Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (13 page)

A
t last the newspapers had jumped aboard. It genuinely delighted him. When the church bells had roused him around ten o’clock, after four short, but sound, hours’ sleep, he had thrown on a jogging suit and headed for the gas station to see if anyone other than the police was finally beginning to take an interest in his actions.

It was almost more than he could hope for. The entire front page of
Dagbladet
was emblazoned with the headline
MYSTERIOUS BLOODBATH IN OSLO
, with the subheading
POLICE SEARCHING FOR VICTIMS
. A tiny photograph in the corner showed a police car, some crime scene tape, and five police officers. It was small in comparison with the headline, but perhaps the blood-drenched corner would not make a good photograph in itself. It would have to be in color at the very least.

Next time, perhaps, he thought before going to take his second shower in five hours. Next time.

*   *   *

They felt like participants in a mediocre American TV film. They were lying in a typical bachelor pad on a tasteless, gigantic white-painted bed, with a tilted headboard containing a built-in radio and alarm clock. But the mattress was good. Hauling himself up, Håkon shyly pulled on his underpants and shuffled through to the kitchen. A moment later he returned with two glasses of cola clinking with ice cubes, and a lopsided smile.

“He’s a good guy, you know.”

His friend had become accustomed to it by now. This was the
fourth time Håkon had blushingly asked to borrow his apartment for a few hours. The first time, his friend was at a loss to understand why Håkon couldn’t take his sex partner to his own place, but in the end he had grinned and handed over the keys.

“We all have peculiar predilections,” he announced, assuring Håkon that he would stay away for five hours.

Since then, the friend hadn’t even passed any comment, simply handing over the keys with an instruction about how long he could stay. This time, however, he had asked if there wasn’t anyone else with an apartment he could borrow, as it wasn’t at all convenient. But when he saw Håkon’s face, he immediately changed his mind. What he did not know was he was not the only one who received this peculiar request from Håkon Sand at regular intervals.

It would not be long until they could expect the owner’s return. Håkon looked discreetly at the clock, but not discreetly enough.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “We have to get up.”

As she made a move, she suddenly declared, “I’m sick and tired of having to meet like this.”

As though it were his choice. He chose not to respond.

“In fact, I’m sick and tired of most things,” she continued as she put on her clothes with exaggerated, hasty movements.

“I’m thinking of ending it.”

Håkon Sand could feel his temper coming to a boil.

“Oh, yes. With this situation here? Or with smoking, perhaps?”

She smoked too much, and if it hadn’t actually started to irritate him, he was at least worried on her behalf. He assumed, however, it wasn’t tobacco she was thinking of cutting out. It was him. She mentioned this in passing around every third time they were together. Earlier, it had terrified him and made him totally desperate. Currently, it only made him completely pissed off.

“Listen, Karen,” he said. “You can’t go on like this. You have to make up your mind now. Do you want me or don’t you?”

The woman came to a sudden stop, then walked around the bed, fastening her trousers.

“You know,” she said, smiling, “I didn’t mean you. Not us. I was talking about my work. I think I should pack in my job.”

That was even more mind-boggling. He plunked himself down on the edge of the bed. Pack in her job? She was the youngest partner in a renowned legal firm, earning astronomical sums of money as far as he could make out, and had very rarely expressed anything to indicate she did not enjoy it.

“Oh, well” was all he said.

“What do you think?”

“No, I th—”

“Forget it.”

“I didn’t mean it like that! I’d like to talk about it.”

“No, forget it. Honestly. We won’t discuss it just now. Another time, perhaps.”

She plumped herself down beside him.

“I’m thinking of going to the cottage on Friday. Do you want to come?”

Sensational. She wanted to take him with her to the cottage. Two and a half days together. The entire time. Without having to hide. Without having to get up and go their respective ways after making love. Sensational.

“I’d really like to,” he stammered, realizing in the same second that her cottage no longer existed. He had a long, nasty wound on his leg from when the building had burned to the ground six months earlier. The scar was still painful on bad days.

“It’ll be a bit too airy, don’t you think?” he said drily.

“Not my cottage. My neighbor’s. And then we can tidy up the site and enjoy ourselves in between times.”

Then he realized one more thing. He had accepted the surprise invitation to dinner at Hanne Wilhelmsen’s.

“Oh, shit.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve got an appointment. Dinner date. Hanne Wilhelmsen has invited me to her apartment.”

“Hanne? I thought you never saw each other outside office hours?”

Karen Borg knew Hanne Wilhelmsen. She had encountered her a few months before, and the policewoman had made a deep impression. Moreover, Håkon could hardly tell a story about his work without the detective inspector being mentioned. But she had never considered them as anything more than colleagues.

“We never have. Until now. She invited me last night, in fact.”

“Can you not call off?” she suggested, running her hands through his hair.

For a fraction of a second, a “Yes of course” reached the tip of his tongue. Then he shook his head. It was one thing to dump his mother in favor of Hanne. Family was somehow different. But he couldn’t say no to Hanne simply because a more attractive option had cropped up.

“No, I can’t do that, Karen. I’ve said I’d really like to come.”

A silence fell between them. Then she smiled and pressed her mouth to his ear. He could feel shivers all the way down his neck.

“You’re a good guy,” she whispered. “A lovely, dependable good guy.”

*   *   *

The young mother with flying red hair was falling apart completely. Her little boy was nowhere to be found. She was running haphazardly to and fro in the narrow streets of the old, run-down residential area, leaning over every single hedge, shouting desperately.

“Kristoffer! Kristoffer!”

She had dozed off in the warm weather. When she last saw him they had just finished eating dinner. Meatballs with sour cabbage. The three-year-old just wanted to eat mashed potatoes with sauce.
It was too hot to argue with a toddler at the defiant stage. Moreover, it was Sunday, and she needed some peace and quiet.

After eating, she had picked up a book and stretched out on the sun bed just behind the charming old house they rented from her uncle. Full of drafts and rather dilapidated, it was not what you would call child-friendly, but the rent was peanuts and the surrounding area was quiet and traffic-free. She had put the boy into the sandpit her uncle had kindly set up in the garden behind the house. He had been jabbering away and having a great time. And then she must have fallen asleep.

Now she was consumed with desperation and full of tears. She tried to convince herself he couldn’t possibly have gone far in the half hour or so she had been snoozing.

“Think,” she said determinedly to herself, clamping her jaws together. “Think! Where does he usually go? Where is it exciting and forbidden to go?”

Terror-stricken at the first answer that struck her, she stopped in her tracks and wheeled around to face the freeway rushing by, three hundred meters below the hillside with all the tiny old houses and gardens. No. He couldn’t have gone there. He just couldn’t have.

An elderly woman in a pinafore and gardening gloves was standing beside a hedge as she rounded the corner of the street about a hundred and fifty meters from home.

“Have you lost Kristoffer?” she asked kindly and somewhat superfluously, since the young woman had been calling her son’s name all the way.

“Yes. No. Not lost. I just can’t find him.”

Her submissive, strained smile encouraged the older woman to pull off her gloves resolutely.

“Come on. I’ll help you. He’s probably not gone far,” she consoled her.

They made an odd couple as they continued the pursuit. The
nervous red-haired woman running from one side to the other through the streets on long, freckled legs. The older lady more systematic, striding up to every single house, taking time to ask the occupants if they had seen the three-year-old.

Eventually they reached the farthest edge of the hill. There was no boy to be seen, and no one else had seen him either. Only the outskirts of the forest lay ahead of the two women, one confused and anxious, the other out of her mind with worry.

“Where can he be?” Kristoffer’s mother sobbed. “He wouldn’t dare go into the forest by himself. Perhaps he’s gone downhill? To the freeway.”

The very thought convulsed her with tears.

“There, there. Take it easy. Let’s not assume the worst. If anything had happened down there, we’d have heard the ambulance long ago,” the older woman comforted her, without any real sense of logic.

“Mommy!”

Beaming with pleasure, a boy came toddling on little suntanned legs out along a garden path, bucket in one hand and plastic spade in the other. If it could be called a garden path. The house nearest to the forest had been unoccupied for a decade, something the property clearly showed. If it hadn’t been for the entrance being covered in a thick layer of fine-grained gravel, it would have merged completely into the overgrown garden.

“Kristoffer,” hiccupped the mother, dashing toward him.

Surprised by the intensity of their reunion, he allowed himself to be lifted up and cuddled until he could scarcely breathe.

“I’ve found a pirate, Mommy,” he announced, proud and excited. “A real pirate!”

“That’s wonderful, my darling boy,” his mother replied. “Wonderful! But you must promise me never to go so far away again. Mommy was very scared, you see. Now we’ll go home and have some juice. I think you must be quite thirsty.”

She gazed at the other woman with heartfelt thanks.

“Many thanks, Mrs. Hansen. Many, many thanks. I was so worried.”

“Yes, it’s okay, no problem.” Mrs. Hansen smiled, taking the boy’s hand to accompany the little family home.

“I want to show you the pirate, Mommy,” he protested, tearing himself away from both women. “You’ve got to see my pirate.”

“Not today, sweetheart. We can go home to your pirate ship and play with that instead.”

The little boy’s bottom lip began to quiver. “No, Mommy. I want to see the real pirate!”

He stood straddle-legged and defiant in the middle of the road, refusing to budge.

Mrs. Hansen intervened. “We’ll go now and have a look at your pirate for a little while and then you and your mommy can come home with me. We’ll have a nice time. Won’t we?”

The final comment was directed at the young woman. She smiled again gratefully, clasping the boy’s hand, and all three of them entered the overgrown garden. Truth to tell, both adults were somewhat curious about what the boy had found.

Even on a bright, shining Sunday afternoon, the house seemed rather frightening. The paint work had flaked off in most places a long time ago. Someone, probably teenagers who didn’t have anything better to do, had smashed all the windows. That had been years before, and even those young restless souls had lost interest in the building—it was now easy prey for the ravages of time. Stinging nettles grew virtually waist-high in some parts of the garden. But around the back, where hardly anyone had been in several years, some kind of grassy lawn was fighting for its life and was managing to stand its ground reasonably well at present. Although there were grassy lawns and grassy lawns. This looked more like a meadow.

When they rounded the corner, the little boy ran across to a small toolshed at the other end of the garden. His mother was afraid the boy would enter the half-open door and called out a warning. It
wasn’t necessary. The boy wasn’t going inside. He crouched down on his haunches beside one of the walls, smiling uncommonly proudly at the two grown-ups, and used his spade to point down into a little hole as he exclaimed loudly, “Look! There’s my pirate!”

It was a human head.

Intuitively grabbing the boy, the younger woman retreated several meters from the spot.

He was bawling. “I want to see! I want to see!”

Mrs. Hansen took only a few seconds before quietly taking command of the situation. “Get him away from here. Tell my husband to call the police. I’ll stay here. Hurry!”

She added the last word when the red-haired mother of the toddler, perplexed and almost paralyzed, remained rooted to the spot, staring at the hole in the ground. She pulled herself away from the grotesque sight and ran off carrying the yelling and kicking toddler, leaving the bucket and spade lying on the grass.

Kristoffer had dug up an area of around forty square centimeters. The head was not buried deeply, at most thirty centimeters. Mrs. Hansen had difficulty understanding how the boy had managed to dig so far. An animal might have made a start on the job.

It might be a woman. It looked like it. The lower part of the face was tightly wrapped in a piece of cloth that seemed to be tied around her head. The corpse’s mouth was open, so the teeth on the upper jaw had forced themselves forward over the binding. Underneath the fabric she could clearly see a depression where the mouth had formed itself into a large O. The nostrils were unusually large and filled with earth. Only one eye was visible. It was half closed. There was a dark, encrusted lock of hair across the other eye, so flat and straight it resembled a head band sitting askew. Almost like a pirate.

Just a few minutes later, Mrs. Hansen heard the police sirens approaching. Standing upright, she stiffly stroked the painful varicose veins on her legs before heading toward the gate to direct the police to the grave.