Death In Oslo

She wasn’t shy about going to the loo in the woods, but the thought of pulling down her trousers in the bitter wind made her pick up pace so she wouldn’t need to.

But it didn’t help. She had to find a suitable spot.

She headed north by the dam and broke a path through the undergrowth and the birch trees that were exploding with catkins and sticky light green leaves. A natural embankment made it difficult to go any further. The old woman gingerly tested a tussock with her boots and then lowered herself down into the ditch behind the embankment, which was about a metre and a half deep. She was just about to undo her trousers when she saw him.

He was lying peacefully asleep. One of his arms was over his face, as if to protect it. The moss he was lying on was thick and soft and the low birch trees almost acted like a duvet.

‘Hello,’ the woman called, keeping her trousers on. ‘Hello there!’

The man didn’t respond.

She struggled past a boulder and stepped in some mud. A branch whipped her face. She swallowed a scream, out of consideration for the man under the trees. Finally she managed to fight her way over to him and stood there, gasping.

Her pulse increased. She felt dizzy, and carefully lifted his arm. The eyes that stared at her were brown. They were wide open and there was a fly crawling around in one of them.

She had no idea what she was going to do. She still didn’t have a mobile phone, despite her son’s constant nagging. It ruined the whole purpose of being outdoors, and could also cause brain tumours.

The man was wearing a dark suit and some good shoes, which were very muddy. The old lady was on the verge of tears. He was so young, no more than forty, she reckoned. His face was so peaceful, with beautiful eyebrows that resembled a bird in flight over his big open eyes. His lips were blue, and for a moment she thought that the right thing to do would be to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As she pulled back his jacket to get to his heart, something fell out of his inner pocket. It was a kind of wallet, she thought, and picked it up. Then she straightened her back, as if she finally understood that the cold corpse was more than several hours beyond being saved by heart compressions. She still hadn’t noticed the bullet hole in the man’s temple.

She was suddenly overcome by nausea. Slowly she lifted her right hand. It seemed to be so far away from her, completely out of her control. Fear made her want to run away, back on to the path, to the road through the forest where there were always other people. She put the small black leather wallet in her pocket, automatically, and clambered back over the embankment. Her right leg gave way underneath her; it felt numb, but the old lady managed to struggle through the undergrowth and get back on to the gravel track, thanks to the iron willpower that had kept her so strong and healthy for eighty years and five days.

Then she collapsed and lost consciousness.

XIII

‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ Johanne said.

‘But-’‘Stop. I warned you, Adam. I told you last night and I was sure that you understood how serious I was, but then you apparently didn’t care. And that’s not why I’m calling.’

‘You can’t just leave and take the-’

‘Adam, don’t force me to raise my voice. That will frighten Ragnhild.’

It was a lie and he knew it. He couldn’t hear anything that sounded like babbling in the background, and his daughter was never quiet unless she was asleep.

‘Have you honestly left me? For real? Have you lost your mind?’

‘Perhaps a bit.’

He thought he heard the hint of a smile, and breathed easier.

‘I’m so disappointed,’ Johanne said calmly. ‘And absolutely furious with you. But we can talk about that later. Right now, I want you to listen…’

‘I have a right to know where Ragnhild is.’

‘She’s with me and she’s fine. I cross my heart and promise that I’ll phone again later today to talk everything through. And my word is worth slightly more than yours, as we both know. But just listen to me.’

Adam clenched his jaw. He balled his fist and raised it to hit something, but all he could find was the wall. A uniformed police cadet spun round about three metres further down the corridor. Adam lowered his fist, shrugged and forced a smile.

‘Is what Wencke Bencke said on the TV true?’ Johanne asked.

‘No,’ Adam groaned. ‘Not her again. Please!’

‘Just listen to me!’

‘OK.’

‘You’re grinding your teeth.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Is it true that the security cameras show no one going in or out of the President’s room? From the time that she went to bed until they discovered that she was missing?’

‘I can’t answer that.’

‘Adam!’

‘I’m bound by confidentiality, you know that.’

‘Have you gone through the films to see what happened afterwards?’

‘I haven’t gone through anything. I’m Warren’s liaison on this case, not an investigator.’

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes, but I don’t have anything to do with-’

‘When is a crime scene most chaotic, Adam?’

He bit his thumbnail. Her voice was different now. The wronged, unreasonable tone had almost disappeared. Now he heard the real Johanne, the one that never ceased to fascinate him with her Socratic way of making him see things differently, from another angle from the one he was so used to after thirty years in the force.

‘When the crime is discovered,’ he said curtly.

‘And?’

‘In the period immediately after,’ he said, uncertainly. ‘Before the area is cordoned off and all the tasks are allocated. When everything is just… chaos.’ He swallowed.

‘Exactly,’ Johanne replied in a quiet voice.

‘Shit,’ said Adam.

‘The President may not have disappeared during the night. She may have been taken later. Just after seven o’clock, when everybody already thought she was gone.’

‘But… she wasn’t there! The room was empty and there was a note from the kidnappers…’

‘Wencke Bencke knew about that too. Now the whole of Norway knows about it. What do you think the function of that note was?’

‘To tell-’

‘A message like that fools the brain into drawing conclusions,’ Johanne interrupted him. She was talking faster now. ‘It makes us believe that something has already happened. My guess is that the Secret Service guys looked very quickly around the room when they read it. It’s a big suite, Adam. They probably checked the bathroom, and maybe they opened a couple of cupboards. But the note… well, the purpose of that was to get them out of there. As quickly as possible. And if things are chaotic at an ordinary crime scene, I can only imagine what it was like at the Hotel Opera yesterday morning. With two national authorities and…’

They were both silent.

At last he could hear Ragnhild. Someone was talking to her and she was laughing. He couldn’t make out the words and it was difficult to determine the gender of the voice. It sounded coarse and husky, but didn’t necessarily sound like a man.

‘Adam?’

‘I’m still here.’