Free The Lion's Mouth by Anne Holt Page A

orderly fashion, eyes downcast, like a procession of mourners rehearsing for the funeral. The press photographers noticed that the only person who actually looked as though she might be hiding a smile was Health Minister Ruth-Dorthe Nordgarden.
    However, it might just as well have been a scowl.
    15.32, GAMLE CHRISTIANIA RESTAURANT
    “T he Christer Pettersson sort. Quite sure. Dead cert.”
    The man wore a suit that looked as though it had been bought in a Texaco service station, its shiny material reminiscent of Beaver nylon from the 1970s. He raised his almost empty half-liter glass and continued speaking, with a foam moustache above his lip. “The police are going to make fools of themselves. Just like in Sweden. They’re going to get completely bogged down in all kinds of stupid, highly political leads. And then it’ll be some peculiar guy or other who turns out to have done it. Somebody like Christer Pettersson, the Olof Palme guy.”
    “Or a jealous lover.”
    The woman with the not entirely original idea was relatively young, around thirty years old, her voice almost falsetto.
    “Does anyone know anything about Birgitte Volter’s love life?”
    Four of the five others around the table, all men, started to laugh.
    “Love life? She was having an affair with Tryggve Storstein, that’s for sure. Bloody hell, he’s also the one who’ll probably takeover the whole shooting match, isn’t he! A slightly delicate situation for the police, don’t you think, since he must be on the list of suspects! I know that—”
    The Texaco man sounded confident but was interrupted by a booming voice that came from the enormous beard of a man in his forties. His head was completely shaven, but the jet-black beard reached down to his chest.
    “That rumor about Volter and Storstein is nothing but nonsense. Storstein’s in a relationship with Helene Burvik now, not Volter. That ended long ago. Long before the big showdown in 92.”
    “I thought Tryggve Storstein was happily married,” muttered the youngest of the journalists around the table, a girl from Aftenposten who had still not managed to establish a regular seat in the Gamle restaurant. “How on earth does somebody like that have the time for a mistress?”
    The silence was total, as they all froze; even the beer was left sitting for a short while. Though she blushed deeply and unflatteringly, the girl was brash enough to continue. “I mean to say, how do you know it’s true , what you’re saying? If I believed half the rumors I’ve heard in the last six months, most members of the Cabinet have a sleazy past and a sex life we all might envy. That is, the ones who aren’t gay. Or them as well, for that matter. How do they find the time ? That’s what I’m asking. For all the sordid goings-on they’re supposed to get up to, I mean. And how do you know all this? And is it actually so very interesting , anyway?”
    She raised her wine glass. She was the only one not drinking beer.
    As though someone had waved an invisible magic wand, she was immediately pushed out of the group. She was sitting at the edge of the table, on a stool, and the two men on either side of her turned away; their shoulders expanded, forming a wall that separated her from the others.
    “So sweet,” the beard muttered. “Sweet and virtuous, I must say.”
    As Little Lettvik entered, she caught sight of them and lifted her hand in greeting; three swinging half-liter glasses waved in response. She approached the bar, then headed toward her colleagues, carrying a glass.
    “Cola, Little? Incredible!” The man in Beaver nylon shook his head. “This should be immortalized. Call the photographer.”
    “Unlike you …” Little Lettvik said softly, perching on a stool that supported only the small inner circle of her backside; the remainder overflowed so that it seemed as if four chair legs were growing out of her posterior. “… I’m now working twenty-four hours a day, and am staying sober.