Punishment

by Holt, Anne

  Everything would be sorted, Aksel soothed her. He had taken out his cards. Platinum, he explained, holding the shiny piece of plastic up to her eyes. These cards were only given to the wealthy. He was wealthy. He would sort everything out.

  Everything would be sorted, now that Aksel had finally come.

  ‘I could have come earlier.’

  She just hadn’t asked him to. Aksel knew that; it wasn’t possible to come to Norway before Eva wanted him to. Even though she hadn’t really invited him now, there was a plea for help in what she wrote. The letter came in May, not in July like it should have. It was a desperate letter, and he had answered her by leaving everything behind and coming home.

  Aksel drank some juice from a large glass that was standing on the bedside table. It tasted fresh. It tasted of Norway, blackcurrant syrup and water. The real thing. Norwegian juice. He dried his mouth and smiled.

  Aksel heard something and half turned round. Fear blasted through his body. He let go of Eva’s hand and balled his fist without being aware of it. The policeman with the keys and watery eyes, the one who wanted Aksel to admit to something he had not done and who had haunted him in his dreams, had worn a different uniform. More old-fashioned, perhaps. This man had a loose jacket and a black and white checked band round his trouser legs. But he was a policeman. Aksel saw that immediately and looked out of the window.

  ‘Eva Åsli?’ asked the man, coming nearer.

  Eva whispered that she was. The man cleared his throat and came even closer to the bed. Aksel caught the smell of leather and car oil from his jacket.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you that your son has been in a serious accident. Karsten Åsli. He is your son, isn’t he?’

  Aksel got up and straightened his back.

  ‘Karsten Åsli is our son,’ he said slowly. ‘Eva’s and my son.’

  LXVII

  Johanne trudged the streets without knowing where she was going. A bitter wind whistled between the tall buildings in Ibsenkvartalet and she vaguely registered that she was on her way to the office. She didn’t want to go there. Even though she was freezing, she wanted to stay out of doors. She picked up her pace and half decided to visit Isak and Kristiane. They could go for a walk out on Bygdøy, all three of them. Johanne needed it now. After nearly four years of sharing responsibility for Kristiane, she had got used to the arrangement. And when she missed Kristiane too much, she could just visit her at Isak’s. He appreciated it when she came, and was always friendly. Johanne had got used to the situation. But getting used to something was not the same as liking it. She had a constant yearning to hold the girl, to hug her tight and to make her laugh. Sometimes the feeling was unbearably strong, like now. Usually it helped to reason that it was good for Kristiane to be with her father. That he was as important to her daughter as she was. That was the way it had to be.

  That Kristiane was not her property.

  Tears fell from one eye. It could be the wind.

  They could do something nice together, all three of them.

  Unni Kongsbakken had seemed so strong when she came to the Grand Café and so tired and worn out when she left. Her youngest son had died years ago. She had lost her husband yesterday. And today she had in a way given away the only thing she had left: an untold story and her oldest son.

  Johanne put her hands in her pockets and decided to walk to Isak’s.

  Her mobile phone rang.

  It was probably the office. She hadn’t been there since yesterday. She’d phoned in this morning to say that she was going to work at home, but she hadn’t even checked her emails. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Right now she wanted to be left in peace to face the truth about little Hedvig’s murder in 1956. She needed to digest the fact that Aksel Seier had served someone else’s sentence. She had no idea what she was going to do, or whom she should talk to. She wasn’t even sure if she would tell Alvhild what she knew. The telephone stayed in her bag.

  It stopped ringing.

  Then it started again. Irritated, she rummaged around in her bag. The display said ANONYMOUS. She pushed the answer button and put the phone to her ear.

  ‘Finally,’ said Adam, relieved. ‘Where are you?’

  Johanne looked around.

  ‘In Rosenkrantzgate,’ she said. ‘Or to be exact, CJ Hambros Plass. Just outside the courts.’

  ‘Stay there. Don’t move. I’m only a couple of minutes away.’

  ‘But . . .’

  He had already hung up.

  *

  The policeman seemed to be uncomfortable. He stared at the piece of paper in his hand, even though there was obviously nothing there that could ease the situation. The woman in the bed was crying quietly and had no questions.

  Aksel Seier would stay in Norway.

  He would later marry Eva. A quiet ceremony with no guests and no gifts other than a bunch of flowers from Johanne Vik. But he didn’t know that yet, as he stood there in the warm yellow room with his future wife, his hands clenched at his sides, with cropped hair and a pair of pink and turquoise checked golfing trousers. Even though he would never be formally cleared of the crime for which he was sentenced, over time he would straighten his back, secure in the knowledge of what had actually happened. A journalist from Aftenposten would write an article that verged on libel, and even though Geir Kongsbakken’s name was not mentioned in the paper, the sixty-two-year-old decided shortly after that it might be wise to wind up his small firm in Øvre Slottsgate. As a result of the article and an application by Johanne Vik, Aksel Seier would receive an ex gratia payment from the Norwegian parliament that he felt was as good as an acquittal in court. He framed the accompanying letter, which then hung over Eva’s bed until she died fourteen months after their wedding. Aksel Seier would never meet the man he had been sentenced for, and never felt the need to either.

  But Aksel Seier knew none of this as he stood there, groping for words, questions for the man with the chessboard wrapped round his legs. The only thing he could think about was a day in July 1969. He had moved from Boston to Cape Cod and the weather was good. Eva’s letter, the July letter, had come. As it had the summer before, and the summer before that. Every Christmas, every summer, since 1966, when Aksel left Norway without knowing that Eva would give birth to a son five months later, Aksel Seier’s son. She only told him about it in 1969.

  Aksel Seier had sat on a red stone on the beach with shaking hands when he discovered that he had a child who was nearly three years old.

  But he wasn’t allowed to go back. Eva was living with her mother, in a small place outside Oslo, and nothing must change. Her mother would kill her, she wrote. Her mother would take the boy away from her if Aksel came home. He wasn’t allowed to come back, said Eva, and he could see that she’d been crying. Her tears had stained the paper, dry patches of smudged ink that made the words nearly illegible.

  Aksel Seier had never understood why Eva waited so long. He didn’t dare ask.

  Not even now; he fiddled with the permanent crease in his trousers and didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Right,’ said the policeman with some scepticism, and stared even harder at the piece of paper. ‘It says nothing here about a father . . .’

  Then he shrugged.

  ‘But if . . .’

  The look he sent to the woman in the bed was full of doubt, as though he thought Aksel was lying. Eva Åsli could hardly protest the man’s claimed fatherhood. All she could do was cry, unbearably softly, and the policeman wondered whether he should call a doctor.

  ‘Take me to Karsten,’ said Aksel Seier, stroking his head.

  The policeman shrugged again.

  ‘OK,’ he mumbled, and looked over at Eva again. ‘If that’s all right with you, then . . .’

  He thought he saw a slight movement in answer. Maybe it was a nod.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said to Aksel. ‘I’ll drive you. It’s possible there’s not much time.’

  *

  ‘There’s not much time,’
snapped Adam. ‘We’ve got to damn well hurry! D’you not understand?’

  Johanne had asked him to slow down three times. Each time Adam responded by accelerating. The last time he had whipped the blue light out through the window and thumped it on the roof, on a bend at full speed. Johanne closed her eyes and crossed her fingers.

  They had barely exchanged a word since he explained to her where they were going and why. They had driven furiously in silence for an hour. They must be nearly there now. Johanne noticed a petrol station where a fat man with bright-red hair was pulling a tarpaulin over a couple of cords of wood. He raised his hand automatically as they swerved into a bend.

  ‘Where the hell is that turn-off?’

  Adam was nearly shouting, but slammed on the brakes when he saw the small, unmarked road up the hill.

  ‘First right, then two left,’ he remembered and repeated: ‘First right, two left. Right. Two left.’

  Snaubu was beautifully situated on the crown of a hill, with a view over the valley, sunny and isolated. The house looked almost derelict from a distance. As they got closer, Johanne saw that one of the walls had recently been repanelled and painted. There were also some foundations that might be for a garage. Or an outhouse. When the car stopped, she felt her pulse thundering in her ears. The wind was still cold up here on the hillside and she caught her breath as she got out.

  ‘Do you really think she’s here?’ she said, and shivered.

  ‘I don’t think,’ said Adam running into the house. ‘I know.’

  *

  Aksel Seier sat on the edge of the metal chair with his hands in his lap.

  Karsten Åsli was unconscious. They had managed to stop the internal bleeding. A doctor explained to Aksel that several more operations were needed, but that they would wait until the patient’s condition had stabilised. Something in the doctor’s eyes told Aksel that the chances were small.

  Karsten was going to die.

  The respirator sighed heavily and mechanically. Aksel had to concentrate so as not to breathe in rhythm with the big bellows; it made him dizzy.

  Karsten looked like Eva. Even with a tube in his nose, a tube in his mouth, tubes everywhere and bandages on his head; Aksel could see it. The same features, the big mouth and eyes, which were undoubtedly blue under the distorted, swollen lids. Aksel ran his finger over his son’s hand. It was ice cold.

  ‘It’s me,’ he whispered. ‘Your dad is here.’

  Karsten’s body shuddered. Then he lay completely still again, in a room where the only noise came from a wheezing respirator and a heart monitor that bleeped red above Aksel’s head.

  *

  ‘She’s not here. We just have to accept that.’

  Johanne tried to put her hand on his arm. Adam pulled away and stormed over to the stairs down to the cellar. They’d already been down there three times. And up in the loft. Every cupboard and corner in the house had been searched. Adam had even pulled apart a double bed to check in all the empty spaces. He had checked the kitchen cupboards at random and even opened the dishwasher in vain several times.

  ‘One more time,’ he said in desperation, and thundered down the stairs without waiting for an answer.

  Johanne stayed in the living room. Adam had broken in. They had broken into someone else’s property without a warrant. Emergency rights, he mumbled when he finally managed to open the front door. Rubbish, she answered, and followed him in. But Emilie was not in the house. Now, when Johanne finally had the chance to think, she realised that it was pure madness. Adam felt something. He felt that Emilie had been taken hostage and was being held somewhere on the farm, by a man with a clean record, who had no more damning evidence against him other than that he had known some members of the families concerned.

  But Adam had a hunch, and for that reason she was now standing in the middle of a strange and sterile living room in a small farmhouse up a hillside, far from civilisation.

  ‘Johanne!’

  She didn’t want to go down there again. The cellar was damp and full of dust. She was already struggling to breathe and coughed.

  ‘Yes,’ she shouted back without moving. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come here! Can you hear the noise?’

  ‘What kind of noise?’

  ‘Come here!’

  Reluctantly she made her way down the steep steps. He was right. When they both stood completely still in the middle of the concrete floor, they could hear a faint humming. A mechanical sound, regular and low.

  ‘It’s almost like my PC,’ whispered Johanne.

  ‘Or a . . . air conditioning. It could be . . .’

  Adam started to feel along the walls with his hands. The plaster fell off in several places. A huge wardrobe without doors stood against the shorter wall, which Johanne thought faced east. Adam tried to look behind it. He squatted down and studied the floor.

  ‘Help me,’ he said, and started to push away the large piece of furniture. ‘There are marks on the floor. This cupboard has been moved more than once.’

  He didn’t need her help. The cupboard slipped away from the wall with ease. Behind it was a small trapdoor that reached to about hip height. It was obviously new, with shiny hinges and no lock. He opened it. Behind the door, a narrow passage sloped down, barely big enough for a grown man. Adam climbed in on all fours; Johanne followed, bent double. Two to three metres in, the passage opened out into a small room, where they could both stand, with concrete walls and a glaring light from the strip light on the ceiling. Neither of them said anything. The sound of the air conditioning was clearer here. They both stared at a door in the wall, a heavy, shiny steel door. Adam pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and carefully put it over the handle. Then he slowly opened it. The hinges were well oiled and silent.

  The rancid smell of human filth made Johanne retch.

  The light inside the door was sharp as well. The room was perhaps ten square metres and contained a sink, a toilet and a narrow pine bed.

  There was a child in the bed. The child was naked. It wasn’t moving. On the floor there was a neatly folded pile of clothes, and at the end of the bed a dirty duvet, with no cover. Johanne went into the room.

  ‘Careful,’ warned Adam.

  He had noticed that the door had no handle on the inside. There was a hook that made it possible to fix the door to the wall but, to be on the safe side, he stayed and held it open.

  ‘Emilie,’ said Johanne quietly, and squatted down in front of the bed.

  The child was a girl and she opened her eyes. They were green. She blinked a couple of times, without managing to focus her eyes. She had a Barbie doll astride her skinny chest, with a cowboy hat at a jaunty angle. Johanne gently put her hand on the girl’s and said:

  ‘My name is Johanne. I’m here to take you to your daddy.’

  Johanne looked up and down the girl’s naked body: skin and bones, with big scabs on her knees. Her hips were like two sharp knives that looked as if they might break through the thin film of pale, transparent skin. Johanne started to cry. She took off her jacket, took off her sweater, her vest; she stood there in her bra and pulled her own clothes over the tiny body without saying a word.

  ‘There are some clothes on the floor,’ said Adam tactfully.

  ‘I don’t know if they’re hers,’ said Johanne, and sobbed as she lifted Emilie up from the bed.

  The child weighed nothing. Johanne hugged her close to her own, bare skin.

  ‘They might be his things. His clothes. They might be that fucking . . .’

  ‘Daddy,’ said Emilie. ‘I want my daddy.’

  ‘We’re going to drive to your daddy right now,’ said Johanne, and kissed the girl on the forehead. ‘Everything’s going to be just fine now, my love.’

  As if anything will ever be fine again after this, she thought, and walked towards the steel door where Adam carefully put his own coarse jacket over her shoulders.

  As if you will ever get over what you’ve experienced in th
is tomb.

  As she left the room, slowly and gently so as not to frighten the child, she noticed a pair of man’s underpants on the floor by the door. They were worn out and green, with a cheeky elephant waving its thick trunk by the fly.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ groaned Johanne into Emilie’s matted hair.

  LXVIII

  It was two o’clock in the morning of Friday 9 June 2000. A light rain drizzled from low clouds over Oslo. The meteorologists had promised no rain and mild nights, but it couldn’t be more than five degrees outside. Johanne closed the door to the terrace. It felt like she hadn’t slept for a week. When she tried to follow the drops that slid in stages down the living-room window, she got a headache. Her lower back ached when she tried to stretch her body. But it was impossible to go to sleep all the same. At about hip height, she could clearly see a print of Kristiane’s hand on the glass against the undefined pattern of the rain outside. Chubby fingers spread out like the petal in an uneven circle. Johanne stroked the handprint.

  ‘Do you think Emilie will ever get over it?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘No. But she’s at home now. They wanted to keep her in hospital, but her aunt refused. She’s a doctor herself and felt that the child would be better off at home. Emilie will be well looked after, Johanne.’

  ‘But will she ever get over it?’

  When she touched it lightly, carefully, she could swear she felt the warmth from Kristiane’s hand on the smooth glass.

  ‘No. Why don’t you sit down?’

  Johanne tried to smile.

  ‘I’ve got a sore back.’

  Adam rubbed his face and yawned loudly.

  ‘Apparently, there was a terrible dispute about access rights,’ he started to say halfway through the yawn. ‘Karsten Åsli has been trying to see his son since he was born, and the mother left hospital the day before she was due to leave. They went through three different instances and five court hearings and she consistently claimed that Karsten Åsli was not suited to have care of the child. She was adamant that he was a dangerous man. Sigmund managed to get hold of copies of all the documentation this afternoon. Karsten Åsli won his case straight down the line, but the mother challenged the judgment and brought interlocutory appeals, delayed the outcome . . . and finally, just ran away. Abroad, presumably. It would seem that Karsten Åsli doesn’t know where. He contacted a private detective agency . . .’