The Lion's Mouth (32 page)

As the little man stared furiously at Hanne’s purse, she swiftly returned it to her bag.

“So, yes.” The man nodded contentedly. “Then I’ll leave you to your pleasant conversation and the golden elixir, while expressing a sincere wish to see you good folks here again.”

He clicked his fingers lightly, and the waiter appeared carrying two glasses of beer without either Hanne or Øyvind having ordered.

“Now you really must stop bothering the customers, Penguin,” the waiter said crossly. “Off you go.”

“He’s not bothering us,” Hanne said, but it was futile.

The waiter pushed the little man in front of him and over to the other side of the premises.

“Where were we?” Hanne asked, pouring the small amount left in her old glass into the new one.

“What in the world was that all about?” Øyvind queried, unable to stop staring at the figure in the tuxedo.

“It’s just city life!” Hanne grinned broadly. “You don’t have such things out in the countryside!”

“Oh yes we do,” Øyvind mumbled. “But they don’t wear tuxedos.”

“You were in the middle of a story.”

Øyvind gazed at the peculiar man for some time.

“The art of government is an uncomfortable balancing act,” he said finally. “In every sense. Especially when the wear and tear is as great as it is in our party. Everything is laid at our door. Everything that’s negative, that is. The country is overflowing with milk and honey, but everyone still curses the Labor Party. This health scandal …”

Looking at his watch, he placed his hand on his stomach.

“Hungry?” Hanne Wilhelmsen enquired.

“Mmm.”

“Afterward. Tell me more first.”

“Well,” Øyvind Olve continued. “If it is true that something went wrong in 1965, then of course we’re interested in having it brought to light. We all are. For a number of reasons. Responsibility has to be apportioned, and most importantly of all, we need to learn from any mistakes that were made, even if they happened a
long time ago. But it is important that things are well timed. Now that so much of this affair seems to have leaked out to the press, the government has been put on the defensive … Damn it all, Hanne, the Prime Minister’s office didn’t even
know
about this until it was printed in today’s newspaper!”

“I still don’t understand,” Hanne said. “It would eventually … Who was in government in 65?”

“Gerhardsen was replaced by Borten that year,” Øyvind murmured. “But that’s not the point! The point is that this makes the government look negligent, it makes us seem uninformed with respect to what the newspapers have found out, and that’s always a sign of weakness. Or it’s perceived to be. At least by people in political circles. And that’s what matters.”

He gave a beery belch.

“You’ll have to do something about your digestive system,” Hanne commented.

“And now that they’ve linked the health scandal to Birgitte’s homicide, we
really are
in trouble.” He leaned across the table, his face only twenty centimeters from Hanne’s.

“But it’s very likely just nonsense,” Hanne protested.

“Nonsense? Yes, sure, but that doesn’t matter! As long as the newspapers spice this up by conflating it into a single issue, then people will regard it as a single issue. Especially when it looks as though …”

He leaned back abruptly and stared at the bar counter. It did not appear as if he intended to continue.

“Looks as though what?”

Hanne was whispering now.

“Looks as though the police don’t have a clue what happened in the Volter case,” Øyvind enunciated slowly. “Or do you?”

Hanne outlined a heart in the condensation on the table where her beer glass had been sitting.

“You mustn’t include me in the police,” Hanne said. “I don’t work there.”

Abruptly Øyvind Olve bent down to lift his ridiculous nylon briefcase onto the table. He struggled with the zipper, then presented Hanne with three A4 sheets.

“Exactly. You don’t work there. Then you can tell me what I should do with this.”

He pushed the documents across to her.

“What is it?” she asked, turning the printed page to take a look.

“It’s something I found in Birgitte’s office. I had to go through all the documents; many of them were of a delicate political nature. This was shoved in between two red folders.”

“Red folders?”

“Classified documents, top secret.”

The sheets contained a list of names, printed in ten-point script, followed by some sort of information about dates.

“Dates of birth and death,” Øyvind Olve clarified. “Obviously, it must be a list of the sudden infant deaths in 1965. And look at this …”

Retrieving the papers, he flicked through to the third sheet, and his eyes scanned the page before he presented it to Hanne again, pointing.

“‘Liv Volter Hansen. Born March 16, 1965, died June 24, 1965.’”

“But what is this?”

“By various circuitous means and a hell of a lot of white lies, I’ve discovered that this overview was produced by the Grinde Commission. The parents of these children were chosen at random by computer, and were to be interviewed in depth about their children’s health, behavior, feeding patterns and so on, prior to the time of death. A random selection, in other words. Sheer chance. And by chance the Prime Minister landed in this group. But the most interesting aspect is that the list was prepared on
April 3. The day before Birgitte was murdered. The only way she could have obtained it would have been if Benjamin Grinde had given it to her. I’ve checked every other possibility. Mail records, minute books, absolutely everything. She must have received it from Grinde. And look at this …”

He pointed at something else on the sheets: a few handwritten words in the margin of the first page: “
New person???
” and “
What should be said?
”

“What on earth does that mean?” Hanne wondered, more to herself than to her companion.

He answered all the same. “I don’t know. But it’s Birgitte’s writing. What’ll I do?”

“You’ll do what you should have done right away,” Hanne said, in a loud, reproving voice. “You have to hand these papers to the police. Now, immediately.”

“But we were just about to eat,” Øyvind Olve complained.

20.00,
OSLO POLICE STATION

P
er Volter was just beginning to lose his hair. Billy T. could see that clearly: it was thinning at the crown, and in time the young man would have an actual bald patch.

Billy T. did not quite know what to do. Per Volter had been stretched out across the desk in the Chief Inspector’s office, his head in his arms, crying like a baby, for almost ten minutes. It had all been brought on by a few simple words of speculation from Billy T.

“I think you have a few things to tell me.”

“Do you think I killed Mum?” Per Volter had yelled, before breaking down in a paroxysm of tears.

Nothing had helped. Billy T. had reassured him that this was not the case. In the first place, his alibi was absolutely watertight:
twenty soldiers and three officers could swear that the boy had been in a tent on the Hardanger Plateau when the shot was fired in the Prime Minister’s office. Secondly, there was not a single iota of motive. And thirdly, he would hardly have offered up the information that the unregistered murder weapon belonged to him, if he really was the murderer.

Billy T. had told him this repeatedly, but to no avail. In the end he gave up, and decided to let Per cry himself out. It appeared that this would take some time.

Billy T. inspected his nails and wondered whether to pay a visit to the toilet. Just as he was making up his mind, rising from his chair, Per Volter sniffed noisily and sat up half-heartedly, his features blurred, his face red and swollen.

“Do you feel a bit better?” Billy T. asked him, sliding back down into a sitting position.

Per Volter did not reply, but dried his face with his sleeve, which was at least a start.

“Here,” Billy T. said, offering him a paper towel. “Your guns and equipment are remarkably well organized.”

The compliment was emphasized by a smile of acknowledgement, but it did not appear particularly encouraging to Per.

“Have you been there?” he muttered, staring down at the wet paper towel.

“Yes. Two police officers went home with your father, and they’ve written a report stating that the storage arrangements are exemplary. Guns kept separately in a locked cabinet, ammunition in another. All five guns registered with us.”

“That register of yours is such a joke,” Per Volter mumbled. “As far as I know, it’s only for this area, and it’s not even computerized.”

“We’re waiting for new gun legislation,” Billy T. said, pouring coffee from a steel thermos flask into two mugs and pushing one
across to Per; he gave him the one with the picture of Franz Kafka. “But why?” he asked, with a note of hesitation.

Looking up, Per made a grimace after burning his tongue. “Why what?”

“Why hadn’t you registered the Nagant?”

Per sat blowing into his mug. The coffee was still too hot, and he put it down gingerly on the desktop.

“I just didn’t get around to it. The other guns were bought. But the Nagant was a gift. On my eighteenth birthday. It belonged to my grandmother. She was quite active during the war, was in Finnmark and all that kind of thing, and we used to say that the Nagant was her war medal.”

Now the young man smiled faintly, and there was a touch of pride in his expression.

“She operated on a wounded Russian and saved his life. She wasn’t even a doctor! The autumn of 43, that was, and the man had nothing to give her apart from his gun. Kliment Davidovich Raskin was his name.”

He was smiling broadly now.

“When I was a child, I thought the name was so cool. After the war, Grandma spent years trying to find him. Through the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and suchlike. She never located him. Grandma died when I was sixteen. Lovely lady. She …”

His tears threatened to spill again, and Per made a fresh attempt with the coffee.

“I got the Nagant as a present from my mum on my eighteenth birthday,” he murmured into the cup. “It was the best present I had ever received.”

“Have you ever used it ?”

“Yes. The ammunition’s quite unusual, so it has to be specially ordered. I’ve used the gun six or seven times, I think. Mostly just
for the sake of it. It’s not a very precise weapon. Old as well. Grandma had never used it.”

Once more he was overwhelmed by the memory of someone who was no longer alive. Tears ran from the corner of his left eye, but he remained upright.

“Why are you so angry with your father, Per?”

Just as Billy T. asked the question, his inner alarm bells rang loudly. The boy should be informed that he did not have a duty to testify against members of his own family. Nevertheless, Billy T. did not withdraw the question.

Per Volter gazed out the window, holding the mug of coffee up to his mouth, without drinking it. The steam seemed to do him good; he closed his eyes and it was obvious that the moisture on his red, streaky face felt pleasant.

“Angry is just the start of it,” he said softly. “The man’s a shit. He was unfaithful to Mum and he lied to me.”

Suddenly he made eye contact with Billy T. His eyes were deep blue and for an uncomfortable moment, Billy T. felt that he was looking at a ghost: the boy looked so like his mother.

“Dad was having an affair with Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden.”

He spat out the name as if it were an effort to enunciate it at all.

Billy T. said nothing, but felt his heart beat faster: a disagreeable fluttering, and, closing his mouth, he involuntarily touched his chest.

“I’ve no idea how long it lasted,” Per continued. “But I caught them at it at home last autumn. Dad didn’t know. That I heard them, that is. I told him the other day. For fuck’s sake …”

Slamming his coffee mug on the table, he put his head in his hands, and leaned his elbows on his thighs, rocking slowly to and fro as he continued to speak into his hands.

“I don’t even know if Mum knew about it.”

There was no more. It was too warm in the little room; the heat pressed against his skin, and Billy T. could still feel the frightening
stitch under his left rib. He tried to raise his arm, but the pain increased so much it made him stop.

“I wish I belonged to an ordinary family,” Per whispered, only just audibly. “I wish I didn’t have to read about us in the papers. About—”

“About your sister,” Billy T. finished for him.

The pain had diminished somewhat, but his heart was still thumping in an unfamiliar rhythm.

Per Volter took his hands away from his face, and again stared into Billy T.’s eyes. Now the likeness to his mother was disturbing.

“I knew nothing about my sister until I read it in the newspaper,” he said in a dull voice. “Nothing! I didn’t even know that I had a sibling! Didn’t I have a right to know that? Eh? Don’t you think they should have told me that I once had a sister?”

He was almost shrieking: his voice slipped into falsetto from time to time.

Billy T. nodded, but did not utter a word.

“I always thought that Mum worked so hard out of … some sort of sense of duty. The party and the country and all that. Now I think …”

He began to cry yet again. He tried to resist, swallowing and rubbing his eyes, his body really too exhausted to withstand a fresh bout. But it was all in vain. Snot and tears ran down his face, and his sleeves were too wet to be of any use when, time after time, he pressed his face against his forearms.

“I think she wasn’t really that fond of me. If she could forget a baby so easily that it was never spoken of, then it’s not so strange that she forgot about me now and again. She didn’t love any of us.”

“I think you’re quite wrong there,” Billy T. ventured, though even he could tell that his voice sounded reedy and unconvincing.
“Not talking about someone doesn’t mean that you’re not fond of the person. You must remember that—”

“Can you imagine what it’s like to read about things like that in the newspaper?” Per Volter interrupted. “Eh? To read innermost family secrets that you didn’t even know about? I
hate
Dad.
I hate that guy!
”