Death of the Demon: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (30 page)

“Cell” was not strictly true. But it worked: a tiny, almost imperceptible trembling appeared at the corner of the woman’s mouth, and remained there. For a considerable length of time.

Hanne stood up and stepped around to the opposite side of the desk. Perching her posterior on the desktop edge, she crossed her legs. Maren Kalsvik was sitting a meter away, staring at a point in the center of her stomach.

“You had a dental appointment that day. Agnes’s discussion with Terje took so long you had to be excused. You had to get to the dentist’s in time. It strikes me that Agnes would not have been pleased about that. She must have been in a bad mood that day. Very understandable. One untrustworthy member of staff after another.”

Maren was still staring at a spot or something on her sweater, but Hanne noticed the trembling in the corner of her mouth was no longer visible.

“Perhaps Agnes did not want to make a fuss. Perhaps you had plans for the rest of the day as well. I don’t know. But I think it’s likely she asked you to return later in the evening. Late in the evening. She would put her own child to bed first. And have peace and quiet at the foster home too. What do I know? Perhaps you had some inkling there was something unpleasant in store. Probably you did, because she must have insisted on holding the meeting. In any case . . .”

She left the desk and returned to her seat once more. Taking
a blank sheet of paper from a drawer, she started to make a paper airplane.

“In any case, you came back. About half past ten, perhaps. You were quiet, because you knew fine well some of the children would be going to sleep at that time. Maybe you popped your head in to say hello to Eirik Vassbunn, but when you saw he was asleep, you did not bother. That may have been because you wanted to show consideration.”

She folded and refolded.

“But it might also have been for other reasons. Anyway, he did not notice that you had arrived.”

The plane was almost completed. Taking a fresh sheet of paper, she tore it carefully to form a splendid tail.

“Then you learned what it was about. Or what proof she had obtained. Or that you were being fired. Something totally upsetting.”

Hanne shifted her eyes from the paper plane to the other woman’s face. Still completely expressionless. Still as though hewn from stone. It no longer irritated Hanne. Now it was a good sign. A damn good sign.

“You obviously kept your voices fairly low. There were children sleeping on that entire floor. Even though several rooms separated you from them. But to be honest . . .”

Hanne Wilhelmsen broke off and sent the airplane in a beautiful curve up toward the ceiling, where it hovered, almost still, as it reached the top of the arc, before flying in a lightning loop and coming in to land on the window ledge. Maren Kalsvik did not allow it to disturb her composure, offering the plane not a single glance.

“I’ve tried to step into your shoes,” Hanne said in a friendly tone. “Tried to think about what it would be like to be discovered. That my boss found out I hadn’t been to Police College after all. That everybody got to know about it. That I got sacked and became unemployed.”

Dripping a few drops of coffee into the overflowing ashtray, she poured the wet contents into the wastepaper basket before stretching her hand into a drawer and withdrawing four Kleenex tissues to wipe the ashtray. She then lit another cigarette.

“I would quite simply have fallen apart. I mean, after so many years, after demonstrating I was really competent at what I was doing, for a trivial piece of paper to turn my whole life upside down.”

She shook her head and smacked her lips.

“I’m not making fun of you, Maren,” she said gently. “I mean it. I would have fallen completely apart. And though my job means so much to me, I think yours is even more important to you. That’s obvious from the way you handle the children.”

A chain of smoke rings dissipated on its journey to the ceiling. The two women remained sitting in silence for a while. The only sounds they heard were footsteps coming and going in the corridor outside. The station was about to empty for the weekend.

“Tell me if I’m wrong, then,” Hanne suddenly encouraged her, finally making eye contact with the other woman, who changed her sitting position and shook her head, muttering something that Hanne did not catch. Then she returned to her role as Sphinx.

“You begged for mercy, perhaps. I would have done that,” Hanne continued indefatigably. “But Agnes . . . Do you know, by the way, what the name Agnes means? Pure or virginal. Saint Agnes was maidenly but stubborn. It cost her her life. Was our Agnes equally stubborn?”

Maren naturally made no reply, but her face was now almost transparent and livid.

“She probably was,” Hanne said for want of a verbal confirmation from Maren. “And then something happened, something I’d like some details about. Look at me!”

She banged both fists on the desk, causing Maren Kalsvik to
flinch. They glanced at each other fleetingly, before looking away. Hanne shook her head.

“There were some knives lying there. Agnes’s own newly sharpened knives. On the desk, possibly, or perhaps on the bookshelf. It’s not so important where they were. Anyway, you moved across the floor, around the desk, and were standing behind Agnes when you suddenly snapped. It happened in the blink of an eye. Before you’ve had time to think, it happened. You grabbed a knife and thrust it into her back. You were furious, you were desperate, and you were completely out of control. There’s an enormous amount here for a defense counsel to work with, Maren. An enormous amount. Perhaps someone will even come to the conclusion that you were suffering from impaired mental capacity at the time of the attack. A lawyer might help you.”

She rolled her chair over toward the window to open it. The room was gray and foggy with cigarette smoke. Now it turned chilly instead.

“Shall I phone for an attorney?”

“No.”

She had been sitting motionless for so long her vocal cords were almost paralyzed, and the reply was more of a cough than a word. Hanne cursed Billy T. Still no word from him.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then I’ll continue. You probably couldn’t fathom what you had done. Murder, you understand, is almost always committed in the heat of the moment. You hadn’t planned anything of the kind. More sustenance for the defense!”

Hanne took out the Yellow Pages for Oslo, and leafed through it to the list of attorneys. She then threw the open catalog toward Maren.

“I would really recommend you get hold of one.”

The woman did not answer, just shook her head faintly.

“I don’t have the energy to say it again,” Hanne said with a sigh, taking the directory back. She closed it with a smack.

“It might well be that you decided to report it to us at once. But then you soon thought of other alternatives. You knew where the desk key was, so you fetched it and opened the drawers to look for the compromising papers. I’ve no idea whether you found anything about yourself. But it’s likely that you found some about Terje. You left them there, in the hope that the police would find them.”

Hanne laughed, a short, hollow laugh.

“It wasn’t strange that you knew Terje had been there after you! I should have placed more emphasis on your amazement that the key was not lying underneath the plant pot when we were talking the day after the murder. Because you had of course put it back. When Terje was not arrested, you realized we hadn’t found anything. Ergo . . .”

She tapped her temple meaningfully with her left forefinger.

Maren Kalsvik was still sitting like a zombie, motionless and with her gaze directed at something Hanne Wilhelmsen could not fathom. Something beyond this world. Her eyes were pale steel gray, almost inhuman, more like a dog or a wolf. Hanne could not recall anything other than that they had seemed much bluer before. On the other hand, the entire office seemed gray now. The footsteps and voices from the corridor, which had broken up the monotony of her monologue, had now disappeared. Most of the Homicide Section had gone to celebrate the solving of the double murder with a beer or four. At home Cecilie was probably standing making coffee, having used up all her excuses for why Hanne had never appeared. What had become of Billy T. was a mystery. Erik and Tone-Marit had been given permission to leave around seven o’clock, after the Lover had tearfully admitted to check fraud. His friend, finally tracked down, had confirmed the coffee-drinking episode until late on the evening
of the murder, something the staff of the café had hesitantly, but nevertheless convincingly, also confirmed. He had been allowed to go. He was probably feeling like hell.

Hanne Wilhelmsen was not feeling so hot herself either.

But Maren Kalsvik was feeling far, far worse. She sat stock-still, without uttering a word, without looking at anything, without reacting to anything that was said. It was the only method she had of maintaining a hold on life and reality.

Something inside her was about to collapse. Her innards were churning into a chaotic mixture. Her abdomen was thumping and beating, as though her heart had fallen all the way down. She managed to breathe only with the very top part of her lungs, as though they were squeezed right up into her throat, where there was not enough space. Inside her head there was not a single thought. Instead her emotions were whirling around inside her stomach, desperate to escape. Her arms and legs had disappeared; they were simply there, dead and numb and serving no other purpose than to constrain everything that was aching and exploding inside her torso.

The only thing she succeeded in clinging on to was determination that she must survive. The only way to survive was to sit totally still and hope it would all pass. There was no one in the entire world who could help her. Apart from herself. By keeping her mouth shut. She must not unravel. Must not believe God had turned his back on her. She clutched a red point somewhere inside her stomach, held tight, and refused to let go.

The suicide letter had arrived in the post two days after he had killed himself. She tore it open and spilled her coffee on it, a letter addressed to her. “I did not kill Agnes,” it had said. He begged her to believe him. There was something else there too. “Be careful, Maren. Agnes knew about your fraudulent diploma. I knew as well. Be careful. I have done so much that was wrong. But so have you.”

She had burned the letter. It was not addressed to the police. It belonged to her.

My God,
she thought, as a rumbling sound came from somewhere inside her stomach.
Forgive me. Help me.

Chief Inspector Wilhelmsen had left the suspect to her own thoughts for a lengthy period. She did not know what she was waiting for. She was sinking into a kind of indifference, a defense against the unbearable fact that she knew she was sitting across from a murderer and did not have the foggiest idea how she was going to see to it that the woman received her well-deserved punishment. Prove that she had committed the crime.

She chased the feeling away but appreciated it would return if something did not happen soon.

“You didn’t need to fear fingerprints. Other than on the knife, that is, but they were swiftly disposed of. Just a wipe. All other prints belonged there quite naturally. You’d been there hundreds of times. That was how we realized why you’d taken the other knives with you.”

Maren Kalsvik moved for the first time during the entire interview. Stiff and sore, she leaned forward toward the coffee cup, its contents thick, cold, strong, and bitter. She blinked vigorously a couple of times, squeezing her eyes shut as though there were a speck of dust in them. The smallest tear hung on the eyelashes of her left eye, before falling and running slowly down her cheek. It was so tiny that it was used up before it reached her mouth. Then she sat back, returning to her wooden doll position.

“For now,” Hanne said, rising from her seat, “I’ll show you what I think. I’ll show you how, quite early on, we realized the murderer had to be someone who spent his or her daily life here, someone who didn’t need to be afraid of fingerprints in the rest of the room.”

She crossed to the door and opened it. Outside, the corridor was deserted and gloomy.

“Now I am you, okay?”

She pointed first to herself and then to the other woman.

“I’ve just killed someone. I’m incensed, I’m desperate, but the most important thing of all is I don’t want to be caught. I have a hard job getting out of it. But then perhaps I suddenly remember what happened when I grabbed the knife I stabbed into Agnes.”

Maren Kalsvik made no sign of watching her. She just sat still, with her profile to the door. Hanne sighed, approached her, and took hold of her beneath the chin. Her face was cold as ice, but her head was limp and the chief inspector had no difficulty forcing her to make contact.

“When a person takes hold of a knife that’s lying in a pile of other knives, it’s extremely difficult not to touch the other ones. It’s well nigh impossible, if you don’t take your time to pick out only one. Look here!”

She took out four long items from a drawer, a letter opener, a slim leather pencil case, a felt-tip pen, and a ruler, and laid them on top of the desk.

“If I lift one of them without knowing exactly which one I want to take hold of, this is what happens!”

As she quickly grabbed the letter opener, her point became clear. She had touched all three other items as well. As she had demonstrated to Billy T. in the bar in Grünerløkka.

“You didn’t have time to mess about. You were acting on the spur of the moment. A moment’s rage and desperation. The remaining knives were the only place your fingerprints preferably should not be. You could have wiped them. But that would have taken time.”

She let go her face and approached the window.

“Of course everyone would have been afraid of fingerprints on the knives. But you see . . .”

The palms of her hands touched the cold glass, and she paused before turning to continue.

“If it had been an outsider who had done it, he or she would have had to fear fingerprints in
other
places too. As far as a stranger is concerned, we have two theories. If he was planning to do something illegal, the outsider would have known to wear gloves. No reason to bring any knives. Or else he committed an unplanned murder. In the heat of the moment. Then the knives would have been the least of his problems. He would have had to wipe down the whole place. The door handle. The desktop, perhaps. The armrests on the chair. What do I know? But you always touch somewhere or other when you enter a place. And that was how I knew.”