Beyond the Truth: Hanne Wilhelmsen Book Seven (A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel) (20 page)

“It’s unregistered,” Ronny said. “I always bet on unregistered betting slips. This is completely legit, Billy T. Seven winners, paying out big money: one hundred and fifty-three thousand four hundred and thirty-two kroner. Legal money.”

“A present,” Billy T. murmured. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Take it. It’s yours.”

It was an absolutely ordinary betting slip from the racetrack. Worth over 150,000 kroner. Presents for the children. Maybe a holiday that would not have to be spent at his parents-in-law’s cottage in Kragerø, with a big family and beds that were too short. A breathing space. His head above water. Entirely legal.

“Money laundering,” Billy T. said, refusing to touch the slip of paper. “The easiest way to launder dirty money. You buy a ticket for more than the winnings.”

“No. We do that at Bjerke. Not with official ones from Hamar. That gets too complicated. How would we get in touch with the winners? This is just a hobby of mine, Billy T. I’m the one who handed it in. I guarantee you it’s a legal prize. Take it as a thank you.”

“Thank you?”

Ronny responded with a smile.

Billy T. knew what he meant. On two occasions, he had looked the other way. It was a long time ago now. Neither time had been particularly serious. He had closed his eyes and let Ronny get away, the last time eight years ago. He had helped Ronny because he remembered that Ronny had once been scared of the dark, and what’s more, had wet his bed until he was quite a big boy. Ronny was a wimp as a young lad, and he had been Billy T.’s best pal, until he had robbed a kiosk for a hundred kroner when they were both fifteen. Ronny was sent to approved school and Billy T. sharpened up. His mother grounded him for two months just for speaking to Ronny before he was bundled into a local authority vehicle and driven off. Billy T. had to keep away from scum like that, and his mother tightened her grip on her son until he completed high school. It was Ronny with the bad acne and the pitiful cock that Billy T. had thought of, when he let him escape. Not the suntanned Ronny with a remarkable bunker of a luxury apartment and an Audi TT.

“You know I can’t accept that,” Billy T. said. The blood was ringing in his ears and he could not take his eyes off the magical note. “That’s sheer corruption.”

“Not at all,” Ronny said firmly. “I don’t expect anything in return. This is just a childhood friend stretching out a hand, Billy T. You redeem it, and nobody is going to be any the wiser. Tax-free and legal. And fucking brilliant, eh?”

Billy T. felt dizzy. He was light-headed, and his eyes tingled as he stood up and staggered toward the hallway.

“If you were going to buy a gun,” he said, aware he was slurring his words a little, “if you were a totally ordinary person and you wanted to get hold of an illegal gun, what would you do?”

“A totally ordinary person?”

Ronny leaned against the door frame and handed him his shoes.

“You forgot these,” he said. “I’ve no idea what totally ordinary people do. But that Hermine Stahlberg character isn’t totally ordinary, either.”

Billy T. fumbled with his shoes and kept losing his balance.

“As I said,” Ronny went on, “this city is overflowing with guns. But if you don’t have the right contacts to get connected to the big boys, it might be you’d have to make do with …”

He considered it.

“Per in the Shack. Do you remember him? He ran an absolutely legit gun store over at Vålerenga, until your lot put an end to the business. Now he sticks mainly to small stuff. Or Bjørnar Tofte. I think he’s still in the game. He’s quite a major player, of course. Or Sølvi. Sølvi Jotun. She’s probably the easiest one to get hold of. But she’s so unstable that long periods can go by between times when she can actually get her hands on anything.”

Billy T. stood up stiffly and ran his hand over the top of his head. He still felt oddly light-headed.

“Sølvi … but she’s an out-and-out junkie!”

“Off and on. She’s a smart cookie. Doesn’t look like it, but she hangs in there. Earns money wherever she can.”

Billy T. felt cold. Then warmth flooded along his arms and he had to study his hands again, to check the blood was still contained within his skin.

Sølvi Jotun was Kluten’s girlfriend. At least she had been, for years.

“Okay.”

He had to get out. He had to get air. He could not bear to be here any longer, Ronny smelled of fruit and cologne, and Billy T. had to get out.

“Was there anything in that drink you gave me?” he groaned as he fumbled with the door handle. “Fuck, Ronny, have you slipped me something?”

“Nothing dangerous – only a pick-me-up. But keep away from your colleagues for a few hours. That’d be best.”

His voice was steady: soft and with an undercurrent of laughter. Finally the door opened.

Billy T. crashed down the stairs. When the rank odor in the back yard hit him, it seemed fresh and homely and, gasping, he opened his face to the world.

The betting slip was tucked inside his breast pocket, neatly folded. Ronny had placed it there as Billy T. pulled on his leather jacket.

Sølvi Jotun, he thought sluggishly.

He needed to find Sølvi Jotun.

Carl-Christian bitterly regretted going along with the decision to hold the family meeting at home. Mabelle walked silently among the soft-spoken relatives, pouring coffee. They numbered nineteen now, and heaven only knew whether more would turn up.

Mabelle looked fantastic. Mourning suited her. Normally she never wore black, which made her look paler, more colorless; her light complexion and blond hair could not take the contrast with total darkness. Now she was beautiful. Her complexion was almost chalk-white against her sweater and she wore her hair loose, newly washed, and it fell like a veil over her face every time she leaned forward to offer one of the guests a refill. Even the faint, almost invisible blue circles below her eyes, with only a judicious attempt to use make-up as camouflage, seemed appropriate at a time like this. Carl-Christian was strangely proud as he scrutinized her and accidentally overheard a cousin whispering to her sister: “She seems completely devastated, poor thing. But my goodness, just gorgeous!”

Nonetheless, he regretted it. Here at home he had no control. He could not get up and leave his own home if it all became too difficult. He was required to wait until the last distant relation condescended to depart. He had certainly not been keen to have the meeting in his home, but Alfred had insisted. The apartment in Eckersbergs gate was out of the question. The police had sealed it and, besides, it would be entirely unseemly, Alfred declared, before phoning around the whole family to remind them of Carl-Christian’s address.

Mabelle disappeared into the kitchen to switch on the coffee machine again. A woman, of whose identity Carl-Christian was not entirely sure, followed her. He saw her place her hand, light and comforting, on Mabelle’s shoulder. It disgusted him. He was sick of all these people, this family, this hastily assembled group of people who, for no reason other than tradition and genetic kinship, had made an appointment with one another every Christmas, stiff in their best clothes, tucking greedily into Hermann and Tutta’s for once generous festive table.

“Well, it looks as if everyone’s here,” Alfred announced. He was newly showered and the smell of his aftershave had overwhelmed Carl-Christian, who had refused to sit down at his uncle’s command and stood propped up against the wall beside the bathroom. “Apart from dear Hermine, of course, who as we all know is in hospital and unable to attend. Welcome to you all, anyway.”

Carl-Christian ran his eye over the gathering. Some seemed genuinely sad, while others had attended out of pure inquisitiveness and found it difficult to hide that. The cousin who stood in a relaxed pose beside Carl-Christian, trying to smother a yawn, had obviously come out of a sense of duty. Jennifer Calvin Stahlberg and her three children had been given pride of place to some extent, on three chairs ranged beside one another at one end of the living room. The widow held the youngest child on her lap. The little girl was about to fall asleep with her thumb in her mouth. The two boys sat on either side of their mother, looking serious, but not crying. Jennifer’s eyes were swollen and tear-stained, but she was now sitting erect in the chair, whispering sweet nothings into the little girl’s ear.

Alfred suggested a minute’s silence in memory of the dead. No one protested: it had been quiet enough already.

“The reasons I wished to call this meeting,” Alfred announced, after more than two minutes, “are of course first and foremost because it felt right to come together after such a brutal experience as the one we are all now going through. Admittedly, some of us gathered last Friday, but at that time everything was probably sufficiently recent and we were all so shocked that …”

He cleared his throat.

“Not everyone could come. But now …”

He thrust out his hand as if blessing them all.

“… we are here. Does anyone wish to say anything?”

No one answered. Alfred’s sisters, one slender and ailing, the other plump and round like Alfred, sobbed into their embroidered handkerchiefs.

“No? I see,” Alfred said, unable to hide his displeasure at the passivity of the assembled company.

He slurped some coffee.

“There’s not so much to say about this tragedy,” he said. “What has happened is absolutely terrible and completely beyond comprehension. At least mine.”

He gave a little burst of laughter, intended to be self-mocking, but had misjudged his audience. They all looked down.

“We simply must stick together,” he added quickly. “We have to support one another. For example, we must choose someone to speak to the press. Some of you have already been sought out by these journalists, and that has almost certainly been unpleasant—”

“I think the right thing has to be not to give any statements at all,” a man in his thirties interrupted him. “At least not before the funeral.”

Carl-Christian had always liked his cousin Andreas. He had something of Hermine about him, something warmly dependable: he never took sides. So it was quite surprising to see him oppose his uncle.

“The press have been at us all,” Andreas went on. “And we know what they’re after. What theories they’re using.”

Carl-Christian’s cheeks were on fire. No one looked in his direction. On the contrary, their interest in the interior decor and view from the window was immediately obvious.

“I just want to say one thing straight away,” Andreas continued. Having stood up now, he had his back to Alfred. “I don’t believe a word of what they’re hinting. We know CC well. None of us here …”

He fixed his eyes on Carl-Christian.

“… none of us believe for a minute that any member of the family is behind this dreadful act. But journalists are journalists. They put words into people’s mouths, especially people like us who have no experience of that sort of thing. We ought to ask them to respect our decision not to comment until our family members have been laid to rest. Then we can take it from there.”

A murmur of assent spread around the room. Alfred appeared offended.

“As I was going to say myself,” he interjected. “Then we are all agreed on that. But there are other items on the agenda. Things that have to be arranged. As you may already know, there is a will in existence.”

Carl-Christian closed his eyes. Since Jennifer had phoned him the previous evening, after the police had collected the document from the Oslo Probate and Bankruptcy Court, he had felt hurled into a tumult of conflicting emotions. He still had not seen the will, not on paper as such, but in the course of the conversation with his sister-in-law he had already understood enough to know that he was in serious economic difficulties. He had been fobbed off with nothing.

But the will might also be his salvation.

He gained nothing from his parents’ death. He must maintain that he had long known of his father’s last wishes. Mabelle had realized that; she had hassled him about it all night long. In fact they knew about this document, of course they did, she had whispered insistently while they lay unable to sleep. Anyway they had known something was brewing, and it was far from surprising that his father had taken such a dramatic step as to disinherit him, considering the circumstances. And since it had actually dawned on them that something of the kind had become unavoidable, it could hardly be such a major falsehood to claim that they had specific knowledge of it. Mabelle was persuasive and CC quite simply had no choice.

“And I don’t have any knowledge of the contents,” Alfred said. “Jennifer here …”

He turned elegantly in the widow’s direction.

“… for the time being has been unwilling to share that with me. But I understand that there will be a meeting … I expect all the same that we—”

“Honestly!”

It was Andreas again. Frowning indignantly, he opened out his arms.

“It’s totally inappropriate to discuss the inheritance before the funeral has taken place! Don’t you agree, folks?”

He looked around. The others nodded, some quite eagerly. Alfred blushed deeply and grew short of breath.

“Of course it is,” he said. “Of course it is. But, despite everything, it’s about a
going concern
, and it’s not in the interest of any of us if that’s not taken care of—”