by Anne Holt
‘Something very nasty indeed,’ Knut Bork supplied; his thumb had started to bleed.
*
For the second time in three weeks Johanne was at home alone, and it felt almost frightening. The apartment always seemed so different without the familiar sounds of the children. She noticed that she was moving cautiously across the floor, so as not to make any noise.
‘Pull yourself together,’ she muttered to herself, putting on a CD that Lina Skytter had compiled, burned and given to her for Christmas. Kristiane was at Isak’s until Friday, and every other Wednesday Ragnhild went to visit her maternal grandparents and stayed over.
She had been trying to get hold of Adam for several hours, but her calls went straight to voicemail. Presumably, he was in a meeting. When the day had finally dawned after the restless, fearful night, she had realized she had to talk to him. There was no more room for doubt – unlike last night when she kept changing her mind. She had made her decision now, and that very fact made her a little more optimistic about the whole thing.
If only she knew what Kristiane had actually seen.
Even though she realized there must be something, she was still unsure what it was. It didn’t feel right to press her daughter any further. Later, perhaps, she thought, as she tiptoed around in her stocking feet, not really knowing what to do.
The music Lina had put together wasn’t entirely to Johanne’s taste. She went over to the CD player and turned down Kurt Nilsen’s voice right in the middle of the chorus of one of his ballads.
She ought to eat something, but she wasn’t hungry.
Adam’s meeting must be taking a long time; it was three hours since she left the first message asking him to call her.
She could sit down and do some work, of course.
Or read.
Watch a film, perhaps.
She reached for the phone and keyed in Isak’s number without even thinking about it. He answered right away.
‘Hi, it’s Johanne.’
‘Hi.’ She could hear him smiling on the other end of the line.
‘I just rang to …’
‘To ask how Kristiane is,’ he supplied. ‘She’s absolutely fine. We’ve been to the pool at Bislett, even though children aren’t really allowed in except at weekends. She’s so quiet that the lady in the ticket office lets her in.’
‘Do you let her go into the women’s changing room on her own?’
‘Of course. She’s too big to come into the men’s with me! She’s starting to develop breasts, in case you haven’t noticed! And she’s got a little bit of hair down below too! Our little girl is growing up, Johanne, and, of course, I let her go into the women’s changing room on her own.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Johanne,’ he said wearily. ‘She’s fine! We’re making tacos, and she’s fried the mince all on her own. She’s chopping vegetables and doing a great job. When she’s with me we always cook dinner together. She’ll be fourteen this year, Johanne. You can’t treat her like a child all her life.’
She is a child.
She’s the most vulnerable child in the world.
‘Hello?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Johanne mumbled. ‘I’m here. I’m glad you’re having a good time. I just wanted to check if—’
‘Would you like to speak to her? She’s standing right here.’
There was a terrible clatter in the background.
‘Oops,’ said Isak. ‘Something just fell on the floor. Can I ask her to call you later on?’
‘No, no. There’s no need. Have a good time. See you Friday.’
‘See you!’
He disappeared and she tossed the telephone down on the coffee table. As she walked over to the big window, Johanne was no longer tiptoeing. She stomped angrily across the floor, unsure whether her aggression was directed at herself or Isak.
She still hadn’t bought any curtains.
The snow was so deep that the fence on Hauges Vei was no longer visible. The piles left by the snowploughs were enormous. People had nowhere to put the snow they had cleared from their drives. Not knowing what else to do, they spread it out in the middle of the road, which meant that a considerable amount ended up right back where it came from every time the snowplough rattled past.
There wasn’t a soul in sight. The cold from the window pane made her shudder. The big snowman the children who lived opposite had made stared at her with his coal-black eyes. He had lost his nose. His birch-twig arms stuck out like witch’s talons. He wore an old hat; a bright red scarf covered half his face.
He reminded her of the man by the fence.
She stepped to one side.
Tomorrow she would get some curtains.
It suddenly struck her that she had been completely wrong.
The anxiety that had tormented her since Christmas had not started with the man by the fence. The feeling that someone was watching Kristiane had not started when a strange man came up and asked her what she’d had for Christmas. The reason why Johanne had reacted so strongly on that occasion was because the fear already had her in its grip. The search for those damned spare ribs and all the stress of organizing a Christmas Eve that would satisfy her mother had just temporarily pushed it aside.
It wasn’t the man by the fence who had triggered her anxiety. It had been there since the wedding. Ever since Kristiane had stood on the tram lines and Johanne had been certain she was going to die, she had felt that her own despair was linked to something more, something greater than the fact that her daughter had been in mortal danger. It had all worked out in spite of everything, and even if she was worrying unnecessarily, she couldn’t remember feeling like this since Wencke Bencke had threatened her in her subtle way almost five years ago.
Johanne hurried over to the computer and switched it on.
It seemed to take an eternity for the start page to appear, and when she keyed in the name of the world-famous crime writer, she got it wrong four times before she was finally able to google the name: 26,900 hits. She tried limiting her search. The only thing she wanted to know about the author was whether she was still living in New Zealand.
Wencke Bencke had got away with murder. She had cold-bloodedly taken the lives of a series of celebrities during the winter and spring of 2004; Johanne had never fully understood her motives. Johanne had helped Adam and Sigmund with the wide-ranging investigation, but the only result was that the three of them became convinced that Bencke was guilty. They couldn’t prove a thing. The celebrated author had come to see her one beautiful spring day when it seemed clear that the murderer would never be caught. Johanne had been out pushing the newborn Ragnhild in her buggy when Wencke Bencke confessed, calmly and with a smile. Not that her confession would have stood up in a court of law, but it was clear enough to Johanne. The hidden threat she left hanging between them as she trudged away in the spring sunshine was also subtle, but it was sufficiently unambiguous to leave Johanne scared out of her wits. The fear didn’t really go away until the following year, when Bencke married a Maori man fifteen years her junior and emigrated to New Zealand. She had been back to Norway in connection with book launches, which made Johanne avoid the arts section of the newspapers for most of the autumn.
There.
An article from VG in September.
Wencke Bencke in the sunshine, surrounded by sheep. She and her husband had bought a farm in Te Anau. She hadn’t even come home last autumn when her latest book was published; VG had visited her instead.
‘This is my home now,’ says the world-famous writer, proudly showing off her enormous flock of sheep. ‘I write better here. I live better here. This is where I’m going to stay.’
Johanne breathed a little more easily.
This had nothing to do with Wencke Bencke.
The fear that plagued her now had started on 19 December, the evening when Marianne Kleive was murdered. Johanne blinked and saw the number 19 etched on the inside of her eyelids, shimmering and green.
&n
bsp; The accursed number 19.
She opened her eyes and stared into space. The telephone rang.
Eva Karin Lysgaard was murdered on 24 December.
Niclas Winter, the artist she had read about last night, died on 27 December.
He died. He wasn’t murdered. He died from an overdose.
The phone kept on ringing. She reached out and picked it up. It was Adam.
19, 24 and 27.
The digital sum was 25.
Giving drug addicts an overdose was a well-known method of covering up a murder.
The phone fell silent. A few seconds later it rang again.
This time she answered it with a brief ‘Hello’.
‘Hi sweetheart. I see you’ve rung me loads of times. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you until now; I’ve been stuck in meetings all afternoon. We’re getting nowhere and—’
‘It’s absolutely fine,’ she mumbled. ‘It wasn’t anything important.’
‘Is everything OK? You sound a bit … odd.’
‘No, no. Yes. I mean, everything’s fine. It’s just … I was asleep. The phone woke me up. I think I might just go to bed, actually.’
‘At this time?’
‘Lack of sleep. Do you mind if we hang up? Only I don’t want to end up wide awake …’
‘Of course …’
His disappointment was so tangible she almost changed her mind.
‘Sleep well,’ he said eventually.
‘Bye darling. Speak to you tomorrow? Good night.’
She sat there for a long time with the silent telephone in her hand. Toni Braxton was emoting her way through Un-Break My Heart on the stereo. A car was revving its engine over on Hauges Vei. The wind must have changed direction, because the constant, distant roar from Maridalsveien and the heavy traffic on Ringveien was so clearly audible that it sounded as if a pipe had sprung a leak in the bathroom.
Even if there had been nothing about Niclas Winter’s proclivities in the article in Dagens Næringsliv, it was possible to read a great deal between the lines. The man was HIV positive. That could be a result of heroin abuse, but it could also be a consequence of unprotected sex with other men. The CockPitt installation certainly pointed in that direction.
Eva Karin Lysgaard was certainly a heterosexual woman, married and with children, but she had come out as a passionate defender of the rights of homosexuals.
Marianne Kleive was married to another woman.
Johanne got up from the sofa, suddenly ravenous.
But she was no longer afraid.
Clues
‘I’m afraid Niclas Winter’s envelope has simply disappeared,’ said Kristen Faber’s secretary as she came into his office on the morning of Thursday 15 January. ‘I’ve looked everywhere, but I just can’t find it.’
‘Disappeared? You’ve lost a client’s file?’
Kristen Faber was talking with his mouth full of a chocolate croissant, from which he had acquired a brown moustache along his upper lip.
‘I haven’t actually touched the file since last Monday,’ she replied calmly. ‘And that was when I gave it to you. In this room.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Kristen Faber. ‘How difficult can it be to find a big envelope?’
‘I haven’t looked in your drawers, of course,’ she said, equally unperturbed. ‘You can check those yourself.’
Crossly, he started yanking out one drawer after another.
‘I put the envelope on that pile on the corner of my desk,’ he mumbled. ‘You must have lost it.’
She didn’t bother to reply; she simply picked up the plate and left.
‘Hang on!’ he shouted before she reached the door. ‘This drawer’s stuck! Have you been messing with my desk?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘As I told you, I haven’t touched your drawers. But I can try to help you.’
She put down the plate and tried to help him. Instead of tugging at the drawer as he had done, she attempted to work it free. When that didn’t work, she suggested they should pick the lock.
‘With a letter opener,’ she said, thinking for a moment. ‘Or a screwdriver. We’ve got a toolbox in the filing cabinet.’
‘Are you mad?’
He pushed her aside and tried once again to open the uncooperative drawer.
‘Have you any idea how much this desk cost? Get hold of a carpenter. Or a locksmith. I’ve no idea who we need to call to sort this out, but I want it fixed by the time I get back this afternoon, OK?’
Without looking at her he started stuffing files into his briefcase. He grabbed his winter coat and barrister’s gown from a hook by the door.
‘I don’t suppose we’ll finish today, but the judge might want to go on a bit longer, so it might get late. You’ll still be here, won’t you? I’ll have a lot of things for you to check after today’s proceedings, and you should have plenty to get on with until then.’
His secretary smiled and gave a brief nod.
The door closed, and she settled down to take her time over her morning coffee and the day’s newspapers. When she had finished she logged on to the Internet version of Passing Your Driving Test the Easy Way. Her husband was beginning to have problems with his eyes, and it was time to get herself a driving licence before her faithful chauffeur lost his sight completely.
You’re never too old for anything, she thought, and she had oceans of time.
*
Johanne was waiting impatiently for eight o’clock. The last half-hour had crawled by, and she couldn’t settle to read the papers. But she couldn’t ring any earlier. She had been wide awake at five, after seven hours of deep, continuous sleep. On a sudden whim she had taken out her skis and driven to Grinda for a little early morning skiing. She turned back after 500 metres. The illuminated track was snowed in, and the narrow super-skis Adam had given her for Christmas were useless on that kind of surface. She had asked for cross-country skis, but the shop assistant had convinced Adam that skating was the in-thing in Nordmarka right now. When Johanne finally got back to the car she was wondering if it was possible to take these bloody chopsticks back and exchange them. Not to mention the trousers; they felt tight around her ankles, and seemed more like slalom pants. She had never learned how to skate and had no desire to do so.
But at least the adventure had done her good.
She had eggs and bacon when she got back, and couldn’t remember a breakfast ever tasting better. With a cup of coffee in her hand she went over to the sofa. The telephone was on the floor, on charge. She reached down and pulled out the cable, then scrolled through her address book until she found the number.
The call was answered after just one ring.
‘Wilhelmsen,’ said an expressionless voice.
‘Hi Hanne. It’s Johanne. How are you?’
Of all the ridiculous ways to start a conversation with Hanne Wilhelmsen, asking how she was had to be top of the list.
‘Fine,’ the voice said, and Johanne almost choked on her coffee.
‘What?’ she coughed.
‘I’m absolutely fine. And thank you for Ida’s Christmas present – much appreciated. And how about you? How are you?’
Hanne Wilhelmsen must have been given a crash course in normal good manners for Christmas, Johanne thought.
‘OK, more or less. But you know how it is. I’ve got my hands full. Adam’s in Bergen practically all week at the moment, so most of the stuff involving the kids lands on my shoulders.’
There was complete silence at the other end of the line. Hanne evidently hadn’t got very far in her course.
‘I won’t take up too much of your time,’ Johanne said quickly. ‘I just wondered if you could help me with something.’
‘Like what?’
‘I need … I need to talk to a reliable person in the Oslo police. Preferably someone who works in violent crime and vice. Someone with a bit of authority.’
‘Me six years ago, in other words.’
‘You could say that, but I—�
��
‘Why are you asking me? Surely Adam can help you?’
Johanne gained some time by taking a sip of coffee.
‘As I mentioned, he’s in Bergen,’ she said eventually.
‘There are telephones.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Is it something to do with Kristiane?’
Hanne laughed. She actually laughed, Johanne thought with increasing amazement.
‘Not really, but …’
Yes, she thought.
I don’t want to talk to Adam yet. I don’t want any critical questions. I refuse to answer all his objections, all his counter-arguments. Kristiane must be protected if it’s at all possible. I want to find out about this for myself first.
‘He just has this tendency to assume I’m …’
‘Moderately hysterical?’
Once again that same light, unaccustomed laugh.
‘A bit too quick to assume that something’s wrong,’ Hanne clarified. ‘Is that the problem?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Silje Sørensen.’
‘What? Who?’
‘Talk to Silje Sørensen. If anyone can help you, it’s Silje. I have to go now. I’ve got a lot to do.’
‘A lot to do?’
The thought that Hanne Wilhelmsen had a lot to do in her self-imposed exile in her luxury apartment was absurd.
‘I’ve started doing a bit of work,’ she explained.
‘Work?’
‘You have a very odd way of speaking on the telephone, Johanne. You keep coming out with individual words followed by a question mark. Yes, I’ve started working. For myself. On a small scale.’
‘Doing … doing what?’
‘Call round one day and we’ll have a chat. But now I really do have to go. Ring Silje Sørensen. Bye.’
Silence. Johanne couldn’t quite believe what she’d heard.
Her friendship with Hanne Wilhelmsen had come about by chance. Johanne had needed help with one of her projects, and had sought out the retired, taciturn inspector. In some strange way she had felt welcome. They didn’t meet often, but over the years they had developed an unassuming, careful friendship, completely free of any demands or obligations.