward and lowered his head into his hands. “Talk to Krohn.”
“Fine,” Harry said. He didn’t have much time. Though he did have one last card. A good one. “I’ll tell them you said that.”
Harry waited. Støp was still bent forward, motionless. Then at last he raised his head.
“Who’s them?”
“The press, of course,” Harry said. “There is reason to believe they will give us quite a grilling, don’t you think? This is what you people would call a scoop, wouldn’t you?”
Something clicked behind Støp’s eyes.
“How do you mean?” he asked, but with intonation that suggested he already knew the answer.
“A well-known figure thinks he’s luring a young woman home, whereas in fact the opposite is the case,” Harry said, studying the painting on the wall behind Støp. It seemed to represent a naked woman balancing on a tightrope. “He’s persuaded to wear a pig mask in the belief that this is a sex game and this is how he’s found by the police, naked and crying in his bathtub.”
“You can’t tell them that!” Støp exploded. “That … that’s breaking the principle of client confidentiality.”
“Well,” Harry said, “it might be breaking the image you’ve built up around yourself, Støp. However, it doesn’t break any obligation to remain silent. More the opposite.”
“The opposite?” Støp almost yelled. The chattering of teeth was gone now and the color was back in his cheeks.
Harry coughed. “My only capital and means of production is my personal integrity.” Harry waited until he saw that Støp was savoring his own words. “And as a policeman that means, among other things, keeping the public informed to the extent that it is possible without damaging the investigation. In this case, it is possible.”
“You can’t do that,” Støp said.
“I can, and I will.”
“That … that would crush me.”
“More or less the way Liberal crushes someone every week on its front page?”
Støp opened and closed his mouth like a fish in an aquarium.
“But of course, even for men with personal integrity there are compromises,” Harry pointed out.
Støp studied him hard.
“I hope you appreciate,” Harry said, smacking his lips as if to memorize the precise wording, “that as a policeman I have a duty to exploit this situation.”
Støp nodded slowly.
“Let’s start with Birte Becker,” Harry said. “How did you meet her?”
“I think we should stop there,” a voice said.
They turned to the door. Appearances suggested that Johan Krohn had found time to shower, shave and iron his shirt.
“OK,” Harry said with a shrug. “Holm!”
Bjørn Holm’s freckled face appeared in the doorway behind Krohn.
“Call Odin Nakken of Verdens Gang,” Harry said, facing Arve Støp. “Is it all right if I return your clothes later today?”
“Wait,” said Støp.
The room went silent as Arve Støp raised both hands and rubbed the backs of his hands against his forehead as though to start his blood circulating.
“Johan,” he said at length, “you’ll have to go. I can manage this on my own.”
“Arve,” the lawyer said, “I don’t think you should—”
“Go home and sleep, Johan. I’ll call you later.”
“As your lawyer I have to—”
“As my lawyer you have to keep your mouth shut and go, Johan. Got that?”
Johan Krohn straightened up, mobilized the remainder of his wounded lawyer dignity, then changed his mind on seeing Støp’s expression. Nodded quickly, turned and left.
“Where were we?” Støp asked.
“At the beginning,” said Harry.
27
DAY 20
The Beginning
Arve Støp saw Birte Becker for the first time one cold winter’s day in Oslo, during a lecture he was giving for a publicity firm at Sentrum Auditorium. It was a motivational seminar where companies sent their jaded employees for a so-called refresher course, that is, lectures intended to make them work even harder. In Arve Støp’s experience most lecturers at this seminar were businessmen who had enjoyed a bit of success with not very original ideas, gold medalists from major championships in minor sports, or mountaineers who had made a career out of climbing up mountains and coming down them again to tell others about the experience. What they had in common was that they claimed that their success was a result of their very special willpower and morale. They were motivated. This was what was supposed to be motivating.
Arve Støp was last on the program—he always stipulated that as a prerequisite for his appearances. So that he could start by slating the other lecturers as greedy narcissists, divide them into the three above-mentioned categories and place himself in the first—success with a not very original business idea. The money that was spent on this motivational day was wasted; most people in the room would never advance that far because they were lucky enough not to have the abnormal drive for recognition that tormented those standing on the platform. Including himself. A condition that he said was caused by his father’s lack of affection. So he had been obliged to seek love and admiration from others and he should therefore have become an actor or a musician, only he had no talent in those areas.
At this point in the lecture the audience’s amazement had turned into laughter. And sympathy. And Støp knew this would culminate in admiration. For he stood there and shone. Shone because he and everyone else knew that whatever he said, he was a success, and you can’t argue with success, not even your own. He stressed that luck was the most important factor in success, he played down his own talent and he emphasized that general incompetence and idleness in the Norwegian business sector ensured that even mediocrity can succeed.
At the end they gave him a standing ovation.
And he smiled as he eyed the dark-haired beauty in the first row who would prove to be Birte. He had noticed her the minute he had entered. He was aware that the combination of slim legs and large breasts was often synonymous with silicone implants, but Støp was no opponent of cosmetic surgery for women. Nail polish, silicone: In principle, what was the difference? With the applause pounding in his ears he simply stepped down from the stage, walked along the first row and began to shake hands with the audience. It was a fatuous gesture, something an American president could permit himself to do, but he didn’t give a damn; if he could annoy someone he was happy. He stopped in front of the dark-haired woman, who glowed back at him with elated red cheeks. As he passed her, she curtsied as if for a royal, and he felt the sharp corners of his business card stick in his palm as he pressed it against hers. She looked for a wedding ring.
Her ring was lusterless. And her right hand narrow and pale, but it held his in an astonishingly firm grip.
“Sylvia Ottersen,” she said with a foolish smile. “I’m a great admirer so I just had to shake hands.”
That was how he had met Sylvia Ottersen for the first time, in her shop Taste of Africa one hot summer’s day in Oslo. Her looks were run-of-the-mill. Married, though.
Arve Støp looked up at the African masks and asked about something so as not to make the situation any more awkward than it already was. Not that it was awkward for him, but he noticed that the woman at his side had stiffened when Sylvia Ottersen had shaken his hand. Her name was Marita. No, it was Marite. She had insisted on bringing him here to show him some zebra-skin cushions that Marite—or was it Marita?—thought he just had to have for the bed that they had left not long before and that now sported strands of long blond hair, which, he made a mental note, would have to be removed.
“We don’t have any left in zebra,” Sylvia Ottersen said. “But what about these?”
She walked over to a shelf by the window; the dayli
ght fell on her curves, which, he reflected, were not bad at all. Her commonplace brown hair, however, was straggly and dead.
“What is it?” asked the woman whose name began with M.
“Imitation gnu skin.”
“Imitation?” M. snorted, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder. “We’ll wait until you get in more zebra.”
“The zebra skin’s imitation, too,” Sylvia said, smiling the way you do at children when you have to explain that the moon isn’t made of cheese after all.
“I see,” M. said, breaking her red lips into a sour smile and hooking her arm under Arve’s. “Thank you for letting us browse.”
He hadn’t liked M.’s idea of going out and parading around in public, and even less the grip she now had on his arm. She may have noticed his distaste when they were outside. At any rate, she let go. He glanced at his watch.
“Ooh,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting.”
“No lunch?” She regarded him with a surprised expression, quite able to hide how hurt she was.
“I’ll call you, maybe,” he said.
She called him. Only thirty minutes had passed since he had been standing on the Sentrum stage, and now he was sitting in a taxi behind a snowplow churning filthy snow onto the roadside.
“I was sitting right in front of you,” she said. “I’d like to thank you for the lecture.”
“Hope my staring wasn’t too obvious,” he shouted exultantly over the scraping of iron on pavement.
She chuckled.
“Any plans for the evening?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, “none that can’t be changed …” Beautiful voice. Beautiful words.
The rest of the afternoon he went around thinking about her, fantasizing about screwing her on the chest of drawers in the hallway, her head banging against the Gerhard Richter painting he had bought in Berlin. And thinking this was always the best bit: the wait.
At eight she rang the bell downstairs. He was in the hall. Heard the echo of the elevator’s mechanical clicking, like a weapon being loaded. A humming tone that rose. The blood was throbbing in his dick.
And then there she stood. He felt as if he had been slapped.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Stine,” she said and a mild expression of surprise spread across the smiling fleshy face. “I phoned …”
He scanned her from top to toe and for a moment considered the possibility regardless; every so often he was turned on by the ordinary and fairly unattractive type. However, he could feel his erection dwindling and rejected the idea.
“I’m sorry, but I was unable to get hold of you,” he said. “I’ve just been summoned to a meeting.”
“A meeting?” she said, quite unable to hide how hurt she was.
“An emergency meeting. I’ll call you, perhaps.”
He stood in the hallway and heard the elevator doors outside opening and closing. Then he began to laugh. He laughed until he realized he might never see the dark-haired beauty in the first row again.
He saw Sylvia again an hour later. After he had eaten lunch alone in the aptly named Bar&Restaurant, bought a suit at Kamikaze that he put on right away and twice walked past Taste of Africa, which was a refuge from the boiling hot sun. The third time he went in.
“Back already?” Sylvia Ottersen smiled.
Just as an hour before, she was alone in the cool, dark shop.
“I liked the cushions,” he said.
“Yes, they’re elegant,” she said, stroking the imitation gnu skin.
“Do you have anything else you could show me?” he asked.
She put a hand on her hip. Tilted her head. She knows, he thought. She can smell.
“Depends what you want to see,” she said.
He heard the quaver in his voice as he answered. “I’d like to see your pussy.”
She let him fuck her in the back room and didn’t even bother to lock the shop door.
Arve Støp came almost at once. Now and then the ordinary, fairly unattractive type made him so damned horny.
“My husband’s in the shop on Tuesdays and Wednesdays,” she said as he was leaving. “Thursday?”
“Maybe,” he said and saw that his suit from Kamikaze was already stained.
· · ·
The snow was swirling in flurries between the office buildings in Aker Brygge when Birte called.
She said she assumed he had given her his business card for her to contact him.
Sometimes Arve Støp asked himself why he had to have these women, these kicks, these sexual relations that were actually no more than ceremonial rituals of surrender. Hadn’t he had enough conquests in his life? Was it the fear of getting old? Did he believe that by penetrating these women he could steal some of their youth? And why the hurry, the frenetic tempo? Perhaps it came from the certainty of the disease he was carrying; that before long he would not be the man he once was. He didn’t have the answers, and what would he do with them anyway? That same night he listened to Birte’s groans, as deep as a man’s, her head banging against the Gerhard Richter painting he had bought in Berlin.
Arve Støp ejaculated his infected seed as the bell over the front door angrily warned them that someone was on his way into Taste of Africa. He tried to free himself, but Sylvia Ottersen grinned and tightened her grip around his buttocks. He tore himself free and pulled up his trousers. Sylvia slid down off the counter, adjusted her summer skirt and went around the corner to serve the customer. With his back to the room Arve Støp hurried over to the shelves of ornaments and buttoned up his fly. Behind him he heard a man’s voice apologizing for being late; it had been difficult to find somewhere to park. And Sylvia had said in a sharp voice that he should have known; after all, the summer holidays were over now. She was meeting her sister and she was already late and he would have to take over with the customer.
Arve Støp heard the man’s voice at his back. “May I help you?”
He turned and saw a skeleton of a man with unnaturally large eyes behind round glasses, a flannel shirt and a neck that reminded him of a stork.
He looked over his shoulder at the man, caught Sylvia going out the door, the hem of her skirt ridden up, a wet line running down the back of her bare knee. And it struck him that she had known this scarecrow, presumably her husband, would be coming now. She had wanted him to catch them at it.
“I’m fine, thank you. I got what I came for,” he said, heading for the door.
· · ·
Every once in a while Arve Støp imagined how he would react if he were told he had made someone pregnant. Whether he would insist on an abortion or that the child should be born. The only thing he was absolutely sure of was that he would insist on one or the other; leaving decisions to others was not in his nature.
Birte Becker had told him they didn’t need to use contraception since she couldn’t have children. When, three months and six acts of sexual intercourse later, she informed him with a rapturous smile that she could after all, he knew at once that she would have the baby. He reacted by panicking and insisting on the alternative option.
“I have the best contacts,” he said. “In Switzerland. No one will ever know.”
“This is my opportunity to become a mother, Arve. The doctor says it’s a miracle that may never be repeated.”
“Then I want to see neither you nor any children you may have again. Do you hear me?”
“The child needs a father, Arve. And a secure home.”
“And you won’t find either here. I’m the carrier of an awful inherited disease. Do you understand?”
Birte Becker understood. And since she was a straightforward but quick-witted girl with a drunkard of a father and a nervous wreck of a mother, accustomed from early years to coping on her own, she did what she had to do. She found her child a father and a secure home.
Filip Becker could not believe it when this beautiful woman he had wooed with such determination, yet to no avail, suddenly surrendered and set her h
eart on becoming his. And since he could not believe it, the seeds of suspicion were already sown. At the moment she announced that he had made her pregnant—only a week after she had given herself to him—the seeds were still well entrenched.
When Birte rang Arve to say that Jonas had been born and was the spitting image of him, Arve stood with his ear against the receiver staring into the air. Then he asked her for a photograph. It arrived in the mail, and two weeks later she was sitting, as arranged, in a coffee bar with Jonas on her lap and a wedding ring on her finger while Arve sat at another table pretending to read a paper.
That night he tossed and turned between the sheets, restlessly brooding over the disease.
It had to be handled with discretion, by a doctor he could trust to keep his mouth shut. In short, it would have to be the feeble, obsequious fool of a surgeon at the curling club: Idar Vetlesen.
He contacted Vetlesen, who was working at the Marienlyst Clinic. The idiot said yes to the job and yes to the money, and at Støp’s expense traveled to Geneva, where the foremost Fahr’s Syndrome experts in Europe gathered every year to hold a conference and present the latest discouraging findings from their research.
The first tests Jonas underwent revealed nothing wrong, but even though Vetlesen repeated that the symptoms usually came to light in adulthood—Arve Støp had himself been symptom-free until he was forty—Støp insisted that the boy be examined once a year.
Two years had passed since he had seen his seed running down Sylvia Ottersen’s leg as she walked out of the shop and out of Arve Støp’s life. He had quite simply never contacted her again, nor she him. Until now. When she called he said immediately that he was on his way to an emergency meeting, but she kept the message brief. In four sentences she told him that obviously not all his seed had dribbled out, she now had twins, her husband thought they were his and they needed a kindly disposed investor to keep Taste of Africa afloat.
“I think I’ve injected enough into that shop,” said Arve Støp, who often reacted to bad news with witticisms.
“I could, on the other hand, raise the money by going to Se og Hør. They love these the-father-of-my-child’s-a-celeb stories, don’t they?”
