Death of the Demon: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (8 page)

“In any case, it’s a bad opening move to concentrate our efforts on a twelve-year-old boy. Leave that open for the moment.”

Then she added, “Though it’s imperative we find him, of course. For many reasons. He may have seen something. But in the meantime we need to rummage around in these people’s private lives as thoroughly as possible. Look for everything. Expenditure, lovers, sexual inclinations, . . .”

A slight blush spread beneath the dark blue eyes, and she lit the last serviceable cigarette in order to deflect attention.

“. . . family quarrels. Everything. What’s more, we need to investigate the victim’s life and lifestyle. Get things started.”

“In that case I’ll go for another visit to the home and see if there are any alternative routes for our murderer to arrive or leave,” Billy T. said as he stood up.

It was half past two. Hanne Wilhelmsen paused for a moment’s thought, calculating that she could be home by five.

“I’m coming too,” she declared, scurrying after him across the blue linoleum in the corridor on the way to the elevator.

“You’re not fucking suited to be a chief inspector, Hanne.” He guffawed. “There’s far too much curiosity in that skull of yours!”

“What a mouth you’ve got,” she answered with mock severity.

As the massive metal doors guarding the entrance floodgates of Oslo Police Station closed hostilely behind them, she gripped his arm for a second and he came to a halt.

“You need to know one thing. You should be glad I can get so angry at you.”

Then she marched on. He didn’t understand a thing but was really keen to believe her.

 • • • 

All the children had returned now, and two identical boys of eight or nine years opened the door, staring in alarm at the tall bearded man.

“Hi there, boys, I’m Billy T. I’m a policeman. Are there any grown-ups here?”

The two boys seemed somewhat reassured as they withdrew, whispering. Billy T. and Hanne Wilhelmsen followed them. The last time they had visited, they had been struck by the silence. Now it seemed all the youngsters were exerting themselves to recover lost ground.

An almost adult boy was sitting in the middle of the floor tinkering with a bicycle. By his side sat a little sparrow of a lad, looking elated every time he was allowed to hold a tool. The older boy was talking to the younger one in a low, friendly voice, almost lost in the shouts from a fourteen-year-old who was running about triumphantly waving a bra with his outstretched arm and a hot-tempered girl chasing after him.

“Anita thinks she’s got boobs!”

“Throw it here, Glenn! Here!”

The two eight-year-olds jumped around him, before one clambered up on an enormous worktable, waving his arms and continuing to yell, “Glenn, Glenn! Here!”

“Anita thinks she’s got boobs,” Glenn repeated, so tall that even if he had stopped now, the two-year-elder girl would not have been able to reach the embarrassing garment she so desperately wanted to retrieve and that he was now waving with his arm extended while standing on tiptoe.

“Jeanette, help me,” Anita said plaintively.

“Give over, Glenn,” was the only help she received from a plump young girl sitting totally unconcerned at the table, drawing. “Roy-Morgan! Don’t step on my drawing!”

She reached out a clenched fist, causing the boy to cry out in pain and start to cry.

“Good heavens, children! Glenn, give over with that. Let Anita have her bra back. At once! And you!”

The eight-year-old who was standing on one leg up on the table, rubbing his other leg, leaped down to the floor before Maren Kalsvik managed to say anything further.

Then she caught sight of the two visitors in the doorway.

“Oh, sorry,” she said in confusion. “I didn’t know there was anybody here!”

“Anybody here?”

Billy T. grinned so broadly his teeth shone through his bushy beard.

“You’ve got a house full, so you have, woman!”

The two boys had continued fiddling with the bike on the floor directly in front of them.

“I’ve told you before, Raymond,” Maren said with a resigned hand gesture. “You can do that down in the basement. This is not a workshop!”

“It’s so cold down there,” he protested.

She gave up, and the boy looked up at her in surprise.

“Is it okay, then, or . . .” he asked, taken aback.

Shrugging her shoulders, she redirected her attention to the two police officers. The last thirty-six hours had taken their toll. She had pulled her hair back with a simple rubber band rather than braiding it. Several strands had loosened, and together with the sunken shoulders and her baggy clothes, it gave her an almost slovenly look. Her eyes were still red-rimmed.

“Did you not get the lists?”

“Oh, yes,” Hanne Wilhelmsen responded. “Thanks very much. They’re a great help.”

A brief nod in the direction of the children indicated to Maren Kalsvik that the police officers wanted to talk to her in a different location.

“We can go in here,” she said, opening the door to a bright, attractive room with four beanbags, a sofa, and two armchairs in front of a twenty-eight-inch television in the left-hand corner beside the outer wall. The two women each sat in an armchair while Billy T. plumped down on a beanbag. He ended up almost flat on the floor, but Maren Kalsvik did not seem to notice.

“The guy who was on night duty, is he here now?” Hanne Wilhelmsen was speaking.

“No, he’s on sick leave.”

“Him too? Is there an epidemic here, or what?” Billy T. grumbled from his position near the floor.

“Terje hurt his back during the fire drill. Slipped disc, or something like that. He seemed fine when we finished, but the pains started during the course of the evening, he says. As far as Eirik is concerned, he’s just about in shock. It can’t have been very pleasant, finding her. He was totally unhinged when he phoned. At first I thought someone was playing a joke on me, and in fact I was about to put down the phone when I realized it was deadly serious. He was completely hysterical.”

“Do you know where he was sitting?”

“Sitting?”

“Yes, was it not in this room that he was sitting for most of the evening?”

“Oh, I see, yes.”

Running her hand through her hair was obviously a bad habit of hers.

“No, I’m not sure about that. But all the adults usually sit in one of the armchairs.”

She looked at Billy T., blinking.

“He probably sat in this chair. It’s the one nearest the TV. It’s not usually on very loud.”

Struggling to his feet, Billy T. stepped over to the door and swung it open.

“Do you keep the door open when you’re sitting here?”

“There isn’t any rule about it. But I usually do, at least. In case any of the children should call out. Or come down. Kenneth has walked in his sleep now and again.”

“But you can’t see out into the living room from that position!”

Maren Kalsvik turned around to face the policeman.

“That’s not really necessary. The most important thing is to hear the children. They know that we usually sit here in the evenings. Some of us also sleep here, in fact, although there’s a bed on the upper floor. The outside door always has to be kept locked.”

“Does it sometimes happen that it’s not?”

“Of course it might well happ—”

The little mechanic’s assistant came in, crying, and hesitated for a moment before rushing past Billy T. in the doorway and catapulting himself onto Maren’s lap.

“Glenn says that I killed Agnes,” he sobbed.

“Kenneth, it’s okay,” she said into his ear. “What nonsense. There’s nobody who thinks you killed Agnes. You were so fond of her. And you are so kind.”

“But he says I did it. And he says the police have come to get me.”

He was in floods of tears and gasped for breath as he clung to the woman. She tentatively held the little arms around her neck and loosened their grip in order to make eye contact.

“Dear little Kenneth. He’s only teasing you. You know that Glenn loves to tease. You mustn’t take it seriously. Ask that man there if they’ve come to get you. He’s the policeman.”

The boy seemed to shrink smaller and smaller. He had retained a premature appearance, with large, slightly protruding eyes and a narrow, almost pinched face ending in a sharp chin. Now he was looking at Billy T., frightened out of his wits, while convulsively clutching Maren Kalsvik’s hand.

The officer hunkered down in front of the boy, smiling. “Kenneth. Is that your name?”

The boy nodded imperceptibly.

“My name’s Billy T. Sometimes people call me Billy Coffee.”

There was a glimmer in the tear-stained eyes.

“See, you’ve got a sense of humor too.” He grinned and rumpled the boy’s hair gently. “I’ll tell you one thing, Kenneth. We don’t think any of the children can have done this. And the thing we are one hundred percent, totally and completely, sure of, is that you haven’t done anything wrong at all. Here . . .”

He extended his fist and took hold of the tiny child’s hand that now had released Maren’s.

“I’ll shake your hand on one thing: you’re not going to be taken away by any policemen. Because we know you haven’t done anything wrong. I can see it in you. A handsome, honest guy. And I’ve had loads of training in seeing these things.”

Now Kenneth was smiling, if not entirely convincingly.

“Quite sure?”

“Quite sure.” Billy T. crossed his heart.

“Can you tell that to Glenn?” the boy whispered.

“Of course.”

He stood up and discovered that Raymond, the bicycle repairer, was standing at the door, leaning on the doorframe with his arms crossed. They stared into each other’s eyes for a fleeting moment, and then the boy started to speak, in a muted, almost monotonous voice. “Of course it’s not Kenneth. It’s no’ me either. But I wouldn’t be so sure that it can’t be one of us. That Olav was a foulmouthed character. He’s nearly as strong as a grown-up. And he’s the most violent kid I’ve ever come across. What’s more, he told me he was going to kill Agnes.”

Silence descended, even the children in the other room were standing behind the boy in the doorway to hear the exchange. Hanne Wilhelmsen felt a strong impulse to put an end to it all by taking the boy to another room without spectators, but Billy T., realizing what she was about to say, made a dismissive gesture.

“He said that a few times. When we were going to bed, for instance. I didn’t bother to answer, the new ones are always so angry about everything and everybody.”

Now he was smiling for the first time. Beneath his wispy hair and scarred face, he was actually good-looking, with even, white teeth and dark eyes.

“I was like that too, in the beginning. But with Olav it seemed kinda worse. He seemed absolutely deadly serious. He even told me how he was going to do it. He was going to use a knife, he said. I remember that well, because I thought it was so strange he wasn’t going to use a shotgun or a machine gun, like I used to talk about. Of course, a knife’s easier to get hold of. There’s piles of them lying in the kitchen. So if I was a cop, I wouldn’t look any further than that boy. He ran off too, you know.”

He had obviously said his piece. Yawning, he made to turn and retreat to the living room. However, Billy T. stopped him.

“But the knife that was used to kill Agnes wasn’t from here,” he said quietly. “You don’t buy your knives from Ikea.”

Clearly totally uninterested, the boy shrugged his shoulders
and continued on his way out the door. “Whatever you say,” he muttered, almost inaudibly. “But I’d bet a hundred note on Olav.”

 • • • 

Olav was extremely bored with canned food. Moreover, his thumb was painfully swollen. They didn’t have an ordinary can opener there, at least not like the one his mum used. The one he had finally found was much smaller, and using it hurt his hand. Mostly he had eaten the canned food cold, and he was fed up with that. Struggling to half open the lid on a can of meatballs, he cut himself.

“Fucking hell!”

He stuck his finger in his mouth to suck the blood and whimpered when his thumb touched the wound on his tongue. Some of the blood had ended up in the sauce, creating a red filigree pattern in the pale brown gravy.

“Bloody lid.”

Pouring the contents into an oversized saucepan, he gingerly turned one of the knobs on the cooker. The numbers and symbols showing which burner they belonged to were completely worn away, but he guessed right this time too. After a few minutes, the food began to bubble, and he stirred energetically a couple of times, scraping the base of the pan. Before the food was properly cooked through, he put the whole shebang down on the tabletop and ate from the saucepan.

By now he had spent one night and one day here, without leaving the kitchen. He slept there and ate there. The remainder of the time he sat on the floor, thinking. Once he had peered into the living room but became frightened by the huge curtainless panorama windows with their view over the entire city. For a moment he had considered moving the television set carefully into the kitchen but quickly discovered that the aerial cable would not reach.

Agnes was dead. That was something at least he was quite
certain about, although he had never seen anyone dead before. She had such a strange expression on her face, and her eyes were open. He had always imagined that people closed their eyes when they died.

If only he could phone Mum . . . There was a telephone in the hallway, secure and with no windows in sight. It even had a dial tone, for he had checked it out. But Mum’s house was probably crawling with policemen. On the television it always showed them going to people’s homes when they had done something wrong. They lurked in the bushes and then
bang!
they pounced when the person arrived. They were probably tapping the phone as well.

For a while he sat musing on where they had located the tape recorder they always used, with someone sitting wearing earphones listening in beside it. At the neighbor’s house perhaps. She was a real cow. Or in the basement. Or maybe they even had one of those massive delivery trucks with no windows and lots of equipment installed inside.