Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (22 page)

But of course they forgot. And so the woman sat there, without anyone actually knowing where she was.

I
t was raining cats and dogs. Not to mention elephants and minke whales. It was as though everything nature had held back for the past two months was pouring out all at once. The water splashed down onto the dry earth that was totally unable to absorb such enormous amounts at the one time. Which led to the rain instead taking a shortcut to the sea by turning the streets into riverbeds. Åkebergveien looked as though the River Aker was in spring flood. It cascaded and streamed, and three traffic policemen were standing in rubber boots and rain attire, wondering when the water would reach the level when it would quite simply sweep the parked cars away. There was traffic chaos in Oslo.

Even the farmers, who, during the long period of drought, with their usual pessimism, had predicted the worst crops in living memory, as they did every single year, whether there was too much rain, too little rain, too little sun or too much, were of the opinion that there had to be limits. Now the harvest was certainly in peril. This was a total natural disaster.

Only the young folks were delighted. After the long heat wave, even a sudden surprising storm could not change the fact that summer temperatures were here to stay. The mercury in the thermometers still pointed to eighteen degrees Celsius. The youngsters shrieked in glee as they frolicked in the downpour, wearing only their bathing trunks, despite their mothers’ vociferous protests. It was to no avail. This was the most cheerful, most intense, warmest rainy weather anyone could ever remember.

The angels are mourning Kaldbakken, Hanne Wilhelmsen thought as she glanced out the window.

It was like sitting in a car inside a car wash. The rain was pounding so violently against the windowpanes that the outlines of everything outside were completely obliterated, creating a pale gray fog. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, and a dewy rose formed beside her mouth.

The intercom instructed them all to come to the conference room. She looked at the clock. There would be a memorial ceremony at eight o’clock. She hated that kind of thing. But she went.

The superintendent appeared gloomier than usual, appropriately enough. He was wearing a suit for the occasion, still wet from his ankles to his knees. It looked rather sad and so was suitable from that point of view. Dampness clogged the air in the unventilated room. No one was dry, but everyone was warm. And most of them were genuinely sorry.

Kaldbakken could hardly be called a popular man. He was too reserved, too taciturn for that. Grumpy, some would say. He had, however, been decent in all his years there. Fair. It was more than could be said for several other bosses at the station. So when some individuals dried a tear during the superintendent’s stammering memorial speech, it was not just for appearance’s sake.

Hanne Wilhelmsen did not shed a tear, but she was sad. She and Kaldbakken had worked well together. They had rather different viewpoints about most things outside the large building in which they earned a living, but as a rule they were in agreement about everything to do with their investigations. Moreover, you’re better off with the devil you know. Hanne had no idea who would be the chief inspector now. In the worst-case scenario, they would end up with someone from another section. But it would probably be a few days yet before anyone was appointed. The man should at least be allowed to go to his grave before his successor moved into his kippered office.

The superintendent was finished, and an awkward silence descended
over the gathering. Chairs scraped, but no one made a move to leave. They were all uncertain whether the session was over, or whether the lengthy silence was part of the proceedings.

“Well, the show must go on,” the superintendent said, coming to their rescue.

The room emptied in less than a minute.

Hanne Wilhelmsen had got it into her head she needed to find the Iranian woman from the ground floor. It was worrying that she had disappeared without a trace. In her own mind, she feared the lady was already lying somewhere with her throat cut, underneath a few feet of earth. The Saturday man could have altered his habits. At the very least, they ought to get hold of her. It annoyed the detective inspector intensely that she had been carelessly superficial in her interview with her that first Monday. It hadn’t seemed so important then. And of course she had so damn much to do.

Now it had at least been established that the woman in the secluded garden had been raped. Both one way and the other, in a manner of speaking. Hanne Wilhelmsen was sitting with the examination results from Forensics. They had not yet carried out any DNA analysis, that took a bloody long time, but semen had been identified in both the rectum and the vagina.

They had to find the lady from the ground floor. In the meantime, her home address was being covered. They had decided to do a fresh, thorough round of interviews with all the neighbors. Just to be on the safe side. Four police officers had allocated most of the day. She herself had more than enough to do in the office.

And outside the window, the prospect was still wet and gray.

*   *   *

Kristine Håverstad was unsure whether she would manage to kill someone who was sleeping. Although she felt a liberating sense of anticipation about what lay ahead, she wished she had a more effective weapon than a knife. A gun would be the best thing.
Then she could taunt him. Take the upper hand, place him in the same situation he had forced her into. That would be best of all. That would be the fairest thing. Then he could pray to God not to die. She would take her time. Perhaps compel him to take off his clothes, to stand before her totally defenseless and stark naked, while she had both clothes and a gun.

Her father had a gun in his bedroom. She knew that, but she didn’t know the first thing about guns. What she did know, however, was the most effective and deadly place to stab a knife into someone. But she needed some time. He had to be sleeping heavily. Between three and five o’clock people sleep most deeply. Between three and five she would get him.

She would manage to kill him, even though he was sleeping. But it was far from being the way she would have preferred.

*   *   *

The woman from Iran was sitting in a detention cell in Lillehammer for the fourteenth hour. She had been fed, as everyone detained there was. She had received nothing else. She did not challenge it and did not utter a word. That’s the way it should be.

Last night she had not slept at all. There were so many noises and far too much light. What’s more, she was terrified. She had sat in a cell twice before. It had not been as clean then. And she had not been given food either. But the uncertainty and anxiety had been exactly the same.

Creeping into a corner of the cell, she drew her knees up underneath her chin and sat without moving a muscle for several hours more.

*   *   *

“She’s vanished without trace. No one has heard her, no one has seen her. Doesn’t seem to have been home since Monday. Difficult to say, the neighbors tell me, because she kept herself to
herself. Never a sound from that apartment, according to the two who live across from her.”

Erik Henriksen looked like a drowned red fox. A little puddle had already formed around him, becoming larger by the minute. Leaning forward, he shook his head vigorously.

“Hey, there’s no need to make me as wet as you!” Hanne Wilhelmsen protested.

“You should see that weather,” Erik said excitedly. “It’s unbelievable! It’s pouring, it’s bucketing, up to here in lots of places!”

He made a light karate chop on his own knee and beamed.

“It’s almost impossible to drive a car! The motor gets drowned!”

He did not need to tell her. Hanne Wilhelmsen thought it looked as though the water would soon reach her window on the second floor. The traffic policemen in Åkebergveien had given up an hour earlier, and now the road was completely closed. In fact, people in the police station had gone from cracking lively jokes about the burst of rain to appearing legitimately concerned. The traffic chaos was no longer only a source of irritation. An ambulance had broken down when the engine became too wet in a small lake in Thorvald Meyers gate. They were so near Accident and Emergency that no harm was done; the patient had simply got soaked when the paramedics had to lift the stretcher between them, wading the two hundred meters or so down to the emergency room, as they carried the old lady with the broken femur. But worse things could happen. No one was particularly afraid of fire at the moment, but it was frightening to contemplate that the city’s infrastructure was in the process of breaking down entirely. Two telecommunications areas had collapsed after a base station was flooded. A generator was close to stalling at Ullevål Hospital.

“What are the meteorologists saying?”

“No idea,” Erik said, leaning against the window and looking outside. “But I say it won’t let up for quite a while.”

The superintendent entered as Erik left. He had removed
his jacket but was still uncomfortably dressed in his suit trousers, which had clearly been purchased several kilos earlier. He pinched the trouser legs at the thigh before sitting down.

“We won’t manage it before Saturday, will we?”

It was actually more a statement of fact than a question. Hanne therefore found no reason to reply.

“What are we doing now?” he asked, this time looking for an answer.

“I’ve sent four men out to Kristine Håverstad’s apartment building. They’re going to interview all the neighbors again. More thoroughly this time.”

She stared slightly uneasily at the wet patch where Erik had stood.

“It’s embarrassing. I should have been more meticulous the first time.”

That was true. The superintendent, however, certainly knew why she had not been. He rubbed his face and sniffed.

“Damn it, with this change in the weather we’ll all come down with colds. That’s all we need now. An influenza epidemic.”

Sighing deeply and sniffing again, he realized that Hanne Wilhelmsen still appeared concerned about her rather deplorable contribution to the rape case of the previous week. When they still had time. Perhaps enough time to prevent last Saturday’s bloodbath.

“Well, Hanne,” he said kindly, pushing his chair closer to her. “It was a rape. A horrible but unfortunately otherwise fairly ordinary rape. What should you have done? With all the rest we have to do? If you are right in this theory of yours that it’s the same person behind the Saturday night massacres as well as this rape—and I think you are—then that’s something we know now. We didn’t know it a week ago.”

Halting, he drew a rough and noisy breath, and sneezed violently.

“Do you know how many we’d need to be here in this section if we were to investigate every single rape to the degree it deserves?”

Hanne shook her head.

“Me neither.”

He sneezed again.

“That’s life. We have too few staff. Rape is a difficult crime. We can’t spend much time on such things. Sorry to say.”

His apology was heartfelt, and Hanne knew that. But the superintendent would not have had the job he had if it weren’t for his extremely flexible and pragmatic character. Rape was a difficult crime to prove. The police needed to prove things. That was the way it was.

“Have you done anything other than talk to the neighbors?”

“Well, I’m waiting for the Forensics results. Not that whatever they come up with will be of any real use. But it would be good to have the proof ready if we find a culprit. Stumble over one.”

A weary smile accompanied the final sentence.

“What’s more, we’re still pursuing the Iranian woman. I’m not happy about her disappearing act. I can’t see any reason for her going missing. Either she’s afraid of something, and then I would really like to know what she’s scared of. Or who. Or perhaps she’s joined her Asian sisters and is lying somewhere in the mud.”

The superintendent knocked on wood, on the desk.

“Well, if she’s still in the country and isn’t dead . . .”

To be on the safe side, he knocked on the desktop one more time.

“. . . then she’ll turn up. Sooner or later.”

“Let’s sincerely hope it’ll be sooner,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said. “By the way, d’you know anything about this weather? It’s beginning to be slightly sinister, you know!”

“It’ll probably let up in the course of the evening. But it’s going to continue to rain fairly heavily, or so the meteorologists say. But God only knows.”

He stood up with difficulty. “Keep me posted. I’ll be here all afternoon.”

“Me too,” Hanne Wilhelmsen responded.

“Besides . . .”

He turned abruptly in the doorway.

“The funeral’s on Monday. Are you going to be there?”

“Yes, if the world’s still spinning on Monday, yes I will.”

*   *   *

It goes without saying that the weather was a disappointment. They had planned to start at the bustling center of Aker Brygge and from there go barhopping. It was not really possible. In fact, there were good grounds to doubt whether Aker Brygge was even still in existence.

“Crazy cool weather,” Terje said enthusiastically. “Let’s go swimming!”

The suggestion did not even receive a response. However, although the weather had put a stop to their original plans, a gang of students in the prime of life would not let the opportunity of a real party slip by.

“I’ve a proposal,” Kristine said, who, as far as the others could make out, still looked rather poorly after her bout of influenza. “I’ve got plenty to drink at home. I’m staying at my dad’s at the minute.” She swiftly backtracked.

“I was so unwell. Better staying there. What about going to your place, Cathrine, and I’ll get some wine and raid the fridge. Maybe we can have a late-night party. Dad will be sure to say it’s okay.”

It was a brilliant idea. Two more hours of study and then they would meet up at Cathrine’s.

*   *   *

It was seven o’clock, and the rain had moderated somewhat. The window in Hanne Wilhelmsen’s office was no longer a gray, blurred surface. Outside, she could now discern the roof of the garage where the patrol cars were housed as well as the used-car
showroom on the other side of the street. The rain was making the picture just a little unclear. But it would be a downright lie to say the weather was fine.