The Lion's Mouth (28 page)

“You can just let this drop, Billy T. You’re not getting any search warrant. But if it’s any consolation …”

He fell back onto his heels with a bump.

“… last Friday a disclosure order was sent to the guard. In other words, he received a formal demand for the same thing that you had requested so nicely. It will now be up to his heirs to comply with it. He probably has parents somewhere. If Tone-Marit discovers that the guard needs further investigating, then I’ll discuss that with her. With Tone-Marit. Not with you.”

“But, Håkon!”

Billy T. was not making any concessions.

“The guard’s death is all too convenient! Can’t you see that?”

Now Håkon Sand burst out laughing.

“So you think there’s a terrorist organization that can arrange the blizzard of the century in northern Norway, and then instigate an unexpected storm and an enormous avalanche? That avalanche was planned in November, you know! That was when it started snowing to such an amazing extent. An uncle of mine lives in Tromsø. He was hospitalized last week for a heart attack caused by too much snow clearing. Huh!”

He laughed again, long and heartily.

“What an incredible show of weather to orchestrate! You’re wrong about this, Billy T. For once in your life, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.”

He was right. Billy T. sulked. He stood up abruptly, then crouched down and embraced the rubber whale.

“I don’t give a shit about any of it,” he said angrily, and left the office.

“And put that whale back where you found it,” Håkon Sand bellowed after him. “Do you hear?
Put it back!”

12.15,
SUPREME COURT

F
ive judges sat in their lunchroom enjoying tea and packed lunches in what was called “the long break”. Two of them had still not become accustomed to skipping coffee. In the Supreme Court, people drank tea. The room was spacious and elegant, its two sets of pale birch-wood sofas upholstered in apple-green wool to complement the warm gold of the walls. Several pictures hung around the room, attractive colorist works. The fine white porcelain cups rattled faintly, and now and again careful little slurps could be heard.

“Has anybody seen Benjamin Grinde today?”

The furrow between the Chief Justice’s eyes betrayed the slight unease he had felt since his discovery a couple of hours earlier that Judge Grinde was nowhere to be found.

“I dropped by his office a short time ago,” the Chief Justice continued. “He was to be the first to consider the verdict in that social security case tried last Wednesday, wasn’t he?”

Three of the other judges nodded feebly.

“That’s what I thought. I am delivering a lecture to the social security tribunal next week, and would like to be able to refer to the most recent decision.”

“I haven’t seen him either,” Judge Sunde said, straightening his snow-white shirt collar.

“Nor me,” another two said, almost in chorus.

“But he was supposed to have his opinion ready this afternoon,” Judge Løvenskiold remarked. “We are having a meeting at four o’clock. So this is—”

“Odd.” One of the others finished his sentence. “Really odd.”

The Chief Justice stood up and stepped across to the telephone just beside the elegant kitchenette to the left of the entrance door. After a short, subdued conversation, he replaced the receiver and turned to face the others.

“This is very worrying,” he said in a booming voice. “His office staff say he was expected as usual today, but he has not turned up. He hasn’t left any messages either.”

As the judges looked down into their teacups, they heard a truck engine idling in the street outside.

“I must look into this,” the Chief Justice mumbled. “Immediately.”

Had Benjamin Grinde been taken ill? It was extremely unlike him to be absent without explanation. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court sat in his own office listening to the ring tone on the telephone receiver. He knew that the telephone at Odins gate 3 was now ringing, but it was evidently falling on deaf ears. He abandoned the attempt and replaced the receiver carefully.

In his employees’ files, there were two numbers provided for Grinde’s mother, his nearest relative. One was foreign, though the
Chief Justice was unable to identify the country code off the top of his head. The other one began with 22 – Oslo. He dialed it, slowly and painstakingly.

“Hello, this is the Grindes’ house,” chirped the person at the other end. “How can I help you?”

The Chief Justice introduced himself.

Birdie Grinde was on top of the world. Yesterday she had received a visit from a journalist, and today the Chief Justice himself was calling.

“No, such a pleasure,” she shrieked, forcing the Chief Justice to hold the receiver away from his ear. “How
can
I help you?”

He explained his business.

“I can only think that Ben just needs some rest,” she reassured him. “He’s exhausted, you know. This affair with the police has affected him dreadfully. I don’t know if you have had the opportunity to notice, but he is very sensitive. It’s a trait of the Grinde family. His father, for example—”

The Chief Justice interrupted her.

“So you think he may simply be asleep? But he hasn’t left any messages.”

“Both you and I know that’s not like Ben. But perhaps he has just overslept. I can …”

Suddenly she stopped, but the pause did not last long.

“I can call in to his apartment this afternoon. I could just manage it before I go to the theater. I have a hairdresser’s appointment right now, you understand, but this afternoon—”

“Thanks.” He interrupted her again. “I would be grateful if you could do that.”

“Of course,” Birdie Grinde said, and the Chief Justice thought he could hear a touch of grievance in her voice.

“Goodbye,” he said, replacing the receiver before she had a chance to reply.

17.30,
MINISTRY OF HEALTH

“B
ut I can do that, my dear!”

The Minister of Health’s secretary looked alarmed when she found her boss bent over the fax machine, squinting in an effort to ascertain how it worked.

“This is personal,” Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden snapped, waving the nervous woman away.

Eventually the fax was sent, and Nordgarden brought the original back into her office.

“Send them in,” she instructed one of the secretaries. Then she took her seat at the top of the conference table, half an hour after the meeting was actually supposed to have begun.

None of them made eye contact with her when they entered. The atmosphere was awkward, and there was a tension in the room that they all, except the minister herself, detected. She smiled anxiously and invited them to take their places around the table.

“First of all I must just say that I don’t have a good grasp of this kind of thing,” she began. “So do your best to be extremely clear. Please. No, wait!”

Staring at the others, two men and three women, she opened her arms.

“Where is Grinde? Hasn’t he arrived yet?”

She glanced at the clock.

The five others looked at one another in surprise.

“I had the impression …” Ravn Falkanger, an elderly physician and professor of pediatrics, started to speak. “I thought Judge Grinde was already here, for a preliminary meeting—”

“Certainly not,” Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden broke in. “I haven’t heard anything about a preliminary meeting.”

Histrionically, she looked again at her watch, tugging at the sleeve of her jacket and holding her arm unnecessarily high.

“Well. If he hasn’t arrived by now, then we’ll just have to make a start. I have read this here.”

She waved the eleven-page report that she had received that morning from the commission’s secretary, a young woman who looked unhappy and appeared far too young.

“And I have to say, you complicate it with all this medical jargon.”

The oldest man present, Edward Hansteen, a professor of toxicology, cleared his throat quietly.

“It should be understood, Minister, that the work of the commission gradually took a different direction from the one set out in our original mandate. We would now like to travel abroad to examine the archives there. That was the reason Benjamin Grinde wanted to speak to the minister, which I understand …”

He cleared his throat again, more vigorously this time, and gazed down at his papers.

“I understand that the minister’s pressure of work made it impossible to have such a meeting with Grinde. I assume that was why he sought help from Prime Minister Volter. The minister will appreciate … that this is a delicate affair and Grinde wanted to raise it confidentially with our political masters.”

The commission secretary began to blush in the painful pause that ensued. Perspiration appeared on her forehead, and she tried in vain to hide behind her long, blonde hair.

“Well,” Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden said. “All that is water under the bridge now. Let us keep to the here and now. Go ahead.”

She nodded again to Dr. Hansteen.

The meeting lasted for three quarters of an hour. The atmosphere did not improve. The discussion around the oval table was subdued, and only the minister’s “I don’t quite understand” and “Could you repeat that part?” cut through Edward Hansteen’s even, pleasant tones. Synnøve von Schallenberg, a community
medicine practitioner, took over from her colleague occasionally; she too would look briefly at the minister as she clarified something, with a concerned expression on her face.

“As the minister undoubtedly understands,” said Dr. Hansteen in his final summing-up, “we are faced with the probable conclusion that something highly irregular has taken place.”

He emphasized the point by smacking the documents three times with his knuckle.

Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden stared intently at the document facing her. The report she had received that morning. She
had
read it, but perhaps not very thoroughly. Not thoroughly enough. She should never have faxed it to Little Lettvik. And certainly not from this office. Could these things be traced? She had made a terrible mistake.

She made an incomprehensible grimace, and tugged at her hair.

“Yes, but …”

The corner of her mouth twitched violently.

“… is there anything here that could mean trouble from a purely political point of view?”

The four oldest members of the commission around the table exchanged uneasy glances. The young secretary intently studied a knot in the wooden tabletop. Health Minister Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden realized just too late that she had overstepped the mark. The commission was not there to help her politically. It was their task to clarify the facts.

“You can go,” she said quickly. “Thanks for—”

Her remaining words were drowned out by the scraping of chairs as the rest of them stood up. To cap it all, the commission secretary knocked her chair over. Ruth-Dorthe was left standing, immobile, her eyes full of tears. But none of the others noticed.

19.30,
STOLMAKERGATA
15

A
lthough it was fantastic that Hanne had moved in, Billy T. felt a powerful sense of wellbeing when he was entirely on his own. No one to foist the TV news program on him, and he could eat lukewarm meatballs and spaghetti out of the can without anyone wrinkling their nose at it. It was convenient. He simply let the can sit under the hot tap for a while and, hey presto, dinner was ready.

He had brought the beanbag through from the bedroom; he was still not entirely used to the blue settee. The bag supported his body, and his legs and arms sprawled across the floor. He ignored the thumps on the wall from his ill-tempered neighbor, and used the remote control to turn the volume up a notch.

Madame Butterfly was approaching the end. He empathized strongly with her in her great adversity. The man she loved and had waited many years for had returned at last, accompanied by another woman. And that woman, who had stolen her beloved, also wanted to take her single genuine treasure, her son. Her only child.

The music built to a crescendo: potent, dramatic. Billy T. closed his eyes, feeling the music flood through him; his toes were vibrating.

“Con onor muore chi non può serbar vita con onore!”

“Death with honor is better than life with dishonor,” Billy T. whispered.

The telephone cut through the finale.

“Bloody hell!”

Leaping to his feet, he grabbed the phone and roared into it,
“Wait!”

He laid the receiver down beside the phone, and crossed to the center of the room.

Madame Butterfly sang to her son, in a heartfelt aria filled with pain: for his sake, she was willing to die.

It was over.

In a voice so soft that Tone-Marit Steen at the other end of the line wondered momentarily if she had dialed the wrong number, he said, “Hello, who is it?”

His voice had resumed its usual tone when, seconds later, he bellowed, “What the hell? Is Benjamin Grinde dead?”

TUESDAY, APRIL 15

08.30,
MARKVEIEN CAFÉ

H
anne Wilhelmsen chuckled as she read the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. It was always the first thing she looked at. She had devoured everything that had been put in front of her: a hamburger with onions and roast potatoes, washed down by a glass of milk. She swallowed a belch, and regretted eating the potatoes.

Billy T. did not subscribe to
Aftenposten
. It irritated Hanne that he was not even civilized enough to have a newspaper delivered to his door. She compensated for her friend’s philistinism by eating breakfast in a café, surrounded by all the daily newspapers, after her morning run.

The coffee was not up to much, but it was strong. She wrinkled her nose, but that was as much in response to all the headlines about Benjamin Grinde’s death.
Dagbladet
had gone for gigantic red lettering above their picture of Judge Grinde, and Hanne turned to page four, as the front page requested her to. It screeched at her, but contained only information she already knew. She couldn’t be bothered to read any further.

For once, however, she had to admit that the newspapers had a point. It
was
striking that Benjamin Grinde had died eight days after Birgitte Volter. The Chief of Police’s thundering exhortation for total silence had evidently borne fruit: as far as she could make out, none of the newspapers had discovered that the time of death had been established as Saturday afternoon. But it was an amazing
coincidence. Government ministers and officials would probably go berserk if – or perhaps she should say when – they found out that the security guard from the government complex had shuffled off this mortal coil on the same day.