Sohlberg and the Gift (6 page)

Soon almost everyone had a nickname if they worked at the Zoo.

One hapless politiinspektør was known as
Kalashnikov
because he stuttered like a machine gun.

Chief Inspector Bjørn Nygård had been
Dumbo
because of his large elephant ears.

Ivar Thorsen was
The Janitor
or
The Mop
because his mother had worked as a maid.

Sohlberg was
Chile Verde
because of his hot temper which he was usually able to control and cloak under a meek and mild exterior.

One Police Commissioner and Chief of the Oslo Police District was known as
Scarlett
because of her obsession with the book and film
Gone with the Wind
. The Politimeister’s obsession included dressing up in lavish Southern antebellum clothing at her home. She also liked to show up—dressed in character as Scarlett O’Hara—at film theater re-showings of
GWTW
. Her chief deputies were of course known as
Rhett
and
Ashley
and her top-floor office suite was
Tara
.

~ ~ ~

Sohlberg refused to talk to his caller about the Zoo over the telephone. Instead he engaged in social pleasantries. A minute later Sohlberg nonchalantly headed downstairs to his rendevous. He had asked for and been granted a half-day off work by the acting head of homicide. Lunde in Vice was a pushover for time-off requests. And to prevent any problems down the road—about his unauthorized investigations—Sohlberg sent Lunde an e-mail explaining that he was “
following leads on two old homicide cases.
”

As soon as he left the Grønland politistasjon Sohlberg had the eerie feeling that someone was watching and following him. He walked down the driveway to a low round fountain. Sohlberg made sure that he appeared to be admiring the metal sculpture of a fisherman in the fountain. He made sure that no one was tailing him while he circled the fountain. And yet he could not shake off the feeling that someone was watching him.

Oslo after a winter storm always depressed Sohlberg. New snow piled up on old dirty snow. Snow and more snow; cold and more cold. Snow on the cities and the fields and the forests and the mountains. The snow covered everything and everyone under a clean blanket. But the pure snow—like the innocent souls that come into the world—would soon be soiled wherever men and women tramp about.

Sin inevitably spots the human path whether it be in pursuit of good or evil.

Sohlberg wondered if Henrik Ibsen had once said that. It sounded like something the great Norwegian playwright would say.

Deep snow drifts from an overnight blizzard prevented Sohlberg from walking down to the Cafekontoret by taking a shortcut through the Grønlandspark. In winter the verdant bosky park was but a dim memory. Sohlberg took the longer route down Grønlandsleiret itself because the street was plowed clean. He stopped from time to time and discretely looked around to make sure that no one followed him.

Sohlberg opened the front door of the Cafekontoret. He could not help comparing the dry frigid air outside with the warm and steamy interior. The waiter took him to his usual booth in a partly-hidden corner at the back of the pub.

Thanks to its convenient location almost everyone in the Oslo police force had at one time or the other had a meal or quaffed a few drinks at the pub-style Cafekontoret which is appropriately named The Office Cafe. The pub is within easy walking distance of the police station on the corner of Grønlandsleiret and Schweigaards gate where Grønlandsleiret becomes Oslo gate. Reasonable prices and decent pub food made the locale all the more attractive. Maybe too attractive.

A few years ago the Oslo Police Commissioner issued an official rule that prohibited detectives from meeting informants or witnesses at the Cafekontoret because almost everyone in the criminal underworld knew about the pub’s
most favored eatery
status among Oslo detectives.

The Politimeister’s first case in point: after leaving his meeting with a Zoo handler at the Cafekontoret an informant in a major drug case was murdered in the middle of Schweigaards gate in broad daylight. The assailant used a pickaxe on the man’s forehead in front of dozens of pedestrians. The silent but effective killer was never caught.

The Politimeister’s second case in point: six months after the pickax murder a 19-year-old female witness in a genital mutilation case was fatally stabbed 43 times. The teenager expired less than 30 yards from the Cafekontoret where she had met with the Zoo handler in charge of African genital mutilation cases. The police rounded up the usual suspects that winter. One excellent suspect emerged. But the Politically Correct prosecutor assigned to the murder refused to charge anyone. The prosecutor found a convenient lack of evidence that protected his political reputation for
sensitivity
to minorities. Of course no one challenged his
insensitivity
to the murdered victim or her family which had to bury her in a closed casket.

At exactly 2:30 P.M. the craggy-faced Petra Sivertsen walked in and sat in front of Sohlberg. Both ordered fiskesuppe and brød—fish soup and bread—after exchanging
Merry Christmas!
greetings.

“Thanks for coming over to meet me.”

“No problem,” said the vacationing Executive Assistant who looked as if she meant it. “I needed to come to downtown to shop for some Christmas gifts. See? . . . I’ve got my bag right here of Santa’s goodies in case anyone sees us together.”

“Very convincing. Can I reimburse you?”

“No. No. I really had to buy this stuff. I’ll keep the receipts to prove my purchases.”

“Thank you.”

“And when I go back to work I’ll make sure the right gossips at the office hear about my finding lovely gifts on such great rabatt . . . such excellent discount sales . . . at the Steen and Strøm shopping center on Nedre Slottsgate. And . . . of course I just happened to stop off at the Munkegata station to have a snack here before heading back home on the Number Eighteen tram which . . . by the way . . . is also the line you take home . . . right?”

“Yes.”

“And if anyone does ask later on I will tell them what a pleasant coincidence and surprise it was to meet you here at the old watering hole.”

“I appreciate you helping me Fru Sivertsen.”

“My boy . . . you were the
only
one from the Zoo who came to visit me when I was sick two years ago . . . you and Heidi . . . the clerk in Evidence.”

“I was worried about you.”

“Thank you. It meant a lot to me. Imagine . . . almost forty-two years of service and no one came to visit me from the Zoo . . . not my boss or any of the detectives from Homicide came to visit me at the hospital . . . or at my home when I was recovering. You . . . my Solly wonderful boy . . . came to the hospital God knows how many times . . . and you later came to help me with house chores at home.”

“It was my pleasure . . . an honor.”

“Yes. But not everyone respects . . . or helps . . . an old widow like me. I know I get smiles and little office gifts from all my boys and girls because I’m
useful
. But I know my place at the Zoo. I’m a nobody . . . an insignificant replaceable and expendable employee.”

“That’s not why I visited you Fru Sivertsen.”

 “I know. You too lost your soul mate . . . just like me. You know what it’s like to be shipwrecked by death on that lonely and invisible island of pain in an ocean of grief.”

“True.”

“Now my boy . . . what can I do for you? . . . Why all this hush-hush spy-like business?”

“I’m interested in getting my hands on a homicide case file that’s considered closed. I have yet to find out where old homicide case files wind up. So . . . where are old homicide files stored?”

“My Solly boy . . . homicide files get stored in different locations based on the age of the case and whether an appeal is pending before the courts. Eventually all murder case files get moved to the National Archives if more than four years have passed since the case was solved or closed or if all normal appeals have been exhausted after someone has been convicted. Now . . . why do you ask?”

“I’m interested in an old case.”

“Why?”

“Because I understand something was wrong with—”

“Wait. Are you still interested in that triple homicide?”

“No no. Actually it’s the Janne Eide case.”

“Oh good! Very good. Finally someone’s going to look at it. You see . . . I’ve prayed for the longest time for the Janne Eide case to be reopened. I’d almost given up hope.”

“You remember it well?”

“Of course. I’m not a stupid secretary or a senile old woman. It’s not every day that lead detective Bjørn Nygård . . . a great detective . . . a sober and intelligent man of integrity . . . gets thrown off a case . . . and then he gets shoved off the Zoo with a miserly early retirement package that he was forced into accepting.”

“Did he have a choice to stay?”

“No . . . not unless he wanted to get demoted on some made-up excuse
and
then assigned to be a lowly cop in some God-forsaken Arctic island town near the North Pole.”

“Why did all that happen?”

“They say it was because
your
friend Ivar Thorsen wanted to get promoted and take Nygård’s job.”

“
They say
? . . . Was it true?”

“Yes and no.”

“By the way Fru Sivertsen . . . Ivar Thorsen and I
used
to be childhood friends. We were best friends from elementary school to high school . . . but at the start of our senior year in high school I noticed that he would say nasty things about me to make himself popular . . . I used to be quite a fat kid back then.”

“Surely not. You’re skeletal now.”

“I’m on the skinny side nowadays . . . but I’ve gained weight recently since I don’t have the time to run as much as I used to. . . . But back in high school Thorsen would make nasty comments or jokes about me being fat . . . I let the insults slide by since he was desperately trying to get accepted . . . but he crossed the line when he went out of his way to betray me at a debate tournament. You see . . . Thorsen and his debate partner had lost to my team because I had come up with a clever and brand new argument that no one ever expected.”

“What did the little jerk do?”

“Went and told
all
the other teams of all the other schools what my partner and I were doing. That took away our element of surprise . . . it gave the other teams enough time to prepare. We lost on the fourth round. He later denied betraying me.”

“Everything sounds like something he’d do.”

“I pretty much cut him off after that . . . my mother begged me to take him back as a friend . . . but I refused to since he wouldn’t apologize.”

“Well of course. You can’t take someone back into your life if they don’t apologize . . . especially when they’ve betrayed you in big or small ways.”

“That’s my philosophy,” said Sohlberg. He wanted to add that it was too bad that his own wife’s family—especially his wife’s mother—didn’t see it that way. Sohlberg detested his mother-in-law for coercing her entire family into repeatedly bringing back into the family a toxic and dysfunctional loser of a son-in-law. The jerk always wreaked havoc and triggered awful fights whenever he was allowed back into the family.

“Good for you Solly. I always knew that you and I think alike.”