Anne Holt - Death In Oslo

The third book in the Vik and Stubo series, 2009

Translated by Kari Dickson

I got away with it . The thought made her pause a moment. The old man in front of her lowered his eyes. His ravaged face was turning blue in the January cold. Helen Lardahl Bentley took a deep breath and finally echoed the words the man had asked her to repeat:

‘I do solemnly swear…’

Three generations of deeply religious Lardahls had worn illegible the print in the century-old leather-bound Bible. Well hidden behind the Lutheran façade of success, Helen Lardahl Bentley was in fact a sceptic, and therefore preferred to take the oath with her right hand resting on something she at least could wholeheartedly believe in: her own family history.

‘… that I will faithfully execute…’

She tried to hold his eye. She wanted to stare at the Chief Justice, just as everyone else was staring at her – the enormous crowd that stood shivering in the winter sun. The demonstrators were too far from the podium to be heard, but she knew they were chanting, ‘Traitor! Traitor!’ over and over, until the words were drowned out by the steel doors of the special armoured vehicles that the police had rolled into position early that morning.

‘… the office of the President of the United States…’

The whole world was watching Helen Lardahl Bentley. They watched her with hate or admiration, with curiosity or suspicion, and perhaps, in the quieter corners of the world, with indifference. For those few seemingly never-ending minutes, she was at the centre of the universe, caught in the crossfire of hundreds of TV cameras, and she must not, would not think about it.

Not now, not ever.

She pressed her hand even harder on the Bible and lifted her chin a touch.

‘… and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’

The crowd cheered. The demonstrators were removed. The guests on the podium gave her congratulatory smiles, some heartfelt, some reserved. Friends and critics, colleagues, family, and the odd enemy who had never wished her well all mouthed the same word, silently or with loud joy: ‘Congratulations!’

Again she felt a flicker of the fear she had repressed for over twenty years. And then, only seconds into her office as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America, Helen Lardahl Bentley straightened her back, ran a determined hand through her hair, and looking out over the crowd, decided once and for all:

I got away with it and it’s time I finally forgot .

The paintings were certainly not beautiful. He did not care for one in particular. It made him feel seasick. When he leant in close to the canvas, he saw that the wavy yellow and orange strokes had cracked into an infinite web of tiny fine lines, like camel dung in the baking sun. He was tempted to stroke his fingers over the grotesque, screaming mouth, but he didn’t. The painting had already been damaged in transport. The railings to the right of the agonised figure now had a sad fringe of threads that curved out into the room.

Getting someone to repair the large tear was out of the question, as it would require an expert. And the very reason that these paintings were now hanging in one of Abdallah al-Rahman’s more modest palaces on the outskirts of Riyadh was that he always avoided experts, whenever possible. He believed in honest handicraft. He had never seen the point in using a motor saw when a simple knife would do. The paintings had been stolen from a poorly secured museum in the Norwegian capital. He had no idea who had stolen them or who had handled them on their journey to this windowless gym. He didn’t need to know who these petty criminals were; they would no doubt end up in prison in their respective countries without being able to say anything of any real consequence as to the whereabouts of the paintings.

Abdallah al-Rahman preferred the female figure, though there was something repulsive about her too. Even after more than sixteen years in the West, ten of which he had spent in prestigious schools in England and the US, he was still disgusted by the woman’s bare breasts and the vulgar way in which she offered herself up, indifferent and licentious at the same time.

He turned away. All he had on was a pair of wide white shorts. He stepped back up on to the treadmill, barefoot, and picked up the remote control. The belt accelerated. Sound was coming from the speakers on either side of the colossal plasma TV screen on the opposite wall:

‘… protect and defend the Constitution of the United States .’

He simply could not understand it. When Helen Lardahl Bentley had been a senator, he had been impressed by the woman’s courage. Having achieved the third highest grades in her year at the prestigious Vassar College, the short-sighted, plump Helen Lardahl had then fast-tracked to a PhD at Harvard. By the time she was forty, she was well married and had been made a partner in the sixth largest law firm in the US, which in itself demonstrated extraordinary competence and a healthy dose of cynicism and intelligence. She was also slim, blonde and without glasses, which was smart too.

But to stand as presidential candidate was downright arrogant.

And now she had been elected, blessed and sworn in.

Abdallah al-Rahman smiled as he increased the speed of the treadmill with one push of a button. The hard skin on the bottom of his feet burned on the rubber belt. He increased the speed again, right up to his pain threshold.

‘It’s just incredible,’ he groaned in perfect American, secure in the knowledge that no one in the whole world would hear him through the metre-thick walls and the triple-insulated door. ‘She actually thinks she’s got away with it!’

‘An historic moment,’ Johanne Vik said, and folded her hands, as if she felt obliged to say a prayer for the new president of the United States. The woman in the wheelchair smiled, but said nothing.

‘No one can say that that isn’t progress,’ Johanne continued. ‘After forty-three men in succession… finally a female president!’

‘… the office of the President of the United States …’

‘You have to agree that it’s quite something,’ Johanne insisted, her eyes glued to the TV screen again. ‘I actually thought they’d elect an Afro-American before they accepted a woman in office.’

‘Next time round it will be Condoleezza Rice,’ the other woman said. ‘Two birds with one stone.’

Not that that would be much progress, she thought to herself. White, yellow, black or red, man or woman, the post of American president was male, no matter what the pigmentation or sex of the person was.

‘It’s not Helen Bentley’s feminine qualities that have got her to where she is,’ she said slowly, bordering on disinterested. ‘And definitely not Condoleezza Rice’s black heritage. Within four years they cave in. And that’s neither minority-friendly nor feminine.’

‘That’s pretty-’

‘What makes those women impressive is not their femininity or their slave heritage. They’ll milk it, of course, for all it’s worth. But what’s really impressive is…’

She grimaced and tried to sit up straight in the wheelchair.