Sohlberg and the Gift (34 page)

In a few seconds the hard look on the face of Christoffer Løvaas softened into the genial if not condescending guise of the know-it-all managing partner of a major law firm. “Now. Now. Inspector. What do you want to know?”

“What was the nature of your relationship with Janne Eide?”

“None. I think that perhaps I
might
have seen her one time at a party.”

“Did you have a romantic or sexual or other relationship with her?”

“No! . . . Like I told you . . . I barely knew her. Don’t you understand? She spent all of her time living abroad with her husband . . . mostly in London and Barcelona and Paris . . . and Cyprus where her father lived. She came maybe once a year to Oslo . . . if that. Don’t you understand? . . . That any Norwegian with a pulse and hundreds of millions of euros and dollars and pounds and Swiss francs gets the hell out of Norway real fast to live in places with nice decent weather. Don’t you understand?”

“I . . . I guess not,” said Sohlberg who instantly felt like an ignorant provincial rube whose love for Norway blinded him to everything: the atrocious weather; the suffocating smallness of the cities and towns; and, the humiliating
please-love-us-please
mindset of a country with a naive and all-too-rich population. Sohlberg sighed. “I love my country.”

“What’s love got to do with it? . . . Trust me Inspector . . . cheap patriotism always melts away when someone has the wealth to live wherever they want to live.”

“Let’s focus on your relationship with the Eides.”

“Fine. Let’s do that. I had zero contact with Janne Eide for all practical purposes. On the other hand . . . her father and his companies were clients of mine. And yet I only met him once briefly and spoke to him maybe three or four times by telephone. I almost always dealt with his executives and personal staff.”

“You know . . . don’t you . . . that I will be reviewing every single telephone call and e-mail and any other contact between yourself and Janne Eide?”

“Yes. I imagine you would do that if you’re obsessed with this case.”

“I’m obsessed with all of my cases.”

Christoffer Løvaas threw his hands up in the air and said, “So be it.”

“What relationship did you have with her husband . . . Ludvik Helland?”

“None. Zero. What would I be doing with a gold-digging parasite like him?”

“What about mutual interests . . . or hobbies with any of them . . . the father . . . the daughter or Helland?”

“Like I said Inspector . . . none . . . zero.”

“You’re sure? . . . Remember . . . you and your firm and your career will be in serious trouble if I later find out that you lied to me . . . or hid information from me.”

“Now there you go again with innuendo and accusations and threats . . . and yet I myself have nothing to hide. Except for the father I never knew or met the daughter or any of the Eide family. I only dealt with the corporate finance people at the very top of the organization. And my contacts with those people shrank to nothing after he sold the business to John Fredriksen and his Frontline company.”

“Why?”

Løvaas cracked his knuckles. “Frederiksen and his companies use other law firms. So . . . after the sale it was our trust and estates department that grew like crazy helping Olan Eide invest his billions. I had nothing to do with that part of his empire. So don’t jump to any conclusions since I want to cooperate.”

“Alright. Go ahead. Cooperate. Tell me more.”

“I’m sure that you know that Olan Eide . . . Janne Eide’s father . . . and his companies were one of our biggest clients for decades as he grew his shipping company into a major player in international freight . . . you could say that Johansen Olsson and Mortvedt floated very high on the giant wave of fees from the Eide ships. Our maritime and contracts practice threw out giant profits thanks to his boats. After the sale of his company and after his daughter’s murder . . . Herr Eide left his gargantuan fortune in all sorts of trusts and foundations that keep our trusts and estates lawyers very very busy up to this very day.”

“Okay. So far so good. Thanks for the background information. Now . . . I want to find out who is the partner or associate or employee at your firm who’s behind this Internet address.”

Sohlberg copied the Internet Protocol information on a piece of paper from a text message that Atle had sent him shortly after their morning conversation. Sohlberg handed the paper to Løvaas who in turn called his tech person and read them the information. The wealthy lawyer hanged up and a pensive if not troubled expression spread over his face. He looked as if his mental engine was working in overdrive.

“So?” said Sohlberg. “Who is it?”

The frigid face suddenly warmed up. A decision had been reached. “Liv Holm. She used to be a senior partner at the firm.”

“Thank you. I appreciate the information . . . but . . . why did you give her up? . . . Why do it so quickly?”

The visage of Christoffer Løvaas changed instantly. He looked like an unemployed man who had just found out that he had won a major prize at Norsk Tipping—the Norwegian National Lottery. “Ah Inspector! You catch on so fast to so many nuances. I’m impressed. Obviously I underestimated you. How clever of you. Pretending to be a dumb bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer when you have a top-notch mind. Tricky too. We certainly made a big mistake when we turned down your employment application.”

“You know?”

“Of course. After I found out that you had once worked as a lawyer I immediately checked out our own private database . . . we keep one on all lawyers in Norway . . . and lo and behold . . . there you were.”

“I’m sure you did that little bit of research so that if things didn’t go well in our interview then you could always claim that I was harassing you and your employees because I wanted to retaliate over being rejected by the firm when I applied out of law school.”

“Something like that. Perhaps. But let’s not worry over what didn’t happen.”

“Which leaves me with why did you give me Liv Holm’s name? . . . Why do it so quickly?”

“Suspicious are you? . . . Do you think I’m perhaps falsely accusing her of using that Internet address? . . . Do you think I’m throwing her under the bus because I have some vendetta or secret agenda against her?”

“You tell me. That’s why I’m asking.”

“I’ll tell you since I’m sure you’ll keep digging away until you find out about our relationship.” Løvaas raised his eyebrow and laughed. “No Inspector. It wasn’t that kind of relationship. . . . No no. Although she’s quite a looker I never liked her. Way too smart and calculating for my tastes . . . now don’t get me wrong . . . don’t think that I like my women dumber than me. It’s just that she soon turned out to be an office rival. And I . . . like most people . . . don’t want my rivals to be as smart or smarter than I am. . . .

“Liv Holm. . . . She always troubled me in the most odd and unpredictable ways. She joined the firm’s trusts and estates practice three years after I got into the contracts and commercial law department. Liv was ever so charming. I even thought of dating her. But I could soon tell she was angling to be what I wanted to be . . . the managing partner. I knew that was her ultimate goal when she married one of the old name partners . . . Olsson who was
forty
years older . . . and very lonely. Twice divorced with a third wife who had recently died. He had once been the head of the firm.

“With Olsson on her side I started looking to jump to another firm. But then he gets a heart attack and dies. To everyone’s surprise he leaves her very little money because five children from his other marriages got most of his money. I stay at the firm since I think that I can probably beat her for the managing partner position. But a few years later Eide sells his company and the law firm’s cash flow and profits shifted from my department to her trusts and estates department.

“Liv was well on her way to becoming managing partner because she had Olan Eide’s ear. She wormed her way into his heart. Tending to his smallest needs. Buttering him up with sickening compliments. She had lots of practice with Olsson on how to win over a much older man.

“Liv Holm became Eide’s second daughter. Actually . . . Liv became a better version of Janne Eide who was much like her long-dead mother . . . a mental lightweight and social butterfly . . . a sentimental woman . . . whose greatest challenge in life was how to spend money . . . whether to spend a fortune on clothes from Chanel or Oscar de la Renta or Ferre or Ungaro or Dior or Valentino or whoever was the fashion king of the year.

“Eide loved his new daughter Liv Holm . . . more in his own image . . . gutsy and brilliant and hardworking. She had him from their first meeting where she proposed a plan to legally avoid paying taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds and Swiss francs that he had overseas from his own personal investments before the sale of his company.

“I guess it was inevitable . . . Liv Holm became his number one advisor and friend. Within a short time after his daughter’s death she became his only contact with the outside world. She fired his servants and staff and put her own people around him. Obviously Liv Holm was set to become the managing partner of our firm at the next partner’s annual meeting when she suddenly declared that she supported my candidacy.”

“Was that unusual?” said Sohlberg.

“Unheard of. Liv had never ever quit in any challenge or dispute. She was a pit bull. A barracuda. Always on the attack. Always tearing down others. The managing partner position would’ve been her coronation. I then realized what she was up to . . . her real agenda.”

“What was it?”

“To leave me as a puppet in charge of a law firm that depended on
her
client for sixty percent of its profits . . . and it was a client that she soon got to completely control.”

“How?”

“After the daughter’s death Liv Holm got Old Man Eide to appoint her as a co-trustee in all of the trusts . . . she also got appointed to the board of directors of all of his foundations.”

Sohlberg couldn’t help smiling. “So . . . in effect she got her hands on his fortune as soon as he died.”

“Yes. And then . . . a few days after he died . . . she resigned from the firm.”

“Where is she?”

“Somewhere in London. I hear she has a villa in Monte Carlo that makes my home look like a hovel. Every year she earns trustee fees and foundation director salaries of more than five million Euros.”

“So she’s out of the law firm?”

“Yes and no. Liv forced me to appoint her protégé as her successor to head the trusts and estates department. Until the merger with Skadden Arps we were almost totally dependent on that department for most of our profits.”

“Surely your firm’s revenue sources are diversified.”

“Yes. But until recently most of the profits came from that department and that client.”

“Is it that drastic?”

“Inspector . . . the Eide estate is no small fortune . . . with compound interest and dividends and tax-free investing strategies the estate is now worth at least three billion Euros that slosh around in trusts and foundations that Liv Holm set up all over the world.”

“Is this why you engineered the merger with the American law firm . . . to reduce your law firm’s dependence on her and the Eide estate . . . to liberate Johansen Olsson and Mortvedt from Liv Holm?”

“Ah. Inspector. You see the big picture. Again . . . I’m impressed.”

“I have a suggestion.”

“How interesting. A detective who suggests and doesn’t accuse.”