Authors: Anne Holt
Dagens Næringsliv
had fallen on the floor.
She bent down and picked it up. It was the current edition, and she hadn’t read it. Not that there was a great deal to read; the leading article and every other headline on the front page was about the financial crisis. Up to now the collapse of the world’s financial markets had
felt largely irrelevant to her, even if she was reluctant to admit it. Both she and Adam were employed within the public sector, neither of them was in danger of losing their jobs, and interest rates were in free fall. They were already noticing that they had more disposable income than they’d had for a long time.
She started reading from the back as usual.
The main news on the stock market page was to do with the death of the installation artist Niclas Winter. Johanne had seen several of his pieces, and
Vanity Fair, reconstruction
in particular had made an impression when the whole family went into the city one day and spent an hour among Winter’s three installations on Rådhuskaia. Kristiane had been completely fascinated; Ragnhild had been more interested in the seagulls and the fountain; and Adam had snorted and shaken his head at the idea that this kind of thing was regarded as art.
It seemed Winter had no heirs.
His mother and maternal grandparents were dead. He had no siblings, and his mother had also been an only child. There was quite simply no one to inherit the small fortune Niclas Winter had unknowingly left behind. Apart from the completed piece
I was thinking of something blue and maybe grey, darling
, it turned out there were four more large installations in the deceased artist’s studio.
Connoisseurs in the art world were expressing themselves in particularly high-flown terms about
CockPitt
, a homo-erotic homage to Angelina Jolie’s husband. Evidently there had already been an anonymous bid of four million kroner for the work.
Dagens Næringsliv
’s sources claimed that the actor himself wanted to buy it.
In spite of the financial crisis, it seemed there was no shortage of money when it came to Niclas Winter’s art now that he was dead. Statoil-Hydro had already put in a claim for the installation that they had ordered then cancelled, and only gave up when the administrator of the estate was able to produce the relevant documentation. His approximate and preliminary valuation of the sculptures was around 15 to 20 million kroner. Maybe more. The article mentioned that, ironically, Niclas had lived on a small income and the goodwill of various patrons of the arts, and only became a wealthy man after his death. A not uncommon fate among artists, as
the businessman and art collector Christen Sveaas pointed out. He had two smaller installations by Niclas Winter in his extensive collection in Kistefos, and was able to confirm that the value of both pieces had risen dramatically.
A background article made it clear that Niclas certainly had his demons. He was HIV positive, but the condition was kept in check with the help of medication. Since the age of eighteen he had ended up in rehab three times. His last stay, four years ago, had been a success. His best work had been created since then, and two of his collaborators expressed great surprise at the fact that Niclas had started using heroin again. He was on the brink of a major international breakthrough, and particularly in the last few weeks before his death he had seemed contented, almost happy. Previous relapses had occurred as a result of artistic setbacks, so it was difficult to understand why he would have sought refuge in drugs at this point.
Johanne was aware that she was breathing more calmly, and was actually starting to feel tired. Reading about the misfortunes of others could sometimes provide a new perspective on things. She allowed the newspaper to drop on to the bed, and her eyes closed.
Kristiane is safe, she thought, feeling that sleep was on its way at last.
She didn’t even dare to lie down and turn out the light. She just wanted to slip into the darkness inside her eyelids. Sleep. Just wanted to sleep.
Kristiane is safe with Isak and tomorrow I will speak to Adam. Everything will be fine, we’ll all be fine.
When she woke up four hours later the newspaper was still lying in front of her on the bed, open at the article about the dead installation artist Niclas Winter.
*
‘Have you seen this article?’
Kristen Faber looked up reluctantly from his documents and took the newspaper his secretary was holding out to him.
‘What’s it about?’ he mumbled, trying to cram the rest of the Danish pastry in his mouth without making too many crumbs.
A fine shower of greasy dough and almond paste landed on his shirt
front and he leaned forward in an attempt to brush it off without leaving a stain.
‘Isn’t that yesterday’s paper?’
‘Yes,’ said his secretary. ‘I took it home after work, as usual, and I found this. It’s hardly surprising that your client didn’t turn up! He’s dead.’
‘Who?’
He carried on chewing and held the paper up in front of him with one hand.
‘Oh,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘Him. Jesus. Wasn’t he quite young?’
‘If you read the article,’ said his secretary with an indulgent smile, ‘then—’
‘I never read the stock market page. Let’s see. Niclas Winter. Aha. An overdose, eh? Poor sod. It looks as if …’
He stopped chewing now.
‘Bloody hell. He was famous. I’ve never heard of the bloke. Except as a potential client, I mean.’
As he put the newspaper down on the desk, his secretary went off to find a dustpan and brush. He carried on reading as she swept the floor around him, and he was still reading when she went away and returned with a Thermos of freshly brewed coffee.
‘Your breakfast isn’t particularly nutritious,’ she said gently, filling his cup. ‘You ought to eat before you leave home. Wholemeal bread or cereal. Not Danish pastries, for heaven’s sake! When did you last drink a glass of milk, for example?’
‘If I needed a mother around here I’d employ my own. Where are those bloody documents?’
He had started shuffling through the heaps of current material. He was certain he’d placed the sealed brown envelope in the pile on his desk before he went home for a shower, after an eventful return flight from Barbados. Now it was nowhere to be seen.
‘Shit. I’m due in court in fifteen minutes. Can you try and find his papers? They’re in a sealed envelope with
Property of Niclas Winter
and his date of birth on it.’
He stood up, pulled on his jacket and grabbed his briefcase on the way to the door.
‘And Vera! Don’t open it! I want to have that pleasure myself!’
The door slammed behind him, and once again silence descended on the office of Kristen Faber, solicitor.
*
Astrid Tomte Lysgaard didn’t really know if she liked the depth of silence in the house when Lukas had gone to work and the children had been dropped off at school and nursery. None of her friends were housewives, apart from the obligatory year after each birth, but she had the impression that most of them envied her the peace they assumed must descend on the house each day between 8.30 and 4.15.
For a long time she had felt the same way.
The daily housework rarely took more than three hours, often less. Although she took the children each morning and picked them up each afternoon, and did all the family shopping, there was still a lot of time left over. She read. She enjoyed going for walks. Twice a week she went to the Nautilus gym on Idrettsveien. Occasionally, she would feel a pang of unhappiness, but it never lasted long.
The fact that everything was done and dinner was on the table when Lukas got home made the afternoons calm. Made their life together more enjoyable. Family life much better. They could spend time with the children instead of worrying about the housework, and Lukas showed her every single day how grateful he was that she had chosen to stay at home.
Since her mother-in-law’s death, everything had changed.
Lukas was grieving in a way that frightened her.
He seemed so distant.
Mechanical.
He said very little, and was prone to losing his temper, even with the children. Under normal circumstances he was the one who sat down and helped their eldest son with his schoolwork, but at the moment he was clearly unable to concentrate on the complexities of Year 2 homework. Instead, he had started clearing out the garage, where he was intending to to build new shelves along one wall. It must be freezing cold out there every evening, and when he finally did come in he would eat his evening meal in silence, then go to bed without even touching her.
It was so quiet in the house, and she didn’t like it.
She set down the iron and went over to the window to switch on the radio. Another miserable day was pressing itself against the wet glass. Surely it had to stop raining soon. January was always a desolate month, but this one was worse than usual. The low pressure was actually having a physical effect on her; for several days she had been troubled by a slight headache, and now it had got worse. Her temples were pounding, and she tried massaging them gently. It didn’t help at all. She would go to the bathroom and take a couple of Alvedon before finishing the ironing.
There were no painkillers in the locked medicine cabinet. She searched in despair among Asterix plasters and Flux, bottles of Pyrisept and Vademecum. Not a painkiller in sight, apart from suppositories for children.
It was as if not being able to find any tablets had made the headache worse.
Lukas’s migraine tablets, she thought.
They would help.
The problem was that they weren’t in the medicine cabinet. Lukas thought the lock was too easy to force, and strong medication could be dangerous for a curious eight-year-old. Instead, he kept the box locked in the drawer of the big desk in his study. Astrid knew where the key was: behind a first edition of
Around the World in Eighty Days
, which his parents had given him on his twenty-first birthday.
She had never opened the drawer, and hesitated before inserting the key in the lock.
They had no secrets from one another, she and Lukas.
Perhaps she ought to ring and ask him first.
He was her husband, she thought wearily, and she only wanted one tablet. Lukas had never told her not to look in the drawer. The very idea of telling each other not to do something was completely alien to them.
The lock opened with an almost inaudible click. She pulled out the drawer and found herself staring down at a photograph. A woman, and the photograph must be quite old. For a while she just stood there looking down at it, then eventually she picked it up, cautiously, and held it under the brighter light of the desk lamp.
There was something familiar about the face, but Astrid couldn’t quite place it. In a way the shape of the face and the straight nose reminded her of Lukas, but that had to be a coincidence. The woman in the photograph also had the same funny teeth, one front tooth lying slightly on top of the other, but after all lots of people had teeth like that. The singer Lill Lindfors, for example, as Astrid had often pointed out when they were young and she was besotted with everything about Lukas.
Despite the fact that she had no idea who the woman was, it struck her in some odd way that she had seen this photograph before. She just couldn’t remember where. As she stared at the woman she realized her headache had disappeared. Quickly, she put the photograph back, closed and locked the drawer and returned the key to its hiding place.
When she left Lukas’s study she closed the door carefully behind her, as if she really had done something forbidden.
*
The depressing piles of unsolved crimes in Silje Sørensen’s office were getting her down. There was barely room for a coffee cup on her crowded desk, even though everything was in neatly sorted files. She sat down on her chair, pushed aside a bundle of newspaper cuttings and put down the cup, before starting to go through the whole lot.
She had to reprioritize.
Her list of things to do was growing.
The Police Officers’ Association’s more or less legal actions and protests against terrible working conditions, low pay, inadequate staffing and the threat to pension entitlement had led to a somewhat acerbic tone in any dealings between the government and the police. Officers were no longer so willing to work overtime. Things didn’t get done as quickly nowadays. The organization’s 11,000-plus members were gradually beginning to take a fresh look at their priorities. Although the statistics hadn’t yet been processed, it looked as if the clear-up rate for 2008 had fallen dramatically in comparison with previous years – and it was only January. Employees were demanding their right to free time, and were off sick more frequently. Sometimes this coincided noticeably with public holidays and weekends, when
major challenges awaited those who were charged with maintaining law and order.
The criminals were having an easier time all round.
People felt less and less safe. The police had always scored highly when it came to credibility and trustworthiness, but now they were losing the sympathy of the public. More and more frequently the papers were running stories about victims of violent crime who had been unable to report the offence because their local police station wasn’t manned, rural stations that were closed at weekends, and victims of crime who had to wait several days for the police to turn up and look for any clues. If they turned up at all, that is.
Silje Sørensen was a member of the union, but she had long since abandoned any attempt to keep a record of her overtime. The only yardstick she used was the reaction at home. When her sons became too much of a handful and her husband became more and more taciturn, she tried to spend more time at home. Otherwise, she sneaked off to work outside normal working hours as often as she could.
As the only child of a shipping owner, her decision to train as a police officer hadn’t exactly been expected. Her mother had gone into a state of shock and hysteria when she learned of her daughter’s career choice. This lasted throughout Silje’s first year in college. We’ve wasted a fortune on boarding schools in Switzerland and England, her mother wailed, and now my daughter is going to throw away her future working in the public sector! If she must get her hands dirty dealing with violent criminals and the like, then why on earth couldn’t she become a solicitor instead? Or a legal advisor within the police service, if the worst came to the worst?