Dead Joker Read online

  Hanne took hold of the slender hand, trying to avoid the cannula.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay,” Cecilie groaned. “Can you straighten me up a bit? I’d prefer to sit up.”

  Hanne hesitated for a second, looking helplessly at the alarm cord that would summon the kindly nurse back. She was scared to touch anything other than Cecilie’s hand.

  “Help me then,” Cecilie said, struggling to raise her head.

  Hanne took the two extra pillows lying by the footboard and managed to tuck them behind Cecilie’s back. Then she switched on the lamp on the bedside table and directed the light at the gray wall in order to dim its bright beam.

  “How are you feeling?” Cecilie said, looking at her.

  Hanne was not sure whether her eyes expressed something completely new, or whether they showed the remains of what had once been there.

  “I’m feeling terrible,” she said.

  “I can see that. Come here.”

  “I am here, Cecilie.”

  “Come up here. Come closer.”

  Hanne lifted the chair underneath her and moved a couple of centimeters. Cecilie raised her hand as far as she could.

  “Even closer. I want to see you properly.”

  Their faces were only thirty centimeters apart. Hanne was aware of the smell of sickness as it wafted around her nostrils. She laid the palm of her hand on Cecilie’s face.

  “What are we going to do now?” she whispered.

  “That’s really up to you to decide,” Cecilie said, almost inaudibly.

  “What do you mean?”

  Hanne let her thumb glide smoothly over Cecilie’s cheek, over and over again. It struck her how soft her complexion was: soft and slightly damp, as if she had been outside walking in the rain.

  “You have to make a decision,” Cecilie said, clearing her throat. “You need to decide. If I have to go down this road on my own, I need to know that now.”

  Hanne swallowed repeatedly.

  “Of course you’re not going to be on your own.”

  She so wanted to say something more. She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to tell her how sorry she was that everything was no longer the way it ought to be, that everything was too late and that she had perhaps never been willing to pay the price for what she wanted more than anything in this life. Hanne wanted to crawl into bed beside Cecilie. She wanted to hold her the way she remembered they had once held each other. She wanted to run her hands over Cecilie’s damaged body and promise that from now on and for as long as they were able to live together, everything would be different. Not like before, like long ago, but far better, more fitting. More truthful. Everything would be true.

  Instead she kept her mouth closed. In the glimmer of light from the lamp facing the wall she saw the suggestion of a smile on Cecilie’s pinched face.

  “You’ve never been good at talking, Hanne. This has been the most difficult time, I think. It’s often impossible to know what you’re thinking.”

  She laughed impulsively, a dry, husky laughter.

  “I know that,” Hanne said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve said that so often.”

  “I know that. I’m so—”

  Now they both smiled.

  “I do want to be with you in any case,” Hanne said, leaning even closer. “I want to stay with you all the—”

  She laid her cheek softly on Cecilie’s. Her earlobe tickled Cecilie’s lips.

  “This is not about you,” she said. “It has never been about you.” She hid her face in Cecilie’s hair and continued. “I’ve never been good enough. I’ve never made myself deserving of you. You should have found somebody stronger. Someone who dared to choose you, absolutely and completely.”

  “But you have done that,” Cecilie said, trying to push Hanne up so that she could look into her eyes.

  Hanne resisted. “No,” she murmured into the hollow of Cecilie’s neck. “I’ve been riding two horses all my life. Or three. Or four, when it suited. None of them have sort of … matched. I have worked so hard to keep it like that. To convince myself that it was right. But this last while—”

  “You’re suffocating me,” Cecilie moaned. “I can’t breathe.”

  Hanne slowly lifted her head, then rose from the chair and crossed to the window. The fog had thickened and it was now barely possible to see across to the parking lot where a solitary BMW with a red fender was sitting.

  “In everything I’ve done, in everything I’ve been, I’ve prided myself on the fact that I’m smart. Smart.”

  She put her right hand on her forehead and massaged her eye socket vigorously with her thumb and index finger.

  “But lately … The past six months, perhaps, I’ve begun to have doubts.”

  “About us,” Cecilie said, more as a statement of fact than a question.

  “No!”

  Hanne turned round, throwing out her arms.

  “Not about us. Never about us! About me!”

  She pounded her chest, then reined herself in.

  “It’s me I doubt,” she hissed. “I … I’ve become so scared of getting things wrong. I look back and bury myself in all the times I’ve done the wrong thing. On all levels. With friends. With you. I’ve let everyone down. The truth is, I let people down all the time.”

  She inhaled deeply and turned to face the window again. She saw her own reflection in the glass. When she continued, she was gazing into her own eyes.

  “I’ve even got scared about my old cases. That I might have contributed to a major injustice. At night I lie and … At night I’m scared … I’m even afraid of being sued. That’s how far it’s gone. It’s as if all the people I’ve put in prison have conspired together and … I try to avoid people I’ve hurt, and even … people I can’t possibly have done anything to. It’s as if I … Well. The only way I can keep going is to concentrate all my attention on fresh cases. A continual stream of fresh cases.”

  “So you avoid relating to people.”

  “Yes. Maybe. Or—”

  “And me.”

  Hanne suddenly sat down. The chair scraped against the freshly polished linoleum floor. She grabbed Cecilie’s hand in both of hers.

  “But don’t you understand that I don’t want it to be like this,” she said. “There’s never been anyone but you. Ever. It’s just that when I look at you, I see my own … My own cowardice.”

  Cecilie tried to reach across to the lamp. It was too dark. It was as if Hanne was ageing as she sat there; the shadows made her features sharper and her eyes more deeply set.

  “Don’t touch it,” Hanne said under her breath. “Please.”

  “It’s been my choice as well,” Cecilie said.

  “What has?”

  “You. I could have been tougher. I could have protested about those two telephones. About the initials on the door. About you never wanting me to attend parties at your work. I could have said something.”

  “You did say something.” Hanne smiled faintly, rubbing the small of her back.

  “Do you want a cushion?” Cecilie asked.

  “You’ve objected constantly.”

  “Not seriously. I’ve been too scared as well.”

  “You’ve never been scared.”

  Hanne sat up straight and took a deep breath. A half bottle of lukewarm mineral water on the bedside table threatened to topple over when she tried to adjust her chair.

  “I’ve always been scared, Hanne. Scared of losing you. Scared of making such big demands that you would choose to leave me.”

  The door opened and the footboard of the bed was thrust inside the room.

  “Now you’re going to sleep whether you want to or not,” the nurse announced when she came into view. “You can’t stay awake all night long, you know. Those chairs are really useless.”

  Swift, experienced hands maneuvered the new bed into place beside Cecilie’s. Hanne stood up and hovered listlessly, wedged in by the window.


  “Are you okay?” The nurse caressed Cecilie’s head and once again checked that the IV drip was correctly regulated. She hummed softly and without waiting for an answer disappeared out the door.

  “Lie down.”

  Cecilie gestured at the newly made bed. Hanne sat gingerly on the edge. Without removing anything other than her shoes, she stretched out carefully on the quilt.

  I wish I knew how long you have left, Hanne Wilhelmsen thought. I would really like to know how much time we have before you die.

  But she did not say that aloud, and would never dare to ask.

  38

  Eivind Torsvik’s fingers raced furiously over the keyboard. In the course of half an hour he had sent five emails to different addresses, all abroad.

  They did not understand this. They did not know enough. They were not all as competent as he was, nor as patient. But he was totally dependent on them. Only by cooperating across borders could they have any hope of prevailing. Of winning. Because that was what this was: a battle. A war.

  Wait, he wrote. We are close to our goal, but we must wait.

  Wait for further orders.

  God only knew whether they would obey.

  39

  Thea Flo Halvorsrud was only sixteen years old. Since she had not taken any nourishment for a week, she was in a pretty poor state. Now and then she took a sip of water from the glass kept constantly filled on her bedside table. However, she refused to touch the food that was carried in to her four times a day. Her dead mother’s sister, Aunt Vera, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Twice she had tried to obtain psychiatric help for her niece. The first time, she was asked to come in and see the emergency psychiatric doctor. Since her niece refused to get up, that advice was worthless. The second time – when she had moved heaven and earth and refused to hang up until she had been given promises of assistance – a young doctor with acne and skinny, nervous hands had turned up. Thea had not given him so much as a glance, far less a meaningful conversation. In the end the doctor had flung out his arms apologetically and said something about compulsory treatment.

  That was out of the question.

  Aunt Vera had phoned Karen Borg.

  “I’ve really no idea what to do,” Thea’s aunt said as she ushered Karen Borg into the guest room, where the sixteen-year-old was lying in a sea of pink cushions on a white lacquered, large single bed.

  “It would probably be best if I talked to her on my own,” Karen said softly, making a sign for the agitated, well-meaning aunt to leave the room.

  Dabbing her eyes, Aunt Vera backed out through the doorway.

  The room was spacious, airy and pink. The chest of drawers was antique rose, the carpet patterned with tiny flowers, and even the curtains had a pale-pink valance. Five bright-pink soft toys were sitting on the window ledge – three rabbits, a teddy bear and something that looked like a hippopotamus – staring vacantly into the room. Karen Borg sent a silent thank you to Håkon for having persuaded her to paint their daughter’s bedroom green and blue.

  “Hi,” she said quietly as she sat down in a chair beside the bed. “I’m Karen Borg. I’m your dad’s attorney.”

  This information did not make any notable impression. The girl curled up into a fetal position and pulled the quilt over her head.

  “Your dad asked me to send you his love. I talked to him earlier today. He’s worried about you.”

  A faint movement under the quilt perhaps indicated that the girl had at least heard what she’d said.

  “Is there anything … is there anything at all I can do for you, Thea?”

  There was no response. Now the girl lay stock-still, as if in addition to everything else, she had also stopped breathing.

  “Thea,” Karen said. “Thea! Are you sleeping? Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  Suddenly the girl turned round in the bed and a head came into view. Blond, greasy hair sticking out in every direction.

  “If you’re Dad’s attorney, you’d do better getting him out of jail instead of bothering me!”

  Then she threw herself onto her back and buried herself in the quilt and cushions once more. Karen Borg caught herself smiling. There were distinct similarities between this teenage girl and Karen’s own barely two-year-old daughter. But there were very obvious differences. At two, Liv was usually smiling again after five minutes. Sixteen-year-old Thea had gone on hunger strike for a week, which was worrying, bordering on life-threatening.

  “If you were to take the time to talk to me, it would perhaps be easier for me to do that job of mine,” Karen said, hoping at the same time that she was not promising too much.

  A faint smell of hot chocolate crept into the room. Thea’s aunt Vera had explained that she regularly tried to stimulate her niece’s appetite by putting food that smelled appealing near the door. Karen Borg did not have much faith that she would manage to tempt the daughter of a recently beheaded woman with chocolate and cream.

  “Would you prefer me to leave?” she said despondently, making a move to stand up.

  Something made her hesitate. A light breeze from the half-open window caused the curtains flutter, and the ears of the smallest rabbit flapped in the draft. Underneath the quilt the movements became calmer again. The girl sat up reluctantly with her back to the headboard. The face was that of a child, but the eyes had sunk so far into her head that she could have passed for ten years older than she was. Her narrow mouth trembled and she fingered the corner of the quilt cover incessantly.

  “You believe Dad,” she said in an undertone. “Since you’re his lawyer, you must believe he’s innocent.”

  Karen Borg did not consider the occasion appropriate for a lecture on legal ethics.

  “Yes,” she said tersely. “I believe him.”

  The girl gave a faint smile.

  “Aunt Vera doesn’t.”

  Karen thought she could hear a noise outside the door. After some rapid deliberation, she let the eavesdropper remain.

  “Maybe so. But she doesn’t know your father as well as you do, and there are quite a lot of things to indicate that he has in fact done something wrong. You mustn’t forget that.”

  Thea muttered something inaudible.

  “Your father has to prepare himself to remain in custody for a good while yet. You can’t really stop eating until he comes out again. That would mean you’d starve to death.”

  “Then that’s just what I’ll do,” Thea said harshly. “I’m not touching anything until Dad comes back. So that we can move home again.”

  “Now you’re being a bit childish.”

  “I am a child! According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, I’m a child until I’m eighteen! That’s not for two years yet.”

  Karen Borg laughed softly.

  “The problem is that you won’t ever be grown-up unless you eat some food.”

  The girl did not answer. She fidgeted repeatedly with the corner of the quilt. A thread had loosened and she put it into her mouth.

  “As I said, your dad is really worried. After all this … all this with your mother and—”

  “Don’t talk about Mum!”

  Her features contracted into a face that was difficult to read.

  Karen Borg had no idea which she would have thought was worse, that her mother had been murdered or that her father was suspected of the homicide. Probably she would not have been in any condition to understand either of those things. At least not at sixteen. She smoothed her skirt and ran her hand over her hair without really understanding why she was sitting there. This girl needed help, not advice from a lawyer.

  “Your father will come to the funeral on Monday at least,” she said after a lengthy pause; the girl had calmed down slightly again. “You’ll see him then. It would probably be sensible to have something to eat over the weekend, so that you’ll be fit to go.”

  “Mum,” Thea said feebly. “Dad. Dad!”

  Then she lay quietly on her back and pulled the quilt over her head o
nce more. Her sobs were muffled by down and cotton, but nevertheless carried far enough for Aunt Vera to open the door. At a loss, she stopped in the center of the room, where she stood wringing her hands.

  “What shall we do?” she said desperately. “What on earth shall we do?”

  “We’ll find a doctor for Thea,” Karen Borg said resolutely. “And we’ll do it today.”

  As she turned to go, she saw Preben Halvorsrud leaning against the doorframe. He stared past her and out of the window. The little rabbit had fallen soundlessly to the floor. It was impossible to read anything at all into the young man’s gaze. At the same time, there was something in his eyes that made Karen Borg shiver and wish herself far away from there.

  “I’ve been saying that all week,” he said dully. “Thea needs help. She also needs Dad. Have you thought about getting him home soon? So that Thea can stop living in this pink cave, I mean.”

  Now he made eye contact with her. It was like staring into the eyes of an old man, out of place on the boy’s immature face.

  “We’ll see,” Karen Borg said curtly, avoiding Preben’s gaze as best she could.

  40

  Her head felt empty and light.

  Hanne Wilhelmsen tried to hold on to one thought at a time. Her eyes flickered, and everything merged into a hallucinatory color chart. She poured bitter coffee from a pump thermos jug and drank most of the contents in one gulp.

  It was now Saturday evening. Since she had stayed at the hospital until late morning, she did not reckon on leaving the police headquarters before close to midnight. Tonight she would sleep at home.

  She took out a little glass box with a plastic lid from a desk drawer. Royal jelly from China. The pills were supposed to have a miraculously reviving effect. She read the label: “For rheumatism, weight loss, hair loss, pneumonia, compromised immune system and depression.” Depression sounded right at least. Hanne poured the brown pills out onto her hand and looked at them for a couple of seconds before placing three of them on her tongue and swallowing them with the last few drops of coffee. They slid down her gullet.

  She looked despairingly at the three bundles in front of her.