The Lion's Mouth (11 page)

“Who are these other people?” For the first time, Håkon Sand showed something resembling interest in the topic under discussion.

“In fact it’s the people who probably knew her best who maintain that she never got mixed up in anything like that. It seems as though …” Billy T. sat up and took a slurp of coffee. “It seems to me that the closer people were to her, the higher their opinion of her.”

“That’s probably only natural,” Håkon commented. “It’s the people closest to us who like us best.”

“But are they the ones who
know
us best?”

They fell silent. From the floor above, they could hear the child squealing like an angry piglet.

“Hard work having toddlers, eh, Håkon?”

The Assistant Chief of Police rolled his eyes. “I had
no idea
it would be so much work. So much … so much of a
slog
!”

“Tell me about it.” Billy T. grinned. “You should’ve done what I did. Have four children with four different mothers who look after
them on an everyday basis, leaving me to take them now and again for fun and games. The best way to have children.”

Håkon looked at him with what Billy T. thought might be something like forbearance. He lay down on the floor again and continued his painstaking examination of the ceiling.

“Okay,” Håkon said softly. “That’s why you’re as happy as a sand boy every other Friday and sour as vinegar the following Monday, yes? Because you’re so happy to hand them back, I mean.”

“Drop it,” Billy T. said tersely. “Let’s drop it.”

Håkon Sand stood up and poured more coffee for them both. “Watch you don’t knock it over,” he said, looking at the cup sitting unsteadily on the cord carpet. “So, what do you think?”

Billy T. hesitated. “To start with, I’m placing most trust in those who knew her best. The problem is simply that …”

He got to his feet once more and stretched out his hands to touch the ceiling.

“… the lady was actually extremely
conventional
, Håkon! It’s
fucking
difficult to find anything in her life to indicate that someone might want her dead. At least to the point that they would actually
do
it. Murder her, I mean.”

He sighed.

“For the time being, at least. We still have a great deal of work to do. To put it mildly.”

He sighed again. This was a lousy day.

“But listen to this, Håkon.”

Billy T. was towering over him, but suddenly he dropped forward to lean his hands on the table, giving Håkon a start.

“Actually there are only two possibilities. Either she was killed because she was Birgitte Volter. There was somebody who wanted
her
dead. As a person, I’m talking about. And in fact, so far there has been nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate that. Or else someone killed her because she was the Prime Minister. They
wanted to kill the
role
she occupied, so to speak. A plot against Norway. Against the policies of the Labor Party. Or something along those lines. And I have to admit …”

This was a difficult admission, and he swallowed.

“I have to admit that that’s more likely. At the moment. And that means the guys on the eighth floor will have a field day. I don’t like that idea at all.”

The child in the room above had stopped howling, and now they could hear instead an even, rhythmic thumping, as though a toy was being banged on the floor.

“Tell me what you know about her, Billy T.”

“Fuck, there’s nowhere here that I can sit down!”

“Here. Take this.”

Håkon Sand passed the chair over to him, and Billy T. smiled.

“It’s her birthday on Friday. She’s damn well going to have her funeral on her fifty-first birthday. She got married when she was only eighteen years old, to a childhood friend of the same age, Roy Hansen. They are still married. One child. Per Volter. Aged twenty-two. Student at the military academy, stays at the Fredriksvern naval base in Stavern. Decent young man; the only sorrow he seems to have brought upon his parents is that he’s a member of the Young Conservatives. Fairly clever at school, vice-chairman of a handgun club, the boy has inherited his mother’s flair for organization.”

“Handgun club? Does he have access to guns?”

“Yes, oh yes. Several guns. But that weekend he was on an expedition bloody miles away up on the Hardanger Plateau; in fact there were problems trying to get in touch with him to inform him of his mother’s death. And there’s nothing to suggest that he had a strained relationship with his mother. On the contrary. Nice boy. Apart from all that stuff about the Young Conservatives. But, honestly, the boy is far beyond any suspicion.”

“More,” Håkon mumbled.

“Birgitte Volter was born in Sweden on April 11, 1946. Her father was Swedish, her mother had fled there during the war. They moved to Norway, to Nesodden, in 1950. She graduated from high school and moved quickly into the trade union movement. Became secretary or something of that nature at the State Liquor Monopoly in Hasle. Then on to the local authority in Nesodden, and gradually took more prominent positions in the Norwegian Civil Service Union. And so on and so forth. The rest is history, as they say. Great girl. Great favorite. All the same, it was a close-run thing in 1992.”

“Friends?”

“That’s strange too,” Billy T. said, scratching his ear again. “I think I’m getting a bloody ear infection. That’s all I need.”

He stared at his forefinger, but could see nothing apart from an ink stain from the previous day.

“You know all that stuff we read in the newspapers. About these networks, you know. That this person knows that person and is best of friends with this one and that one. I don’t think that can be right. Or else the newspapers are using an entirely different definition of friendship from that used by you and me. They’re actually not
friends
. They’re more like party colleagues, so to speak. They seem to have few proper friends, and those are almost always entirely outside politics: people they’ve met in ordinary workplaces, at school years ago and that kind of thing. The only person inside politics I believe was really a friend of Birgitte’s was the President of the Parliament.”

“Enemies, then?”

“Same thing again. It depends what you mean by enemies. What is an enemy? If it’s someone who speaks badly of you, then we’ve all got plenty of enemies. But is it right to call them that? It’s obvious, Håkon, that when you reach so far inside a high-profile political
party like the Labor Party – the governing party – you’ll find many people who have on occasion felt aggrieved. But enemies? Not to mention, someone who would actually go so far as to
murder
you? No. Not that I can see. Not yet, at least.”

“No …” Håkon Sand crossed to the window and opened it a crack. “Actually we’ve got the same problem if we approach it all from a different angle,” he said as he sat down again.

“A different angle?”

“Yes, if we view it as the actual … role? Was that what you called it? It seems really so … tame here. In Norway. It’s as if it’s not possible to think about Anne Enger Lahnstein plotting to kill Birgitte Volter, even though she’s fanatical about stopping this Schengen agreement!”

Billy T.’s laughter was loud and booming.

“No, that would be something! That Lahnstein woman in combat gear sneaking through the air vents in the tower block with a knife in her mouth and a revolver in her belt!”

“Can you imagine it!”

Håkon Sand was still struggling to dry his hair. The atmosphere in the basement was ever so slightly damp and so it was taking longer than usual, causing him to ruffle his grizzled locks repeatedly.

“It can’t be anyone within the country. That’s simply not how it
is
here. And the madman theory doesn’t hold water either. He would have chosen another place. For God’s sake, Norwegian government ministers get such minimal security, apart from in their offices. A madman would have attacked her
outside
. In a shop. At a handball game. Or something like that.”

“Outside a movie theater,” Billy T. said softly.

“Exactly. The murder of Olof Palme was a far greater challenge for the police, because
anyone at all
could have been the perpetrator! As far as Birgitte Volter is concerned, we have a totally different starting point.”

They gazed at each other, and suddenly raised their coffee cups simultaneously, as though at an invisible signal.

“Then
nobody
can have committed this murder,” Håkon Sand said.

“Then we’ll have to try to discover who this nobody is,” Billy T. concluded. “Shall we go?”

That turned out to be a difficult task, as the two-year-old clung to Billy T.’s left leg and would not let go, hanging on for grim death.

“Bath with Billitee! Bath with Billitee!”

He raised the roof when the two police officers clambered into the car outside the attractive white house at Holmenveien 12, but stopped abruptly when the exhaust pipe emitted a loud bang as the Volvo jolted out of the long driveway.

“Bye bye, Billitee and Daddy.” He waved, thrusting his thumb into his mouth.

11.25,
OSLO POLICE STATION

T
he colossal, curved police station at Grønlandsleiret 44 hummed with a constant, low-frequency buzz, as though the building itself was alive: a hive of systematic, purposeful industry. Never before had the vast block – timeworn and gray, with its seven official floors, and secluded, wing-clipped Security Service division in the two-story attic – behaved like this. It was used to its sixteen hundred officers pursuing their own work individually, in exhausted battles against the criminals that ran ahead and thumbed their noses at all of them. But now, as a submissive April sun hung wearily in the sky above the hill at Ekebergåsen, the police station appeared to have renewed energy. The building itself seemed to stretch, both in length and height; the windows that usually looked like dull, half-closed eyes, staring out on a world the police would prefer not to acknowledge, sparkled
vivaciously. The blinds were rolled up, the windows opened slightly, and inside, the people began almost imperceptibly to pull in the same direction. Even the two sequestered floors at the top dared to peep forward and upward, no longer clinging tightly to the roof in the hope of avoiding any more scandals, any more critical investigations.

“I’ll grant him that, the Police Chief,” Billy T. commented. “He’s made quite a good job of organizing this.”

A total of 142 police officers had been allocated full-time to the investigation of Birgitte Volter’s homicide, in addition to an unknown number of officers from the police division of the Security Service. Sixteen sub-groups of varying sizes were operating out of Oslo Police Station. The smallest consisted of only three people, whose job it was to liaise with the Security Service; the largest, having commandeered the gymnasium on the sixth floor, comprised thirty-two police officers, and was responsible for coordinating the tactical investigation. The whole of the police force’s Criminal Intelligence Section was entirely preoccupied with pressing informants, analyzing information and attempting to build a picture of everything that had occurred in Oslo’s underworld in recent days. Billy T. had four people assisting him in compiling a profile of Birgitte Volter’s life and times, a special assignment he regarded as far more exciting than the exhausting interviews he had conducted in the first days after the Prime Minister’s death. Tone-Marit Steen was not a member of his group.

“Why on earth should
I
interview that guy? You’ve already done it pretty thoroughly, haven’t you?” Billy T. was annoyed.

“I’d like you to have another go with him,” Tone-Marit said quietly, handing Billy T. a slim, green folder.

“Listen,” Billy T. said, pushing the folder back at the Police Sergeant. “We have to do everything properly. It’s your job to do
this kind of thing. That security guard can’t have anything of significance to say about Birgitte Volter’s private life.”

“No. But honestly, Billy, can’t you take this as a compliment? I think the man’s lying, and you’re one of the best interviewers we have. Please.”

“How many times do I have to
say
…”

He banged his fists on the table.

“How often have I
told
you that I’m called Billy T.! T.! Not just Billy. Will you never
learn
!”

Tone-Marit nodded a furious and extravagant apology. “T. Billy T. What does the T stand for anyway?”

“That’s none of
your
fucking business,” he muttered, opening the window wider.

Tone-Marit Steen’s appearance was deceptive. Her face was round, with sweet features that made her look as though she was about twenty, although in actual fact she was only two years shy of her thirtieth birthday. Tall and slim, she had narrow, slightly crooked eyes that disappeared when she smiled. She was a veteran player in the national women’s soccer team, where she played left back. This was a role she had also adopted in her work in the police force, where she was a stalwart, solid defender of everything that was right and fair. She was strong, she was fit, and she was afraid of no one.

“You know, I’m just not putting up with this.”

Her eyes flashed, and one corner of her mouth trembled.

“You always treat me like shit, and you couldn’t care less about anything. I
will not
put up with you speaking to me like that. Understood?”

Billy T. looked like a fish out of water.

“Calm down, my dear girl! Calm down!”

“I’m not your dear girl! You’re the one who needs to let up! You’re nothing but a
male chauvinist pig
, Billy T.! You waltz around
with all sorts of women and think you’re sex on legs, but actually …”

Now she stamped on the floor, and Billy T. chuckled, making her even angrier.

“… actually you don’t even
like
women, Billy T. You’re
scared
of them. I’m not the only one who notices that you treat female and male colleagues differently. It’s the opinion of the whole team, I’m telling you. You’re afraid of us, that’s what you are.”

“Now
you
really must give over. There are lots of girls here who—”