Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (23 page)

One by one the constables had returned, drenched to the skin, after questioning the neighbors. Bringing up the rear was the trainee, who had actually thought it was all quite exciting. Now they were all sitting in their respective offices, writing their reports.

“Not a single one of you is going before everybody’s finished,” she declared emphatically when they grumbled about the unpaid overtime.

“Bloody slave driver,” one of them took the liberty of saying when she was out of earshot. “Is she going to be the new chief inspector, then?”

They wrote and wrote. Two of them had ventured in with finished products and hopeful smiles, only to be rejected peremptorily and sent back. Finally a bundle of twenty-four A4 sheets was sitting on Hanne Wilhelmsen’s desk. Now dismissed, they rushed off like schoolboys on the last day before the summer vacation.

They still had no clue about the Iranian woman’s disappearance. It was seriously starting to worry her deeply. But now it was past nine o’clock, and she was dead tired. She ought to read these reports conscientiously before she left. There might be something in them.

“Hardly,” she said to herself after some thought.

However, she took the reports with her, for safety’s sake. She could read them at home. Before she went, she made sure the central switchboard knew to phone her as soon as they heard anything about the Iranian. Or more correctly, if they heard anything about her.

*   *   *

The weather seemed to add extra spice to the party. The rain was battering the windowpane like a real autumn evening, and inside
was warm and dry with plenty to drink. Two of the boys were now trying to fry deep-frozen fillet steaks.

“I’ll have mine raw,” Torill shouted.

“Raw,” mumbled the boy who was frying. “She’ll be lucky if it’s any less than frozen solid.”

Finn Håverstad had shown neither pleasure nor concern when Kristine arrived home and unexpectedly declared she was going to a party. She didn’t look in a particularly festive mood. But he had given his blessing for taking one of the cases of wine. They had hardly exchanged a glance. When she was out the door, and the young man she had come with had bowed and scraped his way behind her, he had felt a kind of relief that she was out of the house. If he were fortunate, she would be away all night. It looked like it, if the amount of wine they had taken was anything to go by.

He had other things to do. Other things to think about.

Kristine sat drinking next to nothing. It was extremely difficult, as Terje was watching her like a hawk. As soon as she had taken a couple of sips, he was standing there ready to refill her glass. In the end, she moved away, to sit beside a huge yucca plant. Of course Terje moved as well. It didn’t matter. On the contrary, in fact.

The party went as student parties usually do. They drank and yelled, and tucked into the fillet steak that was charred on the outside and frozen on the inside. They ate baked potatoes and made claret punch as the night drew on. They were dreading their examinations and looking forward to the summer. They made short-term plans about InterRail trips and long-term plans about doctorates and brain surgery.

When the church clock, outlined indistinctly on the other side of the road, struck twelve hollow notes, they were all extremely drunk. Except Kristine Håverstad. She had performed the feat of sitting there all evening without drinking more than a single glass. The leaves of the yucca plant, on the other hand, were already starting to droop.

*   *   *

It was now almost exactly sixteen hours since the Iranian woman had been taken into custody by two policemen in Lillehammer following a wager. Still no one had spoken to her. Still she had not uttered a peep of protest about her treatment. Still she sat, frightened to death and desperately tired, in the far corner of a detention cell with her knees tucked underneath her chin. The food sat untouched on a tray at the other end of the room. She was certain she was going to die. And so she closed her eyes and thanked Allah for every minute that passed without anyone coming to fetch her.

The shift supervisor that night was an industrious chap from Gausdal. He was thirty-two years old and had a glowing future in the police and prosecution services. He was studying law part-time and managed to follow the normal rate of progression in his studies despite working full-time and having a wife and two children and a newly built detached house. A man like him did not sleep on the job.

But it was tempting. He yawned. The crazy weather had caused the police service a pile of work that wasn’t normally their province. But when everyone else lets them down, people call the police. He had directed his troops through everything from flooded basements to people trapped in their cars with water up to the door handles. Now the rain had eased for a few hours, and the town seemed to have fallen silent at last. But he should not doze off.

His uniform was beginning to be a bit tight. His wife called it his extra comfort layer. She might be right. He was damn well-off. Good job, beautiful family, secure financial position, and pleasant in-laws. A boy from Gausdal could hardly ask for more. Smiling, he went on a round of the cells.

“You’re here again, Reidar,” he greeted an old regular with no teeth whose blood alcohol count was 4. The prisoner stood up unsteadily, swaying with pleasure at seeing him again.

“But is it you, Frogner, is it really you?” Then he fell over.

Frogner laughed. “I think you should lie down again, Reidar. It’ll be better in the morning, you’ll see.”

He knew almost all of them. Not all of them could be awakened. In that case, he went inside and shook them, forcing one eye open to check they were still alive. They were indeed. When he reached the farthest cell, he was astonished.

A woman was sitting curled up in the far corner. She was not sleeping anyway, although her eyes were closed. They were squeezed tightly together, and even from the bars on the door he could see that her eyelids were trembling.

Slowly withdrawing the bolt, he opened the heavy metal door. The woman did not visibly react, just pinched her eyes closed even more tightly.

Knut Frogner had grown up on a farm. He had seen frightened animals before. What’s more, he had two children and good common sense. He remained standing at the door.

“Hello,” he said softly.

Still no reaction.

He crouched down to make himself smaller.

“There’s no danger.”

She opened her eyes gingerly. They were dark blue.

“Who are you?”

Perhaps she did not speak Norwegian. There was something foreign about her, despite her eyes.

“Who are you?” he repeated in his schoolboy English from Gausdal.

It was not easy. The woman did not answer at all, and now she had closed her eyes again. He approached her with short, slow steps and sat down again on his haunches. He placed a hand on her knee, and she froze. But at least she opened her eyes.

“Who are you?” he repeated.

The bundle he had read contained no report about any foreigner
being brought in. In fact, there was no report about any woman brought in at all. A deeply uneasy feeling began to grip the policeman. How long had this lady actually been sitting here?

He understood one thing at least. It was no use trying to talk to her in here. Carefully, but firmly, he raised the woman into a standing position. She had obviously been sitting in the same posture for a long time, as a painful expression crossed her face when, with stiff movements, she allowed herself to stand on her own two feet. She did not smell of alcohol. She could not have been arrested for being drunk and disorderly. But to judge by her clothes, she was from Farawaystan.

Taking her by the hand, he led her out of the cell. When they reached the common room, he sent the three exhausted officers packing and switched off the video they had been watching. Then he installed the woman on the uncomfortable settee.

“I really need to know what your name is,” he said, trying to appear as pleasant as it was possible to be while wearing a uniform.

She mumbled a name. Her voice was weak, and he had no chance of understanding what she said.

“What?” he said quickly, shaking his head and cupping his hand behind his ear. That ought to be international enough.

She repeated her name, more clearly this time. It did not help at all, as he could not make head or tail of it.

Feverishly he looked around for something to write on. There was a piece of greaseproof paper at the end of the table, with a leftover brown cheese sandwich on top. He grabbed the paper, paying no attention to the scrap of bread falling on the floor. Then he patted his breast pocket and located a pen. He placed both of these in front of her. Slowly and apprehensively she lifted the pen and wrote her name, at least something that might resemble a name, on the paper.

“Do you speak Norwegian at all?”

Now she dared to nod her head.

“How long have you been here?”

“Don’t know.”

These were the first words she had spoken in almost thirty-six hours. The policeman swore under his breath and then moved heaven and earth to find out who this woman actually was.

*   *   *

Finn Håverstad did not have much to do.

The extreme weather had seemed at first to be an unexpected hindrance. Now it looked like a blessing. Everybody was staying indoors. The rapist as well. Håverstad had arrived at eleven o’clock and could see both movement and light in the terraced house in Bærum. When he discovered that, he felt a mixture of heartfelt relief and disconcerting anxiety. Deep inside, he had cherished a hope that the man would be away, had left or perhaps had visitors. Overnight guests. Then he would have been forced to postpone his actions. For a while.

But strongest of all was the relief.

The rain was still falling steadily, though it was not as much of a deluge as earlier. It was tempting to remain sitting in the car. However, he was afraid of being seen. Moreover, the last few days had shown him it was not so smart to leave your own car parked beside a crime scene. True enough, he was not planning to get away with his crime, but he would prefer to have some time. Time to calm down afterward. Several hours, a day or two. Perhaps as much as a week. He did not know yet, but he wanted to have the opportunity to decide for himself.

He therefore contented himself with stopping for a few minutes with the motor running, enough to be sure the rapist was at home. Then he let the car jolt across two speed bumps and around a corner. A row of terraced apartments, four stories high and one hundred meters in length, was situated on the left-hand side. The
wives’ cars, for which there was insufficient room in the underground parking facility, were sitting in an enormous parking lot. He left his BMW there, between an old Honda and a smart new Opel Corsa. It looked as though it enjoyed the company.

The Glock was ready for use. He had stuffed it into the waistband of his trousers, more for lack of a better place than because it was practical. It felt uncomfortable but was at least dry.

He walked the couple of hundred meters back. At the end of the road leading to the culprit’s house, he came to a halt. Across from the terrace of houses he could discern some kind of yard, with various items of play equipment and a few benches. They hadn’t been visible from the other side, since the row comprised ten connected houses, shielding it from view. From the gable wall across to the yard there were approximately twenty to thirty meters before an outcrop rose fairly steeply, probably making the play yard unpleasantly dark, even on better days than this. Momentarily, Finn Håverstad wondered whether he should alter his plans and attempt instead to enter from that side. It was far more sheltered, both with respect to the road and the detached houses situated farther down. On the other hand, a stranger on the road would probably arouse less attention. If any at all.

He would keep to his original plan. He turned up his raincoat hood and tried to walk at as normal a pace as possible over to the fifth house in the terrace. He remained standing there for a split second. It was now half past midnight, with nobody in sight. Most of the windows were in darkness. He crept into a shrubbery where three hedges met, only eight meters from the rapist’s residence.

Finn Håverstad sat there waiting.

*   *   *

Terje had not needed to be asked twice. He would probably have suggested it himself, had he not been invited. Overjoyed and extremely drunk, he stumbled out to the taxi Kristine had at last
been able to get hold of, after waiting forty minutes in an annoying telephone queue. He was being allowed to go home with her. In the middle of the night. Which could of course mean only one thing, and anticipation kept him awake nearly all the way home. But only nearly. When they swung into the courtyard in front of Kristine Håverstad’s childhood home in Volvat, she had a hard struggle to force the boy awake. Eventually she had to request help from the taxi driver to get him as far as the entrance. The taxi driver had been grouchy as hell about having to leave his vehicle in the soaking wet weather, especially as the courtyard was one enormous puddle. Muttering curses, he had dropped the boy onto the hallway floor.

“You’ll not have much fun with him there tonight,” he said sullenly, becoming slightly more cheerful when Kristine paid him fifty kroner more than the rate on the taximeter.

“But good luck anyway,” he mumbled then, with a hint of a smile.

It had not been the intention to get him so sloshed. It took her almost five minutes to haul, drag, and carry the boy the eight meters or so into the bedroom. The difficulty was even greater of course because she wanted to avoid waking her father.

The bed was narrow, but she had brought boys there before. Terje was fighting his own determined battle to awaken for what might be the big moment of his life. But when Kristine had taken off all his clothes and laid him down comfortably in a lovely bed, all hope was lost. He snored. It didn’t seem to bother him in the least when she pulled the quilt off him and turned him around, so his neat, hairy backside was presented conveniently for a jab. She had prepared the injection earlier and it lay just below the bed. Since he was more blotto than she had reckoned, strictly speaking, she released a few milliliters with the plunger. Ninety would do. Ninety milliliters of Nozinan. At the Blue Cross center, they used up to three hundred
to give the most cantankerous drunkards some well-deserved hours of sleep each time they went on a drinking spree for days, barely remembering their own names. But Terje was far from being an alcoholic, although currently he must have well over two per mille of ethanol in his veins. Moreover, he was so far gone she fleetingly doubted whether it was at all necessary to ensure he would sleep through the entire night. The doubt did not last long. She resolutely jabbed the syringe into the boy’s left buttock, and there was no reaction. She injected the contents slowly into the muscle. When the plunger reached the base, she removed the needle carefully and pressed a ball of cotton wool firmly on the injection site for a few minutes. She then tidied up scrupulously. It had all been very successful. When Terje regained consciousness late the next morning with her by his side, he would have a thumping hangover, but he would not be able to contradict her when she thanked him for a wonderful night. A boy in his prime, with more limited experience than he would ever admit to, would wonder a little, consider it deeply, and then concoct an excellent, ego-enhancing story about how marvelous it had been.