Authors: Anne Holt
He operated alone, but knew he was not alone.
He was trained to lay a false trail and hide his own. He avoided surveillance cameras as far as possible. On the odd occasion when he had no choice but to pass through an area covered by cameras, he made a point of altering his gait, pushing his lips out slightly, flaring his nostrils. And looking down.
In addition, his appearance was perfectly ordinary.
It was as if he had never been in Norway.
The Svinesund Bridge lay ahead of him. There was no barrier, no checkpoint. There was a customs post on the other side of the road where a truck was just being checked over, but no one asked him for any documentation. When he passed the imaginary line separating Norway and Sweden in the middle of the high bridge, he couldn’t help smiling.
Naive Scandinavians. Stupid, naive Europeans. One reason why he had been allocated this task was because he had studied Scandinavian languages during his military training, but he had never actually been here before. Nor was he tempted to make a return visit.
He drove on for about fifteen minutes, then turned off at a suitable point. The road was narrow with very little traffic, and it wasn’t long before he spotted a small forest track leading off to the right. Slowly,
he drove a hundred metres or so in among the fir trees, then stopped and switched off the engine. The snow was deep in spite of the dense forest, and only the day-old tyre tracks left by a tractor made it possible for him to drive here.
He got out of the car.
It was cold, but there was barely a breath of wind.
He drank in the clear, pure air and smiled. When he looked up he could see stars, and part of the waning moon between two gently swaying treetops.
He closed his eyes and leaned his upper arms on the car roof, then rested his head on his joined hands.
‘Dear Lord,’ he whispered, ‘thank you for all your blessings.’
The familiar warmth rose in his body like a feeling of intoxication as he whispered his prayer.
‘Thank you for giving me the strength to follow your word, dear Lord. Thank you for giving me the energy and courage to fulfil your commands. Thank you for allowing me to be a tool in the battle against the darkness of Satan. Thank you for giving me the ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, true from false. Thank you for punishing me when I deserve it, and for rewarding me when I have earned it. Thank you for …’
He hesitated, then clasped his hands even more tightly and closed his eyes once more, his words sincere.
‘Thank you for allowing me to spare that beautiful young girl, that innocent angel. Thank you, O Lord, for enabling me to recognize the presence of Jesus. For everything is yours, and purity is the goal. Amen.’
Slowly he turned his face up to the sky. The strength that poured through him made him shudder; it was almost as if he had become weightless. A bird took off from a snow-laden branch hanging over the track, screeching eerily as it disappeared into the dark sky. The man stretched, breathed in the fresh smell of cold and fir needles, and fished a small red clover leaf in enamelled metal out of his pocket. He pushed his hands in a pair of gloves he had found in the underground station at the National Theatre, and rubbed the emblem thoroughly before drawing back his arm and hurling it in among the trees. As he got back in the car he felt happy.
He had to reverse the hundred metres back to the main road, but it wasn’t a problem. Fifteen minutes later he was back on the E6, heading towards Gothenburg. In two days he would be back in the States, and there wouldn’t be a single clue that he had ever been in Norway.
He was absolutely sure of that.
*
‘This is the best clue we have.’
Adam leaned back on the sofa and held the picture of Kristiane’s saviour up in front of him.
‘But that’s worth having.’
Johanne shuffled closer to him. He smelled of a long working day, and she pressed her nose against his arm and inhaled deeply.
‘Thank you for not being so cross any more,’ she mumbled.
He didn’t reply.
‘Or are you?’ She smiled and looked up at him.
‘No, no. I suppose I’m just … disappointed. Mostly disappointed.’
‘Now you sound as if you’re telling a child off.’
‘I expect that’s what I am doing, in a way.’
She sat up abruptly.
‘OK, Adam, that’s enough! I’ve said I’m sorry. I should have come to you first. It’s just that you … you’re so bloody …
sceptical
all the time! I knew you’d have doubts about my entire theory and I—’
‘Stop,’ he interrupted, waving his hand vehemently. ‘What’s done is done.’
‘And in any case, contacting Silje Sørensen turned out to be a lucky break.’
She forced an encouraging smile in the hope of evoking a smile in return.
It didn’t happen. Adam scratched his scalp with both hands and sighed wearily. Then he picked up the picture of the bald man in the dark clothes once again.
He examined it for a long time, then suddenly said: ‘You know, I have a good relationship with Isak. I’m perfectly happy for him to be here. However, I can’t accept the fact that you’re using him as a shield to protect yourself from me, that he’s sitting here waiting when I get
home after working in another city for several days, when we haven’t spoken to one another for more than thirty hours, and we have a great deal that is … unresolved, to put it mildly. It must never, ever happen again.’
‘But you wouldn’t have believed me! I’ve had this horrible feeling ever since 19 December, and I haven’t dared say anything, either to you or to Isak! The conversation I had with Kristiane last Monday when I realized she was a key witness was so vague, with so little in terms of … concrete information that I … When Isak told me he also had the feeling that … You wouldn’t have believed me, Adam!’
‘It isn’t a question of believing or not believing, Johanne. Of course I have no problem believing that you – and subsequently Isak – had a feeling someone was watching Kristiane. Or that you believe she saw something significant with regard to the person or persons who murdered Marianne Kleive. But just because you have that kind of feeling, it
doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually happened
. Particularly when neither of you can come up with anything more concrete than “a feeling”.’
He was sitting up straight and drew quotation marks with his fingers on her cheeks.
‘The file was missing, and the man by the—’
‘The file is back, you said so yourself. It was just carelessness.’
‘But—’
‘OK, let’s just drop this, shall we? I’ve asked a patrol car to drive past a couple of times a day, just to be on the safe side. Beyond that, there’s not much we can do if you don’t want us to subject Kristiane to a formal interview, with the stress that would mean for her. So can we forget it? At least for the moment. Please?’
His hand grasped the wine glass.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t do that. I realize you’re hurt. I realize I should have come to you with all this right from the start. But listen, Adam, I’ve been thinking about—’
‘No,’ he broke in harshly. ‘Listen to me! If Kristiane really did witness something to do with the murder of Marianne Kleive,
then why the hell didn’t they just kill her?
’
His last few words were so loud that they both gave a start, then instinctively sat still as they listened for signs that Kristiane might have woken up. The only thing they could hear was the sound of
Mamma Mia
on DVD coming from the apartment below. For the tenth time since Christmas – or so it seemed to Johanne.
‘Because they believe,’ she said. ‘Because they believe in God.’
‘What?’
‘Or Allah.’
‘Because they believe – so what?’
He seemed more interested now. Or perhaps just confused.
‘Because they believe, they don’t kill blindly,’ Johanne said. ‘They believe with a sincerity which is probably alien to most people. They’re fanatical, but they have a deep faith. Taking the lives of adults who in their view are sinners who must be punished with death in accordance with a God-given imperative is something completely different from killing an innocent child.’
She spoke very slowly, as if these thoughts were new to her, and she therefore had to choose her words with the greatest care.
Adam’s expression was no longer so dismissive when he asked: ‘But these people, these groups, are they really … are they really religious? Aren’t they just lost souls using God and Allah as some kind of … pretext?’
‘No,’ said Johanne, shaking her head. ‘Never underestimate the power of faith. And in some ways my theory is made more credible because …’
She lifted her feet on to the sofa and grabbed hold of one of them, as if she were cold.
‘… because Kristiane did actually see something. The man who murdered Marianne Kleive presumably realized straight away that Kristiane isn’t like everyone else. If the man who saved her from the tram really is the murderer, at least that incident proved to him that she’s … different. And if there’s one thing that’s more striking about my daughter than anything else, it’s …’
The tears almost spilled over as she looked at Adam.
‘Her innocence,’ she said. ‘She is innocence personified. One of God’s little angels.’
‘The lady helped me,’ Kristiane said quietly from the doorway.
Adam stiffened. Johanne turned her head slowly and looked at her daughter.
‘Did she?’ she whispered.
‘Albertine was asleep,’ said Kristiane. ‘And I wanted to find you, Mum.’
Adam hardly dared breathe.
‘I had to hide from all the people, because I didn’t want to go to bed without you. And then suddenly I came to a door that was open. There were some stairs. I went down the stairs, because I thought you might have been there, and at least there was nobody else around. It was so quiet when I got to the bottom. It was really a cellar, and it wasn’t at all posh. And then the lady was standing at the top of the stairs. “Hello,” said the lady.’
Kristiane was wearing new pyjamas. They were too big and the sleeves came down over her hands. She started tugging at them.
‘I think I’d better go to sleep,’ she said.
‘What did you do when the lady said hello?’ Johanne asked with a smile.
‘I think I’d better go to sleep. Dam-di-rum-ram.’
‘Come over here and be my little girl.’ Adam turned to her at last and gave her a little wave.
‘I’m Daddy’s girl,’ she said. ‘And actually, I’m not a girl any more. I’m a young woman. That’s what Daddy says.’
‘You can be my girl and Daddy’s girl,’ Adam said with a laugh. ‘You always will be. However old you are. Haven’t you heard Grandpa calling Mum his little girl?’
‘Grandpa calls all women his little girl. It’s one of his bad habits. That’s what Granny says.’
‘Come here,’ Johanne whispered. ‘Come to Mum.’
Kristiane walked hesitantly across the floor.
‘She called to me,’ she said, settling down on the sofa between them. ‘She didn’t know my name, because of course she didn’t know me. She just called out “Come here” and then she smiled.’
‘And what happened next?’ said Johanne.
‘Adam,’ Kristiane said in a serious tone of voice. ‘You must weigh …’
She thought quickly.
‘About 230 per cent more than me.’
‘I think that’s exactly what I weigh,’ replied Adam, with an embarrassed glance in Johanne’s direction. ‘But I kind of wanted to keep that as my little secret.’
‘I weigh thirty-one kilos, Mum. So you can work it out.’
‘I’d rather hear what happened, sweetheart.’
‘The lady called me and I went back up the stairs. She had really warm hands. But I’d lost one of my slippers.’
‘Slippers?’ said Adam. ‘I thought you weren’t wearing any—’
‘Did the lady go back to fetch it?’ Johanne quickly interrupted.
‘Yes.’
‘And where were you in the meantime?’
‘Dam-di-rum-ram. Where’s Sulamit?’
‘Sulamit died, sweetheart. You know that.’
‘The lady was dead, too. Dam-di-rum-ram.’
Adam held her close, resting his cheek on the top of her head.
‘I’m so sorry I ran over Sulamit,’ he whispered. ‘But it was a long time ago.’
‘Dam-di-rum-ram.’
She had drawn her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs as she slowly rocked from side to side. She bumped into Johanne, paused for a moment, bumped into Adam. Over and over again.
‘Let’s get you to bed,’ Johanne said eventually.
‘Dam-di-rum-ram.’
‘Off we go.’
She got up and took her daughter’s hand. Kristiane happily went with her. Adam reached out to her, but she didn’t see him. He sat there listening to Johanne’s patient small talk and Kristiane’s strange chatter.
It struck him that realizing Johanne was right was almost worse than the fact that Kristiane had witnessed something traumatic. Overcome with fatigue, he sank back against the cushions.
He had believed what Johanne told him, but not what she thought it implied. Once upon a time he had cynically drawn her to him precisely because of her judgement. Because he needed it. He had drawn her into an investigation she really didn’t want to get involved in by forcing her to imagine every parent’s nightmare. Children were being kidnapped and murdered, and he was completely at a loss. It was Johanne’s unique experiences with the FBI and her sharp eye for human behaviour that solved the case and saved a little girl’s life. He had fallen in love with Johanne for many reasons, but whenever he
thought back to the time after the dramatic search for the missing child, it was Johanne’s ability to combine intellect and intuition, rationality and emotion that had attracted him with a power he had never experienced before.
Johanne was the perfect blend of sense and sensibility.
But this time – so many difficult years later – he just hadn’t believed in her.
The feeling of shame made him close his eyes.
‘Now do you believe me?’
Her tone wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t even reproachful. On the contrary, she sounded relieved. It made him feel even smaller.
‘I believed you all along,’ he mumbled. ‘I just thought that—’