Sohlberg and the Gift (7 page)

“We do. Anyway . . . I was glad to get rid of Thorsen since we were about to graduate from high school. I thought I’d never see him again. We definitely went our own separate ways when I went into law . . . except for when I gave him a reference to get into the Zoo.”

“My boy Solly . . . that was my next question. I saw your letter in his file when Thorsen applied. You were with a law firm back then . . . quite a successful up-and-coming young lawyer. Why help him?”

“Thorsen begged me. In writing. By phone. And in person. Over and over. Told me how hard life was delivering newspapers in the suburbs for a living . . . told me he hated having to sometimes make ends meet by doing janitor work and odd jobs for a pittance. I felt sorry for him. He had no real job or career at the time.”

“Or education my boy. . . .”

“Yes. He later told me that he was in one of those first batches of inspectors who didn’t have to have legal backgrounds or higher education to get into the police.”

“Exactly,” said Fru Sivertsen as she got angrier. “Thorsen has less schooling than I do and I’m just a secretary earning less than half of what he makes! . . . The old boys club . . . they started letting grossly under-qualified men into the force when women started demanding and getting more and more jobs in the sixties and seventies. Another example of mediocrity . . . especially male mediocrity . . . posing as meritocracy in government. Nevertheless . . . why did you help him?”

“He told me it was his only real chance to make something out of his life. Besides . . . he had already gone to cry to my mother and ask her to ask me. I caved in when she called and begged me to help him. I’ve kept away from him since I gave him the reference . . . we haven’t socialized in more than fifteen years. We’ve grown totally apart. I really have no idea who he is . . . or what he stands for.”

“But people still think of you two as B.F.F.”

“What?”

“Best friends forever . . . it’s a girl term. My granddaughters use it all the time . . . it’s some empty Americanism . . . some Hollywood expression.”

“Forget about us being
B.F.F.
That’s ridiculous!” Sohlberg’s voice rose an octave. “Please tell me Fru Sivertsen that you will never repeat that ugliness ever again to me or anyone else.”

Fru Sivertsen merely answered with a coy smile. She was amused at how easily Sohlberg’s anger rose at the slightest provocation.

Sohlberg’s voice fell to a whisper after he got a couple of stares from other patrons. “Look. It’s true that we do go way back as best friends
forever
. . . as you call it . . . to when we were kids growing up on Ulvøya Island. My mother took him under her wings and made him feel like part of our family because . . . well . . . people got rather snobbish about his mother.”

“I know all about her.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Don’t forget Solly my boy . . . I know almost everything about everyone at the Zoo . . . and there’s gossip and my friends in other departments to fill in the rest of the blanks. . . . Yes my boy you forget that as part of my job I get to look at all personnel records for yearly performance reviews and any action on salaries and bonuses and demotions and promotions of all detectives and their bosses . . . the administrators. I see all job applications . . . and all transfers in and out of the Zoo . . . including all death benefits and retirement pensions and resignations.”

“That’s impressive.”

“I guarantee you that I know more about the Zoo than the Politimeister himself.”

“I believe you.”

“I’m glad my boy that we had this talk. I always wondered what you saw in Ivar Thorsen. So that’s why you
were
best friends with Ivar Thorsen. I can understand how someone as nice as your mother felt sorry that he was the maid’s son. I imagine the rich kids made life horrible for him.”

“Yes,” said Sohlberg whose good manners dictated that he not get into details with Fru Sivertsen about how Thorsen’s mother got pregnant from an affair with her boss’s son right after she started working for the wealthy banker. Nor did he tell her how Thorsen’s mother then bedded down the banker himself. “Now I need your help Fru Sivertsen on the Eide case.”

“Yes of course. What do you want?”

“You mentioned that other people
say
that Bjørn Nygård was taken off the Eide case because Ivar Thorsen wanted to take his job.”

“Yes.”

“Then you said it was and was not true . . . in fact you said, ‘
Yes and no.
’”

“I did say that Solly. Let me explain . . . Ivar Thorsen made sure that his sly putdowns and clever criticisms reached Bjørn Nygård’s boss. But a nasty betrayal by an ambitious and unscrupulous underling wouldn’t be enough to get a high-quality and dependable senior detective like Nygård replaced by an unknown green youngster like Thorsen who was . . . even back then . . . considered an inexperienced moron . . . an incompetent bootlicker.”

“So . . . why was Nygård thrown off the case and replaced with Thorsen?”

“Because one of the higher-up feeders . . . I’m not sure who . . . wanted a certain result in the Janne Eide investigation—”

“What result?”

“That I don’t know. All I know is that Nygård got replaced with Thorsen when Nygård refused to deliver the desired outcome.”

“But don’t you know all the details? . . . I thought you saw all the case files.”

“Yes. But that was another odd thing about the Eide case file. Readership was strictly restricted to a circulation list. And you well know how rarely that
Restricted Access
situation comes about.”

“True. Very true. I think I’ve seen a blue folder once in my entire career here. Who was on the circulation list?”

 “Let me think . . . Bjørn Nygård of course . . . but not Thorsen . . . he was too green to be reading a blue folder . . . who else . . . let’s see . . . their boss Magnus Ellingsen . . . and his boss Ingeborg Myklebust.”

“Just three individuals?”

“Yes three.”

“Where can I find Ellingsen and Myklebust?”

Fru Sivertsen smiled patiently. “You can’t my boy. Only Thorsen is still working in the Zoo. Nygård was of course forced out with a poor man’s early pension . . . left outside to rot like a street beggar in Calcutta.

“On the other hand . . . Herr Ellingsen and Fru Myklebust got big promotions and bonuses right after the Janne Eide case closed . . . that qualified them within a year to get big fat early retirement pensions.

“Ellingsen and his wife moved to that swamp called Florida in America and Myklebust I hear lives on an island villa down in Greece . . . near Turkey. Grows olives or so I understand. Sends a case of bottles of her own pressed olive oil every year to one of the top feeders here. Supposedly she pines away for him even though he’s quite solidly in the gay camp. I don’t think he’ll be switching sides any time soon.”

“Interesting that Ellingsen and Myklebust got huge pensions . . . sounds like the top floor was handing out somewhat generous pensions.”

“Wrong my boy. . . . Their pensions were
obscenely
generous. More than five times what they deserved given the number of years they had worked.”

“Could anyone else read the case file? . . . What about the forensic pathologist?”

“Nope. She could only write up the autopsy.”

“That’s it? . . . No one else?”

“Oh . . . wait . . . Kasper Berge was on the circulation list.”

“Who’s that?”

“He was . . . back then . . . a big-shot prosecutor with the Director General of Public Prosecutions.”

“He wasn’t a district public prosecutor?”

“No. Too ambitious for that lowly position. I remember him. So ambitious. For a time it looked like he’d wind up as the Minister of Justice. But I guess voters got tired of his party’s extreme multi-culturalism . . . imagine that . . . bringing backward Third World foreigners into our society . . . just to make Norway less Norwegian. Imagine what would happen to an African political party that wanted Africa less black and more white. . . . Yes. I can see it now . . . Nelson Mandela campaigning for a more white Africa.”

Sohlberg shrugged.

“Yes . . . what can we do?” she said with sad resignation. “Too late to stop that trainwreck.”

“What’s Kasper Berge doing nowadays?”

“He’s a Venstre party leader. Supposedly he’s plotting the party’s comeback now that he’s head of its youth organization.”

“Unge Venstre?”

“Yes. It’s just a stepping stone. Berge is a man with a mission . . . a man on his way to the top. He’s always wanted to be the Prime Minister. That’s his obsession. I hear that he’s going after the business vote now that he’s got the youth group solidly under his control. He’s a real power to be reckoned with because he has unlimited funds.”

“Let me guess . . . he’s been bankrolled by Janne Eide’s father and his vast shipping fortune?”

“You got it. Before the Old Man died he put Berge in a lot of business deals that made Berge a millionaire. Those deals made headlines. But there were other rumors. Unsubstantiated of course.”

“What rumors?” said Sohlberg with intense curiosity.

“The biggest rumor was that Old Man Eide had changed his trusts and the trustees to make sure that the money trough was always available in huge quantities for Berge’s political ambitions and Berge’s party.”

Sohlberg nodded. “That’s interesting. But that rumor can’t really be proved since I remember reading a long time ago that Eide . . . like all of the super-rich people in the world . . . transferred the bulk of his assets overseas . . . to Luxembourg . . . Cyprus . . . Switzerland . . . Cayman Islands . . . tax-havens where money and assets can’t be traced.”

“That’s correct.”

“Fru Sivertsen . . . wasn’t it odd for this Kasper Berge to be on the circulation list?”

“Yes!” whispered Fru Sivertsen. She sipped her fish soup which had turned cold. “That was quite strange.”

“Why would he be involved in prosecuting the murder of one little civilian citizen in Oslo? Janne Eide was after all just a rich man’s heir. Nothing more. Nothing less. Her father was just a rich man. Nothing more and nothing less. Not even the biggest bootlicking hack at the Ministry of Justice would assign someone like Kasper Berge to direct the police in the Eide case and to prosecute the murder.”

“Yes . . . my dear Solly. But what if . . . what if he got himself assigned to the case? . . . What if Kasper Begre decided to use the case to cozy up to Janne Eide’s father?”

“You have a point. I can see it now. The personal visit to offer his condolences to Old Man Eide . . . Berge then swears he’ll bring the killer to justice.”

Fru Sivertsen set aside the cold bowl of soup. “He’d then have instant access to the old man. An ambitious man like Kasper Berge would soon befriend the rich man . . . then the rich man’s friends and associates . . . the lawyers . . . the company executives. . . . That’s what politicians like Berge do day and night . . . seven days a week. They’re only looking for who can help them . . . their number one priority is finding people they can use for maximum benefit. And knowing Berge . . . he’d do it. Absolutely. He had to work fast because the old man was already sick . . . he died a year after his daughter’s murder . . . heartbroken over his only child’s death.”

 Sohlberg pushed away his untouched and cold fish soup. “Now it makes sense . . . Berge pushed himself into the case. He had no reason to be on the case since neither the father or the daughter were government employees or members of any government office.”