Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (7 page)

After a while she let go, and the pain in her chest returned. It was completely empty inside, an enormous hollow space with an indefinable ache. It swirled around and around, faster and faster, and in the end she stood up to fetch the little box of pills prescribed by the emergency doctor. Valium, 2 mg. A tiny packet. Each pill represented hope of respite, to some degree. For a spell. She stood for ages holding the box in her left hand, then carried it to the bathroom, lifted the toilet seat, and poured pills down into the pale blue chlorinated water. They remained floating on the surface, bobbing gently, before slowly sinking one by one to the porcelain depths and disappearing. She flushed the toilet. Twice. Then she washed her face thoroughly in bracingly cold water before entering the living room. It was dark now. Only a tiny light on the television set was visible, shedding a pale yellow glow on the soft rugs at the entrance to the room. She picked up another bottle of red wine from the kitchen, quietly, so as not to wake her father. If he was sleeping. She remained sitting in the best chair, her father’s old armchair, until that bottle was empty too.

Then he appeared at the doorway. A towering figure, with slumped shoulders and the palms of his hands opened, outstretched from his pajama-clad body, in a gesture of helplessness. Neither of them said anything. He hesitated for a long time, eventually stepping into the room and crouching down beside her.

“Kristine,” he said gently, to say something rather than because he had something to say. “Kristine. My girl.”

She wanted so much to respond. More than anything else in the whole world, she wished she could engage with him, lean forward and let herself be comforted, and comfort him. Tell him sorry for what she had inflicted on him, sorry she had disappointed him and spoiled everything for him by being so stupid as to go off and get herself raped. She wished she could wipe out the last few horrendous days, wipe out everything, be eight years old and happy again, allowing herself to be tossed in the air and caught in his arms. But she simply couldn’t. Nothing and no one could make everything all right again. She had destroyed his life. All she could manage to do was reach out her hand and let her little finger stroke his face, from the soft skin below the temple, across his rough, unshaven cheek until it rested at the cleft in his chin.

“Daddy,” she said in almost a whisper and stood up. Staggering slightly, she regained her balance and returned to her room. At the door, she half turned and saw he was still there, crouched down, with his face in his hands. She closed the door behind her and lay fully clothed on her bed. After only a few minutes, she was in a deep and dreamless sleep.

T
he paved incline leading from Grønlandsleiret to Oslo police headquarters bustled with activity. People were coming and going. A few taxis were driving up and down at speed, dodging everything from men in suits on their way to meetings with important people on the floors above to old ladies tottering in on skinny legs, wearing sensible walking shoes, to give irate and agitated reports about missing poodles. The sun shone incessantly, and the dandelions on the grass were becoming gray haired. Even Oslo Prison looked attractive in the midst of the avenue of poplar trees, as though the infamous TV crook Egon Olsen might emerge from the gate at any moment, humming a tune, ready to plan another heist. Half-naked people were sprawled or seated in every possible spot between the buildings, some on their lunch hour, others unemployed or housewives deriving pleasure from the only patch of green in the Gamle Oslo quarter of the city. A few dark-skinned lads played soccer, startling the occasional sunbather with an errant ball to the stomach. The children laughed and showed no sign of shifting their match to another location.

Hanne Wilhelmsen and Håkon Sand were sitting on a bench directly beside the wall. Hanne had rolled her trousers up above her knees and removed her shoes. With a stolen glance, Håkon ascertained that she didn’t shave her legs. It was okay, as she had only some light, soft, feminine down that made her look even lovelier than if her legs had been shiny. Her skin had already turned a shade of pale golden brown.

“Have you thought about one thing?” Håkon Sand inquired, food in mouth. He continued chewing and then folded the waxed paper neatly, pouring the rest of the milk carton contents down his throat.

“Have you considered that there wasn’t a Saturday night massacre this time? I mean last Saturday night.”

“Yes.”

Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen had finished her modest lunch long before. It had consisted of yogurt and a medium-sized carrot. Incredulous, Håkon had asked her if she was on a diet, and she had not replied.

“Yes, I’ve thought about it,” she acknowledged once more. “Odd. Perhaps the jokers have grown tired of it. We have at least managed to keep the story out of the newspapers. It must be a bit boring after a while, going to all that bother just to annoy us. He was probably hoping for something more. If the theory about it being a prankster is true, that is.”

“Maybe he’s quite simply run out of blood . . .”

“Yes, maybe so.”

The soccer ball soared toward them in an arc. Hanne leaped up and caught it with a smile, then turned to face her colleague.

“Fancy a game?”

An energetic, dismissive gesture extinguished any hope of seeing Håkon Sand play football with the Pakistani boys. Hanne kicked the ball back and groaned. She sat down, rubbing her tender instep.

“Out of practice.”

“What do you really think about that case?” Håkon Sand asked.

“Truth to tell, I don’t know. Hopefully, it’s just nonsense. But there’s something or other about it I don’t like. Despite everything, the guy must have gone to a lot of bother.”

“Or lady.”

“I don’t honestly believe a woman would do something like that. It’s kind of . . . a bit too masculine. All that blood.”

“But what if it wasn’t a prank? What if those three places were scenes of actual crimes? What if . . . ?”

“Don’t you have enough to do, Håkon? Is it necessary to spend time on what-if crimes? In that case, you’ll get plenty to keep you busy in the future, that’s for sure.”

Slightly peeved, she donned her socks and shoes and rolled her trousers down.

“Game over. We need to get back to work,” she insisted.

They ambled into the station. Some gilded monstrosity hanging from the ceiling in a feeble attempt at decorating the enormous foyer seemed about to collapse from the heat. The sunshine was reflected so brilliantly it was painful to look at.

No great loss if the whole piece of junk takes a dive, Hanne Wilhelmsen thought.

Then she took the elevator to the second floor.

*   *   *

Håkon’s speculations concerning the Saturday night massacres consumed her thoughts, which was immensely annoying. She now had five rape cases, seven assaults, and a suspected case of incest to work on. It was more than enough. It was true they had a special group to deal with child abuse, but during this absurd spring it seemed that little children were becoming increasingly valuable as sexual objects. They all had to take a share of the load. The case assigned to her was of the kind that would typically be dropped. Clinically, there was no sign of anything untoward. It did not matter that the child had changed character completely, to the total despair of both mother and kindergarten, and a psychologist had established with a great degree of certainty that something or other had happened. Regardless, this was as far distant from securing a conviction as from here to the moon.
“Something or other” was not exactly specific, seen from a legal point of view. All the same, it conflicted with her innermost instincts as a police officer not to try a bit harder. During the judicial examination, the youngster had said quite a lot but had gone completely silent when Hanne had carefully tried to coax out the name of the person with “weird pee, like milk.” Another judicial review would be her last-ditch effort, but it would have to wait. At least for a couple of weeks.

What if . . .

Hanne Wilhelmsen was sitting with feet on the desk, hands folded behind her head, and eyes half closed.

What if something really had happened in the woodshed in Tøyen, in the workmen’s hut beside the River Lo, and in the parking lot at Vaterland? In that case, it was grotesque. The blood couldn’t possibly come from a single person. Three or four people meeting their cruel fates in each of these places was so totally improbable that—at least for the moment—she had to exclude the possibility.

She jumped when Chief Inspector Kaldbakken entered the room and jerked her feet off the desk.

“Not enough to do, Wilhelmsen?” he grumbled. “All you need to do is come to me, then you’ll have more than enough to keep your hands full!”

“No, thanks all the same.”

Despite her boss’s stern look and the unflattering situation in which she had just been found, she knew that he knew.

“I’ve got more than enough. We all have.”

Her boss took a seat.

“Have you made any progress with Saturday’s rape? That lady student?”

Chief Inspector Kaldbakken must be one of the last people to call female students ladies. There were rumors he still wore his student cap on May 17 as well.

“No, nothing in particular, just the usual. No one has seen anything, no one has heard anything. She’s finding it hugely difficult to give more than a vague description. You’ve seen the sketch yourself—it looks like anyone and everyone. We’ve received about fifty tip-offs and Erik has been going through them. None of them seems especially interesting. So he says, at least. I’ll have a look through them myself.”

“I don’t like it.” He cleared his throat and then coughed for fully four minutes.

“You should give up smoking, Kaldbakken,” she said in a hushed tone, noting it sounded like the second-to-last stage of emphysema. He should stop. Really.

“That’s what my wife says too,” he replied, half choking, and ended the paroxysm with vigorous hawking, producing a great deal of muck with a revolting consistency. A well-used gigantic handkerchief was raised to his mouth and filled with the stuff. Hanne Wilhelmsen tactfully turned away, letting her eye rest on two sparrows pecking each other on the windowsill. It might be too hot for them too.

“I don’t like it,” he repeated. “Rapes seldom come singly. Have you heard back from Forensics?”

“No, it’s far too early. It usually takes weeks to get anything from them.”

“Chase them down, Wilhelmsen. Chase them down. I’m really quite concerned.”

With no little effort and strain, he got to his feet, coughing all the way back to his office.

I
t was not easy to take time off, just like that, all of a sudden. Nevertheless, his two colleagues had been extremely understanding and demonstrated goodwill by accommodating his patients at short notice. It was a financial loss. On the other hand, it had been many years since he had treated himself to a proper vacation.

Vacation and vacation. He had a great deal to do. It was still somewhat unclear where he should begin. And so he started with a swim. The baths were surprisingly full, even at this time, seven o’clock in the morning. The chlorine miasma hung densely above the swimmers—it had probably been recently replenished. Some appeared to be regular patrons, greeting each other and chatting at the poolside. Others were more purposeful, swimming to and fro in the fifty-meter-long swimming pool without paying attention to anyone else and without looking at anybody. They just swam, swam, and swam. So did he.

After a hundred meters, he was exhausted. After two hundred, he realized he wasn’t hampered only by his years but also by too much body fat. The difficulty began to ease off after another two lengths. He had fallen into a rhythm his heart could accept. His body was far more sluggish than the others splashing steadily past him, up and down, up and down. Their muscular torsos trailed a wake, like heavy vessels in miniature. He hung on to the stern wave of a garish pair of swimming trunks. After seven hundred meters, he felt ready. It was a remarkable start to the day. He could not remember when he’d last had time for swimming. As he hauled
himself onto the edge of the pool, he pulled in his abdomen and thrust out his chest. It didn’t last farther than the stairway to the changing rooms, where he squeezed the air out through clenched teeth and let his upper body sink back where it belonged.

He found comfort in the sauna. The others did not look quite the same, in heat of almost a hundred degrees, their complexions florid. While he was sitting there, with a towel wrapped self-consciously around his waist, he decided that his first step was visiting the apartment block where his daughter lived. Had lived. He had to do something with that apartment. It was out of the question she should ever move back there. But he wouldn’t force her to make a decision yet. They had plenty of time. For the moment.

He felt clean and lighter than his weight of approximately one hundred kilos. It was drizzling outside, but the delicate canopy of cloud was unable to turn down the thermostat. It remained far too warm for the time of year. Even in the middle of July, eighteen degrees Celsius at eight o’clock in the morning would be impressive. At this season it was almost terrifying. Perhaps there was something in all that talk about the ozone layer.

With less difficulty than usual, he got into the car, illegally parked in a disability parking bay. The training session had benefited him. He should do it more often. He needed to sharpen up.

Fourteen minutes later he found a parking space large enough, only fifty meters away from his daughter’s address. Looking at his watch again, he realized it was a bit early to disturb anyone. The ones who were going to work would certainly not have time to talk to him. Those who were staying at home were probably not yet up. To kill time, he grabbed a couple of tabloids from a newsstand and stepped into a bakery already tempting busy morning people with the delicious aroma of fresh bread and buns.

After three bread rolls, a quarter liter of milk, and two cups of coffee, it was late enough to make a start. He headed for the car to insert more coins into the parking meter before approaching
the building. Fishing out his keys, he let himself into the apartment block. There were two apartments on each floor and five stories in total. It was just as easy to start on the ground.