by Anne Holt
“What’s your business with that case?”
A more guarded and considerably more mature tone had crept into his voice. Hanne imagined she heard a mechanical click. She quickly grabbed a pen and Post-it block from the basket beneath her seat and wrote REMEMBER HE IS TAPING THIS on a note. She attached it to the worktop in front of her.
“Naturally, I can’t tell you that,” she said, unruffled. “However, it has to do with something quite peripheral. If you don’t have time to talk, then I can wait till another time. If you don’t want to answer my questions, then of course that’s okay too.”
The man at the other end hesitated. “What did you want to know?” he finally asked.
“Just a tiny detail. The way I read the article, you claimed that Kari Thue and Iselin Havørn were close friends. How do you know that?”
She could hear that he was smiling.
“I think you’re well aware that I can’t answer that,” he said. “And this conversation’s going to be a bit flat if we’re to answer each other’s questions by saying that we can’t answer. Let’s do a fair exchange.”
“No.”
“Yes, let’s. You tell me what interest a member of Police Chief Sørensen’s little supergroup has in Iselin Havørn’s suicide. In exchange I can give you some more meat on the bone with reference to the relationship between Thue and Havørn.”
“Was there a relationship?”
Now he laughed aloud. “Something for something, Wilhelmsen. You first.”
“Iselin Havørn was married. Do you mean she was unfaithful?”
“I can answer that as soon as you have … wait a minute.”
It sounded as if he had dropped his phone. In the background she could hear voices all speaking at once, and hurried footsteps that disappeared into the distance. After more rasping and scraping, Dag Beddington was back on the line.
“Hello?” he said breathlessly.
“I’m still here.”
“Sorry, but I have to run. It seems a child’s been kidnapped. Properly kidnapped, I mean. By a stranger, seemingly. From a kindergarten in the city center. Phone me later if you want to swap information about Iselin Havørn.”
The phone was suddenly silent.
“A kidnapping?” Hanne murmured, opening her laptop. At present it told her nothing.
If only Henrik Holme had been here, she thought in desperation, then I could have sent him to see Kari Thue. If there was anyone in existence that Hanne could palm off on the old crow in the hope of getting something out of her, then he was the one.
But she hadn’t heard a word from him in three days, and it was Hanne’s own fault.
FRIDAY JANUARY 22, 2016
He had never seen anyone so like Dina.
Hedda had the same heart-shaped face. The tiny mouth with a distinct Cupid’s bow and winter-dry lips. The blue eyes and blond lashes that Anna had often said Dina had inherited from him, and that would cost her a fortune in mascara when that time came.
Jonas had loved those lashes: long and curled and almost white at the tips. Little giraffe, he had often called her, and she gave him butterfly kisses with her eyelashes on his cheekbones if he asked nicely.
Hedda didn’t even know what a butterfly kiss was.
She had screamed like a banshee for roughly three hours. In the car on the way home. While he carried her from the Golf, parked as close to the front door as possible to minimize the risk of anyone hearing her howls. On the settee where he laid her. At the table when he served her porridge just the way Dina had loved it, lightly cooked oats in a mixture of milk and apple juice with a pinch of cinnamon.
Cinnamon was not good for small children, he knew that, but after all it was just a tiny amount. And it was delicious. He had eaten a generous helping himself while Hedda sat yelling on the opposite side of the little dining table by the window nearest to the kitchen sink. The wee girl didn’t want any. She just shrieked.
For Grampa and Mummy.
Mostly for Grampa.
He let her scream.
Dina could also be headstrong. Jonas’s mother always said that it was simply a matter of treating them like dogs: ignore them until they find out it’s not in their interest to behave like that. Anna had been shocked and pointed out that Dina was not a Dalmatian pup.
Jonas missed his mother: he had realized this for the very first time as he ate the porridge and put up with Hedda’s ear-splitting screams. His father had died in a work accident in the North Sea when Jonas was barely eight years old, and it had always been him and his mother. She died just prior to his release from prison. He was given permission to attend the funeral, but turned it down. She had visited him only once in all the time he’d been inside, and that was immediately after sentence was passed. She had been fairly measured and in fact had only come to inform him of her intention to spend everything she possessed. By the time he was released, her estate would be drained dry. Since she had recently received a serious cancer diagnosis, she would speed up her spending plans. “Inter vivos disposition,” she had declared triumphantly, and left him without as much as a farewell handshake. His lawyer had advised him to go for the jugular with his mother, as he did at least have rights to a share of his paternal inheritance, but Jonas had given up long ago.
His mother had always been cool and practical.
Before Jonas was convicted of killing his wife, though, his mother had never been nasty. Cynical perhaps, which meant she had a tendency to be ironic. To be sarcastic, even. Jonas had never had anything against that, really. His mother was self-controlled, always restrained. She approached every difficulty as an arithmetical problem; there was always a solution. When Dina died, though, she had been really distraught, and had wept at the funeral. Jonas had never witnessed anything like that before.
His mother would have known what he should do.
As for himself, he was feeling terribly worn out by all this shrieking. Dina had never been as bad as this.
Then she had never been kidnapped either.
In the end Hedda had given in. She had eaten a portion of cold porridge, drunk two glasses of milk and begun to draw cephalopods on the sheets of paper he gave her. He had no crayons, but he had offered her pencils and a red marker.
The night had passed surprisingly well. He had locked all the doors and propped chairs against them. Not because he was afraid anyone would break in, but because the little girl must not under any circumstances escape from the house at the edge of the woods. She had to sleep in his bed, and to be on the safe side he had wound string between the bedroom door handle and a hook on the wall where a mirror had once hung.
She took only three minutes to fall asleep at half past nine that evening, thoroughly exhausted. Before she was put into one of Jonas’s old T-shirts and a diaper he had found in the undercarriage of the sport buggy, she had been bathed in the tub in the old dining room.
She had not cried then and was uncomplaining when he carried her in to sleep.
When he was certain that she had journeyed far enough into the Land of Nod, he had risked sitting up in bed to check the Internet. He built a wall beside the little girl with pillows and part of Hedda’s quilt so that the bluish glow from the screen would not disturb her. Within three minutes he had ascertained what he had assumed in advance: Hedda’s disappearance was front-page news everywhere.
He took no time to fall asleep.
Now morning had come.
The alarm clock’s powder-blue numbers showed 05.10. Several seconds passed before it occurred to him that he was not alone. He carefully removed the downy wall between him and Hedda. Her mouth was open, and behind her eyelids he saw fast, flickering movements. She was dreaming. She was so beautiful it was difficult to restrain himself from stroking her cheek. She had perspired a little, and the hair on one side of her head was glued to her cheek. Maybe it was just drool.
The all-enveloping, pleasant emptiness was leaving him.
Now he was engulfed by a gnawing anxie
ty. Not for having stolen Hedda. Stealing Hedda was important and right. He had made a simple plan, he had executed it, and luck had been on his side. It was part two of the plan that was making him nervous. He had to accomplish something he had never had to do before. It was only a question of time before he was arrested, he was sure of that. So sure that he had looked out what he would need if police came to the door as early as tonight.
Everything was ready in the drawer of the bedside cabinet.
It did not matter if they caught him. Nothing meant anything at all apart from this one thing: Bengt Bengtson would never see his granddaughter again. It was his turn now, Jonas determined, unable to resist bending close to the little girl and kissing her soft cheek. With infinite caution: she was still asleep when Jonas silently rose to check the Internet before Hedda woke.
Henrik had studied the time line so often and for such prolonged periods that he was unable to sleep. The last time he looked at the clock, it showed twenty-five to one. Now it was only half past five, and it was still impossible to fall asleep again when he returned to bed after a visit to the toilet. He might as well get up.
The strips of gray paper were still displayed in the living room.
The centipede had acquired more feet, and Bonsaksen’s ring binder had been pieced together again so many times that he had decided it would be a good idea to make a copy set in the course of the day. That would take ages with his combined printer and photocopier. If he hurried, he could arrive so early at Police Headquarters that he could do it there without being seen. Anyway, he would have to show his face at work today. He was to deliver the violent crime statistics for Oslo Police District to Ulf Sandvik by twelve o’clock.
He cracked two eggs into a frying pan on low heat and took a quick shower while they cooked. His hair was still damp when, dressed in his outer clothes, he stood with an egg sandwich, gobbling his breakfast as he gave the time line one more perusal.
Anna’s sister had found her at around eleven on New Year’s Day. She had called the police at once. Apart from the fact that, in her horror at finding her sister on the floor and covered in blood, Benedicte had trampled through all the mess to check whether she was still alive, she had behaved in exemplary fashion. She had phoned 112 and given a good, if tearful, account. Thereafter she had stood quiet as a mouse outside the bathroom and not touched anything until the police arrived.
There was still nothing apart from the blasted tidiness to suggest anything other than that Jonas Abrahamsen had murdered his wife.
Maybe Anna was just an overly fastidious person. Maybe her depression had caused her to develop an obsessive-compulsive disorder, causing her to clean all the time. Who knew, it might be that the house at Stugguveien 2B was equally immaculate every single day, at every single hour of each day.
Kjell Bonsaksen could of course be mistaken. Jonas might well be guilty, as two sessions in court had convicted him and sent him to jail. The man had not even fought against it. Moreover, it was time to yield to the most obvious argument against a hopeless, flimsy theory: no gun had been found with which Anna Abrahamsen could have taken her own life.
Henrik made up his mind so unexpectedly that he dropped his egg on the floor. Leaving the mess, he wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve and bolted for the door. Bonsaksen’s ring binder was left behind on the coffee table.
Henrik Holme had decided to throw in the towel.
It was time to help Hanne Wilhelmsen. After all, she was the more experienced of the two, and he should have learned long ago that she was usually right.
To hell with Jonas Abrahamsen.
The pain was so severe that she had difficulty breathing. She had scratched her arms until they bled; it was as if a million ants were creeping around under her skin. A couple of times she had tried to look into Hedda’s room, but nausea overcame her as soon as she smelled her daughter’s sweet fragrance. The second time, she threw up.
Christel and her father had withdrawn into her bedroom. She could not stand any more of the police officers, clergyman and the couple from some crisis team or other who only made matters worse. Yesterday, when everything was chaotic and the unthinkable had happened, the police wanted them down at Grønland. Christel became hysterical. She was desperate to stay at home. To be where Hedda belonged and would probably turn up at any minute, since it might all be some sort of misunderstanding. Another parent, someone who had the same kind of pushchair and had made a mistake in a moment of stress. Or some kind of dare, a prank by high school students celebrating the end of the school year, and even though it was only January, perhaps things had changed since she was last at school. There could be umpteen reasons for Hedda’s disappearance, and no one was going to persuade Christel to set foot outside their apartment in Geitmyrsveien before this gruesome misunderstanding had been resolved.
It was now nineteen hours since Hedda had vanished.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that I never embark on an investigation with a theory in mind,” Hanne Wilhelmsen said, crunching her teeth into an apple.
“Probably a hundred,” Henrik replied. “But your thesis is undermined ever so slightly by the way you’ve become fixated on this particular case.”
He nodded in the direction of Iselin Havørn’s photograph.
They were seated in Hanne’s home office again. She had greeted him with a quiet hello when he had let himself in after sending a text message requesting to pay her a visit. As if nothing had happened. As if he had not left her in a rage on Monday and failed to get in touch with her ever since then. Henrik had steeled himself for a real showdown all the way through the city. His worries had obviously been a waste of time.
He really did not understand her.
“I’m not fixated,” she said with her mouth full of apple. “And I don’t have a theory. I know, Henrik, and knowing is something completely different. People like Iselin Havørn just don’t commit suicide, and I’m going to get to the bottom of what actually happened.”
Swallowing, she added: “We. You and I. We’re going to get to the bottom of what actually happened.”
With a sigh, Henrik turned his gaze to the flat screen on the wall opposite the Las Vegas painting. It was exactly two o’clock, and the story of the missing child was still the main news on every broadcast.
“But since that’s not your case,” he said, nodding at the screen, “then maybe you could think aloud?”
“Money,” she said tersely, dumping the apple core into the wastepaper basket. “Money’s the root of a lot of devilment, and it doesn’t seem entirely coincidental that the child vanished into thin air just a few days after her grandfather won three quarter billion on Lotto.”
“EuroJackpot,” Henrik corrected her before rushing to continue. “It’s the money angle they’re working on down at Headquarters, as far as I can gather both from the chat in the corridors and from what they’re saying in the media outlets. As a matter of fact, the grandfather seems more of a father to the child.”
“I think he has been, too. Or is, we should still say. Quite a vivacious sort, that daughter of his. Christel. A show-off name for someone who doesn’t really seem too much of a show-off. I had a look at her blog last night. She’s a go-getter, that girl.”
“She might not be so self-assured now,” Henrik muttered.
They sat watching the broadcast in silence.
There were still next to no traces of three-year-old Hedda Bengtson. Of course, that was not the impression the police were keen to give, but both Hanne and Henrik were so familiar with the coded language that they could follow what was going on. At a press conference three hours earlier, the Police Chief had provided so few facts and been so earnest in her plea for assistance from the public that Hanne practically felt sorry for her. The police could not say whether they were searching for one or several perpetrators. They would not answer as to whether the kidnappers had made contact, or if there was any truth in the persistent rumors that the abduction had
any connection with the huge prize the child’s grandfather had won only a week earlier.
“A child can’t just vanish into thin air,” Henrik exclaimed.
“No. Someone has taken her.”
“But surely that can’t be so easy? To break through a locked gate and help yourself, so to speak?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. It is as simple as that to steal a child in Norway. With five minutes at my disposal and mobility in my legs, I could walk out and bring three of them back to you. As a rule you don’t need to force your way through a gate. Getting away with it’s an entirely different matter. In the long term, I mean.”
“We can’t go on like this! They’ll have to introduce new rules and–”
“No,” Hanne cut in. “We have to keep things this way. Kindergartens are not fortresses, and neither should they be. Any society is vulnerable. They are built on trust. In a schoolyard or a kindergarten, the children can’t be under constant, unremitting surveillance. It has to be like this, unless we want to barricade ourselves. Sit behind locked doors and never venture outside.”
Just like you, was the thought that ran through Henrik’s mind, but he did not say anything.
A grave newsreader indicated that an extended news bulletin would be broadcast at four o’clock in the afternoon.
“That was dreadful,” Henrik said. “It’s awful that a child’s been stolen, but … an extended broadcast, eh?”
“This story has all the ingredients the media loves,” Hanne said, using the remote control to switch off the TV. “A gorgeous, successful and well-known mother. A defenseless little child disappears. An updated, traditional family structure with three generations living idyllically under the same roof. And staggering Lotto winnings that have possibly set the whole mischief in train. A real Lindberg scenario, this one.”
She slapped her hands lightly on the table. “But fortunately it’s not our case.”
