The Lion's Mouth (25 page)

It would certainly take time, but the opportunity would present itself, sooner or later.

“Hello?”

The receiver was as silent as the grave. Hesitating, she pressed a green button, and smiled in relief when all at once she heard the dial tone, followed by a rapid squeaky tune.

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“It’s Ruth-Dorthe.”

“Well, well. Congratulations.”

The voice was noncommittal. However, she knew very well that she had him. Of course, he could not be relied upon. No one could be relied upon. But he was hers, all the same. He was the one who had looked after her in the first place; he had helped her, supported her, aware that their respective careers were interconnected: they were political Siamese twins. Gunnar Klavenæs also sat on the party’s executive board.

“What on earth happened?” she asked.

“Don’t concern yourself. It went okay. In the end.”

Silence fell. She could hear the dishwasher: the program had
jammed and the machine was rinsing over and over again. She carried the phone with her to the kitchen.

“One moment.”

It sounded like a tremendous rainstorm in there: a typhoon inside a tin can. Perplexed, she studied the buttons at the top of the panel without touching any of them. Eventually she resolutely pressed the off button. The wind speed inside dropped, and now there was a trickling sound, which got fainter and fainter.

“Hello?”

“Yes, I’m still here.”

“He won’t last long,” she said tonelessly.

“I think you’re miscalculating, Ruth-Dorthe,” was the response at the other end. “He is much stronger than you believe.”

“Not if he inherits all the problems from Birgitte’s time in office. And of course, he will. The election in the autumn will be the death of him.”

“Not now. We’re going to gain votes as a result of Birgitte’s murder. That’s what happened to the Social Democrats in Sweden.”

She squinted at the tree in the back yard, on which tiny buds had started to sprout.

“We’ll see,” she muttered. “I phoned to ask if we could have dinner. Tonight.”

“I can’t manage today. I’m extremely busy at the moment. Can’t I phone you again when I’m free?”

“Okay,” she answered, offended. “I thought you might be interested to hear what I’ve got to tell you.”

“Of course, Ruth-Dorthe. But another time, eh?”

Without replying, she pressed the green button with a tiny picture of a telephone again. It worked.

They thought she was on the way out. Even her supporters – some of them at least. It was only thanks to Gro Harlem Brundtland’s resignation as Prime Minister the previous year that she had
retained her post as joint Deputy Leader of the party. Her four-year tenure prior to that had not gone quite as expected; she lost many friends and the grumbling of those who did not wish her well had grown to a crescendo. At National Congress only a fortnight after the change of government, everyone had been careful to ensure the least possible upset. It was Birgitte’s National Congress, and the leaders from the previous four-year period were to be left in peace. Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden knew that she had been saved by the skin of her teeth. And she knew that Tryggve Storstein was her chief opponent. At that time he was only Deputy Leader, and equal in status to her. Now he was Party Leader, and Prime Minister.

However, she still knew which strings it was possible to pull.

She looked at the time. The girls would be out for a few hours longer. Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden fixed herself a cup of coffee, but it was too strong. She screwed her nose up at it and shuffled out to the kitchen again for some milk. The fridge smelled rank when she opened it; the girls were shirking their chores more than ever these days. She was irritated to see that the milk was out of date. She poked her nose into the opening, and decided to pour a generous amount into her cup all the same.

As she sipped the muddy brown beverage, she let her eyes roam from the cell phone to the cordless one. It was difficult to believe that cell phones could not be eavesdropped; it seemed remarkable that with current technology it was possible to have a conversation and still be certain that no one else was listening. Cell phones
appeared
insecure: they crackled and crunched, and occasionally she had heard other voices on the line. Nevertheless, she decided to use the cell phone.

“You wanted to talk to me,” she said listlessly once she was connected.

She ought to wash the windows. The weak spring sunshine struggled to reach her desk, and dust particles danced in the pale
light. She listened to the voice at the other end for some considerable time.

“You’re talking about internal documents,” she said at last. “That’s very difficult of course. Not to say almost impossible.”

That was not true. They both knew that. But Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden wanted to be persuaded. She wanted to know what was in it for her.

Five minutes later, she disconnected the call.

She scribbled down a few words in the margin of her diary space for Monday. She would have to get hold of a repairman for the dishwasher as soon as possible. She would have to remember to ask the political adviser to arrange it.

18.00,
JACOB AALLS GATE
16

“I
am skeptical! I’m telling you, all the same, I am skeptical!”

Birdie Grinde wrinkled her tanned forehead and puckered her lips. Nonetheless, Little Lettvik could discern a glimmer of curiosity in the old woman’s eyes.

“After the dreadful things that newspaper of yours wrote about Ben, it’s no wonder I’m not exactly delighted to see you. On the other hand …”

Birdie Grinde stepped back in the tiny hallway, indicating for Little Lettvik to follow.

“… if I can contribute in any way to people realizing that Ben had nothing to do with this terrible story, then that would be really splendid, of course.”

The woman, who had to be in her late seventies, was wearing a tight-fitting pair of denim jeans that in a fascinating way illustrated what happened to an ageing body. Her legs appeared frail and skinny, and her calves as thin as pipe cleaners. In the gap between the tight trouser legs and her platform sandals, Little
Lettvik could make out patches of taut, shiny brown skin and dark liver spots. Birdie Grinde’s sweater, a loose-fitting pink angora, reached halfway down her posterior, below which Little could see that the ravages of time had removed all her buttock muscles.

Ten years ago, Little Lettvik thought. Only ten years ago you would probably have got away with wearing such clothes.

“You must sit down,” Birdie Grinde commanded, and Little Lettvik noticed the disagreeable, vengeful eyes beneath the old woman’s eyebrows, which formed two thin strands on her high forehead. “You’d probably appreciate a little snack, wouldn’t you?”

When she returned from the kitchen, she was carrying a small plate of sandwiches in one hand and a stemmed cake stand in the other.

“Myself, I’ve kept my slim figure, as you can see. Just a glass of port for me! So!”

She poured herself such a generous amount that the reddish-brown liquid almost overflowed. Little Lettvik briefly nodded a “Yes, please”, and received half a glass.

“You’re driving, I expect,” Birdie Grinde explained as she sat down. “Help yourself! Do tuck in!”

She pushed the two plates toward the journalist.

They looked good, and Little Lettvik was hungry. She was always hungry. Long ago she had read an article in a popular science magazine about hunger being a substitute for conscience. She had tried to forget that article. Picking up a sandwich filled with salmon and scrambled egg, she wondered whether this strange woman always had luxuries like this to hand, since she could not have been in the kitchen for longer than ten minutes.

It was unpleasant to eat under the eagle eye of the woman on the settee. Her intense, brown eyes glanced up at her from the
glass of port, and Little Lettvik gave up when she’d finished only half the sandwich.

“How could you write such things?” Birdie Grinde resumed. “You already knew that the prosecution was a piece of nonsense!”

“Arrest warrant,” Little Lettvik corrected. “It was an arrest warrant. And we also wrote that it had been rescinded. There was absolutely nothing in that article that wasn’t true.”

Birdie Grinde seemed preoccupied. She stared uninhibitedly at Little Lettvik, but her thoughts seemed not to revolve around her son having been wrongfully singled out as a murderer only a few days earlier. Some vague new expression was carved out on her raddled face: a mixture of amusement and embarrassment.

Little Lettvik found it disconcerting. “And of course it’s been forgotten now,” she continued. “Everybody forgets so quickly. I can reassure you on that point. But perhaps you could tell me something about your son’s …”

Now the other woman’s gaze was unbearable. She continued to stare while carefully wiping her mouth with a linen napkin, over and over again.

Little Lettvik shook her head gently. “Is there something wrong?”

“You have some scrambled egg on your chin,” Birdie Grinde whispered, leaning across the coffee table. “Here!”

She pointed to her own chin, and Little Lettvik made a lightning movement with the back of her hand. A yellow lump was pushed across her skin, and Little Lettvik resorted to the other hand for assistance.

“You
do
have a napkin, you know,” Birdie Grinde said pointedly.

“Thanks,” Little Lettvik mumbled, fumbling to remove the roll of fabric from a large engraved silver ring.

“It’s gone now.” Birdie Grinde smiled in satisfaction. “What was it you wanted to ask me about?”

Little Lettvik seldom let others get the better of her. She never paid any attention to her own appearance. She just did not care. There was very little at all she did bother about, and privately she was extremely pleased that she was not particularly fond of anyone: she was not even especially concerned about other people. Perhaps about him, however. No, not him either. Her business, her crusade, her major project, was the truth. Truth was an obsession, and she laughed derisively at all the pathetic attempts by other journalists to engage in philosophical debates about ethics and journalism. Twice, only twice in a long and illustrious career, had she committed to print something that had turned out not to be true. It had been difficult. Those incidents had plagued her for months afterward. Running the gauntlet of official retractions and compensation payments had been sheer hell.

The truth could never be immoral. How you got hold of it, and what effect it had on other people, was entirely secondary. It made no difference whether she used lies and unscrupulous practices to get to the truth. The sole objective was to find out the truth. If every single word in an article she wrote was correct, then the article was legitimate.

Her certainty about her own eternal search for the truth made her invincible. But just then, facing this witch of a woman – this tiny, conceited, ludicrous squirrel who sat playing with her whiskers on the opposite side of a massive mahogany coffee table – just then, Little Lettvik felt an unaccustomed touch of insecurity.

She gave herself a shake and leaned back in the chair to try and reduce the size of her stomach. For the first time in ages she peered down in annoyance at her own breasts. They spilled over like a solid balcony in front of her; she had not actually noticed before that they rested on her thighs when she was seated.

“I simply wondered whether you could tell me a little about your son,” she said at last. “We would like to give our readers an accurate picture of him. He occupies an extremely prominent position, after all, and his life is of considerable public interest, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, very much so, that’s my view exactly!”

Birdie Grinde laughed, a loud piercing ripple.

“To tell the truth, I’m surprised the press hasn’t shown greater interest in him before. Do you know …”

Birdie Grinde leaned forward again, as if to inspire familiarity.

“… Ben was the first person in Norway to achieve
both
a medical degree and a doctorate in law? The very first. Look at this!”

She rose from the settee and crossed to a bookcase, continuing her flow of chatter. Crouching down stiffly for a moment, she produced a ring binder.

“Personally, I consider that the occasion received far too little attention.”

She slapped the album down in front of the journalist.

“Only two little columns in
Aftenposten
,” she fretted, pointing with a red-varnished fingernail. “It was quite an occasion, I tell you. But …”

She plumped down on her seat again.

“… there was actually a longer article about Ben when he graduated from high school.”

Birdie Grinde gestured with her hand to encourage Little Lettvik to leaf further back in the album.

“It was only in the local
Akershus Amtstidende
, of course, but all the same.”

Little Lettvik flicked through the pages. Suddenly she spotted the young Benjamin Grinde in a large, yellowed, dog-eared newspaper picture. He was smiling faintly, shyly, at the photographer, and despite his thick head of hair and eyes as blank as any
eighteen-year-old’s, he was easily recognizable. The man had grown more handsome over the years, admittedly, but even in this old newspaper image she could see how good-looking he was: immature, vulnerable and engaging.

“My goodness,” Little Lettvik muttered. “Did he get a distinction for his final grade?”

“Distinction in every subject.” Birdie Grinde giggled delightedly. “At Oslo Cathedral School! The best in the city … Yes, I could almost say the best school in the country. At that time, anyway. Since then it has deteriorated, like so many other things.”

Once again she pursed her mouth in disapproval.

“Who’s this?”

Little Lettvik placed the heavy ring binder in front of Benjamin Grinde’s mother. Producing a pair of half-moon glasses from a leather case on the table facing her, Birdie Grinde peered at the picture.

“Oh
that,”
she shrieked. “That’s Birgitte of course! Poor Birgitte,
look
how lovely she was!”