Free Death of the Demon: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel by Anne Holt

tool. The older boy was talking to the younger one in a low, friendly voice, almost lost in the shouts from a fourteen-year-old who was running about triumphantly waving a bra with his outstretched arm and a hot-tempered girl chasing after him.
    “Anita thinks she’s got boobs!”
    “Throw it here, Glenn! Here!”
    The two eight-year-olds jumped around him, before one clambered up on an enormous worktable, waving his arms and continuing to yell, “Glenn, Glenn! Here!”
    “Anita thinks she’s got boobs,” Glenn repeated, so tall that even if he had stopped now, the two-year-elder girl would not have been able to reach the embarrassing garment she so desperately wanted to retrieve and that he was now waving with his arm extended while standing on tiptoe.
    “Jeanette, help me,” Anita said plaintively.
    “Give over, Glenn,” was the only help she received from a plump young girl sitting totally unconcerned at the table, drawing. “Roy-Morgan! Don’t step on my drawing!”
    She reached out a clenched fist, causing the boy to cry out in pain and start to cry.
    “Good heavens, children! Glenn, give over with that. Let Anita have her bra back. At once! And you!”
    The eight-year-old who was standing on one leg up on the table, rubbing his other leg, leaped down to the floor before Maren Kalsvik managed to say anything further.
    Then she caught sight of the two visitors in the doorway.
    “Oh, sorry,” she said in confusion. “I didn’t know there was anybody here!”
    “Anybody here?”
    Billy T. grinned so broadly his teeth shone through his bushy beard.
    “You’ve got a house full, so you have, woman!”
    The two boys had continued fiddling with the bike on the floor directly in front of them.
    “I’ve told you before, Raymond,” Maren said with a resigned hand gesture. “You can do that down in the basement. This is not a workshop!”
    “It’s so cold down there,” he protested.
    She gave up, and the boy looked up at her in surprise.
    “Is it okay, then, or . . .” he asked, taken aback.
    Shrugging her shoulders, she redirected her attention to the two police officers. The last thirty-six hours had taken their toll. She had pulled her hair back with a simple rubber band rather than braiding it. Several strands had loosened, and together with the sunken shoulders and her baggy clothes, it gave her an almost slovenly look. Her eyes were still red-rimmed.
    “Did you not get the lists?”
    “Oh, yes,” Hanne Wilhelmsen responded. “Thanks very much. They’re a great help.”
    A brief nod in the direction of the children indicated to Maren Kalsvik that the police officers wanted to talk to her in a different location.
    “We can go in here,” she said, opening the door to a bright, attractive room with four beanbags, a sofa, and two armchairs in front of a twenty-eight-inch television in the left-hand corner beside the outer wall. The two women each sat in an armchair while Billy T. plumped down on a beanbag. He ended up almost flat on the floor, but Maren Kalsvik did not seem to notice.
    “The guy who was on night duty, is he here now?” Hanne Wilhelmsen was speaking.
    “No, he’s on sick leave.”
    “Him too? Is there an epidemic here, or what?” Billy T. grumbled from his position near the floor.
    “Terje hurt his back during the fire drill. Slipped disc, or something like that. He seemed fine when we finished, but the pains started during the course of the evening, he says. As far as Eirik is concerned, he’s just about in shock. It can’t have been very pleasant, finding her. He was totally unhinged when he phoned. At first I thought someone was playing a joke on me, and in fact I was about to put down the phone when I realized it was deadly serious. He was completely hysterical.”
    “Do you know where he was sitting?”
    “Sitting?”
    “Yes, was it not in this room that he was sitting for most of the evening?”
    “Oh, I see, yes.”
    Running her hand through her hair was