Anne Holt - 1222

Someone giggled, the knitter laughed out loud.

‘So I started working on associations. It was easy. What Roar Hanson said when you came over to us was -’

‘You can’t know what he said,’ shouted Adrian. ‘You’re practically deaf, for fuck’s sake. You said so yourself! You can’t.’

Veronica had sat there motionless and silent the whole time, like the wax doll she resembled. Now she placed her slender hand on his thigh, and he stopped speaking at once.

‘“Watch yourself with her, she’s dangerous”.’

I said it loudly and very slowly.

‘That’s what Roar Hanson said to you when you replied “fuck you”, and it was Veronica he was looking at when he said it.’

Nobody said anything. Nobody moved. It was as if everyone wanted to go through my reasoning for themselves, they wanted to double check and work out whether it really was possible to mishear like that. They sat there lost in their own thoughts, their mouths moving soundlessly, tasting the words, the rhythm of the sentence, the uneven rhymes, and eventually they concluded that there was a logic in it.

There was still total silence. Even the children understood that something significant was happening; they clung anxiously and silently to their parents.

‘Your socks were wet,’ I said, looking at Veronica. ‘That’s why you had to borrow Adrian’s the following morning. It was Cato Hammer who insisted on going outside. He was so afraid when you made contact that he wanted to get as far away as possible from anyone who might hear you. You sought him out before the information meeting. Told him that your mother had recently died, and said that you wanted to have a serious talk with him. When you met during the night as agreed, and to be honest I don’t know where, he wanted to go outside for safety’s sake.’

I paused, and got the feeling that everyone was holding their breath.

After Cato Hammer’s death I couldn’t understand how someone had managed to lure him outside. It was only when I realized he must have been the one who wanted it that way that the pieces began to fit together.

‘You didn’t go far,’ I went on. ‘You were probably standing beneath the roof. He was just outside. You weren’t wearing any shoes. Most people had been in their stocking feet all evening, once the floor had dried and nobody was bringing snow in from outside. Looking for your boots in the middle of the night would have been much too great a risk. You went out in your stocking feet. When you came back in, your socks were covered in snow, which melted and left them soaking wet.’

Everyone looked at Veronica’s red socks.

‘That’s bullshit !’ Adrian yelled. ‘They weren’t wet. That’s not why Veronica wanted to borrow my socks. Her feet were cold, for fuck’s sake! That’s all – her feet were cold!’

She placed her hand on his thigh once again.

‘This isn’t true,’ she said calmly.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘More or less.’

Her face was no longer so pale. I thought I could see a faint hint of pink across her cheekbones and her mouth, which was turning upwards in a slight, almost imperceptible smile.

‘But of course a pair of socks is not enough,’ I said. ‘Your name is Veronica Larsen, isn’t it?’

She just looked at me. That Mona Lisa smile was still there.

‘Your name is actually Veronica K. Larsen,’ I said, emphasising the K, ‘or at least that’s how you’re registered on Berit Tverre’s list of the passengers from the train. And I would guess that K stands for Koht. Your mother’s surname.’

She shook her head slightly.

I rolled my chair a little closer, while making an effort to look as weary as possible. Presumably I overdid it, because some of the handball players started giggling. There were now three metres between me and Veronica Koht Larsen. I stopped and put the brakes on.

‘Finding out your name is the easiest thing in the world,’ I said calmly, looking her in the eye. ‘It would just be foolish to -’

‘It’s true,’ she interrupted. ‘Koht is my middle name.’

‘You mother is Margrete Koht,’ I said.

Now I was speaking only to her. I lowered my voice. Out of the corner of my eye I could see many of the others leaning towards us, some with a hand behind their ear. I didn’t help them; in fact I spoke even more quietly.

‘She was employed by the Public Information Service Foundation. An embezzlement took place within that organization. During 1998. A comprehensive deception that damaged the institution, and not only in terms of the financial loss. Your mother was picked out as the guilty party, and was later convicted. I have a strong feeling that she didn’t do it. She was either badly taken in, or perhaps… persuaded. To accept the blame for something she hadn’t done at all.’

I think she blinked. I can’t be sure, my eyes were dry and smarting, and I was blinking myself the whole time. But I think her eyelids moved a fraction.

‘You brought a gun with you on this trip,’ I said. ‘Something that is obviously going to make the police wonder if the murder of Cato Hammer was planned. I’ll leave that for now.’

Adrian flung his arms wide and roared: ‘Stop it! Stop it, Hanne! Veronica hasn’t-’

‘No, you stop it,’ Veronica said sharply. ‘Just shut up, Adrian!’

He glared at her with his mouth open before collapsing. It was as if the air slowly ran out through his gaping mouth until there was nothing left of the skinny boy’s body but a limp, soft shell.

‘You’re wrong,’ said Veronica, keeping her eyes fixed on mine.

‘You shot Cato Hammer,’ I said. ‘And you had a gun in your bag, which you kept hidden up in your room until now. Adrian noticed that something was in the bag when you arrived at the hotel. Not all that big, but heavy. He hoped it was…’

Adrian whimpered. I stopped, then went on:

‘Adrian thought it was something completely different.’

She didn’t even reach for the bag. It was lying there beside her, on the end of the sofa between her thigh and the armrest.

Not a glance at the compromising bag.

Not even the slightest quiver in her hand. She simply sat there, motionless as always, smiling enigmatically.

I hadn’t expected this.

I was sweating.

‘You’re the only one who’s had a room to yourself,’ I said. ‘The only one, apart from the staff. Of course you could have hidden the gun in the room and locked the door, but you thought it was safer to leave it in the bag and hide the whole thing. To be honest, I think you felt the revolver was difficult to deal with once you had killed Cato Hammer. You found it hard to look at it.’

She definitely blinked this time. The small tip of a wet, pale pink tongue ran over her lower lip.

‘But I don’t think that’s what stopped you from using it again,’ I said. ‘It was something quite different that made you murder Roar Hanson with an icicle, and I will come back to the reason why you didn’t choose to use the gun a second time.’

‘Icicle? Icicle! Icicle…’

The word ran through the room like a cockroach. At first it was whispered, then spoken out loud, and finally it was shouted; in disbelief and delight, with doubt and a huge exclamation mark: Icicle!

‘I didn’t understand that business with the icicle,’ I said quietly when Langerud had exercised his authority to calm people down. ‘An unusual weapon. Difficult to handle. It places particular demands on the attacker, not least in terms of skill and precision. But something Adrian had said came back to me.’

The boy was weeping. He had pulled off his hat and was pressing it to his face to muffle the humiliating sobs. I wanted to console him. I wanted to put my arms around him and rock him and say that he’d just been bloody unlucky yet again. I wanted to whisper calming words in his ear and reassure him that at some point in the future he would meet an adult he could trust. One day.