by Anne Holt
He sipped the champagne, which was too sweet and not cold enough.
This was the best thing he had done.
The piece was entitled I was thinking of something blue and maybe grey, darling and had actually been bought by StatoilHydro.
A monolith of shop window dummies rose up in the centre of the art work. They were wound around each other as in the original in Vigeland Park, but because the dummies were so rigid apart from their knees, elbows, hips and shoulders, the six-metre-high installation was positively spiky. Heads on almost broken necks, stiff, dead fingers and feet with painted nails stuck out on all sides. A thin, shimmering length of silver barbed wire was wound around the whole thing. Real silver, of course; the barbed wire alone had cost a small fortune. On closer inspection you could see that the naked, lifeless dummies were wearing expensive watches on their wrists, and almost every one was adorned with a necklace. The dummies had been literally sexless when he bought them. Only the broad shoulders and lack of breasts distinguished the men from the women, as well as a small, undefined bulge at the crotch. Niclas Winter had come to their rescue. He had bought so many dildos in a porn shop that they had given him a considerable discount, and he had mounted them on the castrated dummies. The dildos were marketed as being ‘natural’, which Niclas Winter knew was nonsense. They were colossal. He sprayed them in fluorescent colours, making them even more striking.
‘Perfect,’ he murmured to himself, emptying his glass in one swig.
He took a few steps back and shook his head.
His last exhibition had been an enormous success. Three outdoor installations had stood on Rådhuskaia for four weeks. People were enthusiastic. So were the critics. He sold the lot. For the first time in his life, he was almost debt-free. And best of all, StatoilHydro, who had already bought Vanity Fair, reconstruction, ordered I was thinking … on the basis of a sketch. The price was two million. He had been paid half a million in advance, but he had already spent that money and considerably more on materials.
Then the bastards changed their minds.
He hadn’t much of a clue about contracts, and when he went to see a solicitor with the letter which had arrived in October, beside himself with rage, he realized it was time to get himself an agent. StatoilHydro were, in fact, perfectly within their rights. The contract had a cancellation clause. Niclas Winter had hardly even glanced through the document before signing it, dizzy with joy.
In the current financial climate, they wrote apologetically. An unfortunate side-effect on employees and owners, they babbled on. Moderation. A certain level of restraint with regard to unnecessary outlay.
Blah, blah, blah. Fuck.
The bloody letter arrived four days before his mother died.
As he sat with her during those last hours – more for appearance’s sake than because he actually felt any sorrow – everything changed. Niclas Winter walked out of his dead mother’s room at the Lovisenberg Hospice with a smile on his lips, fresh hope and a riddle to solve.
And he had done it.
It had taken time, of course. His mother had been so vague that it had taken him several weeks to find the right office. He had got too stressed and made a couple of mistakes along the way. But now he had done it. The appointment had been made for the first working day after the New Year, and the man he was going to meet would make Niclas Winter a very rich man.
He poured himself more champagne and drank.
The tiny, tiny feeling of intoxication did him good, and his piece was finished. If StatoilHydro didn’t have the sense to take the opportunity, there would be other buyers. With the money that was due to come to him he could accept the offer of an exhibition in New York in the autumn. He could give up all those other jobs that sucked the energy and creativity out of him. And he would finally give up the drugs. And the booze. He would work all day long, with no worries.
Niclas Winter was almost happy.
He thought he heard a noise. An almost imperceptible click.
He half-turned. The door was locked, and there was no one there. He drank a little more. A cat on the roof, perhaps. He looked up.
Someone grabbed hold of him. He understood nothing as someone’s hands pulled at his face, forcing his mouth open. When the syringe was pushed into his left cheek, he was surprised more than afraid. The needle caught his tongue, and the pain as it touched the sensitive mucus membrane was so agonizing that he cried out at last. A man was still standing behind him, gripping his hands. An intense heat spread from his mouth at lightning speed, and it was difficult to breathe. The stranger caught him as he fell. Niclas Winter smiled and tried to blink away the film that was covering his eyes like oil. He couldn’t get any air. His lungs were no longer working.
He was hardly even aware of his left sleeve being pushed up.
The second needle ate its way into the blue vein in the crook of his arm.
It was 27 December 2008, and the time was thirty-three minutes past midnight. When Niclas Winter died, thirty-two years old and on the verge of an international breakthrough as an artist, he was still smiling in surprise.
*
Ragnhild Vik Stubo was laughing her biggest laugh. Johanne smiled back, picked up the dice and threw them again.
‘You’re not very good at Yahtzee, Mummy.’
‘Unlucky at games, lucky in love. I’ll just have to console myself with that.’
The dice landed, showing two ones, a three, a four and a five. Johanne hesitated for a moment before leaving the ones and taking her final throw.
The telephone rang.
‘No cheating while I’m gone,’ she ordered, pretending to sound severe as she got up.
Her mobile was in the kitchen. She pressed the green icon.
‘Johanne Vik,’ she said tersely.
‘Hi, it’s me.’
She felt a stab of irritation at the fact that Isak never introduced himself. It should be Adam’s privilege to take it for granted that she would immediately recognize his voice. After all, it was more than ten years since she and Isak had split up. True, he was the father of her eldest daughter, and it was lucky for all of them that they got on. However, he wasn’t a close family member any more, even if he behaved like one.
‘Hi,’ she said dryly. ‘Thanks for driving Ragnhild home yesterday. How’s Kristiane?’
‘Well, that’s why I’m ringing. Now, you’re not to … you must promise not to be …’
Johanne could feel the skin between her shoulder blades contracting.
‘What?’ she said when he hesitated.
‘Well … I’m at Sandvika Storsenter. I wanted to exchange some Christmas presents and so … Kristiane and I … The problem is … It won’t help at all if you get angry.’
Johanne tried to swallow.
‘What’s happened to Kristiane?’ she said, forcing herself to sound calm.
From the living room she could hear Ragnhild throwing the dice over and over again.
‘She’s disappeared. Well, not disappeared. But I … I can’t find her. I was just going to—’
‘You’ve lost Kristiane? In Sandvika Storsenter?’
She could see the vast shopping centre in her mind’s eye; it was the biggest in Scandinavia, with three floors, more than a hundred shops and so many exits that the very thought made her dizzy. She leaned on the kitchen worktop for support.
‘Just calm down, Johanne. I’ve spoken to the management and they’re looking for her. Have you any idea how many kids get lost in here every day? Loads! She’ll be wandering around on her own in some shop. I’m only ringing to ask if there are any shops in here that she’s particularly fond of …’
‘For fuck’s sake, you’ve lost my child!’ Johanne yelled, without giving Ragnhild a thought. The girl started to cry, and Johanne tried to console her from a distance while she carried on talking.
‘She’s our child,’ said Isak at the other end. ‘And she isn’t—’
‘It’s all right, Ragnhild. Mummy was just
a little bit worried. Hang on a minute and I’ll be there.’
The child was inconsolable. She howled and threw the dice on the floor.
‘I don’t want to be lost, Mummy!’
‘Try that teddy bear shop,’ Johanne hissed down the phone. ‘The one where you can make your own bear. It’s at the end of the walkway leading from the old part of the centre to the new part.
‘Mummy, Mummy! Who’s lost me?’
‘Hush, sweetheart. Mummy will be there in a minute. Nobody has lost you, you know that. I’m coming!’
The last comment was snapped furiously down the phone: ‘Keep your mobile on. I can be there in twenty minutes. Call me straight away if anything happens.’
Johanne ended the call, shoved the phone in her back pocket, ran into the living room, scooped up her youngest daughter and comforted her as best she could, while racing through the apartment towards the stairs leading to the outside door.
‘Nobody’s going to lose you, you know that. There’s nothing to be upset about. Mummy’s here now.’
‘Why did you say somebody had lost me?’
Ragnhild was snuffling, but at least she had calmed down slightly.
‘You misunderstood, sweetheart. That kind of thing happens.’
She slowed down as she reached the staircase, and walked calmly.
‘We’re going for a little drive. To Sandvika Storsenter.’
‘Storvik Sandsenter,’ said Ragnhild, smiling through her tears.
‘That’s right.’
‘What are you going to buy me?’
‘I’m not going to buy you anything, sweetheart. We’re just going to … we’re just going to pick up Kristiane.’
‘Kristiane’s coming back tomorrow,’ the child protested. ‘Tonight you and me are going to watch a film with popcorn on the sofa, on our own.’
‘Put your boots on. Quickly, please.’
Her heart was fluttering. She gasped for breath and pulled on her jacket as she forced herself to smile.
‘We’ll take your jacket with us. Off we go.’
‘I want my hat! And gloves! It’s cold outside, Mummy!’
‘Right, there you go,’ said Johanne, grabbing something that was lying on the shelf. ‘You can put them on in the car.’
Without even locking the outside door she grabbed her daughter’s hand and ran down the steps and across the gravel to the car, which fortunately was parked just in front of the building.
‘You’re hurting me,’ Ragnhild protested. ‘Mummy, you’re squeezing my hand too hard!’
Johanne felt dizzy. She recognized the fear from the very first time she held Kristiane in her arms. Perfect, said the midwife. Healthy and beautiful, said Isak. But Johanne knew better. She looked down at her daughter, just thirty minutes old, so silent and with something in her that was blowing her to pieces.
‘Jump in,’ she said just a little too sharply, opening the back door. ‘I’ll fasten your belt.’
Her mobile rang. At first she couldn’t remember where she had put it, and started patting her jacket pockets.
‘Your bottom’s ringing,’ said Ragnhild, clambering into the car.
‘Yes, yes,’ Johanne said breathlessly into her phone when she had managed to get it out of her back pocket.
‘I’ve found her,’ Isak said from a long way off. ‘She was in the teddy bear shop, just as you thought, and she’s absolutely fine. A man was looking after her, and they were actually standing chatting to each other when I got there.’
Johanne leaned against the car, trying to slow her breathing. An immense feeling of relief that Kristiane was safe was overshadowed all too quickly by what Isak had said.
‘What man?’
‘What man? I ring up to tell you that Kristiane is perfectly safe, just as I thought, and you start going on about—’
‘Are you aware that shopping centres are an absolute El Dorado for paedophiles?’
Her words turned to grey clouds of vapour in the ice-cold air.
‘Mummy, aren’t you going to fasten my belt?’
‘Just a minute, sweetheart. What kind of—?’
‘No, Johanne, that’s enough! I’m not having this!’
Isak Aanonsen rarely became angry.
Even when Johanne got up from the sofa late one night an eternity ago and explained that she didn’t think their marriage could be saved, and that she’d already obtained the necessary forms to draw a line under it, Isak had tried to be positive. He just sat there for a while, alone in the living room, as Johanne went to bed in tears. An hour later he had knocked on the bedroom door, having already accepted the fact that they were no longer each other’s most intimate confidant. Kristiane was the most important person in all this, he said. Kristiane would always be the most important thing for both of them, and he really wanted them to agree on the practical arrangements regarding their daughter before they tried to sleep. By the time dawn broke they had come to an agreement. Since then he had loyally adhered to it. And she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times over the years he had shown even the slightest hint of irritation.
But now he was furious.
‘This is just hysteria! The man who was talking to Kristiane was a perfectly ordinary guy who had obviously noticed what kind of … what kind of child she is. He was very kind, and Kristiane smiled and waved to him as we left. She’s standing here now and …’
Johanne could hear Kristiane’s usual dam-di-rum-ram in the background. She started to cry. Silently, so that she wouldn’t upset Ragnhild any more than she already had.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into the phone. ‘I’m sorry, Isak. I mean it. I was just really, really scared.’
‘I think we both were,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation, his voice back to normal. ‘But everything’s worked out fine. I assume you’d prefer it if I brought her straight home today? What do you think?’
‘Thank you. Thank you so much, Isak. It would be wonderful to have her back home.’
‘I’ll make up my time with her another weekend or something.’
‘Perhaps you could stay as well,’ Johanne heard herself saying.
‘Stay over with you? Great!’
In her mind’s eye she could see a glint in those dark blue eyes that narrowed to slits in his always unshaven face when he smiled that crooked, sweet smile that she had once been so in love with.
‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to pick up any shopping while we’re here?’
‘No thanks. Just bring yourselves. Just come.’
She ended the call, overwhelmed by an immense weariness. She rested her arms on the roof of the car. The metal was so cold that her skin contracted. Perhaps she could tell Isak about the man in the garden on Christmas Day. If she explained that her fear hadn’t come from nowhere, that she had a good reason to be anxious, that the man had known Kristiane’s name although neither of the children knew him, if she …
No.
Slowly she straightened up and dried her tears with the back of her hand.
‘Out you come,’ she said, bending down to Ragnhild with a smile. ‘We’re not going to Sandvika after all. Isak and Kristiane are coming here instead.’
‘But we were going to watch a film and pretend we were at the cinema!’ Ragnhild complained loudly. ‘Just you and me!’
‘Well, we can do that with the others. It’ll be brilliant. Come on, out you get.’
Raghnild slid reluctantly from her child seat and climbed out of the car. As they walked back across the gravel, she suddenly stopped and put her hands on her hips.
‘Mummy,’ she said severely. ‘First of all we were in a big hurry to get to Storvika Sandsenter. Now we’re going back inside. We were going to pretend we were at the cinema, just you and me, and now suddenly Isak and Kristiane are coming. Daddy’s quite right.’
‘About what?’ said Johanne with a smile, stroking her youngest daughter’s hair.
‘Sometime
s you just can’t make up your mind. But you’re still the best mummy in the world. The very best supermummy in the whole wide world, with bells on.’
*
Detective Inspector Silje Sørensen of the violent crime division in Oslo had drunk two cups of hot chocolate with whipped cream and was feeling sick.
The photographs in front of her didn’t help.
This year Christmas Eve had fallen on a weekday, which was perfect for those who wanted to have the longest possible time off work. The twenty-third of December, when some people also held celebrations, was on a Tuesday, so most people had also taken the Monday off, even though it was a normal working day, and stayed away on Tuesday. Christmas Day and Boxing Day were bank holidays anyway, and today, the day after Boxing Day, it was Saturday, and therefore a working day for those within the public sector, but for the less conscientious Christmas 2008 was an opportunity to take two weeks off work, since there was no point in going in when New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day fell in the middle of the following week.
Norway was working at a quarter speed, but not Silje Sørensen.
The sight of her full in-tray had put her in a foul mood. In the end it was easy to convince the family it would be best for all of them if she put in an extra day at work.
Or perhaps it was the thought of Hawre Ghani that distracted her, whatever she tried to do.
She flicked quickly through the photographs of the body, took out the picture of the boy when he was alive, plus a new document, and closed the file.
On the afternoon of Christmas Day she had phoned DCI Harald Bull, as he had requested. He wasn’t all that interested in discussing work in the middle of the holiday. When he wrote ‘as soon as possible’, he meant 5 January. Despite the fact that the overtime budget had been blown long ago, they agreed to give DC Knut Bork the job of checking the Kurdish asylum seeker’s background. Bork was young, single and ambitious, and Silje Sørensen was impressed by the report he had completed that morning and left in her office.
She glanced through the pages.
Hawre Ghani had come to Norway eighteen months ago, allegedly at the age of fifteen. No parents. Since he had no ID papers, the Norwegian authorities quickly became suspicious of his age.