by Anne Holt
The front door was ajar.
‘Hello?’
Johanne peered into the hallway.
‘Come in,’ Ellen said, running downstairs from the upper floor.
She wore a red sweater and jeans, and her bare feet were pushed into a pair of black Crocs. Johanne felt uneasy when she noticed the light make-up on Ellen’s face and freshly applied lipstick. She herself had skipped that entire ritual, in anticipation of visiting a red-eyed woman with a blotchy face, probably padding around in joggers.
‘I haven’t heard from Jon yet!’ Ellen said breathlessly. ‘I’ve tried to phone Gabriel Grossmann, but I can’t get hold of him, either.’
‘Hi,’ Johanne said. ‘Who’s Gabriel Grossmann?’
‘The lawyer. Jon’s lawyer!’
Ellen made no sign of greeting her, of making her feel welcome.
‘He’s probably more of a business lawyer,’ Johanne said. ‘Anyway, I’m fairly sure Jon’s just been called in for interview. When the police are first—’
‘That policeman actually came here! Couldn’t he just have phoned? You don’t conduct interviews on a Saturday evening, do you? Not unless you think there’s something extremely serious, such as...’
The façade cracked suddenly. She burst into tears and briefly hid her face behind her lower arm, before taking three abrupt steps forward and throwing her arms round Johanne’s neck.
‘Murder,’ she sobbed after a few seconds. ‘They think Jon has murdered Sander.’
‘Of course they don’t,’ Johanne said, gently stroking her friend’s slender back.
Ellen smelled as though she’d just taken a shower, and her backbone felt like a string of wooden beads underneath her soft sweater.
‘He probably just came to—’
‘That bloody policeman said so!’
Ellen let her go just as suddenly as she had thrown herself round Johanne’s neck. She took a couple of unsteady steps backwards. Her mascara had run, and a residue of lipstick was left on Johanne’s sweater.
‘He said it when Jon wanted to know why it was necessary to hold the interview right now,’ she sobbed. ‘He said...’
She took a deep breath and hoisted her shoulders in a convulsive attempt to pull herself together.
‘He said: “We never know with cases like this, you see. When children die, naturally we have to find out whether there’s any question of abuse.”’
Her eyes grew even larger.
‘Listen here,’ Johanne said, sighing audibly. ‘This policeman is terribly inexperienced. You saw that yourself yesterday.’
‘I didn’t see anything at all yesterday!’ Ellen screamed, slumping slowly until she was crouched with her hands folded at the back of her neck. ‘I only saw that Sander was dead. My boy is dead, Johanne. He fell off a stepladder and I...’
Her sobs morphed into a long-drawn-out wail. Johanne felt her skin contract, and she really had no idea what to do. Ellen was on the verge of insanity, she felt, and it was obviously futile to try to counter her hysteria with common sense.
‘But I noticed what happened,’ she nevertheless said calmly. ‘And the most striking thing about that policeman was that he was barely a policeman yet. Believe me. But he’s been to college and learned a lot of stuff. One of the things they learn is that a child’s death has to be investigated with an eye to—’
The howling was intolerable.
Johanne knelt down with one knee on the floor, and put a tentative hand on Ellen’s shoulder.
When Ellen Mohr had still been Ellen Krogh, she had been curvaceous. Over the years she had become slim, and eventually skinny. Three miscarriages had almost drained her dry before she had managed, with the aid of a Finnish fertility clinic, to produce a living child. Sander had weighed 4.85 kilos when he was delivered by Caesarean section, and it was as though what was left of Ellen’s once-voluptuous figure had disappeared with him. Nonetheless, she exercised four times a week, all year round, and eventually looked like a marathon runner. Sinewy, strong and emaciated. Johanne could feel her collarbone like a taut stick against her hand.
‘It’s only routine,’ she said softly, trying to make eye-contact. ‘Can we go up to the living room and talk about this?’
The drawn-out bawling subsided. Ellen stood up slowly and unsteadily. She ran her finger under her eyes, to no avail, and the make-up etched dark bags above the tight, high cheekbones.
Without a word, she walked upstairs with Johanne following her.
The living room was tidy. All traces of the previous day’s party preparations were gone. The dining table was bare, apart from a laden fruit bowl of multicoloured glass. Through the doors of a glass cabinet beside the south-west-facing windows Johanne could see that all the glasses had been neatly replaced, in serried ranks from the top shelf all the way down. The posies of flowers beside each of yesterday’s place-settings were no longer to be seen. The larger floral arrangements, in two identical vases, had been refreshed with some garden roses and placed on either side of the mantelpiece.
‘Jon tidied it all away last night,’ Ellen said, as if she had immediately noticed how astounded Johanne was that anyone could contemplate tidying up, after the events of the previous day. ‘Neither of us could sleep. I just wandered around aimlessly, but you know Jon.’
Apparently not, it struck Johanne.
‘He’s so rational,’ Ellen continued. ‘He always wants to make use of every single second of the day. The food’s even stored in the freezer. Jon’s so...’
She sank into one of two armchairs in a separate group beside the windows.
‘We didn’t even know about this terrorist attack. Not until Jon’s mother arrived this morning and told us all about it.’
‘Maybe that’s just as well,’ Johanne said, settling into the other armchair. ‘Truth to tell, it’s a hellish weekend. Have you had any sleep at all?’
‘A little. This morning. Helga, Jon’s mother, brought some sleeping pills. She’s so...practical, is Helga. Exactly like Jon.’
Ellen picked up her mobile phone from an occasional table situated between them. Obviously there were no messages, because she shook her head and banged it back angrily.
‘If only Jon would come home,’ she whimpered, touching her head. ‘I just can’t stand this uncertainty!’
Johanne made an effort to sit more comfortably in the enormous chair.
‘Can’t you tell me what actually happened, while we wait to hear from him?’ she asked. ‘If you’re up to it, that is.’
‘Can you promise me they won’t take Jon away?’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes! You’re almost in the police yourself, Johanne. You’ve often helped Adam with difficult cases. It’s even been reported in the newspapers. You have to promise me you’ll prove he didn’t do anything wrong! I can’t bear the thought of first losing Sander, and then—’
‘I’m very far from being a member of the police force,’ Johanne broke in, hoping to prevent a fresh fit of hysteria. ‘I’m a researcher, Ellen. You know that very well. I can’t promise anything at all. But if you tell me what actually took place, then I can at least...’
She had no idea what she could do. Probably nothing. The most important thing, in any case, was to get Ellen to calm down. Soon Jon would come back, and Johanne could go home to her own worries.
‘There was nobody here,’ Ellen said slowly.
Her voice vibrated faintly, and she could not go any further.
‘I see. Here in the living room, you mean, or in the house?’
‘Jon was downstairs saying goodbye to his mother.’
‘Helga? Was she here yesterday as well?’
‘Yes. She’s so kind. If it hadn’t been for the support she’s provided, I don’t know how it would all have gone. She’s so good with Sander. It’s an ordeal trying to make party preparations with him around, it’s...’
She shielded her eyes with her hand.
As if she were ashamed, it dawned on Jo
hanne.
‘I said to Helga that you were coming, so she could leave.’
‘Where were you?’
‘In the kitchen. I think.’
‘You think?’
‘I mean...’
All of a sudden she folded her hands on her knee and started to twiddle her thumbs furiously.
‘I don’t know if I was in the kitchen when he fell. But that was where I was coming from, when I found him. Joachim had just left as well, and I’d asked him to—’
‘Joachim? Was he here too? Then, I mean?’
‘No. I’m not thinking straight. Yes...no! He was here much earlier, in the morning almost, and he was to come back when Jon, Sander and he were going to the cinema. Afterwards they were going to go out for dinner, and play computer games at Joachim’s house. He’s so good with Sander, Joachim.’
Obviously there were lots of people who were good with Joachim, Johanne thought.
‘I heard Jon down in the hall when Helga left,’ Ellen said.
She began to nibble at a long, manicured fingernail.
Even though this summer evening was also grey and the skies threatened imminent rain, the view before them was spectacular. Johanne imagined it must be possible to see as far as Denmark on a good day, but she had always wondered about the architecture of the house. The vast living room with its separate dining section, a TV room beyond that again and, in addition, a spacious guest bathroom were all situated on the upper floor. The kitchen was at ground level, together with the bedrooms, just beyond the hallway. Admittedly the kitchen was also large and contained a table for everyday meals, but it was located at too great a distance from the dining room, for Johanne’s taste.
Of course it was to take advantage of the view, it struck her for the first time while she sat there behind the twelve- or thirteen-metre-wide glass windowpanes. It was even more magnificent from here, and so the living room had been given the entire floor to itself.
‘So there were actually quite a number of you here at the time around...around the time of Sander’s death.’
‘Yes. No, I don’t really know... Yes, I guess so. All the same, I was in the kitchen. Jon was in the hall, and he went directly into his office, I think, and Helga had gone when I came up with the napkins – I think that was what it was, a final touch, you might say, before...’
She tried to suppress a muted sigh. Her eyes were dry, as if there was no more bodily fluid left inside her. She put her right hand on her chin in a self-comforting, gentle movement. Her fingernail was already bitten almost to the quick.
When Johanne had been in the USA in her early twenties, she had almost lost contact with Ellen. Her friend knew nothing about the catastrophic events that had forced her home, the circumstances that Johanne only dared to share with Adam many years later. She told no one else ever. But Ellen had at least tried to reach her.
Ellen, who at that time was still called Krogh and was in charge of a gang of nearly a hundred friends, did not let Johanne shut herself in with her textbooks. Ellen literally drove her out of her little bedsit in Majorstua, sometimes so heavy-handedly that Johanne irritably refused point-blank. But Ellen had not given up. It was through Ellen that Johanne had finally returned properly to her homeland. It was through her that she had met Isak, Kristiane’s happy-go-lucky father, a man with such a positive outlook on life that their marriage was doomed to failure.
It dawned on Johanne that Ellen had always been kind to her, right up until her life had gone so wrong with miscarriage number three and she could hardly bear to be kind even to herself.
Johanne stole a glance at the time.
‘So you were the one who found him?’ she asked, tugging the sleeve of her sweater over her wristwatch as discreetly as she could.
‘Yes. I came up there...’
She glanced to one side and pointed at the staircase, quite unnecessarily.
‘...and spotted him at once. He wasn’t moving.’
‘And that stepladder...’
‘He had dragged it out himself. It’s usually stowed away in a big storage cupboard inside the bathroom.’
Again she pointed out the direction. This time with a slight nod, as if Johanne had never been there before.
‘I suspect he was planning to draw on the ceiling. We were in St Peter’s in Rome three weeks ago, and he nearly broke his neck craning at all the decorations.’
A little smile played over her face, the first one Johanne had seen since she had arrived.
‘You should see his bedroom. Four cars trailing clouds of exhaust. On the ceiling. Above his bed. He so loves to draw, Sander. It’s the only thing that can really get him to concentrate for a while.’
Johanne returned her smile. They remained seated in silence for so long that she began to speculate that Ellen had fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed, and her breath sounded slow and soft.
‘Ellen?’ she said quietly, in order to check.
‘I’m not asleep.’
‘That’s OK then.’
‘He was dead. I saw that at once.’
‘How?’
‘You just know these things.’
Not really, Johanne thought.
‘I see,’ she said.
‘The way he was lying. He wasn’t breathing. He was so quiet. So terribly quiet.’
‘I’m glad you weren’t on your own,’ Johanne said.
‘What?’ Ellen said, opening her eyes.
‘I’m glad Jon was here. I assume you...screamed? That he heard you?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. He was here almost instantly. I think. I’m not exactly sure. Wasn’t he in his office?’
‘That’s what you said.’
‘Yes.’
Ellen ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, so tightly that her eyes momentarily acquired a slant.
‘I don’t remember everything!’ she said, and the piercing tone was on its way back. ‘Helga had just left, and I came upstairs with the napkins and Sander was lying dead beside that...that bloody stepladder! Jon held me back. He tried to hold me back and I—’
‘So he was here, then.’
‘Who?’
‘Jon,’ Johanne said.
‘Yes, he came upstairs after me, I did say that—’
She got to her feet abruptly and stood in front of Johanne. The living room was in semi-darkness, and the summer night was fast approaching outside the windows. The light from an external patio lamp endowed Ellen with a halo that made her face dark and indecipherable.
‘You mustn’t think Jon did it! I came upstairs first. I...I swear, Johanne, I came up with the napkins, and Jon must have heard my scream, because he came running after me, and he held me and he looked after me and...’
‘Take it easy. It’s quite normal not to remember all the details after a trauma like this. That’s how the brain functions, it—’
‘You mustn’t let them take Jon away,’ Ellen said, and now her voice was so distorted by pain that Johanne had goose-bumps. ‘Then I’ll have nothing. Nothing. Johanne. No child, no job, no husband, no money. Nothing.’
‘You really need to try to calm yourself,’ Johanne said, standing up slowly. ‘Maybe it would be best if you go to bed. Do you have any more of those sleeping pills your mother-in-law brought?’
Ellen nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘He didn’t do it,’ she murmured. ‘The police think Jon did it, but—’
A door slammed. The front door, as far as Johanne could tell, from the dull, heavy sound.
‘Jon!’ Ellen called out, more a scream than a shout.
Rapid steps on the stairs.
‘Why is it so dark in here?’ Joachim asked.
Disappointment caused Ellen’s body to droop.
Fresh footsteps. Heavier this time.
‘Jon,’ Ellen whispered.
‘Let’s get some lights on here,’ Jon answered irritably. ‘You’re sitting in pitch-darkness.’
Johanne cleared her throat and leaned forward i
n order to be seen.
‘Is it you?’ Jon asked impassively. ‘I wondered what that car was doing outside the garage.’
He crossed the room and picked up a white remote control. Light spilled from the ceiling, momentarily like floodlights, until he dimmed it all down to a golden subdued light and used the same gadget to switch on one or two table lamps around the room.
‘Joachim and I have to work,’ he said brusquely.
‘Work? But...’
Ellen stood up and turned to face her husband. She rubbed her thighs aimlessly, over and over again.
‘How did it go? At the police station?’
‘Not particularly well. That idiot must have been picked up off the street.’
‘But you’re—’
‘It looked as if he’d never done a bloody interview in his life before.’
Johanne had also stood up. It was now quarter to ten, and Ellen was no longer entirely alone. At least not physically. Nevertheless, she looked increasingly pathetic as she stood there and most of all appeared to be on the verge of breaking down yet again.
‘Why do you have to work just now?’ she asked, her voice only just holding out. ‘I’ve been so scared, and I thought we could...’
‘There are some complicated details we need to clear up before Monday,’ Jon interrupted. ‘The business doesn’t come to a halt just because—’
Johanne began to head for the stairs. She attempted to avoid looking at these two men, by removing her glasses and polishing them with the cuff of her sweater. She should have given Ellen a hug, but the atmosphere was so depressing that she could think of nothing but getting away from there.
‘Thanks,’ she heard Jon say, and turned round all the same as she reached the top of the stairs, now with her glasses back in place.
‘What?’ she blurted.
Jon was on his way to Ellen. He stopped halfway across the room.
‘Thanks for taking care of Ellen. I assume she phoned you when I was away for so long.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I had to call in at work on my way back from Police Headquarters. I should really have rung. Thanks.’