Punishment aka What Is Mine

by Anne Holt

  “Yes, he doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered by that sort of thing, our man…”

  “The parents,” said Johanne slowly.

  She jumped down and opened the damaged flight bag. She went through the papers until she came to the envelope marked “parents,” then she placed the contents side by side across the floor. Jack lifted his head, but went quietly back to sleep.

  “There has to be something here,” she said to herself. “There’s some kind of link between these people. It’s just not possible to develop such an intense hate for four children aged nine, eight, five, and under a year.”

  “So, it has nothing to do with the children at all?” Adam questioned, leaning over the notes.

  “Maybe not. But then again, maybe it’s both. Children and parents. Fathers. Mothers. How do I know?”

  “Emilie’s mother is dead.”

  “And Emilie is the only one who has not been accounted for.”

  There was a pause. The silence was amplified by the noise of the wall clock ticking mercilessly closer to six o’clock.

  “All the parents are white,” said Johanne suddenly.

  “All of them are Norwegian, by origin. None of them know each other. No mutual friends. No jobs at the same place. To put it bluntly…”

  “Striking. Or perhaps they’ve been chosen precisely because they don’t have anything in common.”

  “Common, common, common…”

  She said the word over and over to herself, like a mantra.

  “Age. Ages range from twenty-five, Glenn Hugo’s mother, to thirty-nine, Emilie’s father. The mothers range from…”

  “Twenty-five to thirty-one,” said Adam. “Six years. Not a lot.”

  “On the other hand, all the women have young children. The difference can’t be that great at all.”

  “Do you think there’s some connection between the fact that Emilie’s mother is dead and that she still hasn’t been found?”

  Adam let out a deep sigh and got up. He looked down at the papers and then started to clear away the cups and the coffee pot.

  “I have no idea. Emilie doesn’t seem to fit into this at all. Johanne, I mean it. I can’t think anymore.”

  “I think he’s suffering right now,” she said, changing tack. “I think he made a mistake in Tromsø. That child should have been killed in the same way as the others. Inexplicable. He has somehow managed to develop a method that…”

  “Leaves no trace,” he finished her sentence bitterly. “That our army of so-called experts just shake their heads at. Sorry, they say, ‘no known cause of death.’”

  Johanne sat completely still, on her knees, with her eyes closed.

  “He wasn’t going to suffocate Glenn Hugo,” she whispered. “That was not supposed to happen. He loves the control he has over everyone and everything right now. He’s playing a game. In some way or another, he feels he’s… getting even. He got frightened in Tromsø. Lost control. That scared him. Maybe it will make him careless.”

  “Animal,” snapped Adam. “A god damned animal.”

  “That’s not the way he sees it,” said Johanne. She was still sitting on her knees, resting on her heels. “He’s a relatively well-adjusted guy, to all appearances at least. He’s obsessive about control. He’s always neat. Well mannered. Clean. He’s doing what he’s doing now because it’s justified. He’s lost something. Something has been taken from him that he believes is fundamentally his. We’re looking for a person who believes he’s acting in his full right. The world is against him. Everything that’s gone wrong in his life is someone else’s fault. He never got the jobs he deserved. When he didn’t do well on his exams, it was because the questions were poorly formulated. When he doesn’t earn enough money, it’s because the boss is an idiot who doesn’t know how to appreciate his work. But he deals with it. Lives with it, with women who reject him, with promotions that never arrive. Until one day…”

  “Johanne…”

  “Until one day something happens that…”

  “Johanne, stop!”

  “Triggers him. Until he can no longer bear to live with this injustice. Until it is his time to get even.”

  “I mean it! Stop! This is pure speculation!”

  Her legs had gone to sleep and she made a face as she pulled herself up with the help of the table.

  “Possibly. But you’re the one who came to me for help.”

  “It smells in here.”

  Kristiane was holding her nose. She had Sulamit under her arm. The King of America licked her face in delight.

  “Hello sweetie. Good morning. We’ll let some more air in.”

  “The man smells.”

  “I know.”

  Adam forced a smile.

  “The man is going home to take a shower. Thank you, Johanne.”

  Kristiane wandered back into her room, with the dog hot on her heels. Adam Stubo bashfully tried to hide the sweat marks under his arms as he put on his jacket. When he got to the front door, he started to give her a hug. Then he held out his hand instead. It was surprisingly dry and warm. The palm of her hand burned where she’d touched him, long after he had disappeared around the corner by the red house at the end of the road. Johanne noticed that the windows needed cleaning; there were tape marks all over the glass. And she had to put a bandage on her little toe. She had barely noticed it since she’d stubbed it on the door frame as she went to open the door five hours earlier, but now she saw that it was swollen and that the nail might fall off. And in fact, it was very sore.

  “Jack’s made a poop,” Kristiane shouted triumphantly from the living room.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Even though Aksel Seier had never really felt happy, there were times when he felt satisfied with life. On days like these he felt he belonged; that he was grounded in the history that existed between himself and Harwich Port, between him and his gray, cedar-clad house by the beach. Rain darkened the broken asphalt on Ocean Avenue. His pickup truck humped along slowly toward the house, as if he was still not sure that he wanted to go home. The gray of the sea met the gray of the sky, and the intense green of the oak crowns that leaned heavily toward each other to create a botanical tunnel for part of the road was subdued. Aksel liked this sort of weather. It was warm and the air felt fresh as it brushed his cheeks through the open car window. The pickup bumped into the driveway. He sat there for a while, leaning back in the front seat. Then he grabbed the keys and got out.

  The flag on his mailbox was raised. Mrs. Davis didn’t like Aksel’s mailbox. Her own had been decorated with rosemaling by Bjorn, who claimed to be Swedish and sold mock Dala wooden horses to stupid tourists on Main Street. Bjorn couldn’t speak Swedish and had black hair and brown eyes. But when he painted anything, he stuck to blue and yellow. You had to give him that. Mrs. Davis’s mailbox was covered in coltsfoot flowers dancing on blue stalks. Aksel’s mailbox was completely black. The flag had once been red, but that was a long time ago now.

  “You’re back!”

  Sometimes Aksel wondered if Mrs. Davis had a radar in her kitchen. She had, of course, been a widow for many years and didn’t work-she lived off the meager life insurance payout she’d gotten when her husband disappeared at sea in 1975-and therefore was able to dedicate her time to making sure she knew how everyone was and what was happening in the small town. Her efficiency was impressive all the same. Aksel couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been welcomed home by the lady in pink.

  He held out a bottle in a brown paper bag.

  “Oh dear! Liquor? For me, honey?”

  “Maple syrup,” he said gruffly. “From Maine. Thanks for taking care of the cat. How much do I owe you?”

  Mrs. Davis didn’t want any money, not at all. He had barely been away. Wasn’t it just four days since he left? Five? It was no problem. It was a pleasure to look after such a beautiful and well-trained cat. Syrup from Maine. Thank you so much! Such a beautiful state, Maine. Fresh and unspoiled. She should take a tri
p there soon herself; it must be twenty years since she last visited her sister-in-law, who lived in Bangor. She was the headmistress of a school there, very smart lady, even though she could be a bit liberal with the strong stuff. But that was her business and had nothing to do with Mrs. Davis, and wasn’t he originally going to go to New Jersey?

  Aksel shrugged his shoulders in a way that could mean anything. He grabbed the suitcase from the back of the pickup and walked toward the door.

  “But you’ve got mail, Aksel! Don’t forget to check your mailbox! And the young lady who visited you last week, she came back. Her card is in the box, I think. What a sweet girl! Cute as a button.”

  Then she looked up at the sky and tripped back to her house. The rain hung like pearls on her angora sweater and was about to make her hair flat.

  Aksel put his suitcase down on the steps. He didn’t like getting mail. It was always bills. There was only one person who wrote to Aksel Seier, and her letters came every six months, one at Christmas and one in July, loyal and regular as always. He looked over at Mrs. Davis’s house. She had stopped under the eaves and was waving enthusiastically at the mailbox. He gave in. He strode over to the black box and opened the front. The envelope was white. It wasn’t a bill. He tucked the letter under his sweater as if its contents were illegal. A business card fell to the ground. He picked it up and glanced at the front, then put it in his back pocket.

  The air in the house was stuffy and a sweet smell mingled with the dust that made him sneeze. The fridge was suspiciously quiet. When he slowly opened the door, the light didn’t go on and illuminate the six-pack that stood alone on the top shelf. On the shelf underneath was a plate of stew, covered by a repulsive, green film. It was no more than two months since Frank Malloy had repaired the fridge in return for an embroidered sofa cushion that he took home to his wife. There soon wouldn’t be much left to repair, Frank had said. Aksel should treat himself to a new fridge. Aksel took out a can of beer. It was tepid.

  The letter was from Eva. But it was the wrong time of year for letters from Eva. Not before July. The middle of July and a few days before Christmas Eve. That’s the way it should be. That’s how it had always been. Aksel sat down on the chair under the shark lamp. He opened the envelope with a pewter letter opener decorated with a Viking pattern. He pulled out the sheets of paper with the familiar handwriting, unclear and difficult to read. The lines sloped slightly down to the right. He unfolded the letter, smoothed it over his thigh, then held it up close to his eyes.

  By the time the can of beer was empty, he had managed to get through it all. To be absolutely sure, he read the letter again.

  Then he sat there staring out into space.

  THIRTY-SIX

  On the one hand, Johanne Vik was quite pleased that everyone assumed she had ordered a cake. She was the cake buyer, in both her own and others’ eyes. She was the one who made sure there was always coffee in the staff room. If Johanne had been away from the office for more than three days, the fridge was empty of soda and water and there were only a couple of dry apples and a brown banana left in the fruit bowl. It was unthinkable that any of the office staff might take care of that sort of thing. Remnants of a seventies work ethic still lingered in the university, and in fact it suited her quite well. Normally.

  But now she was extremely irritated.

  They had all known about Fredrik’s fiftieth birthday for ages. He had certainly reminded them of the big day often enough. It was over three weeks since Johanne had collected the money, two hundred kroner each, and gone to Ferner Jacobsen on her own to buy an expensive cashmere sweater for the institute’s most snobby professor. But she’d forgotten the cake. No one had reminded her to remember, yet everyone still stared at her in astonishment when she came back from the university library. At lunch there’d been no marzipan-covered walnut cream cake on the table. No songs, no speeches. Fredrik was really pissed off. And the others seemed to think they’d been wronged, that she had betrayed her colleagues at a crucial moment.

  “Someone else could make the effort sometimes,” she said, and closed the door to her office.

  It was unlike her to forget something like that. The others did have reason to rely on her. They always had and she had never said anything. If she’d remembered the blasted birthday, she could have just asked Tine or Trond to buy a cake. After all, it was his fiftieth. And she couldn’t blame Adam either. Even though he had robbed her of a whole night’s sleep, she was used to that sort of thing. Something she’d learned in the first years with Kristiane.

  She pulled a photocopied page from her bag. The university library had every edition of all the local papers on mircofilm. It had taken her less than an hour to find the announcement. It had to be the right one. As if by fateful irony, or perhaps as a result of a local print setter’s sensitivity, the death announcement was tucked away in the corner, right at the bottom of the page, unobtrusive and alone.

  My dear son

  ANDERS MOHAUG

  born March 27, 1938,

  passed away on June 12, 1965.

  The funeral service took place in private.

  Agnes Dorothea Mohaug

  So the man was twenty-seven when he died. In 1956, when little Hedvig was abducted, raped, and killed, he was eighteen.

  “Eighteen…”

  There was no obituary. Johanne had looked for something, but gave up after she’d trawled through every paper in the four weeks after the funeral. No one had anything to say about Anders Mohaug. His mother didn’t even need to say “no flowers.”

  How old would she be now? Johanne worked it out on her fingers. If she was twenty-five when her son was born, she would be nearly ninety today. Eighty-eight, if she was alive. She might be older. She could have had her son later.

  “She’s dead,” Johanne said to herself, and put the photocopy in a plastic sleeve.

  But she decided to try all the same. It was easy enough to find the address in a telephone directory from 1965. Directory Assistance informed her that a completely different woman now lived at Agnes Mohaug’s old address. Agnes Mohaug was no longer registered as having a phone, said the metallic voice.

  Someone might remember her. Or her son. It would be best if someone could remember Anders.

  It was worth a try, and the old address in Lillestrøm was as good a starting point as any. Alvhild would be happy. And for some reason that was now important to Johanne. To make Alvhild happy.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Emilie seemed smaller. She had somehow shrunk, and that irritated him. His jaw was tense; he heard his teeth grinding and tried to relax. Emilie couldn’t complain about the service. She got food.

  “Why aren’t you eating?” he asked, harshly.

  The child didn’t answer, but at least she tried to smile. That was something.

  “You have to eat.”

  The tray was slippery. The bowl of soup skidded from side to side as he bent to put it down on the floor.

  “Promise me you’ll eat this?”

  Emilie nodded. She pulled the duvet up, right up to her chin; he couldn’t see how thin she was anymore. Good. She stank. Even over by the door he could smell the urine. Unhealthy. For a moment he considered going over to the sink to see if she’d run out of soap. But then he decided against it. To be fair, she’d been wearing the same clothes for several weeks now, but she was hardly a baby. She could wash her underpants when she wanted to if there was soap left.

  “Do you wash yourself?”

  She nodded carefully. Smiled. Strange smile she had, that kid. Subservient, somehow. Womanly. The girl was only nine and had already learned to smile submissively. Not that that meant anything. Only betrayal. A woman’s smile. Again he felt a pain at the back of his jaw; he had to pull himself together. Relax. He had to regain control. He had lost it in Tromsø. Nearly. Things hadn’t quite gone according to plan. It wasn’t his fault that it was so cold. May! May and the child had been packed in as if it were midwinter. Surely it couldn’
t be good for the child. But that didn’t matter now. The child was dead. He had managed to get back home; that was the most important thing. He was still in control. He took a deep breath and forced his thoughts into place, where they belonged. Why did he have this girl here?

  “You watch yourself,” he said quietly.

  He hated the smell of the child. He himself showered several times a day. He was never unshaven. His clothes were always freshly ironed. His mother could smell like Emilie sometimes, when the nurses were too late. He couldn’t stand it. Human decay. Degrading bodily smells that stemmed from a lack of control. He swallowed hard, his mouth filled with saliva, and his throat felt constricted and sore.

  “Should I turn off the light?” he asked, and took a step back.

  “No!”

  She was still alive.

  “No! Don’t!”

  “Then you have to eat.”

  In a way it was exhilarating to stand here like this. He had attached the iron door to the wall with a hook, but it could still close if he wasn’t careful. If he, for example, fell, or he lost his balance for a moment and fell toward the door, the hook would slip out of the eye and the door would slam behind him. They would both be done for. Him and the girl. He was breathing fast. He could go into the room and trust the hook. It was a solid bit of equipment; he’d made it himself. A screw eye secured deep into the wall, with an anchor to keep it firmly in place. A hook. Big. It was solid and would never jump out by itself. He walked further into the room.

  Control.

  The weather had let him down. He had to suffocate the child. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He hadn’t planned to abduct the boy, as he had with the other two. It was smart to do things differently each time. Confusing. Not for him, of course, but for the others. He knew that the boy slept outside for at least a couple of hours every afternoon. After an hour, it was too late. Not for him, but for the others.