Anne Holt - Death In Oslo

Warren stormed in with his gun in his hand. He stopped by the first door and pulled himself in to the wall before shouting: ‘Helen! Helen! Madam President, are you there?’

No one answered. With his gun raised, he moved on and went into the next room.

It was a large sitting room. There was a woman in a wheelchair sitting by the window. She didn’t move and her face was expressionless. However, he did notice that she was looking at a door at the back of the big room. There was another woman sitting on the sofa, with her back to him and a child on her lap. She pulled the child tightly to her and looked terrified.

The child wailed.

‘Warren.’

Madam President came in.

‘Thank God,’ Warren said and took two steps closer as he put his gun back in its holster. ‘Thank God you’re alive!’

‘Stay where you are.’

‘What?’

He stopped instantly when she pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.

‘Madam President,’ he whispered. ‘It’s me! Warren!’

‘You betrayed me. You betrayed America.’

‘Me? I haven’t-’

‘How did you find out about the abortion, Warren? How could you use that against me, you who-’

‘Helen…’

He tried to move closer, but quickly stepped back when she raised the gun again and said: ‘I was tricked to leave the hotel by a letter.’

‘I swear… I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘Hands above your head, Warren.’

‘I-’

‘Put your hands above your head!’

He reluctantly put his hands in the air.

‘ Verus amicus rara avis ,’ Helen Bentley said. ‘That’s how the letter was signed. No one else knows about the inscription. Only you and me, Warren. Just us.’

‘ I lost the watch! It was … stolen! I …’

The child was screaming like it was possessed.

‘Joanna,’ the President said. ‘Take your daughter with you and go into Hannah’s office. Now.’

Johanne got up and ran across the room. She didn’t even look in the man’s direction.

‘If your watch was stolen, Warren, what is that you’re wearing on your left arm?’

She cocked the gun.

In slow motion, as if to avoid provoking a reaction, he turned his head to look. His sweater had slid down his arms when he raised his hands. He was wearing a watch around his wrist, an Omega Oyster with diamonds for numbers and an inscription on the back.

‘It’s… You see… I thought it was…’

He let his hands fall.

‘Don’t,’ the President warned him. ‘Lift them up again.’ He looked at her. His arms were hanging loosely by his sides. His palms were open and he started to lift them towards her in a peremptory, pleading gesture.

Madam President fired.

The bang made Hanne Wilhelmsen jump. The echo thundered in her ears and she felt her hearing vanish into a drawn-out whistling sound for a few seconds. Warren Scifford lay motionless on his back on the floor, with his face up. She rolled over to him and put her finger on his pulse. Then she sat up and shook her head.

Warren smiled and raised his eyebrow, as if he had thought of something amusing at the moment of death, an irony that no one else could share.

Adam Stubo stood in the doorway. He was holding his balls and his face was white. When he saw the dead body, he groaned and stumbled forward.

‘Who are you?’ the President asked calmly; she was still standing in the middle of the room with the gun in her hand.

‘He’s a good guy,’ Hanne said, quick as a flash. ‘Police. Johanne’s husband. Don’t…’

The President raised her gun and handed it to Adam by the butt.

‘Then it’s best that you look after this. And if it’s not too much bother, I’d like to phone my embassy now.’

The noise of sirens grew in the distance.

And got louder and louder.

Al Muffet carried his dead brother down into the cellar and put the body in an old chest that had presumably been in the house since it was built. It wasn’t long enough. Al had to put Fayed in sideways, bending his knees and neck, like a foetus. Having to pull and struggle with the body repulsed him, but he finally managed to force the lid down again. His brother’s suitcase was at the back of the cupboard under the stairs. Neither Fayed nor his belongings would be staying there for very long. The most important thing was to remove all traces before the girls came home from school. His daughters did not need to see their dead uncle. Nor their father being arrested. He had to send them away. He could make the excuse of an unexpected conference or an important meeting out of town, and arrange for them to stay with their dead mother’s sister in Boston. They were too young to stay at home on their own.

Then he would ring the police.

But first he had to make sure that the girls had somewhere to stay.

The biggest problem was the car that Fayed had hired. It took Al a long time to find the keys. They were under the bed. Maybe they had been lying on the bedside table, and had been knocked off when he was trying to get Fayed to tell what he knew about the disappearance of President Bentley.

Al Muffet sat on the steps outside his picturesque New England house with his face in his hands.

What have I done? What if I made a mistake? What if this is all due to an arbitrary and fatal misunderstanding? Why didn’t you say anything, Fayed? Couldn’t you just have answered me before it was too late?

He could drive the car into the old, dilapidated barn. The girls had no reason to go there; as far as he knew, no wild cats had had any kittens recently. Only kittens could tempt Louise into the barn, which was full of spiders and webs that normally scared the life out of her.

He wasn’t even able to cry. An icy claw was hooked somewhere just inside his breast bone, which made it difficult to think and impossible to speak.

But who would he speak to anyway? he thought, emotionally drained. Who could help him now?

He tried to straighten his back and take a deep breath.

The flag on the postbox had been raised.

Fayed had talked about a letter.

Letters .

He could barely manage to stand up. He should move the car, remove all traces of Fayed Muffasa, and then pull himself together so he could welcome his daughters home from school. It was three o’clock, and certainly Louise was going to be home early.

His legs could only just carry him as he walked down the drive. He looked around. There was no sign of human life anywhere, except the hum of a motor saw somewhere far in the distance.

He opened the postbox. Two bills and three identical envelopes.

Fayed Muffasa, c/o Al Muffet .

Then the address. Three identical, thickish envelopes that had been sent to Fayed, at Al’s address.

His mobile phone rang. He put the letters back in the postbox and stared at the display. Unknown number. No one had phoned him during this horrible day. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. He wasn’t sure that he even had a voice any more. He put the phone back into his breast pocket, took the letters from the postbox and started to walk slowly back towards the house.

The person who was calling didn’t give up.

He stopped when he got to the steps and sat down.

He had to galvanise his energy to move the damned car.

The telephone kept ringing and ringing. He couldn’t bear the noise any more; the high, shrill tone made him shiver. He pressed the button with the green phone.

‘Hello,’ he said. His voice was barely there. ‘Hello?’

‘Ali? Ali Shaeed?’

He said nothing.

‘Ali, it’s me. Helen Lardahl.’

‘Helen,’ he whispered. ‘How did…’

He hadn’t watched TV. He hadn’t listened to the radio. He hadn’t been near his computer. All he had done all day was despair over his dead brother and try to work out what kind of a life his girls would have after this.