What Never Happens

by Anne Holt

Alarmed by his own choice of words, he hesitated before repeating himself. “Frightened. I’m frightened, Johanne. I don’t understand these cases. There are so many similarities between them that I can’t help wondering . . .”

  “When the next victim will be killed,” Johanne helped him, as he still couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Exactly. And that’s why I’m asking for your help. I know that it’s a lot to ask. I know that you’ve got more than enough on your plate with Kristiane and Ragnhild and your mother and the house and—”

  “Okay.”

  “What?”

  “Fine. I’ll see how much I can manage.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Yes. But then I need all the facts. About both cases. And I want it to be clear from the start that I can pull out at any point.”

  “Whenever,” he nodded in confirmation. “Should I . . . I can catch a cab down to the office and—”

  “It’s nearly half past ten.”

  Her laughter was lame. But it was still laughter, Adam thought. He studied her face for signs of irritation, small twitches in her lower lips, a muscle that drew a shadow along her cheekbone. But all he could see was dimples and a long yawn.

  “I’m just going to check the children,” she said.

  He loved the way she walked. She was slim without being thin. Even now, only a couple of weeks after giving birth, she moved with a boyish lightness that made him smile. She had narrow hips, straight shoulders. When she bent down over Ragnhild, her hair fell across her face, soft and tangled. She pushed it back behind her ear and said something. Ragnhild was snoring gently.

  He followed her into Kristiane’s room. She opened the door with great care. The little girl was asleep with her head at the foot of the bed, the duvet underneath her, and her down jacket over her like a duvet. Her breathing was steady and even. A faint smell of sleep and clean bed linens filled the room, and Adam put his arm around Johanne.

  “Well, it certainly worked,” she whispered. He could hear she was smiling. “The magic worked.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered back.

  “For what?” Johanne stood still. Adam didn’t let go of her. A feeling of unease that she had tried to repress all afternoon overwhelmed her. She had first noticed it around one, when Adam called to explain why he would be so late, and she shrugged it off. She was always fretting. About the children, about her mother who had started to get confused after her father’s third heart attack and didn’t always remember what day it was, about whether she would ever get back to her research. About the mortgage and the bad brakes on the car. About Isak’s easygoing attitude when it came to discipline, and about the war in the Middle East. There was always something to worry about. This afternoon she had tried to find out in one of her many medical books whether the white flecks on Kristiane’s front teeth might be symptoms of too much milk or any other imbalance in her diet. Anxiety, bad conscience, and the feeling of never being good enough were all part of her normal frame of mind, and she had grown accustomed to living with it.

  But this was different.

  There in the dark, quiet room, with the heat from Adam’s body against her back and the barely audible breathing of her sleeping daughter to remind her of everyday joys and security, she couldn’t put her finger on what was making her uneasy, a feeling that she knew something she did not want to remember.

  “What’s the matter?” Adam whispered.

  “Nothing,” she said quietly and closed the bedroom door again gently.

  It was years since she had dared to drink coffee on a plane. But the tempting aroma of coffee had filled the cabin so quickly that she wondered if they had a barista on board.

  The flight attendant responsible for her row must have weighed well over two hundred pounds. He was sweating like a pig. Normally she would have been disgusted by the unsightly rings of damp that were visible on the pale shirt fabric. She had nothing against male stewards. But she would prefer the more feminine type, thought the large lady who was now standing and staring southeast from her panorama windows on the hills above Villefranche. Pants-wearing stewards often had a slight gay twist of the wrist and chose aftershaves that were more like light spring perfumes than masculine musks. This red-haired boar was therefore an obvious exception. She would normally have ignored him. But the smell of coffee had undone her. She had asked for a refill three times and smiled.

  And even the wine tasted good.

  She had recently discovered that the prices the wine monopoly in Norway charged for goods that had been so carefully and expensively imported were in fact the same as in any old wine shop in the Old Town. Unbelievable, she thought, but true. That afternoon she had opened a twenty-five-euro bottle of wine and drunk a glass. She couldn’t remember tasting a better wine. The man in the shop had assured her that the bottle could stand open for a day or two. She hoped he was right.

  All these years, she thought, and stroked her hair. All the projects that had never given her more than money and a headache. All her knowledge that had never been used for anything other than entertaining other people.

  This morning she had felt the edge of winter in the air. February was the coldest month on the Riviera. The sea was no longer azure blue. The dirty gray foam lapped tamely at her feet as she walked along the beaches and enjoyed the solitude. Most of the trees had finally lost their leaves. Only the odd pine tree shone green along the roads. Even the path to St. Jean, where noisy, well-dressed children with willowy mothers and wealthy fathers usually shattered the idyll, was empty and desolate. She stopped frequently. Sometimes she lit a cigarette, even though she had stopped smoking years ago now. A slight taste of tar stuck to her tongue. It tasted good.

  She had started walking. The restlessness that had plagued her for as long as she could remember felt different now. It was as if she finally understood herself now, understood the feeling of existing in a vacuum of waiting. She had wasted years of her life waiting for something that would never happen, she thought to herself as she stood at the window, holding her hand up against the cool glass.

  “For things just to happen,” she whispered and saw a brief gray hint of breath on the windowpane.

  She still felt restless, a vague tension in her body. But the unease that had previously gotten her down and pulled her away had now been replaced by an invigorating fear.

  “Fear,” she whispered with satisfaction and caressed the glass with slow hand movements.

  She chose the word carefully. A good, exhilarating, bright fear was what she felt. She imagined it was like being in love.

  Whereas before she felt down but couldn’t cry, tired but couldn’t sleep, she now accepted her existence so fully that she often burst out laughing. She slept well, although she frequently woke up with a feeling that could be mistaken for . . . happiness.

  She chose the word happiness, even though it was perhaps a bit too strong at present.

  Some people would, no doubt, say she was lonely. She was certain of that, but it didn’t bother her. If only they knew what she actually thought of the people who thought they knew her or what she did. So many of them had allowed themselves to be blinded by her success, despite living in a country where modesty was considered a virtue and superiority the deadliest of all deadly sins.

  A nonspecific, unfamiliar anger flared up in her. Her skin crawled, and she ran her cold hand down her left arm and felt how firm she was, how compact her flesh was on her body, hard and dense, as if her skin was slightly too small.

  It was a long time since she had bothered to think about the past. It wasn’t worth it. But things had changed so much in recent weeks.

  She was born on a rainy Sunday evening in November 1958. Her mother died within twenty minutes of giving birth, and the way the state had treated the tiny, half-dead child made it crystal-clear that Norway was not a country where you should believe you were worth something.

  Her father was abroad. She didn’t have any grandparents. One of the nu
rses had wanted to take her home to her family when she recovered a bit. She thought the baby needed more love and care than could be offered by a three-way shift at the hospital. But the egalitarian country of which the baby was now a citizen did not permit such special arrangements. So she was left in a corner of the children’s ward, where she was fed and had her diaper changed at fixed times, but otherwise was given very little attention until her father came to take her home three months later, to a life where her new mother was already installed.

  “Bitterness is not in my nature,” the woman said out loud to her own diffuse reflection in the window. “Bitterness is not in my nature.”

  She would never have used the expression “burning rage.” But that was the cliché that came to her all the same as she turned her back to the view and lay down on the far-too-soft sofa so she could breathe more easily. Her diaphragm was burning. She slowly raised her hands to her face. Big square hands with sweaty palms and short nails. She turned them around and noticed a scar on the back of one of them. Her thumb looked as though it had been broken. She tried to recall a story that she knew existed somewhere. She quickly pulled up the sleeves of her sweater, she pinched and touched her own skin. The heat was so extreme now that she could barely swallow. Suddenly she sat up and observed her body as if it belonged to someone else. She ran her fingers through her hair and felt the grease on her scalp against her fingertips. She scratched herself with small, sharp movements until her scalp started to bleed.

  She sucked her fingers greedily. A vague taste of iron hung under the nails, and she tore them off, bit her skin, and swallowed. Everything was clearer now. It was important to reflect on the past; it was necessary to piece together her story, to make it whole.

  She had tried once before.

  She’d been thirty-five years old when she finally managed to argue her way into seeing a copy of the dry hospital report of her birth, full of terminology, and she couldn’t face dealing with it then. She had leafed through the yellowing pages that smelled of dusty archives and found confirmation of what she had feared, hoped, and expected. Her mother had not given birth to her. The woman she knew as Mommy was a stranger. An intruder. Someone she didn’t need to feel anything for.

  She had felt neither anger nor sorrow. As she folded the handwritten pages, she simply felt flat. Or perhaps it was a sense of vague and almost indifferent irritation.

  She had never challenged them about it.

  She couldn’t be bothered.

  The false mother died soon after anyway.

  That was ten years ago now.

  Victoria Heinerback had always irritated her.

  Victoria Heinerback was a racist.

  Though naturally she wasn’t open about it and wouldn’t acknowledge it. The woman was, after all, politically savvy and had an almost impressive understanding of how the media worked. Her fellow party members, however, were constantly dropping stupid and completely ignorant comments about immigrants. For them, Somalians and Chinese were cut from the same cloth. Well-integrated Chinese people were lumped together with lazy Somalians. Victoria Heinerback’s party believed that a conscientious Pakistani who ran his own corner shop was the same burden on society as a gold-digger from Morocco who had come to Norway thinking he could just help himself to the women and government money.

  Victoria Heinerback was responsible for this.

  The woman who was spending the winter alone on the Riviera got to her feet suddenly and stood up. She was a bit unsteady; a wave of dizziness forced her to hold on to something.

  It was all so perfect, everything. Everything was working.

  She laughed quietly to herself, astonished by the force of her mood swings.

  Inspecting someone’s house can tell you more than a thousand interviews, she thought as the nausea ebbed away.

  Evening was falling, and she wanted to pour herself another glass of the good wine from the Old Town. The beam from the lighthouse at Cap Ferrat swept over her in a pulsing stroke when she turned to stare out over the bay. To the north, streetlights lit the roads that cut through the steep terrain.

  She was a master of her art, and from now on, she would not be judged by anyone other than herself.

  Five

  The visit to Victoria Heinerback’s apartment had not made Adam any less judgmental, but he now didn’t know what to expect from the memorial service. He parked some distance from the house. The cars sat bumper-to-bumper along the narrow road, making it almost impassable.

  The former party leader had generously offered his house for the occasion. His colossal villa by the water, only a few hundred yards from the old airport at Fornebu, was no longer plagued by pollution and noise following the long-awaited relocation of the main airport. The once beleaguered, uninhabitable timber house, with its scores of bay windows, large terraces, and two Ionic pillars framing the front door, had risen like a phoenix from the ashes, though the garden that sloped down to the fjord was still no more than clay and loose stones, ashen and snow white.

  The number of mourners dressed in dark clothes was impressive.

  Adam Stubo shook hands with a woman at the door and, just in case, mumbled his condolences. He had no idea who she was. He almost stumbled on an umbrella stand further down the hall. At least fifteen people were waiting to hang up their coats. Then he felt someone tug his sleeve, and before he could turn around, a young man with a thin neck and badly tied tie had taken his coat from him and given him a gentle push toward one of several public rooms.

  Before Adam knew it, he was standing with a half-full glass in his hand. As he was walking, he looked around in desperation for somewhere to put it down.

  “It’s non-alcoholic,” whispered a voice.

  He recognized the woman immediately.

  “Thank you,” he said, bewildered, and squeezed in to the side so he wouldn’t block the door. “You’re here too.”

  “Yes,” said the woman in a friendly, quiet voice that could be heard above the humming of the crowd. “Most of us are. This is more than politics. It’s a tragedy that’s touched us all.”

  She was wearing a tight black suit that contrasted with her short blonde hair and made her look paler than she did on TV. Adam looked down self-consciously and noticed that the funereal mood had not prevented the Socialist Left leader from choosing a skirt that was so short, it would have been more appropriate for someone ten years younger. But her legs were well toned, and he realized he should look up.

  “Were you a friend of Victoria’s?” asked the woman.

  “No.” He cleared his throat and held out his hand. She took it. “Adam Stubo,” he said. “NCIS. Pleased to meet you.”

  Her eyes were blue and alert, and he registered a hint of curiosity in the way she tilted her head as she passed her glass from one hand to the other. Then she stopped herself with a quick nod.

  “I just hope you get to the bottom of this,” she said before turning into the room, where the newly retired party leader, Kristian Mundal, had positioned himself by a rostrum, presumably borrowed from a nearby hotel.

  “Dear friends”—he coughed to get everyone’s attention—“I would like to welcome you all warmly on behalf of Kari and myself. We felt that it was not only right but also very important to mark this sad occasion.” He coughed again, but this time more. “Sorry,” he apologized and continued. “It has been only two days since we heard the terrible news that Victoria had been so brutally taken from us. She . . .”

  Adam could have sworn there were tears in the older man’s eyes. Real tears, he thought, astonished. In public. Real, salt tears were wetting the weathered face of a man who for three decades had proved to be the toughest, most cunning, and most resilient politician in Norway.

  “It is no secret that Victoria was”—the man stopped and took a deep breath before continuing—“I don’t want say ‘like a daughter to me.’ I have four daughters, and Victoria was not one of them. But she was someone who meant a lot to me. Politically, of course,
as we worked together for many years, despite her young age, but also personally. To the extent that it’s possible in politics . . .”

  He stopped again. The silence was intense. No one touched their glasses. No one scraped their feet or chair on the dark cherrywood floor. People hardly dared to breathe. Adam glanced around the room without moving his head. Over by one of the other rooms, squeezed between a couple of imposing armchairs and two men that Adam didn’t recognize, was the chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, with his hands inappropriately deep in his pockets. His brow furrowed in expectation, he stared out the window, as if he hoped that Victoria Heinerback would surprise them all by waving from the deck of a small boat approaching the jetty just below the house. One of the Labor Party’s youngest members of parliament was standing, weeping openly and silently, beside an arrangement of white lilies in a huge Chinese vase. She sat on the Standing Committee for Finance and Economic Affairs and therefore knew Victoria Heinerback better than most, Adam assumed. The minister of finance was standing next to the rostrum, with his head bent. He discreetly adjusted his glasses. The Storting’s president was holding a woman by the hand. Adam looked down and concluded that the villa in Tveistveien must be one of Europe’s least-guarded terrorist targets right now. He shuddered. On his way out here, he had only seen one marked police car, just outside the house.

  “. . . and to the extent that politics is a friendly place,” concluded the elderly man. “And it can be. I am glad that . . .”

  Adam nodded lightly to the blonde with the good legs, who gave a brief, sad smile back. He slowly withdrew from the room, while the man in front continued his speech.

  “Excuse me,” he whispered to irritated faces as he made his way toward his goal. “Excuse me, I just . . .”

  At last he was out in the hall. It was empty. He carefully closed the double doors and sighed.

  Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to come. He had had a reason for coming, thinking that the memorial service would give him a better picture of Victoria Heinerback. She was obviously not the person he had taken her to be. She was more. Even though he never for a moment imagined that the pictures of public figures drawn with broad strokes in the press were in any way genuine, real, or exhaustive, his visit to the scene of the crime two days ago had made a deeper impression on him than he was prepared to admit. Earlier on, while he was rummaging around looking for a clean, white shirt, he had hoped that the people close to Victoria Heinerback might give more of themselves and say more about her at this impulsive memorial service, held so soon after the young woman’s death. But even now, twenty minutes into the service, he realized that he should have known better. This was a day for praise. For good thoughts and happy memories, a shared grief across party lines.