screwdriver and began to prise the board loose. She lifted it up carefully to reveal a small compartment, entirely filled with something packed in a plastic bag. The redheaded constable got so excited that he forgot to breathe through his mouth.
“It’s money, Inspector Wilhelmsen, look, it’s money! And what a hell of a lot!”
Hanne stood up, took off her soiled gloves, threw them in a corner, and put on a new pair. Then she squatted down and fished out the package. He was right. It was money. A fat bundle of thousand-kroner notes. At a quick guess she estimated it to be at least fifty thousand kroner. The constable had taken out a polythene bag from his inside pocket and held it open for her. It was just about big enough.
“Well done, Henriksen. You’ll make a good Sherlock Holmes.”
Hanne’s praise heartened the youngster, and in his delight at the prospect of getting out of the fetid place he cleared everything up himself and locked the door behind them, leaping down the stairs after his superior like a puppy with its tail wagging.
THURSDAY 19 NOVEMBER
None of them had expected the result they got. To tell the truth, no one but Hanne Wilhelmsen had expected any result at all. Hakon Sand had dismissed Lavik’s coffee cup with a shrug of his shoulders the previous Thursday. Han van der Kerch’s death had overshadowed everything. There had been a hell of a fuss about the belt-rather unnecessarily, since the chap could have used either his shirt or his trousers for the same purpose. Experience showed that it was impossible to stop a determined suicide once he’d made up his mind. And Han van der Kerch certainly had.
“Yes!”
She bent forward at the waist, clenched her fist, and brought down her arm as if she were pulling an imaginary steam whistle.
“Yes!”
She repeated the movement. The others in the incident room watched her in silence, somewhat embarrassed.
Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen flung a document on the desk in front of the lanky chief inspector. Kaldbakken picked it up calmly, in mute reproof of her unseemly outburst of emotion. He took his time. When he put it down there was the faintest trace of a smile on his rather equine face.
“This is quite gratifying,” he said, clearing his throat, “quite gratifying.”
“Aw, come on! What an understatement!”
Hanne would have welcomed a more enthusiastic response. Jorgen Lavik’s fingerprints, clearly delineated on a coffee cup from the police canteen, were identical to a beautiful complete print on a thousand-kroner note found under a floorboard in the nauseating flat of a deceased drug addict on Mosseveien. The report from Forensics was unambiguous and unassailable.
“It can’t be true!”
Hakon Sand snatched the report so fast that it ripped down the middle. It was true.
“Now we’ve got the bugger,” the ginger-haired constable cried out, bursting with pride at his contribution to the discovery. “All we’ve got to do is bring him in!”
Far from it, of course. The fingerprints proved nothing. But they were a damned good indication of something. The problem was that Lavik would almost certainly be able to concoct a whole host of explanations. His link to Frostrup had been legitimate enough. The prints weren’t adequate on their own. Everyone in the room, with the single exception perhaps of the over-eager young constable, was agreed on that. Hanne set up a flip chart in front of the group and picked up a red and a blue marker. Neither worked.
“Here you are,” said her young colleague, tossing a new black spirit marker across the room.
“Let’s list what we’ve got,” said Hanne, starting to write. “First of all: Han van der Kerch’s explanation to his lawyer.”
“Has she told us what he said?”
Kaldbakken was genuinely taken aback.
“Yes. You’ll find it in Doc. 11.12. The Dutchman left a letter, a sort of suicide note. A farewell message for Karen Borg. She was able to report what he’d told her-we interviewed her all day yesterday. It was exactly as we thought, but it was wonderful to get it corroborated! And the main thing is that we now have it in writing.”
Without further comment she turned to the board and wrote:
1. H.v.d.K.’s statement (Karen B.)
2. Link Lavik-Roger Car Salesm. (phone no. in bk)
3. Lavik’s fingerpr. on banknote at Frostrup’s (!!!)
4. Code list found at J.F.’s same as one at Hans Olsen’s
5. Lavik’s visit to cells on day H.v.d.K. lost his mind
6. Lavik’s visit to prison on day of Frostrup’s overdose
“Han van der Kerch’s statement is important,” she said, using a broken ruler as a pointer to tap the first item on the chart. “The only, and perhaps rather ticklish, drawback is that we don’t have it from the man himself. Hearsay evidence. On the other hand: Karen Borg is an extra-credible witness. She can verify that Kerch had been involved for several years. He also confessed to his association with Roger the car salesman, and he’d heard rumours about lawyers lurking in the background. Rumours are a rather insubstantial basis for arrest, but all the trouble he went to in his choice of lawyer seems to imply that he had fairly reliable information. Anyway, Karen Borg’s statement means we’ve got Roger in the bag.”
She exchanged the ruler for a marker pen and underlined Roger’s name heavily.
“And we’re getting closer to our friend Jorgen.”
Heavy underlining beneath Lavik’s name.
“The connection here is wafer thin, even if we’ve established that they knew one another. Lavik has admitted it once, and will doubtless do so again. He’ll say it was more meetings with clients, but there’s still the incontestable fact that it’s rather odd to keep phone numbers in code. A lot of trouble, and not undertaken without good reason.
“Also,” she added emphatically, putting a thick ring round item three on the list to reinforce her words, “also, we’ve discovered Lavik’s fingerprints on Jacob Frostrup’s banknotes. The fact that
She waited as if to allow for objections. None came, so she resumed.
“Item four takes us further into the unknown. This is very significant for the wider context, and I’m convinced that these codes could tell us quite a lot if only we could crack the damned things. But since we don’t intend to charge Lavik with murder, I’m not sure we should put too much weight on them now. We might need an ace up our sleeves at a later stage. As for Lavik’s presence at critical moments in the lives of Van der Kerch and Frostrup, that too is slightly more peripheral and can be put on hold. For the time being. So we’re back to items one to three as the basis for a possible arrest.”
She paused again.
“Would that be sufficient, Hakon?”
He looked at her, and knew that she knew. It was nowhere near enough.
“Arrest for what? For murder? No. For drug dealing? Not really. We’ve got no grounds at all when it comes down to it.”
“Well, yes we have,” Kaldbakken objected. “The find at Frostrup’s wasn’t totally lacking in significance.”
“Use your imagination, then, Hakon,” Hanne appealed with a wry smile. “You could make something out of it, couldn’t you? The charges you come up with are often inaccurate and riddled with holes, yet you seem to get custody orders in their hundreds.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” said Hakon. “You’re forgetting that this man is a lawyer himself. No court will
