Sohlberg and the Gift (39 page)

“Thorsen . . . they arrested the real Ludvik Helland less than an hour ago in London.”

Thorsen gulped and wiped the sweat off his pasty forehead. “Oh really? . . . And
who
sent off that arrest warrant? . . . You did! . . . I can’t believe you stabbed me in the back Sohlberg. You are in serious trouble.”

“Me? . . . I would think that
you
should be up at the Zoo begging for your job with the top brass at this very minute.”

“Sohlberg . . . you betrayed me.”

“Are you kidding me? . . . What about
you
sending an innocent man to the insane asylum for a murder he did not commit? . . . What about
you
betraying Chief Inspector Nygård and getting him kicked off the Janne Eide case
and
the force so you could do your dirty deeds?”

“I’ve done nothing wrong. I only did what I was told to do by my superiors.”

“That . . . you idiot . . . is what you did wrong.”

“No Sohlberg. I followed orders. I won’t get into trouble. You’ll see. Who’s ever gotten into trouble for following orders? Name one person. Name one country where that’s a crime! . . . You on the other hand disobeyed policies and procedures when you undertook an unauthorized investigation. You’re the one who’s wrong. For whatever crazy reasons you got yourself involved in a closed case . . . a case that everyone at the Zoo on the top floor wanted closed. You however went around my back. You conducted an unauthorized investigation into the Janne Eide murder. And you told no one. You kept it secret. You would know that
that
is a big no-no if you had ever bothered to read and obey the department’s policies and procedures. Our boss is not going to be happy with your shenanigans. He’ll cut off your you-know-what when he gets back from vacation.”

“Listen you moron and listen good because I’m not going to repeat myself. First. I did not conduct an unauthorized investigation . . . in fact starting four days ago . . . on Wednesday afternoon of last week . . . I sent several e-mails to Lunde . . . our acting department head during Christmas Holidays . . . and I informed him that I was
following leads on two old homicide cases
. I kept him informed of the Liv Holm case. So it’s a lie for you to say that I kept my investigation a secret.

“Second. I did not reopen a closed case. Instead I investigated a
new
case . . . that’s why I had Liv Holm and Ludvik Helland arrested for stealing hundreds of millions of euros and dollars and pounds and other currencies from the Olan Eide estate. So I did not intentionally
reopen
the Janne Eide case . . . the re-opening was collateral damage from my investigating the looting of the Eide trusts and foundations by Liv Holm . . . who in turn led me straight to the real Ludvik Helland.”

“That’s nonsense!”

“Thorsen . . . at the end of the day I’m not the one who’s going to be in serious trouble. No my friend. You’re the one who’s in serious trouble for botching the Janne Eide case and sending an innocent man to the nut house. It’s inevitable that you . . . Ivar Thorsen . . . will be the fall guy since your two old bosses are long gone . . . enjoying their early retirement.
You
are the only one who’s still in the force . . .
your
name was plastered back then all over the media for
your
solving the Janne Eide case. The buck stops with you and the bell tolls for you. You’re finished. Toast.”

Ivar Thorsen screeched: “No! No! I can’t take the fall for this. Everything you’ve said so far only shows that you played dirty with your clever tricks. . . . You betrayed me.”

“Thorsen . . . you’re clueless . . . you betrayed the force and they’re not going to turn a blind eye on you now that all has been revealed. So . . . you better get as fast as you can to the Zoo and save what’s left of your career. Maybe you can write parking tickets in Spitsbergen or some other God-forsaken Arctic island in the Svalbard archipelago.”

Thorsen moaned. He held his head with both hands as if his cranium was about to fall off or explode. Sohlberg knew it was time to interrogate Thorsen and get the truth from him. That opportunity would probably never again present itself.

“Why was Nygård kicked off the Janne Eide case?”

“He was working the case way too slowly. He refused to be rushed.”

“Whose idea was it to kick him off the case?”

“Kasper Berge . . . a prosecutor with the Director General of Public Prosecutions.”

“Didn’t the idea come from Nygård’s boss . . . Magnus Ellingsen . . . or his boss . . . Ingeborg Myklebust?”

“No. Kasper Berge called the shots. Ellingsen and Myklebust just went along. Berge was adamant about getting Ludvik Helland arrested . . . he definitely wanted this Jakob Gansum character arrested and charged with the murder even after Nygård mentioned that we had never found any old or current pictures or fingerprints for Ludvik Helland.”

“That was a huge warning sign . . . wasn’t it?” said Sohlberg with a sneer.

“In hindsight . . . yes. I now realize that Nygård was getting suspicious as to the true identity of the man we thought was Janne Eide’s husband. But you can’t blame anyone for thinking this Jakob Gansum character was Ludvik Helland . . . after all . . . we found Jakob Gansum inside the Eide residence . . . in the master bedroom . . . with her blood all over him. How could he have gotten inside unless he had all of the security codes . . . or if she let him in?”

“Thorsen! . . . You forgot the first and second rule of homicide . . . nothing is obvious . . . assume nothing.”

“That’s fine for you to say that years after the fact. Look Sohlberg . . . all of us at the Zoo were surprised . . . and feeling like we had been played for fools when Berge quickly agreed with the defense lawyers in getting Ludvik Helland labeled criminally insane . . . a lunatic not responsible for his acts. . . . ”

“Thorsen . . . did you ever investigate Jakob Gansum’s claims that he was not Ludvik Helland?”

“No. No one believed him. Besides . . . I would’ve been fired or demoted. Now that I think of it . . . I’m sure that Chief Inspector Nygård would’ve investigated those claims. But Kasper Berge wouldn’t have tolerated such delays. Berge constantly reminded us that it was an open and shut case. He must have charmed the top people at the Zoo into marching along with his plan because we soon started getting the same Berge song repeated to us from upstairs.”

“Who purged the Janne Eide case files at the Zoo?”

“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Thorsen! . . . Stop lying . . . you’re making a bad situation worse.”

“How can it get worse?”

“Tell me everything and I might be able to help you . . . guide you . . . on avoiding a ton of criminal charges . . . beginning with perjury and obstruction of justice charges. You know they’re going to blame you. They can’t do anything to Ellingsen in the U.S.A. and Myklebust in Greece. They’re retired. Gone. Non-entities who can’t be punished. But you . . . you will be the whipping boy. So tell me everything.”

Ivar Thorsen slammed his fist into the table. “This is so unfair! . . . It’s not fair.”

“You’re going to be their fall guy. The patsy. Tell me everything and I might find something that you can use to save yourself.”

“Alright! . . . I cleaned up the files because Ellingsen told me to do it after Ludvik Helland or that Jakob Gansum character was sent to the nut house. Ellingsen said, ‘Wipe them clean’ and I did. He told me to shred all of Nygård’s notes. I cleaned up everything. And I mean everything.”

“Why?”

“He was nervous about the contents . . . even what was in the courthouse files. He wanted the expert psychiatrist report taken out. I understood from Ellingsen that Berge insisted that
I
and no one else clean up
all
the files. I’m not that stupid. I figured they wanted me to do that so I could eventually be blamed if necessary. That’s when I realized that Berge was playing everyone like puppets. Heck . . . I was scared out of my wits when Berge insisted that I be the only one to purge the files.”

“How do you know Berge insisted? . . . I thought it was Ellingsen who ordered you to delete and destroy documents.”

“Berge was sitting in Ellingsen’s office. Berge turned around and point-blank asked me, ‘Did you get the court files?’”

“What did you say?”

“‘No,’ I said. ‘No one told me to go to the courthouse to scrub the court files.’ That got him real mad. Furious! . . . Enraged! . . . That’s when he ordered me to go that very day to the court and clean up the files.”

Sohlberg asked the same question again but in a different way in the hope of getting a more complete and informative answer from Thorsen:

“Why did they have you sanitize the police
and
the court files?”

“Ellingsen and Berge told me that they didn’t want Ludvik Helland’s relatives or friends to find him at the insane asylum and then try to set him free with some sharp lawyer.”

“Whose idea was it to put Jakob Gansum in an insane asylum?”

“Honestly? . . . I don’t know. But I wouldn’t put it past Kasper Berge to have planted that idea with the defense lawyers . . . or to at least have hinted to the defense team that he would not oppose an insanity plea.”

“Why lock up Jakob Gansum in an insane asylum? . . . Wouldn’t a prison have done the job?”

“Ellingsen later told me that Berge wanted the insane asylum option because no one would ever believe the Jakob Gansum claims that he was not Ludvik Helland. Ellingsen said, ‘At a prison you never know what prisoner or lawyer or detective might hear his claims and check them out. At the insane asylum we’ve got better control over who has access to an inmate at the nuthouse than we do in a prison.”

Sohlberg mused over all of Thorsen’s answers when he realized that Thorsen had used interesting words when describing his conduct as to the missing documents. Sohlberg tried to look as calm as possible. He yawned and said as casually as possible:

“Oh . . . by the way . . . what did you do with all of the documents and stuff you took out of the files at the Zoo and the court?”

Thorsen’s eyes widened. He knew Sohlberg was on to him. “I . . . I took them home. I put them under my mother’s bed.”

“What? . . . You didn’t shred or burn them?”

“Heck no! . . . Do I look insane?”

Sohlberg smiled. Thorsen had at least inherited his mother’s peasant cunning. It was for nothing that she had arrived as a young and penniless farm girl from the Austlandet region near the Swedish border to work as a maid for a well-known banker who lived near Sohlberg’s parents. Sohlberg still remembered how shocked he had been as a teenager when his mother informed him that Thorsen’s mother had been impregnated by the banker’s son. Sohlberg moved closer to Thorsen and said:

“What else was in those papers? . . . What was so important that they wanted you to destroy Nygård’s notes?”

Thorsen’s small peasant eyes shifted. He hesitated and then blurted out:

“Nygård’s memo to Ellingsen . . . Nygård
wrote down that he
absolutely needed
to compare the prisoner’s fingerprints with all other fingerprints inside the house. That’s when Berge panicked and demanded that Nygård get fired or pushed out of the force. Berge didn’t want Nygård comparing fingerprints that would eventually reveal that Jakob Gansum and Ludvik Helland were two different individuals.”

Sohlberg sat back into the sofa.

Berge had to have known that Liv Holm and Ludvik Helland had picked the perfect patsy—Jakob Gansum—to blame for the murder of Janne Eide.

Liv Holm and her lover Ludvik Helland . . . and their enabler Kasper Berge . . . could only enjoy the financial fruits of their bloody labor if Jakob Gansum did time as the substitute for the real murderers.
That’s why Berge made sure that all records were sanitized and that Jakob Gansum was locked up in a lunatic asylum.