Sohlberg and the Gift (4 page)

~ ~ ~

The drive out to Lillestrøm from Oslo on the Rv159 highway always charmed Chief Inspector Sohlberg. He looked forward to the endless vista of pastoral farm fields and rolling hills among the occasional forest. As soon as he got on the entrance ramp he sensed that a car had pull up right behind him. A glance at his rearview mirror confirmed that a dark BMW was tailing him aggressively. Sohlberg slowed down; so did the driver.

You moron . . . tailgate me again and I’ll call a squad car to pull you over.

Within a few seconds the car dropped far behind.

Sohlberg got off the road three times to make sure that he wasn’t being followed: he got gasoline once and pretended to ask for directions twice. No car seemed to be shadowing him. The dark BMW: gone. He looked carefully for vans and small trucks and other unusual vehicles. But no one else seemed to be tracking him.

Thirty minutes out of Oslo he was surrounded by peaceful snow-covered fields and forests and soft-shouldered mountains that seduced him into feeling that he should ask for a rural posting.

Why not?

He pictured leaving Oslo and its hectic and corrupting city life. He certainly wouldn’t miss his daily commute from and to Ulvøya Island.

Sohlberg’s morning and evening commute forced him to watch the depressing spectacle of drug addicts and dealers openly buying and selling their toxic garbage in the plaza that’s in front of the central train station in downtown Oslo. Sohlberg always got intensely embarrassed when visiting police officers from other countries would ask him to take them down to the
plata
or plateau to observe the blatant drug dealing.

A disgusting national shame!

Sohlberg never stopped wondering in anger and amazement at why the top echelon at the Ministry of Justice and the Police tolerated such brazen crime in such an open and visible public forum.

Why?

Why did the Justice Minister tolerate such human degradation?

Because the moral rot at the central train station reflects the moral rot at the very top of Norway’s political elites.

It would be simple and easy for the Minister or any of her underlings to send police officers to sweep the area out with mass arrests or a few well-publicized arrests.

A few months ago Sohlberg had watched in horror as the wraith of a drug-addicted mother towed two small children with her on the plata while begging people for money. The woman scampered away into the crowd when she saw his police hat and uniform. By the time Sohlberg decided to question if not arrest her for the sake of the two innocents she was gone. The children’s haggard faces haunted Sohlberg. So did the mother’s twisted death-like mask.

Sohlberg was outraged that the government tolerated such degrading horrors.

Why do government officials tolerate the crime-ridden and graffiti-defaced Grønland neighborhood around the Oslo police station—the politihuset?

Why do they allow punks to spoil downtown Oslo with so much graffiti?

It wouldn’t take much effort to end Oslo’s notorious street crime or to protect block after block of fine old buildings from being ruined by the spray-painted
graffiti
that any Neanderthal caveman would have found ridiculous if not repugnant.

He accelerated hard and sped faster past the snow fields as his anger kept rising. He was very well aware of the sad reality that Norway—like most other countries—was led by Empty Suits and Empty Skirts.

Empty Suits and Empty Skirts.

His anger boiled over as he thought of the incompetent and corrupt morons who pretend that their empty political promises do any good for the average citizen. The worst part from Sohlberg’s point of view was that almost all citizens are harmed by the grand delusions of the Empty Suits and Skirts. Sohlberg belonged to a tiny minority of Norwegians who felt that the insane fantasies of the country’s elites would inevitably lead to intended and unintended disasters.

The detective’s blood pressure shot upwards as he thought of a case in point:
all
rapes in Oslo during a 12-month period were perpetrated by Third World immigrants who thought that their religion and culture entitled them to enjoy the body of any woman. Of course all of the rape victims happened to be ethnic Norwegian women.

One Pakistani suspect had even told Sohlberg:

Your women are sluts. The blondes always want it. The blonder they are the more they like it.

Few Norwegians would openly admit the ugly truth: that the rapes came courtesy of the
diversity
politicians of multi-culturalism who imported the immigrant rapists to live comfortable lives of idleness and crime thanks to the generous welfare handouts of Norway.

Sohlberg’s anger worsened as he remembered more examples of crimes and social disasters that the
tolerance
politicians had inflicted on society through their social engineering projects on both the native population
and
the foreign immigrants who tried to assimilate.

Yes. . . . Something is wrong in Norway. Very wrong.

He looked out at the empty fields and a wistful thought calmed him down:

It’s better to be far from the madding crowd and among the lovely and dark and deep woods.

A sign on the side of the road proclaimed: LILLESTRØM! THE GOOD LIFE.

The sunny morning vanished as soon as Sohlberg entered the city limits. An Arctic front shepherded huge billowing clouds of ominous gray-black shapes over the city. Snow began falling from heavy clouds that lumbered in from the north.

Oh . . . not good.

Sohlberg’s police car skidded on black ice that he failed to notice on the winding road. He struggled to bring the vehicle to a controlled stop. After a white-knuckle moment the car finally came to rest on a mound of snow. He looked out at the empty farm fields that filled up with more snow.

Great . . . I’m lost.

He was indeed lost. Sohlberg went on the Internet with his personal cell phone to re-check whether he was in the right direction and after the right person.

Before Sohlberg left the Oslo politihuset he had run an Internet search on his personal cell phone. The search had disclosed a residential street address near Lillestrøm for the retired Chief Inspector Bjørn Nygård—the man in charge of the Janne Eide case.

Sohlberg then went to www.skattelister.no which is the Norwegian tax authority’s website that publishes summaries of annual tax returns of all Norwegian citizens for everyone to read. While searching for Bjørn Nygård’s tax returns Sohlberg found it ironic that none of Norway’s royal family were listed by the tax authorities.

The royals . . . 100% exempt from paying taxes . . . and 100% exempt from working at a real job to earn a living.

Sohlberg held the minority view that the Norwegian royals consisted of worthless social parasites. Even fewer Norwegians shared Sohlberg’s extreme but historically correct opinion that Norway’s royal family consisted of in-bred Danish royalty that Sweden and Denmark had imposed on Norway during centuries of ruthless exploitation of Norway and Norwegians by the Danes and Swedes.

~ ~ ~

Sohlberg made frequent use of the www.skattelister.no website ever since he had investigated the triple murder of a husband and wife and their 16-year-old daughter. His boss had assigned him to assist the lead detective on the day that Sohlberg celebrated his first year as an Oslo Politiinspektør.

The deceased husband’s and wife’s modest income and taxes on skattelister certainly did not match the lavish residence and lifestyle of the victims. Sohlberg placed a call to his mentor and friend Lars Eliassen to find out why such a discrepancy would show up in the tax rolls. That’s when Sohlberg learned about
The Shadows
.

“Norway’s transparent tax lists don’t contain the names of
The Shadows
.”

“The Shadows?” said Sohlberg.

“Yes,” answered Eliassen. “The Shadows are those few Norwegian citizens of the spying variety.”

“What?”

“They’re Norwegians who work for or help the Ministry of Defense and its National Security Authority. Ditto for the Defense Ministry’s other intelligence agency . . . the Norwegian Intelligence Service. The Shadows also include individuals who work for or help the Norwegian Police Security Service.”

“The P.S.T. is in this Shadow-World too?”

“Yes,” said Eliassen. “They’ve got operatives to protect.”

“I’m surprised,” said Sohlberg who thought that the PST—Norway’s version of the American FBI—was almost as incompetent as its American counterpart.

Any residual doubts that Sohlberg had about the existence of
The Shadows
evaporated when Sohlberg received a visit from a nameless deputy director of Norway’s national forensic agency known as the National Bureau of Crime Investigation (KRIPOS).

In the presence of Homicide’s top boss at the time—the talented Sigbjørn Holmås—the KRIPOS man curtly ordered Sohlberg and the lead detective to stop investigating the triple homicide.

Why?

Because KRIPOS is taking over the case on direct orders of the Minister of Justice and the Police.

Sohlberg went along because his boss and the lead detective were powerless to do anything. A few weeks later Sohlberg got chewed out in a screaming tirade by Holmås whose hot temper matched Sohlberg’s short fuse.

But boss . . . what’s this all about?

Sohlberg . . . are you that stupid? . . . Don’t you understand? . . . Someone in the I.T. department flagged your clumsy unauthorized computer searches in our mainframe. They passed the information on to KRIPOS.

Are you kidding me?

Do I look like I’m kidding? . . . You disobeyed orders when you looked up the case file of the triple murder after you were ordered off the case.

The most bewildering part of the entire episode was that Sohlberg’s computer searches had failed to turn up
any
case files for the murdered family. There should have been at least one case file even if KRIPOS was the sole agency exclusively investigating the triple homicide. In other words the family did not exist in the eyes of the police. And if they did not exist then they could not be murdered and if there were no murders then there could be no arrests or prosecutions.

The Shadows
. A phrase that always sent a shiver down Sohlberg’s back. The words invoked memories of the massive blood splatter on the walls and floors and ceilings from each of the three bludgeoned victims.

Years passed. The media never mentioned the triple murders. No one ever got arrested in the case. The mystery deepened when Sohlberg tried but failed to find
any
friends or family of the deceased. After the triple homicide Sohlberg promised himself that he would never
ever
abandon an investigation or be forced off a case.

~ ~ ~

The snow fell in thick curtains that reduced visibility to a few feet. A pensive Sohlberg sat in the car and waited for the blinding storm to pass him. He again ran a search on the www.skattelister.no website. The search confirmed former Chief Inspector Bjørn Nygård’s financial status as belonging to the lower 20% of Norway’s gross income levels. That did not surprise Sohlberg. Early retirement from the police rarely yielded a large pension especially for an honest cop like Bjørn Nygård.