by Anne Holt
‘But she’s right,’ said Johanne with a smile. ‘You’re the best in the world at most things.’
‘Idiot. Night-night.’
‘Night-night, my love.’
Adam’s voice disappeared. Johanne stared at the telephone for a while, as if she was hoping he might still be there and would reassure her that the man by the fence posed no threat. Then she got up slowly, put down the phone and went over to the window. The new moon was suspended at an angle above the apartment block next door. There was still frost on the ground. The cold had sunk its teeth into Oslo, but the sky was clear, day after day, and all week there had been the most breathtaking sunsets. The few sparse snowflakes that had fallen during the afternoon covered the garden like a thin film. The sky was clear once again, it was dark, and after a while Johanne felt ready for bed.
*
A woman stared out of a window, not knowing if she would ever sleep again. Perhaps she was already sleeping. Everything was strange and unreal, like a dream. She had been born in this house, in this room, she had always lived here and looked out of this leaded window, a cross dividing the view into four different parts of the world, as her father had told her when she was little and believed every word he said. Now everything was twisted and distorted. She was used to the rain against the window pane. It often rained, almost all the time. It was raining in Bergen and she wept and didn’t know what she was seeing. Life had been chopped into pieces. The view from the little house was no longer hers.
She had waited for twenty-four hours – a long night and an even longer day – in a state of not knowing which she could do nothing about. Just as her life had followed a course that had been determined by circumstances beyond her control, so these endless hours of waiting had been something she just had to suffer. There had been no way out, not until the woman on TV had told her what she had, in fact, already known when she woke up in the armchair in front of the screen exactly twenty-four hours earlier, with a fear that grasped her by the throat and made her hands shake.
Because she had waited before.
She had waited all her life, and she had got used to it.
This time everything was different. She had felt a confirmation of something that couldn’t be true – shouldn’t be true – and yet she still knew, because she had lived like this for such a long time, utterly, utterly alone.
The doorbell rang, so late and so unexpectedly that the woman gave a little scream.
She opened the door and recognized him. It was an eternity since they had last met, but the eyes were the same. He was weeping, like her, and asked if he could come in. She didn’t want him to. He wasn’t the one she wanted to see. She didn’t want to see anyone.
When she let him in and closed the door behind him, she asked God to let her wake up.
Please, please God. Please be kind to me.
Let me wake up now.
*
‘Surely nobody’s awake at this time of night?’
Beate Krohn looked at the news editor with a resigned expression. It was almost midnight. They were alone in the news office among silent, flickering monitors and the quiet hum of computers and the ventilation system. Here and there someone had hung up the odd Christmas decoration: a strand of red tinsel, a garland of little Norwegian flags. In one corner stood a sparse Christmas tree with a crooked star on top. Most of the chocolates and biscuits that had been provided as a consolation for those who had to work over Christmas had been eaten. Sheets of paper and old newspapers were strewn all over the place.
‘What about your parents?’
He just wouldn’t give up. He had lit a cigarette – such a blatant breach of the rules that she was quite impressed in spite of herself.
‘They’ll be asleep, too,’ she said. ‘Besides which, I’d frighten the life out of them if I rang this late. We have rules about that kind of thing in our family. Not before seven thirty in the morning, and not after ten at night. Unless somebody’s died.’
‘But somebody has died!’
‘Not like that. I mean—’
He interrupted her with a deep drag on his cigarette and an impatient wave of his hand.
‘Let me show you how it’s done,’ he grinned, the cigarette clamped between his teeth. ‘Watch and learn.’
His fingers flew over his mobile before he put it to his ear.
‘Hello Jonas, it’s Sølve.’
Silence for three seconds.
‘Sølve Borre. At NRK. Where are you?’
Beate Krohn had once read that the most common opening remark in the entire world when it came to mobile phone conversations was ‘Where are you?’ After that she had sworn never to ask the question herself.
‘Listen, Jonas. Bishop Lysgaard died last night, as you’ve no doubt heard. The thing is—’
He had obviously been interrupted, and took the opportunity to have another deep drag on his cigarette.
‘Sure. Sure. But the thing is, I just wanted to check what she died of. Just to satisfy my curiosity. I’ve got one of those feelings, you know …’
Pause.
‘But can’t you give one of them a ring? There must be somebody there who owes you a favour. Can’t you—?’
Once again he was interrupted. By now the cloud of smoke surrounding him was so dense Beate was afraid it would set off the alarm. She took a step back to avoid getting the smell in her clothes.
‘Nice one, Jonas! Nice one. Give me a ring later. Doesn’t matter what time it is!’ He ended the call. ‘There you go,’ he said, his fingers moving over the keys. ‘Come here and I’ll teach you something. Look at these messages.’
Beate leaned hesitantly over his shoulder and read the message saying that Bishop Lysgaard was dead. It hadn’t changed since she last saw it.
‘Notice anything odd?’ asked the editor.
‘No.’
She coughed discreetly and turned away.
‘I don’t know how many messages like that I’ve read in my life,’ he said, completely unmoved. ‘But it has to be a lot. By and large, they’re all exactly the same. The tone is slightly formal, and they don’t really say much. But they almost always say more than the fact that the person concerned is dead. “So-and-so passed away unexpectedly at home.” “So-and-so passed away after a short illness.” “So-and-so died in a car accident in Drammen last night.” That kind of thing.’
His fingers drew so many quotation marks in the air that ash went all over the keyboard. It was already so worn that the letters were barely visible.
‘But this one,’ he said, pointing at the display. ‘This one just says “Bishop Eva Karin Lysgaard died yesterday evening. She was sixty-two years old …” And so on and so on, blah blah blah.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ she said firmly.
‘Oh no,’ said the news editor, still smiling broadly. ‘Probably not. But it needs checking. How do you think a guy like me became a journalist at NRK before I was twenty-one, with no training?’
He pointed meaningfully at his nose.
‘I’ve got it, that’s how.’
The telephone rang. Beate Krohn stared at it in surprise, as if the editor had just shown her a conjuring trick.
‘Sølve Borre,’ he yapped, dropping his cigarette stub into a mineral water bottle. ‘Right. Exactly.’
He sat in silence for a few seconds. The mischievous expression disappeared. His eyes narrowed. He reached for a pen and made a few illegible notes in the margin of a newspaper.
‘Thanks,’ he said eventually. ‘Thank you, Jonas. I owe you big time, OK?’
He sat staring at his phone for a moment. Suddenly he looked up, completely transformed.
‘Bishop Lysgaard was murdered,’ he said slowly. ‘She was fucking murdered on Christmas Eve.’
‘How … ?’ Beate Krohn began, sinking down on to a chair. ‘How do you know … ? Who was that you were talking to?’
The chief news editor leaned back in his chair and looked her straight i
n the eye.
‘I hope you’ve learned something tonight,’ he said quietly. ‘And the most important thing of all is this: you’re nothing as a journalist without good sources. Work long and hard to cultivate them, and never, ever give them away. Never.’
Beate Krohn struggled in vain to control her blushes.
‘And now,’ said the editor with a disarming smile as he lit yet another cigarette, ‘now we’re really going to hit the phones. Time to start waking people up!’
Small Keys, Big Rooms
‘Good grief,’ said Adam Stubo, stopping dead in the doorway. ‘Did I wake you up?’
Lukas Lysgaard blinked and shook his head.
‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Or rather, yes. I hardly slept last night, so I sat down here and …’
He raised his head, smiling wanly. Adam hardly recognized him. The broad shoulders were drooping. His hair was getting greasy, and he had dark, puffy bags around his eyes. A blood vessel had burst in his left eye, staining it bright red.
‘That’s understandable,’ said Adam, pulling out a chair on the opposite side of the table.
Lukas Lysgaard shrugged his shoulders. Adam didn’t really know whether it meant he didn’t care whether Adam understood or not, or if it was a kind of apology for the fact that he had fallen asleep.
‘The wolves are out,’ Adam said as he sat down. ‘After all, it was only a matter of time before the press found out.’
The other man nodded.
‘Have they been after you already?’ Adam asked, glancing at the clock which showed that it was a few minutes after half past eight.
The man nodded dully.
‘Anyway, I’m very grateful to you for coming in,’ said Adam, gesturing with one hand. ‘I see my colleague has taken care of the formalities. Has anyone offered you something to drink? Coffee? Water?’
‘No thanks. Why are you actually here?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you mean?’
Lukas leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk.
‘You work for NCIS.’
Adam nodded.
‘NCIS is no longer what it was.’
‘No.’
Adam couldn’t understand what the man was getting at.
‘As far as I understand it, NCIS exists primarily to combat organized crime. Do you think it was the Mafia that killed my mother?’
‘No, no, no!’
For a brief moment Adam thought the man was serious. A humourless, almost imperceptible smile made him change his mind.
‘The very best resources have been allocated to this enquiry,’ he said, pouring himself a coffee from a Thermos. ‘Including me. How’s your father?’
No reply.
‘My intention is to give you some information to begin with,’ said Adam, pushing a thin file across the desk.
Lukas Lysgaard showed no sign of wanting to open it.
‘Your mother died of a stab wound. To the heart. This means that she died very quickly.’
Adam watched the other man’s face, looking for any indication that he ought to break off.
‘She had no other injuries apart from a few grazes, which in all probability are due to the fall itself. Therefore it seems likely that she did not offer any form of resistance.’
‘She was …’ Lukas raised a clenched fist to his mouth and coughed. ‘She was sixty-two years old. You can hardly expect her to put up much resistance when some man attacked her.’ He coughed again, then quickly added: ‘Or woman. I assume that happens from time to time.’
‘Absolutely.’ Adam nodded and stroked his cheek, wondering whether he ought to take back the untouched file. The silence between them went on for just a little bit too long. It became embarrassing, and Adam realized that Lukas Lysgaard’s fairly unfriendly attitude had hardly changed over the past twenty-four hours. He was staring at the desk with his arms folded.
‘My wife is a criminologist,’ Adam said suddenly. ‘And a lawyer. And she’s studied psychology as well.’
Lukas at least looked up, a furrow of surprise creasing his brow.
‘She’s quite a lot younger than me,’ Adam added.
Neither the most reluctant witness nor the most hostile thug could manage to remain unmoved when Adam started talking about his family for no particular reason. It seemed so unprofessional that the person being interviewed was annoyed, surprised, or quite simply interested.
‘She sometimes says …’ Adam picked up his cup and took a slow, noisy slurp. ‘She would rather her nearest and dearest died after a long, painful illness than as the victim of a crime, however quick it might be.’
As he spoke he felt the usual pang of conscience as he misrepresented Johanne, saddling her with views she didn’t hold. It disappeared when he saw Lukas’s reaction.
‘What does she mean … ? What do you mean by that? It’s terrible to wish something like that on someone you love, and—’
‘It is, isn’t it? I agree with you. But what she means is that the family of someone who has been the victim of a crime is subjected to a detailed investigation, and that can be a terrible strain. When someone dies of other causes, then …’
Adam held up his hands, palms facing outwards.
‘… then it’s all over. The family is overwhelmed with sympathy, and no one asks questions. Quite the reverse, my wife stubbornly maintains. A death from natural causes has the effect of laying to rest any secrets the family might have. However, when the deceased is the victim of a crime …’
He shook his head ruefully and stuck an imaginary key in an imaginary keyhole.
‘Everything has to be brought out into the open. That’s what she means. Not that I agree with her, as I said, but she is right to a certain extent. Don’t you think?’
Lukas peered at him without giving any indication of whether he agreed or not. Adam held his gaze.
‘I assume,’ Lukas said suddenly, leaning across the desk, ‘that what you’re trying to tell me is that there are secrets in my family that could explain why my mother was stabbed and murdered out in the street!’ His voice cracked at the end of the sentence. ‘That she’s the guilty party, somehow! That my mother, the kindest, most thoughtful …’
His voice broke and he started to cry. Adam sat motionless with the coffee cup in his right hand and a pen balanced between the index and middle fingers of his left hand.
‘I don’t think my mother had any secrets,’ said Lukas in despair, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Not my mother. Not her.’
Still Adam said nothing.
‘My mother and father loved each other more than anything in the world,’ Lukas went on. ‘They’ve had their disagreements, just like everyone else, but they’ve been married since they were nineteen. That’s …’ He sobbed as he worked it out. ‘That’s more than forty years! They’ve been married for more than forty years, and you come along claiming there are all these secrets between them! It’s … it’s …’
Adam made a few brief notes on the pad in front of him, then pushed it away so that it fell on the floor. When he picked it up, he put it back on the table face down.
‘You’ve got a nerve,’ Lukas said harshly. ‘Insinuating that my mother—’
‘I apologize if that’s the way you see it,’ Adam said. ‘That wasn’t my intention. But it’s very interesting that you immediately defend your parents’ marriage when I talk in completely general terms about the fact that everyone has experiences they don’t want to share with other people. Something they’ve done. Something they haven’t done. Something that might have made them enemies. Something that has harmed others. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that …’
He let the sentence dangle in the air in the hope that it was sufficiently vague.
‘My parents don’t have any enemies,’ said Lukas, clearly making an effort to pull himself together. ‘On the contrary, my mother was regarded as a mediator, an advocate of reconciliation. Both in her prof
ession and in her private life. She never said anything to me about anyone wanting to kill her. That’s just …’
He swallowed and ran his fingers through his hair over and over again.
‘As for my father …’
He was finding it difficult to breathe.
‘My father has always been in my mother’s shadow.’
His voice altered as he slowly exhaled. Suddenly he seemed resigned. It was as if he was actually talking to himself.
‘I mean, that’s obvious. My mother with her career, and my father who never got any further than his degree. I don’t suppose he wanted to …’
He broke off again.
‘How did they meet?’ Adam asked gently.
‘At school. They were in the same class.’
‘High-school sweethearts,’ said Adam with a little smile.
‘Yes. My mother was saved when she was sixteen. She came from a perfectly ordinary working-class family. My grandfather worked at BMW.’
‘In Germany?’
Adam leafed through the file in front of him, looking somewhat surprised.
‘No. Bergen Mechanical Workshop. He was a member of the Norwegian Communist Party and a wholehearted atheist. My mother was the first member of the family to go to the grammar school. It was difficult for my grandfather to see his daughter reading theology, but at the same time he was incredibly … proud of her. Unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to see her become a bishop. That would have …’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘My father, on the other hand, came from a totally academic environment. His father was a professor of history, at the University of Oslo first of all. They moved to Bergen when my father was around eight years old. His mother was a lecturer. In those days it was quite unusual for women to …’
Once again he broke off.
‘But you know that,’ he added, eventually.
Adam waited.
‘In many ways my father is regarded as … how shall I put it? A weak person?’
He sobbed out loud as he said it, and the tears began to flow again.
‘Which he most definitely isn’t. He’s a wonderful father. Clever and well-read. Very thoughtful. But he just couldn’t … do everything … become the kind of person who … The thing is, his parents had great hopes for him. They expected a great deal of him.’