Punishment

by Holt, Anne

  ‘At least she’s enjoying this!’ Johanne smiled in resignation. ‘Why did you choose something so . . . so ugly?’

  ‘Shhhh!’

  Isak laid his finger over her mouth, she pulled back.

  ‘Jack’s beautiful. Has something happened? You look so . . . there’s something about you.’

  ‘Give me a hand,’ she replied curtly, and went to get the vacuum cleaner.

  She really could not fathom what had made Kristiane decide to call the dog Jack, King of America.

  XXXIII

  He felt strangely nervous. Perhaps he was just tired. The two hours’ sleep on a side road in Lavangsdalen, three quarters of an hour’s drive from Tromsø, had helped of course. But he still didn’t feel all that bright. The muscles in his lower back ached. His eyes were dry. He blinked furiously and tried to squeeze out some tears by yawning. His nervousness manifested as a prickly feeling in his fingertips and an uneasy hollow feeling in his stomach. He gulped some water from a bottle in long, deep draughts. The car was parked behind the student flats at Prestvannet. Students come and go. They borrow cars. They have visitors. It was the perfect place to park. But he couldn’t sit in the car for much longer. Someone would notice. Especially here, where there were so many single women. He put the top back on the bottle and took a deep breath.

  It took less than five minutes to walk to the small path at the top of Langnesbakken. He knew that, of course, as he’d been here before. He knew her habits. Knew that she was always at home on the last Sunday of the month. Her mother would come at five o’clock sharp. As she always did. Just to check. To check her property. Disguised as a family meal. Sunday roast, a good glass of wine and beady eyes. Clean enough? Nice enough? Has the grouting in the bathroom been redone?

  He knew what would happen. He had been here three times in the course of the spring. Had a look around. Made notes. It was five to three. He walked round the bend and looked over his shoulder. No one. It was raining, but not much. The clouds drowned the mountains on Kvaløya; they were darker to the west and the weather would worsen towards evening. He quickly crossed a garden with a light step and disappeared behind a bush. It was thinner than he’d hoped. Even though he was wearing grey and dark blue, he would be easily spotted if someone cared to look. Without looking back, he ran over to the house wall. There were no neighbours to the north-west. Only small winter-worn birch trees and dirty remnants of snow. He was breathing heavily. This was not how he had anticipated feeling. Nervousness constricted his throat and he swallowed quickly, several times. He hadn’t felt like this before. He held tightly on to the small pouch on his belt. Elation. That’s what he should be feeling. A certainty that made him sing inside. This was his moment.

  This was his moment.

  He could only just hear her. Without looking at his watch, he knew that it was three o’clock. He held his breath. All was quiet. When he peeped round the corner, he saw that he’d had more luck than he dared hope for. She had left the pram out on the grass. An old hammock was lying on the terrace, so there wasn’t room for the pram. The world was silent except for his shallow breathing and an aeroplane that had started its descent to Langnes. He opened the pouch. Got ready. Approached the pram.

  It was standing under the eaves, out of the spring rain. But the child was covered up as if winter storms still raged round the house. The hood was up. A rain cover was buttoned over the pram. The mother had also put a net over, to keep stray cats out perhaps. He struggled with the cat protection. Unbuttoned and pulled back the rain cover. The baby was lying in a blue sleeping bag and wearing a hat. The end of May and the baby had a hat on! Close to the head. The strap under its chin disappeared in a fold of skin on the chubby neck. There wasn’t much extra room in the pram. The baby was fast asleep, with its mouth open.

  He mustn’t wake it.

  He would never manage to get enough clothes off the child.

  ‘Shit!’

  Panic washed over him like a wave, starting at his feet and then up through his body, winding him. He dropped the syringe. He had to have the syringe. The baby gasped and gurgled. The baby was a great big gaping breathing hole. The syringe. He bent down, picked it up and put it in the pouch, pulled out a piece of paper. His hands were shaking, he dropped the plastic cover. Bent down, picked it up, put it in his pouch. The sleeping bag was filled with down. He pulled it over the breathing hole. Held the dark-blue material firmly between his fingers, his gloved fingers, the child twisted and thrashed, tried to turn away, it was amazing how easy it was to stop it, he held on, pressed firmly and didn’t let go, until there was no resistance from under the down and the blue material. But still he didn’t let go. Not yet. He kept pressing with a firm grip. The plane had landed and it was quiet everywhere.

  Luckily, he remembered the piece of paper.

  ‘I remembered the message,’ he said to himself, once he was in the car. ‘I remembered the message.’

  Even though he fell asleep at the wheel twice – he woke as the car veered over on to the dirt siding, just in time to pull back – he managed to drive as far as Majavatn without stopping, other than to piss and fill petrol from the jerrycans on hidden side roads. He had to sleep. He found a blind spot for the car on a track by a deserted camping site.

  It shouldn’t have happened like that.

  He should have been in control. It should have been carried out as planned. Suddenly it was impossible to sleep, even though he felt sick from lack of sleep. He started to cry. It shouldn’t have been like that. It was his moment. Finally. His plan, his wish. He cried so loudly that he felt ashamed, he swore and hit himself in the face.

  ‘Thank God I remembered the message,’ he mumbled, and dried the snot with his fingers.

  XXXIV

  The doorbell jerked her out of a dream. Short rings, as if someone was trying to wake her without disturbing Kristiane at the same time. The King of America was whining in Kristiane’s room, so she let the dog out before going to open the front door. Fortunately it looked as if her daughter was sleeping undisturbed, and the air in the room was heavy with sleep and dog piss. The dog jumped up at her again and again, its claws painfully scratching her bare legs. She tried to push it away, but tripped and stubbed her toe on the door frame on her way out into the hall. Afraid in case the person outside might ring again, she limped swearing to the front door and opened it.

  It was hard to see his eyes. His whole body seemed smaller, his shoulders bent forwards, and she smelt a faint trace of sweat when he lifted his hand to ward her off. He had a flight case tucked under his arm. The handle was broken so he carried it like a box, open and misshapen.

  ‘Unforgivable,’ he muttered. ‘But I couldn’t make it before now.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘One. In the morning.’

  ‘I realised that,’ she said drily. ‘Come in. I’ll just go and put something else on.’

  He was sitting in the kitchen. The King of America was chewing his hand. It was slavering and whining and presumably hungry.

  ‘Hmmm. Recent acquisition?’

  She grunted in response and fumbled for the coffee machine. She should have known it was Adam. When she woke up, all she thought was that she had to stop the ringing. If Kristiane woke up in the middle of the night, it would be the start of a long day. She pulled at the faded sweatshirt. She had better sweaters than this in the cupboard.

  ‘If you’re going to come again at night, please don’t ring the doorbell. Use the phone. I turn the phone off in the living room. The one . . .’

  She nodded towards the bedroom and measured coffee into the filter.

  ‘It rings quietly in my room. It wakes me, but lets Kristiane sleep. It’s important for her. And for me.’

  She tried to smile, but it turned into a yawn. Groggy, she blinked her eyes and shook her head.

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ said Adam. ‘Sorry. He’s done it again.’

  Her hand felt leaden as she lifted it to her hair, so she
let it fall again until she had a firm grip on a drawer handle instead.

  ‘What?’ she said, flatly. ‘What do you mean, done it again?’

  Adam covered his face with his hands. His voice was muffled.

  ‘An eleven-month-old boy from Tromsø. Glenn Hugo. Eleven months! You hadn’t heard?’

  ‘I . . . I haven’t watched TV or listened to the radio tonight. We . . . Kristiane and I were playing with the dog and went for a walk and . . . Eleven months. Eleven months!’

  Her outburst hung in the air between them for a long time, as if the young victim’s age held a hidden explanation, a code or solution, for his meaningless death. Johanne felt the tears in her eyes and blinked.

  ‘But . . .’

  She let go of the drawer and sat down at the table. His hands were clasped in front of him and she had a strong urge to put hers on top.

  ‘They’ve found him already then?’

  ‘He was never abducted. He was suffocated in his pram during his afternoon nap.’

  The dog had flopped down in the corner by the cooker. It was lying on its side. Johanne tried to focus on the small ribcage, rising and falling, rising and falling. The ribs stood out under the soft, short fur. His eyes were half closed and his tongue was wet and pink in the middle of all that shitty brown.

  ‘Then it’s not him,’ she said quickly in a flat voice, struggling for air. ‘He doesn’t suffocate them. He . . . he abducts them and then kills them in a way we can’t . . . we can’t work out. He doesn’t suffocate small babies while they’re asleep. It can’t be the same man. In Tromsø, you said? Did you say in Tromsø?’

  She hit the table with her fist, as if the geographical distance was the proof she needed: what they were looking at was a tragic but natural death. A cot death, awful, of course, but still bearable. At least for her. For everyone else apart from the family. The mother. The father.

  ‘Tromsø! That doesn’t make sense!’

  She leaned forward over the table and tried to look him in the eye. He turned towards the coffee machine. Slowly he got up, seemingly robbed of energy. Opened the cupboard and took out two mugs. For a moment he stood studying them. One of them had a Ferrari on the side, faded to a pale pink by the dishwasher. The other was shaped like a tame dragon, with a broken wing and the tail as a handle. He filled them both and gave the car mug to Johanne. The steam from the coffee clung to her face. She gripped the mug with both hands and wanted Adam to agree with her. Tromsø was too far away. It didn’t fit the pattern. The killer had not claimed his fourth victim. It couldn’t be true. The dog whimpered in his sleep.

  ‘The message,’ he said in a tired voice, and sipped the hot liquid. ‘He left the same message. Now you’ve got what you deserved.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘We haven’t released any details about the message yet. There hasn’t been a word about it in the papers. We’ve actually managed to keep it secret until now. It has to be him.’

  Johanne looked at the clock.

  ‘Right. Twenty-five past one,’ she said. ‘We’ve got four hours and thirty-five minutes exactly until the alarm clock in there goes off. So let’s get started. I’m guessing that you’ve got something in your flight case. Go get it. We’ve only got four and a half hours.’

  *

  ‘So the only common feature is the message?’

  She leaned back in the chair, frustrated, and folded her hands round her neck. There were yellow Post-its everywhere. A big sheet of paper was stuck to the fridge; as it had been rolled up, they’d had to use masking tape to stop it falling down. The children’s names were written at the top of each column and information about everything from their favourite food to their medical history underneath. The column for Glenn Hugo was almost empty. The only information they had about the little boy who was not yet more than twenty-four hours dead, was a preliminary cause of death: suffocation. Age and weight. A normal, healthy, eleven-month-old boy.

  A piece of A4 paper over the cooker showed that his parents were called May Berit and Frode Benonisen and they were twenty-five and twenty-eight years old respectively and lived in her wealthy mother’s house. Both were employed by the local council. He worked as a rubbish collector and she was a secretary in the mayor’s office. Frode had nine years’ elementary education and a relatively successful career as a footballer for TIL behind him. May Berit had studied history of religion and Spanish at the University of Oslo. They’d been married for two years, almost to the day.

  ‘The message. And the fact that they’re all children. And they’re all dead.’

  ‘No. Not necessarily Emilie. We don’t know anything about what’s happened to her.’

  ‘Correct.’

  He massaged his scalp with his knuckles.

  ‘The paper that the messages are written on comes from two different sources. Or piles to be more precise. Ordinary copy paper of the type used by everyone with a PC. No fingerprints. Well . . .’

  He rubbed his head again and a very thin puff of dandruff caught the light from the powerful standard lamp she had taken in from the living room.

  ‘It’s too early to say anything definite about the last message, of course. It’s still being tested. But I don’t think we should get our hopes up. The man is careful. Extremely careful. The handwriting in each message looks different, at least at first glance. That might be on purpose. An expert is going to compare them.’

  ‘But this witness . . . this . . .’

  Johanne got up and ran her finger over a series of yellow Post-its on the cupboard door nearest the window.

  ‘Here. The man in Soltunveien 1. What did he actually see?’

  ‘A retired professor. Very reliable witness, by the way. The problem is that he . . .’

  Adam poured himself coffee cup number six. He tried to suppress an acid burp and held his fist to his mouth.

  ‘His eyesight isn’t that good. He uses pretty strong glasses. But in any case . . . He was repairing his terrace. He had a good view from there down to the road, here.’

  Adam used a wooden ladle as a pointer and marked out the rough map that was taped to the window.

  ‘He said that he noticed three people in the critical period. A middle-aged woman in a red coat, who he thinks he recognised. A young boy on a bike, who we can basically rule out straight away. Both of them were walking down the road, in other words towards the house in question. But then he saw a man, who he reckoned was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, walking in the opposite direction . . .’

  The ladle handle moved across the paper again.

  ‘. . . out towards Langnesbakken. It was just gone three. The witness is sure about that because his wife came out shortly afterwards to ask when they should eat. He looked at his watch and reckoned that he would be finished with the new railings by five.’

  ‘And there was something about the way he was walking . . .’

  Johanne squinted at the map.

  ‘Yes. The professor described it as . . .’

  Adam rummaged around in the papers.

  ‘. . . someone who’s in a rush but doesn’t want to show it.’

  Johanne looked at the memo with a degree of scepticism.

  ‘And how do you see that?’

  ‘He felt that the man was walking more slowly than he wanted to, almost as if he wanted to run, but didn’t dare. Sharp observation, in fact. If it’s right. I tried to do something similar on the way here and there could be something in it. Your movements become quite staccato and there’s something tense and involuntary about it.’

  ‘Can he give any more details?’

  ‘Unfortunately not.’

  The last wing had been broken from the dragon mug in the course of the night and it stood there, more pathetic than ever, like a tame, clipped cockerel. Adam put a bit of milk in his coffee.

  ‘Nothing more than his age, approximately. And that he was dressed in grey or blue clothes. Or both. Very neutral.’

  ‘Sensible
of him. If it really was our man . . .’

  ‘Oh, and that he had hair. Thick, well-cut hair. The professor couldn’t be sure of anything else. Of course, we’ll make an announcement, asking anyone who was in the area at the time to contact us. So we’ll see.’

  Johanne rubbed her lower back and closed her eyes. She seemed to be lost in thought. The early morning light had just started to creep into the sky. Suddenly she started to collect all the notes, take down the posters and fold away the map and columns. She put everything together in a meticulously thought-out system. The Post-its in envelopes. The large sheets of paper folded and piled on top of each other. And finally she put it all back in the old flight case and then took a can of Coke from the fridge. She looked questioningly at Adam, who shook his head.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he assured her. ‘Of course.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘This is where we really start. Who kills children?’

  ‘We’ve been through this before,’ he said hesitantly. ‘We agreed that it was motorists and paedophiles. And when I think about it, it was a bit flippant really to say motorists, given the context.’

  ‘They’re still responsible for killing most children in this country,’ she retorted. ‘But never mind. This is about hate. A distorted sense of justice or something like that.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m thinking, Adam!’

  The white of his eyes was no longer white. Adam Stubo looked as if he’d been on a bender for three days, an impression that was reinforced by the smell.

  ‘The hate would have to be pretty intense to justify what this man has done,’ said Johanne. ‘Don’t forget that he has to live with it. He has to sleep at night. He has to eat. Presumably, he has to function in a community where society’s condemnation screams at him from the front of every newspaper, from every news broadcast, in shops, at work, maybe . . .’

  ‘But surely he can’t . . . He can’t hate the children!’

  ‘Shhh.’