Odd Numbers Read online

  Billy T. leaned back in his chair. His tongue was actually swelling inside his mouth: he pretended to be sucking on a mint in order to produce saliva.

  “I didn’t steal it,” he said listlessly. “We can sit here until morning. You can ask me the same questions over and over again. Twist them ever so slightly each time. Wear me out, force me to contradict myself. Soon the water will run out, and you’re going to have to spend time getting me something else.”

  Deep down, he was praying that he appeared more self-assured than he felt.

  “All the same, nothing will come of it. I didn’t steal anything.”

  A fleeting smile, impossible to interpret, crossed her face. Perhaps she simply had a strange sense of humor and enjoyed watching him sweat like a pig in his polyester jogging outfit.

  “So you say,” she remarked in a refined accent from Ålesund or thereabouts. “But that’s not what Officer Gundersen says. He claims, on the contrary, that you stood there, at the intersection between Gabels gate and Bygdøy allé, with Darth Vader in your hand, next to a BMW decorated for the occasion with the body of a dead Muslim. One of quite a number of dead Muslims yesterday, if I may be permitted to add that. So many that it’s of exceptional importance to know in precise detail what happened in the entire area. Precise detail. What happened?”

  “As I said . . .”

  Billy T. resisted the temptation to pour water into his glass yet again. Instead he placed a hand on his throat and massaged the muscles below his left collarbone.

  “I was in the area entirely by accident. I’d just visited an old friend. Hanne Wilhelmsen.”

  Even now, when he mentioned her name for the fourth time, it seemed as if the Chief Inspector froze. She was on the point of saying something when Billy T. raised his voice and continued: “You know, it’d be fucking easy to check. Why don’t you call her? Phone her and ask if I was at her apartment yesterday morning when the bomb went off. One of her windows cracked in two, as I’ve now told you several times over. Into the bargain, she has some sort of consultant job here at police headquarters, you know, so it should be a simple matter to work something out.”

  He did not relinquish eye contact.

  As close to the truth as possible.

  Lie hard by what is true.

  It was his father’s voice he heard. His father, who had come and gone in his life at will. And who had taught him enough about living on the edge that it was a wonder Billy T. had landed in the police and not on the other side of the law.

  “When the bomb went off, Hanne said that I should run over and see if I could offer some assistance.”

  “A pretty stupid suggestion,” Havenes commented.

  “Agreed. But it seemed like a good idea right then.”

  “And then?”

  Groaning expressively, he took a breath and began to speak at breakneck speed.

  “Then I ran down to Bygdøy allé. There I saw a young, dark-skinned, and quite obviously Muslim man walking along. Since by that point in time, through having read some tweets at Hanne’s, I knew they were talking about a huge explosion, I wanted to get him out of the way.”

  “Because he was a Muslim.”

  She regarded him with ill-concealed skepticism.

  “Yes.”

  “Or was it because you knew him?”

  This question was new.

  Billy T. raised his glass as calmly as he could. He drank the rest of the water before momentarily studying the glass as he rotated it in his hand.

  “No.”

  He fixed his eye on Chief Inspector Havenes.

  “No?” she said. “But Gundersen claims that you knew his name.”

  “The guy had already told me that.”

  “In the few seconds it took you to walk from one side of Bygdøy allé to the other? Right after an enormous explosion, and with all the chaos prevailing in the area, and you had already managed to introduce yourselves?”

  “Yes. His name was Shazad Beheshdi.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re good at foreign-sounding names, aren’t you?”

  “Good at remembering all names. It’s an important characteristic for a police officer.”

  “Something you are no longer.”

  “No. But I have, as you surely know . . .”

  Billy T. leaned forward and placed his hand on a slim, unopened folder on her side of the table.

  “. . . six children. Five of them are boys. Each and every one of them grew up somewhere in Groruddalen. It’s the area in Norway with the highest number of immigrants. As you also know, I’m sure. All the boys have played football. They have gone to kindergarten. To school. My youngest boy is only seven and he lives in Veitvet.”

  Leaning back, he clasped his hands around his neck.

  “So I’m used to what you call foreign-sounding names, to put it that way.”

  The perspiration rings under his arms were so expansive that they probably met across his back. In his own mind, he thanked all the gods he did not believe in for his good fortune in being arrested while out jogging. The rank body odor would otherwise have been an exceptionally obvious sign of stress.

  “Darth Vader,” she said yet again.

  This time he could not be bothered. She was persistent, he would give her that. But not very much more. She had made the most amateur blunder in the world when she had eventually come in to interview him. She had shown him contempt.

  Whether it was his burly figure, wearing tasteless clothes and stinking of sweat, or his reputation as the worst rule breaker in the police district that she had no time for, he had no idea. Probably both. All the same, she should have kept her feelings to herself. Smiled more. Been friendlier. Offered him a Coke and something to eat, the way he himself had always done.

  “Amateur,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “I called you an amateur.”

  “I heard that. I also noted that your explanation is that you laid the figure on the hood of the car. Beside the body.”

  She spoke slowly, in a monotone, as if reading out something of little fundamental interest to her.

  “And even though Officer Gundersen had asked you to help Officer Krogvold, you left. You went to Frognerveien, took the tram to the National Theater, the subway to Sinsen, and returned home to . . .”

  For the first time, she had to glance at her notes.

  “. . . Refstadsvingen,” she rounded off.

  He nodded.

  “Then I actually have only two remaining questions.”

  Billy T. felt a cold shiver up his spine. He tried to hide the shudder by clutching the empty glass. The pitcher was also empty, after the Chief Inspector had poured herself the remainder of the water, so he put it down quickly and leaned forward with his elbows on the table.

  “And they are?”

  “First of all, I should say that it amuses me slightly that people here in headquarters don’t know what your surname is.”

  “I am Billy T. That’s enough.”

  “All your children have their respective mother’s name, so that doesn’t give you away either.”

  “You said you had a question?”

  She ignored him completely. She was no longer looking at him, but at a point above and to one side of his head, as if someone were standing behind him.

  “But everyone has a surname. Even you. You had a father. His name was Thorvald. That’s what the T in Billy T. stands for, incidentally.”

  Billy T. tried to sit still. He shifted his weight to his lower arms and stared directly at her, even though she did not return his gaze.

  “Hardly an investigative achievement to discover that,” he said. “There’s a passport office three floors below us.”

  “What I’m wondering, first of all,” she said nonchalantly, “is whether you’ve ever been inside the NCIN offices.”

  “Me? No.”

  “Never?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been at the intersection of Fri
tzners gate and Gimle terrasse?”

  Billy T. felt the tang of salt as he licked a drop of perspiration running down the furrow from his nose to the corner of his mouth.

  “Almost certainly,” he said, unfazed. “There’s hardly a place in this city I haven’t been. But not lately, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That is what I mean. And you’re certain of that?”

  “Yes!”

  His right hand tapped the table.

  “Well,” she said, unruffled, thrusting her hand inside a slim document folder, “then you have some explaining to do. You see, only nine hours after the explosion, we found this. Inside the NCIN office. It’s smashed, as you will see . . .”

  She held out a closed fist, with the back of her hand hovering above the tabletop.

  “. . . not so strange, given what it’s been through.”

  She turned her hand and opened it.

  A wristwatch.

  Billy T. recognized it immediately.

  It was an old Omega watch, made of gold. There was next to nothing left of the leather strap, but the color matched. The glass was shattered, and the second hand had snapped in two.

  The watch itself remained.

  “Shall I turn it over?” she asked with a smile.

  He did not answer. He had ventured so far inside the maze that it closed in around him on all sides: a steel case with walls coming steadily closer. He was aware of a cloying taste of blood in his mouth.

  Chief Inspector Anita Havenes was smiling even more broadly.

  “It’s engraved. ‘Thorvald B. Fastlyng’ is what it says on the back. Thorvald Billy Fastlyng. He had almost the same name as you, your father.”

  She placed the watch facedown right in front of him.

  “Your name is Billy Thorvald Fastlyng. This watch belonged to your father. He died years ago, and it’s really not all that far-fetched to assume that you were the one who inherited it. Especially not since a new name was engraved on it later.”

  A long forefinger nail with bright-red varnish that had begun to chip pointed precisely at the second inscription on the watch.

  “ ‘Billy T.,’ it says there. This is your watch. And if you’ve never been inside the NCIN office, how has your watch ended up there, to be pulverized in the terrorist attack yesterday? That, Billy T., is the final question to which I’d like an answer.”

  “Answer me, then, Hammo!”

  Ida Wilhelmsen sat dangling her legs from a bar stool. Her school books lay spread out before her on the vast kitchen island, though she did not seem especially focused on her homework.

  “Answer me, then,” she pestered.

  The kitchen was divided into two zones. The larger section of the room was furnished at normal body height. Along one gable wall, maybe twelve feet long, however, there was a complete kitchen fitted out with low counters, sink, and easily accessible domestic appliances for a wheelchair user. Hanne cracked an egg into a plastic bowl and looked over her shoulder.

  “Answer what, then?”

  “Why no one is marching in a rose parade. Mommy and I went in the rose parade last time. There must have been a million people there.”

  “There weren’t as many as that.”

  “Yes, there were. And then we went to the cathedral. I got to buy a teddy bear and a flower. Everyone in my class drew pictures that we were allowed to laminate and lay down in the square outside. All the way down the street, in fact. I asked Albert if we weren’t going to draw pictures this time, too, but he said there was no place to put them. Why not, Hammo?”

  “Do you want onion in your omelet?”

  “Yes, please. But why is there no rose parade, Hammo? And flowers in front of the cathedral?”

  “This time most of the people killed were Muslims. Then it would be natural to choose somewhere different from the actual cathedral.”

  “There were quite a lot of Muslims on Utøya as well.”

  “Yes, of course. Tomato?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The ten-year-old slid down from the stool and grabbed an apple from a glass fruit bowl.

  “It’s different out there, Hammo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From that summer.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Last time, people became so nice all of a sudden. To one another, you know. Mommy said that everyone became very un-Norwegian. Talking to one another on the bus and giving lots of money to beggars, and that kind of thing. Mommy got hugs from total strangers when we were on the way home from the rose parade.”

  “You were only seven then, sweetheart. Are you sure you remember it so well?”

  “I was eight and remember all of it. It was terribly sad, and then at the same time it was quite lovely as well. All those hugs Mummy got. I didn’t understand it then, but now I think it was because she’s so dark. Because Voldemort didn’t like dark people.”

  “Voldemort? Don’t eat an apple just now, please. Maybe you could have it for dessert.”

  “Albert says that we shouldn’t use the bad guy’s name. That then . . . we honor him, in a way.”

  “What a lot of drivel. Use his name. He’s called Anders Behring Breivik.”

  “I know that.”

  Hanne poured the egg mixture into the frying pan.

  “But what do you mean when you say that it’s different out there?” she asked as she sprinkled grated cheese over the omelet.

  Ida sat down in the wide, deep window seat overlooking the backyard and leaned against the glass. She fiddled with a cell phone before abruptly setting it down and crossing her arms over her narrow chest.

  “It’s almost as if nothing has happened,” she said slowly. “As if no one seems particularly sad. They are on TV, but not out there. Nobody is giving each other hugs. People seem more sort of . . . angry, somehow. I thought maybe we would get a day off school today. Or at least that we would talk a lot about what had happened, and so on. It lasted only a split second, and then—abracadabra—it was time for science. Nonsense!”

  Hanne smiled and swept her bangs out of her eyes.

  “It’s nearly two o’clock, Ida. If you’re going to be ready for your riding lesson, you’ll have to do your homework while you eat. Lerke’s mom is going to give you a ride today. And then I really do think that you shouldn’t dwell so much on this explosion. You’ve already lost one good night’s sleep. I’d rather not have a repetition tonight.”

  Ida did not reply. She just sat there, backlit by indolent spring sunshine that had given up the attempt to break through the low-lying clouds. Her hair was hanging loose, and when she pulled one leg up on to the ledge and clasped her hands around her knee, it struck Hanne yet again how like her mother Ida was. The same gestures. The same mouth, ever so slightly crooked when she smiled, because of a canine tooth that had gone its own way in her upper jaw.

  Ida was the very image of her mother, but a paler version. Her eyes were brown, not almost black like Nefis’s. Her skin was light—not winter-pale like Hanne’s and not olive colored like her mother’s. Ida was the most beautiful and most important creature Hanne had ever loved, and fortunately it occurred to her less frequently now that, to her great shame, she had not wanted to have her.

  “Why don’t Mom and you want me to be a Muslim?” Ida asked out of the blue.

  Hanne lifted the lid of the saucepan and peered inside.

  “We’ve talked about that loads of times, darling. It’s not a case of us wanting anything. Other than that you should be old enough to decide your own identity before we place too strong an expectation on you.”

  “We haven’t talked about it. I’m the one who does. You never give me a proper answer. Mommy’s a Muslim, but all the same she has your surname, and I can’t understand why she doesn’t—”

  “Ida.”

  Hanne heard her voice grow unnecessarily sharp and tried to take the edge off it with yet another smile, before she moderated her tone and continued: “Mommy’s not—�
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  She broke off herself and ran a finger slowly over her forehead to gain some time.

  “What is a Muslim?” she asked rhetorically. “It can be someone who believes in the message of the Koran, and Mommy doesn’t. She’s an atheist.”

  The ten-year-old got abruptly to her feet.

  “You don’t believe in God, and Mommy doesn’t believe in Allah. How then am I going to be able to make up my mind when I’m older?”

  “Hopefully you’ll draw the same conclusion as your parents. Sit down. Your food’s ready.”

  “Do you know what I think?”

  “Now we’re going to stop. Eat your food and do your homework. You’ve only got an hour before you need to be ready in your riding gear.”

  Hanne put a plate on her lap and rolled over to the kitchen island. The dish clattered too loudly as she put it down.

  “I think you and Mommy are cowards,” Ida said softly. “I think you want to make me as Norwegian as possible so that I won’t—”

  “You are Norwegian, Ida. Norwegian through and through. Now pack it in, won’t you? Eat up.”

  “Anyway, I think the atmosphere out there in the world is so different because people aren’t very fond of Muslims. Because it’s Muslims who were killed and Muslims who did the killing. They’re not bothered. Not as much as last time, at least. But then you can’t know very much about that, of course, because you’re never any place other than here.” She took an abrupt breath and held it for a few seconds, before exclaiming: “Sorry.”

  “You can apologize for your tone,” Hanne said. “But not for what you said. You’re right. I am only here, of course. Leave your phone and sit down at the table.”

  “Can you leave yours down as well? Can we talk?”

  “Do your homework. This minute.”

  Hanne picked up her own phone at the very moment that it made a tinkling sound. A text message. It was an unknown number.

  Hesitantly, she opened the text:

  Hanne. I’ve been interviewed all morning. Alleged connection to the terrorist attack. Absurd. One very last try: Can we talk? It’s about what I mentioned yesterday. Crisis. Billy T.

  Hanne read the message three times. This morning’s anxiety had grown distressing. When Henrik Holme left her, she had been seized by a compelling need to do something. Since she seldom did anything other than read and keep herself up-to-date on the Internet, it felt alien—quite frightening, if she was absolutely honest with herself. She had considered phoning the Chief of Police, but shook off the idea when she realized the obvious: Silje Sørensen would not be able to say anything. For a while, she had been prepared to make the journey down to Grønlandsleiret on her own, but she was unable to stick to her decision. In the end, it was too difficult to answer the question of what she would achieve there.