Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (21 page)

“Kristine, my lass!”

She managed to break free after a quarter of an hour. She had not chosen the time of day at random. It was the change of shift, and she was able to sneak unseen into the storeroom where the medicine cabinet was situated. She wondered fleetingly whether she should lock the door. Then it dawned on her it would be more difficult to explain a locked rather than an open door. Although she shouldn’t be in there, she could always come up with some plausible explanation or other. She fished out the keys to the medicine cupboard. They rattled too much, so she clutched the key ring and held her breath. What nonsense. With the hubbub in the corridor outside, there was little chance anyone would hear her. And what she was going to do would not take long either.

The packs of Nozinan were directly in front of her, in large quantities. She wondered whether she should choose injection or pill form. Without further thought, she grabbed the former. She didn’t need syringes; she had some at home. Quick as a flash, she shut the cabinet behind her and crept over to the door. Holding her breath for thirty seconds, she stuffed the medication in her pocket and strolled nonchalantly out the door. There were only two clients in the corridor, and they were so inebriated they barely knew what day of the week it was.

On the way out, she reassured her boss once again that she would send a sick note, and that yes, of course, she would soon be back at work. Only a few days. He let her go with a sarcastic comment under his breath, which she could hear plainly.

It had gone well. The next part was more difficult.

It didn’t seem as though she had been away for very long. Some nodded and smiled over their books, others stared blankly at her and buried themselves in their studies once more. Then she caught sight of Terje. He was sitting in the common room with five others she knew well, and she received a warmer welcome here. Especially from Terje. Four years her junior, he was a first-year student. Since the beginning of term, he had been clinging to her like a limpet. In umpteen different ways, he had declared his great love for her, paying hardly any attention to either the difference in their ages or the fact he was eight centimeters shorter. He was really sweet, and for the most part she took a kind of pleasure in his courtship.

“Persistence wins the day.” He brushed her aside gallantly on the occasions when she, irritated, had felt that enough was enough and attempted to tell him the lay of the land.

She collapsed into a vacant chair.

“Heavens, what do you look like,” commented one of her close friends. “You must’ve been really ill, I can see that!”

“Much better now.” She smiled.

The others didn’t look very convinced.

“And I’d really like to celebrate being back on my feet again. A little jaunt into town. Tomorrow. Wednesday night. Anyone want to come?”

They all did. Especially Terje. That was the point.

*   *   *

It had to happen on Wednesday. The best day. On Friday he would run a number of risks. The guy could be planning a weekend in the country. Or a party at home, for that matter. What’s more, people stayed up late on Fridays. He needed peace and quiet, so it would have to take place on Wednesday evening. He could do it on Thursday but couldn’t muster the patience. It had to be Wednesday.

Moreover, there was another important point about that day.
He had told his daughter it would take place on Thursday. Now she would avoid having to wait. On Thursday morning he would waken her with the news it was all over.

The closet was locked, in accordance with the regulations. It was of course unnecessary now, since Kristine was grown up and did not touch his belongings. Indeed, she had hardly been inside his bedroom since she had been at high school.

Three Home Guard uniforms were hanging neatly in a row. With three stars on the epaulettes. He was a captain. Even the green field uniform was smoothly pressed. Two pairs of boots were lined up on the floor beneath the clothes. There was a faint smell of shoe cream and mothballs.

At the very back, behind both shoes and uniforms, lay a little steel case. Crouching down, he dragged it forward. Then, placing the case on the nightstand, he sat on the bed and opened it. The service pistol was made in Austria. Glock. Nine-millimeter ammunition. He had plenty of that. He could not touch his service ammo, but he had two broken boxes from the last shooting practice. To be persnickety, it was theft, but the top brass shut their eyes to it. It was so easy, of course, for boxes of ammunition to disappear underneath a car seat.

With unaccustomed fingers, he dismantled the gun, oiled it, and then dried it thoroughly with a rag. He placed the pistol by his side on the bed, wrapped in the polishing cloth. Then he took five cartridges from one of the boxes, replacing the remainder inside the steel case, locking it, returning the whole kit to the back of the closet and turning the key.

Stopping momentarily, he wondered where he should store his gun in the meantime. Finally he decided simply to stash it underneath the bed. The cleaning lady did not come until Friday, and by that time the weapon would be back in its rightful place.

He undressed and stepped into the bathroom adjacent to his bedroom. It took some time to fill the bathtub, so he threw on a dressing gown and went to mix a strong drink, although the
afternoon was too young, strictly speaking. When he came back, the foam had reached almost the top of the bathtub rim, and it spilled over when he lowered himself into the scalding hot water.

Only yesterday had it really struck him that what he intended to do was a punishable offense. To put it mildly. The thought struck him like a hammer blow, for a split second, and then he pushed it away. He would not acknowledge it. Now he let the certainty that he was about to turn himself into a criminal sink more deeply.

It had never, not for a single moment, dawned on him that he could go to the police with what he knew. Actually, he was infuriated that they apparently were incapable of investigating as well as he had. It had all been frighteningly easy. It had taken him a few days. What were the police actually doing? Nothing? They had told him they had obtained fibers and traces of semen. For analysis. But what would they do with the results when they had no register to compare them? When he had asked the police officer that very question, she had shrugged her shoulders in resignation without giving an answer.

The police would have done something, right enough, if he went to them. He had no doubt about that. Probably the man would be arrested and subjected to tests of one kind or another. Then they would be able to prove it was him, and after that he would be put in prison. For a year or eighteen months. Minus a third of the sentence for good behavior. It meant the man could get away with less than a year behind bars. Less than a year! For having broken his daughter. Destroyed, humiliated, and defiled her.

Going to the police was out of the question. They would have to get on with their own business. Which was more than enough, if the newspaper headlines were anything to go by.

Naturally he could try to get away with it. Concoct an alibi of some kind. But he did not think much about that sort of thing. What’s more, he wasn’t interested.

Finn Håverstad was not concerned with getting away with the
homicide he was planning of the man who had raped his daughter. He would ensure he managed to carry out his intention in peace. Then he would spend a few hours with Kristine, before giving himself up to the police and telling them what he had done. No one would condemn him for it. Of course he would be dealt his punishment, by a court of law, but no one would really condemn him. He would never have condemned himself. His friends would certainly not do so. And when all was said and done, when push came to shove, Finn Håverstad did not give a toss what others might say. It was essential for him to kill. It was justice.

*   *   *

The man Finn Håverstad lay in his bathtub planning to murder had changed his mind. Yesterday he had been so determined, so definite about doing it. Now he wanted to skip a Saturday. It did not matter a jot that they had found the body in the abandoned garden. He was one hundred percent certain nobody had been there for several years. That was possibly why he had been slightly slipshod with the depth. He had had too much to do. Bloody hell. It was good to get coverage in the newspapers, though. Perhaps that was what had blinded him yesterday. Now, after further thought, it struck him that things were becoming dangerous.

By a quirk of fate, he was sitting with a glass of exactly the same brand of whiskey as Håverstad the dentist had on the edge of his bath. It would break his pattern. That was what he enjoyed most. What had bothered the police most. He particularly liked the blood aspect. It aroused interest. If it had not been for that very detail, he would not have been given so much attention. And pigs’ blood! On Muslims!

When the body was discovered, however, it immediately became more serious. Now he had to reckon on them allocating more resources. That was not his intention at all. It was a fucking nuisance they had found the body.

*   *   *

The lady was as round as a ball and deeply suspicious by nature. After forty years of running a boardinghouse, no one was going to come here and pull the wool over her eyes. It was one thing that they were going to have those Olympic Games here in the winter.

“We’ll be well rid of those foreigners there,” she mumbled to herself as she spread thick slices of bread with half a gram of butter, making it extend as far out toward the edges as possible. The thicker she cut the slices, the fuller the guests would be. Then they used up fewer sandwich toppings. Bread was cheaper than the cold meats and cheese. Simple arithmetic. She had calculated with satisfaction that she could save up to sixty or seventy kroner in only one round of supper. There was money to be made that way, in the long run.

“We’ll get rid of those foreigners at the Olympics, oh, yes, but these asylum seekers, we’re worse off with them,” she continued grimly without anyone listening, apart from an enormous brindled cat that had jumped onto the kitchen worktop.

“Kitty, kitty, get yourself down from there!”

A couple of cat hairs had fallen onto one of the buttered slices, and she plucked them off with her small, plump fingers.

Then she came to a decision.

Drying her hands on her voluminous apron that was far from clean, she lifted the receiver on an old-fashioned black telephone with a rotary dial. Her fingers were so fat that she could not fit them properly into the holes, but she managed to dial the number for the police. She had it taped beside the telephone, handy should the occasion arise.

“Hello? This is Mrs. Brøttum from the Guesthouse! I want to report an illegal immigrant!”

Mrs. Brøttum managed to report her immigrant to a patient lady who assured her they would investigate the matter. After ten minutes oohing and aahing about all the Muslims flooding into
the country, with their obvious special attraction to the Lillehammer area, the lady at the police station, now not quite so patient, managed to wind down the conversation.

“Mrs. Brøttum again,” sighed the uniformed officer to her colleague at the central switchboard in Lillehammer police station as she threw the note into the wastepaper basket.

Not very far from the station, two other uniformed policemen were enjoying a late dinner break. Three hot dogs and a large order of fries each. They were sitting on a hard, rigidly mounted concrete bench, scowling across at a pretty, neat woman in old-fashioned clothes who sat at the far end, beside the fairly busy highway. She was eating the same as them, but not as much. And not as fast.

“I’ll bet that woman over there’s not Norwegian,” one of the officers said, his mouth full of food. “Look at those clothes!”

“Her hair’s too light,” the other one said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Her hair’s far too light.”

“She might be Turkish,” the first one insisted. “Or Yugoslavian. They’re sometimes blonde, you know!”

“Her over there’s not a foreigner.”

The other man did not give up. Neither did the first.

“Let’s bet on it,” he challenged. “I’ll wager three hot dogs and one order of fries.”

Thinking about it, the other man peered over at the small figure. She had now obviously realized they were interested in her, as she stood up abruptly and stepped quickly over to the trash can with what was left of her food.

“Okay.”

The other took him on. They both got to their feet and approached the lady, who looked panic-stricken.

“I think you’re damn right, Ulf,” the doubter said. “She’s scared of us in any case.”

“Hello there,” the first one shouted, confident of victory. “Stop a minute!”

The woman with the bizarre clothing stopped suddenly. She looked over at them, terrified.

“You’re not from these parts, are you?”

He was friendly enough in a way.

“No, I not from here.”

“Where are you from, then?”

“I from Iran, asylum seeker.”

“Oh, yes. Well, have you got any papers on you?”

“No papers here, but where I live.”

“And where’s that, then?”

Of course she had forgotten what it was called. Moreover, she would hardly have been able to pronounce Gudbrandsdalen Guesthouse if she had all the time in the world. Instead she simply pointed uncertainly up the road.

“Up there.”

“Up there, yes, well,” one of the policemen repeated, glancing at his colleague. “I think you’d better come with us. We’ll have to check this out more closely.”

They did not notice that the woman had tears in her eyes, or that she was trembling. They did not pay very much attention at all.

When the little Iranian woman did not appear for supper at the Gudbrandsdalen Guesthouse, Mrs. Brøttum came to the conclusion that her tip-off had been followed up. Humming cheerfully, she splashed out on an extra slice of cucumber for the buttered slices of bread with liver paste. She was exceedingly pleased.

In a cell at Lillehammer police station, the Iranian sat waiting for the police to check who she was. Unfortunately, she was brought in at the same time as the change of shift. The two who had placed a bet on her nationality were preoccupied with getting home to their wives and children, and asked their replacements to write the report. They promised on their honor to do so.