by Anne Holt
It made him feel extremely awkward.
“I suggest,” Herdis Brattbakk began when she sat down so graciously that Henrik wondered whether Google had been lying about her age, “that we skip the part where I declare my duty of confidentiality and you argue that it’s of exceptional interest with regard to a serious criminal case in order to get me to talk.”
Henrik gave a faltering smile and risked a brief nod.
“After all, since it’s almost thirteen years since Anna Abrahamsen was my patient, and more than twelve years since she died, we can simplify matters. The Health Personnel Act § 24 applies in this regard, so I’ll ask you one question: are there important reasons here for me to break my duty of confidentiality?”
“Er … yes.”
Henrik nodded enthusiastically before tucking his hands under each thigh. He had prepared himself for having to persuade her, and felt increasingly unsure of himself when she came straight to the point.
“I’m old enough to think for myself without being hidebound by rigid regulations. I choose to trust you.”
Henrik went on nodding until, realizing that it looked idiotic, he stopped abruptly.
“Anna came to me in late autumn of 2002,” the psychologist said, crossing one leg over the other.
It was so long and slim that Henrik had to compose himself and look away.
“Almost a year after she had lost her daughter,” she continued. “It would have been better for her if she had come sooner. As is well known, there is no formula for the grieving process, but as you’re probably aware, it’s not at all unusual to go through an initial phase of denial.”
Henrik kept on nodding without giving any response.
“However, Anna got stuck there, in that phase, for far too long. She was heartbroken, understandably, but in a way that reminded me more of a …”
Herdis Brattbakk smiled, raised her chin and looked diagonally across at Henrik.
“ … man. There was something masculine about the way she seemingly managed to move in and out of grief. She went back to work extremely early after her daughter died, and from what I understood, that actually went well. One of many problems was probably that she didn’t spend time dwelling on what had happened. Instead of grieving and absorbing the reality of the situation, she went on living in a condition of denial. At work she took on more and more responsibility. She filled her free time with friends and …”
For the first time since his arrival, she hesitated. But only for a moment.
“… an excessive amount of alcohol. She used sleeping pills too. When she was finally referred to me, her friends had disappeared, and all that was left was alcohol and tablets. Neither of them particularly reliable friends in a time of crisis.”
“But she still went on working?” Henrik asked, and he was so annoyed for asking about something he already knew that the timbre of his voice grew tremulous.
“Yes. She still had some sort of hold on her existence. But only to a degree. You see …”
Now she was leaning closer to him. Her purple silk blouse was buttoned so low that he caught a glimpse of a black bra. He tore his eyes away and stared straight out through the window.
“… children also move in and out of grief. But they do it properly. A ten-year-old can be devastated at the loss of his mother one minute and take delight in a new iPad the next. Only to start crying again. And then the next day have a great time at the Tusenfryd amusement park. It does them good to be like that. It doesn’t make their sorrow any less and doesn’t indicate that it’s any less genuine either. It makes life easier to live, that’s all. Adults, on the other hand …”
She straightened her back at last, and Henrik was able to tear himself away from the view across the Oslo Fjord, where the Danish ferry was ploughing a pale furrow on the dark-blue water.
“… can become ill from that kind of behavior. Or it can be a sign that they already are.”
“I see. What kind of illness?”
She smiled.
“I would be happy to give you a lecture on it, but I’m sure that’s not why you’ve come. Anyway, I’m convinced that Anna wasn’t ill. Not then, at least. Later, however …”
She stopped herself.
“Don’t let me anticipate,” she said. “I’ll come to that shortly. Anna was healthy, I believe, but simply not very good at grieving. Losing a child is the most challenging thing a person can be subjected to, and few of us are equipped to deal with it. Do you have children, Henrik?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I’ve never dared.”
The blush took off from the depths of his knees. It came rushing through his body and reached his face far faster than he had ever experienced before. It felt as if a gigantic hand had grasped his body, and he broke into a sweat.
“Here,” she said in a friendly tone, pouring a glass of water from a carafe on the circular glass table between them.
Henrik took hold of the glass and guzzled all the water.
“Thanks,” he whispered hoarsely as he poured himself another. Unfortunately he missed the glass, and a puddle of water spread slowly across the tabletop.
“There’s been a great deal of research into parents who lose their children,” Herdis Brattbakk said, as if nothing had happened. “Into the surviving family members after the massacre on Utøya island, for example. Tragic reading. Without a doubt, things are not going especially well for very many of them.”
Henrik saw that the puddle of water had taken on the shape of Africa. He glanced up at her and thought he could see her eyes welling up. She took a deep breath and fiddled with her wedding ring.
“When Anna’s friends began to abandon her, she sought solace in God. That’s not unusual either. Especially since what she was probably struggling most with, quite apart from eventually having to accept that her daughter was gone for good, was …”
Henrik glanced at the kitchen section, in two minds whether to go for a cloth.
“… her sense of guilt,” Herdis Brattbakk rounded off after a moment’s thought.
“Guilt?” Henrik repeated in surprise. “Surely it was an accident! And she wasn’t even there, it was Jonas who probably should ha–”
“Guilt is a fascinating phenomenon,” she interrupted him. “We humans totally depend on feeling guilt in order to be able to adapt to society. In a family. In a workplace. When we’ve done something wrong, we ought to understand that and feel it. Guilt, or conscience, if you like, spurs people into good or desirable behavior. And it can make us throw in the towel if we make a wrong move. The problem is that it’s often misplaced. We feel guilt when we haven’t done anything wrong. And what’s more, it can be too late to put things right. As in Anna’s case.”
“What do you mean?”
“Anna didn’t have a high opinion of her own abilities as a mother,” was Herdis Brattbakk’s forthright response. “And once Dina was dead, there was very little she could do about it.”
“Could you … elaborate?”
“In a way, Anna and Jonas had reversed gender roles. It was Jonas who loved the child above all else. He was the one who took care of most of the broken nights during the first year, and Anna stopped breast-feeding her daughter very early. He was at home with their daughter for nine months. Anna could barely hold out for three months as a full-time mother. Jonas was their daughter’s primary care giver, on the whole.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“No. And if Dina were still living, it probably wouldn’t have bothered Anna in the least that she was a successful worker who found greater pleasure in selling cars than changing diapers. Also, she could rely on the fact that the child had an absolutely outstanding, ever-present father, just as men have relied on their children’s mother from time immemorial.”
“But Dina died,” Henrik said softly.
“Exactly. And when Anna entered her religious phase, she began to regard her daughter’s death as a punishment.”
; “Of her?”
“Yes. She really never reproached Jonas, I believe. Far from it – she defended him. Before you arrived, I went through my notes from that time …”
She nodded in the direction of the kitchen, as if her archives were stored in the fridge.
“… and she mentioned an episode when Dina was quite small. Anna’s attention was distracted for a moment, and her daughter knocked over a cup of freshly brewed coffee. She sustained a serious burn, and they had to take her to Accident & Emergency. To tell the truth, she surprised me with her repeated insistence that Jonas was not to blame for Dina’s death. We humans are actually pretty poor at that. As a rule, we believe that catastrophes are easier to handle if we can find someone to blame. Anna never fell for that temptation.”
“For how long did she come to you?”
“Not long enough. She came once a week from September 2002 until March in the following spring. So, six months.”
“Did she not want to continue?”
“No. Unfortunately. And the break was sudden. She didn’t turn up for an appointment, and the following day I received an email saying she had decided to stop.”
“Did she give any reason?”
“Not really. She wrote something about coping better now, but I knew that was sheer nonsense. In fact she was getting gradually worse. But she didn’t come back.”
Henrik could not stand it any longer.
“Can I get a cloth?” he asked weakly, staring at the water, where Africa had turned into an immense Antarctica.
“Of course,” she said, with a faint smile. “You’ll find a roll of paper towel in the dispenser beside the fridge.”
“When did she come back?” he asked loudly, halfway across the room.
“At the end of September 2003. So, three months before she was killed.”
“Why?”
“I’ve asked myself that too. She arrived unannounced. Near the end of the day – she knew from previous experience that I don’t take patients after five o’clock. When I was ushering the last one out, she was standing there. I usually take ten minutes between each appointment so that patients don’t bump into one another at the door, but there stood Anna.”
“What did she say?” Henrik asked, lifting the glass of water with his left hand while he wiped the glass surface with his right. “What did she want, then?”
“To talk. It was as if she simply resumed the therapy sessions, without any further comment about having declined my help six months earlier. And without drawing any definite conclusions after a mere one-hour consultation, she had deteriorated considerably.”
She lifted her left leg off the right and crossed her legs the opposite way.
“What makes you say that?” Henrik asked her.
Herdis Brattbakk moistened her lips and swallowed. She adjusted her blouse slightly – it fell in soft folds from her bust over what Henrik thought must be a remarkably firm stomach. A heart of white gold and diamonds glittered in the hollow of her neck, moving gently in rhythm with her pulse. She seemed much calmer than he was.
“Well, for a start, she looked far worse,” she finally said. “Thinner. Her hair was lifeless and a bit too long. Her clothes were more haphazardly assembled. The dark rings under her eyes had become permanent, I think, and she had acquired that expression on her mouth …”
Shaking her head slowly, she ran her slim hand over her thigh a couple of times.
“After all these years I can almost say that I can still see it,” she said quietly.
“What do you see?”
“I see that they have given up.”
“What?”
Henrik felt uncomfortably hot again. He held his breath to curb the blushing, but it was no use. “What do you mean by saying that they … had Anna given up? Given up what?”
“Life. She was in the process of giving up on living.”
Again her hand slid over her trouser leg, and she cast her eyes down.
“I was extremely concerned when she left me, and asked her really earnestly to return. The very next day, in fact. She went along with that and agreed to come, but then she didn’t turn up. I never saw her again. Tried to phone her a few times, but only reached her answering machine.”
“Was she suicidal?” Henrik let slip, when he could no longer suppress the question.
Herdis Brattbakk’s eyes narrowed. Her cheekbones seemed even more distinct now, and a sharp edge was clearly etched beneath each eye.
“I don’t use the expression ‘being suicidal’. At least not until someone has made a serious attempt to take his own life. Suicide can come like a bolt from the blue. To all appearances, anyway. Or else be … inevitable, in a way, to all intents and purposes a calamity that has been flagged up in advance. In other words, ‘being suicidal’ is rather imprecise. But I was terribly worried.”
She nodded deliberately and looked him straight in the eye. Hers were green, he noticed now for the first time, with brown, triangular flecks around the iris.
“Anna had begun to remove herself from her own life,” she said softly. “It was as if she was preparing herself for death.”
Henrik touched both sides of his nose at the same time and tapped his forehead.
“What do you mean?” he squeaked, before clearing his throat.
Herdis Brattbakk pondered this for some time. She fiddled with her wedding band, which besides the heart at her throat was the only jewelry she wore. She lifted her glass to her mouth and sipped at the water. When she replaced it on the table, Henrik noticed an almost imperceptible trembling in her hand. She ran her fingers slowly through her hair.
“She was disposing of things,” she said in the end. “For example, she had made up her mind to divorce. Not that this was so terribly unexpected, for communication between her and Jonas had been dreadful since Dina died. But it was not just Jonas she was getting shot of. It was things. Dina’s room had remained untouched for nearly two years. Jonas had refused to let her do anything with it, but on their divorce she would keep the house and could do whatever she wanted. In the meantime, before Jonas moved out and they applied for a legal separation, she cleared the room. Little by little, somehow. The cupboards first, so that Jonas would not notice anything. Then photograph albums and–”
“Did she really throw out the photo albums? The ones with photos of Dina?”
“Yes, and her own, from when she herself was a young child. It was as if she somehow wanted to erase her own life. And worst of all was that she experienced great pain while doing this. It cost her a great deal. That was why she came to me.”
A thousand questions filled Henrik’s head and he struggled to keep them all inside.
“Anna didn’t shed many tears at our earlier meetings,” the psychologist continued. “I think she didn’t have the energy. On the other hand, on that last occasion, she was inconsolable. At times she quite simply had difficulty speaking. Every single object she removed from the house was like … cutting off part of her own soul.”
The final part of the sentence was spoken as if reading from a document.
“That was exactly what she said. She was cutting off parts of her own soul. I was very worried about her. In some absurd way, she was looking forward to Jonas moving out so that she could continue with the task of ‘packing herself away’.”
Her long fingers drew snappy quote marks in the air.
Henrik’s mouth dropped open and, checking himself, he jerked it shut and coughed.
“Why … why did she come back to you?” he asked.
“I don’t honestly know. A desperate need to talk, possibly. She did not have many people left. Her friends were gone. Her parents were dead. She had no more than a professional connection with her colleagues at that time. Jonas was on the way out, and she’d never had an especially close relationship with her sister. Not that they had fallen out or anything, but there was quite a big difference in age between them. Jonas and his sister-in-law got on well, but she and Anna were ver
y different. Anna …”
Unexpectedly, she leaned across the table and held her hands out with palms turned down and fingers slightly splayed.
“You should have seen her hands,” she said in an undertone. “They were dry and sore … she had been scouring and scrubbing. It’s entirely possibly that at that time she had developed some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder.”
Henrik quickly pushed both hands under his thighs.
“I can’t be sure,” Herdis Brattbakk said, with a sigh. “As I told you, she never came back.”
“Were you not afraid she would … injure herself?”
“She had already done that!”
For the first time Henrik could detect a trace of irritation in her voice.
“It was obvious that she shouldn’t dispose of everything that reminded her of Dina. Everything that reminded her of what her life had been when it was good to be alive, even long before she had her daughter. When she left, I caught myself fearing the moment when everything was gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was afraid of what she would do when she had finished. When there was nothing left to eliminate. From what I’d understood, it was quite a slow process, getting rid of her dearest possessions, so it might take some time. But what would she do when everything was gone?”
She opened her arms wide as she asked the question.
Henrik did not answer.
“Why didn’t you raise the alarm?” he asked instead.
“With whom? Her family? She really had nobody, as the situation had evolved, and I couldn’t see any reason to initiate involuntary hospitalization. I offered her help to find a voluntary place. I think I recall mentioning the Modum Bad clinic. Just for some breathing space. She rejected it out of hand.”
“But when she died … did you never think that it might have been suicide and that Jonas was innocent? Didn’t you ever consider speaking up about it?”
For the first time, Herdis Brattbakk looked at him in disapproval. “But my dear, I had no reason to do so. It said in the newspapers that it was a case of murder. And with an obvious perpetrator!”
