Punishment

by Holt, Anne

  PUNISHMENT

  ANNE HOLT spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway’s Minister for Justice during 1996–1997. Her first book was published in 1993 and she has subsequently developed two series: the Hanne Wilhelmsen series and the Johanne Vik series. Both are published by Corvus.

  ALSO BY ANNE HOLT

  THE JOHANNE VIK SERIES:

  PUNISHMENT

  THE FINAL MURDER

  FEAR NOT

  THE HANNE WILHELMSEN SERIES:

  THE BLIND GODDESS

  BLESSED ARE THOSE THAT THIRST

  DEATH OF THE DEMON

  THE LION’S MOUTH

  DEAD JOKER

  WITHOUT ECHO

  THE TRUTH BEYOND

  1222

  PUNISHMENT

  Anne Holt

  Translated by Kari Dickson

  First published in the English language in Great Britain in 2009 by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group.

  This edition published in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Originally published in Norwegian as Det som er mitt in 2001 by Cappelen.

  Published by agreement with the Salomonsson Agency.

  Copyright © 2001, Anne Holt.

  Translation copyright © 2007, Kari Dickson.

  The moral right of Anne Holt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-85789-464-9

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84887-613-2

  Printed in Great Britain.

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26-27 Boswell Street

  London WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter 15

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  Chapter XLVI

  Chapter XLVII

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter XLIX

  Chapter L

  Chapter LI

  Chapter LII

  Chapter LIII

  Chapter LIV

  Chapter LV

  Chapter LVI

  Chapter LVII

  Chapter LVIII

  Chapter LIX

  Chapter LX

  Chapter LXI

  Chapter LXII

  Chapter LXIII

  Chapter LXIV

  Chapter LXV

  Chapter LXVI

  Chapter LXVII

  Chapter LXVIII

  Chapter LXIX

  Author’s postscript

  PUNISHMENT

  The ceiling was blue. The man in the shop claimed that the dark colour would make the room seem smaller. He was wrong. Instead the ceiling was lifted, it nearly disappeared. That’s what I wanted myself, when I was little: a dark night sky with stars and a small crescent moon over the window. But Granny chose for me then. Granny and Mum, a boy’s room in yellow and white.

  Happiness is something I can barely remember, like a light touch in a group of strangers, gone before you’ve had a chance to turn round. When the room was finished and it was only two days until he was going to come, I was satisfied. Happiness is a childish thing and I am, after all, thirty-four. But naturally I was happy. I was looking forward to it.

  The room was ready. There was a little boy sitting on the moon. With blond hair, a fishing rod made from bamboo with string and a float and hook at the end: a star. A drop of gold had dribbled down towards the window, as if the Heavens were melting.

  My son was finally going to come.

  I

  She was walking home from school. It was nearly National Day. It would be the first 17 May without Mummy. Her national costume was too short. Mummy had already let the hem down twice.

  Last night, Emilie had been woken by a bad dream. Daddy was fast asleep; she could hear him snoring gently through the wall as she held her national costume up against her body. The red border had crept up to her knees. She was growing too fast. Daddy often said, ‘You’re growing as fast as a weed, love.’ Emilie stroked the woollen material with her hand and tried to shrink at the knees and neck. Gran was in the habit of saying, ‘It’s not surprising the child is shooting up, Grete was always a beanpole.’

  Emilie’s shoulders and thighs ached from being hunched the whole time. It was Mummy’s fault she was so tall. The red hem wouldn’t reach further than her knees.

  Maybe she could ask for a new dress.

  Her schoolbag was heavy. She’d picked a bunch of coltsfoot. It was so big that Daddy would have to find a vase. The stalks were long too, not like when she was little and only picked the flowers, which then had to bob about in an eggcup.

  She didn’t like walking alone. But Marte and Silje had been collected by Marte’s mum. They didn’t say where they were going. They just waved at her through the rear window of the car.

  The flowers needed water. Some had already started to wilt over her fingers. Emilie tried not to clutch the bunch too hard. A flower fell to the ground and she bent down to pick it up.

  ‘Are you called Emilie?’

  The man smiled. Emilie looked at him. There was no one else to be seen here on the small path between two busy roads, a track that cut ten minutes off the walk home. She mumbled incoherently and backed away.

  ‘Emilie Selbu? That’s your name, isn’t it?’

  Never talk to strangers. Never go with anyone you don’t know. Be polite to grown-ups.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, and tried to slip past.

  Her shoe, her new trainer with the pink strips, sank into the mud and dead leaves. Emilie nearly lost her balance. The man caught her by the arm. Then he put something over her face.

  An hour and a half later, Emilie Selbu was reported missing to the police.

  II

  ‘I’ve never managed to let go of this case
. Perhaps it’s my bad conscience. But then again, I was a newly qualified lawyer at a time when young mothers were expected to stay at home. There wasn’t much I could do or say.’

  Her smile gave the impression that she wanted to be left alone. They’d been talking for nearly two hours. The woman in the bed gasped for breath and was obviously bothered by the strong sunlight. Her fingers clutched at the duvet cover.

  ‘I’m only seventy,’ she wheezed. ‘But I feel like an old woman. Please forgive me.’

  Johanne Vik stood up and closed the curtains. She hesitated, not turning round.

  ‘Better?’ she asked after a while.

  The old woman closed her eyes.

  ‘I wrote everything down,’ she said. ‘Three years ago. When I retired and thought I would have . . .’

  She fluttered a thin hand.

  ‘. . . plenty of time.’

  Johanne Vik stared at the folder lying on the bedside table beside a pile of books. The old woman nodded weakly.

  ‘Take it. There’s not much I can do now. I don’t even know if the man is still alive. If he is, he’d be . . . sixty-five. Or something like that.’

  She closed her eyes again. Her head slipped slowly to one side. Her mouth opened a fraction and as Johanne bent down to pick up the red folder, she caught the smell of sick breath. She put the papers in her bag quietly and tiptoed towards the door.

  ‘One last thing.’

  She jumped and turned back towards the old woman.

  ‘People ask how I can be so sure. Some think it’s just an idée fixe of an old woman who’s of no use to anyone any more. I’ve done nothing about it for so many years . . . When you’ve read through it all, I would be grateful to know . . .’

  She coughed weakly. Her eyes slid shut. There was silence.

  ‘Know what?’

  Johanne whispered, not sure if the old lady had fallen asleep. ‘I know he was innocent. It would be good to know whether you agree.’

  ‘But that’s not what I’m . . .’

  The old woman slapped the edge of the bed lightly with her hand.

  ‘I know what you do. You are not interested in whether he was guilty or innocent. But I am. In this particular case, I am. And I hope you will be too. When you have read everything. Promise me that? That you’ll come back?’

  Johanne smiled lightly. It was actually nothing more than a non-committal grimace.

  III

  Emilie had gone missing before. Never for long, though once – it must have been just after Grete died – he hadn’t found her for three hours. He looked everywhere. First he’d made some irritated phone calls, to friends, to Grete’s sister who only lived ten minutes away and was Emilie’s favourite aunt, to her grandparents who hadn’t seen the child for days. He punched in new numbers as concern turned to fear; his fingers hit the wrong keys. Then he rushed around the neighbourhood, in ever increasing circles, his fear growing into panic and he started to cry.

  She was sitting in a tree writing a letter to Mummy, a letter with pictures that she was going to send to Heaven as a paper plane. He plucked her carefully from the branch and sent the plane flying in an arc over a steep slope. It glided from side to side and then disappeared over the top of two birch trees that thereafter were known as the Road to Paradise. He did not let her out of his sight for two weeks. Not until the end of the holidays when school forced him to let her go.

  It was different this time.

  He had never phoned the police before; her shorter and longer disappearing acts were no more than was to be expected. This was different. Panic hit him suddenly, like a wave. He didn’t know why, but when Emilie failed to come home when she should, he ran towards the school, not even noticing that he lost a slipper halfway. Her schoolbag and a big bunch of coltsfoot were lying on the path between the two main roads, a short cut that she never dared take on her own.

  Grete had bought the bag for Emilie a month before she died. Emilie would never just leave it like that. Her father picked it up reluctantly. He could be wrong, it could be someone else’s schoolbag, a more careless child, perhaps. The schoolbag was almost identical, but he couldn’t be sure until he opened it, holding his breath, and saw the initials. ES. Big square letters in Emilie’s writing. It was Emilie’s schoolbag and she would never have just left it like that.

  IV

  The man referred to in Alvhild Sofienberg’s papers was called Aksel Seier and he was born in 1935. When he was fifteen years old, he’d started an apprenticeship as a carpenter. The papers said very little about Aksel’s childhood, except that he moved to Oslo from Trondheim when he was ten. His father got a job at the Aker shipyard after the war. The boy had three offences on his criminal record before he even reached adulthood. But nothing particularly serious.

  ‘Not compared with today, at least,’ Johanne mumbled to herself and read on. The paper was dry and yellow with age. The court transcripts mentioned two kiosk break-ins and an old Ford that was stolen and then left stranded on Mosseveien when it ran out of petrol. When Aksel was twenty-one, he was arrested for rape and murder.

  The girl was called Hedvig and was only eight years old when she died. A customs officer found her, naked and mutilated, in a sack by a warehouse on Oslo docks. After two weeks’ intense investigation, Aksel Seier was arrested. It was true that there was no technical evidence. No traces of blood, no fingerprints. No footprints or marks of any kind to link the person to the crime. But he had been seen there by two reliable witnesses, out on honest business late that night.

  At first the young man denied it vigorously. But eventually he admitted that he had been in the area between Pipervika and Vippetangen on the night that Hedvig was killed. Just doing some bootlegging, but he refused to give the customer’s name.

  Only a few hours after his arrest, the police had managed to dig up an old charge for flashing. Aksel was only eighteen when the incident took place, and according to his own statement he was simply urinating when drunk at Ingierstrand one summer evening. Three girls had passed him. He just wanted to tease them, he said. Drunken horseplay and high spirits. He wasn’t like that. He hadn’t flashed at them, but was just joking around with three hysterical girls.

  The charge was later dropped, but never quite disappeared. Now it was resurrected from oblivion like an indignant finger pointing at him, a stigma that he thought had been forgotten.

  When his name was published in the newspapers, in big headlines that led Aksel’s mother to commit suicide on the night before Christmas 1956, three more incidents were reported to the police. One was discreetly dropped when the prosecuting authorities discovered that the middle-aged woman in question was in the habit of reporting a rape every six months. The other two were used for all they were worth.

  Margrete Solli had dated Aksel for three months. She had strong principles. Which didn’t suit Aksel, she claimed, blushing with downcast eyes. On more than one occasion he had forced her to do what should only be done in marriage.

  Aksel himself told another version. He recalled delightful nights by Sognsvann, when she giggled and said no and slapped his hands playfully as they crept over her naked skin. He remembered passionate goodbye kisses and his own half-baked promises of marriage when he had finished his apprenticeship. He told the police and the judge that he’d had to persuade the young girl, but no more than was normal. That’s just the way women are before they get a ring on their finger, is it not?

  The third charge was made by a woman that Aksel Seier claimed he had never met. The alleged rape had taken place many years before when the girl was only fourteen. Aksel denied it repeatedly. He had never seen her before in his life. He stubbornly stuck to this throughout his nine-week custody and the long and devastating trial. He had never seen the woman. He had never even heard of her.

  But then he was known to be a liar.

  When he was charged with murder, Aksel finally gave the name of the customer who could give him an alibi. The man was called Arne Frigaard and had bo
ught twenty bottles of good moonshine for twenty-five kroner. When the police went to check this story, they met an astonished Colonel Frigaard at his home in Frogner. He rolled his eyes when he heard the gross accusations and showed the two constables his bar. Honest drinks, every one. His wife said very little, it was noted, but nodded when her pompous husband insisted that he had been at home nursing a migraine on the night in question. He had gone to bed early.

  Johanne stroked her nose and took a sip of cold tea.

  There was nothing to indicate that anyone had investigated the Colonel’s story any further. All the same, she could sense the irony, or perhaps even sarcastic objectivity, in the judge’s dry, factual rendition of the policeman’s testimony. The Colonel himself had not been called as a witness in court. He suffered from migraines, his doctor claimed, thereby sparing his patient of many years the embarrassment of being confronted with allegations of buying cheap spirits.

  Johanne jumped when she heard noises from the bedroom. Even after all this time, even when things had been so much better for the past five years – the child was healthy now, and usually slept soundly from sunset to sunrise and probably just had a bit of a cold – she felt a chill run down her spine whenever she heard the slightest sleepy cough. All was quiet again.

  One witness in particular stood out. Evander Jakobsen was seventeen years old and was in prison himself. However, he had been free when little Hedvig was murdered and claimed that he’d been paid by Aksel Seier to carry a sack for him from an address in the old part of town, down to the harbour. In his first statements, he said that Seier walked through the night streets with him, but didn’t want to carry the sack himself as ‘that would draw too much attention’. He later changed his story. It was not Seier who had asked him to carry the sack, but another – unidentified – man. In the new version, Seier met him at the harbour and took the sack from him without saying much. The sack supposedly contained old pigs’ heads and trotters. Evander Jakobsen couldn’t be certain, as he never checked. But it stank, that’s for sure, and it could have weighed roughly the same as an eight-year-old