by Anne Holt
‘Ragnar Reiten. Forty-three years of age. He’s been the head teacher for nearly four years. Before that he was a teacher at the same school. There’s some kind of CV on the second page there. I found the information on the school’s home page and on a web page for... He’s a coin collector, I discovered. Quite passionate about it.’
Johanne did not reply. She scrutinized the picture and showed no sign of interest in Henrik’s thorough written description of Ragnar Reiten on page two.
‘Maybe...maybe that stuff about the coin collection’s not entirely relevant,’ he admitted nervously.
She still did not look up.
‘Maybe a bit over-the-top to print out the photo,’ he added quickly. ‘It really doesn’t matter what the guy looks like.’
Johanne swallowed audibly, shifting the printout from one hand to the other.
‘I could just have told you his name,’ Henrik said, piling the other papers on top of one other, before pushing them briskly into the plastic folder. ‘I’m a bit too caught up with... Don’t quite know why, but I sort of like to be systematic about everything. Sorry. That’s how I’ve always been.’
At a loss, he sat there with the folder on his knee. The fingers of his right hand were drumming on the plastic.
‘No,’ Johanne said, still without lifting her gaze. ‘It might not have been enough, just with his name.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘No. Not me. But Jon Mohr knows him well. They hung out together in a small group of boys all through high school. I went to the same school. Wouldn’t have remembered him, though, if it hadn’t been for...’
At long last she looked up.
‘I’ve met him since. At Jon and Ellen’s summer barbecue last year, or the year before. There’s always lots of people there, and I never chatted to him. But he was carrying an absolutely gorgeous little girl. His adoptive daughter, I think it was. Originally from Ethiopia, and one of the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen. That’s why I remember him.’
‘But that means...’
Henrik did not get any further.
‘That means it might not be so strange that the head teacher didn’t sound the alarm about Sander,’ Johanne said, taking a deep breath. ‘He’s one of Jon Mohr’s best friends.’
*
Johanne had once heard a journalist comment that the most characteristic thing about Norway was that it never took longer than two hours to get hold of anyone, be it the Prime Minister, the King or Joe Soap. She did not know whether this was true, but in any case it had not been difficult to track down Ragnar Reiten. He and his family were staying in a holiday house outside Fredrikstad, and it had been a simple matter of calling him on his mobile phone to get a detailed description of the location. As a friend of Ellen’s, she was of course very welcome to visit, even though he seemed somewhat taken aback at Johanne’s pressing need to talk to him. Especially since she would not drop any hints over the phone. He already knew that Sander had died tragically in an accident at home, and he had spoken to Jon only a few days earlier.
‘A terrible business,’ he had said. ‘And in the midst of all this other palaver. Just come!’
Johanne had implored the heavens above for the Golf to behave nicely on the trip. Until now her prayers had been answered. Even when it had to bump its way along an old cart-track that could not have seen any maintenance since logging operations had used horses, it did not let her down. When she rounded a corner one kilometre after turning off route 117, the landscape opened out to show an idyll of the type that guaranteed that Adam’s dream of something similar would never come to fruition. Inherited property, she immediately surmised. There was no scope for this sort of thing on public-sector wages.
Parking the car between a mossy boulder and an enormous anthill, she lingered for a moment just to take in the view.
A red-painted cabin was situated on a rocky outcrop with four slender pine trees behind it. An annexe was built on either side of the cabin, forming a horseshoe-shaped terrace facing the open sea. Between the buildings, the lawn sloped down to the water’s edge, merging into smooth, flat rocks. From the terrace down to the jetty, built of stone and with a small bathing hut to one side, could hardly measure more than thirty metres. It was now half past seven, and above the horizon she could see a high evening sun that gave the mirror-like water a golden glow.
‘Hi,’ said a breathless, dark-skinned wee girl. ‘I heard your car.’
‘Hi. I’m Johanne.’
The girl, aged about six, held out a sticky, warm hand.
‘Kari,’ she said, making a curtsey. ‘Daddy said you were coming. Come on!’
Letting go of Johanne’s hand, she turned abruptly and broke into a run.
‘Come on,’ she yelled again as she disappeared behind the house wall.
Johanne followed her, aware of the smell of barbecued food and growing hunger pangs.
‘Hello and welcome!’ Ragnar Reiten shouted as she turned the corner of the first annexe and took in the entire open terrace and the seating arrangement beside a well-equipped outdoor kitchen. ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we? At a summer barbecue at Ellen and Jon’s house a couple of years ago? We’re having dinner in three-quarters of an hour or so. Sit yourself down!’
Wiping his hands on a white apron with SUPER DADDY printed in green letters across the chest, he came to greet her with a broad smile and outstretched hand.
‘So nice to see you. The circumstances could be better, of course, but let’s now enjoy the days we have – that’s what I say. Have a seat! We’re having grilled entrecôte steak.’
Johanne coughed, afraid he would hear her stomach rumble. She had not eaten since about eleven o’clock. She hadn’t felt hungry, either. Now her mouth was salivating, and she let go his hand as she peered out over the sea.
‘Unfortunately I can’t stay for dinner,’ she said. ‘I won’t take up much of your time.’
Kari was pulling on a life-jacket.
‘I can swim, you know! I just need to have this on when I’m fishing for crabs. That’s the rule. Here at our holiday house there are lots of rules. They’re nearly all about the water. And fire. And that cliff over there.’
The little girl pointed north, before she grabbed a clothes peg with a string wound around it and danced her way down to the shore beside the jetty. Johanne watched her progress as she paddled in the water searching for mussels between the rocks.
‘It’s really lovely here,’ she said softly.
‘We like it!’ Ragnar Reiten said, grinning. ‘The place belongs to my parents, but they’re hardly ever here. They’re starting to get on in years, you know, and it’s undeniably a bit inconvenient here by the sea, despite all the modern facilities. My sister lives in California and only comes home every three years or so. Suits us splendidly!’
Flinging out his arms in delight, he opened a small fridge tucked under the long worktop and took out a bottle of Farris mineral water that he threw across to her. She only just managed to catch it.
‘But sit down for a minute. My wife’ll be here in half an hour or so, she’s gone to the station in Fredrikstad to pick up some friends. Places like this must be shared, don’t you know! We have guests here nearly all summer long.’
‘I can believe it.’
She sat down in the shade, half-turned from the view. When she unscrewed the top of the Farris bottle, one-third of the contents spilled out. Ragnar Reiten made no move to fetch her a glass, so she put the bottle to her mouth and drank.
‘Shame that you can’t stay,’ he said. ‘When you’ve driven all that long way from Oslo and...’
‘It’s not really so far. Not much traffic, either, on a Tuesday during the summer holidays.’
He was biting his lips, lost in thought, as he turned the enormous slice of meat on the grill, before fixing his eyes on her once again.
‘What’s this visit of yours actually all about, then?’
‘It’s to do with Sander.’
<
br /> ‘I see. Well, what about him?’
His smile had vanished.
‘I’ve reason to believe that you, in your role as head teacher, received two reports of concern about him.’
He put down the utensil. A deep V-sign formed above the bridge of his nose, and his voice seemed different when he sat down in the chair directly opposite her, took off his sunglasses and asked, ‘What on earth does that have to do with you?’
‘Officially?’ She shrugged. ‘Nothing. But I feel fully entitled to take an interest.’
‘Take an interest? On the phone you said you were here as a friend of Ellen’s. If that was true, you’d hardly be sitting here asking about reports that in plain words accused her husband of being a child abuser.’
‘Maybe not. But is it true, all the same? That you received such reports?’
He pushed his hand into his breast pocket behind the apron and took out a pack of Marlboro. With a stolen glance at the girl on the water’s edge, he put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with the barbecue lighter.
‘I realize that, indirectly, I’ve confirmed that already,’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘But you’re probably well aware that this is a subject I can’t possibly discuss with you. Duty of confidentiality, and all that jazz.’
‘Daddy,’ Kari called from the shore. ‘Look! A starfish!’
He used one hand to conceal his cigarette and waved to his daughter with the other.
‘That’s brilliant, sweetheart! Find some more mussels then!’
‘I have a good appreciation of that,’ Johanne said in a friendly tone. ‘I just thought you should have the opportunity to explain yourself, before I took the case further.’
‘Took the case further? What...what case? And what the hell do you mean by that, anyway?’
He sucked peevishly at his cigarette.
‘The case dealing with Sander’s death.’
‘It was an accident, not a crime.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. That’s what I’ve decided to find out.’
‘At whose instigation?’
‘No one. My own conscience, perhaps.’
She heard at once how crass and pretentious that sounded, and tried to brush it off with a smile. He did not return her smile. Instead he sat studying her uncomfortably closely, in silence, while smoking the cigarette right down to the filter tip.
‘In all honesty, I’m glad I don’t have friends like you,’ he said eventually, tossing the butt on the ground, where he trampled on it before picking it up again. ‘And in the hope that you won’t pester Ellen and Jon with a similar visit, I’ll tell you something that will have to remain between the two of us.’
He dropped the cigarette end into an empty cola can.
‘This Elin Foss,’ he said, getting to his feet to turn the meat on the grill again.
It was slightly charred, and he struggled to remove it from the grill grid. He grabbed a spray water bottle and damped the flames that were licking around the almost fully cooked slice of meat, due to the dripping oil.
‘Do you have any idea how many of these reports of concern she brings me in the course of a year?’
Johanne felt uncomfortably hot, and tried to push her chair even further into the shade. It was too heavy to do so while seated, and she did not want to stand up.
‘Of course I don’t know that.’
‘Then I can tell you. Between ten and fifteen. Every year. She’s done that in every single one of the six years she’s been employed at the school. Some of them refer to the same children, but in total I would bet that between forty and fifty families have fallen under Elin Foss’s vengeful spotlight.’
Johanne no longer felt hungry. A sour taste of reflux filled her throat when she did not succeed in swallowing a burp, and she began to cough.
‘Violence against children is a serious problem,’ Ragnar Reiten said, tearing a large strip of aluminium foil from a roll on the worktop. ‘Both substantively and quantitatively. But such statistics are hopelessly inaccurate. Elin Foss is an unqualified stirrer, but fond of children. Lots of good qualities. As long as she doesn’t raise these crazy abuse-theories of hers with the children, then we choose to look through our fingers when yet another report drops on my desk every month or even more frequently.’
He wrapped the foil round the entrecôte with brisk dexterity born of long experience. He patted the parcel lightly and put it aside to rest on the worktop.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay?’
Johanne stood up.
‘Quite sure. Do you check out these reports at all?’
‘Yes. Of course. Every single fucking report is read and assessed by me, in consultation with the assistant head. Even a blind hog can find an acorn, as we know, and I would never dare just throw away these papers. On a couple of occasions, quite a long time ago now, though, we did think there were grounds for further investigation. Both times the concerns proved to be totally without foundation, however.’
He lifted his hand to his eyes and looked out to spot Kari.
‘Kari! Kari, where are you?’
A curly black head popped up at the other side of the jetty.
‘Now I’ve got enough mussels, Daddy!’
‘Brilliant! Lie on your tummy on the jetty, then, so you don’t fall in.’
The gulls screeched in the sky above the picturesque scene beside the water. A hundred metres farther out, a boat chugged past. Kari clambered up on to the jetty, sat with her legs crossed and began to smash the shells with a hefty stone.
‘Elin Foss is an old Marxist of the most ludicrous type,’ Ragnar Reiten said with a resigned smile, extracting another cigarette from the packet. ‘The kind that never quite got over the nonsense. The most striking similarity among the children she has been concerned about is that they all have fathers who are successful, rich and usually work in the industrial sector. She’s against everything that smacks of “patriarchy and capitalism”, that’s all. You know...’
He gave her a pitying look.
Johanne averted her eyes.
‘Sorry. This has been what you might call a wasted journey.’
‘Not necessarily.’
He sounded as though he was smiling. She continued to stare out across the sea.
‘If this was what it took to persuade you to let sleeping dogs lie, then we’ve both done Ellen and Jon a huge favour. They’re having a dreadful time.’
‘I know that. I must just apologize once again for disturbing you. I’ll be on my way back to Oslo.’
Ragnar Reiten raised his hand in a limp gesture of farewell. He was already more preoccupied by the potato salad and was struggling to open a jar of capers.
‘Drive carefully,’ he called out as she turned the corner of the house and glanced one last time at the little girl on the shore.
Kari was standing with a triumphant fist in the air. A fishing line, almost the length of the girl herself, was dangling from her fingers. At the foot of it, a crab was holding a broken mussel shell in one claw.
‘Look, lady! Look! This one’s huge.’
Johanne gave her a thumbs-up and forced a smile before heading to the car, offering up her usual, silent prayer: ‘Let the car start. Please let this fucking car start.’
VII
Sander Mohr’s funeral took place in torrential rain.
It was now Friday 5 August and summer had returned to its usual cool Norwegian self. Heavy raindrops dripped on umbrellas and dark jackets from the drooping silver birches that encircled the church. People in huddled groups spoke to one another in low voices, guardedly exchanging regretful comments about this summer that none of them would ever forget. The church bells tolled slowly and discordantly, as if they would soon run out of energy. When a squirrel scurried down a tree trunk and scuttled in terror into a crowd of black-clad people in front of the church doors, before disappearing into the shrubbery on the other side, no one reacted. They just stood there, stiff and expectant, eventually let
ting themselves be driven out of the downpour into the ceremony to mark that eight-year-old Sander Mohr was no longer among them.
The turnout was surprisingly large, considering the holiday season and the circumstances. Johanne had stood for some time on the fringes of these small groups, but caught sight of Joachim as he arrived, running up the grass from Glads vei. He spotted her at the same time and approached with a relieved expression, putting his arm around her shoulders.
‘Are you on your own?’
‘Yes. My husband couldn’t take time off work.’
‘Can we sit together?’
‘I was planning to sit at the back. Shouldn’t you really sit near the front? After all, you were almost...one of the family.’
Looking round quickly, Joachim let her go and rubbed his hands together, as if feeling cold.
‘Don’t want to,’ he muttered. ‘Rather not. Bloody hell, I’ve never been at a funeral before, and I...’
The final stragglers had already ambled inside, and they were left alone again. Johanne began to walk towards the massive doors, and Joachim followed behind. The organist was playing a dreary prelude, as if the sight of the diminutive white coffin at the far end of the aisle was not poignant enough in itself. A man in a suit gave a brief bow as he handed them each a booklet from a stack on a table and indicated to Joachim that he should sit on the second-last pew, before following and sitting by his side.
The enormous space inside the church was almost half-full. Johanne recognized some of the mourners, but far from all. Marianne had brought her electrician husband and was sitting down at the front. Several of the other guests invited to dinner at Ellen’s house on 22 July were also present. Johanne estimated around 250 mourners in the church, a significant number of them advanced in years. Friends of Helga Mohr, probably. When she heard the door behind her open and close one last time, she snatched a glimpse over her shoulder.
Agnes and Torbjørn Krogh crept inside and sat on the very back pew, at the other side of the centre aisle. Johanne tried to send them a smile, but they were staring down and hunched together. Torbjørn put his arm round Agnes’ shoulders. She was already weeping silently, relegated from the front pews where she rightfully belonged. Agnes and Torbjørn were in clandestine attendance at their grandchild’s funeral, and would probably depart the scene before it was over, for fear of open confrontation.