“Come now Harald. Is that how you treat an old friend from Videregaende Skole. . High School?”
“Of course not Margerete. How are your parents. . your mother?”
“Gone.”
“Traveling?”
“No. Dead.”
“I. . I’m sorry to hear that. I really am.” He wondered why his mother had not told him. After all his mother had been good friends with Fru Fredriksen who had been his math teacher in the 9th grade in Ungdomsskole or Junior High School. Sohlberg had always suspected that the two women had conspired to act as matchmakers between him and the youngest of the four lovely Fredericksen daughters. But he had little in common with the extroverted Margerete.
“Harald. I’ve wanted to tell you in person all these years that I’m sorry I did not come to Karoline’s funeral. I should have. . ”
Memories flooded and overwhelmed him. His first wife Karoline. Happy times. Three years married. Mountain climbing every summer in Romsdalen valley which is Norway’s Yosemite valley. Then Karoline suddenly gone. Falling. Down down down. Looking straight into his eyes without any surprise or any screaming. Dead. An accident. For unknown reasons she did not properly tie herself into the rope although she was an experienced climber who had summited Eiger and Mt. Blanc and the Matterhorn. The sickening shisssh of the rope going through the carabiner on her harness. Falling to her death when they had almost reached the summit of the North Face Trollveggen (Troll Wall) of Trollryggen Peak which is the tallest vertical cliff in Europe at 3,600 feet.
“I. . I have to go.”
“Come inside with me Harald and talk. We’ll have something to drink.”
“No!” he said too loudly before lowering his voice. “No thanks. I have to go.”
After 20 minutes of solitaire the man switched to play online poker. He quit a short time later when he realized he could not play well.
He whispered, “What shall I do?”
He weighed his options. They ranged from bad to worse. None attracted him. None promised an attractive outcome. He could always strangle her right then and there and dispose of her body in the wood chipper. Maybe he’d slice her lying tongue off before choking her to death. Perhaps before torturing her he’d have to sneak up on her from behind and knock her head into unconsciousness. He would have to surprise her and disable her because she had once been rather muscular and fit as a bodybuilder. He couldn’t risk her using her athletic skills to somehow overpower him.
Had she taken steroids to win competitions?
The drugs might still be in her body endowing her with extra-manly strength. So he might just have to shoot her in the head or bash in her skull from behind. On the other hand a taser or stun gun would perfectly disable her with a jolt of 100,000 volts. That would shut up her lying devious mouth.
The door opened. She said:
“Honey. . it’s time. Are you coming?”
He nodded.
“Honey,” she said, “I really want to work out hard today. Get rid of the stress. You mind if we stay an extra hour at the gym?”
“Of course not,” he lied. He was desperate if not dying inside. He wanted to be at home to hear any news on the television or radio about breaking developments in the case.
“You know something,” she said with a bright smile, “I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ll go back to competition.”
That was another lie. He knew from eavesdropping on her phone calls that she had permanently quit bodybuilding after placing third in the “Women Over 35 Years Old" category in the Norge Austlandet (Eastern Norway) cup of bodybuilding. She always quit if she did not immediately succeed. He forced himself to be pleasant and said:
“Have you really thought about that my sweet?”
“Honey you know as well as I do that I need to lose weight. I’ve even been thinking of going back to teach. I heard that a teacher position is opening up at Grindbakken Skole.”
Grindbakken Skole: the scene of the crime. No. No way! He could not let her. He would not let her.
Just what is she thinking when she talks about going to teach at Grindbakken? Or is she just taunting him?
Her teaching! More lies and grand deceptions. For years she told anyone who’d listen that she planned on becoming a school principal and then a school district superintendent. He had fallen for that lie and deception until it finally dawned on him that she had a bachelor's and a master's degree in education and yet had never had a full-time teaching job other than working a couple of lowly part-time substitute teacher jobs that she couldn’t even hold for more than a few months before pissing everyone off with her hyper-controlling nature and delusions of grandeur and competence.
He racked his mind trying to remember the nature of her full-time jobs after she lost the part-time substitute teacher gigs.
Where oh where did the crazy broad work at?
A one year gig at the McDonald’s near Oslo University Hospital.
Ja. That was her job with a master’s degree in education — Assistant Manager of the McDonald’s hamburger restaurant at Torgny Segerstedts Vei 11. She had even been named “Assistant Manager of the Month” for having the best sales for the drive-through in the afternoon.
How special of the Little Froken Genius.
“Honey,” she screeched, “go get our bags and I’ll see you in the driveway. Chop chop! We’re running late. Don’t forget to make sure that my deodorant is in my bag. Last time you forgot to check.”
“Ja my sweet.”
She flew down the stairs. He waited briefly for her to get out of the house because her cloud of cheap drugstore perfume gagged him. She blew the car horn twice to rush him.
“How stupid of me winding up with her in my bed and my house,” he whispered to himself. “But Little Miss Genius is always one or two steps ahead of me.”
In hindsight he should have known better than to sleep around with a McDonald’s Assistant Manager of the Month especially when he was a highly-educated man with an enviable high-paying job that most Norwegians could only dream about. He should have known that she saw him as the ultimate meal ticket and that she would never stop pursuing him until she had a marriage ring on her hand and their baby in a crib.
“How very stupid of me,” he said under his breath now that he had finally come to realize that he could not divorce her. Never. Otherwise she would tell the world about the molestation.
Little Froken Blackmailer. Ja. . that would be an interesting issue for her to bring up with the courts and the media and the police.
Wouldn’t it?
She had him cornered!
He wondered why he had told her about the molestation in the first place.
Why did he?
“Coming!” he yelled when she blew the car horn repeatedly.
He did not look forward to spending the endless light-filled nights under the midnattsol with her. He could not stand being near her or hearing her or seeing her or smelling her. And yet she had trapped him in a loveless marriage built on lies and discontent. A cage with no escape.
When would this torture end?
He had absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that an end was in sight. There was no sunset in the horizon for his troubles. He couldn’t and wouldn’t even have the pleasure of torturing and killing her because she surely had her blackmailer’s information conveniently tucked away somewhere ready to be released by someone in case of her death or grievous injury.
That’s it. I have to find out if she has any blackmail information on me tucked away somewhere where it’s ready to be released if she dies or winds up badly injured. If she doesn’t then I’m going to literally rip her to pieces.
The Otterstads sent their oldest son Leif to pick up the Sohlbergs at exactly 8:00 P.M. in one of the Otterstad’s motorboats. As usual the boat was a Beneteau from France where the 120-year-old company kept Mathias Otterstad on a short waiting list for new powerboats like the Antares 42 model.