Death of the Demon: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (21 page)

In the middle of the night he came in and woke me. He was not crying but was clearly nervous and asked if he could sleep in my bed, something he had not done since he was tiny. I let him snuggle up to me and put my arms around him. He pushed them away but accepted me lying close to him. He hardly slept all night.

The next day, it was all entirely forgotten. I asked him what had been so creepy, but he only smiled.

At school he had been allocated an aide for fifteen hours a week. Though he had kept up with the work in most subjects in year one and the beginning of year two, his restlessness was so disruptive that he had started to fall behind. First and foremost, the task of the aide was to make him sit still, but he also worked with him on a one-to-one basis for a few hours.

Olav liked the aide, a young man, and he was friendly to me as well. I was afraid of him at the beginning, but he laughed a lot and at least gave me some impression that he liked my boy. Sometimes he accompanied Olav home, and the boy was almost unrecognizable. It was true he didn’t listen to what I had to say any more than otherwise, but when the aide gave him instructions, he obeyed him without protest.

Once the young aide phoned me late one evening. Olav had gone to bed. He was running a temperature and was tired. It must
have been when he had just started in year five. The aide wondered whether I found it difficult to set boundaries for my son. He was trying to tell me I was not quite “handling him properly,” as he put it. If I was willing, he could come and talk to me in the morning, when he had no lessons with Olav and I would be on my own at home all the same. He had been in contact with the child welfare service, he admitted, and tried to adopt a light tone of voice as he informed me they had taken a positive view of him undertaking work as a kind of home consultant.

Child welfare service. Home consultant. The words were like knives in my heart. The aide, who had been a guest in my home, eaten meals here, laughed, ruffled my son’s hair, and been pleasant and kind toward me
 . . .
He had spoken to the child welfare service.

I simply put down the receiver.

Two days later, the representatives of the child welfare service were standing on the doorstep.

 • • • 

Facing Billy T. was a half liter of beer in a glass sparkling with condensation, with a delightful circle of froth on top. Hanne had contented herself with a Munkholm. Lifeless and lackluster, the top was a fine, white layer that could hardly be dignified with the name of froth.

“Talk about withholding important information,” Hanne said quietly in order not to be heard at neighboring tables.

They had sat down at the table farthest back and on a raised area in the innermost recesses of the bar. A more pretentious proprietor had probably called it a mezzanine, but here it was simply known as the platform.

“Yes, it is fairly critical, to put it mildly,” Billy T. conceded, diving into his beer. “Stupid of me not to ask when I had the guy in for the interview.”

Hanne made no comment about his oversight.

“This means in all probability that the perpetrator did
not
come to kill Agnes,” she continued. “It has been bothering me, this matter of the knife. It’s a clumsy murder weapon. Not at all reliable. Unusual.”

“Well, there is a lot of knife crime here in this country,” Billy T. noted.

“Yes, but not deliberate murders! If you plan ahead of time to murder someone, a knife is probably not going to be your weapon of choice. Knives are about . . . the city center on a Saturday night, fights, drunken nonsense, parties, cabin holidays in the pouring rain when people start to argue. And what’s more, loads of stab wounds. And often a wounded culprit into the bargain.”

“So you think the person in question came for some other reason, that things turned nasty, and he or she grabbed the knife almost on an impulse? For lack of anything better, so to speak?”

“Precisely. That’s exactly what I mean.”

The food arrived on the table. Hanne had ordered a chicken salad; Noah’s Ark was the only place in the city where the chicken in the salad was served piping hot. Billy T. launched himself into a double kebab.

They ate in silence for several minutes, before Hanne grinned and lay down her knife and fork. Looking obliquely at her companion, she asked, “How’s it going with that woman you met in the Canary Islands?”

He did not deign to respond, instead continuing to eat with undiminished enthusiasm.

“That golden tan of yours is starting to fade. Is it the same with your love affair?”

He prodded her in the side with his fork and spoke with his mouth full of food. “Now don’t you be mean and rotten. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“C’mon, Billy T. Tell me more.”

She waited patiently until he finished his meal, when he finally wiped his beard with his lower arm, emptied his half liter, and, signaling for another, planked down two fists in front of him on the table.

“It was nothing.”

“It was not! You were so elated a week or so ago!”

“That was then, this is now.”

She reconsidered and turned serious. “What’s all that about, Billy T.?”

Appearing irritated, he put an unnecessary amount of energy into trying to catch the waiter’s attention, since he had not responded to his earlier gesture.

“What d’you mean?”

“All that with you and women.”

Billy T. had four children. None of them had the same mother. He hadn’t even stayed with any of them long enough to be anywhere near deciding to move in together. But he loved his sons passionately.

“Me and women? Dynamite, that is!”

He finally received his half liter. Remaining seated, he etched hearts on the dewy surface of the glass.

“I can’t stand any hassle,” he added.

“Hassle?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of hassle?”

“All that female hassle. That can’t-you-pay-a-little-attention-to-me-as-well hassle. I like to do whatever I want. If a woman wants to do that with me, then that’s great. After a while they don’t want to do that any longer. Then the hassle starts. I just can’t deal with that.”

“Damage in early childhood,” Hanne said with a smile.

“Probably.”

“But you. Why . . .” She broke off with a self-conscious smile.

He never learned what she had been about to ask, because something suddenly dawned on him. His gaze became distant, and perhaps to avoid closer interrogation about his wounded personal life, he returned to the latest information from the widower.

“What could have happened to the
other
knives?”

“What . . .” She stopped as she realized the implication of the question herself.

“There should have been another three or four sharpened knives lying there. You’re right about that. Can the murderer have taken them with him?”

“Of course he can. But why on earth would he do that?”

Hanne stared vacantly at her Munkholm bottle without receiving any help from that quarter. Then she turned her attention to a loud argument escalating at one of the entrance doors, where two exhausted characters from the park wanted to come in. The dark-haired waiter was employing all his reserves of tact and discretion, and in return was showered with crude racist comments. Immune to it, he succeeded in turning the old guys away.

“I think I know,” she exclaimed. “If I’m right, we can really start to narrow down the search for the murderer.”

Hanne was thoughtful rather than triumphant. Scanning the room, she managed to catch the waiter’s attention again.

“Hi, do you think I could borrow four or five knives from the kitchen? Just for a moment. It’s for . . . a bet.”

The waiter looked surprised but shrugged his shoulders and returned with four large, well-used knives just a minute or so later.

Standing up, Hanne placed the knives on the table at Billy T.’s right side.

“Let’s assume they were lying on that side. The principle remains the same. Sit as though you’re concentrating on something in front of you.”

Billy T. intently contemplated the crumbs on his plate. Stepping behind him, Hanne grabbed the largest knife from the table, drew it in a backward sweeping motion, and simulated a slow-motion movement toward her colleague’s spine, allowing the point of the knife to stab him in the back.

“Ouch!”

He wheeled around and tried to massage the tender spot with his right hand. That gave him a sore shoulder. It became noticeably quieter in the premises, and curious bystanders at the surrounding tables were staring at the pair of them in alarm.

“Did you see that?” Hanne asked eagerly, replacing the knife on the table. “Did you notice what happened? When I grabbed the knife?”

“Of course I did,” Billy T. answered. “Of course I fucking did. Hanne, you’re a genius!”

“I’m fully aware of that,” the chief inspector replied, self-satisfied.

In sheer enthusiasm, she paid the whole bill herself, though Billy T. had consumed far more alcohol.

“But, Hanne,” Billy T. said, stopping suddenly when they reached the sidewalk, “if that stunt of yours in there has any relevance, then we can forget both the Lover and that guy Hasle without the driver’s license.”

“Well, Billy T.,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said, “although we now have a bloody good theory, we must never box ourselves in. We still have to explore all avenues. That’s elementary!”

“Okay, Sherlock,” Billy T. said with a grin.

And then he could not resist smacking a kiss right on her lips.

“Yuck,” Hanne said, wiping her mouth demonstratively.

But she was smiling broadly.

 • • • 

In a rather sad apartment in an even sadder neighborhood, an extremely frightened car salesman sat drinking beer. The twelve bottles stood like empty-headed tin soldiers in a circle on the table in front of him. He arranged them in patterns, changing the lineup every five minutes. His ability to move them into different positions without knocking them over persuaded him he was still not drunk enough to make any attempt to catch some sleep.

Directly in the center of the circle of bottles lay a checkbook. Agnes Vestavik’s checkbook. There were only four checks missing. One had already been used when he stole the book, astonishingly easily from her handbag when she had been making a toilet visit. He had not afforded it a moment’s thought; his hands had simply acted of their own accord. It was tucked in there, he knew, because she had used it when she paid for their meal shortly before. Without hesitation, he had pulled the leather wallet from her bag and stashed it in his own capacious coat pocket. Just as he was having second thoughts, she had emerged smiling from the restroom, asking whether they were ready to depart.

The three other checks he had used to withdraw three identical sums of money, from three different bank branches, in three different locations around Oslo. First in Lillestrøm. That had gone really well, although the pathetic false beard had almost fallen off because he was sweating like a pig. He had used a driver’s license someone had left behind in a car he had loaned out for a test-drive. Age and facial features had matched to some extent, and the woman at the window had barely spared him a glance before counting out ten thousand-kroner notes on the counter and then ringing the bell for the next customer. He almost couldn’t muster the temerity to lift the money, but the woman had looked at him impatiently, pushing them toward him with a gesture of irritation. Making an effort to control his trembling, he mumbled a few words of thanks and left the bank
as slowly as possible. He had parked his car a couple of blocks away, closer to the railway station, in a parking lot where it was just another nondescript vehicle.

Yes, indeed, he was a car salesman and sometimes also sold a used car or two. He had cut a few corners here and there, and had occasionally felt he was something of a villain, but he had never done anything exactly criminal before. It was bloody easy. And absolutely awful. With ten rustling thousand-kroner notes in his wallet, he had driven to Sandvika to cash the next check. It had to be accomplished before she discovered the loss of her checkbook and had the account frozen.

In bank number two, the procedure also went pretty smoothly. He had wiped himself thoroughly underneath the beard and managed to position it better. Choosing to park in the enormous shopping mall, he nevertheless strolled to a bank in the center of Sandvika, five minutes’ walk away. The lady had looked slightly sternly at him, but that could have been because he hesitated when she asked him to produce his ID. In confusion he had almost handed her his own certificate but realized in time and put it back. Devastated by his uncertainty about whether she had spotted his two driving licenses, he fumbled so much with the other one that his behavior became suspicious. However, he obtained his money and decided he should stop.

Twenty thousand kroner. How much money did Agnes actually have? Did they check whether there was enough money in the account before they handed him the money? He tried to recall, but his memory failed him.

He headed now for Asker. At one moment he stuck to his decision to bring this to a halt, the next he was coveting more. Just one more check. The car kept its steady course, unaffected by the chaos overwhelming him.

As he entered the bank, it dawned on him that all banks had CCTV cameras. Of course he had known that, as this made it
so convenient that the man in his photograph sported a beard. In addition he had donned an old cap, produced from a chest in his attic.

However, as he entered the third bank he was suddenly overwhelmed by fear, all the more so perhaps because he was the only person in the place.

“What can I do for you?” a smiling young man had said, coaxing him to approach.

It was too late to turn back, so he handed over the final check.

“The computers are down, unfortunately, so I’ll have to phone,” the young man said, smiling even more broadly as he scrutinized the check.

“I can come back later,” he had stuttered as he held out his hand to retrieve the check.