What Never Happens

by Anne Holt

  “Couldn’t you just ask her?”

  Bjørn peered at him over the top of his glasses.

  “Ask her . . . hah!”

  “If you can check her account, I mean. Not about where she was. From your description of her, it wouldn’t surprise me if she said yes. Your story is about a woman who wants to be seen. Who wants you to get a glimpse of her, out of reach, but still . . . there. Present. Like a fairy in the woods. If you’ve seen one, you’ll swear on your life that they exist. But you can never prove it.”

  The wood crackled on the fire. Every now and then the flames flared up with blue tongues. The hint of burnt resin mingled with the smell of the malt whiskey—tar and burnt bark. Bjørn reached for a wooden box on the shelf and opened the lid.

  “Take one,” he said, and Adam felt his eyes go moist.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

  They prepared their cigars in silence. Adam struck a match and had to hold back a sigh of sleepy pleasure.

  “You should know that Wencke Berger,” he said and then blew a smoke ring up toward the ceiling, “has thought of everything. I don’t know whether we could get anything from her account statements. Probably not. Judging by what she’s managed so far, she will have thought about that. She’s sharp, and she knows her stuff. It would be unbelievable if she hadn’t covered all her tracks, even the electronic ones. But if she hasn’t . . .”

  He put the cigar in his mouth. The dry, fine tobacco stuck to his lips. The smoke was mild and almost felt cool against his palate.

  “If, contrary to expectation, she has overlooked such an important thing, it will only be because she hasn’t overlooked it.”

  He laughed and looked at the short, fat cigar.

  “Then it would be part of the game. She is so sure, so utterly convinced that we will never find anything to nail her with, that she feels safe. She knows that we can’t get access without her permission. Or get a court order on the basis of reasonable doubt. We have neither. And she knows it.”

  Bjørn pushed the ashtray over to him.

  “I have to have that order,” Adam said and knocked his cigar on the edge of the ashtray. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But you have to understand that . . .”

  The wind had changed. It was a westerly now. The rain had been replaced by sleet. A flash of lightning illuminated the garden. The naked trees were visible for a moment, sharp with flat shadows, like an unsuccessful photograph. The thunder followed a few seconds later.

  “Thunder and lightning at this time of year,” muttered Bjørn. “A bit early, isn’t it? And when it’s so cold?”

  “You’re a judge,” Adam said and puffed on his cigar. “You’ve been in the judicial system for . . . how long?”

  “Eighteen years. Plus two as an associate lawyer. That’s twenty years.”

  “Twenty years. And have you ever, in all those years, come face to face with . . . evil? I don’t mean situational madness, a kind of materially determined opportunism. I don’t mean wretchedness, character disorders, or egoism. I mean pure, genuine evil. Have you ever come across it?”

  “Does it exist?”

  “Yes.”

  They drank in silence. The smoke lay like a comfortable, scented blanket under the ceiling.

  “Do you have anyone who can submit a request?” Bjørn asked.

  “What else do we have young, easily manipulated lawyers for . . .”

  They smiled without looking at each other.

  “Make sure it gets to the courts on Wednesday,” Bjørn Busk said. “Not before and not after. Then it will be certain to end up on my desk. But I’m not promising anything.”

  “Thank you,” Adam said and made a move to get up.

  “Can’t you stay for a while?” Bjørn asked. “Sit down. We’ve got whiskey in our glasses, and this box is full.”

  He tapped the wooden lid with his fingers. Adam leaned back in the chair. He put his feet on the ottoman in between them.

  “If you insist,” he said and shut his eyes. “If you dare to have me here.”

  “It’s pouring rain,” Bjørn Busk replied. “The house won’t burn down tonight.”

  Seventeen

  There was some satisfaction in the fact that they were frightened.

  She had seen their fear, even though she no longer bothered to check that often. Every evening about seven, they carried the youngest child to the car and drove a couple of miles to Johanne’s childhood home. The strange one, who always carried a fire engine around with her that she should have outgrown years ago, was staying with her father. She often came to visit them in Haugesvei, but as far as Wencke Berger could make out, she never slept there.

  Not that it really mattered.

  Things had changed.

  Everything.

  It was Sunday, March 21, and she was puttering about in the apartment, cleaning. She had been busy recently. Not only was she working hard on her manuscript, but the interviews and TV appearances took time. She had barely been home in the last couple of days, except to change clothes. And they were now strewn over chairs in the living room and on the bedroom floor.

  Old friends had suddenly reappeared. Not that they were any more interesting, but they had at least changed their attitude, which basically meant very little. She couldn’t be bothered with everyone who came back to knock on her door, enthused by all the attention Wencke Berger was now getting.

  The most important thing was that she was being taken seriously at last. She was an expert. Not on fiction, but on reality. She was no longer the epitome of commercialism and an easy read, the trademark of culture in decline. Now she was in the opposition, a skeptic, someone who was critical of the authorities and an eloquent debater.

  She was barely recognizable. Even to herself.

  She stopped in the bathroom. Looked at herself in the mirror. She looked older. That must be the weight loss. She no longer had crow’s-feet only when she smiled; the wrinkles now followed her cheekbones as if the skin on her face was slightly too heavy.

  It didn’t matter. Age instilled her analyses with authority, gave substance to all the comments she was now asked to give and gave happily. No longer just about the serial killings, but also the disappearance in Vestlandet, a nasty rape case in Trondheim, and a sensational bank robbery in Stavanger. Wencke Berger was the expert that everyone wanted to hear from.

  And it was Fiona Helle’s murder that had started it all.

  Wencke Berger opened the drawer of new makeup. She wasn’t used to it. She tried to put mascara on her short lashes.

  She missed.

  The thought of Fiona Helle always made her hands shaky. She tried to breathe normally and turned on the faucet. Cold water running over her wrists helped to clear her head.

  She hadn’t really felt any pleasure when she read about the murder, what now seemed like a lifetime ago. At the time, her feeling was closer to rage, a liberating rage, against the victim. She remembered the evening remarkably well. It was a Wednesday evening in January. The smell of asphalt hung in the air, as the road above the house had been repaired. She was restless but couldn’t do anything other than move from chair to chair in front of the panorama window with a view of the bay and Cap Ferrat.

  The appalling Internet connection had nearly prevented her from surfing the day’s papers in Norway. When she finally did log on, she stayed up all night.

  Something happened.

  Whereas previously she had been irritated and on occasion provoked, this time she was overwhelmed by rage.

  Fiona Helle sold other people’s lives for her own fame and fortune. The show was an affront to her, Wencke Berger, with all its life lies and biology. It was she who Fiona Helle spat on every time she entertained the viewers with vulnerable people’s dreams in her one-hour, lightweight program; the dreams that were once Wencke Berger’s dreams, though she had never dared to admit it.

  “I must learn how to do this,” Wencke Berger thought as she pulled the mascara brush
from the sticky black contents of the silver cylinder. “I’m not old yet. I still have a lot to do, and I’m changing. I’m no longer just an observer, I am being observed. I must learn to look good.”

  Ten years ago, when her true history had come to light on an aging document, she was already paralyzed. She was on the verge of becoming invisible. She didn’t belong anywhere. No one wanted to know her. She wrote books that everyone read but no one admitted to reading. Her father was a parasite, he wanted money, money, money. Her false mother barely spoke to her and couldn’t understand what she called “Wencke’s horrible scribblings.”

  Her real mother, the woman who gave birth to her in pain and then died, would have been proud of her. She would have loved her in spite of her heavy body, her unattractive face, and her increasingly closed nature.

  Her mother would have kept all her novels in the bookshelves in the living room, and maybe had a scrapbook with press clippings.

  She couldn’t face finding out more. Wencke Berger knew nothing about the woman who had died twenty minutes after her daughter was born. Instead, she started to catalog other people’s lives. She became a better author.

  And grew more and more invisible.

  She didn’t care about the world, just as the world obviously did not care about her.

  But that was then. Not now.

  It was a waste of time trying to put on makeup. Her hands felt too big; she wasn’t used to the tiny brush in the eyeshadow compact. The lipstick was too brazen, too red.

  It smelled of asphalt, she remembered, that evening in Villefranche. Wet, soft tar mixed with the brine of the sea and rain. She went to bed at dawn but couldn’t sleep. Somewhere in her head was a thought that kept evading her. It took a week before she grasped it. All these years, she had thought, all these years of futile work that had given her nothing but money and dissatisfaction. Then there it was, right in front of her, a shining new opportunity. All the preparations were made. She could just begin. Fiona Helle’s tongue had been cut out and beautifully wrapped. Wencke Berger smiled coldly when she read that; she laughed furiously and remembered another case, from another world, six years ago. She remembered a man with intense eyes, extreme energy, and fascinating stories, remembered how she had moved closer and closer to the front with every lecture, with questions and observant comments. He gave her a fleeting smile and then bent down over an elegant brunette, quoting Longfellow, and winked. Wencke Berger gave him a book with a respectful dedication in the front. He left it behind on the desk. In the evenings she followed him; he went to the pub where he was boisterous and told stories, surrounded by women who took turns taking him home.

  She was already too old then. She was invisible, and he bragged about Johanne Vik.

  All this came back to her, and she realized what she should do. She would no longer wait for something that would never happen. She would be the one who made it happen.

  And she had succeeded.

  And now she had to learn to put makeup on, to display her new self. She just had to stop thinking about the past so much, getting so emotional.

  Forget Fiona Helle!

  Wencke Berger closed the drawer in the bathroom and went into the bedroom. She picked up clothes on the way. Her wardrobe was steadily expanding. She shopped regularly, nearly every week; she was no longer afraid of asking sales clerks for advice.

  More than a hundred people’s lives were stored in the filing cabinet by the wall. She stroked the ice-cold door handle. Put her finger on the lock. Leaned against the solid weight of steel.

  People’s good and bad habits, rhythms, desires, and needs had been noted, analyzed and cataloged. Wencke Berger knew them better than they knew themselves; she was clinically neutral, the cold observer. She knew enough about over a hundred people to be able to disguise them lightly and then kill them with pen and paper. She knew their lives inside out. When she woke up that sunny January morning in Villefranche and decided to make fiction real, she had plenty to choose from.

  She knew, both then and now, that she should select randomly. Arbitrary victims were the safest. But the temptation was too great. Victoria Heinerback had always irritated her, though she never really knew why. The most important thing was that she could be taken for a racist. Everything had to fit. Johanne Vik had to have a chance of understanding. If not after the first murder, then later.

  And Rudolf Fjord would tumble in any case.

  He was pathetic.

  Wencke Berger opened the metal cabinet. Found a file. Read. She smiled at how good her memory was, how easy it was to recall all she had seen and written down.

  Rudolf Fjord was despicable. He wouldn’t survive if the police turned a searchlight on his life. If he didn’t fall on one count, there were plenty of others that would nail him. His file was almost as extensive as Johanne Vik’s. For a while she considered choosing him as her first victim. But then she decided against it. That would be too easy. Rudolf Fjord would self- destruct on his own.

  She was right. He couldn’t ride out a storm.

  Wencke Berger closed the file. She pulled out another, much thinner, studied the name but didn’t open it. A moment later she put it back and locked the cabinet.

  Vegard Krogh deserved to die. She could hardly bear the thought of him. Now he was gone.

  Wencke Berger went into the living room. It was neater now. Some flowers had been standing for a few days too many and were giving off a potent smell; she had been given them by the committee of the Students’ Association for taking part in a debate on chemical castration.

  She opened the balcony door. The cold air caressed her face; it felt like it was wiping away all the wrinkles she had just been examining in the mirror.

  For some reason, she couldn’t quite come to terms with having sacrificed that whore in Stockholm. One prostitute more or less on Brunkebergs Torg was, of course, neither here nor there. But there had been a kind of bond between them. Maybe it was the physical likeness. It hadn’t taken long to find her; whores come in most colors and shapes. The woman was large despite her obviously meager diet. Her hair was curly and dry. Even her glasses, which were so exclusive that they must have been stolen, were like hers.

  And the woman fell for it.

  She hadn’t run away with the credit card. She could have spent as much as she liked before the card was cancelled, then disappeared. But she had believed the promise that she would get lots of cash in return for doing what she was asked: to eat a good meal. Take a taxi. Buy something in a kiosk or two and be back at the hotel just before midnight. Be seen, but not say a word.

  When they met again the next morning, the prostitute was almost happy. She was clean. She had eaten well. Had a good night’s sleep in a warm bed, with no customers.

  Of course she didn’t get the money.

  As expected she threatened to go to the police; she was smart enough to realize there was something suspicious about the offer she’d been made. As expected, she didn’t do anything before injecting the heroin that Wencke Berger had given her, a gesture of goodwill in return for her work well done.

  As expected, she died of an overdose.

  Now she was dead, cremated and no doubt laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

  Wencke Berger stood on the balcony and frowned at the thought of the dead whore. Then she lifted her face to the sky and decided never to give her another thought.

  A light rain started to fall. It smelled of spring in Oslo, exhaust fumes and rotting garbage.

  Håvard Stefansen’s death was simply a necessity. Johanne Vik had disappointed her; she didn’t understand the pattern. She had to make it clearer, and Wencke Berger finally stepped into the spotlight.

  And she stayed there.

  People recognized her on the street now. They smiled at her, and some people asked for her autograph. One of the tabloids had run a three-page profile of the crime expert and international best seller writer in its Saturday magazine: Wencke Berger, photographed at her computer in her chaoti
c study, in front of a large, beautifully set dining table with a raised glass, on her balcony with a view over the town, smiling at the photographer. She’d had help from a stylist with the makeup.

  She hadn’t let them into the bedroom.

  She went back into the living room. The smell of the flowers was nauseating. She took the vase into the kitchen. Emptied out the water and put the flowers in a plastic bag.

  The book would soon be finished.

  At the bottom of her cabinet, where it wouldn’t be found until she died, lay the most important file. On the cover, in big, regular capital letters, she had written ALIBIS.

  For seventeen years, she had studied and researched. A good alibi was a prerequisite for a successful crime, the very foundation of a good thriller. She created and constructed, considered and discarded. The file grew slowly. Before she went to France, she had counted. Thirty-four documents. Thirty-four plausible alibis. She had already used some of them; others lay waiting for a new book, a more suitable story. None of them were perfect, because there was no such thing as a perfect alibi.

  But her constructions were very, very good.

  Three of them could never be used in a book.

  They had been put to better use.

  As they were not perfect, they kept her alive and on her toes. Every morning she felt that thrilling fear. When the doorbell rang, when the phone rang, when a stranger stopped on the other side of the street, looked twice, and then crossed the road toward her, she felt the fear; she was reminded of how valuable life had become.

  On the way out to throw the flowers down the garbage chute, she stopped and hesitated. The book she had taken from Victoria Heinerback’s bedroom was in the shoe closet in the hall. She had looked at it only last night. Felt the pages, felt the excitement of touching the paper that the young politician had taken to bed with her, read on the bus; maybe she had even sneaked a few pages during boring plenary sessions and the endless waiting around in the Storting.