Punishment (24 page)

‘You left a message on my voicemail. Several, in fact. Was there anything in particular?'

‘Just wanted to know how you are. And to invite you and Kristiane to supper on Friday. It would be good for you not to have to think . . .'

‘Friday . . . Let me see . . .'

The trailer was having problems getting up the long, gentle slopes to Karihaugen. Johanne moved out to the left and accelerated to overtake. She lost her earpiece.

‘Wait,' she shouted into the air. ‘Don't hang up, Mum!'

As she tried to catch the wire, she lost control of the wheel. The car swerved into the next lane and a Volvo had to slam on its brakes to avoid a collision. Johanne gripped the wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead.

‘Don't hang up,' she barked again.

Without taking her eyes from the road, she managed to fish up the earpiece.

‘What happened?' screeched her mother at the other end. ‘Are you driving while talking on the phone again?'

‘No, I'm talking on the phone while I'm driving. Nothing happened.'

‘You'll kill yourself that way one day. Surely it can't be necessary to do everything at once!'

‘We'll come round on Friday, Mum. And . . .'

Her heart was thumping hard and painfully in her chest. She realised that she hadn't eaten since breakfast.

‘Do you think Kristiane could stay over until Saturday, mid-afternoonish?'

‘Of course! Can't you both stay the night?'

‘I've got plans, Mum, but it would be . . .'

‘Plans? On Friday night?'

‘Can Kristiane stay over, yes or no?'

‘Of course she can, dear. She's always welcome. You too. You know that.'

‘Yes. See you about six then.'

She quickly ended the call before her mother managed to say anything else. Johanne had no plans for Friday night. She had no idea why she'd asked. She and Isak had agreed that if they needed someone to babysit for Kristiane, they would always ask each other. First.

She rang her voicemail again. Adam's messages had been deleted. She must have hit the button through force of habit. Lina had phoned while she was talking to her mother.

‘Hi, it's Lina. Just wanted to remind you about the book group on Wednesday. Your turn, you know. And God help you if you can't make it. Just make something simple. We'll bring the wine. We'll be there about eight. See you, hon. Look forward to it.'

‘Shit!'

Johanne was good at multitasking. She managed to cope every day because she could do lots of things at once. She could plan a birthday party for Kristiane while she did the laundry, at the same time as talking on the phone. She listened to radio
programmes while she read the paper and managed to digest the content of both. On the way to the kindergarten, she planned what they would have for supper and what Kristiane would wear the next day. She brushed her teeth and made porridge and read out loud to Kristiane – all at the same time. On the rare occasions when she was going out with other people, she dropped her daughter off at Isak's or with her parents, while she put on her make-up in the car mirror. That's the way women were. Especially her.

But not at work.

Johanne had chosen to do research because she liked to study things in depth. But it was more than that. She could never have been a lawyer or a bureaucrat. Doing research allowed her to be thorough. To do one thing at a time. To cast a wide net, take time to find connections. Research allowed her to doubt. Whereas her daily life demanded fast decisions and make-do solutions, compromises and smart short cuts, in her work she had the opportunity to go over things again if she wasn't satisfied.

But now everything was a mess.

When she had hesitantly agreed to research the possible miscarriage of justice against Aksel Seier, it was because it was relevant to her project. But at some point or another – she couldn't pinpoint when – the case had started to live its own life. It was no longer anything to do with her life at the institute, with her research. Aksel Seier was a mystery that she shared with an old lady, whom she was drawn to but at the same time wanted to forget.

And then she had let herself get involved with Adam's work.

I can cope with having lots of small balls in the air, she thought to herself as she turned off from TÃ¥senlokket. But not big ones. Not at work. Not two demanding projects at the same time.

And not five ladies for dinner on Wednesday. She just couldn't cope.

I
t was only eleven o'clock in the evening on Monday 29 May, but Johanne had already been in bed for an hour. She should have been exhausted. But something was making her uneasy, keeping her awake, without her knowing what it was. She closed her eyes and remembered that it was Memorial Day. Cape Cod would have had its first real weekend of the summer season. Shutters would have been stored away. Houses aired. The Stars and Stripes would be flying from newly painted flag poles, the red, white and blue national pride flapping in the wind while the sailing boats cruised between Martha's Vineyard and the mainland.

Warren would no doubt have been in Orleans and installed the wife and children for the summer, in the house with a view over Nauset Beach. The children must be grown up by now. Teenagers, at least. Without wanting to, she started calculating. Then she forced herself to think about Aksel Seier. She had a list of names of people who had worked in the Ministry of Justice in the period from 1964 to 1966 in front of her. It was a long list and it told her nothing. Identities. People. People she didn't know and whose names meant nothing to her.

She had constantly been looking over her shoulder in Cape Cod. Of course they wouldn't meet. First of all it was a good fifteen-minute drive from Harwichport to Orleans and second, there was no reason for anyone from Orleans to go to Harwichport. The traffic went in the opposite direction. Orleans was big. Bigger, at least. More shops. Restaurants.
The fabulous Nauset Beach on the Atlantic Ocean made Nantucket Sound look like a paddling pool. She knew that she wouldn't bump into him. But she kept looking over her shoulder all the same.

Again she ran her finger down the pages. Still they told her nothing. The director general, Alvhild's boss in 1965, had been dead for nearly thirty years. Line through him. Unfortunately. Alvhild's closest colleagues had nothing to say. Alvhild had already asked them long ago if they remembered anything, knew anything about Aksel Seier's extraordinary release. Strike them off.

Johanne dropped her felt pen. It fell down into one of the folds in the duvet. A black stain grew instantly in the middle of all the white. The telephone rang.

No number, said the display.

Johanne didn't know anyone who had an ex-directory number.

It must be Adam.

Adam and Warren were about the same age, she thought.

The phone continued to ring when she lay down and pulled the duvet over her head.

The next morning she had a dim memory of the telephone ringing a few times. But she wasn't sure; her sleep had been heavy and dreamless, right through the night.

G
iven the exceptional circumstances, the principal was nervous, even though staff numbers had been bolstered by two young trainee teachers. After all, she was the one who was responsible. In her opinion, a trip to the technical museum was reckless and unnecessary. But the others had convinced her. It was close enough for them to walk there and the ten children would be accompanied by four adults. The children had been looking forward to it for so long, and surely there were limits to the restrictions a mad abductor could impose on them. It was broad daylight and not yet midday.

The children were aged between three and five. They walked hand-in-hand, crocodile fashion. The principal walked in front, with her arms out, as if she could somehow protect the children better that way. One of the students was at the back and the kindergarten's only male employee walked beside them on the roadside, singing marching songs so that the children walked in time. Bertha, who was in fact the cook, was on the inside of the pavement.

‘Left, right, hup-two-three, everyone keep up with me,' shouted the man. ‘One foot, two foot, on the ground, nobody look around. Keep your arse tight, shoulders back . . .'

‘Shhhh,' said the principal.

‘Arse,' screamed a child. ‘He said arse!'

Bertha stumbled over a crack in the asphalt and got left behind. One of the little girls let go of her friend's hand to help.

‘Arse,' repeated two boys. ‘Arse, arse!'

They passed the entrance to the Rema 1000 supermarket. A delivery van was trying to turn out into Kjelsåsveien. The principal made angry gestures to the driver, who replied by giving her the finger. The van rolled slowly forwards. Bertha screamed, little Eline stood petrified in front of the bumper. An unleashed dog lolloped over the road towards them. It wagged its tail and ran circles round three of the children, who eagerly tried to grab its green collar. The owner called from the path down by the Aker River. The dog pricked up its ears and bounded away again. A Volvo screeched on its brakes. The right fender clipped the dog, which howled and limped away on three legs. Eline was crying. The van driver rolled down his window and hurled abuse. The trainee teachers held their wards by the collar and tried to stop others from wandering out into the road by standing with their legs apart on the edge of the pavement. Bertha picked up Eline. The van driver edged over the pavement and accelerated up towards Frysjaveien. The dog whined in the distance. The owner was squatting beside it trying to calm it down. The driver of the green Volvo had stopped in the middle of the road, opened the door and was obviously uncertain whether to get out or not. There were already four cars behind her, two of them tooting angrily.

‘Jacob,' said the principal. ‘Where's Jacob?'

*

When Marius Larsen, the only male employee at Frysjakroken kindergarten, later tried to tell the police what had actually happened outside Rema 1000 on Kjelsåsveien, just before midday on Wednesday 31 May, he couldn't remember the exact chain of events. He remembered all the elements of the incident. There was a dog and a Volvo. The van driver was foreign. The man who owned the dog was wearing a red sweater. Eline was howling and Bertha tripped on something.
She was extremely overweight so it took a while for her to get up. The Volvo was green. They were singing marching songs. They were on their way to the technical museum. The dog was a pointer, grey and brown.

Marius Larsen had all the pieces, but couldn't put them together. Eventually they asked him to write it all down. A patient officer gave him some yellow Post-its. One Post-it for each thing. He put them down in order, shuffled them round, thought about it, wrote new Post-its with stiff, bandaged fingers, tried again.

The end of the story was the only thing he was absolutely clear about.

*

‘Jacob,' said the principal. ‘Where's Jacob?'

Marius Larsen let go of two children. He spun round and saw that Jacob was already a hundred and fifty metres away, under some man's arm, who was opening the door of a car parked outside a garage further up the road, going east.

Marius ran.

He ran so fast that one of his shoes flew off.

When he was nearly at the car, no more than ten or twelve metres away, the engine started. The car swung out over pavement and into the road. Marius didn't stop. Jacob wasn't visible. He must be lying on the back seat. Marius threw himself at the car door. A broken beer bottle cut into his shoeless foot. The car door burst open with a thud, Marius lost his balance. The driver hit the brakes. The door banged on its hinges. Jacob was crying. Marius didn't let go of the door, he had a firm grip now, holding on to the window with his fingers. He wouldn't let go. The car moved off again, jolting and jumping before suddenly accelerating, and Marius lost his grip. His hand was numb and the cuts on his foot were bleeding profusely. He lay on the asphalt in the middle of Kjelsåsveien.

Jacob was lying beside him, screaming.

It turned out the boy had broken his leg when he fell. But otherwise he was in good form. All things considered.

*

Almost exactly five hours later, at ten to five on Wednesday afternoon, Adam Stubo, Sigmund Berli and four detectives from Asker and Bærum Police stood at the entrance to a block of flats in Rykkin. The stairwell smelt of wet concrete and cheap TV dinners. No curious neighbours stuck their heads out to have a look. No children approached them when they parked the three dark cars directly outside the building; three identical cars with badly disguised blue lights in front. All was quiet. It took them three minutes to pick the lock.

‘I take it that all the formalities are in order,' said Adam Stubo, and entered the flat.

‘D'you know what, I don't give a toss about that right now.'

The officer from Asker and Bærum followed him in. Adam turned round and blocked his way.

‘It's in just these situations that we need to be careful with things like that,' he said.

‘Yeah, yeah. Everything's fine. Now move.'

Adam didn't know what he had expected. Nothing probably. Best that way. Nothing would surprise him, ever. He had his own little ritual for occasions like this. A short meditation with closed eyes before going in, to empty his brain, to let go of prejudices and assumptions that might or might not be well founded.

Now he wished he had prepared himself better.

*

Norway was unofficially in a state of emergency.

The news was broadcast only minutes after the actual event took place: yet another attempted abduction of a child.
This time the police had a car registration number and a good description to go on. NRK-TV and TV2 cleared their programme schedule. What was originally intended to be lots of short, special broadcasts quickly developed into one long one on both channels. At impressively short notice, both production teams managed to call in experts in most areas that might have any relevance to the case. Only a couple of them, a well-known child psychologist and a retired NCIS chief, were shuttled between the studios in Karl Johan 14 and Marienlyst. Otherwise both channels showed considerable creativity. At times too much. TV2 had a fifteen-minute interview with a funeral director. Thin, dressed in dark clothes and with as much emotion as he could muster, he explained the different reactions of grief of parents who lose their children under traumatic circumstances, padding it out with several thinly disguised anonymous examples. The viewers reacted with such disgust that the executive producer had to make a personal apology before the end of the evening.