by Anne Holt
“No. It’s just the usual kind of thriller, I think.”
“Fine. Come straight home. Have a nice time.”
The boy muttered all the way out into the hallway, vigorously rubbing his tender arm.
Maren returned, closing the doors again. After a moment’s hesitation, she grabbed hold of an old black key hanging on a nail beside the doorframe, inserted it into the classical keyhole, and rotated it. There was a grinding of metal against metal, demonstrating that the key had hardly ever been used in many years. She sank into the winged armchair once more. Although she was clearly marked by the events of recent days, it was as though something had flared up in her weary eyes. A spark of vitality, an almost serene determination. Terje felt it rather than saw it and took heart.
“You won’t say anything to the police?”
He was pathetic. Not only had he lied, both about having been at the home at a rather critical point in time, and also about Agnes not knowing about his embezzlement from the business accounts. As well as the somewhat significant point that he had appropriated the papers from the director’s desk drawer. Now it looked as though he was ready to kneel down and beg for assistance.
“Why did you lie, Terje? Did you not trust me?”
His gaze flitted from her face and was about to fall to the floor. Then he caught himself and rested his eye instead on a point twenty centimeters above her head, remaining sitting like that, with his arms on the armrests and gripping the edges tenaciously with his hands, almost as though he were at the dentist’s. He did not answer.
“I need to know exactly what happened. Was it the shortfall that Agnes wanted to talk to you about earlier in the day? Was that why she embarked on a round of staff interviews? Did she show you the papers?”
“No,” he eventually whispered. “No, she didn’t show me any papers. She simply told me she had discovered certain irregularities, and she was extremely disappointed. She waved some papers about, and I understood that they concerned me. She asked me . . .”
Now, drawing his feet up onto the chair, he lowered his head, with an eye on each knee, like a child, or almost like a deformed fetus. When he continued, his voice was indistinct and difficult to understand.
“I was to make a written statement before anything would happen. I was to hand it in the next day. That is to say, the day after she . . . she died.”
Suddenly he let his feet drop to the floor again. He did not cry, but his face was contorted into a kind of rictus Maren had never witnessed before. Fleeting tics crossed his mouth in lightning flashes, and his eyes almost looked as though they were about to disappear into his head. For a moment she was really frightened.
“Terje! Terje, pull yourself together!”
Standing up, she perched on the table between them. She attempted to hold his hand, but he would not relinquish his grasp of the armrest, so instead she placed her right hand on his thigh. He felt abnormally hot; the heat burned through his trouser leg and made the palm of her hand sweaty after only a few seconds.
“I won’t say anything. But I need to know what happened. You must understand that. So I don’t say anything wrong to the police.”
His eyes had fallen back into place. He was breathing more quietly and she could see his knuckles were no longer quite so chalk white.
“I only wanted to know what she had found out. For all I knew, she might only have uncovered a tiny fraction. And most of it had been put back again, you see. I was only . . . She was smart, wanting to have my version first.”
“Are you sure she was dead when you came on the scene?”
“Sure?”
Now his eyes were fixed on hers again, in disbelief.
“She had an enormous knife between her shoulder blades and wasn’t making any sign of breathing. That’s what I call dead.”
“But did you check? Did you take her pulse, or did you consider the possibility of artificial respiration? Was she warm, for example?”
“I didn’t touch her. Of course I didn’t. I was in a state of total shock. The only thing I could think of when I managed to compose myself was to take those papers and get the hell out of there.”
“Was the drawer open?”
“No, it was locked. But the key was where it usually is. Underneath the plant pot.”
“Did you know that too?” She seemed slightly surprised.
“Yes, I found out about that a few years ago. I caught her by accident once. Idiotic hiding place. Just about the first place anyone would look. Did you know about it?”
She did not reply but instead stood up and stepped over to the window again. Darkness had settled like a viscous carpet over the garden, with an irregular pattern of wet white rags overlaying all the dark gray. As she pulled her vest tighter with a familiar movement demonstrating she virtually lived in that garment, it struck her that it was time for the children’s television.
“The police wouldn’t have believed you,” she said to his reflection on the windowpane. “I have problems myself. The way you’ve lied about it.”
“I appreciate that. I can’t expect you to believe me. But it’s true, Maren. I didn’t kill her.”
She let him have the last word but gave him a look he was unable to interpret as she left to keep Kenneth and the twins company in front of the TV screen.
• • •
“Oslo Police are searching for twelve-year-old Olav Håkonsen, who disappeared from his home on Tuesday evening. The boy was apparently wearing denim jeans, a navy blue jacket, and sneakers.”
“Goodness, I thought the news program had stopped issuing that kind of missing person report,” Cecilie Vibe exclaimed from her relaxed Friday pose on the sofa.
A vague, fairly worthless photograph of the boy accompanied the news report, delivered by a pale, oval, nondescript female face with a remarkably mellifluous voice.
“They make exceptions,” Hanne mumbled, hushing her with an arm motion.
“The boy is about five foot two in height and strongly built. Information should be directed to the Oslo Police or your nearest police station.”
The well-dressed woman then moved on to describe an allegedly two-headed cat that had been born in California.
“Strongly built, I suppose that’s one way of putting it,” Hanne said. “From what I understand, the boy is grossly overweight.”
She zapped over to TV2, where a dark-haired lady was smiling repeatedly and talking about nothing at all. She zapped back to the weather forecast on NRK.
“Tickle my feet,” she requested, propping her feet on Cecilie’s lap.
“Where can the boy have gone?” Cecilie asked, absentmindedly stroking the soles of Hanne’s feet with her fingers.
“We don’t actually know. It’s starting to seem a bit sinister. We were pretty sure he would go home to his mother by some means or other, but he hasn’t managed to do that. Or had the opportunity to. Take off my socks!”
Cecilie pulled the white tube socks from her feet and continued her hand movements.
“Do you think something has happened to him?”
“Not sure. If it hadn’t been for the boy running off by himself, and therefore probably trying to hide, we would be really scared. Another child abduction, possibly. But he’s in hiding. He’s twelve years old and can probably hold out for a while. We’re assuming he ran away willingly. It’s not likely that he’s been exposed to any criminal activities. If we assume he didn’t murder the lady at the foster home, and we do, then the disappearance has nothing to do with the murder at all. He’s been threatening to run away since he arrived there. But obviously we’re concerned. For instance, he might have seen or heard something. And we’re very interested in that. But . . . a twelve-year-old on the run is not good under any circumstances. Don’t stop!”
Cecilie resumed her tickling, still as uninspired as ever.
“What’s it actually like at that kind of foster home? I didn’t think we had institutions of that type any longer. And why did they say h
e had disappeared from ‘his home’?”
“Probably don’t want to stigmatize him too much, I would think . . . The foster home looks almost like an ordinary home, only much larger. Very nice, really. The youngsters looked as though they enjoyed being there. We certainly don’t have many foster homes like that, with a group of children being looked after, any longer. Most children are placed in individual foster homes.”
Cecilie began to invest more energy in her touch, allowing her featherlight fingers to glide up Hanne’s leg, underneath the fabric of her trousers. An irreverent interpretation of Grieg’s music blasting from the TV set announced the start of Around Norway. Hanne used the remote control to reduce the volume. Sitting up on the sofa without lowering her legs, she leaned toward her girlfriend and they kissed, warm, slow, and teasingly.
“Why don’t we have children?” Cecilie whispered to Hanne’s mouth.
“We can try to make one now, at once,” Hanne said with a smile.
“Don’t joke.”
Cecilie drew back, pushing Hanne’s feet down onto the floor.
Hanne inflated her cheeks and allowed the air to flow out through her lips in an exaggerated gesture of resignation.
“Not now, Cecilie. We’re not going to discuss that now.”
“When, then?”
They looked at each other, and an old, almost forgotten battle flared into a new skirmish.
“Never. We’re finished with that. It’s been decided.”
“Honestly, Hanne, how many years have passed since we made up our minds? Back then I was quite clear—it was for the time being. Now we’re almost thirty-six, and I can hear my biological clock ticking louder and louder.”
“You? Biological clock? Huh!”
Hanne caressed Cecilie’s face, smooth, soft, and with no more than a tiny network of fine laugh lines at the corner of each eye. She wasn’t only pretty, she was wearing incredibly well. People who had not known them for a long time were convinced Hanne was several years older than her partner. In fact, she was sixteen days younger. Her hand slid down toward Cecilie’s breasts.
“Don’t do that,” Cecilie said in annoyance, pushing away the unwelcome hand. “If we’re going to have children, we have to make a decision soon. Tonight’s as good as any other night.”
“No, it’s not, think about it.”
Hanne grabbed the beer bottle sitting between them and refilled her own glass. Her movement was so abrupt that the liquid spilled over profusely, running over the tabletop and menacingly threatening to overflow the edge onto the carpet. She swore and rushed out with angry stride to fetch a cloth. The beer had already formed a dark stain on the yellow carpet by the time she returned, and it took her several minutes to set things straight. Cecilie made not the slightest sign of helping. Instead, with feigned interest, she watched a story about a man who had taken a doctorate in Latin at the age of ninety-three and in addition woodcarving as a hobby.
“Tonight’s not just as good as any other night,” Hanne growled. “I’ve had an exhausting week, I’ve missed you, I’ve been looking forward to an enjoyable evening at home, I’ve been looking forward to spending time with you, I can’t bear to quarrel, and what’s more, it’s true that we decided not to have children years ago.”
She slapped the wet cloth down, causing the drops of beer to spatter across the table.
“You have decided for us,” Cecilie said quietly.
Hanne realized the battle was lost. They had to go through this, as they did at irregular but fortunately increasingly lengthy intervals, reiterating the fundamental conditions for the difficult lifestyle they had embarked on when they found each other one spring day a hundred years ago, when they were both just finishing high school and discovering the realities of life. Hanne hated these discussions.
“You hate talking about anything difficult,” her mind reader commented. “If only you had some idea of how hopeless that makes things for me. I have to steel myself for weeks in advance when I want to bring up something that’s not just about the joys of spring.”
“Okay. Talk away. Everything’s my fault. I’ve spoiled your whole life. Are we finished now?”
Hanne threw out her arms, then crossed them. She stared at the TV screen, where a blonde woman was now standing, clad in a traditional Norwegian cardigan, at the top of the Holmenkollen ski jump, talking about an eleven-year-old girl who was a rising star in the sport.
“Hanne,” Cecilie ventured before pausing for a moment. “Of course we won’t have children if you don’t want to. We must agree in that case. One hundred percent. I’ll give in if you say no. But is it so strange, really, that I’d like to talk about it?”
Her voice was no longer angry or dismissive. But that was not enough. Hanne continued to sit motionless, her eyes stiffly fixed on the little ski jumper hovering sixty meters above the landing slope.
Now it was Cecilie who grabbed the remote control. The sound vanished and the screen flickered to black with a tiny dot that continued to diminish before being swallowed up by all the darkness.
“I was watching that program,” Hanne said, her gaze still fastened on the spot where the white dot had disappeared. “I can in fact manage to do two things at the one time.”
She was startled as Cecilie burst into tears. Cecilie hardly ever cried. She, Hanne, was the one who resorted to tears at all hours of the day and night. Cecilie was the one who put things right, who was calm and logical, who had insight and courage and could face the world with unwavering rationality. Kneeling on the floor in front of Cecilie, she attempted to lift her hands away from her face, but it could not be done.
“Cecilie, darling, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be a grouch. Of course we can talk about it.”
The slender figure reacted by withdrawing even further into herself, and when Hanne tried to stroke her back, she trembled, as though in aversion. Hanne retracted her hand and stared at it as if it might conceal something frightful.
“Cecilie,” she whispered, terror stricken. “What’s wrong with you?”
The woman on the sofa continued to weep, but now at least she was trying to say something. At first it was totally incomprehensible, but eventually she calmed down a little. Finally she moved her hands from her face and looked directly at Hanne.
“I get so completely worn out, Hanne. I’m so tired of . . . I’ve often thought . . . The New Testament. Peter who denied Jesus and all that stuff, at Eastertime. Do you know why there’s so much emphasis on that? It’s because . . .”
Her violent sobbing seemed almost abnormal, she was gasping for breath and becoming blue in the face. Hanne didn’t dare to move a muscle.
“It’s because,” Cecilie continued once she had regained her breath, “it’s the worst thing you can do to anyone. To deny another person. You have denied me for almost seventeen years, are you aware of that?”
Hanne fought a determined battle against all the defenses snapping into place inside her head. She clenched her teeth and rubbed her hands over her face.
“But, Cecilie, that’s not what we’re talking about just now,” she said slightly hesitantly, for fear of setting the convulsive sobbing into motion again.
“Yes it is, in a way it is,” Cecilie insisted. “Everything hangs together. Your defensive walls in every direction and that excruciating routine of yours that appears just as surely as amen in church every time I raise any important issue. Bang, bang, bang it goes, and then you’re like an impregnable fortress. Don’t you appreciate how dangerous that is?”
Hanne felt the fear that clutched at her like claws on her spine on the few occasions she understood Cecilie was seriously questioning their relationship. She ground her teeth as she battled against her own reactions and managed to hold them somewhat in check.
“If we’re going to continue to live together you must pull yourself together, Hanne.”
It wasn’t even a threat. It was simply the truth. They both knew it. Hanne probably knew it better.
> “I will pull myself together, Cecilie,” she promised swiftly and breathlessly. “I’ll pull myself together wonderfully. I swear. Not from tomorrow or from next week. From right now. We can have heaps of children. We can invite the entire police station here. I can place an announcement in . . . We’ll have a civil partnership!”
She leaped up with energetic enthusiasm.
“We’ll get married! I’ll invite all my family, and everyone at work and . . .”
Cecilie stared at her and started to laugh. A peculiar, unfamiliar mixture of laughter and tears, while she shook her head in despair.
“That’s not what I’m asking for. That’s all nonsense, Hanne. I don’t need all that stuff all at once. I just need to have the feeling we’re moving forward. It was lovely that at long last you allowed Billy T. to enter our lives. Was that really so awful, do you think?”
Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed a cushion from the sofa and hugged it to herself as she continued, “Billy T.’s enough for the moment. But only for the moment. Soon I have to meet your family. At least your brothers and sisters. And as far as this about children is concerned . . . Sit down now, please.”
She replaced the cushion and cautiously patted the seat beside her.
Hanne stood like a statue, white as a ghost, adopting a terrified pose. Giving herself a shake, she sat down at the far edge of the sofa. Her thighs bounced up and down in a nervous rhythm, and she clenched her fists so ferociously that her nails dug into the palms of her hands.
“Take it easy, my friend.”
Cecilie had almost regained control over herself and the situation. She drew her girlfriend toward her and could feel how much Hanne was shaking. They remained sitting in silence for a considerable time before they were both able to breathe easily, calmly.
“Do you think it’s odd that I want to know why you don’t want to have children?” Cecilie whispered into Hanne’s ear.
“No. But it’s so difficult to talk about it. I know you’d like to have children. It’s exactly as if I’m stealing something from you whenever I say no. It’s just as if I’m stealing something from you all the time by being your girlfriend. I feel so small. So . . . nasty.”
