by Anne Holt
The doorbell rang.
“Damn it, Mom!”
“Damn it,” repeated Kristiane seriously.
Johanne stamped out into the hall and pulled open the front door.
“Morning,” said Adam Stubo.
“Hi . . .”
“Hello,” said Kristiane, sticking her head out from behind her mom’s thighs, with a big smile.
“You’re looking very nice today!”
Adam Stubo held his hand out to the little girl. Amazingly, she took it.
“My name is Adam,” he said solemnly. “And what is your name?”
“Kristiane Vik Aanonsen. Good morning. Good night. I have a kite.”
“Oh . . . can I see it?”
Kristiane showed him Sulamit. When he wanted to hold the fire engine, she pulled back.
“I think that’s the best kite I have ever seen,” he said.
The child vanished.
“I was in the neighborhood, so I thought . . .”
He shrugged. The obvious lie made his eyes narrow into an almost flirty smile. Johanne was caught off guard by a strange jabbing feeling, a breathlessness that made her look down and mumble that he’d better come in.
“It’s not exactly clean in here,” she said automatically as she registered his eyes swooping over the living room.
He sat down on the sofa. It was too deep and soft for a man as heavy as Adam Stubo. His knees were pushed up too high and it almost looked as if he was sitting on the floor.
“Maybe you’d be more comfortable in a chair,” she suggested, removing a picture book from the seat.
“I’m comfortable here, thanks,” he said. It was only now that she realized he had a large envelope with him, which he placed in front of him on the coffee table.
“I just . . .”
She made a vague gesture toward Kristiane’s room. It was the same problem every time. As Kristiane looked like—and sometimes behaved like—a normal, healthy four-year-old, Johanne was always uncertain whether she should say anything. Whether she should explain that the girl was small for her age and was in fact six and brain-damaged, but no one seemed to know how or why. Or explain that all the strange babblings that came out of her daughter’s mouth were neither due to stupidity nor impudence, but rather a short circuit that no doctor could repair. Normally she waited too long. It was as if she hoped for a miracle every time. That her daughter would be rational. Logical. Coherent. Or that she would suddenly develop an obvious deformity—a lolling tongue or squinting eyes in a flat face that made everyone smile with warm understanding. Instead it was just awkward.
Kristiane settled down to watch 101 Dalmatians in her mother’s study.
“I don’t usually . . .”
Again she made that vague, apologetic gesture toward the room where her daughter was sitting.
“No problem,” said the policeman on the sofa. “I have to admit that I sometimes do the same. With my grandson, I mean. He can be pretty demanding. A video is a good babysitter, sometimes.”
Johanne felt the red flushing over her face and went into the kitchen. Adam Stubo was a grandfather.
“Why did you come here?” she asked when she returned with a cup of coffee that she put down in front of him, with a napkin underneath. “That ‘in the neighborhood’ explanation isn’t really true, is it?”
“It’s this case of ours.”
“Cases.”
He smiled.
“Correct. Cases. You’re right. At least . . . I feel that you can help me. It’s as simple as that. Don’t ask me why. Sigmund Berli, a good friend and colleague, can’t understand why I am pursuing you in this way.”
His eyes narrowed again in a way that had to be flirting. Johanne concentrated hard on not blushing again. Cake. She didn’t have any cake. Cookies. Kristiane had eaten them all yesterday.
“Do you take milk?”
She started to get up before he indicated otherwise with his right hand.
“Listen,” he started again, pulling out a pile of photographs from the envelope on the coffee table. “This is Emilie Selbu.”
The photo was of a pretty little girl with a garland of coltsfoot in her hair. She was very serious and her deep blue eyes looked almost mournful. There was a small hollow at the base of her thin neck. Her mouth was small, with full lips.
“The picture is very recent. Taken about three weeks ago. Lovely kid, isn’t she?”
“Is she the one they haven’t found?”
She coughed as her voice gave way.
“Yes. And this is Kim.”
Johanne held the photograph right up to her eyes. It was the same one that they had shown on TV. A boy clutching a red fire engine. Red fire engine. Sulamit. She dropped the picture quickly and had to pick it up from the floor before pushing it back to Adam Stubo.
“As Emilie is still missing and Kim is . . . What on earth makes you think that the crimes were carried out by the same person?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question.”
There were several photographs in the pile. For a moment it seemed that he intended to show them all to her. Then he clearly changed his mind and put the rest back in the envelope. The photos of Emilie and Kim remained on the table, side by side, both facing Johanne.
“Emilie was abducted on a Thursday,” he said slowly, “in the middle of the day. Kim disappeared on Tuesday night. Emilie is nine years old and a girl. Kim was a five-year-old boy. Emilie lives in Asker. Kim lived in Bærum. Kim’s father is a plumber and his mother is a nurse. Emilie’s mother is dead and her father is a linguist who earns a living translating literature. None of them know each other. We’ve hunted high and low to see if there are any connections between the two families. Apart from discovering that Emilie’s father and Kim’s mother both lived in Bergen for a while at the start of the nineties, there’s nothing. They didn’t even know each other there. All in all . . .”
“Strange,” said Johanne.
“Yes, or tragic, depending on how you choose to look at it.”
She tried to avoid looking at the photographs of the two children. It was as if they were reproaching her for not wanting to get involved.
“In Norway there’s always some kind of connection between people,” she said. “Especially when you live as close together as Asker and Bærum. You must have experienced that yourself. I mean, when you sit down and start talking to someone. You nearly always have a mutual acquaintance, an old friend, somewhere you’ve both worked, an experience in common. It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Um, yes . . .”
He paused. He seemed uninterested. Then he suddenly took a deep breath as if he were about to protest, but stopped himself.
“I need someone to construct a profile,” he said instead. “A profiler.”
His English pronunciation was broad, like an American TV series.
“Hardly,” Johanne interjected. The conversation was heading in a direction she did not like. “If you are to going to benefit at all from a profiler, you need more cases than this. Assuming that we are actually dealing with one and the same person.”
“God forbid,” said Adam Stubo. “That there should be more cases, I mean.”
“Obviously I agree with you on that. But it’s more or less impossible to draw any conclusions based on two cases.”
“How do you know that?”
“Elementary logic,” she replied sharply. “It’s obvious . . . The profile of an unknown criminal is based on the known common features of his crimes. It’s like one of those connect-the-dots drawings. Your pencil follows the numbered points until there is a clear picture. It doesn’t work with only two points. You need more. And on that point, you are absolutely right: let’s hope and pray that it doesn’t happen. That more points appear, I mean.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Why do you insist that this is one and not two cases?”
“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that you chose to study psycholog
y and law. An unusual combination. You must have had a plan. A goal.”
“Complete coincidence, in fact. A result of youthful fickleness. And I also wanted to go to the States. And you know . . .”
She discovered that she was biting her hair. As discreetly as possible, she pushed the wet lock of hair behind her ear and straightened her glasses. “I think you’re wrong. Emilie Selbu and little Kim were not abducted by the same man.”
“Or woman.”
“Or woman,” she repeated, exasperated. “But now, however rude it may be, I’m going to have to ask you to . . . I have quite a lot I need to do today, because I’m . . . Sorry.”
Again she felt that pressure on her lungs; it was impossible to look at the man on the sofa. He got up from his uncomfortable position with remarkable ease.
“If it happens again,” he said, gathering up the photographs. “If another child is taken, will you help me then?”
Cruella De Vil screeched from the study. Kristiane shrieked with delight.
“I don’t know,” said Johanne Vik. “We’ll see.”
As it was Saturday and the project was going according to plan, he treated himself to a glass of wine. When he thought about it, he realized that it was the first time in months that he’d had alcohol. Normally, he was worried about the effects. A glass or two made him docile. Then halfway through the third he would get angry. Fury waited at the bottom of the fourth glass.
Just one glass. It was still light outside and he held the wine up to the light.
Emilie was difficult. Ungrateful. Even though he wanted to keep the girl alive, for the moment at least, there were limits.
He took a sip. It tasted musty; the wine tasted of cellars.
He had to smile at his own sentimentality. He was just too emotional. He was too kind. Why should Emilie live? What was the point? What had the girl actually done to deserve that? She got food, good food, often. She had clean water in the tap. She even had a Barbie doll that he had bought for her and yet she didn’t seem to be any happier.
Fortunately she’d stopped snivelling. To begin with, and particularly after Kim disappeared, she cried the minute he opened the door down there. She seemed to be having difficulties breathing, which was nonsense. He had installed a good ventilation system ages ago. There was no point in suffocating the child. But she was calmer now. At least she didn’t cry.
The decision to let Emilie live had come naturally. He hadn’t intended it to be that way from the start, at least. But there was something about her, even though she didn’t know it herself. He’d see how long it lasted. She’d have to watch herself. He was sentimental, but he had his limits.
She’d be getting company soon enough.
He put down the glass and pictured eight-year-old Sarah Baardsen. He had memorized her face, stored each feature in his mind, practiced putting her face together so he could call her up at will, whenever and wherever. He didn’t have any pictures. They could fall into the wrong hands. Instead he had studied her in the playground, on the way to her grandmother’s, on the bus. He’d once even sat next to her through an entire film. He knew what her hair smelled like. Sweet and warm.
He put the cork back in the bottle and left it on one of the half-empty shelves in the kitchen. When he glanced out the window, he stiffened. Right outside, only a few yards away, stood a fully grown roe deer. The beautiful animal lifted its head and looked right at him for a moment before sauntering off toward the woods to the west. Tears came to his eyes.
Sarah and Emilie were sure to get along during the time they were together.
SEVENTEEN
Boston’s Logan International Airport was one enormous building site. It smelled damp under the low ceiling and the dust lay thick. Everywhere she looked, warning signs screamed out at her, black writing on a red background. Watch out for the cables on the floor, the beams hanging loose from the walls, and the tarpaulins hiding cement mixers and materials. Four planes from Europe had landed in under half an hour. The line in front of passport control was long, and Johanne Vik attempted to read a paper she had already read from front to back while she waited. Every now and then she would push her carry-on luggage forward with her foot. A Frenchman in a dark camel coat poked her in the back each time she waited a couple of seconds too long before moving.
Lina had turned up the evening before with three bottles of wine and two new CDs. Kristiane had been safely delivered to Isak and her best friend was right, Johanne did not need to worry about tomorrow as she didn’t have to be at Gardemoen Airport until midday. And there was no point in going to work first. Lina’s wine disappeared, along with a quarter bottle of cognac and two Irish coffees. When the airport express train rolled into the platform at the new international airport on the morning of May 22, Johanne had to dash to the toilet to rid herself of the remains of a very good night. It would be a long journey.
Fortunately she had fallen asleep somewhere over Greenland.
Finally it was her turn to show her passport. She tried to hide her mouth. The cloying taste of sleep and an old hangover made her uncertain. The passport inspector took longer than was necessary; he looked at her, stared down, hesitated. Then he finally stamped the necessary documentation in her passport with a resigned thump. She was waved in to the U.S.
Normally it was so different. Coming to America was usually like taking off a backpack. The feeling of freedom was tangible; she felt lighter, younger, happier. Now she shivered in the bitter wind and couldn’t remember where the bus stop was. Instead of renting a car at Logan, she had decided to take the bus to Hyannis. There was a Ford Taurus waiting for her there, which meant she didn’t need to think about the traffic in Boston. If only she could find the damned bus stop. It was chaotic out here too, with temporary detours and temporary signs everywhere. Despondency sank over her and she still felt a bit nauseous. The cologne of the angry Frenchman clung to her clothes.
Two men were leaning against a dark car. They both had baseball caps on and were wearing the characteristic rain jacket. They didn’t need to turn around for Johanne to know that it said FBI in big reflective letters on their broad backs.
Johanne Vik had the same jacket herself. It was hanging in her parents’ cottage and was only used in the pouring rain. The F was half-faded and the B had nearly disappeared.
The FBI men laughed. One stuffed a piece of chewing gum into his mouth, then straightened his cap and opened the car door for a woman in high heels who crossed the road quickly. Johanne turned away. She had to hurry if she was going to catch the bus. She still felt a bit lousy and sick and hoped that she would sleep on the bus. If not, she would have to find a place to stay overnight in Hyannis; she was hardly in any state to drive in the dark.
Johanne started to run. Her suitcase bumped along on its tiny wheels. Breathless, she handed her luggage to the driver and climbed on board.
It struck her that she hadn’t given Aksel Seier a single thought since she left Gardemoen. She might even meet him tomorrow. For some reason or another, she had built up a picture of him. He was quite good-looking, but not particularly tall. Maybe he had a beard. God knows if he would want to see her. To travel to the States, more or less on a whim, with no agreements, no actual information other than an address in Harwich Port and an old story about a man who was convicted of something that he probably didn’t do—it was all so impulsive and unlike her that she smiled at her reflection in the window. She was in the U.S. In a way, she was home again.
She fell asleep before they had left the Ted Williams Tunnel.
And her last thought was of Adam Stubo.
EIGHTEEEN
Johanne Vik could not remember what day it was when she woke up on Tuesday morning.
The evening before, she had picked up the car from Barnstable Municipal Airport, which was no more than a couple of small airstrips alongside a low, long terminal building. The lady behind the Avis desk had given her the keys and a slightly embarrassed yawn. It was still two hours until midni
ght. Even though it would only take her about half an hour to drive to the room she had booked in Harwich Port, she didn’t want to chance it. So she checked in at a motel in Hyannis Port, five minutes from the airport. She took a shower and then went for a walk in the dark.
Down by the dock, the anticipation of summer was tangible. Pubescent boys, who had been bored by an uneventful winter, now cheered and laughed in the night and waited for the town to explode. Children as young as ten fled from their mothers and bedtime and zigzagged between the bollards and old barrels on their scooters. Memorial Day was only a few days off. The population of Cape Cod would increase tenfold in the course of one weekend and then remain constant until September and Labor Day, and the start of another idle winter season.
Johanne fumbled for her watch. It had fallen onto the floor.
It was just past six in the morning. She had only slept for five hours, but she felt good all the same. She stood up and pulled on a T-shirt that was too big, the one she normally slept in. The air conditioning gave a strained sigh and then was quiet. It must be about 77 degrees in the room. The morning light poured in when she opened the curtains. She looked to the southwest. The express boat to Martha’s Vineyard sat at the dock, newly painted and white; there was an offshore breeze and the mooring ropes were straining between the jetties and boats. Beyond the ferry, in the shelter of a copse, was the massive gray Kennedy memorial. She had gone there last night and sat on a bench looking out to sea. The night air was already saturated with early summer, salty and sweet. She sat with her back to the memorial, a huge stone wall with an unimaginative copper relief in the middle. An expressionless, dead president in profile, like on a coin—a king on a gigantic coin.
“The king of America,” Johanne said to herself as she connected her laptop to the Internet.
Only one e-mail was worth the cost to download: a drawing from Kristiane. Three green figures in a circle. Kristiane, Mommy, and Daddy. The hands they were holding were enormous, with fingers that were interwoven like roots on a mangrove tree. In the middle of the circle stood a beast with lots of teeth that Johanne found hard to identify at first. Then she read the message from Isak.