Punishment aka What Is Mine

by Anne Holt

  “No, no. We’re not even partners anymore. You know…”

  He gave a short laugh.

  Stubo’s cell phone rang.

  The conversation didn’t last long. The policeman shut his phone with a snap.

  “I have to go,” he said curtly.

  Karsten followed him out. Evidence of a light shower clung to the grass; it would be cold again tonight. Might even fall below freezing; the breeze had an edge to it that meant it could freeze, at least up here on the hillside. Early summer scents teased his nose. Karsten breathed in deeply.

  “I can’t really say it was nice to meet you,” he smiled, “but I hope you have a good trip back to town.”

  Stubo opened the car door and then turned toward him.

  “I’d like to talk to you again in town,” he said.

  “In town? You mean Oslo?”

  “Yes. As soon as possible.”

  Karsten thought about it. He was still carrying his coffee cup. He looked into it, as if he was astonished there was nothing left. Then he raised his eyes and looked straight at Stubo and said:

  “Can’t make it this week. Maybe at the start of next week. Can’t promise you anything. Have you got a card or something? Then I can call you.”

  Stubo’s eyes did not leave his face. Karsten didn’t blink. A confused fly buzzed between them. A plane could be heard far above the clouds. The fly ascended to the skies.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Stubo said finally. “You can be sure of that.”

  The dark blue Volvo bumped out of the open gate and rolled slowly down the hill. Karsten Åsli watched until it reached the small woods where he knew the road forked. He couldn’t remember the last time the valley had looked so beautiful, so clean.

  It was his. This was his place. Through a break in the clouds he could see the vapor trial from the plane heading north.

  He went inside.

  Adam Stubo stopped the car as soon as he thought he was out of sight. He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. The feeling that the child was nearby had been so strong, so overwhelming, that it was only his twenty-five years’ experience that stopped him from ripping the place apart. There were no provisions that would allow that. He had nothing.

  Nothing more than a feeling. There wasn’t a judge in Norway who would give him a search warrant on the basis of a hunch.

  “Think,” he hissed to himself. “Think, for Christ’s sake.”

  It took him less than eighty minutes to get back to Oslo. He stopped outside the block of apartments where Lena Baardsen lived. It was the evening of Monday, June 5, and it was already half past eight. He was scared that time was running out.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Aksel Seier stood in front of the old, flecked mirror in the living room. He ran his hand through his hair. It smelled of oranges. His bangs were gone and the hair at the base of his neck was soft and bristly when he rubbed it the wrong way. Mrs. Davis thought that for once he should look like he came from a civilized part of the world. After all, he was embarking on a long journey to a country where people might think Americans were barbarians, for all she knew. They often did, the Europeans. She had read that in the National Enquirer. He had to show them he was a well-to-do man. His shaggy gray locks were fine here in Harwich Port, but now he was going to another world. She had cut him badly on the ear, but otherwise his hair looked even enough. Short all over. The orange pomade had been left behind by one of her six sons-in-law. It was supposed to be good for your scalp. Aksel didn’t like the smell of citrus. He wasn’t leaving for another day and decided to wash it out before he took the bus to Logan International Airport in Boston. Matt Delaware had offered to drive him to the bus stop in Barnstable. And so he should; the boy had gotten both his pickup and his boat for a good price.

  The property on Ocean Avenue had, on the other hand, been sold for 1.2 million dollars.

  As it stood.

  It had only taken him an hour to figure out what he wanted to take with him. The glass soldiers that he’d taken four winters to make would go to Mrs. Davis. The risk that they would break during the trip across the ocean was considerable. She was moved to tears and promised that none of her grandchildren would be allowed to play with them. She would love the cat like her own, she exclaimed in a loud voice. Matt bowed and scraped the ground with his foot when Aksel offered him the chess table and the large tapestry over the sofa on the condition that he send the galleon figurehead to Aksel as soon as he had an address in Norway.

  The figurehead looked like Eva. There wasn’t really much more that was worth bothering about.

  Aksel didn’t like his new hairstyle. It made him look older. His face was more visible. The wrinkles, the pores, and the bad teeth that he should have done something about long ago, they somehow seemed more obvious when his bangs had gone and his face was naked and unprotected. He tried to hide behind a pair of old glasses with brown frames. But the lenses were not the right strength anymore and made him feel dizzy.

  He had been to the bank. The money for the house came to about ten million kroner. Cheryl, who had grown up in Harwich Port and started to work at the bank a couple of months ago, had given him a big smile and whispered, “You lucky son of a gun” before explaining to him that the buyer would pay the outstanding amount in installments over the next six weeks. Aksel would have to contact a bank in Norway, open an account, and then everything should be fine and the authorities couldn’t make a fuss. It’ll be just fine, she assured him, and laughed again.

  Ten million kroner.

  To Aksel, the figure was astronomical. He tried to ground himself by remembering that it was ages since he knew what a krone was actually worth, and Norway was an expensive country, after all. At least that was what he had understood from the odd article he came across about his homeland. But over a million dollars was over a million dollars wherever you were in the world. He could even get a place in Beacon Hill in Boston for that amount. And Oslo couldn’t be more expensive than Beacon Hill.

  Mrs. Davis had gone to Hyannis with him to buy clothes. There was no way around it. Aksel Seier didn’t quite trust her taste-the plaid pants from Kmart were particularly awful. Mrs. Davis said that plaid pants and pastels made him look rich, and he was, so that was that. When he mumbled something about the Cape Cod Mall, she rolled her eyes and claimed that the shops there fleeced you before you’d even set foot in the door. What you couldn’t buy in Kmart wasn’t worth buying. So now he had a suitcase full of new clothes he didn’t like. Mrs. Davis had confiscated his old flannel shirts and jeans; she was going to wash them before giving them to the Salvation Army.

  He must remember to call Patrick.

  Aksel took a step back from the mirror. The way the light fell, slanting from the window, he found it difficult to recognize himself in the flecked mirror. It wasn’t just his hair that was different. He tried to straighten his back, but something in his neck and shoulders stopped him. He had looked at the ground for too many years. Aksel’s back was bent from thousands of days toiling over heavy work, turning away from other people, and long evenings crouched over fine handiwork and his own thoughts.

  He lifted his head again. There was a pain between his shoulder blades. He looked thinner now. He forced himself to stand like that. Then he stroked his hand over the brown jacket and wondered whether he should put a tie on before he left. Ties were respectable. Mrs. Davis was certainly right there.

  If he had enough money when he’d done everything he needed to do, he would pay for Patrick to come over. Even though his friend earned good money in the summer season, he spent most of his earnings on maintaining the carousel and living through the long winter months, when he had no real income. Patrick had never been back to Ireland. He could come to Oslo for a week or two and then stop over in Dublin on the way back, if he wanted to.

  Aksel suddenly realized that he was frightened. There was still a lot to do before he left. He had to get a move on.

  He’d never been on a plan
e, but it wasn’t that that frightened him.

  Maybe Eva didn’t want him to come. She hadn’t actually asked him to. Aksel Seier pulled off his new jacket and started to pack the glass soldiers in the tissue paper that Mrs. Davis had bought.

  He cut his finger on a small blue splinter. It was the remains of the general that Johanne Vik had broken. Aksel sucked on his finger. Maybe the young lady had lost interest in him when he just disappeared.

  He hadn’t been so frightened since 1993, when the nightmares about the wet-eyed policeman with the keys had finally stopped plaguing him.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  He was completely insane,” she said. “Quite simply insane.”

  Lena Baardsen seemed anxious when Adam rang the bell, even though it was not particularly late. Her eyes were red and the bags underneath looked almost purple in her pale face. The apartment was stuffy and claustrophobic, though she obviously tried to keep it neat. She offered him nothing, but sat with a kitchen glass full of what Adam thought was red wine for herself. She raised her glass, as if she knew what he was thinking, and said:

  “Doctor recommended it. Two glasses before bedtime. Better than sleeping pills, he said. To be honest, neither helps. But at least this tastes nicer.”

  She drank the remainder in one gulp.

  “Karsten is charming. Was, at least. Good at looking after you. I was very young then. Not used to so much attention. I just…”

  Her eyelids sank.

  “… fell in love,” she said slowly.

  The smile was presumably meant to be ironic. But in fact it was just sad, especially when she opened her eyes again.

  “When we became lovers, he changed. Obsessively jealous. Possessive. He never hit me, but toward the end I was terrified all the same. He…”

  She pulled her legs up and shivered, as if she was cold. It must have been close to eighty-five degrees in the apartment.

  “I realized pretty soon that he wasn’t quite normal. He would wake up at night if I went to the bathroom. He’d come out to the bathroom and watch me pee, as if he sort of expected me to… run away. We didn’t live together. Not really. I had a studio apartment that was too small for both of us. He lived in an apartment with rommates, but I don’t think the people he lived with could stand him. So he kind of moved in with me without asking. He didn’t bring his things with him or anything like that; there wasn’t enough room. But he just took over, somehow. Straightened and washed and fussed around. He’s obsessive about cleaning. Was. I don’t know him anymore. He was incredibly self-centered. It was me, me, me the whole time. I would never put up with it now. But he was good-looking. And very attentive, to begin with at least. And I was very young.”

  She gave a feeble, apologetic smile.

  “Do you…” said Adam and then started again. “Did you know anything about his family background?”

  “Family?” repeated Lena Baardsen in a flat voice. “A mother, at least. I met her twice. Sweet, in her own way. Unbelievably meek. Karsten could be really nasty to her. Even though he seemed… he actually seemed to care about her a lot. Well, sometimes at least. The only person he was really scared of was his grandmother. I never met her, but Jesus, some of the things he told me…”

  She suddenly looked surprised.

  “D’you know what, I can’t actually remember anything he told me. No examples. Strange. But I do remember clearly that he hated her. It seemed that way to me anyway. Real hate.”

  “His father?”

  “Father? No… he never mentioned his father, I don’t think. He didn’t actually like talking about his past. Childhood and all that. I got the impression that he grew up with his mother and grandmother. So it must have been his maternal grandmother, but I’m not sure about that either. It’s so long ago. Karsten was crazy. I’ve done everything I can to forget the guy.”

  Again she formed her lips in a shape that could resemble a smile. Adam stared at a big photograph in the middle of the coffee table, a photograph of Sarah in a silver frame. Beside it were a big pink candle and a small rose in a thin vase.

  “I can’t sleep,” whispered Lena. “I’m so frightened the candle will go out. I want it to burn always. Forever. It’s almost as if none of it is really true until the candle goes out.”

  Adam nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “I know,” he said calmly, “I know what it’s like.”

  “No,” she said with emotion. “You don’t know what it’s like!”

  He saw something behind her ravaged face, something in her suddenly angry features, and he knew that Lena Baardsen would get through this. She just didn’t know it herself yet. Her daughter’s death was incomprehensible and would be for a long time. Lena Baardsen was clinging to a grief that was pervasive, constant. She existed outside all reality, as reality was unbearable right now.

  It would get worse. Then eventually, when the time was right, it would be possible to live again. And then the real grief would come. The one that never ends and that can’t be shared with anyone. The one that would allow her to live and laugh and maybe even have more children, but would never disappear.

  “Yes,” said Adam. “I do know how you feel.”

  It was too hot. He got up and opened the door out to the small balcony.

  “Did he do it?”

  Adam half turned around. Her voice was thin and tired, as if there would soon be nothing left. He should go. Lena Baardsen would pull through. He had all the answers he needed.

  “You remembered the date you last saw him,” he said.

  “I ran away,” said Lena. “I went to Denmark. Gave notice on my apartment while he was at work, took all my things home to my mother, and left indefinitely. He made my mother’s life hell for weeks. Then he gave up, I assume. Was it him… did he kill Sarah?”

  Adam balled his fists so hard that his nails were pressing into the skin on his palms.

  “I don’t know,” he said sharply.

  He left the balcony door open and walked toward the hall. Halfway across the living-room floor he stopped and studied the picture of Sarah again. The rose was dying; its head was hanging and it needed more water.

  When he got back to the car, he turned and counted seven stories up. Lena Baardsen was standing on the balcony with a blanket around her shoulders. She didn’t wave. He bent his head and got into the car. The radio turned on automatically when he put the key in the ignition. He was well past Høvik before he registered that the program was about the Black Death.

  More than anything, he wanted to slap her. Turid Sande Oksøy was not a good liar, which was presumably why she took such pains to hide her face from her husband when she repeated:

  “I have never heard of Karsten Åsli. Never.”

  The row house in Bærum was imbued with another kind of grief than that in the small apartment in Torshov. There were living children here. Toys were strewn across the floor and it smelled of cooking. Both Turid and Lasse Oksøy looked like they’d slept too little and cried too much, but in this home time had moved on in a way. Turid Oksøy had put on some makeup. Adam had called on his cell phone to ask if it was okay for him to drop by, even though it was getting late. Her mascara had already caked in the corner of her eyes. The lipstick made her mouth look too big for the white face. She was picking absently at a small cut at the base of her nose. It started to bleed and she started to cry.

  “I swear,” she sobbed. “You have to believe me. I’ve never known anyone named Karsten.”

  Adam should have talked to her alone.

  It was a huge mistake to visit her at home. Lasse, her husband, would not leave her alone, which was reasonable. He kept his arm around her shoulders even when she turned away from him. Adam should have waited until tomorrow and called her in to the office. Alone, without her husband. He needed more evidence against Karsten Åsli. Something more than an instinctive certainty that the man was dangerous; something that would give grounds for a closer investigation. Because of his experience and reputation
, Adam might possibly get a search warrant if he could show that Karsten Åsli was the only person who had known all the mothers involved, particularly as he denied it himself. He could explain that to Turid Oksøy and then force her to confess.

  She was very frightened. Adam couldn’t understand why. Her son was dead, killed by a madman whom the woman was protecting. Adam wanted to hit her. More than anything, he wanted to lean over the table, grab her stupid pink sweater, and slap her. He wanted to beat the truth out of her thin body. She was ugly. Her hair was dead, her makeup was running. Her nose was too big and her eyes were too close together. Turid Sande Oksøy looked like a vulture, and Adam wanted to tear off the awful made-up face and dig out the truth from the pea brain behind it.

  “And you are quite sure of that?” he said calmly, and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Yes,” she assured him, and looked up at him as she brushed her thumb over the skin under her eyes.

  “Then I apologize for disturbing you,” he said. “I’ll find my own way out.”

  “Shit, shit!”

  Adam hit his fist so hard against the tree trunk that his knuckles started to bleed. The muscles in his neck were in knots. He was shaking; it was difficult to find the right numbers on his cell phone. He tried to take deeper breaths, but his lungs refused. Right now he didn’t know who was more frightened, himself or Turid Sande Oksøy.

  He leaned against the pine tree so he could relax a bit more. The lights in the house he’d just left were being switched off one by one. Eventually only a strip of dim yellow light was visible under some blinds upstairs.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t apologize. Her voice helped him to breathe more freely. It took ten minutes to tell her about the day’s events. He repeated himself here and there, but pulled himself together and tried to stay calm. To tell the story chronologically. To stick to the facts. Precision. At last he was quiet. Johanne said nothing.