Death of the Demon: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (26 page)

“Shall we go to the cinema?” he suggested before he had time to consider it deeply, and she did not even seem surprised.

“Yes, we could,” she said. “What would you like to see?”

“It’s all the same to me,” he answered, feeling less tired already.

They sauntered into the city center, too late to make the seven o’clock screening and with all the time in the world until the one at nine.

Tone-Marit walked beautifully. A determined, self-assured gait, with a little feminine swing of the hips that did not seem to be an affectation. She carried her head erect, although she was almost as tall as he was, and he was a six footer. She was wearing a short leather pilot’s jacket over painfully tight denim jeans, and quite pointed shoes with laces that disappeared up under her trouser hems. She was not saying very much now either, but that was of no consequence.

It took them half an hour to reach Klingenberg. By then he knew at least where she stayed and that she lived alone. What’s more, she played soccer in the premier league, trained five times a week, and had played in six international matches. He was extremely impressed, and taken aback that he had not known these scraps of information before.

As they rounded the glass cases beside the cinema entrance, he spotted Hanne Wilhelmsen. The old familiar feeling of his heart beating just a tiny bit faster caught him off guard, but for the first time it was combined with something negative, almost depressing, that anger he had not quite managed to shrug off. Slowing his pace, he rubbed his freckled face with his finger and weighed the possibilities of going to the cinema at Saga instead. However, they had already decided on this movie.

Hanne Wilhelmsen was standing fiddling with her cinema ticket and chatting to three other women. Two of them had cropped hair and looked quite similar, one in an old anorak and the other in a dun-colored shapeless jacket and rubber boots
folded over at the top, just like an old sea dog. Both were wearing old-fashioned student glasses. The third woman was totally different. She had midlength pale blonde hair and was almost as tall as Hanne. Underneath an open maxicoat in some kind of expensive-looking fabric, she wore a dark red dress with buttons down the front. The two top buttons were unfastened, and the collar was turned up. Now she was throwing her head back and laughing at something one of the short-haired women had said. Hanne, standing half turned toward Erik and Tone-Marit, nudged her shoulder and smiled in a way he had never seen before. Her face was so open, she seemed younger, she seemed happier, more uncontrolled, in a sense. Suddenly, she caught sight of him.

Erik was here. And Tone-Marit. She had of course experienced this on many previous occasions. Colleagues out and about in the city. Oslo was not such a huge place. She had her strategies. A brief nod or a slight wave before hurrying off in the direction of something or other that seemed a very important destination. Something urgent that prevented any intimate conversation. It occurred frequently, although Cecilie usually became annoyed, or at least dismayed.

But here, outside a cinema where the movie would not begin for another twenty minutes, casually huddled together with all the other people standing waiting, waving their cinema tickets, it would be no use. They were her immediate subordinates. People she worked in close contact with. Day in and day out. She had to talk to them.

She beat them to it by taking the initiative and leaving her friends to approach her two colleagues. Too late, she discovered Cecilie had followed her. Karen and Miriam fortunately read it all so rapidly that they headed for the doors, departing the scene. Why on earth they insisted on looking so much like lesbians was unfathomable. And sometimes uncomfortable.

She had no idea what she was going to say. So she said it like it was.

“This is Cecilie.”

The earth stood still for three whole seconds before she added, “We share an apartment. We live together.”

“Oh, yes,” Erik Henriksen said, holding his hand out to Cecilie. “I’m Erik. We work together.”

His left hand made a circular motion that included himself, Hanne, and Tone-Marit.

“Are you a colleague as well?” he asked doubtfully, scrutinizing Cecilie’s face.

“No, far from it.” She laughed. “I work at Ullevål Hospital. And so you’re Erik. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Hanne noticed Erik was struggling with his perennial blushing and said a thank-you to higher powers that she was therefore more easily able to conceal her own. She did not even dare to look at Tone-Marit.

“Did you manage to complete most of those interviews?” she asked cheerfully, taking an imperceptible step to one side to avoid standing too close to her girlfriend.

“Five left to go,” Tone-Marit replied. “We’ll probably finish them tomorrow. By the way, the boy was spotted this afternoon.”

Hanne pulled herself together.

“Was spotted? By our people?”

“Yes, at the Storo Center, but he made a successful escape,” Erik confirmed. “He’s a tough little nut. He’s been on the run for a fortnight now. They’re searching the entire area up there. It’s not far, you see, from that villa where he spent a few days. The boys think he’s found himself a new hiding place, so they’re investigating abandoned farmhouses and that kind of thing. Farms scheduled for demolition.”

“Well,” Hanne said lightheartedly, trying to bring the unwelcome encounter to a conclusion, “I want to get myself a poster!”

“She’s hopeless,” Cecilie said apologetically with a smile. “She loves movie posters!”

“That last remark was bloody unnecessary,” Hanne hissed when they were out of earshot.

“I thought you were clever, Hanne,” Cecilie said calmly, taking the cinema tickets from her to hand over to the inspector.

“I’d no idea Hanne shared an apartment with anybody,” Erik whispered once he and Tone-Marit had found their seats. “Really lovely girl too.”

Tone-Marit fiddled with a straw that refused to fit into her carton of juice.

“I don’t exactly think they just share an apartment,” she said serenely, finally managing to push the reluctant straw into place.

But by then Erik was already tucking into a bag of chocolates and had started to look forward to the movie.

10

A
t ten o’clock on Friday morning, Maren Kalsvik phoned Billy T. again. Kenneth was unwell. He was crying and did not want her to leave the house. Normally he would have to accept it, she explained, but there had of course been so much lately. The boy was afraid, brokenhearted, and was running a temperature of thirty-nine degrees Celsius. She realized it was a lot to ask, but since the other members of staff were sitting in a queue at the police station waiting to be interviewed, she thought she would take the liberty of asking if he could come over to conduct her interview there. At the foster home.

Billy T. liked Kenneth. Besides, he knew what sick children could be like.

At twenty minutes to eleven he parked his own car on the road leading down from the Spring Sunshine Foster Home. He had not been able to contact Hanne, and that made him slightly ill at ease. He had been on the point of phoning her home to check whether she was there but had rejected that idea.

As he opened the gate on his way up to the large house, a skinny woman emerged from the main door. Catching sight of him, she halted and waited until he reached her.

“You’re from the police?” she asked skeptically, looking him up and down.

When he confirmed her supposition, her eyes affected an expression of concentration, as though struggling to call something to mind. Then she shook her head briefly, obviously casting
the thought aside. Without another word, she held the door open until he was inside before scurrying away along the gravel path.

Raymond came thundering down the stairs, almost colliding with Billy T. as the police officer was about to pop his head around the door of the dayroom.

“My goodness, are you not at school?” he asked.

“I’d forgotten my gym clothes! Maren’s in the conference room,” the seventeen-year-old called out, slamming the front door so violently behind him it could have wakened the dead.

Fortunately it did not wake Kenneth, who was sleeping on the first floor.

“Finally. He hardly slept a wink all night,” Maren Kalsvik said ruefully, offering him a chair.

“It doesn’t look as though you did either.”

She smiled faintly, squinting her eyes and shrugging her shoulders.

“It’s okay. But I’m worried about him. This is affecting the children, you know. Children who should be spared any anxiety. That’s one of the reasons for them being here. Oh, my! A murder and a suicide. In ten days.”

She covered her face with her hands and remained sitting like that for a few seconds until, with a start, she sat up straight and in an exaggeratedly cheerful voice suggested they should begin.

“Since we’re doing this here at your house,” Billy T. said, placing a tape recorder in the middle of the table, “I’m using this. Okay?”

She did not answer, so he presumed it was acceptable. After some initial fumbling, it even worked, although it was at least fifteen years old and made a ticking sound like an old-fashioned clock. It belonged to Oslo Police Station, and someone had ensured it would not be forgotten by plastering it with OPS labels in six different places. Beside the tape recorder he
placed a cell phone belonging to him, only two months old. He had received it as a Christmas present from his sons, meaning that their respective mothers had somehow collaborated on the gift.

“Have to have this on,” he said somewhat apologetically. “It’s the tackiest thing, I know, but we’re in the middle of an investigation and all that. The others have to be able to contact me.”

She still said nothing. So that was probably okay as well.

“We need to return to the evening of the murder,” he commenced.

“I do that every single night,” she said impassively. “When I’m finally able to sit down and relax. Then it hits me. All of it. That dreadful sight.”

Actually, he admired her. So young, and so much responsibility. Enough bucketfuls of love for a whole flock of children.

“Are you living here now?” he asked.

“Yes. Just for a while. Until things settle down.”

The old wreck suddenly stopped ticking, and he fiddled some more with the buttons, clearly reluctant to remain depressed. Eventually the recorder seemed to be functioning again.

“Can you recall precisely when Eirik Vassbunn phoned you?”

“It must have been just before one. At night, that is.”

She smiled wanly.

“How was he behaving?”

“Totally hysterical.”

“Hysterical? What do you mean by that?”

“He was sobbing and stammering and couldn’t manage to explain anything at all. Going completely to pieces.”

Her face had taken on a hard expression, and she pulled the elastic band from her hair, gathering her ponytail together once more and putting the band back on.

“He says you arrived before he had called the police.”

Billy T. stood up and crossed to the window. Placing his hands
on his back, he asked, without looking at her, “Why did you not say that when you were interviewed the first time?”

Then he turned around abruptly and fixed her with a stare. All he could read there was genuine astonishment.

“But I said that quite clearly then,” she said. “I’m one hundred percent sure of that.”

Billy T. stepped toward the table to produce a copy of the previous interview. It was five pages long and signed by both Kalsvik and Tone-Marit Steen.

“Here,” he said, reading aloud, “ ‘The witness says she was phoned by Eirik Vassbunn circa 01:00 hours. It could have been ten minutes before or ten minutes after. She thinks it did not take longer than a quarter of an hour for her to arrive on the scene. Vassbunn was extremely upset, and the police had to drive him to the emergency doctor for medical attention.’ Full stop. Nothing about it being you who had phoned. Nothing about the police not being here when you arrived.”

“But I really
did
say that,” she insisted. “Why wouldn’t I have said so?”

Billy T. rubbed his hands over his skull. He needed to shave. It prickled and felt itchy. He knew she was probably telling the truth. The previous interview did not mention that she had arrived before the police, but neither did it mention that she had
not.
Tone-Marit was promising, but she could obviously still make mistakes.

The phone rang. They both jumped slightly.

“Billy T.,” he barked, angry at the interruption. His anger increased when he heard it was Tone-Marit.

“Sorry, Billy,” she said. “But I—”

“Billy T. Billy
T.,
I’ve told you. A hundred times.”

He turned halfway around, away from the table, and Maren Kalsvik raised her eyebrows and pointed toward the door. He nodded, somewhat disconcerted, but she seemed grateful to be
able to take a break so early. She carefully closed the door behind her, and he was left alone.

“What is it?”

“We’ve found out who committed fraud with those checks.”

He said nothing. He heard the
whooshing
sound of water in a pipe and assumed that Maren Kalsvik was in the kitchen next door making coffee. But it might also be something wrong with his ears.

“Hello? Hello!”

“Yes, I’m here,” he said. “Who was it?”

“The Lover. The videos show it clearly, even though he’s wearing a stupid false beard.”

Hanne’s theory in the bar disintegrated, though it did not matter in the least.

“One more thing,” she said, her voice fading and almost disappearing in the grating and crackling from the phone. “Hello? Are you there?”

“Yes,” he shouted. “Hello?”

“The Lover has disappeared. He’s not been at work for a couple of days but hasn’t phoned in sick or anything like that. The friend he told us he was with in Drøbak on the evening of the murder can’t be found either.”

The
whooshing
noise became even louder. Now he was not sure whether it came from the water pipes, the telephone, or his own head.