Death In Oslo

that paid its police what they were actually worth.

‘Make yourself at home,’ Hanne Wilhelmsen said. ‘There are towels in the cupboard over there. I’ll put some clothes outside the door, so you can get them when you’re ready. Just take the time you need.’

She rolled her chair out of the bathroom again and shut the door.

It took Madam President a while to get undressed. Her muscles were still tender and sore. For a moment she was unsure what to do with the soiled clothes, before she noticed that Hanne had put a folded bin liner by one of the sinks.

What a strange woman, thought the President. ‘But weren’t there two of them? Three, with the housekeeper.’

She was naked now. She stuffed the clothes into the bin liner and tied it carefully. What she really wanted was a bath, but a shower was probably more sensible, given how dirty she was.

The warm water poured from a showerhead that was about the size of a dinner plate. Helen Bentley groaned, partly from pleasure and partly from the pain that coursed through her body as she leant her head back so the water would wash over her face.

There was another woman there last night. Helen Bentley remembered it clearly now. Someone who wanted to tell the police. The two women had spoken together in Norwegian, and she hadn’t been able to make out anything, other than a word that sounded like police. The woman in the wheelchair must have won the argument.

The shower was helping.

It was like purification in every sense. She turned the tap on full. The pressure increased noticeably. The jets of water felt like arrows massaging her skin. She gasped. Filled her mouth with water so she could hardly breathe, then spat it out, let everything run over her. She scrubbed herself thoroughly with a hemp glove that felt coarse and comforting on her hand. Her skin went red. Bright red from the hot water and flaming red from the hemp glove. Her cuts stung intensely when the water hit them.

She had stood exactly like this that late autumn evening in 1984, the evening she had never shared with anyone and that therefore no one must know about.

She had showered for nearly forty minutes when she got home. It was midnight. She remembered that clearly. She had scrubbed herself with a loofah until she bled, as if it were possible to scrape a visual impression off your skin. Make it vanish for ever. The hot water had run out, but she’d stayed in the freezing cascades until Christopher had come in and asked with some concern if she was going to get Billie ready for bed.

It had been raining outside. The rain had poured from the skies in deafening sheets that hammered on the tarmac, on the car, on the roofs and trees and the playground over the road from the house, where a swing swung backwards and forwards on the gusts of wind, and a woman had been standing waiting.

She wanted Billie back.

Helen’s daughter had been born to another woman. But all the papers were in order.

She remembered screaming, All the papers are in order, and she remembered pulling her purse from her bag and waving it in front of the other woman’s pale, determined face: How much do you want? How much do I need to pay you not to do this to me?

It wasn’t about the money, Billie’s biological mother said.

She knew that the papers were valid, she said, but they said nothing about Billie’s father. And he had come back now.

She said that with a slight smile, a vaguely triumphant expression, as if she had won a competition and couldn’t help boasting about it.

Father! Father! You never said anything about the father! You said you weren’t sure, and that in any case, the guy was gone, over the hills, an irresponsible slob, and you wouldn’t want Billie to be exposed to him. You said you wanted what was best for Billie, and that was for her to come and live with us, with Christopher and me, and that all the papers were in order. You even signed them! You signed, and Billie has her own room now, a room with pink wallpaper and a white crib with a mobile that she can reach out and touch, which makes her smile.

The father wanted to look after both of them, the woman said. She had to shout in the howling storm. He wanted to look after Billie and Billie’s real mother. Biological fathers had rights too. She was stupid not to have given his name when Billie was born, because then all this could have been avoided. She apologised. But that was the situation now. Her boyfriend was out of prison and had come back to her. Things had changed. Surely being a lawyer, Helen Bentley would understand that.

She unfortunately had to have Billie back now.

Madam President laid her palms against the tiles.

She couldn’t bear to remember. For over twenty years she had tried to suppress the memory of her panic as she turned away from the woman and ran towards the car on the other side of the road. She wanted to get the diamond necklace that her father had given her earlier that evening. They had been celebrating Billie, and her father’s face had been flushed and sweaty, and he had laughed and laughed about his little granddaughter, while everyone exclaimed how beautiful she was, how cute, little Billie Lardahl Bentley.

The necklace was still in the glove compartment, and maybe Helen could use the diamonds and a credit card to buy her child again.

Two credit cards. Three. Take them all!

But while she was fumbling with the car key and trying to hold back the tears and panic that were threatening to overwhelm her, she heard the loud thump. A frightening, solid sound that made her turn in time to see a body in a red raincoat sail through the air. Then she heard another thud through the rain as the woman hit the tarmac.

A small sports car spun off round the corner. Helen Bentley didn’t even register the colour. All was quiet.

Helen no longer heard the rain. She didn’t hear anything. Slowly and mechanically she walked across the road. When she was a few metres from the red-coated woman she stopped.

She was lying in such a peculiar position. So twisted and unnatural, and even in the poor light from the street lamp, Helen could see the blood pouring from a wound on her head. It mixed with the rainwater and became a dark river that twisted its way to the gutter. The woman’s eyes were wide open and her mouth was moving.

‘Help me.’

Helen Lardahl Bentley took a couple of steps back.

Then she turned and ran to the car, pulled open the door, jumped in and drove off. She drove home, and stood in the shower for forty minutes, scrubbing herself with a loofah until she bled.

They never heard any more from Billie’s biological mother. And almost exactly twenty years later, on a November night in 2004, Helen Lardahl Bentley was pronounced the winner of the presidential election in the US. Her daughter stood with her on the podium, a tall, blonde young woman who had never made her parents anything but proud.

Madam President pulled off the hemp glove, took down a bottle of shampoo and soaped her hair. It made her eyes sting. But it felt good. It broke up the image of the injured woman lying on the wet tarmac, with her head covered in blood and muck.

Jeffrey Hunter had shown her a letter when he woke her in the hotel room, silently and far too early. She was confused and he had put his finger on her lips in a disconcertingly intimate manner.

They knew about the child, it said. They would expose her secret. She had to go with Jeffrey. The Trojan Horse was operative and they would disclose her secret and destroy her.

The letter was signed by Warren Scifford.

Helen Bentley mentally grabbed the name and clung on to it. She clenched her teeth and let the water fall on her face.

Warren Scifford.

She wasn’t going to think about the woman in the red raincoat. She had to think about Warren. And him alone. She had to focus. She rotated slowly in the shower and let the water pummel her aching back. She lowered her head and breathed in deeply. In and out.

Verus amicus rara avis.

A true friend is a rare bird.

That was what had convinced her. Only Warren knew about the inscription on the back of the watch that she had given him after the election. He was an old, good friend and had contacted her before the final televised debate