What Never Happens

by Anne Holt

  She put Sulamit down with a thump.

  “You can’t actually be hungry again. You ate less than an hour ago. Now listen.”

  “I’m all ears,” Adam said.

  “The problem is that it’s difficult to imagine a completely random series of victims,” Johanne said and sat down on the stool beside him. “People never function in a vacuum! We’re never unbiased, we all have our likes and dislikes, we . . .”

  She pressed her fingers together so that her hands looked like a tent, and then she put her nose in the opening.

  “Let’s imagine,” she continued, in full concentration. Her voice sounded nasal when she sat like that. “. . . a murderer who decides to kill. For whatever reason. We’ll come back to that. But he decides to kill, not because he wants to take someone’s life, but because he—”

  “It’s difficult to imagine that anyone can be murdered in cold blood, unless the murderer actually wants them dead.”

  “Try to imagine it all the same,” she said impatiently. She folded her hands and clasped them together until the knuckles turned white. “The murderer would possibly choose the first victim fairly randomly. Like when we were children and spun the globe. Then, wherever your finger hit—”

  “You would go in twenty-five years’ time,” he finished. “I even read a children’s book about something like that. The Kept Promise.”

  “Do you remember what tended to happen the second time you tried?”

  “I cheated,” he said and smiled. “Opened my eyes ever so slightly to make sure I got somewhere more exciting than my friend.”

  “In the end I would stand there with open eyes and aim,” Johanne admitted. “I wanted to go to Hawaii.”

  “And your point is . . .”

  “I’ve read in the papers,” she said, letting him stroke the back of her hand, “that they’re calling these cases the perfect crime. Not so strange, really, considering how helpless the police seem to be. But I think perhaps we should shift focus and instead say that we’re in fact talking about the perfect murderer. But”—she chewed her lip and reached for a caper in one of the bowls—“the point is that there is no such thing,” she said, studying the stalk. “The perfect murderer is completely free of any context. The perfect murderer feels nothing—no fear, no horror, no hate, and certainly no love. People have a tendency to think that insane murderers have no feelings and are completely incapable of relating to other human beings. They forget that even Marc Dutroux, the epitome of a pedophile monster, was married. Hitler inflicted terrible suffering on the Jews and sent six million to their deaths, but it’s said that he was very fond of his dog. And presumably he was even kind to it.”

  “Did he have a dog?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Think so. But you get my point, at least.”

  “No.”

  She got up slowly, still chewing on the stubborn caper. She looked around the room and then went over to Kristiane’s toy box.

  “I am a person who has decided to kill,” she said and swallowed before stalling his objection. “Just forget why for the moment.”

  She picked up a red ball and held it out in front of her in her right hand, in a dramatic pose, like Hamlet and the skull. Adam chuckled.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said in a level voice. “This is my world. I know a lot about crime. It’s my subject. I know there’s a connection between the motive and how a case is solved. I know that I’m more likely to get away with murder if no one can find a connection between me and the victim. So, I spin the globe.”

  She closed her eyes and blindly pressed her finger into the red rubber.

  “I have chosen a completely random victim,” she said. “And I kill that person. Everything works out. No one suspects me. I get a taste for more.”

  She looked up.

  “But in some way, I’ve changed. All our actions, everything that happens, affects us. I feel . . . successful. I want to do it again. I feel . . . alive.”

  She froze. Adam opened his mouth.

  “Shh,” she said sharply. “Shh!”

  They could hear the children running from room to room downstairs. Jack was barking angrily. Then they heard a muffled, cross grown-up voice through the floor.

  “Maybe I should go down and get her,” Adam said. “Sounds like—”

  “Shh,” she said again. She had a distant look in her eyes, and she had frozen in a theatrical comedy pose, with one leg tantalizingly in front of the other. The ball was still in her right hand.

  “Alive,” she repeated, as if she was tasting the word.

  Suddenly, she grabbed the ball with both hands and threw it to the floor. It bounced against the fireplace and knocked over a plant that was standing on the floor, without Johanne seeming to notice.

  “Alive,” she said for the third time. “These murders are a form of . . . extreme sport.”

  “What?”

  Adam stared at Johanne. He tried to see beyond the unfamiliar, frightened expression, beyond her unfamiliar behavior; he tried to see inside her mind. She stood as if in a trance.

  “Extreme sport,” she repeated without paying him any attention, “a way of feeling alive. That’s how people describe it. The adrenaline kick. The rush. The feeling of defying death and succeeding, time and again. Nearly dying is the most intense way of feeling alive. Actually feeling life. Understanding it better. The rest of us just ask why. Why push yourself to get to the top of Mount Everest when the journey is, in every sense, paved with dead bodies? What would drive someone to throw themselves from a high cliff in Mexico when the slightest misjudgment could mean that the waves below hurled them straight back into the cliff face?”

  “Johanne,” Adam tried and put up his hand.

  “They say it gives them the feeling of being alive.” She answered her own questions.

  She still didn’t look at him. Instead she grabbed Kristiane’s rag doll from the windowsill. She pulled to it to her by the leg and then hugged it, long and hard.

  “Johanne,” he tried again.

  “I just don’t understand it,” she whispered, “but that’s the explanation they give. That’s what they say when it’s all over and they’re smiling at the camera, at their friends. They stick their middle fingers up at life. And laugh. And then they go and do it all over again. And again. And again . . .”

  This time he got up and went over to her. Pulled the doll from her hands and put his arms around her. He didn’t know if she was crying, so he kept still.

  “As if life isn’t valuable enough in itself,” she mumbled into his chest. “As if human triviality is not bad enough. As if loving someone, having children, getting old isn’t frightening enough.”

  She pushed him away. He didn’t want to let go, but she was determined and forced him to. But she did look him straight in the eye when she continued.

  “We can see it everywhere, Adam. More and more, new variations all the time. Jackass stunts for young people. They set themselves alight, dive from a roof on a bike. People are bored. People are bored to death!”

  She was nearly screaming and slapped him on the chest. Her voice trembled.

  “Did you know that some people play a kind of Russian roulette with HIV? Others heighten their orgasm through strangulation? And sometimes they die before they come. Die!”

  She was laughing now, hysterically. She went over to the island and managed to perch on a stool. She covered her face with her hands.

  “Death is the only real news for people today,” she said. “I can’t remember who said that, but it’s true. Death is extremely titillating, as it is the only thing we will never understand. It’s the only thing we know nothing about.”

  “So what you’re saying,” Adam tried to bring her back to day-to-day reality, “is that we’re talking about a killer who’s . . . bored?”

  “Yes. His motive has nothing to do with whom he kills but rather that they are killed.”

  “Johanne . . .”

 
“It has to be,” she insisted. “Killing someone is the most extreme of all extreme actions you can take. The murderer . . . It fits, Adam. It fits with the theory that he didn’t kill Fiona Helle. He was just sitting there. Somewhere. Bored. Then Mats Bohus killed his mother, in a grotesque way, and everyone went crazy. The murder had all the right ingredients: a famous victim, the characteristics of ritual, strong symbolism. The reaction was deafening. I can hardly imagine anything more stimulating, a more exciting trigger than that murder. Especially as it had so many similarities to the first murder in another series, in another story about—”

  “Now listen to what you’re saying,” Adam insisted. He had raised his voice now. “If we summarize your profile, we’ve got the following. A”—with his right index finger, he pointed to his left thumb—“The murderer knows everything that’s worth knowing about crime. B: At some point or another, he heard Warren’s lecture about proportional retribution.”

  “Or heard about it,” corrected Johanne.

  “Which means that he may not necessarily be Norwegian,” Adam added and grimaced. “Third: Killing for this person is a kind of hobby, a way to relieve a boring, humdrum life. He chooses—”

  “his victims by apparently random criteria,” Johanne concluded. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were shiny. “At least to begin with. He has only one criterion. The person has to be famous. He wants maximum effect. It’s the thrill he’s after. He’s playing, Adam.”

  “And then we’re back to square one,” he said and rubbed his cheek in resignation. “Vegard Krogh was not famous.”

  “He was famous enough,” she corrected him with great intensity. “There was enough commotion about his death, for goodness sake! Especially as he was number three in a series of celebrity murders. The murderer knew that. He knew that Vegard Krogh was sufficiently well known, and that was why he decided to forgo . . . randomization!”

  “What?”

  “Only a computer can achieve a completely random selection, Adam. We humans, we let ourselves be swayed, consciously or subconsciously. Vegard Krogh was chosen because he . . .”

  Once again the look in her eyes became distant and dark. She pulled at a tangle of hair and chewed it. The commotion downstairs had died down a while ago. The children had been sent out to play in the rain. Adam could hear them in the garden.

  “The murderer wanted him dead,” she said slowly. “The motive was first and foremost the game. The challenge of killing someone and getting away with it. But the murderer gave in to temptation this time. By choosing someone he wanted to get even with.”

  “Everyone wanted to get even with Vegard,” Adam groaned. “And your profile doesn’t match any of the people we’ve come across, spoken to, or in any way suspected in connection with this case. And do you have any idea how many people that is? Do you know how many statements we’ve taken?”

  “A lot, I guess.”

  “Several hundred! Nearly a thousand statements. And not one of them, not a single witness, matches your description of . . . What shall we do? Where is he, what needs to be—”

  “He won’t stop. Not yet. I guess we just have to wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “For—”

  “The world’s best mommy,” shouted Kristiane.

  She had her raincoat on, and her boots were soaking. They squelched as she ran over the floor and threw herself into her mother’s lap. Jack was in hot pursuit. He stopped in the middle of the floor, between the living room and open kitchen, and shook himself. A shower of water sprayed around him. Sand and fine gravel pattered down on to the parquet.

  “The best dog in the world,” Kristiane said. “The best Kristiane. And Daddy. And Adam. And house. And—”

  “Afternoon all! The door was open, so I just came up. Is her bag ready?”

  Isak laughed and patted the eager, happy dog.

  “I’ve been sailing,” he said, “so I’m just as wet as Kristiane. Great weather for sailing though! Cold as hell. Good wind. But then it started to rain. Shame. Come on then, princess! We’re going go-carting today! Won’t that be fun!”

  He tracked his dirty shoes across the floor. Picked up the fire engine, gave a big smile, and put it in his pocket.

  “Bye, Mommy! Bye, Adam!”

  The girl danced after her father. Adam and Johanne sat in silence and listened to them rummaging around in her room. He put his hand on her thigh when she wanted to go in and help. Five minutes later, they heard Isak’s Audi TT accelerate powerfully down Haugesvei.

  “I bet he forgot her pajamas and toothbrush,” Johanne said and tried to ignore Adam’s exasperated sigh when he answered.

  “He can buy a toothbrush at any gas station, Johanne. And she can sleep in a T-shirt. Isak remembered Sulamit, and that’s what’s most important. Don’t make such—”

  She got up suddenly and went to the bathroom.

  “I’m boring,” she thought to herself and started to load the washing machine. “I’m unexciting and unsophisticated. I know. I’m responsible and very rarely spontaneous. I’m boring. But I certainly never get bored.”

  The man sitting in the chair with a target pinned to his breast pocket with a safety pin was an unpopular star. His long hair was tied back in a ponytail. He had a widow’s peak that gave him a diabolical look. There was something primitive about the way his brows jutted out over his eyes; his eyebrows met in the middle, looking like a fat, hairy caterpillar was crawling across his face. His nose was straight, narrow, and sophisticated. His lips were full. An unbecoming goatee sprouted on his chin below his mouth. His tongue was just visible between his eye teeth, which had been filed into points. The corners of his mouth turned down in an unattractive grimace. Above his head, a zinc bucket was attached to the wall with a nail.

  Håvard Stefansen was a professional biathlete. His greatest achievement as an adult to date was two individual silver medals in the world championships. He had won three world cup titles last season. And as he was only twenty-four, he was one of Norway’s great hopes for the Winter Olympics in Turin in 2006.

  As long as he could control himself, the national team coach had publicly warned him only six weeks ago.

  During the course of his first two seasons in the senior national team, Håvard Stefansen had been sent home from meets and competitions four times. He was an arrogant winner and an appalling loser. He usually openly slandered his competitors when he lost a race. He accused them of taking drugs. They cheated. He treated foreigners and his own teammates with contempt. Håvard Stefansen was rude and egocentric, and no one wanted to share a room with him. Which didn’t seem to bother him.

  The public didn’t like him either, and he had never had personal sponsors. In his chosen sport, boasting and menacing tattoos were not common. When he raced, he was often met with boos or silence, and in some weird way, he seemed to get a kick out of that. His speed increased, and his shooting improved every month, yet he did nothing to change his terrible reputation.

  Now it was too late.

  It was the night of March 2, and the bull’s-eye on the target over his heart had been hit. His eyes were glassy. When Adam Stubo leaned over the body, he thought he saw slight bruising on the eyelids, as if someone had forced them open.

  “He wasn’t killed in here,” said an officer from the Oslo police. His red hair was poking out from under the paper cap. “That seems fairly clear. He was stabbed in the back with a knife. While he was asleep, we assume. No indications of a struggle, but the bed is full of blood. The footprints are obvious out here. It looks like his clothes were just thrown on. We think he was killed in his sleep and then dragged out here, dressed, and arranged on the chair.”

  “The bullet hole,” Adam muttered. He felt queasy.

  “Lead pellet, sir,” the other replied. “He was shot with an air rifle. This is some kind of indoor shooting range.” He pointed to the target covering the top of the bucket. “For air guns only, of course. The pellets are caught in the b
ucket. Air rifles only make a ‘pff’ sound, which explains why no one heard anything. If the guy was alive when he was shot, it would presumably have hurt like hell, but nothing more. That, on the other hand . . .”

  The policeman, who had just introduced himself as Erik Henriksen, pointed to Håvard Stefansen’s right hand. It was half open and resting on his groin. His index finger was missing. Only a ragged stump remained.

  “His trigger finger,” Henriksen said. “And if you look over here . . .”

  He went to the other end of the corridor, his paper overalls rustling as he moved. An air rifle was attached to a sawhorse with tape and rope. The barrel of the gun was balanced on a slanting broom handle. Håvard Stefansen’s finger was on the trigger of the gun, which was aimed at his heart. The finger was blue, and the nail was slightly too long.

  “I have to leave,” Adam said. “I’m sorry, I just have to . . .”

  “Even if this is our case,” Erik Henriksen said, “I thought it would be best if you guys had a look. It’s suspiciously like—”

  “A sports celebrity,” Adam thought desperately. “That’s what we were waiting for. And I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t guard every sports celebrity in the country. Couldn’t raise the alarm. It would only have caused panic. And I couldn’t know anything for certain. Johanne believed and thought and felt, but we couldn’t be sure. What could I have done? What should I do?”

  “How did the killer get in?” Adam forced himself to ask, determined to stick it out. “Break in? Window?”

  “We’re on the fifth floor,” Henriksen pointed out with a hint of irritation. This NCIS guy was certainly not living up to his reputation. “But take a look at this.”

  Although the apartment was in an old building, the front door looked new and had a solid, modern lock. Henriksen used his pen as a pointer.

  “Old trick, really. A small piece of wood has been pushed into the keyhole and here . . .”

  The pen moved over the spring bolt.

  “It’s stuck,” he said. “Matches, presumably.”

  “God,” Adam mumbled. “A simple old con trick.”