The Lion's Mouth (24 page)

Some people had come home with him after the reception at the City Hall. He had left as early as the Protocol Section had permitted. The Party Secretary and three others from the party office had accompanied him. Afterward a few more had arrived, but fortunately they had eventually realized that he wanted to be left alone. And they had cleared up after themselves.

Roy Hansen had tried to switch on the television, but there was only endless coverage of the funeral. It seemed like a final, bitter defeat; he did not even have Birgitte’s death to himself. Even as she lay there, under a white wooden lid in a heavy coffin, she was not his. She belonged to the state. The general public. First and foremost, the party. Never to him. Not even today, when everything was over forever. Rather than being a quiet reunion of close family and friends, a chance to mourn in the company of others who were fond of the woman he had shared his life with, Birgitte’s funeral had become a political summit. An adjunct.

He caught himself suddenly missing Birgitte’s parents. They had both passed away at the end of the eighties, and that was probably for the best. They had been spared the experience of their daughter’s murder. As they had been spared from witnessing the way Birgitte had steadily distanced herself from everyone
around her, becoming increasingly alienated from all who loved her. But it would have been good to have them here today. Perhaps they could have shared this with him. It was obvious that Per could not.

Last Friday, Roy Hansen had longed more than anything for his son to come home, for him to be standing there in his uniform with his bulging kitbag; the hours until Per returned on the Saturday morning had been unbearable. But when Per did finally arrive, he had in a sense disappeared. His face had been stony; closed and locked.

Now, suddenly, he was standing there.

“Good night. I waited until Grandma fell asleep. Now I’m off to bed.”

Roy Hansen had not even heard the car roll up. He stared at his son’s contours in the doorway; the candlelight blurred the boy’s outline.

“But, Per,” he whispered, “can’t you sit down for a moment or two? Just for a little while.”

The young man in the doorway did not move a muscle and it was impossible to see his face.

“Sit down, do. Just for a short spell.”

Suddenly light flooded from the ceiling. Per had switched it on, and when Roy’s eyes had adjusted to the brightness and he had regained his sight, he got a shock.

Per, that decent boy. That well-brought-up, clever lad who had not once during his teenage years given his parents reason to worry. Per, who had been his boy, his comfort, and actually also his responsibility, since Birgitte had embarked on The Long Absence when the boy was hardly more than ten years old.

He was unrecognizable.

“If you’re hell-bent on talking to me,
then I’ll do that with pleasure
!”

His face was contorted, his eyes popping like those of a dead cod, and saliva sprayed from his mouth as he spoke.

“I hadn’t intended to say anything! But do you really think that I don’t
know?”

He hovered threateningly over his father, his fists clenched.

“You’re a … You’re a bloody hypocrite! Do you know that, Dad, you’re a … a …”

Now the boy was crying. He had not shed a tear during the funeral service, but now his eyes produced a flood of tears, and his face became blotchy: a strange disease had him in its grip, making him mean and repulsive. Roy leaned to one side on the settee, almost reclining.

“Don’t you think I know why Mum kept away? Why she couldn’t bear to be at home any more?”

Roy Hansen attempted to draw even further away from his son, but Per made a sudden movement with his fists which made him even more frightened, and he froze.

“And Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden, of all people! That Dolly Parton look-alike! What do you think it did to Mum when she found that earring in the bed!
What do you think?”

“But …”

Roy tried to sit upright. Again, Per raised his hands pugnaciously, his clenched fists poised in mid-air just half a meter above him, pinning him to the spot.

“And I heard you! You thought I was out that evening, but in fact I came home!”

“Per—”

“Don’t ‘Per’ me! I heard you both!”

The young man sobbed uncontrollably, coughing and sniffling and shrieking in a hysterical voice, and it became difficult to hear what he was saying.

“Calm down, Per! Tone it down!”

“Tone it down! Should I just, like, tone it down! It was you, Dad, who should have toned it down that night last autumn. You and that damn oversized whore!”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was drained. Per Volter lowered and unclenched his fists, which left him standing in something like a military at-ease pose, and gasping for air.

“I’ll never talk to you again!”

Per crossed to the door.

Roy Hansen stood up falteringly. He had lost his voice.

“But, Per,” he whispered. “There’s so much you don’t know! So very much you don’t know!”

He did not receive an answer, and immediately afterward heard the car race out of the driveway. The candle had gone out, leaving the living room bathed in a harsh and unforgiving light.

SATURDAY, APRIL 12

10.15,
ODINS GATE
3

I
t was impossible to get up. The double pillows under his head made it difficult to breathe. He peered down at his naked feet, looking for the hole through which all his strength had drained. He felt dead. The total emptiness was augmented by a sorrow he had never experienced before.

There was no way out of this. Benjamin Grinde’s world was disintegrating. Last week had been one long journey to Golgotha, heading toward oblivion: the absolute end. The looks from his colleagues in the judiciary, as though something untouchable had wrapped itself like a sheet around him. They did not converse with him, and only occasionally, of necessity, did they speak to him. The newspaper headlines had destroyed everything. Even though the arrest warrant had not been legitimate. Even though the police had confirmed he was not a suspect. The warrant was there nonetheless, a written indictment that would in any case – now that this was all public knowledge – put his future career in jeopardy. But the other thing was worse.

Would he never escape a shared destiny with Birgitte? Would it never end? After all these years? They had each in their own way tried to move forward; they had both fled in different directions and ended up in the highest echelons, at the very pinnacle, but of their own individual trees.

With great effort, he pulled himself together, rolling his legs off the bed and struggling to sit upright. The bronze lion, frozen stiff,
guarding the bedroom door, growled at him. Its mane was highly polished and shone like gold, its jaw black and coated in verdigris. He had bought it in a back street in Tehran. The big cat fascinated him, this foreign species of animal that had nevertheless been chosen as the most Norwegian of all: the symbol of Norwegian officialdom. It snarled on the coat of arms above the entrance to the government complex. There were two of them in front of the Parliament Building, tame and toothless lions that tried to look the part, without actually succeeding in scaring anyone. And most splendid of them all, the lioness with the ample breasts that guarded Room 9 in the Supreme Court: the conference and ceremonial room.

Benjamin Grinde stared at the bronze figure. It fixed him to the bed, as if a repellent stench of bad breath emanated from its mouth, and he longed to escape. From the bedroom. On wobbly legs, he padded out to the kitchen.

I’ve never looked inside it, he thought suddenly. He could not find more coffee. What is actually inside it?

The massive oak sideboard with its glass doors and relief pattern of bunched grapes appeared almost black in the gloom. The curtains were drawn; life went on outside, in here there was nothing.

Underneath his great-grandmother’s old tablecloth lay the tiny box he should have left where it was.

A beautiful little pillbox in enameled gold.

Drawing it out, he made an effort to open it.

11.00,
SECURITY SERVICE SECTION
,
OSLO POLICE STATION

“A
nd you’re saying we had this man in here yesterday? Here?

At the police station?”

There was little sign of the formerly rigorous, unruffled Security Service Chief. Now he was trotting around the floor of his own office, combing his hair with his fingers.

“When was he released?”

“Yesterday afternoon. He had nothing to do with the demonstration. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Brage Håkonsen,” Ole Henrik Hermansen mumbled. “What previous do we have on him?”

“Nothing much.”

The police officer tried to follow his boss with his eyes, but it was difficult: Hermansen was darting from side to side behind him.

“And what exactly is ‘nothing much’?”

“He definitely belongs to extreme right-wing circles. He was once in ‘Aryan Power’, but that’s a while ago now. These past couple of years he’s been practically invisible. We suspect that he leads his own group, almost a cell. But we don’t know anything about it.”

The Security Service Chief came to an abrupt halt directly behind his subordinate.

“And Tage Sjögren paid him a visit as well. Last week.”

The police officer made do with a nod, even though he was unsure whether it would be noticed.

“Find out everything,” Ole Henrik Hermansen spluttered, crossing suddenly to the office chair. “Find out absolutely everything about this guy. If push comes to shove, arrest him.”

15.32,
TINDFOTEN IN TROMSDALEN NEAR TROMSØ

T
he snow was no longer white; it whipped around him in a shade of gray he had never seen before. All the gray specks floated together into a uniform nothingness: he could hardly see the tips of his skis ahead of him. They should not have left the shelter at Skarvassbu. He had told Morten it was crazy; the way the weather had closed in after they left Snarbydalen, they should have taken refuge at the shelter.

“But it’s almost all downhill from here on,” Morten had protested. “Twenty minutes of gentle uphill slopes, and then no more than half an hour of fabulous downhill skiing. There’s beer at home. Do you really want to stay here?”

Morten had pointed at the shelves in the little tourist cabin. A few packets of cauliflower soup and four cans of the local stew were far less tempting than a rare beefsteak and cold beer at Morten’s lodgings in Skattøra.

“But there’s the risk of an avalanche, don’t you think?” he had objected. “There could be an avalanche!”

“My God! I’ve skied this trail hundreds of times! There are no avalanches here. Come on!”

He had capitulated. Now he had no idea where Morten was. Stopping, he rested on his ski poles.

“Morten! Morten!”

It seemed as though the sound did not want to venture out into the gray blizzard. It about-turned just outside his mouth, and forced itself back in again.

“Morten!”

He did not even know where he was. The terrain was still sloping gently uphill, but he had been skiing for nearly an hour. Morten had said that it would only take twenty minutes to reach the start of the downhill slopes. It must be these dreadful conditions. All this snow. Far more snow than usual: he knew from the weather forecasts that records were being broken almost daily in the north of Norway.

Wasn’t it slightly flatter here?

He stopped and made an effort to check. The pelting, biting snow had begun to penetrate his clothes. Neither of them had been dressed for such horrendous weather.

“Morten!”

The security guard from the government complex felt dizzy: it was difficult now to know which way was up. He had lost his
bearings regarding north, south, east and west long ago. However, it was straight downhill now. The uphill slope had come to an end.

Suddenly he heard a noise. Different from the wailing, whistling wind and the rattling of the lock on his rucksack. Low-frequency and threatening. He stood frozen stiff, feeling anxiety creep up through his legs.

There had to be two meters of snow below him. Was he standing on a bank? Was he alongside a rock face? Desperately, he began to head off: sharply, purposefully, although he had no idea of his locus on the route. Then he lost his balance.

The ground underneath him had started to move, slowly and insistently. The rumble had increased to a deafening roar, and before the guard had regained his footing, heaps of snow came tumbling down. As if the world was coming to an end. Flung hither and thither, he was soon lying on his back, before being propelled onto his stomach. The snow forced its way everywhere: not only inside his clothing, onto his skin, but also inside his ears, eyes, mouth and nose; all of a sudden he knew he was about to die.

The pressure on him increased. He was no longer sailing down the mountainside on top of the snow; he was underneath it. His surroundings were no longer gray; they were pitch-black. His eyes felt as if they were being hammered into his skull, and he panted for air that did not exist: his airways were full of snow.

Now they’ll never find out about it.

He made a final effort to suck air down into his aching, flattened lungs, before everything went black. Only three minutes later he was dead.

16.10,
KIRKEVEIEN
129

T
he fine French Empire-style antique chair looked chagrined beside the Billy desk from IKEA. The Munch lithograph
ought to have felt equally affronted, squeezed up beside a silk-screen print in a red picture frame that had been bought at auction in a gallery at Aker Brygge for two hundred kroner during the last economic upswing.

Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden sat in the chair deep in thought. She stared at the cell phone in her right hand, then slammed it down and picked up the usual one instead: a cordless phone she had still not fully grasped how to operate.

She would get even. Perhaps not immediately, but at some point she would pay him back. Tryggve Storstein had not wanted her to continue in her job, and she knew that only other pressures had forced her name through.