Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (12 page)

Standing up, she pulled on her leather jacket, smiled at them, and wished them enjoyment of their Friday night adventures as she prepared to leave.

“Wait for a bit, darling.” Billy T. grinned, grabbing her by the arm. “Give me a hug!”

She was leaning toward him with some reluctance, when he stopped in his tracks, staring directly into her eyes with a seriousness she had seldom witnessed in him.

“I like you, you know, Hanne,” he murmured. Then he hugged her tight.

N
ature was in a state of total confusion. The scent of bird cherry blossom hung heavily in the air, as at Midsummer, along all the byways, and the garden roses were already blooming. Tulip petals, normally in their full glory, were sprawling indecorously, and the flowers would be dead within a couple of days. Insects were buzzing around in the midst of all the frivolity, in a state of semiconsciousness. Pollen allergy sufferers were having a dreadful time, and even the most enthusiastic aficionados of summer glanced furtively at the sky. The sun seemed hardly to take a few hours’ rest each night before springing up, just as scorching and fighting fit as ever, around five o’clock every morning. There must be something wrong somewhere.

“The comet is coming,” groaned Hanne Wilhelmsen, who read Tove Jansson’s Moomin books annually.

She was sitting on their little balcony with her feet on the railings, reading the Saturday newspapers. It was already almost half past ten at night but definitely too warm to sit indoors watching television.

“Wimp,” Cecilie responded, offering her a glass of Campari and tonic. “In the south you would be thinking this is just marvelous. Be glad instead that for once we’re having beautiful weather here in the north.”

“No thanks. I’ve a slight headache. It must be the heat.”

Cecilie was correct all the same. It was actually lovely. Hanne Wilhelmsen couldn’t recall ever having sat outside in shorts and
T-shirt so late into the evening and feeling too warm. Not in Norway. At least not at the beginning of June.

On the grassy slope below their balcony, two families with young children were having a party. Five children, one dog, and two pairs of parents had been barbecuing, playing singing games, and enjoying good old-fashioned outdoor fun for several hours, despite the fact it must now be well past bedtime for the youngest. An hour ago, Cecilie had wondered sotto voce how long it would take for Mrs. Weistrand on the ground floor to come out and complain. The lady in question had already banged her balcony door a number of times in demonstrative protest against the children’s racket. Cecilie was proved right of course. At eleven o’clock a police patrol car swung into the parking lot, and two policemen in summer uniform strode purposefully across the grass pitch toward the family idyll.

“Look at them, Cecilie,” Hanne said, laughing quietly. “They’re marching in step. When I was a constable, I decided I’d never do that, it looks so military. But then it’s impossible to lose the habit. It’s exactly like belonging to a marching band.”

The policemen were peas in a pod. Two short-haired men of identical height. They stood somewhat hesitantly on the edge of the little gathering before directing themselves to the man who was apparently the elder.

“I knew it.” Hanne sniggered, slapping herself on the thigh. “I knew they would approach one of the men!”

Getting to their feet, the two women leaned their elbows on the balcony railing. The group was no more than twenty meters away, and the sound carried well in the summer evening.

“Let’s start packing up here,” one of the two officers ordered. “We’ve had a complaint about a disturbance. From the neighbors, that is.”

“What neighbors?”

The man who had been given the honor of being addressed flailed his arms in disappointment.

“Everybody’s outside just now, you know,” he said, pointing to the apartment block, where people were outside on the majority of balconies.

“We’re not disturbing anybody!”

“Sorry,” the officer insisted, straightening his cap. “You’ll have to move indoors.”

“In this heat?”

Now Mrs. Weistrand made her entrance. With a wide gait and definite sway of the hips, she stepped across from her own little patch of garden.

“It’s more than two hours since I called,” she scolded. “It’s a disgrace.”

“A lot to do, ma’am,” the other twin apologized, adjusting his cap. Hanne Wilhelmsen knew it was a nightmare to wear one in this heat. She made up her mind to wade in.

“Cecilie, I really do have a headache. Could you be bothered making me some tea? You’re an angel.”

Tea for a headache. Good medicine, the physician surmised, knowing perfectly well why she was being asked to go inside. But she said nothing, simply shrugging her shoulders as she headed for the kitchen.

“Hello,” Hanne Wilhelmsen shouted over to the two officers as soon as Cecilie was out of sight. “Hello, boys!”

Everybody down on the grassy slope looked up at her. The two constables paced uncertainly in the direction of the building when they realized she was talking to them. Hanne did not know them but assumed, presumptuously enough, that they knew who she was. Which was obviously correct. When they were five meters away from her, they brightened up.

“Hello there,” they both said, more or less in unison.

“Just leave them be,” Hanne Wilhelmsen advised, with a wink.
“They’re not making any noise at all. It’s the old wifey on the ground floor who’s being difficult. Let the youngsters enjoy themselves.”

Detective Inspector Wilhelmsen’s advice was good enough for the two policemen. With a deferential touch of their caps, they turned on their heels and returned to the little gathering.

“Keep it quiet, then,” one of them said as he headed with his partner toward presumably more important assignments.

Mrs. Weistrand scurried angrily back to her burrow, while the older man at the party approached Hanne.

“Thank you very much,” he said, forming his right hand into a gesture of triumph, like a “Yes-to-the-European Union” symbol from 1972.

Hanne only smiled, shaking her head. Cecilie had returned. Banging a teacup down on the table, she buried herself in the newspapers without uttering a word.

When it reached half past two, with the children long off to bed and the heat of the night sufficiently abated for them both to wear sweaters, it dawned on Hanne that Cecilie had not exchanged more than a few monosyllables with her since the police officers’ visit. They remained sitting in silence, neither of them having any wish to lie down side by side, and in addition it really was a most enchanting night. Hanne had tried everything. Nothing worked. Now she was sitting wondering what in the world she should do to avoid having the entire following day spoiled as well.

Then the telephone rang. Hanne’s phone.

Cecilie ripped the newspaper in two.

“If that’s work, and you’ve got to go, I’m going to kill you,” she growled indignantly before throwing the torn paper away, stamping into the apartment, and slamming the bedroom door ferociously behind her. Hanne took the call.

Although she had felt mentally prepared—a phone call in the
middle of the night between Saturday and Sunday never heralded anything good—she could feel the skin on her neck tighten. It was another Saturday night massacre. Håkon was phoning. He was already on the scene, a subway station in one of the older suburbs on the eastern flank of the city. It looked absolutely hellish. Since the latest information about some of the mess being human blood, he assumed she would want to take a look.

Hanne thought about it for all of ten seconds.

“I’m on my way,” she said tersely.

She remained standing outside the bedroom door before knocking lightly.

“It’s your room too,” she heard a grumpy voice from inside.

She ventured in. Cecilie had undressed and was sitting up in bed, holding a book and wearing the ugly reading glasses she knew Hanne hated.

“You’re going out, I hear,” she said frostily.

“Yes, and you’re coming too.”

“Me?”

Lowering her book, she met Hanne’s gaze for the first time in hours.

“Yes. It’s about time you got to see what I’m up to when I wander off outdoors during the night. This bloodbath is probably no worse than your own operating rooms.”

Cecilie did not believe her. She began to read again but was clearly more preoccupied with what Hanne was about to say.

“I mean it, my friend. Put on your clothes. We’re going to inspect a crime scene. Hurry up.”

Five minutes later, a rose-colored Harley roared toward the Oppsal area. When they arrived, it looked quite different from the other scenes. Three patrol cars were parked, blue lights flashing, probably without causing any degree of embarrassment to the neighbors, who were straining their necks to follow what was happening anyway. The subway station was of the unmanned
type, surrounded by a fence and with a contraption resembling a sluice gate facing the street on the side used by exiting passengers. The bloodbath was on the opposite side, where travelers had to walk through a small building to access the boarding platform. There were thirteen police officers in the area, Håkon Sand among them, dressed in full uniform. Hanne remembered that he was on duty. He beamed when he caught sight of her greeting him as she crossed the crime scene tape draped in all directions. Cecilie had accompanied her, unchallenged by the female police sergeant guarding the perimeter.

“You were quick,” he commented, apparently not noticing she had someone with her. Hanne did not introduce them.

“A young couple on their way from a party discovered it,” Håkon explained. “They were madly in love and were looking for a discreet place to go.”

He pointed to a corner formed by a two-meter-high wall where it met the drab gray building. The ground was a mixture of extremely old asphalt and a great many dandelions that had conquered the dark-gray surface. Now it was all black with blood. Huge quantities of blood.

“Now we’re making an effort to gather evidence far more thoroughly,” he explained, indicating the scene around him.

Sensible. Just what she would have done. Looking around, she spotted Hilde Hummerbakken of the dog patrol. She had put on about thirty kilos since leaving police training college and was waddling around in a far-too-tight uniform. She had, however, the most beautiful dog in the world. Its tail wagging like a propeller, it roamed over the site, stopping sometimes here, sometimes there, all the while obeying the soft-spoken, forthright commands of its mistress—a fascinating sight. After several minutes, the rotund officer approached them, and Hanne crouched down to pet the dog.

“The perpetrator must have come through the building,”
Hummerbakken said, panting. “That’s quite clear. There’s nothing along the fence. Cairo has ranged through the whole building but is picking up something thirty meters up the slope there. He or she had a car. Should these buildings not be locked at night?”

“Probably,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said as she stood up. “But with fewer and fewer staff, there’s a limit to how meticulous they can be. There’s nothing here to steal. Just an empty building.”

Police Inspector Hummerbakken left them to walk another round with the dog. Hanne Wilhelmsen borrowed a flashlight. In the middle of the bloody site, someone had placed a little strip of cardboard, like a gangway, without any rhyme or reason. She stepped carefully across as far as it reached, confirming that here too there was an eight-digit number scratched on the blood-smeared wall. Then she turned to the others, hunkered down, and looked around in every direction.

“As I thought,” she muttered, getting to her feet and making her way back.

None of them understood what Hanne had established. Cecilie was dumbstruck by all the impressions bombarding her and had not yet recovered from the fact that she was actually standing there, in the midst of a buzzing nest filled with Hanne’s colleagues.

“In there, near the wall, you could have four square meters where you are invisible,” she enlightened them. “The nearest building you see is that one over there. In this light, it’s impossible for anyone out there to see in here.”

They followed her index finger to a building shrouded in darkness on a low elevation, at least three hundred meters distant.

“Hello,” Håkon Sand suddenly declared, as though he hadn’t noticed Cecilie until now. He stretched out his hand. “I’m Håkon Sand.”

“Cecilie Vibe.” Cecilie smiled radiantly in return.

Hanne interrupted the extremely brief conversation.

“A friend of mine. She was visiting. Couldn’t exactly leave her,” she lied with a forced smile, immediately feeling terrible pangs of regret.

“And now you’ll have to drive me home,” Cecilie said, cold as ice, nodding briefly in Håkon’s direction and starting to head for the door of the gray building.

“No, wait, Cecilie,” Hanne said desperately.

In a loud voice, to be sure her partner would hear, she addressed herself to Håkon: “Actually, I was thinking of inviting you to dinner next Friday. At my place, that is. With my partner. Then you can meet . . .”

She swallowed the word “her.”

“. . . my partner,” she concluded without thinking how odd the repetition must sound.

The police attorney looked as though he had been invited on a three-week cruise in the Caribbean. Just as incredulous and evidently just as happy.

“But of course,” he replied, without even considering that he had actually arranged to see his aging mother. “Certainly! We can discuss the details later!”

Leaving the bloodbath behind, Hanne followed Cecilie away from the scene and across to the motorcycle. She said nothing. She felt numb and had no idea how she would get herself out of the arrangement she had just made.

“So that was Håkon Sand. He seems pleasant enough,” Cecilie prattled. “I think you ought to tell him about me before he turns up.”

She leaned her head back and laughed uproariously before her gloomy surroundings crossed her mind, and she stopped abruptly. Then she chuckled all the way home.