The Lion's Mouth (30 page)

In that respect, the living room was more pleasant. Bookcases lined an entire wall and contained every genre of literature. Billy T. pressed the button to eject the CD from the player: Benjamin Britten’s
Peter Grimes
. Not exactly Billy T.’s taste; he shook his head slightly at the thought of the fisherman Peter Grimes, who went out in all weathers and tormented the life out of the workhouse boys apprenticed to him. Powerful stuff, and certainly not suitable for someone in suicidal anguish.

He saw that Tone-Marit was looking at some tiny figurines. He took one of them down from the shelf in the massive, heavy sideboard, and wondered what it could be.

“Japanese netsuke,” Tone-Marit said with a smile. “Little miniatures that were originally made as belt toggles but were later used as ornaments and collectables.”

Astonished, Billy T. stared from the tiny, scary-looking Shinto-god he held in the palm of his hand to Tone-Marit.

“These are truly beautiful,” she continued. “They’re probably genuine. They were made before 1850, which means they’re exceptionally valuable.”

Carefully, she replaced the figures on the shelf, lining them up behind the polished glass doors.

“My grandfather ran a Japanese agency,” she explained, almost embarrassed.

Billy T. knelt down and opened the double doors embossed with decorative bunches of grapes. Inside lay starched, ironed tablecloths, all neatly folded.

“A methodical person, this guy Grinde,” he mumbled as he closed the doors.

Then he went into the bedroom. It was tidy but the bed was stripped. A pair of trousers hung neatly in an electric trouser press on the wall, and a shirt and tie were draped over a little winged armchair. The bathroom opened off the bedroom, and was decorated in a masculine style, with dark blue floor tiles. Its white walls were broken at shoulder height by a border of blue and yellow in some kind of Egyptian pattern that ran right round the room. A faint, fresh, masculine odor was evident. A toothbrush. An old-fashioned shaving brush and real shaving soap. Billy T. picked up the razor: it looked like silver, and had the initials BG on the handle.

He felt like an intruder, and suddenly imagined a fearful scenario: imagine if
he
were the one who had been found dead! Imagine some police officer going through
his
bathroom, touching his things, peering at his most intimate belongings. He gave himself a shake, hesitating before he opened the cabinet door.

That was it.

He did not doubt it for a moment.

“Tone-Marit,” he roared. “Bring an evidence bag and come here!”

She appeared in the doorway almost instantly.

“What is it?”

“Look.”

She approached him slowly, her eyes following his forefinger down to a little gilded, enameled pillbox.

“Oi,” she said, her eyes like saucers.

“Yes, you could say that.” Billy T. grinned as he transferred the little trinket into a plastic bag and closed the zipper.

15.45,
OSLO POLICE STATION

T
he Security Service Chief looked like a funeral director. His suit was too dark, his shirt too white. The narrow black tie ran like an exclamation mark down the front of his inappropriate outfit. Admittedly, they planned to meet Birgitte Volter’s next of kin, but it was now four days since the funeral had taken place.

None of those assembled in the Police Chief’s conference room had experienced anything like this before. Naturally, most of them had at least once in their career spoken to the bereaved relatives of a murder victim, but never in such an official way. And certainly not after the murder of a Prime Minister.

“Well,” the Chief of Police said.

He stared in disbelief at Billy T., who was wearing gray flannel pleated trousers, a white shirt and an unbuttoned, dark gray jacket. The colors on his tie were mellow and autumnal, and he looked like a completely different man. Even the inverted cross in his earlobe had been removed, and in its place twinkled a tiny diamond.

The Superintendent rushed breathlessly into the room, red in the face.

“The elevators are out of order,” he groaned, rubbing his hands over the seat of his trousers.

Roy Hansen stood in the doorway, having been ushered in solicitously by the Police Chief’s secretary. He greeted each person in turn, and the round of handshakes became so lengthy and complicated in the confusion of chairs that Billy T. sensibly abstained from adding to the awkwardness. Instead he sat down, nodded to the widower, and avoided asking what had happened to Per Volter.

Per Volter arrived five minutes late. His clothes looked as though they had been slept in, which they probably had; there was a whiff of stale perspiration combined with the unmistakable stench of earlier intoxication masked at daybreak with green mouthwash. His eyes were evasive, and he raised his hand in a collective greeting instead of accepting the hands hesitantly extended toward him. He did not condescend to give his father so much as a glance.

“I’m late,” he muttered, collapsing unceremoniously onto a chair, his back half-turned on his father. “Sorry.”

The Chief of Police stood up without quite knowing what to say. It did not seem appropriate to actually “welcome” people to the investigation into the homicide of their wife and mother. He gazed in the direction of Roy Hansen, who had his eyes trained on his son’s back; his expression was so surprisingly naked and full of despair that the Police Chief momentarily lost his courage and considered postponing the entire session.

“I’m quite sure this will be unpleasant,” he finally ventured. “And I’m really sorry about that. However, I – and my colleagues – thought you would prefer to get a first-hand account of where we stand. In the investigation, I mean.”

“We know a lot less than the guys outside the door downstairs,” Per Volter broke in, loudly and abruptly.

“I beg your pardon?”

The Police Chief laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and looked him in the eye.

“Outside the door?”

“Yes. Journalists. I had to run the gauntlet of them to make my way through. Do you think I’m happy to have my photograph taken like this?”

He tugged at his shirtfront, as if to demonstrate his grubby condition.

The Police Chief examined something immediately in front of his feet, and swallowed several times. His Adam’s apple chafed against his chin, which was red with shaving rash.

“I can only apologize. It was not our intention for anyone to know you were coming. Sorry.”

“Sorry here and sorry there!”

Per Volter pushed back his chair and stretched out like a defiant teenager, his backside on the edge of his seat, his shoulders against the backrest, and his legs splayed out across the floor.

“To serve and protect. Isn’t that what they say? Until now, you’ve neither served nor protected. Agreed?”

He slammed a fist onto the wall beside him, then buried his face in his hands.

Roy Hansen cleared his throat. His face was now ashen, and his eyes were perilously moist. The other men in the room sat quiet as mice, and only Billy T. dared to look at father and son.

“Per,” Roy Hansen said softly. “You know you can—”

“Don’t speak to me,” Per Volter bellowed. “Haven’t I told you that? Haven’t I told you that I never want to speak to you again? Eh?”

He covered his face once more.

The Chief of Police was crimson. Fumbling with a cigarette he could not light, he continued to stare at one of his knees. The Superintendent’s mouth was gaping, although he was unaware of it, and it was only when a dribble started to run down his chin that he clamped his jaw shut and promptly used his arm to wipe his face.

The Police Chief peered studiously through the window, as though evaluating a possible escape route.

“Per Volter!”

It was Billy T., his voice deep and penetrating.

“Look at me!”

The young boy on the opposite side of the table stopped rocking from side to side, though he still kept his face hidden.

“Look at me,” Billy T. roared, slapping the palm of his hand on the teak table so forcefully that the windows juddered.

Startled, the boy took his hands away.

“We know you’re feeling dreadful. Everyone in this room understands that you must be going through a terrible ordeal.”

Billy T. leaned further across the table.

“But you’re not the first person in the history of the world to lose his mother! Now you really must pull yourself together!”

Per Volter sat up angrily in his chair.

“No, but I’m the only one to have his family’s whole life-history laid bare in every newspaper in the country afterward!”

Now he was sobbing, quietly and with little sniffs, and rubbing his eyes repeatedly, to no avail.

“You’re right there,” Billy T. said. “I certainly can’t imagine what that must be like. But you have to let us get on with our jobs all the same, which right now involves telling you and your father how things stand. If you would like to listen, that’s fine. If not, I suggest you leave. I can get someone to accompany you out the rear exit, so you can avoid the press out there.”

The young man did not answer; he was still weeping.

“Hello,” Billy T. said softly. “Per!”

Per Volter looked up. The police officer’s eyes were a peculiar pale, matte ice-blue color, the sort you might see on a dangerous dog, or in a horror movie. However, his mouth was extended in a faint smile that suggested an understanding that Per Volter felt no one had shown him since his mother had been shot.

“Do you want to go, or would you rather stay? Or would you perhaps like to wait in my office, so that you and I can have a chat by ourselves afterward?”

Per Volter forced a smile.

“Sorry. I’ll stay.”

Then he blew his nose on a tissue offered by the Police Chief. He straightened up completely and placed one foot over the other, staring at the Police Chief as though wondering, with impatience and amazement, why the report had ended before it had begun.

It did not take long. After a brief résumé, the Chief of Police handed over to the Security Service Chief, who was equally concise. Billy T. was aware that the information being imparted had been methodically filtered, and that in fact Ole Henrik Hermansen was relating everything and nothing. The most interesting aspect was that, when he spoke in general terms about the extremist lead, an odd expression crossed his lips, and his gaze was not as steady as usual.

The security guard, Billy T. thought. They’ve found something on the guard.

“Eh?” he exclaimed all of a sudden: the Police Chief had spoken his name three times without him hearing. “Oh, sorry. The pillbox, yes.”

Retrieving a little plastic bag from his jacket pocket, he placed it in front of Roy Hansen. The widower had not uttered a word since Per had shrieked at him, and he still did not open his mouth. He peered at the plastic bag with a poker face.

“Do you recognize this?” Billy T. asked. “Is this Birgitte’s pillbox?”

“Never seen it before,” Per Volter said before his father had got round to answering.

The young man leaned forward to pick up the bag. Billy T. swiftly placed his hand over the object.

“Not yet. Do you recognize it?”

He removed the box from the bag, and held it up to Roy Hansen.

“It’s ours,” the widower whispered. “We received it at our wedding. Birgitte and I. A wedding present. It’s the one I showed you in the photograph.”

“Certain?”

Roy Hansen nodded slowly, without taking his eyes off the box.

“
I’ve
not seen it before,” Per Volter repeated.

“Where did you find it?” Roy Hansen asked, holding out his palm to Billy T.

“In Benjamin Grinde’s apartment,” Billy T. replied, placing the box in Roy Hansen’s hand.

“What?”

Per Volter looked from one to the other.

“At that Supreme Court judge’s place?”

All the police officers nodded enthusiastically, as though to make the assertion even more credible.

“At Benjamin Grinde’s,” Roy Hansen said. “Why on earth …?”

He looked up from his thorough inspection of the little pillbox.

“Yes, well, that was what we were hoping one of you might be able to tell us,” Billy T. said, fingering the diamond on his ear.

“No idea,” Roy Hansen mumbled.

“Not a single theory?”

Despair had given way to aggression, and the widower raised his voice. “Maybe Benjamin Grinde stole it? Swiped it! Some time or other. What do I know! He could have taken it years ago, for that matter, since I haven’t seen it for as long as I can remember.”

“No. It must have been on the day he met Birgitte, before she was killed,” Billy T. said calmly. “Her secretary remembers that the box always used to sit on her desk.”

He glanced at Per Volter, who shrugged and shook his head.

“Haven’t a clue,” he reiterated. “Never seen it before.”

“You probably noticed it was difficult to open,” Billy T. said, addressing Roy Hansen. “But we managed it. There was a lock of hair inside the box. It looks as if it came from a baby.”

Per gasped, obviously forcibly steeling himself to prevent another bout of tears.

“We thought,” Billy T. began. “We thought perhaps … It isn’t easy to ask about this, Mr. Hansen, but …”

Roy Hansen looked as if he had shrunk, and his eyes were closed.

“We have emphasized that every single piece of information about Birgitte may be of relevance to the case, and so it is necessary to ask …”

Billy T. placed the flat of his hand on his shaved head and rubbed it pensively to and fro. He considerately neglected to look at the Police Chief, knowing what his superior officer would say.

“Why did you not tell us about this dead baby?” he asked quickly. “About your daughter?”

“Billy T.,” the Police Chief said sharply, and waited. “This is not an interrogation! You certainly don’t need to answer that right now, Mr. Hansen.”

“But I want to!”

He got to his feet and crossed stiffly to the window, then turned abruptly to face the others.

“You just admitted that you have no idea what it’s like to have your life dissected in the newspapers. You’re
completely
correct about that. You haven’t a clue! The whole of Norway is preoccupied with Birgitte. You are preoccupied with Birgitte. I have to put up with it. But there is one thing that actually belongs only to me!
Me! Do you understand that?
”