E-Book, Englisch, Band 10, 400 Seiten
Reihe: Hanne Wilhelmsen Series
Holt In Dust and Ashes
Main
ISBN: 978-1-78239-884-4
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, Band 10, 400 Seiten
Reihe: Hanne Wilhelmsen Series
ISBN: 978-1-78239-884-4
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
ANNE HOLT is Norway's bestselling female crime writer. She spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway's Minster for Justice between 1996 and 1997. She is published in 30 languages with over 6 million copies of her books sold.
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FRIDAY JANUARY 8, 2016
“This is a gift. Despite everything. A gift.”
Halvor Stenskar, General Manager of the health food firm VitaeBrass AS, gave a loud sigh and placed his hand over hers. She pulled back, just slowly enough to appear dismissive rather than downright rude.
“I mean …”
He stood up and walked to the window, where the accursed weather cast the fjord in shades of dark gray beneath a sky that seemed only slightly paler. The Nesoddland peninsula lay like an oppressive predator on the other side of the water, only just visible in the low clouds above the city of Oslo.
November weather in January.
“Of course suicide is a tragedy,” he said.
It dawned on him that this was probably the fifth time he had done so since his arrival. He cleared his throat and began over again.
“Nevertheless, suicide is a voluntary act. I’m sure it isn’t undertaken lightly. Not by anyone. Not even by Iselin. But despite all that, it is a choice, after all.”
He turned again to face the living room. Even though the apartment was located in an eye-wateringly expensive area of Tjuvholm, it was not impressively large. Besides, there were too many items of furniture here, which made it all seem cramped. Furniture and bric-a-brac and strong colors, completely different from the strict minimalism his own wife favored. A gigantic painting above the fireplace of a sea eagle in flight was the only picture in the entire room. Otherwise there were only curios, made of ceramic and wood, of copper and wrought iron. And brass. There were objects made of brass everywhere. Admittedly, the pale-yellow metal was the key to the company’s success, but there had to be a limit as to quantity. He had counted candlesticks and arrived at a total of fourteen before he had given up. The room reminded him of a boudoir most of all, with its dark red settees, countless soft cushions and the scent of incense that was making him feel slightly queasy. Boudoir was appropriate to some extent, since two lesbians, getting on in years, had lived together here.
On the other hand he had never set foot inside a boudoir, so what did he know?
He caught himself staring at Maria.
The settee she sat on was so deep and low that her legs, when stretched out, were almost parallel with the floor. She was clutching a cushion to her stomach, holding on to it as if for grim death. It could not possibly be to hide her paunch. Despite her age, she was slim, healthy and relatively fit. She seemed neither tear-stained nor devastated, at least not the way he would imagine his own wife to be if he had been the one to die.
“The most important thing is to pour oil on troubled waters,” he said. “It’s been an unpleasant time for all of us these past few weeks. It’s not particularly advantageous for the company, all this …”
His hand waved uncertainly in the air, as if he was bothered by an insect.
“… media interest.”
Finally Maria glanced up. They had never enjoyed a close relationship; they were far too different for that. He did not understand her. To him, BrassCure was a business idea. An exceptionally lucrative one, but he had never felt tempted to swallow a single one of the pills they sold at such an extortionate price. Iselin was the one who had belief in the product. She was the one who could mesmerize a whole room full of agents and sellers with explanations about BrassCure’s active ingredients and effects on the human body. The theories would not have taken her very far in a medical institute, but they had laid the foundations of a small fortune for her as well as several others.
It was less clear where Maria fitted in to all this.
She had always appeared loyal to Iselin, sometimes bordering on self-effacing. Whereas Iselin could fill a room with her mere presence, Maria was a wide-eyed admirer who seldom spoke a word in her spouse’s company. He had warned her before she had brought her lover into the firm. And handing over half of Maria’s shares to Iselin as a wedding present, with no conditions stipulated, had been sheer madness. Halvor Stenskar spoke up, both indirectly and eventually more bluntly and boorishly, but it had been to no avail. A matter of months after they met, the two turtledoves were registered partners. And Halvor Stenskar had to admit that it had been upon Iselin’s introduction to the company that VitaeBrass had really taken off.
Maria had seemed totally enthralled by Iselin. Endlessly.
“Media interest,” he repeated, mainly to break the painful silence.
“You’re always claiming that all PR is good PR.”
“But by that I mean relevant PR.”
He placed exaggerated emphasis on “relevant”.
“Such as articles stating that we promise more than we deliver?” she asked. “That we have no scientific proof that BrassCure has any effect whatsoever? About the Consumer Council having slaughtered our adverts time after time?”
“Whenever someone writes something along those lines, we can cite umpteen patients who claim the opposite. And the right of reply, Maria, is not to be sneezed at. The right of reply has given us a lot of free publicity over the years, both for VitaeBrass as a company and BrassCure as a product. Iselin being unmasked as …”
He was not quite sure about his choice of word. After all, this was a brand-new widow seated in front of him.
“Extremist,” she offered helpfully. “That’s what they call it. But I can’t recall you ever expressing disagreement with what Iselin stood for.”
“Socially, no! We’re all agreed that these immigrants are getting out of hand, aren’t we, and that something drastic has to be done to prevent …”
He used his fingers to comb his thick, gray hair and discreetly brushed away flakes of dandruff from his jacket shoulders before sitting down on the arm of the only chair in the room.
“Healthy skepticism about this flood of dysfunctional illiterates and prospective benefit claimants is one thing. It’s another thing entirely to preach that pure …”
“Racism,” she helped him again when he hesitated.
He blinked hurriedly, but did not answer.
“Iselin, or more correctly Tyrfing, was not racist in the tabloid sense of the word. She was more of a modern nationalist. She wanted to free her country from its multicultural yoke. Racism builds on certain people being inferior to others. Iselin’s ideas were not based on any ranking of races. She simply meant that our ethnicity, identity and culture are important, so important that we must protect them from the completely unwarranted influence that Islam has had. You said before that you agreed with all this.”
“No. What she wrote in that damned blog of hers is something very different from what she voiced in social settings. As I said, it’s some way from–”
“You’ve never expressed reservations about anything Iselin said on this subject. Neither have I, for that matter, but that’s because I quite simply wasn’t too bothered. About politics, I mean.”
“Not too bothered?”
He stared at her in disbelief.
“You picked Iselin up out of nothing,” he said, far too loudly. “You’ve financed this entire …”
He flapped his hands distractedly. Now it seemed as if he had been attacked by a whole swarm of insects.
“… blog business of hers. You’ve made this crusade possible. You’re the one who gave her half your shares, and you’re the one who–”
“You seem to have forgotten that the company doubled its turnover in ten months once Iselin joined the management team. Anyway, Iselin could have been Tyrfing without me. A blog costs two kroner and fifty øre to set up. But forget it. I can’t stand all this.”
Maria Kvam got to her feet. With more difficulty than usual, he thought, as if she was weighed down by something almost intolerable. The angry, almost aggressive expression in her eyes was gone. Maybe it was her way of grieving.
“Despite everything, this is also a gift,” Halvor Stenskar said, lifting his backside from the soft chair-arm. “As I said. With all due respect, Maria. Now that the worst has happened, with Iselin given a thrashing and deprived of every last shred of dignity as she was, despite it all this is best for …”
He hesitated, just long enough for her to give him a smile he had never seen before.
“For the company,” she declared. “It’s good for the company that the storm around Iselin is calming down. And of course that is the most important thing. The most important thing of all.”
“Your company,” he said sharply. “Very much yours. Especially now. After this, I mean …”
His hand swept over the room in an imprecise gesture, as if Iselin’s suicide lay hidden somewhere between the velvet cushions and knick-knacks.
“Mine,” she said, with a nod. “Now it’s almost all mine.”
He saw that she was crying. Absolutely silently, and almost unnoticeably, with only the tears running down her cheeks giving him to understand that it was high time he left.
Henrik Holme had been greatly in doubt about whether he should dare to visit Hanne at all. His dismissal yesterday had been just as peremptory and imperious as ever, and strictly speaking this was not a new case he had tucked under his arm.
It was not a case at all.
The papers inside the worn, blue ring binder did not contain a mystery. No unknown perpetrator lurked there, no blind alleys as in the cases they had previously investigated and in some instances solved. Quite the opposite. Henrik had spent the past night and morning skimming through...
