Sohlberg and the Gift Read online

  Sohlberg was outraged that the government tolerated such degrading horrors.

  Why do government officials tolerate the crime-ridden and graffiti-defaced Grønland neighborhood around the Oslo police station—the politihuset?

  Why do they allow punks to spoil downtown Oslo with so much graffiti?

  It wouldn’t take much effort to end Oslo’s notorious street crime or to protect block after block of fine old buildings from being ruined by the spray-painted graffiti that any Neanderthal caveman would have found ridiculous if not repugnant.

  He accelerated hard and sped faster past the snow fields as his anger kept rising. He was very well aware of the sad reality that Norway—like most other countries—was led by Empty Suits and Empty Skirts.

  Empty Suits and Empty Skirts.

  His anger boiled over as he thought of the incompetent and corrupt morons who pretend that their empty political promises do any good for the average citizen. The worst part from Sohlberg’s point of view was that almost all citizens are harmed by the grand delusions of the Empty Suits and Skirts. Sohlberg belonged to a tiny minority of Norwegians who felt that the insane fantasies of the country’s elites would inevitably lead to intended and unintended disasters.

  The detective’s blood pressure shot upwards as he thought of a case in point: all rapes in Oslo during a 12-month period were perpetrated by Third World immigrants who thought that their religion and culture entitled them to enjoy the body of any woman. Of course all of the rape victims happened to be ethnic Norwegian women.

  One Pakistani suspect had even told Sohlberg:

  Your women are sluts. The blondes always want it. The blonder they are the more they like it.

  Few Norwegians would openly admit the ugly truth: that the rapes came courtesy of the diversity politicians of multi-culturalism who imported the immigrant rapists to live comfortable lives of idleness and crime thanks to the generous welfare handouts of Norway.

  Sohlberg’s anger worsened as he remembered more examples of crimes and social disasters that the tolerance politicians had inflicted on society through their social engineering projects on both the native population and the foreign immigrants who tried to assimilate.

  Yes. . . . Something is wrong in Norway. Very wrong.

  He looked out at the empty fields and a wistful thought calmed him down:

  It’s better to be far from the madding crowd and among the lovely and dark and deep woods.

  A sign on the side of the road proclaimed: LILLESTRØM! THE GOOD LIFE.

  The sunny morning vanished as soon as Sohlberg entered the city limits. An Arctic front shepherded huge billowing clouds of ominous gray-black shapes over the city. Snow began falling from heavy clouds that lumbered in from the north.

  Oh . . . not good.

  Sohlberg’s police car skidded on black ice that he failed to notice on the winding road. He struggled to bring the vehicle to a controlled stop. After a white-knuckle moment the car finally came to rest on a mound of snow. He looked out at the empty farm fields that filled up with more snow.

  Great . . . I’m lost.

  He was indeed lost. Sohlberg went on the Internet with his personal cell phone to re-check whether he was in the right direction and after the right person.

  Before Sohlberg left the Oslo politihuset he had run an Internet search on his personal cell phone. The search had disclosed a residential street address near Lillestrøm for the retired Chief Inspector Bjørn Nygård—the man in charge of the Janne Eide case.

  Sohlberg then went to www.skattelister.no which is the Norwegian tax authority’s website that publishes summaries of annual tax returns of all Norwegian citizens for everyone to read. While searching for Bjørn Nygård’s tax returns Sohlberg found it ironic that none of Norway’s royal family were listed by the tax authorities.

  The royals . . . 100% exempt from paying taxes . . . and 100% exempt from working at a real job to earn a living.

  Sohlberg held the minority view that the Norwegian royals consisted of worthless social parasites. Even fewer Norwegians shared Sohlberg’s extreme but historically correct opinion that Norway’s royal family consisted of in-bred Danish royalty that Sweden and Denmark had imposed on Norway during centuries of ruthless exploitation of Norway and Norwegians by the Danes and Swedes.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sohlberg made frequent use of the www.skattelister.no website ever since he had investigated the triple murder of a husband and wife and their 16-year-old daughter. His boss had assigned him to assist the lead detective on the day that Sohlberg celebrated his first year as an Oslo Politiinspektør.

  The deceased husband’s and wife’s modest income and taxes on skattelister certainly did not match the lavish residence and lifestyle of the victims. Sohlberg placed a call to his mentor and friend Lars Eliassen to find out why such a discrepancy would show up in the tax rolls. That’s when Sohlberg learned about The Shadows.

  “Norway’s transparent tax lists don’t contain the names of The Shadows.”

  “The Shadows?” said Sohlberg.

  “Yes,” answered Eliassen. “The Shadows are those few Norwegian citizens of the spying variety.”

  “What?”

  “They’re Norwegians who work for or help the Ministry of Defense and its National Security Authority. Ditto for the Defense Ministry’s other intelligence agency . . . the Norwegian Intelligence Service. The Shadows also include individuals who work for or help the Norwegian Police Security Service.”

  “The P.S.T. is in this Shadow-World too?”

  “Yes,” said Eliassen. “They’ve got operatives to protect.”

  “I’m surprised,” said Sohlberg who thought that the PST—Norway’s version of the American FBI—was almost as incompetent as its American counterpart.

  Any residual doubts that Sohlberg had about the existence of The Shadows evaporated when Sohlberg received a visit from a nameless deputy director of Norway’s national forensic agency known as the National Bureau of Crime Investigation (KRIPOS).

  In the presence of Homicide’s top boss at the time—the talented Sigbjørn Holmås—the KRIPOS man curtly ordered Sohlberg and the lead detective to stop investigating the triple homicide.

  Why?

  Because KRIPOS is taking over the case on direct orders of the Minister of Justice and the Police.

  Sohlberg went along because his boss and the lead detective were powerless to do anything. A few weeks later Sohlberg got chewed out in a screaming tirade by Holmås whose hot temper matched Sohlberg’s short fuse.

  But boss . . . what’s this all about?

  Sohlberg . . . are you that stupid? . . . Don’t you understand? . . . Someone in the I.T. department flagged your clumsy unauthorized computer searches in our mainframe. They passed the information on to KRIPOS.

  Are you kidding me?

  Do I look like I’m kidding? . . . You disobeyed orders when you looked up the case file of the triple murder after you were ordered off the case.

  The most bewildering part of the entire episode was that Sohlberg’s computer searches had failed to turn up any case files for the murdered family. There should have been at least one case file even if KRIPOS was the sole agency exclusively investigating the triple homicide. In other words the family did not exist in the eyes of the police. And if they did not exist then they could not be murdered and if there were no murders then there could be no arrests or prosecutions.

  The Shadows. A phrase that always sent a shiver down Sohlberg’s back. The words invoked memories of the massive blood splatter on the walls and floors and ceilings from each of the three bludgeoned victims.

  Years passed. The media never mentioned the triple murders. No one ever got arrested in the case. The mystery deepened when Sohlberg tried but failed to find any friends or family of the deceased. After the triple homicide Sohlberg promised himself that he would never ever abandon an investigation or be forced off a case.

  ~ ~ ~

  The snow fell in thick cu
rtains that reduced visibility to a few feet. A pensive Sohlberg sat in the car and waited for the blinding storm to pass him. He again ran a search on the www.skattelister.no website. The search confirmed former Chief Inspector Bjørn Nygård’s financial status as belonging to the lower 20% of Norway’s gross income levels. That did not surprise Sohlberg. Early retirement from the police rarely yielded a large pension especially for an honest cop like Bjørn Nygård.

  The snow tapered off as the clouds stormed off. The sun made a glorious return appearance in the sky. Sohlberg continued his journey on the narrow and icy streets that wound their way around the low mountains that surround Lillestrøm. At one point he left the city limits by accident and wandered past expanses of lily-white snow fields chequered with dark hills crowned with old-growth strands of spruce and fir and hemlock.

  Beautiful . . . but I’m totally lost.

  Sohlberg eventually meandered back into town. He got lost two more times before he found the residence of Bjørn Nygård. A small garden surrounded the modest cottage from the 1950s. Of course the garden was nothing but a plot of deep gray snow. Sohlberg imagined a summer garden filled with a profusion of flowers. Regardless of the garden’s seasonal flora the humble residence and neighborhood matched the reported income of the former Chief Inspector in charge of the Janne Eide homicide.

  A woman’s voice boomed somewhere in the back of the house after Sohlberg rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. “Wait a minute . . . I’m coming! . . . You better not be trying to sell us magazines or other junk! And we don’t want any preaching. We want nothing!”

  A lacy curtain parted by a large window next to the front door. Sohlberg watched the woman’s suspicious rheumy eyes narrow when she saw the marked police car and then his blue police uniform.

  The door swung open.

  “Yes . . . what is it Officer?” said the frail woman in her seventies. Bowed down by age she looked up at Sohlberg and waved him inside to the hallway.

  “Thank you . . . I want to talk with Bjørn Nygård.”

  “What?” said the clearly perplexed woman.

  “Just some quick questions.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Ma’am . . . are you his wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fru Nygård . . . please . . . I need to talk with him. It won’t take more than fifteen minutes.”

  “No.”

  “Look . . . this is not a game. . . . Is he here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then . . . I want to see him.”

  “You can see him but you won’t get what you want . . . which by the way young man . . . exactly what do you want to talk to him about?”

  “An old case.”

  “I told you . . . you will never get what you want . . . now go away . . . this is ridiculous.”

  “Why? . . . Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’re a fool. A young fool. It figures you’re from Oslo.”

  “How do you know I’m from Oslo?”

  “I know all the police here in Lillestrøm. My two sons are police here . . . one’s an inspector just like you.”

  Sohlberg was glad that she had not asked for his name. “Fru Nygård . . . I just needed some help from your husband. I know what a great detective he was. . . .” Sohlberg took a risk and went for her undivided attention if not sympathy. “Look . . . I know he was unfairly forced out of the service.”

  “Well . . . well.”

  A grandfather clock ticked loudly somewhere nearby. Sohlberg heard someone stir in what sounded like a chair or sofa. Then a sigh and gentle snoring.

  “Come.”

  Sohlberg followed the bent woman. In the small living room a toothpick of a badly-dressed man slept open-mouthed on a sofa.

  “My husband. What’s left of him. He doesn’t even know who I am anymore. Doesn’t know my name . . . just knows that I’m someone who feeds him and cares for him. On rare occasion he seems as if he recognizes me as someone kind or important from his past. Other days he talks to me about his wife and how she was nice and took great care of him.”

  “I’m so very sorry,” said the pained Sohlberg. “I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do. Go back to Oslo and tell them all to go to hell.”

  “Oh I will.”

  “Especially that rat of Ivar Thorsen. I’ll live as long as I can so I can one day spit on his grave.”

  Fru Nygård’s rancor followed Sohlberg all the way back to Oslo. The unjust treatment and ultimate fate of Bjørn Nygård rankled Sohlberg. He was powerless to stop or change Nygård’s dementia. On the other hand Sohlberg decided that he might—against all odds—make right the humiliating career injustice meted out to Bjørn Nygård.

  ~ ~ ~

  Emma Sohlberg was used to her husband’s absent-minded ways whenever he was solving a case. She was used to his keeping odd hours. For example that evening Sohlberg had arrived home extremely late—almost four hours after dinner time. Homicide is not a 9 to 5 job. Not for the murderer. Not for the detective. And certainly not for the spouse or family of the detective.

  Trying to sound as casual as possible Emma Sohlberg said:

  “Sohlberg . . . didn’t you tell me that you had a very light caseload this week?”

  “Yes my Love,” he replied with a mouth full of rømmegrøt while he read the final draft of a report that he had to turn in at work. He did not notice her suspicious eyes.

  She waited for him to finish his favorite dish. They sat in a small cozy alcove in the kitchen. She made the sour cream pudding from an old family recipe that called for sour cream with melted butter and brown sugar and cinnamon with a touch of nutmeg and allspice. Her secret variation of the family recipe was Saigon cinnamon and a delicious organic butter from Norsk Melk. The small dairy co-op refused to be controlled by the giant Tine milk monopoly of Norway.

  “Sohlberg . . . isn’t December when you traditionally cut back on work in Homicide unless there’s a new murder?”

  “Yes . . . it is,” he said slowly as he lifted his eyes up to meet hers. “I’m sorry I got in so late and missed dinner. But something came up.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes . . . an old case. Nothing really. I’m just reviewing it. Making sure all the t’s crossed . . . and i’s dotted . . . you know.”

  “But you always do that before you close your cases.”

  “It’s someone else’s case.”

  “You be careful.”

  “It’s not like that time. Not at all.”

  “I hope not. You told me they went ballistic when they caught you snooping around an old case.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “I hope so. But why do this?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “That’s never a good thing.”

  Chapter 3/Tre

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, OR ONE DAY

  AFTER THE DAY DECEMBER 2

  I will not be denied. There must be blood.

  The Falconer stared out the window. It smells you know.

  I don’t care if it smells or not. All I care about is that there will be blood. There will be blood for that long-tongue liar. That midnight rider.

  Wish I could be there. The falcon could then take her away.

  Falcon. I don’t need no stinking falcon. God is gonna cut her down.

  You got religion boy.

  I got Johnny Cash. I used to hear him all the time when I was young and sang his songs on my guitar. I could’ve been like him.

  Nobody cares about what a man could or should or might have been. What’s important is the killing. Ain’t nothing like killing. Preparing. Doing it. The Afterwards. What matters is that you are gonna do a killing. That ain’t no small thing. No sir. Killing is no small thing.

  I guess not.

  Killing is the ultimate. It’s the absolute greatest thing that a man or a woman can do with his or her life. Killing is the highpoint of my life. Killing ought to be the highpoint in the life of eve
ry man. Ain’t nothing like it. It’s so freaking powerful. Beyond powerful. Killing is the greatest thing a man will ever do because death is the greatest thing a man will ever encounter. You ever think about that.