Sohlberg and the Gift (33 page)

“I guess Chief Inspector that the old saying is true . . . criminals always make mistakes.”

“Oh yes they do. You can count on it.”

“Got something to write on?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

Sohlberg reached for a nearby pencil on a side table and he dropped it when he heard the name of the business. “What? . . . Are you sure?”

~ ~ ~

He parked on the rather narrow Peder Claussøns Gate in the St. Hanshaugen neighborhood and walked to the equally cramped St. Olavs gate. On the right the street led straight up to Akersgata where he saw the lovely St. Olav's Cathedral. The Catholic church’s slim brick tower and tapered metal spire dominated the end of its namesake street.

Sohlberg turned left on St. Olavs gate and headed to Number 9—a massive three-floor villa on the north side of the street. He took out his personal cell phone and searched www.skattelister.no to find out the amount of yearly income that the homeowner had reported to the tax authority.

Wow . . . that’s a lot. . . . Almost 2.2 million dollars.

He rang a buzzer next to a set of enormous 12-foot double doors while he gazed at the fine neo-gothic building next door.

Until recently most of the 80- and 100-year old villas on the street had been chopped up into rental apartments and offices. But wealthy professionals and business owners were now buying entire buildings and renovating them into the spectacular homes that had once housed the elites of Oslo.

A voice-box squawked above a closed-circuit camera: “Yes?”

“Chief Inspector Sohlberg. Oslo Police. . . . I want to see Christoffer Løvaas right now.”

“Oh yes,” said the managing partner of the major law firm of Johansen Olsson & Mortvedt. “I’ve been waiting for you. My man will greet you at the door to let you in.”

While Sohlberg waited he thought that a copper-colored face had peeked out from behind the curtains of one of the basement windows. A minute or so later an elderly and dignified Filipino opened the left door and waved Sohlberg inside.

“Please wait here,” said the servant in excellent Norwegian.

“Here’s my business card.”

The servant took Sohlberg’s official card and walked down a well-lit corridor. The elegant mansion did not disappoint. Sohlberg waited in a vast hall on the right side of the building that stretched all the way up to the third floor. Blinding light came in through a giant skylight. Plant-laden balconies on the second and third floor opened into the hall which was strewn with strategically-placed metal and stone sculptures—small and large. The impeccable collection of sculptures imbued the home with a stately air that Sohlberg knew had to have come from a professional art curator and not from an interior decorator.

Colorful and modern abstract paintings lined all of the walls. So did paintings that went all the way back to the 1400s and 1500s. Sohlberg also recognized modern works by Marsden Hartley and Frida Kahlo from the Americas and a striking 14-foot portrait of some Swedish nobleman from the mid-1600s by Jacob Heinrich Elbfas. The stunning hall and its art were obviously designed to impress as did the mandatory wait for the homeowner to make his grand appearance. Sohlberg was inspecting a small altarpiece probably by Fra Angelico when the tall and patrician Christoffer Løvaas beckoned him from a corridor that led to the back of the house.

At 46 Løvaas was the youngest managing partner of a major Norwegian law firm that was well known for its arrogant and obnoxious lawyers. It still rankled Sohlberg that he had been rejected by the firm after he had applied and graduated from law school. His interactions with the firm’s lawyers had never been pleasant while he had been a lawyer at a competing law firm. And his early morning Internet research confirmed that Johansen Olsson & Mortvedt had merged a year ago with a gargantuan American law firm based in New York City.

Christoffer Løvaas swept his lush steel-gray hair back before shaking Sohlberg’s hand. “Come on in to the study.”

Persian carpets and a glowing natural gas fireplace added warmth to the room which was surrounded by floor-to-ceiling bookcases stuffed with books and artwork of all sizes and shapes and colors. An enormous snow-filled patio spread behind a row of French doors.

Sohlberg sat on a low leather sofa and said:

“Who told you I was coming?”

“Our office manager. He told me you had dropped by to question our I.T. administrator at her home. That’s kind of drastic . . . isn’t it Inspector? . . . Couldn’t this wait until Monday?”

Sohlberg noticed that Løvaas referred to him as Inspector and not Chief Inspector despite the fact that Løvaas held in his left hand the official Oslo Police business card that clearly identified Sohlberg as a Chief Inspector. “No. It can’t wait until Monday. I don’t conduct criminal investigations based on your convenience or your employee’s weekend schedules. And while some police officers may go gaga over the wealthy and powerful I myself don’t arrange my inquiries based on other people’s convenience . . . whether rich or poor.”

 “How admirable.” Løvaas spoke like a man who was accustomed to obsequiousness from household and public servants. His voice left no doubts as to the managing partner’s disdain for Sohlberg’s tactics. “Inspector . . . I understand that you want to find out the name of one of our employees who may or may not have sent text messages to someone a few years ago from our law firm’s computers. Correct?”

“Yes. But your tech administrator wouldn’t answer my questions. That’s why I’m here. I imagine you’re going to claim that you’re her lawyer and do everything you can to protect your law firm . . . and hide the truth.”

“You’re right about your first two assumptions but wrong about the third . . . hiding the truth. Without a doubt . . . my loyalty is first to the law firm and second to our clients. Our employees and partners and associates come third. So why don’t you tell me the truth as to why you’re here and I’ll tell you the truth about the person you want to know about as long as the information does not harm the firm or our clients. I will never give up any information that could damage the firm or our clients. That’s non-negotiable Inspector.”

“Non-negotiable loyalty to your firm and your clients? . . . Isn’t that just fancy talk to explain away the fact that you worship the Almighty Dollar?”

“What?”

“It’s a matter of record that each partner in your firm will now earn more than two million U.S. dollars every year thanks to the merger with Skadden Arps in New York.”

“Let me help you Inspector. I
had
to make choices to insure that our firm would be able to survive and thrive against our biggest local competitors . . . like B.A.H.R. and Wiersholm. We also had smaller but innovative growing firms like Schjødt and Selmer eating our lunch. Did you know that even big old Thommessen . . . one-hundred-fifty years old . . . now has offices in London?”

A long and growing pause told Sohlberg that Løvaas actually wanted an answer. Sohlberg complied:

“No.”

“Inspector . . . did you know that Wikborg Rein has offices in London and Shanghai and Singapore and even Kobe in Japan?”

“No. I stopped keeping track of that when I joined the force.”

“I think Inspector that you have a disdain for money and the wealthy. I’ve read about you . . . when you resigned from your law firm you left behind a lot of money that was rolling in from your friend Matthias Otterstad’s businesses. Money management wasn’t it? Quite a pot of gold that you left for others to enjoy.”

 Sohlberg shrugged. “Whatever. But when I was at the law firm I never saw any need for any Norwegian firm to merge with any foreign law firm.”

“Inspector . . . you have a fantasy that you share with a lot of Norwegians. You suffer from the delusion that small is beautiful . . . that the little big town of Oslo is a great world-class capital . . . which it is not . . . and that Norway is an important country which it never has been or will be . . . not even with all that oil sitting out there under the North Sea.

“Inspector! . . . Don’t you understand? . . . Economic and military power come from one thing. Bigness.”

“Bigness?”

“Big government. Big business. Big everything. Our little law firm in little Oslo in little Norway was going to get run over by the giant companies and giant law firms that run the world. Exxon. Wal-Mart. Chase. Pfizer. Skadden Arps. Baker and McKenzie.

“The power of bigness means that to survive and prosper we have to choose between the Americans and the Chinese. These are the world’s two powers for now. And . . . last I saw . . . the Chinese aren’t exactly booming with law firms. So we had to marry a big fat American law firm or we would’ve had one of our competitors beat us to the altar.”

“Let’s suppose that what you say is true. Now . . . let’s see how your theory of bigness affects a criminal investigation. I propose to you that a Norwegian criminal investigation will trump your law firm’s
bigness
. . . and do a lot of damage to your law firm’s reputation.”

“Inspector . . . your threats . . . how quaint. But let’s stop arguing. Maybe our interests will coincide. Why are you here and who are you interested in?”

“I’m here because I have questions related to the murder of Janne Eide.”

Christoffer Løvaas’s blue eyes frosted over. His face froze into a finely-chiseled ice cube. “That’s ancient history . . . a closed case . . . isn’t it Inspector?”

“The old or recent history of a case is not your concern. Nor is it your concern whether the case is open or closed. Your concern should be that I’m here at your home on a Saturday at one o’clock in the afternoon to ask you questions related to the Janne Eide homicide.”

“I notice Inspector that you use the word
related
. Does this mean you’re investigating something that’s tangential or indirect to the case? Or is it directly tied to the case? . . . Why do I have the feeling that you are playing lawyer word games with me? Really Inspector . . . why waste my time playing cat and mouse games with me? After all . . . I looked you up when I heard about your early morning visit to my administrator. I know who you are.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. You’re just another lawyer who couldn’t hack it in private practice . . . and so you went into the police force . . . as so many of your kind do.”

Sohlberg smiled. “That helps even things out . . . don’t you think? Having one lawyer question the other balances things out nicely. Besides . . . it’s not your concern at all whether my inquiries are directly or indirectly related to the Janne Eide case. Now . . . if you are trying to hide information from me . . . well that’s a whole other matter.

“You forget
Mister
Løvaas that since I couldn’t hack it in private practice I have something to compensate for my failure. I have a badge and you don’t. I have handcuffs that I can slap on anyone and you don’t. I have a loaded gun and you don’t. I can make a phone call right now and arrange to have you escorted . . . or arrested if necessary . . . and taken down to the station for questioning.

“Of course I will contact all the newspaper and radio and television reporters in my fat address book and let them know about your confinement and questioning in a murder case.

“You can then call your own lawyer and whatever public relations flacks you use as mouthpieces to do some serious damage control . . . and explain why the managing partner of Johansen Olsson and Mortvedt has been brought in for questioning . . . and charged with . . . let’s see . . . how about something like . . . not cooperating with a criminal investigation . . . or obstructing justice.

“I wonder what your partners and the clients of your firm will start thinking when they hear and read and see all sorts of nasty rumors about you and the firm in the media. I’m sure that you also have some ambitious competitor at your firm who’s ready and willing and able to push you out and take your exalted place as the managing partner.”