The Lion's Mouth (35 page)

He stared at his own hands, at his wedding ring embedded on his finger.

“Come on, let’s make some coffee,” he said. “We’re not going to get any sleep anyway, either of us.”

She gave him a tentative smile, drying her tears with a big, crumpled handkerchief, and padded after him down to the kitchen. They sat on opposite sides of the dining table, an everyday table with only one chair on either side.

“It’s so peculiar,” she said softly. “I always think of Marie as a baby. But she would have been grown up. Thirty-two years old. Maybe we …”

The tears cascaded down her exhausted cheeks, and she squeezed his hand.

“Maybe we would have had grandchildren, even. Someone to take over the farm.”

She gazed at her husband. He was fifty-four years old. They had met at the community hall at the age of fifteen, and had been faithful to each other ever since. If it hadn’t been for Kjell, her life would have been over the morning she woke to find Marie dead in her cot. For four hours, she had held the baby tight, rocking her, and refusing to be parted from her when the local doctor arrived. In the end, it was Kjell who had persuaded her to let go. It was Kjell who had lain down beside her, keeping her alive for the next three days. It was Kjell who, over the years, had made it possible for her to smile at the thought of their child; the child who, despite everything, they had been able to keep for a few months.

“Well,” Kjell said, looking out the window; the darkness was no longer winter black, and a gray glimmer in the night sky promised that spring would soon arrive in earnest. “There’s no point thinking like that, Elsa. There’s just no point.”

“You shouldn’t have let that journalist come, Kjell,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have let her come. Everything’s become … everything’s become …”

He pressed her hands more tightly.

“There, there,” he said, trying to elicit a smile.

“It’s as if it’s all come flooding back.” She sobbed quietly. “All the awfulness. What we’ve managed to—”

“Hush, hush,” he whispered. “I know, sweetheart. I know. It was stupid. But she seemed so decent on the phone. It seemed so important to … what was it she said? To turn the spotlight on this vaccine scandal. I felt it was the right thing to do, the way she put it. She seemed so interested and sympathetic.”

“She wasn’t particularly sympathetic when she came,” Elsa said, raising her voice and releasing his hands in order to blow her
nose. “Did you see how she stared at Marie’s photograph? What a cheek she had, asking to borrow it. What a cheek.”

She stood up angrily and removed the jug from the coffee machine. She poured for them both, but instead of sitting down again, she remained standing with her back to the kitchen worktop.

“And that other woman, the photographer. The way she pushed us around in the cemetery. Did you see how she trampled on the flowers? Sorry, was all she said, as she stamped all over Herdis Bråttom’s brand-new grave. What a way to carry on!”

Kjell Haugen did not say a word. He sipped his coffee and let Elsa have her rant. For a short time, it made her less sorrowful. He was desperately full of remorse. The woman from
Kveldsavisen
had been there for barely half an hour, and hadn’t listened to what they had to say. She was not interested in them; she only wanted the details and jotted them down on a notepad in a tearing hurry, without even making eye contact. She hadn’t even accepted coffee and cake, even though Elsa had baked a cream layer cake before they came.

“She didn’t even cotton on that Dr. Bang understood what had happened,” Kjell said suddenly. “We didn’t get to tell her about that. That he wrote letters to the authorities for many years afterward.”

Elsa was staring out the window. The sky had begun to brighten. Faint rays of morning sun seemed to be creeping up from the field, from every furrow in the newly ploughed soil.

“It’s like a knife,” she whispered. “It’s as if someone has sliced open a scar that has taken so many years to heal.”

Kjell Haugen stood up stiffly and headed for the living room, where he lifted the copy of the newspaper off the coffee table. All of a sudden, he tore it to shreds, and threw the pieces into the stove. He took hold of a matchbox but his hands were
trembling so violently that he could not succeed in setting the paper ablaze.

“I’ll do it,” his wife said softly from behind his back. “I’ll light it.”

“It was stupid,” he whispered into the flames when they flared up, coloring his face a golden red. “But she seemed so sympathetic when she phoned.”

SATURDAY, APRIL 19

04.20,
DEEP INSIDE THE FORESTS OF NORDMARKA
,
NEAR OSLO

H
e had fooled them, and it had been so easy, it was laughable. Admittedly, it had taken a while to find out where they were positioned. He now had six liters of milk in the fridge after four unnecessary trips to the little corner shop. It would go off, but that didn’t matter. It was almost too good to be true. The police were keeping an eye on the entrance to Vidars gate. Period. They had obviously not discovered that it was possible to go through the basement and across into the neighbor’s garden, where a cellar flap into the back yard allowed him to jump over the fence and out through the door three blocks farther down. No one had spotted him. To be entirely on the safe side, he had taken three buses and one tram in different directions, leaping off suddenly at the last minute. Finally he had gone into a sports store and had bought a cheap bicycle.

He had cycled all the way to the cabin, not arriving until late evening, after darkness had really closed in. The final stretch had been totally deserted; the dismal spring weather was evidently insufficiently tempting, even for the most committed walkers. He had read for a while and had struggled to fall asleep, getting out of bed several times to reassure himself that there was nobody lurking outside. An occasional animal noise came sweeping across the lake, and for an hour or so a light spring shower had whispered softly around the cabin. Otherwise, all was silent.

He was still tired after only three hours of fitful sleep, but he did not want to sleep any more. He had swum all the way across the lake twice, and his body was wide awake even though his head felt sluggish. He made some coffee and spread a few slices of bread with fish roe.

He switched on the radio, but there was nothing worth listening to: just lots of noisy pop music, and Brage Håkonsen was not keen on that. Instead he took out a book by David Irving, and read as he ate.

He had probably lost his job. He had been absent for four days now without getting in touch, and the bad-tempered warehouse boss would certainly bite his head off if he returned. But he didn’t want to go back. In any case, he didn’t want to think about that at the moment. After all, he had money in the bank, and lived modestly.

He snatched a glimpse out the window and saw that it was bright outside now; it would be sensible to head for the potato cellar while it was still early. People occasionally wandered past at weekends, even though the path was more than two hundred meters from the cabin. The lake seemed enticing to the few walkers with the energy to venture this far, and he had given up trying to frighten them off with a sign: “Fishing and Swimming Forbidden”. The forestry authority removed them after a while anyway.

The safest course of action would be to go now.

He pulled a sweatshirt over his head and pushed his feet into a pair of trainers, without tying the laces. He needed a new pair, but he had to be careful now. The bike had cost three thousand kroner, and it was annoying to have spent so much money when he had a good, expensive bicycle in the back yard. However, it hadn’t been worth the risk. It would have been tricky to haul it through the basement, and he wasn’t sure if he would have managed to drag it with him over the fence.

The morning air had a pungent odor of earth and forest, making him dizzy, even though he had already been outside. He jogged the forty meters over to the little hillock located to the east. The door to the potato cellar was covered in spruce branches and twigs, and would have been invisible if he had not known it was there.

Removing the camouflage and stacking it beside the entrance, he fished out the key to the hefty padlock from a pocket in his sweatshirt. The lock was well oiled, and it was a simple matter to lift off the heavy cellar flap. The hinges squeaked a little, and Brage paused for a second, stiffening as he strained to listen. Then he exhaled, placing the flap cautiously all the way down on one side of the opening, and entered the pitch-black cave. It always took time for one’s eyes to adjust to the dark, and he switched on a flashlight.

Now he could hear something. Something other than the occasional small animal. Something more than the wind toying tentatively and ineffectually with last year’s rotting leaves. A twig snapped. Several twigs fractured. He heard footsteps.

“Come out of there,” he heard a loud voice call out imperiously.

For a second or two, he considered his options. He had the newly purchased revolver in his pocket and was holding ammunition in his hands. In front of him lay four AG-3s and two shotguns, as well as four saloon rifles. Ammunition for all of them was on the shelf. He would have time to load. He could shoot his way out.

“Come out right now!” the man roared from the entrance.

Brage Håkonsen felt anxiety crush his ribs. He attempted to open the package of bullets for the revolver, but his fingers seemed swollen and uncooperative.

I don’t dare do it, it suddenly dawned on him. For fuck’s sake, I just don’t dare.

With gritted teeth, he backed out of the potato cellar. His eyes were filled with tears, but he swallowed repeatedly to retain a degree of control.

Once he emerged from the opening, they threw themselves on him. He lay flat as a pancake on his stomach and could taste the forest floor as spruce needles forced their way into his nose and mouth. A stab of pain jolted through him as the handcuffs were slammed around his wrists.

“They’re too tight!” he screamed, and spat. “For fuck’s sake! They’re too bloody tight!”

One of the men had been inside the potato cellar already.

“Look at this,” he said as his colleague yanked Brage to his feet. “What have we here, then?”

He was holding an AG-3 in one hand, and in the other the box of documents. The plans. The great ideas.

“We hoodwinked you completely,” the man said, with a loud guffaw. “You thought we were rank amateurs, only watching the door, didn’t you?”

His laughter echoed across the water, and a large bird screeched as it took off in fright at the opposite side of the lake.

“Fucking homo,” Brage growled.

The police officer holding him, a big, strong guy in his fifties, grinned broadly.

“It takes one to know one,” he said, pulling Brage firmly and purposefully in the direction of the cabin.

Severin Heger ran ahead to call for reinforcements.

09.40,
KIRKEVEIEN
129

T
his headache was killing her. A drill was boring into each temple, her eyes were smarting, and she had no idea why. She hadn’t drunk any alcohol the night before; in fact, she hadn’t
touched a drop since that fatal evening when Birgitte Volter was killed. Even so, she had difficulty keeping herself upright; this pain was new and different and really terrifying. Two Paracet tablets had not helped, and she rummaged around in her bag in search of something more effective.

The newsprint on the page danced in front of her eyes when she sat down at the kitchen table. The coffee tasted acrid, but after half a cup she felt her headache subsiding slightly. Whether due to the coffee or the Paralgin Forte covered in dust and fluff from her handbag, she was not quite sure.

The story was no longer a
Kveldsavisen
exclusive. Although
Kveldsavisen
had the edge, all the other newspapers in Oslo and the major regions had now thrown their hats into the ring as well. That created a demand for new angles, fresh theories, and a great deal of pessimistic conjecture. There was now, effectively, no limit to what commentators could speculate about. Even though nobody had yet dared identify a murderer, not a single voice in government circles had refrained from expressing the opinion, if you read between the lines, that the health scandal was obviously closely connected to Birgitte Volter’s death.

The specter of Benjamin Grinde permeated the pages of every newspaper, despite there being hardly a mention of his name. They all homed in on the friendship between Volter and Grinde, holding it up as an example of the unacceptable culture of influence within central government that had been established by the Labor Party over many years. Buying vaccines from an Eastern bloc country during the frostiest period of the Cold War was far and away the worst scandal in Norwegian post-war history, greater than the Lund Commission’s revelations about the Security Service, infinitely more serious than the debate over government responsibility regarding the Kings Bay coal-mining disasters. Even through her intense headache, Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden had to
admit that on this point, the newspapers were probably not entirely out in left field: several hundred lives may have been lost because of the vaccines. If all of this was true, of course – something no one actually knew for certain yet.

Strictly speaking, the other newspapers had no new facts to add to the revelations contained in yesterday’s extra edition of
Kveldsavisen
. However, the
Kveldsavisen
story had been so comprehensive that it spawned innumerable pages of commentary from the learned and the not-so-learned, from politicians and indefatigable spokespeople. As was his wont, Fred Brynjestad, professor of public law, made a number of vitriolic attacks, though the more observant reader might have struggled to deduce quite who he was aiming at. Since Einar Gerhardsen, who had served as Prime Minister from 1963–65, was long dead, and his last Minister of Social Affairs also, the intensity of the criticisms seemed rather reckless. Especially as it had in no way been clarified how high up the political ladder responsibility for the vaccine purchase went, or who had profited by the transaction.