The Lion's Mouth (31 page)

Now he was standing at Billy T.’s side; one hand rested on the table as he looked into Billy T.’s eyes.

“Why haven’t I said anything about Liv, you ask.
Because it’s none of your business!
Okay? Liv’s death was
our
tragedy. Birgitte’s and mine!”

His fury abated just as swiftly as it had erupted. Suddenly it appeared that he did not quite know where he was or why he was there, and he gazed around the room in astonishment before returning to his seat.

The silence lasted for some considerable time.

“Well,” Billy T. said, returning the pillbox gently to the little bag and stuffing it into his jacket pocket again. “We’ll leave that, then. I’m sorry if I’ve said something that might have caused offense. There’s just one more thing …”

He looked at the Police Chief, who, with a resigned nod, invited him to continue.

“We have something that absolutely must not come out. We have managed to keep the press at bay until now, and we’d really like to keep this information to ourselves for a while yet. We have …”

He produced an envelope from a folder and placed the contents in front of the two relatives.

“We know that this is the gun that was used in the murder,” he said, pointing to the two photographs. “This is a Russian—”

“Nagant,” Per Volter interrupted. “A Russian Nagant. Model 1895.”

He stared at the picture.

“Where is the gun?”

“Why do you ask?” Billy T. asked.

“Where is the gun?” Per Volter repeated his question, the roses in his cheeks making him look feverish. “I want to see the gun.”

Within just a few minutes, an officer knocked on the door, handed a revolver to Billy T., and left again.

“Can I touch it?” Per asked quietly, looking at Billy T., who nodded.

With practiced movements, Per Volter examined the gun that had killed his mother. He inspected the barrel, found it empty, aimed at the floor and pulled the trigger.

“Are you familiar with this type of gun?” Billy T. enquired.

“Yes,” Per Volter said. “I know this gun very well. It’s mine.”

“Yours?”

The Security Service Chief was almost shouting.

“Yes. This Nagant belongs to me. Can anyone tell me how it ended up here?”

17.30,
STENSPARKEN PARK

I
t worried him greatly that he had not insisted on a different meeting place. He hated Stensparken Park. He could barely walk through the little green oasis between Stensgata and Pilestredet without getting insulted by one of the scum who usually roamed there, repulsive homosexuals who always mistook him for one of their own, no matter how he dressed or acted. Once a man had ingratiatingly compared him to Jonas Fjeld, the fictional detective, and that was what had saved the guy from being knocked to the ground. Brage Håkonsen had the complete works of crime writer Øvre Richter Frich on his bookshelf, and Fjeld was his hero.

They should have arranged to meet later in the evening. It was still light now. The supplier had, however, been insistent, saying that he was going abroad and wanted this over and done with.

Brage Håkonsen had strolled through the park three times: it was impossible to stand still. That was when they crept out. The vermin of society.

At last. The man with the dark, ankle-length coat made an almost imperceptible gesture toward him. Surveying his surroundings as discreetly as possible, Brage began to approach the other man. As they passed each other, he felt something drop into the bag he was carrying, a nylon bag with some training gear at the bottom. He had released his grip on one handle just in time.

Now he clutched it again and jogged across to two trashcans at the other end of the little park. He opened one, and dropped a
padded envelope inside, together with an ice cream wrapper he had found half an hour before.

Five thousand was not so bad. Not for an unregistered, efficient handgun. Untraceable. As Brage Håkonsen left the park, he saw out of the corner of his eye the man in the long coat heading for the trashcans. Smiling, Brage held the bag extra tightly.

Suddenly an icy sensation raced down his spine. That man over there, the one standing under a tall tree reading a newspaper, he had seen before. Today. Not long ago. He made a strenuous effort to remember where. In the kiosk? On the tram? Picking up his pace, he glanced over his shoulder to see whether the man with the newspaper was following, but he was not. He just stared after him, and then stooped over his newspaper again.

He must be one of them. The homosexuals. Relieved, Brage breathed out and scuttled across toward the veterinary college.

However, he could not let go of the thought of the man with the newspaper. He would travel out to the cabin and hide the gun there. For the time being. Until the plan was completely ready. It was almost, but not quite. He was unsure who to take with him, since the project could not be accomplished alone. But he wanted only one assistant. The more people involved, the greater the likelihood of it all going down the drain.

Now that the Prime Minister had been taken out, it was the turn of the President of the Parliament. The symbolic value would be enormous. However, something made him hesitate as he unlocked the door to his apartment: he could not travel out to the cabin. Hardly anyone knew he had it. Only the old woman on the ground floor, for whom he did some shopping and washed the stairs, and who had given him the keys to her cabin by way of thanks. She was childless and as old as the hills, and knew hardly anyone apart from the council care-workers who brought her hot food three times a week. But she was quite charming too. He had
not actually had any ulterior motives when he’d started chatting to her about this and that, but when it emerged that her husband had been a Norwegian soldier in the Waffen-SS, and that he had died during the war, he had begun to help her out. After all, you had to look after your own. It was a matter of honor.

He wanted to go to the cabin. Something told him that he could not. Something told him that the gun ought not to remain in his apartment, or in his own storeroom.

Padding down to the basement, he unlocked the storeroom belonging to Mrs. Svendsby, and placed the wrapped pistol behind four jars of preserves dated 1975. He did not even look at the gun before he locked up again, and replaced the key between two joists under the ceiling.

Mrs. Svendsby had trouble with her hips and had not visited the basement for more than fifteen years.

19.10,
TRANEN RESTAURANT

T
he Tranen restaurant had made no effort to be trendy. While all the other gloomy cafés in Oslo had begun attracting crowds of taxi-riding tourists from the West End, the Tranen remained quite simply
too
gloomy. Few of its customers had ever ventured west of the Bislett Stadium at any point in their lives, and now most of them were in no fit condition to toddle even that far. They sat there with their few kroner from social security, their florid, reddish-purple faces, and their life stories that no one wanted to hear. Hanne Wilhelmsen knew that these characters were desperately sad: they just sat there shouting, so thoroughly pickled in alcohol that they were never going to be listened to by anyone.

Glancing at the time, she tried to suppress her irritation.

Øyvind Olve rushed breathlessly through the door. He scanned the room in confusion, and looked as though he thought he had
come to the wrong place. A cowboy sat at the table just inside the door. Actually, it was a woman, and in truth she looked as if she had never sat her broad backside on anything resembling a horse, but the accessories were all in place. She was wearing a shiny red leather jacket with long fringes of luminous nylon, and studs on the back spelling out the words “Divine Madness” in cursive script. On her head she wore a white replica Stetson, and her jeans were three sizes too small, making it difficult for her to sit down. Perhaps that was why she was half standing, leaning over a man who was obviously refusing to pay her bill. Or perhaps she simply wanted to show off her boots: shiny, brilliant white, and clearly made of plastic.

“You said you would pay,” she slurred, snatching at the collar of a man with thin strands of hair draped over his crown. “Really, Tønna, you
promised
to treat me!”

The man attempted to wriggle out of the alleged agreement, quite literally, but ended up knocking over an almost untouched half-liter glass of beer. All five people seated around the table stared in shock as the expensive droplets spilled across the table and trickled in a wide waterfall down onto the floor.

“Fuck, Tønna, what
are
you doing?” the cowgirl whined. “Now you owe me another one at least!”

Øyvind Olve did not spot Hanne Wilhelmsen until she waved at him. Relieved to escape from the rodeo near the door, he planted himself on a seat opposite her, before slapping his briefcase on the table.

“Øyvind, at last,” she said, smiling reproachfully. “When are you going to get yourself something better than that?”

Feeling hard done by, he gazed at the case, a small valise-type affair in red and black nylon with the Labor Party logo in one corner.

“But I think this one’s fine!”

Hanne Wilhelmsen put her head back and laughed uproariously.

“Fine? It’s downright awful! Did you get it at a conference or something?”

Taken aback, Øyvind Olve nodded as he placed his bag at his feet, out of the policewoman’s line of vision.

Hanne nodded toward the glass of beer on the table in front of him: she had ordered for them both.

“Why on earth did you want to meet here?” he whispered, rolling his eyes.

“Because it’s the only place in Oslo you can be absolutely sure nobody’s listening to what you say,” she whispered back, peering conspiratorially around the room. “Even the Security Service folk don’t poke their noses in here!”

“But,” he muttered, staring at the grease-spattered menu, “is it okay to
eat
in here?”

“We’ll eat somewhere else afterward,” she said brusquely. “The beer is just as good here as any other place. Now, do tell.”

Sipping from her glass, she leaned her elbows on the table as she licked her lips.

“What on earth is this health scandal all about? What’s actually going on?”

“When this sort of thing happens, it usually has to do with a power struggle. And leaks to the press.”

“You mean someone’s leaking information?”

“The stuff that was in the newspapers today,” Øyvind said, drawing a circle in the condensation on his beer glass, “they didn’t even know about in the Prime Minister’s office. It looks as if somebody is out to frame us.”

“Frame you? But isn’t it true, then, what’s in the papers?”

“It may well be. And if it is true, it would have been made public. The point is that this is something that the investigations
committee needs to look into, and since so much has already come out, it becomes difficult for us to respond to it rationally.”

“Us? Do you mean the party?”

Øyvind Olve smiled, almost anxiously.

“Yes, to some extent. But mainly the government. I keep forgetting that I’m no longer working in the Prime Minister’s office. Sorry.”

“How can this damage the present government, though? It all happened more than thirty years ago!”

“Everything attaches itself to the government. You must see that. It’s the government that has taken responsibility for investigating this, and it was only by the skin of our teeth that we avoided having the whole of Parliament take control of the enquiry. Fortunately Ruth-Dorthe was quick off the mark and managed to put together a committee of government appointees before the MPs got themselves organized. The case was evidently not of sufficient importance – at that point. But now, as you can see …”

He took a slug of beer and groaned.

“Look at the Security Service scandal, when there was all that heat about them allegedly doing illegal surveillance on communist activists,” he continued, lowering his voice further. “When the Lund Commission’s report was finally published …”

After raising his glass once more, he downed half the contents.

“… didn’t you notice how they tried to turn it into
their
victory?”

“Who did?”

“The opposition. The Socialist Left and the Center Party. Among others. As if Parliament itself was responsible for all the investigations work, and not an exceptionally competent Supreme Court judge with a good crew on board! As if we in the government were not also interested in a thorough investigation into any possible corruption!”

“But,” Hanne objected, “the government had completed its investigation by then, and very little action had been taken!”

“Yes,” Øyvind Olve said, smacking his glass down on the table. But that wasn’t the
government’s
fault, you know! Confound it, it wasn’t Prime Minister Gro herself who’d gone searching through files looking for dirt on communist activists and all that stuff!”

He waved irritably for another beer. Instead of the waiter, they were suddenly faced with a man barely four foot seven inches tall, dressed in a tuxedo and with a nose that had most definitely seen better days but had probably never been any larger. His mouth was not visible until he opened it, and, with a sweeping motion of his top hat, declared, “Your Excellencies! It gives me great pleasure for this debauched establishment to receive a visit from upstanding folk like yourselves! May I, on behalf of the proprietor and Tranen’s regular customers, wish you a most sincere welcome!”

Using both hands to replace his hat on his head, he made a stiff little bow.

“My name is The Penguin, and you good people can probably understand why!”

Laughing heartily, he grabbed the edge of their table with his chubby little fingers. His tuxedo was old and worn, and the silky gray cummerbund was stretched precariously around his podgy torso; his arms and legs were too short for the rest of his body.

Hanne began to search for her purse.

“But, my good woman,” the man exclaimed in exasperation, “how could Your Excellencies come to the presumptuous conclusion that my little expedition to your table has a selfish motive? My wretched task is to offer you both a warm welcome!”