What Dark Clouds Hide

by Anne Holt

  ‘Wouldn’t it be of gold or something similar, in that case? And he’s so clever at drawing, wouldn’t he have tried to copy the carvings?’

  Adam’s head moved from side to side as he smacked his lips.

  ‘Well, maybe. I suppose so. Coal-black frames are maybe not so common.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we’re left with just the simplest interpretation of all,’ Adam said, taking off his glasses. ‘This boy has drawn a room, a scene, where he feels secure and happy. It’s not likely to be his own house. Children don’t usually have double beds. It’s also very rare for youngsters to read Tom Egeland and Jeffrey Archer. Inside this room, the boy is happy. The world outside is threatening, dark and horrible.’

  He shoved the drawing over to Johanne’s side of the bed.

  ‘And, with that, I’m putting a stop to all the foolishness of the day. Or the night, to be more exact. I really must sleep, my dear. I absolutely must.’

  Taking a pillow from behind himself, he switched off his bedside lamp and stretched out with his back turned to Johanne. She switched on her own light.

  ‘Is it Sander?’ Adam mumbled, only just audible.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about it. I can’t take in any more at present. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Johanne remained seated with the sketch in front of her as she listened to Adam’s breathing become increasingly slow. Increasingly regular. He had spotted the same as she had, in Sander’s minor work of art, and she wanted more than anything to rouse him again, talk to him, tell him everything that had happened since she left Glads vei that Friday evening ten days and an eternity ago.

  The bedroom in the picture appeared masculine, it struck her. The books, the dark wallpaper, the absence of photographs, creams or sleeping tablets on the bedside table – this could not be Helga Mohr’s room. The interior was also far from Ellen’s taste, and Johanne knew, anyway, that Jon and Ellen had Hästens divans. This bed had a headboard and footboard and high legs.

  Joachim, she thought, wrinkling her brow. Ellen had said he was so good with Sander. It seemed a bit strange that the boy had also spent the night with his father’s much younger friend. On the other hand, Ellen and Jon were dependent on a great deal of help to relieve them. Agnes Krogh had not mentioned Joachim at all, but it was after all several years since she had been in touch with her grandchild.

  Joachim had seemed distressed about Sander’s death, she recollected. Perhaps he had really known the boy. Perhaps she had at last encountered someone outside the family who was fond of Sander and could answer her questions about what his life had really been like in the past few years.

  Tomorrow she would contact Joachim. She could not remember his surname, but she would be able to find that out on the web pages of Mohr & Westberg AS. Tomorrow, she thought, putting the drawing aside on the bedside table, before she lay down and turned off the light.

  ‘We’re going to have a little boy,’ she whispered into the darkness.

  Adam, though, was fast asleep.

  *

  ‘Do you think anyone will come?’ Ellen Mohr asked quietly as she poured herself more red wine.

  Jon stood silently in the doorway, leaning on the door frame with his arms folded on his chest. His olive-green silk pyjamas looked almost black in the dim light from a single candle on the kitchen table. It was after half past three. A new summer’s day had just begun to dawn in the east, but the room was still bathed in semi-darkness. It would be another ninety minutes until sunrise.

  ‘Are you sitting here drinking?’ he asked in a monotone. ‘I can’t sleep.’

  He switched on the overhead light.

  ‘Do you think anyone will come?’ she asked without looking at him.

  ‘It’s summer,’ he said. ‘People are on holiday.’

  ‘I requested an extra-large death notice, but apparently that wasn’t possible. At least not in Aftenposten. They all have to be single-column. That’s how it’s gone in this country. Even in death, everyone has to be the same.’

  She laughed drily, a forced sob, as she raised her glass.

  ‘You’re slurring your words,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not slurring my words.’

  ‘Say “death notice”.’

  ‘Death notice.’

  ‘There, you can hear it.’

  ‘I’m not slurring!’ Ellen screamed, banging her hand on the table. ‘I’m talking about our son’s funeral!’

  ‘You don’t seem to be. Take a look at yourself, Ellen.’

  She shuddered in the harsh light from the ceiling. Her hair was dishevelled and the front of her pale dressing gown was splashed with red wine. A dry, bluish outline was etched around her lips and her teeth were discoloured. Her hands fiddled with the label on the bottle; it was already half-torn off and tiny balls of paper were spread out on the table. A cigarette smouldered in a coffee cup full of butts, and the air was distended with smoke. Jon crossed to the window and opened it wide.

  ‘How much have you actually been drinking?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Can’t you see a doctor?’

  She did not answer. Jon pulled out a chair and sat down. He rocked it back towards the wall and put his feet on the table.

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ he said. ‘You’re drunk all the time. Either that, or you’re sleeping it off. You can’t go to the doctor’s in that state.’

  Ellen drained her glass as if it were lemonade, and poured more. The bottle was empty, and she slammed the palm of her hand demonstratively on the base, before putting it down again. The grubby bandage on her hand was about to fall off. She began to pick at it.

  ‘Do you think anyone will come?’

  Her voice was reedy and imploring.

  ‘You’ve got one million, four hundred and fifty thousand friends. I expect some of them will turn up.’

  ‘Had. Before Sander died. Where are they now? Why does nobody come? Phone? Why is there no one who’ll help me?’

  ‘It’s the holidays,’ he repeated in a resigned tone. ‘Nearly everyone we know is abroad. The announcement has not been printed yet. Besides, loads of people have sent condolences and flowers. And then, of course, there’s this...’

  Ellen shook her head violently, waving her arms hysterically.

  ‘If you mention that fucking terrorist.’

  Jon shut his mouth again with a distinct click.

  Ellen slumped in her seat. Breathing heavily, with her mouth open. Eventually she straightened up and began to move her forefinger from side to side above the almost invisible candle flame, gradually more slowly, until she burned herself and pushed her finger into her mouth.

  ‘When will the announcement be printed?’ he asked.

  ‘Wednesday. Tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re getting mixed up, Ellen. Tomorrow’s Tuesday.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s mixed up. This is Tuesday morning and the time is...’

  She lifted her gaze to the oven.

  ‘Three thirty-six. Really, that’s how drunk I am.’

  A cat howled in the garden. The heady scent of high summer had banished the stuffy smell of cigarette smoke, and Ellen shivered as she drew her dressing gown more snugly around her body.

  ‘This can’t go on,’ Jon said calmly, taking his feet down from the table and letting the chair drop back to the floor. ‘We need to get help. We can’t live like this, Ellen. You can’t be like this.’

  ‘Yes, I can. But I’ll get a grip on myself for the funeral, don’t worry. I’ll be the well-behaved wife. I’ll mourn nicely for my dead son. Won’t bring shame on...’

  He leaned across the table and tried to reach her hand. She withdrew it so abruptly that she nearly fell off the chair.

  ‘You weren’t keeping an eye on things!’ she screamed, for the first time meeting his gaze.

  ‘Don’t start. That’s a warning, Ellen. Don’t start.�
��

  Swallowing noisily, he began to rise from his seat.

  ‘What have you done to us?’ she yelled, flinging out her left hand.

  The glass toppled over.

  Jon jumped across to the window and closed it.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ he snarled, tearing reams of Torky kitchen towel from a dispenser on the wall. ‘The neighbours can hear you, for fuck’s sake! Keep your mouth shut!’

  ‘I don’t give a damn! I don’t bloody give a toss what the neighbours—’

  Jon turned on his heel. He slapped the paper towel on the table, splattering the red wine, and grabbed Ellen by the hair with his other hand. Slowly he bent her head back as he raised his right fist to deliver a blow. She did not even make an effort to resist.

  Finally she became quiet.

  ‘I don’t know who I’m most ashamed of,’ he sobbed. ‘You or me. I don’t know who I’m most ashamed of! But I’m settling for you. You’ve made me into a... You’ve made me into a—’

  Suddenly he let go of her hair and lowered his fist. The sleeves of his pyjama jacket almost covered his hands, and the trousers were too baggy. He took an unsteady step back, and then another.

  And then yet another.

  VI

  Joachim Boyer was a young man Johanne struggled to place. His speech was varied and precise, but there were faint remnants of intonation that pointed to an upbringing in the East End of the city. His clothes were expensive and fashionable, but with a detail or two to suggest he was not as totally up-to-date as the impression he would like to give. As on the last occasion she had seen him, he was wearing sports socks with his brown shoes, and an enormous Rolex jingled on his wrist. Johanne did not know many people who owned an unnecessary excess of wealth. The few she had come across who could afford to buy watches in that price bracket did not buy Rolex.

  She liked him.

  When he arrived for their meeting at the Åpent Bakeri café in Åsengata, he had barely shaken her hand in greeting before asking her what she would like to drink. As a matter of course he held out the chair for her, brought her a latte and in addition a muffin she had not requested. When he pushed the sunglasses down from his forehead, he first enquired whether it was acceptable for him to do so: he was bothered by bright light. He was in his late twenties, and kept himself fit. His shirt was from Philipp Plein, she noticed from the buttons, and was snug in all the right places. At Christmas three years ago she had bought one with the same label for Adam. It was still hanging in the wardrobe. On him it had looked like a well-stuffed sausage-skin.

  Joachim Boyer was not really handsome. His nose was too large for that, and his chin a touch undersized. But his smile was broad, and his good manners surprised her. That he stood up when she almost immediately excused herself to go to the toilet was a custom that belonged to a different time. At least to quite a different generation from his own.

  ‘I must ask you something,’ he said on her return, once he had again ensured that she was sitting comfortably. ‘How do you go about ordering a funeral wreath? Do you get in touch with the undertakers?’

  ‘You can certainly do that. But I think all the florists are well versed in that sort of thing.’

  ‘Would it be wrong of me to order a proper wreath? Not just a small spray? I mean, I’m not a member of the family and...’

  He gulped as he glanced to one side.

  ‘I think you can most definitely do that,’ Johanne said.

  ‘I’ve never been to a funeral before. I’m dreading it.’

  ‘It can be really lovely,’ she said. ‘A dignified ending, in a way.’

  ‘But Sander was a child. There shouldn’t have been any ending for him.’

  His voice acquired a sharp edge, an almost aggressive undertone. His left hand loosely hugged the coffee cup, but she saw that the right, resting on the thigh of his trousers, was clenched.

  ‘There are lots of funerals like that at present,’ Johanne said. ‘All of them equally senseless.’

  ‘Agreed. But I didn’t know them. I knew Sander.’

  She leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. They sat outside, since it was still warm, although drifting banks of clouds occasionally blocked the sunlight. Cars roared past on Hans Nielsen Hauges gate, forcing them to break their conversation now and again.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ she said suddenly, pulling Sander’s rolled-up drawing from her bag. ‘This is what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  Shoving aside the plates and cups, she placed the picture carefully in front of Joachim. It had curled at the edges from being rolled up, and she placed their water glasses at each of the top corners. Joachim took off his sunglasses slowly and hooked them into his open-necked shirt.

  ‘Oh, fuck!’ he said softly.

  His hand brushed across the drawing, a loving caress.

  ‘That’s at your place, isn’t it?’ Johanne asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘That’s Klonken,’ he said, pointing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The pig. The green pig is called Klonken. I bought it ages ago in Spain. I don’t know where Sander got the name from.’

  ‘Klonken,’ Johanne repeated, with a faint smile.

  ‘So amazingly detailed,’ Joachim said quietly, bending even closer to the drawing. ‘Look at the poster with all that water! It was something I had on the wall as a boy. Sander found it when he and I were helping my mother clear out her cellar a couple of years ago, and he desperately wanted to have it. He was keen on whales, Sander. Whales and cars and dinosaurs, and all sorts of things.’

  ‘Didn’t he get it, then?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Joachim looked momentarily confused.

  ‘He just didn’t want to take it home with him. Wanted to keep it at my place, above the bed.’

  His finger just touched the picture.

  ‘He was bloody good at drawing, but this is the best one I’ve seen.’

  A long silence ensued. It did not matter, Johanne thought. Joachim could not get enough of Sander’s drawing, and he was totally engrossed in it, moving his fingers across its surface. Sometimes he mumbled something indistinct. When he finally glanced up again, he put his sunglasses back on and rolled the drawing up carefully.

  ‘Can I keep it?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to frame it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Johanne said. ‘On two conditions.’

  He looked at her quizzically over the rim of his glasses. She adjusted her own.

  ‘Firstly, I must get it back if that proves necessary. Secondly...’

  She handed him an elastic band, and he wrapped it twice round the bulky roll of paper.

  ‘I’d like you to tell me about Sander,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You knew him. You were obviously fond of him, and he of you. What was he like?’

  ‘What was he like?’

  Joachim smiled faintly as he lifted his coffee cup with both hands. He inhaled and hesitated for a moment, before his smile grew big and wide.

  ‘Sander was a fun guy. He was kind. Sometimes he was the only person I wanted to be with. Odd, I know, since he was only a child and not even part of my family. But, you understand...’

  For more than twenty minutes Joachim Boyer talked about his twenty-one-years-younger best friend. In the beginning, Johanne interposed a question here and there, but Joachim drew a portrait of Sander so different from how she herself had known the boy that eventually she fell completely silent. Whereas Ellen might complain that Sander had weird eating habits, Joachim told her about a boy who would eat anything as long as he was allowed to help prepare the food himself. Though Ellen and Jon had bemoaned their son’s sleeping patterns since the day he was born, Joachim smiled at the thought of the boy who was hardly able to wait when half past eight arrived and he could lie in the double bed with Klonken and read Donald Duck comics for exactly fifteen minutes, before the light was switched off and he fell fast asleep. Joachim talked
about a boy who could focus for ages in order to achieve something he had set his mind to, such as taking a swallow-dive from a jetty in Larkollen, where Joachim’s parents had a caravan. Ellen and Jon had always smiled apologetically about Sander’s lack of ability to persevere with anything for more than ten minutes at a time; after all, he had ADHD.

  As they said repeatedly.

  ‘But then there was this business of...’

  Joachim squirmed in his seat, his eyes following a lorry attempting to turn down Åsengata, where vehicles were so tightly parked on both sides that there was barely room for a car to pass. The coffee had gone cold. Joachim began to stir it aimlessly.

  ‘What business?’ Johanne asked.

  Hesitating, he set down the spoon for a second or two, before picking it up again and using it to drum on the table top.

  ‘That drawing,’ he said, nodding almost imperceptibly at the roll with the blue ponytail band wrapped around it. ‘You don’t need to be a psychologist to react to that border.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re a psychologist, aren’t you? I Googled your name before our meeting.’

  ‘Yes. Amongst other things. I’m also a criminologist and...’

  ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘That’s not so important,’ Johanne replied. ‘I’d rather hear what you make of it.’

  As a cloud obscured the sun, she thought she could feel a few drops of rain. All the same, she did not relinquish eye-contact. The sunglasses prevented her from looking into his eyes, but she was aware that he could see hers.

  ‘I’ve never at any time believed there was anything wrong in Sander’s home,’ he said, with great emphasis on ‘never’. ‘Not until now.’

  ‘What has made you change your mind?’

  Now he was restless. Two women in their twenties sat down at an adjacent table, half-hesitating as they peered up at the sky. Joachim ran his eyes over them both, before he looked at her again and asked, ‘Why did you really want to meet up with me?’

  ‘First and foremost, to show you the drawing and hear what you thought of it. Next, to try to gain a better, more complete picture of Sander.’