Sohlberg and the Gift (46 page)

“Enough.”

“They will find out it was you.”

He looked out to the sea and scanned the horizon. His blue eyes burned with Viking vigor. “No one will find us.”

“They will find us.”

“Enough.”

“You’ll see . . . you can’t stop this. I can’t believe you got us into such a mess. This is not good. We’re in big big trouble.”

He shook his head and started planning how to ambush and kill anyone who landed on his island.

~ ~ ~

Seasickness tormented Chief Inspector Hvoslef. Nausea continued to plague him even two hours after he had landed on the northwest shores of the island of Reinøya.

Constable Rasch leaned over and said, “Are you okay?”

Without any conviction Hvoslef nodded and weakly said, “Yes.”

The austere cliff-scraped landscape and the odd-shaped mountains and the thin and sporadic green plants and brush served as grim reminders to Hvoslef that this was indeed the Land of White Death and that he must return to town as soon as possible. Nearby clumps of spindly Downy Birch seemed ominous if not cruel hoaxes in comparison to the lush Scandinavian forests that grew south of the Arctic Circle. Shrieking seagulls added a dirge that promised death or madness.

Hvoslef’s discomfort increased even more when he saw Leif Jørgensen the Third approach him.

“Chief Inspector,” said the 68-year-old doctor, “what have we here?”

“Nine dead men. Shot execution-style in the back of the head.”

Hvoslef went on to give the doctor a brief summary of the investigation thus far. He intensely disliked the medical examiner who had an imperial air of intellectual superiority.

Except for Hvoslef everyone in Tromsø felt that Jørgensen’s arrogance was well-earned because the doctor was the third generation of Leif Jørgensens MDs who had served as highly-respected medical examiners of Troms County.

Hvoslef eyed the balding doctor and his angular bird-like features and giant beak of a nose and loathed him even more. This third version of Leif Jørgensens had also worked for decades as a professor of forensic pathology at the University of Tromsø’s School of Medicine
and
at the University Hospital of North Norway and despite suicide being the leading cause of death in Troms County the good doctor like his father and grandfather always checked off the box marked ACCIDENT instead of the box marked SUICIDE for the sake of the surviving family and friends and the dead one’s memory and that’s why Troms natives adored the Leif Jørgensens especially for the Jørgensens never having left Tromsø for Oslo as did most other educated or wealthy people in the forlorn land peopled with melancholy.

“Well now,” declared Jørgensen, “I guess it’s time to find out what really happened to these folks.”

Hvoslef’s face reddened at the stinging slight implied in the comment—that Jørgensen the medical doctor and medico-legal expert and not Hvoslef the police detective would discover what had really transpired at the crime scene. Hvoslef decided it was time to cut the doctor down a little. “Herr doktor . . . it’s rather obvious that each of these nine men have been murdered with a gunshot wound to the head. Isn’t it now?”

“No it’s not obvious. . . . I won’t know the cause of death until I fully examine the bodies. They may have other wounds somewhere in their bodies. . . . Those wounds may or may not be fatal . . . and those wounds may or may not be pre-existing to the cranial wounds. I won’t know
that
until their clothes are removed and I determine the exact cause of death. Also . . . all or some of these individuals may have drowned or been poisoned first.”

“Why would anyone shoot these nine men in the head if they were already dead?”

“Nine men? . . . You’re wrong on that count Hvoslef . . . one of your nine men is a woman. The third from the right.”

Waves of anger and nausea rolled inside Hvoslef. He almost threw up and he later wished that he had done so on the doctor’s expensive and elegant clothes. “I think . . . I’m going to. . . .”

“Yes. What? . . . What are you going to do?”

Hvoslef’s rage worsened with the sickening thought that he was forever stuck with the only expert in Tromsø and Troms County who was authorized to render forensic or medico-legal opinions on a person’s cause of death by The Norwegian Commission of Forensic Medicine.

Soon after arriving at Tromsø to assume his new position Hvoslef had tried to fire Jørgensen and replace him with a younger and more pliable and less experienced candidate but under Norway’s Criminal Procedure Act only The Commission had the power to choose who could testify as a forensic expert in criminal proceedings and who could perform autopsies and write autopsy reports which had to be filed with the Commission.

“Hvoslef are you sick? . . . You’re absolutely green. Let me get my stethoscope and bag.”

~ ~ ~

Later that day the man came back to his cabin by the fjord. He dropped his enormous frame into the squealing sofa.

“The cops are out there in force . . . dozens and dozens of them . . . plus a bunch of scientist types in white smocks. They’ve got five big boats . . . and two helicopters.”

“Did they see you?”

“Yes and no. I took the boat towards Ringvassøy . . . pretended I was fishing . . . I used the old binoculars.”

“I hope you didn’t go back into Hansnes.”

“No,” he lied.

“Someone in that stinking town is bound to put two and two together.”

“Bah. They’re idiots.”

“They have nothing else to do but gossip and spy on everyone.”

“They won’t.”

“Who are you kidding? . . . They knew we were a couple long before your wife knew and she used to keep very close tabs on you.”

He said nothing. No one ever won an argument with her. She was ten years older and acted too often like his boss. But she was smart and willing to live the hard outdoors life of the woman of a fisherman and a poacher and a thief and she ran his businesses well and exhausted him in the sack. He grunted and got up.

“Where are you going?”

He left the cabin and despite her harridan screams he felt very sure about himself and his decisions. He went into the brush to check the tripwires that surrounded their cabin and they were tight and ready to trigger the deadly and silent missiles that would shoot out of the handmade crossbows that he had built several years ago for such an eventuality.

“Come back here! . . . You need to clean the boat’s sump. I told you to clean it last week.”

He hid behind a clump of Downy Birch and gently picked up one of the crossbows and aimed it at her direction. She was standing by the front door clueless to his aim. He wondered what she’d do if the steel-tipped bolt thudded deep into the wall next to her.

What if I instead shoot her in the head by accident with my crossbow?

Anything could happen out here in the wilderness. Anything.