What Never Happens

by Anne Holt

  It was Rudolf Fjord’s copy.

  She wanted to throw it away. She snatched it up and dropped it down the chute with the flowers. She stood there listening to the sound of the heavy book banging on metal, duller and duller until it ended in a muffled, nearly inaudible thump.

  Someone might find it. Someone might wonder what a book belonging to Rudolf Fjord was doing in the garbage room of the apartment house where Wencke Berger lived and wrote. She hadn’t destroyed it, hadn’t torn out the page with the owner’s name on it. She could have burned the book or thrown it away somewhere else.

  But there wouldn’t be any excitement in that.

  Wencke Berger lived on a continuous high. She had thrown herself off the highest cliff.

  “Three weeks,” Sigmund Berli said. “Our three weeks are up.”

  “Yes,” Adam Stubo replied. “And we’ve got nothing. Nothing at all.”

  On the desk in front of him, there were two piles of printouts. One contained statements from Wencke Berger’s three accounts from the period from January 1 to March 2, when Håvard Stefansen was murdered. The other was an itemized log from the phone company.

  “When Victoria Heinerback was killed,” Adam said, “Wencke Berger was in Stockholm. Just as she’s said in several of these”—he kicked a pile of newspapers and magazines on the floor—“stupid interviews. About how shocked she was when she read about the murder, how . . . She’s so damned cunning.”

  For three weeks, Sigmund and Adam had worked alone. They had gotten a court order for compulsory disclosure on the basis of a creatively modified and in part false petition. And since then, they had worked day and night, looked at Wencke Berger’s every move under a magnifying glass, only going home to change and get a few hours of unsettled sleep before returning to the painstaking work of reconstructing the woman’s life by studying her money withdrawals, phone calls, and where she had surfed the Internet.

  Wencke Berger was well off but spent surprisingly little money. She had renewed her wardrobe just before coming home, but even around Christmas, her spending was absurdly low. She seldom called anyone and was hardly ever contacted by anyone other than her various publishers in Europe. She hadn’t spoken to her father since before Christmas.

  She told the papers that she’d had a meeting with her publishers in Stockholm, a quick trip to plan the autumn’s book launch and a tour. Sigmund called and pretended to be a journalist; he fished for confirmation of the meeting. He was disturbingly unaffected by the growing number of lies they had to tell. Adam, on the other hand, was deeply affected. Not only were they pushing the limits of what was permissible, they were doing the opposite of everything he had learned and stood for in his years with the police.

  Wencke Berger had become an obsession.

  They had spent a week trying to work out the different ways in which she could have gotten from Stockholm to Oslo on February 6. They had juggled with possible times, studied maps, and combed the passenger lists that Sigmund had managed to extract from the various carriers using charm, threats, and lies. At night they tramped around in the corridors, sticking yellow Post-it notes on the walls, with times on them. Tried moving them closer together. Tried to find holes and weak points, a tiny opening in the solid wall of impossible times in Wencke Berger’s bank statements.

  “Just can’t get it to work,” Sigmund had concluded at around four o’clock every morning. “I just can’t get it to work.”

  She had checked in at the hotel at three in the afternoon. Bought something in a kiosk at seventeen minutes past five. She took a taxi just before seven in the evening. At twenty-five to twelve, roughly the time that Victoria Heinerback was murdered in her home in Lørenskog, Wencke Berger had paid a substantial amount for a meal at a restaurant near the Dramaten theater in the center of Stockholm.

  One morning, after working for sixteen hours with no results, Sigmund got on a plane to Stockholm in a rage. He came back that afternoon defeated; the night porter was absolutely certain that he had seen Wencke Berger returning to the hotel at around midnight on the night in question. He had nodded at the picture Sigmund showed him. No, they hadn’t spoken, but he seemed to remember that the woman in room 237 had gotten some ice from the machine in the reception area. It had something wrong with it, so he had to mop up the water on the floor after she’d gone. She had also dropped some clothes into the laundry that afternoon, and when he left them outside her door first thing the next morning, he heard loud music coming from the room.

  She had checked out at around ten o’clock.

  The only thing that was odd about Wencke Berger’s trip to Stockholm was that she’d splurged on herself, which was very unusual.

  Otherwise, everything was just as it should be. Adam and Sigmund had given their all and gotten nothing in return. The deadline had passed.

  “What do we do now?” Sigmund asked quietly.

  “Yes, what do we . . .”

  Adam played with the statements. When Vegard Krogh was killed, Wencke Berger was apparently in France. Two days earlier, she’d withdrawn a substantial amount from her account and then didn’t touch it for four days. The next transaction was in a fishmonger’s in the Old Town in Nice.

  Sigmund and Adam had been encouraged by this unaccounted-for period and spent several days investigating it. Theoretically it was possible for her to have gotten to and from Norway using the cash. But her name did not appear on any of the passenger lists, nor was it registered with any of the car rental firms in Nice.

  It was harder to get hold of the lists from Stockholm. She could easily have stolen a car. After three weeks’ intensive work in the office, the only thing the two investigators knew was what they had been convinced of to begin with: Wencke Berger had been in Oslo when the murders happened.

  But they didn’t know how she’d managed it.

  They could keep on looking, investigating further.

  That’s what they should do. That’s what they both wanted to do.

  But to do that, it could not be official.

  Their deadline was already past, and their colleagues had begun to make fun of them. They grinned when Adam and Sigmund came to lunch, pale and drawn. They sat by themselves and ate in silence.

  When Håvard Stefansen was killed, Wencke Berger had been sitting at her computer, working, one floor below. She had given her witness statement, and a very detailed one at that. Hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual, she was so engrossed in her work. She had been on the Internet for several hours, trying to find out more about South American spiders. It was only when she went to take her suitcases up to the loft, after her prolonged stay abroad, that she noticed the open door, stuck her head into the foyer of the apartment, and discovered the body. Then she called the police. The story was consistent with the phone company’s log. It could hardly be called an alibi, but it didn’t give them anything to go on, either.

  And Wencke Berger blossomed. She was everywhere, and there was great anticipation about her new novel coming out in the fall.

  Adam stood up abruptly. He gathered all the papers and stacked them together as one great document.

  “We’ve lost,” he declared and threw the pile into a box for shredding.

  He stroked his hand over his head and added, “Wencke Berger has won. The only thing we have, after all these weeks of hard work, is proof that . . .” He laughed, quietly and reluctantly; he didn’t want to finish the sentence.

  “That the woman is innocent,” Sigmund concluded slowly. “We’ve worked day and night for three weeks without proving anything other than that . . . the woman’s innocent. We have proven Wencke Berger’s innocence!”

  “That is precisely what we have done,” Adam said and gave a long yawn. “And that’s exactly what she intended. She knew this would happen. And you . . .”

  He came around the desk. For a moment he stood looking hard at Sigmund, who had lost weight. His face was still round. His chin was still chubby, but his clothes were too loose. The line
s around his nose were clearer and deeper than before. His eyes were bloodshot, and he smelled of stale sweat when Adam gave him his hand, pulling him out of the chair.

  “You are my best friend,” he said and gave him a hug. “You are truly my Sancho Panza.”

  Thursday, June 4, 2004

  Summer was just around the corner.

  April and May had been and gone, and the weather had been unusually warm and sunny. The leaves on the trees and flowers had sprung early this year, making spring hell on earth for people with allergies. The crown princes of Denmark and Spain had both gotten married. Preparations were under way in Portugal for the European Cup, and the Athenians were working against the clock to get ready for the Olympic Games in August. The world had been shocked by the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, but only enough for a few photographs to make the front pages of newspapers in Norway. The historical expansion of the European Union to the east didn’t cause much of a stir either in the small, rich country on the periphery of the Continent. People were more interested in the prolonged transportation strike, which had resulted in empty shelves in stores and fights over toilet paper and diapers. Rosenborg won match after match in the football league series, and the revised national budget was passed without any political drama. If you looked carefully, you could still sometimes find the odd article about the unsolved murders of Victoria Heinerback, Vegard Krogh, and the biathlete Håvard Stefansen. But not often. Nothing had been written about the cases for a couple of weeks now.

  A woman was sitting on a bench by the Aker River, reading the paper.

  Johanne Vik had also used the spring to try to forget. She was well trained in the art. As the weeks and months passed, and nothing more happened, it became impossible to keep the children in hiding. The house in Haugesvei had been under police surveillance, but that too seemed unnecessary after a while, certainly to those responsible for the Oslo police’s already strained budget. Patrol cars no longer included Haugesvei on their nightly rounds.

  And no one had tried to set fire to the box-shaped, white, semidetached house where the Vik-Stubo family lived with their children and a dog and friendly neighbors.

  She had just started to sleep again too. She had gotten into a daily rhythm. She went for walks.

  The carriage was standing beside her. The baby was asleep, covered by a light cotton blanket. Johanne glanced up at the sky every now and then; it looked as if the good weather might be coming to an end.

  She enjoyed sitting like this. She came here every day. She bought the papers at the gas station on Maridalsveien. Before she reached the bench under the willow tree, where the river took a swing between Sandaker and Bjølsen, the baby was asleep, and she had an hour to herself.

  Another woman walked toward her, down the path. She was probably in her midforties. Her hair was curling in the light breeze, and she had sunglasses on.

  “Johanne is so damned predictable,” the woman thought to herself. “Hasn’t she learned anything? She sits here every day, unless it’s raining. She doesn’t seem to be frightened anymore. The children are at home again. It annoys me that I overestimated her.”

  “Hello,” the woman said as she walked up to Johanne. “It is Johanne Vik, isn’t it?”

  Johanne stared at her. Wencke Berger smiled when the other woman put her arm over the carriage, her fingers splayed over the crocheted blanket.

  “I’ve met your husband on a couple of occasions,” said the author. “Is it okay if I sit down?”

  Johanne didn’t answer. She didn’t move.

  “Wencke Berger, pleased to meet you. We’ve got mutual acquaintances, in fact. In addition to your husband, that is.”

  She sat down. Her upper arm brushed Johanne’s arm as she made herself comfortable, sitting confidently with her legs crossed. She bounced her upper foot.

  “Terrible thing,” she said and shook her head. “All those celebrity murders. I was a witness in one of the cases. Perhaps you remember. It looks as if the poor victims are forgotten already, sadly.”

  She nodded at the pile of papers between them.

  “That’s the way it goes. As long as there are no real suspects, the papers run out of things to write. And with those cases . . .”

  She nodded at the papers again. Johanne sat poker-straight and paralyzed on the far end of the bench.

  “. . . they seem to have come to a dead end. The police, I mean. Strange. Apparently there’s no leads. They simply have nothing to go on.”

  Johanne Vik had finally managed to pull herself together. She tried to get to her feet while clinging onto the carriage and picking up a bag full of baby stuff.

  “Wait,” Wencke Berger said in a friendly voice and gripped her arm. “Can’t you stay for a while? Just a few minutes. We have so much in common. There’s so much I’d like to tell you.”

  “Is it curiosity that keeps her sitting here,” she wondered, “or won’t her legs carry her?”

  Johanne sat still, with the bag on her lap and her arm protecting her daughter.

  Wencke Berger sat up straight on the bench and turned her head toward the younger woman.

  “Have you ever suspected anyone other than me?” she asked, still friendly.

  “She’s not answering. She has no idea what to say. She’s not curious anymore. She’s frightened. Why doesn’t she scream? What would she scream?”

  “I received this letter.”

  Wencke Berger pulled out a folded sheet from her back pocket. She unfolded it and flattened it over her knee.

  “Notification of compulsory disclosure,” she explained. “From the court. As prescribed by law, there’s also information about how to proceed if I want to complain about your husband sticking his nose in my business.”

  She held the letter up for a moment. Then she shook her head and put it back into her pocket.

  “But I can’t be bothered to. In fact, it’s good for me that I’ve already been cleared, in the event of any later accusations. The job’s done, you might say.”

  Her laughter was dark. She tried to tuck her hair behind her ear.

  “The Stockholm trip must have puzzled you,” she said before getting the letter out of her pocket again.

  She took it in her right hand and scrunched it up. Then she stood up and barred the way for the carriage.

  “Lovely little girl,” she said and bent down over Ragnhild. “She’ll have a cleft in her chin.”

  “Get away. Get away!”

  Wencke Berger took a step back.

  “I’m not going to harm her,” she smiled. “I’m not going to harm anyone!”

  “I have to go,” Johanne Vik said and struggled with the brakes on the carriage. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Of course. I won’t force you. I certainly didn’t intend to distress you so. I just wanted to talk. About our shared interests and mutual . . .”

  The brakes had gotten stuck. Johanne pulled the carriage down the path. The rubber wheels screeched on the asphalt. Ragnhild woke up and started to howl. Wencke Berger smiled and took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were lightly made up. They looked bigger and darker.

  “She’ll never go away,” thought Johanne. “She’ll never disappear. Not until she dies. Not until I manage to . . .”

  “I’ve finished the book, by the way,” Wencke Berger said as she sauntered along behind the carriage. “It’s good. I’ll send you a copy when it’s printed.”

  Johanne stopped suddenly and opened her mouth to scream.

  “Of course,” Wencke Berger said, as she lifted her hands, as if to stop her. “You don’t need to give me your address. I know perfectly well where you live.”

  Then she gave a slight nod, turned her back, and walked away down the path in the opposite direction.

  Postscript

  This book opens with a quotation by Walter Benjamin. The quotation was used in Lars Fr. H. Svendsen’s book Kjedsomhetens filosofi (A Philosophy of Boredom) (Universitetsforlaget 1999), which has been a great sou
rce of inspiration and help in writing What Never Happens.

  On page 193, there is a quotation from an unnamed source: “And you’re dying so slowly that you think you’re alive.” I am obliged to say that this is taken from the title poem in a collection of poems, Og du dør så langsomt at du tror du lever, by Bertrand Besigye (Gyldendal 1993).

  I would like to thank Alexander Elgurén for his irrepressible enthusiasm and Randi Krogsveen for her invaluable help.

  This book is for you, Tine, as all my books are.

  Anne Holt

  Oslo, June 18, 2004

  About the Author

  ANNE HOLT is a best-selling thriller writer, with three million books sold worldwide—and a former minister of justice, lawyer, journalist, and TV editor and anchor. What Is Mine was her English-language debut and the first of a three-book series featuring ex-FBI profiler Vik and police detective Stubo. A former resident of the United States, Anne Holt currently resides in Norway and France.