What Never Happens

by Anne Holt

  “I went on a kind of sentimental journey, if you like. Only it wasn’t that sentimental.”

  Three defined furrows appeared in his brow as he leaned forward.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “For a long time, I’ve had a nagging feeling that there’s something familiar about the cases. The murders of Fiona Helle, Victoria Heinerback, and Vegard Krogh. I just wasn’t able to grasp it. The feeling, that is. The memory. But it had to be something that . . .”

  She took a sip of coffee. The steam clung to her face.

  “Something what?”

  “It had to be something that I’d come across in Washington. Or Quantico. It was very distant. So . . . forgotten and long ago. And I was right. I didn’t need to look very far. When I saw . . . Just a picture of . . . Forget it.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear and didn’t want to let go of the warmth from the mug of coffee. She clutched the cup in both hands and turned her back on Adam.

  “My darling.”

  “Sit down.”

  “Okay,” he said reluctantly.

  “All I needed to see was the picture of the academy,” she said so quietly that he had trouble hearing. “Then I remembered. I remembered the class. I remembered the long days, the tiring, demanding, fun . . .”

  She approached her reflection in the window, as if it was easier to talk to herself.

  “Now I even know which lecture series it was, Behavioral Science. Warren amused us with a lecture he called ‘Proportional Retribution.’”

  For a moment, Adam thought he saw the reflection smile.

  “Amused us,” she repeated. “That was actually what he did. We laughed. Everyone laughed when Warren wanted us to laugh. It was toward the end of June. Almost summer break. It was warm. Very humid and warm. The air-conditioning in the auditorium was broken. We were sweating. But not Warren. He always seemed so cool—in every sense.”

  Slowly she turned around. She lowered her cup. It was empty and hung from her finger by the handle.

  “I expend so much effort trying to forget,” she said without looking at him. “Maybe it isn’t that strange that I found it so hard to remember. Although . . .”

  Her eyes filled up. She leaned her head back to prevent the tears from running down her face. Adam started to get up again.

  “Don’t,” she said harshly.

  She smiled suddenly through the tears and wiped her left eye lightly with the back of her hand.

  “The lecture was about revenge, people with a strong sense of ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,’” she said. “About criminals with an exaggerated need for the punishment to fit the crime. At least symbolically. Warren loved things like that. He loved anything that was violent. Clear. Exaggerated.”

  “Sit down, Johanne.”

  He patted the cushion next to him on the sofa.

  “No, I’d rather stand. I have to tell you this. While I still have the energy to do it. Or rather”—another fleeting, thin smile—“when I don’t have the energy not to,” she added.

  “To be honest, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Johanne.”

  “He told us about five cases,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “One was . . . It was about one of those eccentrics you only find in the States. A slightly twisted, intellectual type. With green fingers. He had a beautiful garden, which he protected, tooth and nail. I can’t remember how he made a living, but he must have had money, because the garden was the jewel of the neighborhood. Then a neighbor sued him over a boundary dispute. The neighbor claimed that the fence was a few yards too far into his property, and the court ruled in his favor, after having put the case through several rounds in the judicial system. I don’t remember all the details. The point is that . . .”

  She froze, with the tip of her tongue on her lips and her head cocked.

  “Did you hear something?”

  “No. Can’t you . . .”

  She swallowed and sighed deeply before carrying on.

  “The point is that the neighbor was found dead just after the final judgment. His tongue had been cut out and was lying in a folded envelope, made from the cover of House & Garden. A magazine. About—”

  “Houses and gardens,” said Adam, exasperated. “Can you please sit down? You’re freezing. Come here.”

  “Are you listening?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “His tongue had been cut out! And beautifully wrapped! The most banal, vulgar symbol—”

  “I am sure,” he interjected in a quiet voice, “that there are examples of bodies that have been dismembered in that way all over the world, Johanne. Without it having anything to do with the death of Fiona Helle. You said it yourself, it was a long time ago and you don’t remember all—”

  “The worst thing is that I do remember,” she burst out. “I remember everything now. Please try to understand, Adam! Don’t you know how . . . hard it is to force yourself to remember something that you have desperately tried to forget? How . . . how much it hurts to—”

  “It’s difficult for me to understand something I don’t know about,” Adam retorted and immediately regretted it. “I mean . . . I can see that it’s painful for you. That’s not difficult to—”

  “Don’t push it,” she almost screamed. “I will never, ever talk about what happened. I’m just trying to explain to you why this story got hidden. It’s so painfully close to—”

  He got up. He grabbed her by the wrists and felt how thin she had become. Her watch, which had been too tight to wear in the last months of pregnancy, was now in danger of slipping off her wrist. Without any resistance, she let him hold her. He stroked her back. He could feel the sharp vertebrae through her sweater.

  “You need to start eating,” he said with his face buried in her lifeless and matted hair. “You need to eat and sleep, Johanne.”

  “And you need to listen to me,” she cried. “Can’t you just listen to my story? Without asking what . . . Without mixing everything . . .”

  With a sudden angry movement, she straightened up and put her hands on his chest.

  “Can’t you just stop asking about things that are my business, and my business alone? Can’t you forget that and just listen to what I’m saying?”

  “It’s difficult. At some point you’re going to have to—”

  “Never. Okay? Never. You promised not—”

  “We were getting married the next day, Johanne. I was scared that you’d cancel the whole wedding if I didn’t go along with your demands. It’s different now.”

  “Nothing is different.”

  “Yes it is. We’re married. We’ve got children. You’re about to . . . You’re upset, Johanne. You’re suffering because of something you refuse to let me in on. And I won’t accept that.”

  “You have to.”

  He let go of her. They stood there for a while, close but not touching. He was nearly a head taller than her. Johanne lifted her face. There was a darkness in her eyes that he didn’t recognize, and his heart started to race when for a moment he saw something that he thought might resemble . . . hate.

  “Johanne,” he whispered.

  “I love you,” she said quietly. “But you have to let it lie. Maybe one day I will be able to tell you about what happened between Warren and me. But not now. Not for a long time, Adam. I have spent the last few weeks trying to find my way back to that memory, and it’s been a tough journey. I can’t take any more. I want to leave it behind. To come back. To my life here. To you and the children. Us.”

  “Of course,” he said in a hoarse voice. His heart was still pounding.

  “But I took a story back with me that I really need to tell. I put a lid on the rest. And it will be there for a long time, maybe forever. But you must . . . you have to listen to what I have to say.”

  He swallowed and nodded.

  “Shall we sit down?” he said, his voice still raw.

  “Don’t be like that,” Johanne said and stroked his cropp
ed head. “Can’t you—”

  “You frightened me,” he said, keeping his eyes locked on hers.

  They were normal again. Friendly. Johanne’s own normal, friendly eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Can we sit down?”

  “Can you please stop—”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry that I frightened you. But you don’t need to treat me as if I’m a casual guest.”

  For a moment her eyes were hostile. Not full of hate, as he had felt before, but aggressive and hostile.

  “Bullshit,” he said and smiled. “Okay, let’s just drop you and . . . you and Warren. Now tell me the rest.”

  He got another cup and poured them both coffee, then sat down on the sofa and patted the cushion beside him.

  “Come on,” he said with strained cheerfulness.

  “Are you sure?” she asked and took the fresh cup of coffee without sitting down.

  “Absolutely.”

  His smile still hadn’t reached his eyes.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “The other case was a small-town murder in California. Or . . . yes, it was California. A local politician was literally suffocated with Bible quotations. Nailed to the wall with his mouth full of wet paper. Pages from the poor bastard’s own Bible.”

  Johanne’s eyes wandered around the room, as if she needed to find comfort in the security and familiarity it offered before she could continue. Darkness enveloped the house like an insulating cape. It was so quiet that Adam thought he could hear the whirring of his own thoughts. They were careening around in his head, confused and unstructured. What was this? What kind of absurd story was she telling him? How could three murders in Norway in 2004 be connected to a repressed and forgotten lecture in the States thirteen years ago?

  Bible then, Koran now.

  Beautifully wrapped tongues. Then and now.

  “Why was he killed?” was all he could think to say.

  “A pastor who had his own wacky following believed that this local councilman deserved to die because he had encouraged ungodly racism. He got one of his followers to carry out the murder. A simpleton. Who just grinned throughout the court case, told them everything . . . or so we were told.”

  “Racism,” thought Adam.

  Victoria Heinerback was not a racist. Victoria Heinerback worked primarily with economics. They had hardly paid the issue any attention. They had looked for political motives: unpopular budget cuts and brutal power struggles. Racism was quickly dismissed as a motive, despite the Koran. The young party leader had avoided the issue and was smart enough to answer questions generally and harmlessly whenever forced into a corner by journalists who were not satisfied with platitudes about immigration costs and resource issues.

  “But Victoria Heinerback did have several fellow party members,” Adam hesitated, “who might be accused of not liking our new countrymen.”

  He hadn’t touched the coffee. He leaned forward over the coffee table. His hand was shaking.

  “That’s two cases,” he said and left the cup where it was. “You said there were five.”

  “A journalist was beaten to death,” continued Johanne. “He had uncovered a financial mismanagement case in a company on the East Coast, I can’t remember what it was about. The story cost him his life.”

  “But he wasn’t killed by a . . . pen?”

  “No.”

  She gave a wan smile.

  “A typewriter. A Remington, a huge, old-fashioned . . .”

  Adam wasn’t listening anymore.

  “A typewriter to the head,” he thought. “A pen in the eye. Two journalists, then and now, killed by the tools of their trade. Two politicians, then and now, crucified and desecrated with religious scripts. Two tongues. Two people accused of lying.

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

  Johanne picked up a red rag doll from the shelf by the TV. It was missing an arm. Its face was dirty gray, and its red hair was as faded as its dress, almost pink after countless spins in the washing machine.

  “I heard all this on a warm day in early summer many years ago,” she said, and ran her fingers down the doll’s absurdly long legs. “Each case individually is not that interesting. America’s criminal history is full of far more spectacular stories than that.”

  All of a sudden, she threw the doll into the toy box.

  “What’s interesting for us is that someone in this country is trying to emulate the series again. But we shouldn’t get bogged down in the past, we have to focus on . . . on Fiona Helle, Victoria Heinerback, and Vegard Krogh. On today. Our own murders. Don’t we?” Johanne paused.

  He wanted to nod. He really wanted to smile and agree. What she had told him was useful enough, sketchy and imprecise though it was. It was sufficient.

  They both knew that it was impossible.

  She had told him an important story and at the same time had driven a wedge between them. He would use the next few days to put the heavens in motion, to trace every detail of the cases. He would get international organizations involved. They needed transcripts, judgments, hearings. They needed names and dates.

  They needed Warren’s help.

  “I think,” he said and hesitated for a moment before continuing, “I think that’s enough for this evening. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  “I know,” she said and hunkered down. Jack had woken up and was rubbing against her. “We can’t do much good now. Go to bed.”

  “Come with me.”

  “There’s no point, Adam. Go to bed.”

  “Not without you.”

  “I don’t want to. Can’t.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I know that you’re going to talk to Warren. I understand that you need to.”

  “Should I make an omelet?”

  “You’re just like Mother. You think that food solves everything.”

  She buried her nose in the warm, acrid smell of dirty dog and mumbled, “Don’t act as if I’m stupid, Adam.”

  Again, he didn’t know what to say.

  “Of course I realize what you have to do with the information I’ve given you,” she continued. “I’m not asking for fanfares for having dived back into a past I wanted to forget, but I would like some kind of respect. Just pretending that everything is fine and I’ve just told you a goodnight story, I think that’s . . . unfair.”

  She lifted up the dog and hid her face in his fur.

  “We should be happy,” he said. “We should be delighted about Ragnhild. About Kristiane’s progress. About each other. We get along well together, the two of us. The four of us. That morning, a month ago, feels like an age now, when Kristiane thought we’d gotten an heir to the throne, wasn’t I happy then? Satisfied? The baby was healthy. You were a bit anxious and very happy. I want to turn back time and forget everything that is alien and secret, that opens up this chasm between us. Your eyes were hostile, and now you’re slipping away from me.”

  “Just keep me out of it,” Johanne said. “Do what you have to, but keep me out of it. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  Jack wriggled in her arms and wanted to get down.

  “He doesn’t like being held,” Adam said.

  “Is Mats Bohus definitely out of the question?”

  “What?”

  “Are you one hundred percent sure that Mats Bohus is not behind all the murders?”

  “Yes.”

  The King of America made a leap for it and landed on the floor with a dull thud. He whimpered a bit and then shot off into a corner with his tail between his legs.

  “What can it be?” Johanne said and sat down on the other sofa.

  “You mean who, don’t you?” he said in a flat voice.

  “Well, both who and what.”

  “I can’t bear this,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your coldness.”

  “I’m not cold.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “You’re
hopeless. You want me to be happy and warm and close all the time. That’s impossible. Grow up. We’re two adults with adult problems. It doesn’t mean something’s wrong.”

  She said “doesn’t mean something’s wrong.” He’d wanted to hear “nothing’s wrong.” He folded his hands and studied his knuckles, which were white now. In fourteen months he would be fifty. The signs of age were getting clearer, the dry, loose skin on the backs of his hands, even when he curled his fingers.

  “Do you think someone might be setting this up?” she asked, doubtfully.

  “Oh, come on,” he mumbled and opened his right hand.

  She looked at Jack, who was still turning in circles on his cushion, trying to settle down.

  “Maybe there’s someone else outside who’s manipulating others to commit murder,” she said, mostly to herself, as if she was thinking out loud. “Someone who knows about these old stories and who, for some reason, is trying to re-create . . .”

  The dog finally lay down.

  “I’m going crazy,” she murmured.

  “We’re going to bed,” Adam stated.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You mentioned five,” he said.

  “Five what?”

  “Five murders. The lecture was about five murders. All examples of what Warren called . . . proportional revenge?”

  “Retribution.”

  “What were the last two cases?” he asked without looking up from his hand. Johanne took off her glasses. The room became fuzzy, and she cleaned her glasses with half-closed eyes.

  “Who was killed?” he asked. “And how?”

  “An athlete.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He got a javelin through the heart.”

  “A javelin . . . like the ones you throw?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “The killer was a competitor. He felt he’d been overlooked when one of the Ivy League schools awarded an athletic scholarship. Something like that. I can’t remember exactly. I’m exhausted.”

  “So now all we can do is just sit tight,” he started. “Completely helpless . . . and wait for an athlete to be brutally murdered.”

  She was still polishing and rubbing her glasses with the corner of her shirt, without purpose or reason.