Punishment

by Holt, Anne

  ‘No identifiable cause of death,’ she said slowly. ‘Sarah just died.’

  ‘Yes. A small cut above the eye. But no internal injuries. A completely insignificant wound, at least in terms of cause of death. A healthy, strong eight-year-old. And this time again, he . . . the murderer that is – we don’t know if it’s a man or a . . .’

  ‘I think you can safely say he.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Well, first of all because it’s easier than having to say “he or she” the whole time. And second, because I am fairly convinced that it’s a he. Don’t ask me why. I can’t give you any reasons. Perhaps it’s just prejudice. I just can’t imagine a woman treating children like that.’

  ‘And who do you think treats children like that?’

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘I asked . . .’

  ‘No, I interrupted you. You were about to say something about this time again . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes. The girl also had diazepam in her urine. Just a tiny amount.’

  ‘What is the point of giving a child tranquillisers?’

  ‘To calm them down, I should think. Maybe he keeps . . . Maybe he’s keeping them somewhere where they have to be quiet. He has to get them to sleep.’

  ‘But if the reason was to get them to sleep, he could give them sleeping tablets.’

  ‘Yes. It’s possible he doesn’t have access to them. He may only have . . . Valium.’

  ‘Who has access to Valium?’

  ‘Oh, God . . .’

  He stifled a yawn and shook his head sharply.

  ‘Lots of people,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘Everyone who actually gets it prescribed by the doctor. We’re talking about thousands, if not tens of thousands. Then there’s pharmacists, doctors, nurses . . . Even though there are supposed to be rules and regulations in hospitals and chemists, we’re talking about such a small dose that there’s no way . . . It could be anyone. Did you know that over sixty per cent of us open the bathroom cabinet when we’re in someone else’s house? Stealing two or three tablets would be the easiest thing in the world. If we ever manage to catch this guy, it won’t be because he’s in possession of Valium or Vival.’

  ‘If we ever,’ repeated Johanne. ‘That’s a bit pessimistic.’

  Adam Stubo was playing with a toy car. He let it roll down the back of his hand. The front lights glowed weakly when the wheels were set in motion.

  ‘She only likes red cars,’ said Johanne. ‘Kristiane, I mean. Not dolls, nor trains. Nothing but cars. Red cars. Fire engines, London buses. We don’t know why.’

  ‘What is it that’s wrong with her?’

  He carefully put the car down on the coffee table. The rubber on one of the wheels had been torn off and the tiny axle scraped against the glass surface.

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘She’s sweet. Really sweet.’

  He looked like he meant it. But he’d only seen her once. And then only briefly.

  ‘And you’re no further forward with the actual delivery of . . . I mean, he must have been in the entrance in Urtegate, or got someone else to . . . What do you know about it?’

  ‘Courier. A courier!’

  Adam Stubo thumped his index finger down on the roof of the car and pushed it slowly across the table. A small stripe in the glass followed in its trail, where the tyre was missing. Johanne opened her mouth. But said nothing all the same.

  ‘It’s just so . . . so impudent,’ Adam said savagely. He wasn’t aware of what he was actually doing. ‘Of course the guy knew that we wouldn’t tolerate another home delivery of a dead child to the mother. We had checks everywhere. Mistake, of course. With Sarah’s murder, Oslo City Police are suddenly involved and the relationship between the NCIS and . . . forget it. We should have been more discreet. Lured him into a trap. At least tried. He read the signs and used – a courier! A courier! And no one in Urtegate saw anything unusual, no one heard anything, no one guessed. The box with Sarah in must have been left there in broad daylight. Old trick, by the way . . .’

  ‘It’s best to hide where there’s lots of people,’ Johanne concluded. ‘Smart. All the same, the package must have been . . .’

  She hesitated before adding quietly:

  ‘Quite big.’

  ‘Yes, it was big enough to hold an eight-year-old child.’

  Johanne knew herself well. She was a predictable person. Isak, for example, found her boring after a while. Once Kristiane was well again and life returned to a set routine, he started to complain. Johanne was not impulsive enough. Relax, he said more and more often. It’s not that bad, he sighed in resignation every time she looked sceptically at the ready-made pizza he fed their daughter when he couldn’t be bothered to make food. Isak thought she was boring. Lina and her other friends agreed to a certain extent. But they didn’t say so to her face either. On the contrary, they praised her. She was so reliable, they enthused. So clever and so responsible. You could always rely on Johanne, always. Boring, in other words.

  She had to be predictable. She was responsible for a child who would never really grow up.

  Johanne knew herself.

  The situation was absurd.

  She had invited a man home with her, someone she barely knew. She let him tell her the details of a police investigation that was nothing to do with her. He was in breach of the confidentiality clause. She should warn him. Politely say goodbye. She’d already made her mind up in the hotel room in Harwichport, when she tore up the message into thirty-two pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

  ‘Strictly speaking, you shouldn’t be telling me this.’

  Adam Stubo drew a deep breath and let the air seep out between his clenched teeth. He shrank. Maybe he was just sinking deeper into the sofa.

  ‘Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t. Not until we’re formally working together. And I’m starting to get the impression that you don’t want to do that.’

  He gave a smile, as if he wanted to be ironic. But then gave up and continued:

  ‘Strictly speaking, this case is a nightmare. Strictly speaking . . .’

  Again he drew a deep breath.

  ‘My wife and only daughter died just over two years ago,’ he said quickly. ‘I assume you didn’t know.’

  ‘No, I’m very sorry.’

  She didn’t want to hear this.

  ‘An absurd accident. My daughter . . . she was called Trine and was only twenty-three. Amund was a baby. My grandson. She was going to . . . is this upsetting you? I’m upsetting you.’

  Suddenly he sat up. He straightened his shoulders and once again filled his grey tweed jacket. Then he smiled briefly.

  ‘You have more useful things to be getting on with.’

  But he didn’t get up. He gave no sign of moving. A great tit had settled on the bird table out on the terrace.

  ‘No,’ said Johanne.

  When he looked at her, she didn’t know what he wanted. The general impression was that he was grateful. Relieved perhaps, because he sank back into the sofa.

  ‘My wife had been irritated by a blocked gutter for a while,’ he said blankly. ‘I’d promised to do something about it. For a long time. But I just never got round to it. My daughter dropped by one morning, said she was happy to go up on the roof and hose down the gutters. Presumably my wife held the ladder. Trine must have lost her balance. She fell, taking part of the gutter with her. Which must have fallen under her somehow, because it . . . impaled her. The ladder fell on top of my wife, with Trine’s full body weight. One of the rungs hit her in the face. Her nose bone was pushed up into her brain. When I came home a couple of hours later, they were both lying there. Dead. And Amund was still asleep.’

  Johanne could hear herself breathing, short and shallow. She tried to break the rhythm, to slow the pace.

  ‘I was head of division at the time,’ he continued calmly. ‘To be honest, I’d seen myself as the next head of the NCIS for a long time. But af
ter that . . . I asked to be a detective inspector again. Will never be anything else. If I manage to stay on, that is. Cases like this make me wonder. Well, well.’

  His eyes were uncertain. His smile was shy, nearly sheepish, as if he had done something wrong and didn’t know how to say sorry. He opened his mouth a couple of times, clearly to say something more. Then he looked down at his hands instead.

  ‘Well, well,’ he repeated after a while, twiddling his thumbs. ‘I’d better beat a retreat.’

  But he still didn’t get up. He still made no sign of wanting to go.

  I haven’t got room for this, thought Johanne. I haven’t got time for this case in my life. I don’t want it. I haven’t got room . . .

  ‘. . . for you,’ she mumbled.

  ‘What?’

  Adam was sitting with his back to the big living-room window. The contrasting light made it difficult to see his face. Only his eyes were clear. They were looking straight at her.

  ‘Should I make some lunch, instead?’ she asked, smiling. ‘You must be hungry. I certainly am.’

  *

  He took up so much space.

  Isak, the only man who had ever been in her kitchen for more than thirty seconds, was slight, almost skinny. Adam Stubo filled the entire room. There was barely space for Johanne. He took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. Then he started to make an omelette, without asking. Johanne could hardly move without touching him. He smelt newly showered, with a faint aroma of cigars, the smell of someone who was older than her. When he turned up his sleeves to cut the onion, she noticed the hairs on his forearms were light, nearly golden. She thought about summer and turned away.

  ‘What do you think the message means?’ he said, and jabbed the air with his knife. ‘Now you’ve got what you deserved. Who got what they deserved? The child? The mother? Society? The police?’

  ‘In both cases the message has been directed at the mother, in a way,’ replied Johanne. ‘Though of course the murderer couldn’t be certain that it would be the mother who found Kim. It could just as easily have been the father who went down into the cellar. And as far as Sarah is concerned, there’s reason to believe that the murderer realised that the package might never be delivered to the address. He’s not stupid. I don’t know. I think it’s more important to focus on the content of the message than whom it’s addressed to.’

  ‘What do you mean by content?’

  Adam turned on the stove and took a frying pan out of the lower cupboard without even asking where it was. Johanne had sat down on a stool and was staring with great concentration at a glass of iced water.

  ‘In fact, I think you should start from a completely different angle,’ she said slowly.

  ‘OK. What angle?’

  He wiped his eyes.

  ‘You should always start at the bottom,’ she said more or less absent-mindedly, as if she was searching for something in her memory. ‘Look at what you’ve got. Facts. Objective evidence. Lay the foundations. Never speculate before you’ve got the foundations. Dangerous.’

  ‘So that’s what you should do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She straightened her back and put down the glass. Good smells were coming from the cooker. Adam found some plates and glasses, knives and forks. He seemed to be very focused as he cut a tomato into a beautiful decoration.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said with satisfaction, putting the frying pan on the table. ‘Onion omelette. Now that’s what I call a real lunch.’

  ‘Three children,’ she said, chewing slowly. ‘If we assume that Emilie was taken by the same man as Sarah and Kim. We can’t be certain, but let’s . . . For the moment, we’ll assume she was. Three children have disappeared. Two of them have been delivered back. Dead. Dead children.’

  ‘Dead children,’ Adam repeated, and put down his fork. ‘We don’t even know what they died from.’

  ‘Wait!’

  She lifted a hand and continued:

  ‘Who kills children?’

  ‘Sex offenders and motorists,’ he muttered grimly.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘These children weren’t killed by a motorist. And there’s nothing to indicate that they were killed by a paedophile either. Isn’t that right?’

  He nodded imperceptibly.

  ‘Unless it was sexual acts that leave no trace,’ he said. ‘And that is a possibility.’

  ‘What are we left with then, if it’s not a question of sex or cars?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, and took another helping.

  ‘You’re eating too quickly,’ she said. ‘And you’re wrong. We’re left with quite a lot. You, I mean. You’re left with quite a few options.’

  The omelette tasted good. A bit too much onion for her liking, but the dash of Tabasco made it different.

  ‘The fact is that we don’t kill children easily. Both you and I know that most killings in this country are manslaughter. The percentage of murderers who reoffend is minimal. Most killings are the result of an ongoing family conflict, terrible jealousy or . . . pure accident. A drunken brawl. One thing leads to another. There’s a weapon to hand, a shotgun or a knife. Bang. Someone becomes a killer and that’s that. We both know that. Children are seldom directly involved, at least not as victims. Other than by association.’

  ‘That’s if we rule out teenagers,’ Adam retorted. ‘They’re killing each other more and more frequently. And they get younger and younger. I think I would call a fourteen-year-old a child. He was that age, the boy who was arrested in January. At Møllergate school, that is.’

  Johanne rolled her eyes.

  ‘Yes, yes. But gang violence is also about rivalry. Misconceived honour. They kill each other, but rarely anyone else. People who aren’t involved. And as far as sex offenders are concerned, they generally kill to hide their crime. The abuse. It’s very rare that the actual killing is part of the sexual act. To put it simply, sex offenders kill because they have to. I’ve talked to many of them and some find it hard to live with the knowledge of what they have done. They are consumed by remorse. Shame. Grief. Not so much for the sexual act – which they have an astonishing ability to rationalise – but for the murder. The fact that a child had to die.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  He emptied his glass of milk and gently patted his stomach.

  ‘A person who can kill an innocent child . . . Steal them, kill them and send them back to their parents with a grotesque message . . . The actions presuppose a psyche that allows him to legitimise what he has done.’

  ‘That his actions are perfectly reasonable, as far as he is concerned. In other words, he’s mad.’

  Adam was playing with a tube in his breast pocket.

  ‘No, he’s not mad. Not in the traditional sense of the word, at least. He’s not psychotic. Then he would never be able to pull this off. Don’t forget how . . . sophisticated his crimes are. How well planned everything has to be . . . It depends what you mean by mad. A warped . . . mind? Yes. Mentally ill? No.’

  ‘But it’s fine for him to kill a child? Is that what you’re saying? That he thinks it’s fine to kill a child, but he’s not mentally ill?’

  ‘Yes. Or no, actually. For all we know he might be sorry that a child has to die. But he has a higher goal. A mission, if you like. A kind of . . . task?’

  ‘But for who?’

  The cigar tube slipped backwards and forwards between his fingers. There was the nearly imperceptible sound of brushed metal rubbing against dry skin.

  ‘Don’t know,’ she said abruptly.

  You’re playing me, it struck her. Here I am going on about things that are so obvious that you must have worked them out for yourself ages ago. How many murder cases have you worked on? How many killers with distorted judgement have you met? You’ve read volumes about this. You’re fishing. And you think you’ve got me hooked. For some absurd reason it’s important for you to have me on board. I won’t be fooled.
/>   ‘Coffee?’ she asked nonchalantly, and started to fill the machine with cold water.

  ‘You know how a profiler works,’ said Adam.

  She let the water run over her wrist. The jug was full to overflowing.

  ‘First of all, you would read all our documents,’ continued Adam. ‘All the technical evidence and objective facts. Then you would make a profile for each of the victims. Which in this case would be relatively simple, as they’re children. And at the same time incredibly complicated, because you would also need to make profiles for their parents in order to get the whole picture. Then you would slowly start to develop a profile for our man, from scratch. If you’re right that is. That it’s a man, I mean. That’s what you’d do. If only you were willing to help me.’

  The intensity of the last sentence frightened her. She turned off the water and nearly dropped the jug on the floor.

  ‘Why? Why?’

  She spun round and hit the table with her empty hand.

  ‘Can you give me one good reason why an experienced detective inspector in the NCIS would use so much energy and to put it mildly, such unorthodox methods, to get a worthless academic to help him with a case that is so gruesome that we’ve experienced nothing like it in this country before? Can you? Can you explain why you are apparently unable to take no for an answer?’

  There was silence. He studied his hands. Johanne turned her back to him. The coffee machine gurgled and burped. Outside the kitchen window, a red Golf drove slowly from post box to post box down the small road that was actually closed to traffic.

  ‘At the risk . . .’ Adam started quietly, ‘. . . that you will think I’m just as mad as . . . that you will think I’ve flipped.’

  She still didn’t turn round. The man in the red Golf had stopped outside number sixteen.

  ‘When I was younger, I was proud of it in a way,’ he continued as quietly. ‘In fact, I boasted about it. My intuition. The boys called me PS – Psychic Stubo. I . . . It’s not that I am actually psychic. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I can’t see where missing people are. But I . . . I’ve stopped talking about it. My colleagues started to look at me in a strange way. Whispering in corners and behind my back. So I kept shtum. You see, I have this ability . . . no, not ability. Tendency. I have a tendency to feel the cases I work on. It’s difficult to explain, really. I kind of develop a hypersensitivity. I dream my cases. See things.’