Beyond the Truth: Hanne Wilhelmsen Book Seven (A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel) (8 page)

BOOK: Beyond the Truth: Hanne Wilhelmsen Book Seven (A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel)
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“Yes, I suppose—”

Silje tried to look around with a fresh pair of eyes.

“But here,” Hanne said, holding her palm peremptorily over the work desk. “Here the documents are placed edge to edge, parallel and linear. Striking.”

Silje did not answer. Instead she approached more closely. Now, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Hanne, she nodded gently.

“You’re right, of course, but he may have … It’s possible he’s pernickety about everything he’s currently working on, but that it’s impossible to maintain that kind of order with everything – sort of thing? So that other things become … a bit messy?”

“Exactly,” Hanne said tartly. “You can do better than that, Silje. There’s a far more obvious explanation. These documents have been moved. And carefully put back again.”

“Moved? It’s less than twenty-four hours since he was here, Hanne. Of course something’s been moved. By Knut Sidensvans himself.”

Silje surreptitiously scrutinized Hanne. The Chief Inspector was markedly older now. Her dark hair had taken on a gray sheen at the temples, something to which Hanne had partly resigned herself. It did not suit her, and she really ought to have something done about it. The wrinkle from her nose to the corner of her mouth was deeply etched, despite the recent rounding out of her body – a middle-aged spread that made her trousers somewhat too tight to actually sit well. When Hanne suddenly turned to face her, Silje noticed that the only unchanged aspect was her eyes. Deep-blue, unusually large, and with a distinct black ring around each iris.

“I’m wondering about the keys,” Hanne said.

“Yes, what was that?” Silje said expectantly.

“Sidensvans’s body was found with his coat on. He didn’t have a wallet. No keys, either.”

“No keys?”

“I read the report before we came here. No wallet. No keys. Damned odd.”

“Not really. He might have put them—”

“What have you got with you at the moment, Silje?”

“With me?”

“Yes. No handbag. Just like men. What do you have in your pockets?”

A jangling of coins was heard as Silje took a look.

“Loose change. Wallet. Cellphone. A small flashlight. And … keys. And this here. Do you want some?”

She offered Hanne some chewing gum.

“You see,” Hanne said, without taking any. “We always walk about with our keys on our person. Where are the ones belonging to Sidensvans?”

She did not wait for an answer, but asked for Silje’s Maglite. After examining the documents, books, and loose papers for a few more minutes, she shook her head slowly.

“You’re right, of course,” she said. “It’s impossible to say anything for sure. All the same …”

She stiffened, just as she was about to return the flashlight.

“But there is something here,” she said abruptly and firmly. “At least it might be something. I’ll request a thorough search of the entire place. Prints. Biological traces. Everything.”

“We have limited resources, Hanne. Isn’t it more important for us to concentrate on the crime scene? And the Stahlberg family?”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Hanne said, buttoning her jacket before nodding in the direction of the front door. “We’re going to expend endless time and personnel on the members of the Stahlberg family. But we need to spend some time on this place as well. There were four victims. Not three.”

Locking up carefully, she hooked the key on her own key ring, before a sudden idea struck her.

“Would you like to come home with me, Silje? Have some dinner?”

“Yes! I’d love that. I … oh, no. I have to go home. Tom’s going to a Christmas dinner this evening, and we don’t have a babysitter for Simen.”

“That’s a shame,” Hanne said lightly. “You’re missing out on something special. Mary’s become a real whizz in the kitchen. Another time, maybe.”

“Yes, definitely! I’d honestly love to come, but you know how it is with young children, and … it’s no longer easy to do anything impulsive.”

A taxi stopped at Silje’s signal. She sat inside and waved to Hanne through the rear window, until the vehicle was swallowed up in the afternoon rush. Hanne was left behind, blushing ferociously.

It was the psychologist’s fault. And Nefis’s. You have to be more direct, Hanne, they nagged. Tell other people what you want –that was what they continually dinned into her. It’s not dangerous. They’ll be pleased. Do it, Hanne.

Now she had tried. She would have liked to eat Mary’s Friday meatballs and maybe even drink a Pilsner or three with Silje. Nefis would have been delighted about the unexpected guest. Mary would have cursed because Hanne had not phoned first, but would nevertheless set an extra place with the finest porcelain, and maybe even produce some Turkish beer from the cold-storage room.

Hanne had done as the psychologist and Nefis had suggested.

The red flush lingered on her cheeks for a long time.

The deceased Karl-Oskar Wetterland had been an old-school advocate. At his death he owned his spacious apartment in Oslo, his summer cottage with no winter water supply in the Hvaler islands, a 1992 Volvo, and a pretty little portfolio of shares. It had been conservatively accumulated and carefully administered. Together with the three high-interest accounts declared in the envelope that he had left behind, sealed and with his son’s name in elegant handwriting on the outside, they would ensure that his widow would live prosperously during her remaining years.

His son found comfort in that.

His father had taken good care of his family while he lived, and his orderly estate showed how well prepared he had been for his death. Terje Wetterland, the advocate’s only child, was not left a single krone. This made him smile as he walked around his father’s office, touching the occasional object. Of course his mother should be the sole beneficiary. Terje was forty-seven and well established in France, with a wife, children, and an income far in excess of what his father had ever earned from his small legal firm. His mother should be comfortable in her old age. They had agreed about that, he and his father. She should have the opportunity to spend money on help in the house. She should be able to spend long summers in Provence with her grandchildren, without having to be subsidized. At least not overtly. They had discussed it one evening about six months ago. Father and son had sat on a rocky outcrop enjoying drinks on Midsummer Eve. The children shrieked from the beach and the night was never-ending. They agreed there and then how everything should be arranged. And that was how it would be.

Terje Wetterland ran his fingers tenderly over a silver-framed photograph of himself and his father, half naked and soaking wet; it was late summer and they were both dark brown. They sat on the edge of a jetty, him a happy kid of four or five with his father’s arm around his waist.

He wiped dust from the glass with his shirt sleeve, before stuffing the picture into the document folder. There was nothing else here that he coveted. Although his father still had one or two clients, it was impossible to make any arrangements about them at present. He would ask his mother who they were. There could not be many, since his father had really wound up his whole practice three years ago. Only habit and a few grouchy old clients made him step inside his office a couple of times a week. His son would call the clients from France and straighten matters out. If anything were urgent, they would probably phone his mother.

He glanced superficially at some documents lying on the desk, before stowing everything into the safe and locking it. Then he switched off the light, locked his father’s office, and returned home to his mother.

A heavy layer of frost covered the ski trails. The forest was silent. The old man tried to thrust his skis into a snowdrift, but the snow was too hard and compacted. He put them aside instead, just beyond the track. Not that anyone would steal them. After all, it was almost midnight. People were keeping indoors. In any case, nobody spent a night just before Christmas trudging over Nordmarka in the freezing cold. He pulled a crooked grin at the thought. All the same, it was best to set the skis under a spruce tree, a few meters beyond the path, well hidden. You never knew.

These nocturnal trips of his had become a habit. Thirty years ago, he had returned to the smallholding where he had stayed during his childhood. Now he lived on the landowner’s goodwill and odd jobs in the forest. A walk before turning in for the night ensured a good night’s sleep. In the summer months he plodded on foot in the evening light that was reflected in the many lakes dotting the landscape. As soon as snow took hold in late autumn, he set off on tarred wooden skis. He knew his forest and the tracks that intersected it.

The cold pinched his cheeks and made his eyes water. It felt reassuring. He took a few tentative steps along a narrow path leading down to a tarn where he often swam in warm weather. Here and there he tramped his way through, almost losing his balance a couple of times. After barely fifty meters he stood beside a rocky ridge jutting beautifully into the ice-covered tarn. All he could hear was the trickling sound of a little stream. Gingerly, trying not to slip on the slick bare rock, he stepped over the point to drink some of the super-cool water. He crouched down and, using his fist as a cup, plunged it into the water. The ice glittered in the blue moonlight. It would take some time for the lake to freeze solid; the cold had only really set in during the past few days.

He grew aware of a movement on the opposite side of the water. He stopped in his tracks, believing it to be an animal and loath to frighten it off. His hand, halfway to his mouth and covered in water, trembled slightly from cold and tension. Very slowly he stood up to his full height, with the dense spruce forest behind him. His clothing was dark, and he merged completely into the background. The light breeze blew toward him. An animal would scarcely pick up his scent, if he did not move.

It was not an animal, though. He saw that now. He stood up straight and caught sight of a man, or at least a person, not standing on the edge, but a short distance across the surface of the ice. The being crouched down. Some action was undertaken.

He strained to listen. His hearing was not quite what it had been and he could make out only his own pulse and a rhythmic rippling of the water in the stream. The person over there finally moved across to the edge of the forest, silently, sometimes staggering, as if creeping back in its own footprints. Soon it had disappeared in an easterly direction.

The old man hesitated, unable to understand why he had not called out. He had felt uneasy, he was taken aback to admit, and had withdrawn into the darkness to avoid being seen, without really being able to explain why. Once again he strained his hearing, inclining his head and placing his ice-cold, bare hand behind one ear.

All was silent.

He was alert now. Slightly afraid, but also keen to find out what had happened, what the shadow had been doing here, at a tarn in Nordmarka on a December night. An old curiosity was awakened, a long-suppressed feeling, forgotten and packed away, since it was something that had only ever led him into trouble.

It would take just a few minutes to cross the ice, maybe half an hour to walk around it. He cast his mind back to the mild weather that had come and gone since October and set off over the ground.

He gasped for breath when he reached the spot, asthma squeezing his windpipe. Carefully he followed the other person’s footprints. They were almost black outlines on the blue-white snowy ground. Since the ice had supported the weight of the other person, it would probably hold him too. Anyway, he did not have to walk out far.

A hole.

Not large, but wide enough to draw up fish. Someone had been ice-fishing, in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold.

He chuckled softly, and shook his head at the stupidity of city folk.

SATURDAY
DECEMBER
21

H
anne Wilhelmsen lay staring at the ceiling. The heat in the room thickened the air with depleted night, and she licked her lips to moisten her dry mouth. Fortunately she had kicked off her quilt during the night. All the same, her skin was coated with sticky perspiration. Stiffly, she sat up in bed and punched her pillow, before lying down again.

“You really might have told me about the party on Christmas Eve,” she said softly.

Yawning, Nefis turned to face her.

“My dear Hanna, if I’d told you about this party, it would never have come to pass! You would have said No, no, no; and then we’d have been left on our own. You and me and Mary.”

“That’s the way I would have liked it, though.”

Nefis groaned, smacking herself on the forehead. Her black hair was spread out in sweaty clumps and she smiled broadly.

“Sweetheart. You are odd. Above all, you want it to be just the three of us all the time. All the time! I want to have a real Christmas! When I’ve been stuck in a wintry country with all these joyful traditions for Christmas Eve, then I want all of it! Lots of decorations and lights, and very, very much people around the table.”

“Much,” Hanne said, wanting to get up. “It should really be ‘many’, when you’re talking about people. And you could have asked. Anyway, I didn’t know that you felt
stuck
.”

BOOK: Beyond the Truth: Hanne Wilhelmsen Book Seven (A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel)
7.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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