by Anne Holt
She sat upright like a queen, with her ankles elegantly crossed and a coffee cup in one hand.
‘Thanks for coming. I didn’t know anyone else to contact. Ellen and Jon have told me before about your input into a number of these cases your husband has worked on. According to Ellen, you’re almost considered a member of the police force.’
Johanne opened her mouth to protest, but Helga Mohr raised her voice a notch and pressed on, refusing to give way to any objections: ‘Naturally, I know better. You’re a researcher. Criminology and psychology. It’s your husband who works for the police. NCIS, isn’t that correct?’
It was not really a question, and so she did not wait for an answer.
‘I received a visit from a young man yesterday,’ she said, putting down her cup.
The fragile rattling on the saucer made Johanne hesitate to set hers down.
‘An amateur,’ Helga Mohr stated emphatically. ‘Dressed up as a police officer, something he obviously also was, even though in name only.’
That gave Johanne more than a good idea who she meant.
‘A young lad,’ Helga Mohr said with a hint of a snort. ‘But an unpleasant young man. He claimed to be investigating Sander’s death.’
For the first time since Johanne arrived, she could detect a certain lack of confidence in the other woman. Her face collapsed. Her voice trembled as she caught her breath and continued: ‘As if there was anything there to investigate. Sander fell off a ladder. Tragic and absolutely awful, of course, but—’
She leaned back a little for the first time. Her hands tidied a few invisible strands of hair. Her bottom lip quivered almost imperceptibly before she pulled herself together, cleared her throat and took a deep breath.
‘Jon was an afterthought,’ she said unexpectedly, with a surprisingly broad smile. ‘I presume you already know that?’
The question did not invite an answer this time, either.
‘I was forty-one when he was born. My daughters were already twelve and thirteen. In many ways, Jon was a...’
She ran her hand repeatedly over her already perfect hairdo.
‘He was a gift. An unforeseen and very welcome son. Wilhelm, my husband...’
Her eyes wandered to an oil painting above the gas fire, a portrait of a robust, almost majestic figure against a dark background of heavy drapery. It did not seem appropriate in the otherwise bright room, though at the same time it seemed as if the entire apartment was furnished around the authoritarian gaze that belonged more in a grand hall somewhere in Victorian England.
‘...had in all likelihood always wanted a son.’
Johanne tried to raise her cup to her mouth, but felt her hands shaking.
‘Wilhelm unfortunately did not have the pleasure of Jon for very long. He died when our son was only ten years old. But you already know all that. You did, after all, go to high school together, you and Jon. You were good friends, he’s told me that. I can’t quite place you from that time, but then of course we lived in the house at Smestad at that time. You young folk mostly used the basement entrance.’
Johanne had never set foot in the house at Smestad. At high school she had had no idea who Jon was, until he had won that international essay competition and became a hot topic of conversation. Since then she had barely had a glimpse of him before he had popped up again, after his transformation into Ellen Krogh’s successful suitor.
‘That’s a long time ago,’ Helga Mohr said slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m eighty-four now.’
Johanne should not have come. The old woman’s façade was showing increasingly obvious cracks. Her lipstick, which only ten minutes earlier had outlined a mouth softer and larger than it was in reality, now adhered dull and lustreless to her dry lips. Her eyes had become moist, and the shadows beneath them became more obvious when she was not speaking.
‘What can I do for you?’ Johanne asked, finally daring to set down her cup. ‘What is it you actually want with me?’
‘That policeman,’ Helga Mohr began.
‘Yes,’ Johanne said encouragingly, when she added nothing further.
‘He thought that Jon might have killed Sander.’
‘I see. Did he say that?’
‘No. Not directly.’
‘Oh, well. But indirectly?’
‘Why else would he ask me to what extent Sander had a previous history of—’
Her mouth grew even narrower, as if defiantly holding on to a word that was forcing its way out.
‘Injuries,’ Johanne suggested calmly. ‘More, or perhaps more serious or more often, than the usual, for high-spirited boys of that age.’
Helga Mohr’s natural eyebrows had disappeared with age. Instead she had pencilled them in, without succumbing to the temptation to make them narrow and sharp. Now the brown, well-shaped wings lifted rather arrogantly, or perhaps it was just in surprise.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That was exactly what he wanted to know. An idiotic question.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Who can say what is normal for a high-spirited boy? You knew Sander yourself and were aware he was a handful for everybody. He has broken his arm at least twice. He climbs, jumps, crawls, wriggles about and jumps off from all sorts of places. Sander had ADHD, and of course it isn’t possible to say whether he needed medical assistance more or less frequently than other children he might be compared with.’
A phone rang in the kitchen. Helga Mohr showed no sign of moving to answer it.
‘You knew Sander yourself,’ she repeated, letting her gaze hang in the middle distance, as if trying to cast her mind back.
‘Not too well,’ Johanne said tentatively. ‘I had met him a few times, but it would be wrong to say that...’
‘You have children yourself?’
‘Yes, yes, I do.’
‘A little girl, as far as I know, and then another one a few years older? A bit confused, isn’t that right?’
Johanne had heard many descriptions of her older daughter: autistic, Asperger’s syndrome, different, learning difficulties, strange.
She caught herself smiling. The phone had stopped jangling.
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘“A bit confused” is sometimes a good description of her. Not quite the same as all the other seventeen-year-olds, in any case.’
‘Does she lash out much?’
‘No. I’d say never. Kristiane is a very cautious young woman. Physically reticent, you could safely say.’
‘You see!’ Helga Mohr exclaimed, for the first time lifting her finger in sheer enthusiasm. ‘Children are different! This... this lanky smart alec of a policeman quizzed and probed as if he had the definitive answer to how many times a child should visit accident and emergency before the age of ten.’
Now she snorted again, quite literally, sniffing noisily with exasperation, and had to produce a handkerchief from the sleeve of her pale-pink cardigan.
‘But I showed him the door. I can assure you of that, I sent him straight to the door and told him never to set foot in here again.’
Johanne could not comprehend how the inept young police officer had been allowed to stomp around in this case. It was true that the terror attacks had probably claimed the vast majority of police resources, but it would surely be better to let the Sander case lie for a few weeks, instead of wrecking it in this fashion.
‘I think you should take it all very calmly,’ she said. ‘It’s all simply routine.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘He seemed convinced. My husband taught me once that the most dangerous creature on the planet is a policeman certain of his facts.’
Blinking, Johanne struggled to conceal her surprise by pouring more coffee. The coffee pot was lighter than she had expected, and her movement so abrupt that she spilled some.
‘Sorry!’
Helga Mohr leaned forward, snatched two napkins from the cake dish and wiped it up.
&nb
sp; ‘They were after him for a number of years,’ she added. ‘The police, I mean. At that time the authorities had decided to crush everyone who built this country. Reksten. Jahre. Many more. And my husband, too. Without them being able to get very far, I should add.’
‘But what do you want with me?’ Johanne interrupted. ‘I realize you’re upset, and I’m terribly sorry for the family, but...’
‘You have to prove my son’s innocence.’
Johanne slumped back on the settee. The cushions were so soft that she disappeared into the great white nothingness, before scrambling to recover.
‘No one has yet alleged he is guilty!’ she said, for the first time putting some force into her voice. ‘You’re crossing your bridges before you come to them.’
‘Better safe than sorry,’ Helga Mohr said firmly. ‘Will you take on the assignment? Money’s no object, I’m sure you understand that.’
Johanne’s sudden burst of laughter seemed to cause offence to the elderly woman. She puckered her mouth and raised her chin a notch, and her gaze became even more piercing.
‘I really don’t mean to be rude,’ Johanne said. ‘But in the first place, I can’t help you and, even if I could, I certainly wouldn’t take any payment for it. Besides, and most importantly, I believe this case is going to be dismissed for what it is. A terrible accident. But now I really do need to leave.’
‘Good,’ the other woman said curtly. ‘I have wasted both my time and yours.’
She stood up, her body obviously stiffer than when Johanne had arrived. She stooped a little and, as she crossed to the hallway, tottered sideways a step or two to avoid losing her balance. Once she had reached the front door, she stood for a few seconds with her back to Johanne, without making a move to open the door.
‘There’s one tiny thing,’ she said softly, half-turning.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I rely on your absolute confidence?’
Johanne hesitated for a moment.
‘That will, of course, depend on what you tell me,’ she said. ‘But if you’re asking me if I can keep a secret, then the answer’s yes.’
The old woman’s eyes looked glazed. The wings of her nose vibrated anxiously: this was a completely different woman from the self-assured hostess who had received her guest for morning coffee, with the absurd suggestion about turning Johanne into a private detective. Even her thick, grey-white hair appeared flatter in the dull lamplight, and she lowered her head, staring at Johanne’s knees as she finally spoke.
‘Jon isn’t Sander’s real father.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Ellen was...you know, after all those miscarriages. They went to that clinic. In Finland, you know. They carried out a kind of...you know—’
She covered her eyes with her fine-boned hand, as if ashamed.
‘Donation.’
‘Sperm donation?’
Johanne tried to collect her thoughts without looking altogether bewildered.
‘Yes. It somehow wouldn’t take. With Ellen and Jon. And so... Ellen doesn’t know that I know. It was Jon who told me about it. One night last summer. Sander had caught a cat. Sander isn’t a nasty boy. He just doesn’t think things through until it’s too late. He put a parachute from some kind of war game on the cat, stuffed the animal into a bag and climbed up on to the roof in Glads vei. If it hadn’t been for the parachute, the cat would probably have pulled through.’
‘Did he drop it...did Sander drop the cat from the roof?’
‘Yes.’
Now, at last, Helga Mohr let her hand fall, but without lifting her eyes.
‘The animal broke its spine, poor thing. Its paws were tangled in all the cords, so that it couldn’t twist round and land properly, the way cats are known to do. Jon had just arrived home from work and saw the whole incident. I came over later that evening to babysit. Never in all my life have I seen Jon so furious. Ellen had to go by herself to the party they were meant to attend, Jon was so angry and had been drinking and...’
She swayed, but when Johanne automatically reached out a hand to prevent the fall that seemed so imminent, the old woman batted her hand away.
‘He told me then. He told me that Sander was not his boy. As if Sander hasn’t always been his boy, it didn’t really matter that—’
With great exertion, she straightened her back and thrust out her chin.
‘My husband would have bothered about that sort of thing. Not I. Sander was ours, as much as anyone. That’s what I said to him then too. To Jon. He was just so drunk. I’ve never seen him like that, neither before nor since. He’s careful with alcohol, my Jon.’
It struck Johanne that the woman was actually right. Jon had been teetotal at high school, and didn’t drink much as an adult. On the occasions when someone slurred a comment about the hand he held over his glass when a refill was offered, he usually gave the reply that he had to work. Even at weekends.
‘He was terribly remorseful the next day,’ Helga Mohr said. ‘I had to swear that I would never say anything. Not to anyone.’
‘But now you’re telling me. Why?’
‘Because...’
Sander’s grandmother peered at the photograph on the wall in the hallway. A school photo: 1A written in chalk on the blackboard in the background, Sander behind the desk wearing a blue sweater, with a pencil in his hand.
‘I’ve read about these kinds of...child-abuse cases. Especially in recent times, you know.’
Johanne nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘Stepfathers,’ Helga Mohr whispered. ‘It seems to me there’s more reason to suspect men who aren’t really the child’s father.’
Her tears spilled over.
‘Jon was Sander’s father,’ Johanne articulated slowly. ‘Both legally and socially. I can assure you all the research shows that—’
‘But just think: what if they get to know about it?’ Helga Mohr sobbed, pressing her hands against her chest. ‘If the police find out that Sander wasn’t Jon’s son? They’ll never leave him in peace!’
Johanne had no idea what to say. She could not quite bring herself to look at the terrified old woman still blocking the door – the exit from this business she did not want to have anything more to do with. Instead, she stared at the photograph of Sander. He looked oddly bashful, with a new haircut, tanned complexion and a pencil case embossed with a picture of a dinosaur. It dawned on her that this was the very first photograph she had ever seen of Sander. His smile was hesitant, almost brittle.
As if he were afraid someone would take it from him.
*
Ellen Mohr was still lying in bed as the time approached noon. There were none left of the sleeping pills her mother-in-law had given her. At the hospital, when they finally had to use force to tear her away from Sander, someone had said that she would be given some sedatives to take home. They must have forgotten about it. It was impossible for her to sleep without medication. Sometimes she drifted in and out of drowsiness punctuated with terrifyingly realistic dreams, but she woke after only a few minutes with her pulse racing and a taste of iron in her mouth.
The emptiness in the house was unbearable.
Jon was at work from early morning until late at night. At least, that was what he claimed. How there could be so much to do in the middle of the public holidays was a mystery, but he was impossible to talk to.
There was nothing to talk about, either.
She looked at him at night, under cover of feigned sleep, through half-closed eyelids, when he was stretched out peacefully by her side. Her hands ached to find their way underneath the quilt, across to his skin; she wanted the warmth he refused to give her, by turning his back and lying like that all night long. At the far edge of the bed, with his shallow breaths telling her that he could hardly sleep, either.
There was no longer anything to talk about.
Not even the funeral.
Yesterday she had phoned Henrik Holme to find out when they could have Sander back.
It took all her strength just to make that phone call. After the dismissive response she had opened a bottle of red wine and guzzled it in half an hour. The intoxication did not knock her out, as it was intended to do. Instead, it caused her to traipse around, searching for a way to leave this house that she had begun to hate. There was none. She did not want to go anywhere in such a state and, despite everything, driving was out of the question. In the bathroom she had begun to pick shards out of the broken mirror. One large fragment, in the shape of a horse’s head, made a deep incision in her thumb. The pain felt remarkably liberating, and she nudged it in so far that she thought she felt it meet the bone. Shocked at herself, she had torn out the splinter so fast that the wound grew even larger. She had eventually managed to staunch the bleeding with three compresses and an unwieldy support bandage. When she began to sober up, she opened yet another bottle.
There was no longer anything to talk about.
Jon could no longer bring himself to look at her.
She could barely bring herself to look at him.
Now she lay in bed, aware of the pulse throbbing in her damaged thumb. A sliver of bright sunlight through the gap in the curtains split the bed in two.
She had still not ventured into Sander’s room.
Someone had removed the letters of his name from the door.
Only the faint outlines of pale marks on the dark wood showed that he had ever existed.
All of a sudden, she tore off the quilt and got to her feet.
She staggered towards the bathroom. The broken mirror reflected a Cubist portrait. Ellen grabbed a tube of toothpaste and squeezed half the contents into her mouth. Her tongue contracted on contact with the peppermint taste, and she spat it all out again after only a few seconds.
The silence in the house made it difficult to breathe.
Lots of people knew that Sander was dead. Some of Ellen’s old classmates had phoned on Saturday morning to find out if the postponed dinner might be rearranged for later in the summer. Jon had answered them during sombre conversations, each and every one of them lasting no more than half a minute.
When Ellen had turned forty, Jon had arranged an exorbitantly expensive party. The guest list numbered 150 friends and acquaintances, and she had nevertheless needed to prioritize so strictly that some individuals were offended. That had been only three years ago.