Blessed Are Those Who Thirst: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel (26 page)

“Now you’re afraid,” the other man whispered, letting the knife roam playfully over his groin. “Now perhaps you are just as scared as my daughter was. But you didn’t care about that.”

By then the rapist could not tolerate any more. Taking a deep breath, he emitted a deranged, piercing howl that could have wakened the dead.

Plunging forward, Finn Håverstad drove the huge knife from behind, upward in an enormous arc, gathering speed and
strength. The point struck the rapist in his sprawling crotch, penetrating his testicles, perforating the musculature in his groin, and disappearing into his abdominal cavity, where it stuck fast, the blade having ruptured an artery.

The scream stopped as suddenly as it had started. The sound was chopped straight off, and it became eerily silent. The rapist collapsed completely, the chair threatening to topple over, despite the weight of the television set on the seat.

Someone came storming up the stairs. Finn Håverstad turned around quietly as he heard the footsteps, wondering only how the neighbors had been alerted so quickly. Then he saw who it was.

Neither of them uttered a word. Kristine Håverstad rushed toward him, in what he anticipated would be an embrace. Stretching his arms out to his daughter, he was knocked sideways when she instead clawed along his arm to grab hold of the pistol. It dropped to the floor and she retrieved it before he managed to regain his footing.

He was much larger than her and far stronger. All the same, he was not able to prevent a shot being fired as he gripped her arm, firmly but not too hard, since he wanted to avoid hurting her. The bang made them both jump skyward. Terror stricken, she let go of the gun, and he let go of her. For several seconds they stood staring at each other, before Kristine grabbed hold of the knife handle protruding from the rapist’s loins, like a bizarre rock-hard spare penis. When she withdrew the knife, the blood gushed out.

*   *   *

Hanne Wilhelmsen and Audun Salomonsen were taken aback that their colleagues from Asker and Bærum had not yet arrived on the scene. The silent road lay in darkness, with no sign of the anticipated flashing blue lights. The car juddered to a
halt in front of the terrace of houses. As they ran toward the entrance, they heard the sound of police sirens not too far off in the distance.

The door had been forced. It was wide open. They had arrived too late.

When Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen reached the top of the stairs, she was confronted by a sight she knew would stay with her forever.

Tied to a chair with his arms twisted behind him, his legs sprawled at an angle, and his chin resting on his chest, hung her colleague Olaf Frydenberg. He resembled a frog. He was almost naked, and a river of blood was streaming down from his pubic region to a rapidly growing puddle at his feet. Before carrying out any examination, she knew he was dead.

Nevertheless, she held her gun in front of her with both hands, pointing away to a corner of the living room and ordering the two people there to stand back from the victim. They obeyed immediately, with eyes downcast, like dutiful children.

There was no pulse. She forced an eyelid open. The eyeball stared dead and senseless at her. She speedily started to loosen the ropes around his wrists and ankles.

“We’ll try artificial respiration,” she said obstinately to her colleague. “Get the first aid equipment.”

“I did it,” Finn Håverstad interrupted suddenly from his corner of the room.

“It was me!”

Kristine Håverstad sounded desperate.

“He’s lying! It was me!”

Wheeling around abruptly, Hanne Wilhelmsen scrutinized the two of them more closely. She felt no anger. Not even resignation. Only an immeasurable, profound sadness.

They both wore the same expression they had adopted the first time they had been sitting in her office. A helpless, sorrowful
countenance that even now was more striking on the huge man than on his daughter.

Kristine Håverstad still held the knife in her hand. Her father was clutching the pistol.

“Put down your weapons,” she requested, almost kindly. “There!”

She was pointing at a glass table by the window. Then she and her colleague Salomonsen set to work on an entirely futile resuscitation procedure.

T
he calendar had settled down again. At long last. Lowlying cloud cover, appropriate for the time of year, was drifting across the Oslo sky, and the temperature was around fifteen degrees Celsius, the average for June. Everything was as it should be, and the citizens took relief in the knowledge that the storm damage had not been as severe as had been feared the previous day.

Hanne Wilhelmsen sat in the canteen at the police station in Grønland. Paler than everyone else, she felt sick. She had missed two nights’ sleep in four days. She would go home soon. The superintendent had ordered her to stay away over the weekend. At least. Furthermore, he had asked her to apply for the post of chief inspector, something she definitely would not do. In any case and under whatever circumstances, not today. She wanted to go home.

Håkon Sand, on the other hand, appeared unusually pleased with himself. He was sitting smiling, lost in thought, but snapped out of it when he realized that Hanne Wilhelmsen was genuinely closer to physical breakdown than he had ever seen her before.

The canteen was situated on the sixth floor, with a fantastic view. Far out on the Oslo Fjord, a Danish ship was slowly approaching land, fully laden with pensioners and luggage illegally crammed with Danish sausages and cheap bacon. The grass outside the curved building was no longer strewn with people, and only one or two optimists were stretched out, peering expectantly up at the sky to check whether the sun might return anytime soon.

“There had to be a first time,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said, rubbing her eyes. “The way we let people down, it was really only a matter of time before some people took matters into their own hands. The bloody worst of it is . . .”

She restrained herself, shaking her head.

“The bloody worst of it is I understand them.”

Håkon Sand scrutinized her more closely. Her hair was unwashed. Her eyes were still blue, but the black ring around the irises seemed larger, as though it had eaten its way toward the pupils. Her face seemed puffy, and her bottom lip had cracked in the middle, where a narrow, hardened line of blood divided her mouth in two.

Squinting at the bright June sunlight, her eyes followed the Danish ferry. She had not received answers to so many questions. If only she had reached the house in Bærum a few minutes earlier. Five minutes. Max.

“For instance, where did he get all that blood from?”

Uninterested, Håkon Sand shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m preoccupied with something entirely different.” He brushed her question aside, gazing at her with a sly and expectant expression, in the hope that the detective inspector would ask what he was talking about.

Hanne Wilhelmsen, however, was deep in her own thoughts, and now the Danish boat was experiencing minor problems with a little cargo vessel insisting on right of way in the shipping lane. To be honest, she had not heard what he said.

“They’ll probably get away with it,” he said, a fraction too loudly, with a touch of bitterness at the detective inspector’s lack of interest. “It’s likely we won’t be able to bring a prosecution against either of them!”

That helped. Letting the Danish ferry shift for itself, Hanne stared at him, her eyes brimming with skepticism.

“What did you say? Get away with it?”

Kristine Håverstad and her father were being detained in custody. They had killed a man. Neither had tried to lie their way out of it. They were insistent. What’s more, they had been caught in flagrante only five minutes later.

Of course they couldn’t get away with it. Hanne yawned.

Håkon Sand, who had slept soundly for eight hours in his own bed, and therefore had both time and energy to study the case, and moreover had discussed it with several colleagues in the early hours of the morning, was in top form.

“Each of them claims they did it on their own,” he said, taking a swig of the bitter canteen coffee. “Both of them take the blame. Each of them on their own. They obstinately deny they were operating together. From what we know at the moment, there are many aspects indicating that this at least was true. They came in their own cars and parked in different places. In addition, Kristine had made an attempt at constructing an alibi.”

He smiled at the thought of the young lad who had been brought in for interrogation in a state Håkon hoped never to experience for himself. The student had thrown up twice in the first half hour of the interview.

“But that’s surely not a problem, Håkon! There can’t be any doubt that one of them did it, and the other must be able to be arrested as an accomplice?”

“No, actually not. Both have stories that are consistent with the facts we have. Each of them claims they killed the man and that the other one arrived immediately afterward. According to their preliminary statements, both sets of fingerprints will be on both the knife and the gun. Both have motive, both had opportunity. Both have gunshot residue on their right hands. Who shot into the ceiling and who shot the man in the arm, the parties are totally at odds about. And so, my dear chief inspector-to-be . . .”

He grinned, and she could not summon up the energy to put him right.

“And so we have quite a classic problem. In order to be found guilty, there must be proof beyond all reasonable doubt that the perpetrator committed the crime. Fifty percent is not enough! Ingenious!”

Flinging his arms out wide, he roared with laughter. People looked at them, something he realized immediately without being bothered in the slightest. Instead he got to his feet and pushed the chair toward the table. He remained standing there, leaning toward the table, his hands resting on the back of the seat.

“It’s too early to draw any substantial conclusions. There are many inquiries still to be undertaken. But if I’m not mistaken, the bronze lady on my desk will be splitting her sides with laughter!”

The police attorney smiled himself, from ear to ear.

“One more thing.”

Now he directed his gaze in embarrassment at the tabletop, and Hanne could discern a touch of pink on his face.

“Our appointment for dinner tomorrow . . .”

She had forgotten it completely.

“Unfortunately, I’ll have to cancel.”

This day was proving to be full of pleasant surprises.

“That’s okay,” she said, conspicuously fast. “We can take a rain check.”

He nodded but made no move to leave.

“I’m going to be a dad,” he said eventually, and now he was truly pink around the ears. “I’m going to be a dad at Christmas! Karen and I are going to celebrate at the weekend. We’re going away. I’m sorry to—”

“No problem, Håkon! Hundred percent okay! Congratulations!”

Putting her arms around him, she hugged him for a long time.

What a day.

*   *   *

When she arrived back in her own office, she lifted the telephone receiver without hesitation. Before she had a chance to reconsider, she dialed an internal number.

“Are you busy tomorrow, Billy T.?”

“I’ve got my boys this weekend. I’m collecting them around five o’clock. Why are you asking?”

“Would you bring them with you and come for dinner at my place and . . .”

All things in moderation. She could not bring herself to say her name. He saved her.

“They are three, three, four, and five years old,” he warned.

“That doesn’t matter. Come at six o’clock.”

Then she phoned Cecilie at work to give notice that the menu would have to be changed. It would have to be spaghetti. With loads of bright yellow fizzy drinks.

The emotion she felt as she replaced the receiver shocked her more deeply than everything that had happened during the last twenty-four dramatic hours.

She was happy!

Turn the page for an excerpt from

DEATH OF THE DEMON

The third book in Anne Holt’s acclaimed Hanne Wilhelmsen series

Coming June 2013 from Scribner in paperback and eBook

Translated from the Norwegian by

Anne Bruce

In
Death of a Demon,
Hanne Wilhelmsen, recently promoted to chief inspector in the Oslo police, must grapple with her new administrative responsibilities—not the maverick detective’s strong suit—as she investigates a grisly murder in an Oslo foster home and tracks down a runaway twelve-year-old boy.
Death of the Demon
is a dark and captivating new chapter in Holt’s brilliant, rollicking series that examines the murky intersection of crime and justice.

Praise for
Blind Goddess
(Book #1 in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series, now available from Scribner)

“A
good old-fashioned mystery
.”

—
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Holt proves
a masterful plotter
. Unexpected twists hold up to scrutiny, loose ends are tied up, and the
finale leaves readers wanting more
.”

—
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

I
’m the new boy!”

With resolute strides he stomped to the middle of the floor, where he remained standing while the snow from his enormous tennis shoes formed little puddles around his feet. His legs wide apart, as though to conceal the knock-kneed cross formed by his legs, he threw out his arms and repeated:

“I’m the new boy!”

His head was clean-shaven on one side. From just above his right ear, raven black spiky hair was combed in a curve across the crown, slicked over his round cranium, and ending with a straight trim, several millimeters above his left shoulder. A single thick lock draped his eye, matted like a leather strap. His mouth formed a peevish
U
as he tried to blow the strands into place, over and over. His oversized quilted parka fit loosely around the waist, half a meter too long and with the thirty centimeters of superfluous length on the sleeves rolled up into a pair of gigantic cuffs. His pants hung in folds on his legs. When he managed with considerable difficulty to open his jacket, it was obvious that his pants were nevertheless stretched like sausage skins as soon as they reached his thighs.