Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (2 page)

“I did an extra shift in the crime section,” she explained, leaving
the folder untouched. “They’re struggling with illness down there right now.”

The police prosecution attorney, a dark-haired and reasonably good-looking man whose temples were grayer than his thirty-five years would suggest, flopped onto the visitor’s chair. He removed his glasses and sat polishing them with the end of his tie. The spectacles did not become particularly clean, but the tie became decidedly more crumpled.

“The case has been assigned to the two of us. If there is a case, that is. There’s no victim, no one has heard anything, no one has seen anything. Odd. There are some pictures in there.”

He pointed toward the folder.

“I don’t need those, thanks.” She waved dismissively. “I was there. It really didn’t look very pretty.

“But you know,” she continued, leaning toward him, “if all of that turns out to be human blood, then there must have been two or three people killed in there. I’m inclined to think there are some young hooligans having some fun with us.”

The theory didn’t seem improbable. The Oslo police were in the middle of their worst spring ever. In the course of six weeks, three murders had been visited upon the city, and at least one of these seemed unsolvable. There had been no fewer than sixteen cases of rape reported in the same period, with seven of these becoming the object of enormous media attention. The fact that one of the victims was a member of Parliament for the Christian Democrats, on her way home from an evening committee meeting when she was brutally assaulted in the Palace Park, inflamed public disappointment in the lack of progress made by the police. Well aided by the tabloid press, the frustrated citizens of Oslo had started to protest against the Oslo police’s apparent inability to act. The elongated, curved building sat there at Grønlandsleiret 44, gray and unshakable, seemingly unmoved by all the merciless criticism. Its inhabitants arrived at work in the mornings with shoulders drawn
up and eyes downcast. They went home again far too late each day, their backs bent and nothing more to show for their daily toil than still more confirmed dead ends. The weather gods played around tauntingly with intense summer temperatures. The awnings were pulled right down, in vain, over all the windows on the south façade of the enormous building, making it appear both blind and deaf. The interior remained just as stifling. Nothing helped, and nothing seemed to show the way out of a professional blind alley that simply increased with every new case entered into the huge data systems. They should be of assistance but instead appeared hostile, almost mocking, each morning when they spewed out their lists of unsolved cases.

“What a springtime,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said, sighing theatrically. With a look of resignation, she raised her eyebrows and contemplated her superior officer. Her eyes were not especially large, but they were amazingly blue, with a distinctive black edge around the iris making them appear darker than they were. Her hair was dark brown and quite short. From time to time she tugged at it absentmindedly, as though she actually wished it were long and thought it would hasten its growth if she helped it along a little. Her mouth was generous, with a cupid’s bow that didn’t simply dip down from the top but also met its twin from below, like a hesitant cleft lip that had changed its mind, thus forming a sensuous curve instead of a defect. Above her left eye she bore a scar parallel to her eyebrow. It was pale pink and not particularly old.

“I’ve never seen it like this. Though I’ve only been here for eleven years. Kaldbakken has been here for thirty. He hasn’t experienced anything like it, either.”

She pulled at her T-shirt and gave it a shake.

“And this heat doesn’t make it any better. The whole city is on the move every single night. A spell of rain right now would be just the thing. That would at least keep people indoors.”

They sat there for too long, talking about everything and nothing.
They were friendly colleagues who always had something to talk about but who didn’t know very much about each other all the same. Other than that they both enjoyed their work, that they took it seriously, and that one of them was more competent than the other. That didn’t do much for the relationship between them. She was a highly skilled officer with a reputation that had always been good but following a dramatic case the previous autumn had now reached legendary heights. He had loafed around in the police station as a second-rate lawyer for more than six years, never outstanding, never brilliant. Still, he had built up a reputation for himself as both conscientious and hardworking. He too had played a decisive role in the same sensational case. His reputation was edging more in the direction of solid and dependable than what it had been before: rather uninteresting.

Perhaps they complemented each other. Perhaps it was more the fact they were never in competition that enabled them to work so well together. However, it was a curious friendship, restricted by the walls of the police station. Police Attorney Håkon Sand was genuinely sorry about that and several times had endeavored to alter the situation. Some time ago he had suggested in passing that they meet up for dinner. The rejection had been so blunt it would be a long time before he made the effort again.

“Oh, well, we’ll let the blood-soaked woodshed lie. I’ve got other things to do.”

The police officer slapped a heap of files sitting in a tray beside the window.

“So have we all,” the attorney retorted, before walking the twenty meters along the corridor to return to his own office.

*   *   *

“Why have you never brought me here before?”

The woman sitting on the opposite side of the narrow table smiled reproachfully as she squeezed her companion’s hand.

“I didn’t really know whether you liked this type of food,” the man responded, clearly pleased at how successful the meal had been.

The Pakistani waiters, immaculately dressed and with diction indicating they had been born at Aker Hospital rather than a delivery room in Karachi, had amiably steered them through the menu.

“Slightly inconvenient location,” he added. “But otherwise it’s one of my favorite restaurants. Good food, top-notch service, and prices to suit a public servant.”

“So you’ve been here often.” She paused. “Who with, then?”

He didn’t answer but instead raised his glass to hide how mortified he was by the question. All his women had been here. The very short-lived, far fewer than he liked to consider, and the two or three he had endured for a few months. Every time he had been thinking of her. What it would be like to sit here with Karen Borg. And now they were sitting here.

“Don’t think about the ones who were first. Concentrate on being last,” he said with a grin after a moment’s thought.

“Elegantly put,” she replied, but her voice had adopted a trace of . . . not coldness, but a kind of coolness that always terrified him out of his wits. That he could never learn.

Karen Borg didn’t want to talk about the future. For almost four months she had been meeting him regularly, up to several times a week. They ate together and went to the theater. They went for walks in the forest, and they made love as soon as they had the opportunity. Which was not too often. She was married, so her apartment was out of the question. Her husband knew they were having an affair, she said, but they had decided not to burn their bridges until they were certain that was what they wanted. Of course they could go to his place, something he suggested every time they were together. But she turned him down flat.

“If I come home with you, then I’ve made a choice,” she declared illogically.

Håkon Sand believed the choice of making love with him was a far more dramatic decision than the choice of venue, but it was no use. The waiter appeared with the check twenty seconds after Håkon had dropped a hint. It was presented according to old-fashioned etiquette, neatly folded on a plate placed in front of him. Karen Borg grabbed it, and he couldn’t muster the energy to protest. It was one thing that she earned five times as much as he did and quite another to be continually reminded of that. When the AmEx gold card was returned, he got up and held her chair for her. The strikingly handsome waiter had ordered a taxicab, and she snuggled up to her lover in the backseat.

“I suppose you’re going straight home,” he said, a precaution against his own disappointment.

“Yes, it’s a working day tomorrow,” she confirmed. “We’ll meet up again soon. I’ll phone you.”

Once she was out the taxi door, she leaned back in again to give him a gentle kiss.

“Thanks for a lovely evening,” she said softly, smiling briefly as she withdrew from the cab once again.

Sighing, he gave the taxi driver a new address. It was situated in a completely different part of the city, allowing plenty of time to feel the sharp little stab of pain he always experienced after his evenings with Karen Borg.

W
ell, that’s absolutely amazing.”

Håkon Sand and Hanne Wilhelmsen were in agreement after all. It was quite strange.

Rain was drizzling. It was welcome after the completely abnormal tropical heat of the past few weeks. The garage was of the open type, one story supporting another on pillars with several meters’ space between. No wall separated the weather from the few cars left behind in the cheerless building. Nonetheless, it didn’t seem that any of the blood had washed away.

“Nothing else? No weapon or anything? No young girl missing?”

It was the police prosecution attorney speaking. Håkon was wearing a jogging suit and Helly Hansen jacket, and yawning despite the violent scene around him. Blood was spattered across one corner on the first floor of the parking lot. He knew from bitter experience that blood had an ugly tendency to spread widely, but what he saw here had to have taken many liters.

“Good that you phoned,” he said, smothering a fresh yawn and glancing discreetly at his Swatch. It was half past five on Sunday morning. A car filled with celebrating students tore past, leaving the deafening blasts of a horn concerto in its wake. Then it was as quiet again as it always was after all the night owls had gone home to bed, safe in the knowledge no one needed an early rise.

“Yes, you had to see this. Fortunately there was a good pal of mine on duty, and she remembered I was involved in the first of these . . .”

Hanne Wilhelmsen didn’t quite know what to call these absurd cases.

“. . . these Saturday night massacres,” she concluded, after a brief pause. “I got here half an hour ago.”

The two men from Forensics were in full swing, taking samples and photographs. They worked quickly and with great precision, and neither of them uttered a word as they went about their business. Hanne and Håkon also remained silent for some considerable time. In the distance, the car full of students had encountered acquaintances, and the jangle of their horn broke the silence once again.

“This has to mean something. Look at that!”

Håkon Sand made an attempt to follow a straight line from the point of her finger toward the wall. The light was poor, but the numbers were outlined clearly enough once his attention was drawn to them.

“Nine-two-six-four-seven-eight-three-five,” he read aloud. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Absolutely nothing. Other than it being the same number of digits as the last time, and the first two are the same.”

“Couldn’t it be a telephone number?”

“That area code doesn’t exist. I’ve considered that, of course.”

“National Insurance number?”

She didn’t answer.

“Of course not,” he brushed it aside himself. “There’s no such month as the ninetieth . . .”

“Besides, there’s either two digits too many or three too few.”

“But abroad, the date of birth is the other way around,” Håkon Sand recalled enthusiastically. “They begin with the year!”

“Right, well. Then we have a murderer who was born on the seventy-eighth day of the sixty-fourth month in 1992.”

An uncomfortable silence ensued, but Hanne Wilhelmsen was kindhearted enough not to let it last too long.

“The blood is being analyzed. Also, there must be fingerprints here somewhere. We’d better go home. I hope it was okay for me to phone. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? But it’s the seventeenth!”

“Bloody hell, right enough,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Personally, I boycott that day, but I don’t mind having a day off.”

“Boycott the seventeenth of May?” He was genuinely shocked.

“A day for regional costumes, flags, and other nationalistic nonsense. I prefer to plant up my window box.”

He didn’t quite know whether she was being serious. If this was true, she had told him something about herself for the very first time. That fact meant he was on cloud nine all the way home. Even though he himself adored the 17th of May.

N
orway’s National Day had been one of the good old kind. The sun had poured its warmth over the country and the bright green trees of springtime. The royal family stood steadfastly waving from their vast balcony. Tired, sullen children in mini–folk costumes with ice cream splashes trailed their little flags along the ground, despite the encouraging cheers of overeager parents. Hoarse, drunken students devastated everything in sight as though it were their last day on earth and their intention was to achieve the highest possible blood alcohol count on the road to the hereafter. The Norwegian people enjoyed themselves with their Constitution and lashings of eggnog, and everyone was in total agreement it had been a marvelous day.

Apart from the Oslo police. They saw everything most of the others were fortunate to avoid. Disorderly conduct, overintoxicated citizens, unruly teenagers, one or two drunk drivers, and a few instances of domestic disturbance: all of this was to be expected and so could be handled with ease. A brutal murder and five other stabbing assaults were above and beyond the norm. To top it all off, there were five new cases of rape. That year’s 17th of May would enter history as the toughest ever.