What Never Happens (32 page)

When she came back, he noticed that she had a great figure under her shabby clothes. Her jeans needed to be washed and her slippers must have once belonged to Vegard. But her waist was small, and her neck was long and thin. Her movements, when she put down the mugs and poured the coffee, were graceful.

“I thought I was done with you guys,” she said without sounding unfriendly. “So I wonder what you want. A friend of mine, he’s a lawyer, said that it’s unusual for you to visit people at home. He said . . .”

Her smile was unreadable. A thin finger brushed her left eyebrow. Her eyes, when they met his, were almost teasing.

“. . . that the police call people in to make them feel insecure. You’re at home in the police station, not me. But here I’m at home. Not you.”

“I don’t feel particularly threatened where I’m sitting,” Adam said and tasted the coffee. “But your friend has a point. So you could draw the conclusion that I don’t intend to make you feel insecure. It’s more that I’m looking for—”

“To talk?” she observed. “You’re at a bit of loss, and you’re the kind of policeman who looks around, tries to get a better overall impression, a bigger picture. And then maybe you’ll discover a new angle. Paths and evidence that you hadn’t noticed before.”

“Hmm,” he said, astonished. “Not so far from the truth.”

“My friend. He knows you. You’re quite well known.” She gave a short laugh.

Adam Stubo resisted the urge to ask who her friend was.

“I can’t quite get a handle on your husband,” he said.

“Don’t call him my husband, please. We only married for one reason, and that was that if we wanted to have children, it looked like we’d have to adopt—which is much easier to do as a married couple. Please just say Vegard.”

“Okay, I can’t quite get a handle on Vegard.”

Laughter again, deep and short.

“I don’t think there were many who did.”

“Not even you?”

“Certainly not me. Vegard was many people. We all are, I suppose, but he was worse than most. Or better. Depends on how you want to look at it.”

The irony was obvious. Again, Adam was struck by her voice. Elsbeth Davidsen used a wide range of expressions. Small, telling movements in her hands and face, and careful but obvious changes in her voice.

“Do tell.”

“Tell? Tell you about Vegard . . .”

She picked absentmindedly at her knee.

“Vegard wanted so much,” she said. “At the same time. He wanted to be obscure, literary, and alternative. Innovative and provocative. Unique. But he also had a craving for recognition that was difficult to combine with writing essays and inaccessible novels.”

Now it was Adam’s turn to laugh. As he put down his mug and looked around the room again, he realized that he liked this woman.

“Vegard had a great talent,” she continued thoughtfully. “Once upon a time. I wouldn’t exactly say that he . . . wasted it, but he . . . he was an angry young man for too long. When he was younger, he was full of charm. Energy. I was fascinated by the uncompromising strength in everything he did. But then . . . he never grew out of it. He thought he was fighting against everyone and would never admit that as the years passed, he was only fighting against himself. He lashed out, not realizing that whoever it was he was trying to hit had long since left. It was . . .”

Adam hadn’t reacted to the fact that the woman, up to now, appeared to be untouched by her husband’s brutal death just over two weeks ago. A sensible strategy, he thought, given the situation. She was talking to an unknown policeman. But now he could see that her lower lip was quivering.

“It was actually quite pathetic,” she said and swallowed. “And pretty damn horrible to watch.”

“Who was he after the most?”

With a listless hand, she puffed up a dirty red cushion.

“Anyone who achieved the success that he felt he deserved,” she explained. “Which he felt . . . robbed of, in a way. In that sense, Vegard was the classic cliché of an artist: he was misunderstood. The one who had been passed by. But at the same time . . . at the same time he tried to be one of them. More than anything, he wanted to be one of them.”

She leaned forward and picked up a card that had fallen on the floor. She handed it to him.

“This came a day or two before he died,” she said and pulled at one of her pigtails. “I’ve never seen Vegard so happy.”

The card was cream-colored and adorned with a beautiful royal monogram. Adam tried to repress a smile and carefully put the card back down on the glass table.

“You may well laugh,” she sighed sadly. “We had a terrible argument about that invitation. I couldn’t understand why he felt it was so important to get in with that crowd. To be honest, I was worried. He seemed to be obsessed with the idea that he finally was going to ‘be someone,’ as he put it.” She made finger quotes in the air.

“Did you often argue?”

“Yes. At least recently. When Vegard really started to get stuck and definitely couldn’t be called young and promising anymore. We’ve been soooo”—she held her thumb and her forefinger an eighth of an inch apart—“close to splitting up. Several times.”

“But you still wanted to have children?”

“Don’t most people?”

He didn’t answer. There was a sudden commotion outside on the stairs. Something heavy fell on the floor, and two angry voices bounced off the concrete walls. Adam thought they were speaking Urdu.

“Nice here in Grønland,” she said dryly. “Sometimes it can be a bit too lively. At least for those of us who can’t afford to buy an apartment in the new buildings.”

The voices out in the stairwell died down and then trailed off. Only the monotone drone of the city forced its way in through the dilapidated windows and filled the silence between them.

“If you could choose one,” Adam said finally, “one of Vegard’s enemies . . . someone who really had a reason to wish him ill, who would that be?”

“That’s impossible,” she answered without hesitation. “Vegard had offended so many people and threw his shit around so liberally that it would be impossible to pick out one person. And in any case . . .”

She picked again at the hole on the knee of her jeans. The skin underneath was winter-white against the indigo blue.

“Like I said, I’m not really sure if he could cause that much damage anymore. Before, he was hard-hitting and on target with his criticism. Recently it’s just been . . . shit, like I said.”

“But would it be possible,” Adam tried again, “to identify . . . one group, then . . . one group of people that has greater reason to feel they’ve been wronged? Tabloid journalists? TV celebrities? Politicians?”

“Crime writers!”

Finally, a broad and genuine smile. Her teeth were small and pearly white, with a slight gap between the upper front teeth. A dimple appeared on one of her cheeks, an oval shadow of forgotten laughter.

“What?”

“Some years ago, when all his antics still attracted attention, he wrote a parody of three of that year’s best sellers. Nonsense, really, but very funny. He got a taste for it. And in many ways it was his trademark for years. Haranguing crime writers, that is. Also in situations where it was completely unjustified or inappropriate. A kind of personal version of Cato’s ‘Moreover, I advise that Carthage must be destroyed.’” Again she made finger quotes in the air.

A car backfired outside the living room window. Adam heard a dog barking in the backyard. His back was sore, and his shoulders ached. His eyes were dry, and he rubbed them with his knuckles, like a tired child.

“What are we doing?” he asked himself. “What am I doing? Searching for ghosts and shadows. Getting nowhere. There’s no connection, no common features, nowhere to go. Not even an overgrown, invisible path. We’re flailing around in the dark, getting nowhere, without seeing anything except more new, impenetrable scrub. Fiona Helle was popular. Victoria Heinerback had political opponents, but no enemies. Vegard Krogh was a ridiculous Don Quixote who waged war with popular fiction authors in a world full of despots, fanaticism, and threatening catastrophe. What a . . .”

“I have to go,” he muttered. “It’s late.”

“So soon?” She seemed disappointed. “I mean . . . of course.”

She went to get his coat and came back before he had managed to struggle out of the deep sofa.

“I’m terribly sorry, on your behalf,” Adam said as he took his coat and put it on. “For what has happened, and for bothering you like this.”

Elsbeth Davidsen didn’t answer. She walked silently in front of him down the hall.

“Thank you for letting me come,” Adam said.

“It is I who should thank you,” said Elsbeth Davidsen seriously and held out her hand. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

Adam felt her warmth, the dry, soft hand, and dropped it a second too late. Then he turned and left. The dog in the backyard had gotten company. The animals were making a din that followed him all the way to the car, which was parked a block away. Both side-view mirrors had been broken and a parting message from Oslo East had been scratched onto the curbside doors:
Fuck you, you fucker.

At least it was spelled correctly.

Fourteen

I
f you don’t mind me saying, Johanne, you look damn great tonight. You really do. Cheers!”

Sigmund Berli lifted his glass of cognac. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was the only one drinking. A red flush spread around his eyes like a rash, and his smile was broad.

“Amazing what a good night’s sleep can do,” Adam said.

“More like eighteen hours,” Johanne said under her breath. “Don’t think I’ve slept that long since I was in my last year of school.”

She was standing behind Sigmund’s back, asking Adam silently, with gestures and facial expressions, why he had invited his colleague home with him on yet another weekday.

“Sigmund’s a grass widower at the moment,” Adam explained in a loud, cheerful voice. “And the man doesn’t have enough sense to eat unless the food is put on the table in front of him.”

“If only I got food like this every day,” Sigmund said and swallowed a burp. “I’ve never tasted such a good pizza. We normally have Grandiosa. Is it hard to make it? Do you think I could get the recipe for the wife?”

He grabbed the last piece as Adam started to clear the table.

“Would you rather have a beer?” Johanne asked in desperation, looking at the cognac bottle on the windowsill. “If you’re going to eat more, that is. Doesn’t it, well . . . go better?”

“Cognac goes with most things,” Sigmund said happily and launched into the last piece of pizza. “It’s really nice to be here. Thanks for asking.”

“You’re welcome,” Johanne said flatly. “Are you still hungry?”

“After this, I could only be hungry for life,” grinned the guest, washing down the pizza with the rest of the cognac.

“Dear God,” muttered Johanne and went to the bathroom.

Sigmund was right—the sleep had done her a world of good. The bags under her eyes were no longer so dark, even though they were more obvious than Johanne liked in the harsh light by the mirror. This morning she had taken the time to have a proper bath, wash her hair, and cut and polish her nails. Put on makeup. When she finally felt ready to collect Ragnhild, she had lain down and slept for another hour and a half. Her mother had demanded that she look after her grandchild again on the weekend. Johanne had shaken her head, but her mother’s smile showed that she wasn’t going to yield.

“What is it about mothers?” Johanne asked herself. “Will I be like that too? Will I be just as hopeless, project my feelings onto my daughters and annoy them, be equally good at reading their needs? She’s the only person I can give my baby to without feeling worried or ashamed. She makes me feel like a child again. That’s what I need, I need to have no responsibility, no demands every now and then. I don’t want to be like her. I need her. What is it about mothers?”

She let the cold water run over her hands for a long, long time.

More than anything, she wanted to go to bed. It was as if the previous night’s long sleep had reminded her body that it was possible to sleep, and now it was screaming for more. But it was only nine o’clock. She dried her hands thoroughly, put her glasses on, and reluctantly went back to the kitchen.

“Or what do you think, Johanne?”

Sigmund’s moon face smiled expectantly at her.

“About what?” she asked, trying to muster a smile.

“I was saying that surely it must be easier to develop a profile of the killer now. If we take all your theories seriously, I mean.”

“All my theories? I don’t have many theories.”

“Don’t be a pedant,” Adam said. “Sigmund’s right, isn’t he?”

Johanne picked up a bottle of mineral water and drank. Then she screwed the lid back on, thought about it, smiled fleetingly and said, “We’ve certainly got a lot more to go on than before, I agree.”

“Come on, then!”

Sigmund pushed a pen and some paper in her direction. His eyes were bright, like an excited child. Johanne stared at the sheets of paper in irritation.

“Fiona Helle’s the problem,” she said slowly.

“Why?” asked Adam. “Isn’t she the only one who’s not a problem? We’ve got a murderer, a confession, and a perfect motive that underpins the murderer’s confession.”

“Exactly,” Johanne agreed and sat down on the empty bar stool. “And for that reason, she doesn’t fit in.”

She took three pieces of paper and laid them side by side on the counter. She wrote FH in felt-tip pen on the first page and pushed it to one side. Then she took the second and wrote VH in big letters and left it in front of her. She chewed the pen for a while before she scribbled VK on the last piece of paper and put it in line with the others.

“Three murders. Two unsolved.”

She was talking to herself. Biting the pen. Thinking. The men were quiet. Suddenly she wrote Tuesday, January 20, Friday, February 6, and Thursday, February 19, under the initials.

“Different days,” she murmured. “No pattern to the intervals.”

Adam’s mouth moved as he calculated the days.

“Seventeen days between the first and second murders,” he said. “And thirteen between the second and third. Thirty between the first and the last.”