Beyond the Truth: Hanne Wilhelmsen Book Seven (A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel) (43 page)

“Here,” he said. “Here’s a huge puddle for you. Jump in it. Then Daddy will just make one phone call before we go to McDonald’s. But if you get yourself too wet, then we’ll have to go home again. Okay?”

Jenny stomped out into the enclosed pond in the middle of the park. The mixture of snow and water, dog excrement and litter sprayed out with every step. She laughed and stood beside the dead fountain in the center, picking her nose.

“Hanne,” Billy T. said with relief when, surprisingly enough, someone answered at the other end. “I’ve tried a hundred times to get in touch with you.”

“Eleven,” she corrected him. “But I really don’t have time. What is it?”

“You’re in deep trouble. You were supposed to interview Carl-Christian this morning!”

“I sent text messages to both the Superintendent and Annmari,” she barked. “There must be others in that damn building who can conduct an interview from time to time!”

“But, bloody hell, you have to pick up the phone when we call you!”

“Then I wouldn’t get anything else done. I had to switch it off.”

“Jenny!
Jenny!
” He smacked his forehead and groaned noisily. “Well, it’s your choice, Jenny. Now we have to go straight home.”

The little girl had sat down to play with a stray puppy that was licking her face boisterously.

“Tone-Marit is really ill,” he moaned into the receiver. “I just have to go home and take care of Jenny for a few hours. My God—”

“Are you phoning to tell me I’m
persona non grata
at headquarters or did you have something important to tell me?”

“I …”

When, that morning, he had awakened from a sweaty dream and begun to rummage through the pile of old newspapers Tone-Marit had stacked in the hallway, it was as a result of a sudden impulse. When he finally found the copy of
Aftenposten
from Friday December 20 and tracked down the article he recalled from his visit to Ronny Berntsen, he grew worried. Two hours later, at police headquarters, after having lied more than he could ever remember doing in years, he had reached a state of certainty and deep anxiety.

“That gun,” he said, clearing his throat. “The revolver—”

“Yes?”

“You know that the pistol—”

“You were talking about the revolver, Billy T.”

“Yes. The pistol came from Sølvi Jotun. It was sold to Hermine. We’re pretty sure about that now. Sølvi recognized an indentation on the stock. She’s in the cells now and is going to kill me when she finally gets out. I—”

“You had no choice, Billy T. You couldn’t protect her any longer. We’ll see how we can help her later. But what about this revolver?”

“It’s ours.”

“Ours.”

Hanne repeated the word – not as a question, not in surprise. She was simply confirming it, as if he was telling her something she had known for a long time, an everyday piece of information that, to be honest, was not particularly sensational.

“Yes, well, not exactly ours …”

He was almost whispering. The tram rumbled down Thorvald Meyers gate and Jenny had set out on a swim through the dirty water. The puppy squealed in glee and snatched off her hat. The dog owner no longer seemed so cheerful; she looked at Billy T. in reproach and pointed at the child, who was now dripping wet.

“It’s a confiscated gun, Hanne. It was seized by us seven months ago and should right now be under lock and key as precisely that: a confiscated gun. I recognized it from a picture taken the day the murders took place. I’ve checked.”

Hanne said nothing. Billy T. gulped. The silence between them was impenetrable, pleasant; verging on the relationship they had once had, at a time when they had hardly needed to ask to know what the other was thinking.

“You’re a genius,” she said at last, at the other end of the phone. “Do you know that? A bloody genius. Can you get rid of Jenny?”

“No.”

“Drive her home to us. Nefis and Mary can—”

“I have to go home for some dry clothes,” he broke in.

“To hell with that. Nefis will find something. You must …”

It took her only three minutes to explain to him what he had to do. He disconnected the call and tucked his cellphone into his breast pocket. Then he stepped out into the pond. Carefully he lifted Jenny up and settled her in his arms, like a baby; she leaned her head back and smiled at him, a big smile with pearly white teeth. He put his face against hers, his mouth to hers, a childish mouth full of laughter and spittle and the residue of caramel candies like a trace of sweetness on her lips. He kissed her on the nose, on her cheeks, he smacked his lips and blew raspberries, and Jenny laughed loudly for a long time.

“I love you,” he mumbled into her ear as he began to head for the car. “I love you, you little monster.”

It took Hanne twenty minutes to gain access to Henrik Heinz Backe. Of course he had not opened the door when she had rung the doorbell. Only after hammering on the door, throwing stones at the windows, shouting and screaming, and finally trying to pick the lock with her credit card and a pocket screwdriver was she rewarded by a grouchy face as the door opened a crack. To be on the safe side, she had thrust her foot forward. After considerable persuasion, she was finally allowed inside.

The furniture in the apartment was heavy and old-fashioned, and a faint odor of unwashed male hit her as she followed Backe unbidden into the living room. Nevertheless, the place had an atmosphere of some sort of coziness. The bookshelves were crammed and there were crocheted cloths and runners on the tables. In the windows sat three pelargoniums, each in its own Delft pot and shriveling in the heat. The settee was decorated with embroidered cushions. An enormous chandelier was suspended from the ceiling. Three of the bulbs were gone; the lighting in the room was lopsided. All of a sudden, it struck Hanne that the apartment was like the one belonging to the Stahlbergs, of course, but only a mirror image; it made her dizzy when she tried to calculate where the kitchen was located.

“Flowers are not my forte,” Backe said, as he sat down in an armchair. “It was my wife who was good at that sort of thing.”

Hanne chose the settee; she had a good view of the entire living room from there, and she tried not to be too obvious when she studied his face. He was not drunk. Even though the smell of liquor had been noticeable when he had finally opened the door, his gait was steady all the same. His slurred speech was more a result of his lack of teeth rather than a high blood-alcohol count. He was dressed in gray trousers and some kind of smoking jacket with a white shirt underneath; everything was apparently clean.

“I’ve met you before,” he said, scratching the back of his hand in a confused gesture.

“Yes. I drove you home a week ago. Do you remember?”

“Unn really had a talent with flowers,” he said, smiling. “You should have seen the garden here. In the spring. The summer. It was so beautiful.”

An old striking clock ponderously struck the hour.

“Time flies,” Backe said.

“You said that you were a retired insurance consultant,” Hanne said.

“This was my wife’s childhood home. We moved here in fifty-eight. No …”

He swept a faint smile away with his hand, embarrassed at his own forgetfulness.

“Eighty-five, I mean. That’s when we moved here. My parents-in-law had passed away by then. Both of them. Time flies.”

“And before that you lived in Bergen, didn’t you?”

He looked up.

“Bergen? Why, yes. We lived in Bergen for years.”

“And you were in the police, I understand?”

The clock struck again; there must have been something wrong with it. Backe stood up and disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned, he was carrying a tumbler filled to the brim with brown liquid. He made no move to offer Hanne anything.

“It’s not easy to live alone after all these years,” he said, sitting down in another chair. “Insurance consultant. That’s what I was. I’m a pensioner now.”

The gray-blue veil descended over his eyes. Hanne dried her hands on her trousers. She clasped them and supported her elbows on her knees as she craned forward.

“This is extremely important, Backe. I’d really like you to answer my questions.”

He stared at her, but she was still doubtful as to whether he actually saw her.

“You had a case,” she said tentatively. “You had several – I’ve come across this here …”

She put her right hand under her jacket and flicked through the pages.

“This one,” she said softly as she skirted around the table.

Backe fumbled with his glass, sloshing the liquid, and was left rubbing the armrest with his finger in rhythmic circles. Finally he looked up and grabbed the sheets of paper.

“Unn would have been devastated,” he said quietly. He was right about that.

“Who?” Hanne said.

“I drank too much. I always drank too much.”

As if to underscore his own point, he emptied half the glass in one swallow.

“Unn made allowances for me. She always tried to get me to stop. But it was so … She wouldn’t have put up with this. You understand …”

His face had changed and a sense of calm had settled over his features.

“Drinking is expensive,” he said with a little cough. “I let myself be persuaded to take the money. I regretted it, of course. Regretted it terribly. Wanted to give it back. Wanted to blow the whistle. But he was right. It would have been the death of Unn. Yes, yes, that much is true.”

His gaze slid over the pages. Hanne was unsure whether he was really reading. She crouched down to get a better view of him and he flinched, as if he had only now discovered that she was there.

“But Unn’s not here any more,” he said.

“This is so important,” Hanne whispered, afraid to frighten him, afraid he might retreat again into his failing memory. “What was it that happened?”

“The boy was only eighteen. A good family, you know. And good families in Bergen …”

Now he was laughing. Hanne was struck by how beautiful his voice became, deep and melodious.

“… are better than any others, you know! Drunk-driving. Drove into a lamppost. A trivial affair.”

The rest of his drink went down the hatch.

“But the case definitely shouldn’t have been dropped. He was new, so first of all I tried to do the right thing. I sent it back and said there must have been a mistake. But he didn’t back down.”

Befuddled, he glanced down into the empty glass.

“I just poured some more a minute ago,” he said, his slurring more obvious now.

“What happened?” Hanne asked.

“He still wouldn’t do anything and said the case should be dropped. Typical rich folk, getting off more easily. Just like those …”

He stared fiercely at the wall dividing his apartment from the Stahlbergs’.

“… fucking snobs in there. Thinking they’re better than …”

Backe was becoming genuinely agitated. Spittle sprayed as he spoke and he flung out his right arm.

“And my parents-in-law,” he roared. “I was never good enough for them. For Unn!”

His spouse’s name made him slump back again, exhausted, his breathing labored. He inspected the glass once more, indicating his intention to stand up. Hanne pressed her hand gently on his chest.

“Wait a minute,” she said in a friendly tone. “I’ll get you a refill afterwards. Who told you it would be the death of Unn?”

“It wasn’t really so very much money,” he said as if he had not heard her. “But when I threatened to go further up the ranks, he began to make threats. When that didn’t help either, he burst into tears. Tears! Huh! A grown man—”

“Who?” Hanne asked.

“You can see it for yourself. Our names are there. He had already accepted the money. I got half. I accepted half of it. I accepted …”

His tears spilled over.

“A grown man,” he mumbled. “A grown man sniveling like a child.”

Hanne took his glass. When she returned with more liquor, he had already started talking.

“Of course I understood this wasn’t the first time. But he promised it would be the last. I accepted the money. Twenty-five thousand kroner, that’s what I got. Then I quit. The shame … the shame has never let up. It never ended. An insurance consultant. That’s what I am. Do you think they’re dying?”

He was looking at her now, straight in the eye, a confused gaze that made her want to smooth his hair with her hand and pat him on the cheek. Instead she asked: “Who?”

“The pelargoniums. I’ve tried to water them. Maybe they got too much. Unn was the one who attended to that kind of thing. Well, well.”

Slowly he subsided back into the chair. The clock struck five times, a ragged chime, the workings hiccupping violently. The strong smell of spilt liquor stung her nostrils. Cautiously she loosened his grip on the documents, case papers from an obviously unlawfully-dropped case from Bergen in 1984. She placed them with the three other case files, cases shelved just as hair-raisingly, despite knowledge of the perpetrators and the existence of sufficient evidence. None of them was particularly serious: a couple of cases of drunk-driving, an excess speed violation, and an attack on a taxi driver. Cases that could be made to disappear, that could easily be stamped and archived. They had lain there in the vast archives, unread and unseen, shielded by Backe’s shame, guilt, and love for his wife, until they had surfaced in the course of Knut Sidensvans’s research into crime in major Norwegian cities eighteen years later.