by Holt, Anne
‘At least, if you are innocent,’ Alvhild interrupted. ‘But we don’t know that in Torgersen’s case.’
‘Of course, that’s a valid point. In general, I mean. But not in terms of my research. I have to look at the actual consequences of external interest.’
‘Fantastic,’ said Alvhild to no one in particular. Johanne was not entirely sure what she was referring to.
‘Don’t you think it’s strange,’ she said thoughtfully, to fill the silence. ‘I mean, isn’t it peculiar that the Aksel Seier case just died once he’d been sentenced, when several papers were extremely critical of the legal proceedings? Why did they just drop the case? Was it something to do with the man himself? Was there something disagreeable about his personality? Did he refuse to cooperate with journalists that meant him well? Is Aksel Seier really just . . . a bastard? Who no one really cared about in the end? I would get a lot out of talking to the man.’
The door opened quietly.
‘Is everything all right?’ asked the nurse and continued without waiting for a reply. ‘You’ve been sitting in that chair for too long now, Mrs Sofienberg. It’s time for you to lie down again. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask your friend to . . .’
‘I can do that myself, thank you.’
Alvhild pursed her lips again and lifted her hand to stop the white-clad woman.
‘Would it not be wise to write to him first?’
Johanne Vik got up and popped the unused notebook back in her handbag.
‘In some situations I choose not to write letters,’ she said slowly, putting her bag on her shoulder.
‘And those are?’
The nurse had opened the bed covers and was about to roll the monstrous metal construction out on to the floor.
‘When I’m afraid of not getting a reply,’ said Johanne. ‘No reply is an answer in itself. Nothing means “no”. I don’t dare risk that. Not from Aksel Seier. I’m flying out on Monday. I . . .’
The nurse caught her eye.
‘Yes, yes,’ mumbled Johanne. ‘I’ll leave now. Maybe I’ll phone you, Alvhild. From America. If I have anything to tell, that is. I hope that everything is fine . . . well, as good as it can be in the meantime.’
Without thinking, she bent over the old lady and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. Her skin felt dry and cold. Once she was well out of the house, she used her tongue to moisten her lips again. They tasted of nothing; just dry.
XIV
Emilie had been given a present. A Barbie doll with hair that was curled up inside her head so you could pull it out and then wind it back in with a key on her neck. The doll had nice clothes, a pink sequinned dress that came in the same box as the doll and a set of cowboy clothes as an extra present. Emilie played with the cowboy hat. Barbie was lying on the bed beside her with her legs splayed. She didn’t have a Barbie doll at home. Mummy didn’t like toys like that. Nor did Daddy, and in any case, Emilie was too big for things like that now. At least, that’s what Auntie Beate said.
Auntie Beate was probably angry with Daddy now. She probably thought it was his fault that Emilie had disappeared. Even though she was only walking home from school, like she had so many times before without anyone coming and stealing her away. Daddy couldn’t keep an eye on her all the time. Even Auntie Beate had said that.
‘Daddy . . .’
‘I can be your daddy.’
The man was standing in the doorway. He must be mad. Emilie knew a lot about mad people. Torill down the road in number fourteen was so mad that she had to go to hospital all the time. Her children had to live with their grandparents because their mum sometimes thought she was a cannibal. And then she would light a bonfire in the garden and want to roast Guttorm and Gustav on spits. Once Torill rang the bell in the middle of the night; Emilie woke up and followed Daddy down to see who it was. Guttorm and Gustav’s mother was standing there stark naked, with red stripes all over her body, and wanted to borrow the freezer. Emilie was hurried off to bed and didn’t really know what happened next, but it was a long, long time until anyone saw Torill again.
‘You’re not my daddy,’ whispered Emilie. ‘My daddy is called Tønnes. You don’t even look like him.’
The man looked at her. His eyes were scary, even though he had quite a nice face. He must be mad.
Pettersen in the green block was mad in a different way from Torill. Mummy used to say that Torill wouldn’t hurt a fly, but it was different with Pettersen in the green block. Emilie thought it wasn’t quite true to say that Torill wouldn’t hurt a fly when she actually wanted to roast her own children on a fire. But Pettersen was worse, all the same. He had been to prison for messing around with young children. Emilie knew what messing around meant. Auntie Beate had told her.
‘I’m sure we’ll be friends one day,’ said the man, and grabbed the Barbie doll. ‘Were you pleased to get this?’
Emilie didn’t answer. It was difficult to breathe in here. Maybe she had used up all the air; something was pressing on her chest and she was dizzy all the time. People need oxygen. When you breathe you use up the oxygen so the air becomes empty and useless, in a way. That’s what Auntie Beate had explained to her. That was why it was so horrible to hide under a duvet. After a while you just had to lift up a corner to get some oxygen. Even though it was a big room, she had been there a long time. It felt like years. She lifted her face and gasped for air.
The mad man smiled. He obviously had no problem breathing. Maybe it was just her, maybe she was going to die. Maybe the man had poisoned her because he wanted to mess around with her afterwards. Emilie gasped desperately for air.
‘Have you got asthma?’ asked the man.
‘No,’ gasped Emilie.
‘Try lying down.’
‘No!’
If only she could relax and think about something completely different from the man with the scary eyes, then maybe she could breathe.
But she couldn’t think about anything else.
She closed her eyes and leaned back, her upper back propped against the wall. There were no more thoughts. Nothing. Daddy had probably given up looking for her.
‘Go to sleep.’
The man left. Emilie locked her fingers around the stiff Barbie doll. She would rather have had a bear. Even if she was too old for that, too.
Now that she was on her own again, she could at least breathe.
The man had not messed around with her. Emilie pulled up the duvet and eventually fell asleep.
*
Tønnes Selbu was alone at last. It was as if he no longer had his own life. As if nothing was his any more, not even time. The house was constantly full of people, neighbours, friends, Beate, the parents. The police. They obviously thought that it was easier for him to talk to them here at home. Whereas in fact it would be a relief to go to the police station, an escape. He wasn’t even allowed to go to the shop. Beate and Grete’s old friends did everything. Yesterday his mother-in-law had even run a bath for him. He had lowered himself into the scalding-hot water and half expected some woman or other to appear out of nowhere to wash his back. Scrub him. He lay in the water until it was tepid. Then Beate shouted for him. She eventually banged on the door, worried.
He had lost control of his own time.
Now he was alone. They wouldn’t leave him in peace, the others. He had got very angry. In the end. A great rage had forced everyone out of the door. It felt good because it reminded him that he still existed.
He put his hand on the door handle.
Emilie’s room.
He hadn’t been in since that first afternoon, when the child disappeared and he turned her room upside down trying to find a clue, a trace, a code that might tell him Emilie was only joking. She had gone too far, of course, but it was all just an attempt to fool him, frighten him a bit so that they could have an extra-special evening, safe in the knowledge that Emilie would never actually disappear. He emptied her drawers. Her books landed on the floor, her clothes in a pile in t
he hall outside. He even pulled off the bedclothes and tore a poster of Disneyland down from the wall. It was no mystery, no rebus; there was neither answer nor clue. Nothing to be solved. Emilie was gone and he rang the police.
The cold metal burnt against the palm of his hand. He heard his own heart hammering in his eardrums, as if he didn’t really know what he would find behind the familiar door with Emilie’s name on it, spelt out in wooden letters; the M had fallen off half a year ago and he read E-ilie, E-ilie. Tomorrow he would buy a new M.
Beate had tidied the room. When he eventually went in, he saw that everything was back in place. The books were standing neatly on the shelves, according to colour, the way Emilie liked. Even her satchel, which the police had seized, was back in place, on the floor beside the desk.
The police thought it was his fault.
But they weren’t accusing him of anything. In the first few days, he’d felt a bit like a psychiatric patient, on the one hand, who everyone treated with kid gloves, and on the other like a criminal who everyone suspected. It was as if they were constantly frightened that he’d take his own life and therefore watched him with almost suffocating care. At the same time there was something about the way they looked at him; a sharp edge to the questions they asked.
Then the little boy disappeared.
And they changed their tune, the police. It was as if they finally understood that his despair was genuine.
Then they found the little boy.
When two of the policemen came to tell him that the boy was dead, he felt like he was sitting an exam. As if, unless he answered exactly what they wanted and the expression on his face was suitable for such an occasion, it would be his fault that Kim Sande Oksøy had been killed. Such an occasion?
They had asked him to make a list. Of everyone he had ever known or met. He was to start with his family and closest friends. Then the more peripheral people, good and not so good friends, ex-girlfriends and one-night stands, colleagues and colleagues’ wives. It was impossible.
‘This is impossible,’ he’d said, throwing up his hands. He had gone as far back as secondary school and couldn’t remember the names of more than four school friends. ‘Is it really necessary?’
The policewoman had been patient.
‘We’ve asked Kim’s parents to do the same,’ she said in a calm voice. ‘Then we can compare. See if you have any mutual acquaintances. Or if you ever had. It’s not only necessary, it’s very important. We think that these cases are connected, so it is important to find a common link between the families.’
Tønnes Selbu ran his hand over Emilie’s bed, over the letters she had written in felt pen on the blond wood when she was learning the alphabet. He wanted to bury his face in her pyjamas. It was impossible. He couldn’t bear to smell her.
He wanted to lie down in Emilie’s bed. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get up either. He ached all over. Maybe he should ring Beate after all. Maybe someone should come, someone to fill the empty space around him.
Tønnes Selbu stayed sitting on the edge of his daughter’s bed. He prayed, intensely and continuously. Not to God – he was an unfamiliar figure he only used in the fairy tales he told to Emilie. Instead, he prayed to his dead wife. He hadn’t looked after Emilie well enough, as he had promised Grete, in the hours before she died.
15
A man approached the terraced house. The red and white tape that the police had put up had not been removed yet, but had loosened here and there. The night wind made the tired plastic wheeze at the man who slowly climbed over the fence and hid in the bushes. He seemed to know what he wanted to do, but wasn’t quite sure if he dared to. If anyone had seen him, the first thing they would have remarked on was his clothes. He was wearing a thick, polo-neck sweater under a down jacket. He had a big hat on his head, with earflaps and a peak that hung down over his eyes. The boots would have been more appropriate for a soldier fighting a winter war, enormous and black with laces far up the lower leg. A pair of coarse woollen socks stuck up over the top.
It was the night of 19 May and a mild south-westerly wind had brought warmer temperatures of around fourteen degrees with it. It was twenty to twelve. The man stood in the cover of a gooseberry bush and two half-grown birch trees. Then he pulled off one of his gloves. Slowly he pushed his right hand down into his wide camouflage trousers. He tried to keep his eyes fixed on a window on the ground floor, where the curtains were drawn, which they weren’t supposed to be. He wanted to see the green teddy bear. The man didn’t have time to get annoyed about it, with a groan he went loose at the hips. He pulled his hand out of his trousers. He stood completely still for a couple of minutes. His ears were buzzing and he had to close his eyes, even though he was scared. Then he put his glove back on, climbed back over the fence and walked off down the short road, without looking back.
XVI
It was already late when Johanne got up on Saturday 20 May. At least, for Kristiane. The child woke up at the crack of dawn, weekdays and weekends alike. Though the six-year-old obviously liked being on her own first thing in the morning, she had no concept of how to avoid waking her mother. Johanne’s alarm clock was a rhythmical dam-di-rum-ram from the sitting room. But Kristiane wanted nothing to do with her. From six o’clock until eight, she was incommunicado. When Johanne went back to work again, once Kristiane’s illness was no longer life-threatening, it had been a complete nightmare getting the girl ready for nursery every morning. In the end, she gave up. Kristiane just had to be left to her own devices for those two hours. The university was a flexible employer. And what’s more, when she had applied to teach only every second term, this favour had been granted until Kristiane was ten. Her friends envied her – enjoy it while you can, was their advice; you can read the papers in peace and wake up properly before starting your day. The problem was that Kristiane had to be watched. Who knew what she might get up to? Johanne knew that Isak was more laid-back. She had found him fast asleep on a couple of occasions, with Kristiane pottering about on her own.
And now she had done exactly the same.
She looked over at her watch, confused. Quarter to nine. She threw back the duvet.
‘Mummy,’ Kristiane said cheerfully. ‘Mummy’s getting up for her Kristiane.’
The girl was standing in the doorway to the sitting room, already dressed. Albeit in a ghastly pink sweater she’d been given by her grandmother and a pair of green velvet trousers, with a tartan skirt on top. Her hair was done up in five plaits. But she did have clothes on, so Johanne tried to smile.
‘Well done, you’ve got dressed all by yourself,’ she said sleepily. ‘Mummy must have slept in.’
‘Slept in kept in.’
Kristiane came closer and then crept up into her mother’s lap. She laid her cheek on her breast and started to suck her thumb. Johanne gently stroked her daughter’s back with her right hand, up and down, up and down. When they sat like this, these moments of intimacy that were impossible to force or predict, Johanne could hardly breathe. She felt her daughter’s warmth through the pink sweater, drank in the sweet smell of her hair, her breath, her skin. It was all she could do not to crush her.
‘My little Kristiane,’ she whispered into the plaits.
The telephone rang. Kristiane pulled back, slipped down from her mother’s lap and padded out of the room.
‘Hello?’
‘Did I wake you?’
‘Of course you didn’t wake me, Mother. I’ve got Kristiane here this week.’
Johanne tried to reach hold of her dressing gown. The telephone lead wasn’t long enough. She wrapped the duvet round her shoulders instead. There was a draught from the windows.
‘Your father is worried.’
Johanne wanted to snap: You are the one who’s worried. She checked herself with a resigned sigh and tried to sound cheerful.
‘Oh? Worried about me? There’s no need for that.’
‘What about your behaviour the other day? On TV no less . . . In fa
ct, he even lies awake at night and wonders . . . Is everything all right, dear?’
‘Let me talk to Dad.’
‘Your father? He . . . He’s busy at the moment. But listen to me, dear. We thought that maybe a short break would do you good. You’ve had a lot on recently, what with Kristiane and work and . . . Do you want to come with us to the cottage today? I’m sure you can get time off on Monday and maybe even Tuesday too. You and your father could go fishing and we could go for some lovely walks . . . And I’ve already spoken to Isak and he’s happy to have Kristiane from today . . .’
‘You’ve spoken to Isak?’
It was great that she and Isak had a good relationship when it came to Kristiane. And she realised that everyone, not least their daughter, benefited from the fact that Isak also got on well with his ex-in-laws. But there were limits. She had a suspicion that he dropped by to see them every week, with or without Kristiane.
‘Yes, gosh! He’s thinking about buying a new yacht, did you know? Not just a racing boat this time, he said he was getting a bit bored of . . . well, of course, it’s got something to do with Kristiane, as well. She just loves being on the water, and those fast sailing boats are not particularly suitable for children. He was here yesterday and we talked about you, you know, about how worrie—’
‘Mum!’
‘What, dear?’
‘There’s no need to be worried. I am absolutely fine. And anyway, I’m going . . .’
If she told her mother that she was going to the States, she would get no peace at all, just endless advice on travel routes and precautions. Her mother would end up packing her suitcase for her.
‘Mum, I’m a bit busy right now. I’m afraid I haven’t got time to come to the cottage, but thanks anyway. Give my love to Dad.’
‘But Johanne, could you not at least come over and see us tonight? I could make something nice to eat and then you and your father could play . . .’