Fear Not (50 page)

When Susan and little Anthony died, his life had ended.

He had tried to follow them to heaven in a suicide attempt. It achieved nothing, apart from the fact that he could no longer count himself a US Marine. They had no use for suicidal soldiers, and Richard had to face the future without work as well as without his wife and child. All he had was a small pension, a suitcase full of clothes, and an insurance payout which he didn’t really want from the accident.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ asked the attractive flight attendant. She leaned across the empty seat beside him and smiled. ‘Coffee? Tea? Something to eat?’

He returned her smile and shook his head.

In the three months after the accident he had more or less become a tramp, usually drunk and constantly possessed by a blind, white-hot rage. One night he had quite rightly been thrown out of a bar in Dallas. He lay semi-conscious on the ground in some back street until a man appeared out of nowhere and offered him a meeting with God. Since Richard wasn’t due to meet anyone else, he allowed himself to be helped up and led to a little chapel just two blocks away.

He met the Lord that night, just as the stranger had promised.

Richard Forrester ran a hand over his hair. It was nice to let it grow again, but he still had only a few millimetres of stubble covering his scalp. He was blessed with thick hair with no sign of bald patches yet, and he always kept it short. However, when he shaved his head his appearance changed considerably.

He settled down more comfortably, turned off the light above his head and pulled down the blind.

The God he had met in Dallas that November night in 2002 was completely different from the one he knew from home. His parents were Methodists, as were most people in the neighbourhood of the small town where he grew up. As a child Richard had thought of his religion as a kind of social participation in a closed community more than as a personal relationship with God. There was a service every Sunday, and the odd church bazaar. There was the football team and the Mothers’ Union, barbecues and Christmas parties. Richard had mainly grown up with a
pleasant
God who made little impression on him.

When the stranger took Richard along to the chapel, he met the omnipotent God. He had a revelation that night. God came to him with a violence that made him think he was going to die at first, but eventually he passed into a state of peace and total surrender. That night in the chapel was Richard Forrester’s catharsis. By the time the new day dawned, he was reborn.

His life as a soldier for his country, as a married man and a father, was over.

His life as a soldier of God had begun.

He never touched alcohol again.

Richard Forrester listened to the low hum of the engines, and saw the pretty girl in his mind’s eye.

She had seen him. When the woman who was going to die went down into the cellar on her own, it provided him with a chance he just had to take. When the child appeared he was in despair for a moment, because of what he knew he must do.

Then he realized that this was a pure and honest child.

Just like Anthony, who had been born prematurely and with brain damage, which would have prevented him from ever maturing mentally. The girl was the same kind of child. Richard had understood that after just a few seconds.

He allowed her to run away, up the cellar steps.

In order to be completely sure, he had kept an eye on her. After he had saved her from being hit by the tram, it was easy to get one of the agitated observers dressed in his party clothes to tell him who she was. Richard had simply stood there on the opposite side of the street until the mother had carried the child inside. A man who was busy entertaining the constant stream of smokers with a dramatic eyewitness
account had willingly given Richard the mother’s name when he said he wanted to send her some flowers. He had found the address on the Internet.

Unfortunately, the girl had prevented him from killing the woman in the way he had originally intended, camouflaged as an accident. But it wasn’t the child’s fault. Fortunately, he had had the presence of mind to search through the woman’s pockets and her bag; he had found the ticket to Australia and taken her mobile phone. Then he had gone into her room, collected her luggage and paid the bill. The chaos in reception suited him perfectly; he virtually disappeared among the crowd of partying guests and drunks. He had hidden her suitcase right at the back of an unlocked storeroom full of rubbish, underneath a big cardboard box that was so dusty it couldn’t have been touched for years. He had to prevent her disappearance from being discovered immediately, and by sending a couple of short, nondescript texts over the next few days he had bought himself a decent interval. Every minute that elapsed between the murder and the start of an investigation reduced the chances of the case being solved.

‘Can I get you a pillow?’ he suddenly heard the flight attendant whisper.

Without opening his eyes he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

The child’s mother had been hysterical. First of all she had slapped him across the face, once the girl was safe. In the period between Christmas and New Year he had once stood just a few hundred metres from the white building where the family lived. A man had come out of a neighbouring property and stopped by the fence to chat with the two girls playing in the garden. The mother was standing at the window, watching them. She was frightened out of her wits, and seemed beside herself when she came out to fetch them inside.

A bit like Susan, he thought, although he didn’t allow himself to think about Susan very often. She was always anxious about Anthony, too.

It wasn’t the first time he had noticed how the people he observed had a horrible feeling they were being watched. They never saw him, of course, just as the mother of the pretty girl hadn’t seen him when he followed her to school in his neutral hire car, where he finally found confirmation that the child was different. He was too well trained ever to
be seen. But she sensed his presence. It had taken Richard a little while to identify the girl’s father, but he had become uneasy the very first time. Richard had wanted to find out if the child behaved differently away from her mother, and had observed them together on three separate occasions. The man started looking over his shoulder at an early stage.

The man who lived on a hill high above the city in a twisted caricature of a family had reacted in much the same way. Felt persecuted. His lover had been completely hysterical, rushing around photographing tyre tracks on the Monday almost two weeks ago. Richard had been standing at a safe distance, watching the whole thing. Two dark-skinned lads had driven up in a big BMW. Pakistanis, he guessed. Oslo was crawling with them. They obviously had something to sort out between themselves, because they had driven into the little pull-in outside the gate of the house where the so-called family lived and stayed there for a good while, gesticulating violently and smoking countless cigarettes before they drove off.

The sodomite had sensed Richard’s presence, but hadn’t seen him. Just like the others.

They didn’t see him and, come to think of it, they didn’t sense his presence either.

What they sensed was the presence of the Lord, Richard Forrester thought. And even if that perverted travesty of a father had escaped on this occasion, his time would come.

Richard Forrester smiled and fell asleep.

*

The house looked as if it was lying at rest on the steep hillside. The windows were small and divided into four panes. The wooden building was tucked in between two similar but larger houses, and was a modest dwelling. Almost shy. A narrow opening led into a little back garden. A lady’s bike was propped up against a stone wall, and a collection of brightly coloured ceramic pots had been piled up in one corner for the winter. Stone steps led up to a small green door, beside which hung a porcelain nameplate. The name, and the meadow flowers surrounding it, had faded to pale blue in the wind and rain and sunshine over the years.

M. Brække
, it said in ornate letters.

Adam Stubo hesitated. He stood on the stone steps with his back to the simple, wrought-iron fence and tried to think the whole thing through one more time.

He was about to deprive this woman of a secret she had kept for almost half a century, as far as he could tell. By placing his finger on the brass bell below the nameplate he would intrude upon a life that had been difficult enough already. The woman who lived in the little white house had made her choice and lived her whole life in the shadow of another’s marriage.

The female employee at Bergen police station who had recognized the woman in the photograph had briefed him during the drive from Flesland. Martine Brække was a tutor at Bergen’s cathedral school, unmarried and childless. She lived a quiet life, cut off from most things, but she was a respected teacher and also gave private piano lessons. She had once been a promising concert pianist herself, but at the age of nineteen she had been struck by a form of rheumatism which put an end to the brilliant career she had envisaged.

Fragile, tentative music could suddenly be heard from somewhere inside. Adam shook his head and listened to the piece being played on the piano. He didn’t recognize it. It was light, dancing, and it made him think of the spring.

He lifted his hand and rang the doorbell.

The music stopped.

When the door opened, he recognized her at once. She was still beautiful, but her eyes were red-rimmed and the area around her mouth was puffy from crying.

‘My name is Adam Stubo,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m a police officer. I’m afraid I need to talk to you about Eva Karin Lysgaard.’

The fear in her eyes made him glance to the side, as if he could still change his mind and leave.

‘I’m alone,’ he said. ‘As you can see, I’m completely alone.’ She let him in.

*

‘I really don’t want to hear any more about that will, thank you,’ Kristen Faber’s secretary said to her husband as she was making sandwiches for lunch. ‘It has absolutely nothing to do with you.’

Bjarne was sitting at the kitchen table with the photocopy in his hand, peering short-sightedly at the small writing.

‘But you have to understand,’ he said crossly, which was unusual for him, ‘that this could actually mean the man has been conned out of a considerable inheritance!’

‘Niclas Winter is dead. There are no heirs. That’s what it said in the paper. A dead man can’t be conned out of anything. Except life, of course.’

She snorted decisively and placed a generous portion of salmon on top of the mountain of scrambled eggs.

‘So that’s the end of that. Lunchtime!’

‘No, Vera, that’s not the end of anything!’

He banged his fist down on the table.

‘This could involve a crime! I mean, it says here …’

He slapped his other hand down on that day’s copy of
VG
, which was lying open at a double-page article about some terrible gang from America that had killed six people out of blind hatred for homosexuals and lesbians. Bjarne Isaksen was shocked. Admittedly, he wasn’t too keen on the sordid things that kind of person got up to, but there had to be limits. You couldn’t just go around killing people in the name of God just because you weren’t a fan of their love lives.

‘It says here that Niclas Winter was murdered!’

Vera turned to him, put her hands on her hips and cleared her throat, as if bracing herself for what she intended to say.

‘That will has nothing to do with Niclas Winter’s death. I’ve read the article to you three times now, and there is no mention of money, an inheritance or a will. Those lunatics from America have just been killing indiscriminately, Bjarne! They can’t possibly have known anything about a document that was lying in a dusty old cupboard in Kristen Faber’s office!’

She was getting more and more angry as she went on.

‘I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my entire life,’ she said crossly, turning back to the worktop.

‘I’m going to call the police,’ Bjarne said obstinately. ‘I can call them without saying who I am, then I can suggest they get in touch with Faber and ask him about a will with Niclas Winter as the beneficiary. They have those information lines, where you can ring up without
saying who you are. That’s what I’m going to do, Vera. And I’m going to do it now.’

Vera groaned theatrically and ran her slender hand over her hair.

‘You are
not
going to call the police. If anyone in this house is going to speak to the police, it’s me. At least I can explain how I …’

Another nervous adjustment of her well-groomed coiffure.

‘… have legal access to the will,’ she concluded.

‘Go on, then, do it!’ Bjarne said agitatedly. ‘Ring them!’

She banged the butter knife down on the worktop and fixed him with the sternest look she could muster, but he wasn’t giving in. He stared back like a stubborn little boy, refusing to back down.

‘Right then,’ she said, and went to fetch the telephone.

*

‘That was Adam Stubo,’ Lukas said, slightly surprised. He put the phone down on the coffee table. ‘He’s on his way over.’

‘Why? I thought you said he’d gone back to Oslo.’

At least his father had started talking again. A little bit.

‘Evidently he came back today.’

‘Why did he phone?’

‘He wanted to speak to you. In person.’

‘To me? Why?’

‘I … I don’t know. But he said it was important. He said he’d tried to call you. Have you unplugged the landline?’

Lukas bent down and peered behind his father’s armchair.

‘You mustn’t do that. It’s important that people can get hold of you.’

‘I have a right to peace and quiet.’

Lukas didn’t reply. A vague sense of unease made him start wandering around the room. Only now did he notice that the house hadn’t been cleaned since before Christmas. Apart from the fact that the pile of newspapers by the television was about a metre high, the place was tidy. His father kept things in order, but nothing else. When Lukas ran his finger over the smooth surface of the sideboard, it left a shiny streak. The nativity crib was still on display. The bulb inside the big glass box was broken, and the once atmospheric tableau was reduced to a gloomy memory of a Christmas he just wanted to forget. As he walked quickly around the corner and went over to the sofa in
the L-shaped living room, the dust bunnies swirled silently across the floor. He stopped just outside his father’s field of vision and sniffed the air.