Sohlberg and the Gift (10 page)

“Very Good. Don’t forget . . . I have to interview a couple of witnesses out in the East Side . . . Østkanten . . . and tomorrow I have to check out some old police archives.”

They kissed. Fru Sohlberg hurried out the door to join Nora Otterstad. The two best friends had agreed to go on a joint shopping expedition to buy gifts for their husbands. Their gift-giving experiences with their husbands had never been happy or stress-free.

~ ~ ~

Every December a grumpy Sohlberg declared that his Christmas gift was too costly and could not be afforded on his policeman’s salary and thus had to be returned
immediately
for a cheaper substitute. Emma Sohlberg inevitably countered rather angrily that she would buy him whatever gift she felt like buying him because she earned a bigger salary than his as an occupational health nurse.

At the Ottersatd household Matthias Otterstad objected loudly to any Christmas gifts that his wife got him. He reminded her that he was a wealthy money manager for the ultra-wealthy and that he already owned more than any man could ever want. Herr Otterstad nevertheless smiled and accepted her gift when the former hospital nurse would say:

“You’d better accept my Christmas gifts since a divorce would be very expensive for you. Remember . . . you sold me and I still own fifty percent of your company since I gave you the money to keep the business afloat when you couldn’t break even the first two years.”

~ ~ ~

As soon as the sleek Jaguar purred away Sohlberg turned his mind to
her
. She had been the first thing on his mind that Saturday morning.

Astrid Isaksen . . . mystery visitor.

Why did she pick me from all the other homicide detectives at the Zoo?

Who is she really?

Who sent her?

Why?

Is she telling me the truth? . . . Half-lies? . . . Outright lies?

~ ~ ~

Sohlberg discovered that Astrid Isaksen had at least been truthful when she had left him a voice message at work and mentioned that she lived during the week with her aunt on Tøyengata in the dangerous Grønland neighborhood which surrounds the Zoo:

“I stay with my aunt until the weekend. That’s when her boyfriend Jon Næss comes to visit. He works with her at the railroad but lives in Bergen. So on weekends I stay with my grandparents. You can meet me there this weekend.”

On Thursday during his lunch period Sohlberg had taken a brisk 20-minute walk to the dingy apartment building on Tøyengata. The sight of Muslim women wrapped in face-covering veils depressed him. Women trapped in full-body burkas enraged him.

Why migrate to Norway and then dress and live in a backwards medieval lifestyle?

Pakistani and Somali women looked utterly out of place in the frigid snow-covered streets of European Oslo. The cultural disconnect would be more visible and extreme in the summer when half-naked ethnic Norwegian women stood next to Third World Muslim women clad in what is basically a bodybag for the living.

The building manager confirmed Astrid Isaksen’s story and the fact that her aunt cleaned passenger cars for Norges Statsbaner or NSB Norwegian State Railways. A visit to NSB corporate offices later that day also confirmed the aunt’s life-long employment. Sohlberg was however unable to find and interview Astrid and her aunt. Despite several attempts Sohlberg never found them at home.

Petra Sivertsen’s list came handy again. Sohlberg made a call and one of Petra Sivertsen’s secretary friends at the jail took a look into criminal records to find out if Astrid Isaksen or her aunt or her grandparents had ever been charged with any crime. The inquiry’s result: clean records for the four Isaksen family members. The parents of Astrid Isaksen weren’t as clean.

Both parents had multiple previous contacts with the police.

The mother had multiple convictions for petty theft beginning from when she had been a teenager. She had been waiting for a trial on shoplifting charges when she died. A senile old man had accidentally killed her ten years ago when he accelerated instead of braking for pedestrians at the corner of Karl Johans gate and Kirkegata.

The father was a low-level informant who should have been but had not been arrested for numerous bar fights and frequent if not habitual theft. He had been picked up during two major drug busts but released without ever being arrested for meth dealing and possession. Oddly enough his criminal résumé ended abruptly seven years ago. Jakob Gansum had suddenly gone off the crime grid. No jail or prison in Norway lodged him. He no longer worked the police as a snitch. That probably meant he was dead or imprisoned in some other country. Stone-cold rehabilitation into a law-abiding lifestyle was the least likely option.

Does a leopard lose his spots?

Rarely. But it happens. The ex-con becomes an evangelist. Or a baker of organic breads. Or a doting stay-at-home father.

So far so good. No lies or discrepancies in what Astrid Isaksen had told him.

~ ~ ~

The visit to Astrid Isaksen and her grandparents required that Sohlberg drive his Volvo sedan on the E-18 Highway north into Oslo and then northeast on the E-6 towards the East Side of Oslo and its endless stretches of newer apartment buildings. He again had the feeling he was being followed. This time by a white Volvo. As before the driver dropped far behind as soon as Sohlberg slowed down. He got off the highway three times and waited until he was sure that no one was tailing him.

“Uggh . . . here we go to lovely Østkanten,” muttered Sohlberg as he hurled down the snow-cleared E-6 and passed the Ring 3 Highway towards his destination in the East Side.

As Sohlberg drove and looked out the car’s window he thought of how East Oslo had gone downhill.

During my childhood the rough and poor Grønland and Tøyen neighborhoods had minimal crime. Ditto for the areas north along the Akerselva River to lower Grünerløkka and the poor suburbs east of the Akerselven.

But now these neighborhoods are as dangerous as the Bronx in New York or South-Central Los Angeles in the USA.

Sohlberg was not alone in remembering the 1970s of his childhood when Norway was safe and relatively crime-free. But that all changed for the worse when the political elites flooded Norway with Turkish and Pakistani immigrants. Like most Norwegians Sohlberg had seen first-hand the crime wave that followed the multi-cultural insanities of the elites.

Insanity. That’s the perfect description.

It got even worse when our leaders then tried to look like the world’s greatest bunch of humanitarians. Their refugee insanity brought us a swarm of criminals from Pakistan and Vietnam and Bosnia and Somalia.

What a mess.

Sohlberg sighed. He had no power at all to change such matters. Zero. He was just a small cog in the criminal justice wheel. But he at least could make a difference in the Janne Eide case. He was determined if not obsessed to do so. Even the powerless can do good for others when they choose to do so.

With increasing angst Sohlberg dreaded his east-bound journey. He intensely disliked the far East Side of Oslo—the armpit of Oslo. He hated its urban sprawl and lack of character. He loathed the excess criminal population of East Europe that had encamped
en masse
to Østkanten thanks to the liberal immigration policies of the so-called
tolerant
elites of Norway. The drunk and the idle and the addicted had found a new host country to leach off ever since East European countries had ended the lavish cradle-to-grave welfare systems of communism. Oslo’s elites could now brag of having 300% the crime rate of New York City.

Hideous big box buildings thrived as promiscuously as lice in the armpit of Oslo. So did row after row of 3- and 4-story pyramid-like complexes stacked with the traditional recessed terraces that allow Norwegians to get maximum exposure to the sun during the summer.

The eastern reaches of Oslo depressed Sohlberg even more because the area was
in transition
. In other words East Oslo was in that irreversible downward spiral into crime and blight and poverty as ethnic Norwegians fled and East European and Third World immigrants moved in. Sohlberg had a hard time accepting Oslo’s
white flight
—once a symptom of dying American cities like Detroit. Sohlberg had an even harder time accepting that Islam was now the second largest religion in Norway. A large mosque dominated the Furuset neighborhood that Sohlberg drove past.

During the last part of his trip Sohlberg began to think carefully about the questions that he would present to the grandparents. He had to be careful and subtle. Astrid Isaksen had warned him that her grandparents were still bitter in the extreme over their daughter’s death and that they hated her father for having abruptly abandoned her seven years ago “for another woman”.

After exiting onto Karihaugveien he turned right into the narrow lanes of Edvard Munchs vei. Deep piles of snow covered the Ellingsrud neighborhood. The further he got away from the clean snow-plowed freeway the more dicey the roads became. Clumps of snow weighed down the pines on both sides of the road. Another right turn brought him into the impossibly narrower lane of Dragonstien. He had to leave his car at a parking lot on the right because Dragonstien disappeared under a six foot wall of snow. So much for global warming.

Rows of pyramidal four-story buildings beckoned at the top of a small hill. It looked like he’d have to post-hole his way up the plush piles of snow on the hill until he saw a tramped path in the snow.

After getting lost and frozen for more than 25 minutes in the maze of pathways between the buildings Sohlberg finally found the Isaksen ground floor apartment. He knocked and after a few minutes the door opened. A chain jiggled on the door’s security fastener. He shouted his name and showed his badge through a two-inch crack.

“Can I come in?” said Sohlberg with impatience as the door remained chained.

Metal parts moved. The security chain slid off. The door opened and a frigid welcome followed his bone-chilling walk.

“Yes,” said the grandmother reluctantly. “I guess so. Come in.”

The modestly furnished two-bedroom apartment smelled of old age and that smell reminded Sohlberg of his own grandparents. Vague aromas of ointments and medicines hung in the air along with pungent wafts of old-fashioned traditional recipes being slow-cooked in the kitchen. His nose detected fiskesuppe laden with heavy cream. But one sickening smell prevailed above all others: the acrid stench of tobacco which permeated and overpowered everything and everyone.

“Who is it?” said someone in the living room with a voice that sounded like sand blowing on a dune.

Sohlberg watched in disbelief at the living skeleton of Astrid Isaksen’s grandfather. The old man’s oxygen tank stood next to smoldering cigarettes piled high on an overwhelmed ashtray. Open and closed medicine bottles littered the room and pills of all sorts of pedestrian and fantastic sizes and shapes and colors spilled out everywhere. An IV bottle hung above the grandfather. The line dripped milky fluid into his veins. The ailing Isaksen waved his hand and in a mocking tone said:

“Welcome to my empire of pain.”

Not books but vodka and aquavit bottles lined the bookcase and window sills. Sohlberg tried not to stare but the man’s emaciated face and wasted body reminded him of the horrific multiple car pile-up on the highway that warrants a second or third or fourth lookover.

“This one is a cop,” said the surly grandmother by way of introduction. “He’s the one Astrid talked to on Monday. Sit down Inspector . . . if you must.”