by Anne Holt
‘You know. Those miscarriages. Ellen and Jon seemed completely...completely obsessed with having children. I once suggested adoption. It must have been after the second miscarriage. Ellen was totally exhausted. Jon was furious.’
‘Really? Furious?’
‘Extremely brusque, at least. It seemed as if this was a debate they had already had, and he had won. Ellen would not have minded adopting. I’m sure of that. She is after all my daughter, and I know her.’
If only you knew how little we mothers actually do know about our children, Johanne thought.
‘Yes,’ she said, dropping the crumbs on to her own plate.
‘After miscarriage number three, I almost didn’t recognize her. That was around the time she sold her practice. It’s not healthy, you know, for an adult woman in the prime of life, in perfect health, to go about with nothing to do. She went completely crazy, especially when they began to travel backwards and forwards to that fertility clinic in Finland and she was stuffed full of hormones.’
‘Why was it that she sold her dental practice?’
It dawned on Johanne that she had never in fact asked Ellen for the reason; it had just been announced during a toast at a dinner party many years before. Ellen and Jon had both voiced the opinion that it would be a liberation, and in addition a good chunk of money had been realized from the sale.
‘It was Jon’s idea,’ Agnes Krogh said. ‘It seemed as if he wanted to have control of Ellen all the time. When all was said and done, he couldn’t stand her being independent of him. He would hardly have been able to afford that house in Glads vei on his own, but then it’s also needlessly large. When she sold the practice, she became... She became his, in a sense. Do you understand?’
Johanne nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘But then Ellen finally got pregnant. At long last.’
Agnes’ eyes grew distant.
‘Everyone was so happy. Jon and Ellen, and us. The pregnancy was straightforward and easy, Ellen barely even suffered from nausea. No pelvic complications, despite her stomach being so enormous. He weighed nearly five kilos, Sander, when he was born. Did you know that?’
Johanne had no inkling of how large he had been, since the first time she had seen him, he had already been six months old. She nodded.
‘It was after he was born that everything became so terribly difficult again,’ Agnes continued. ‘Sander was so...wide-awake!’
She smiled fleetingly and tucked her hair behind one ear, before raising her coffee cup.
‘He slept very little. Incredibly little. Both Torbjørn and I tried to ease the burden, but we were both working at that time and there were limits to how much we could help out. Helga, Jon’s mother, was also helpful, I know, but at her age everything gets so difficult. She’s twenty years older than me, you see.’
‘Lots of babies are exhausting,’ Johanne said. ‘Do you mean that Sander was different even then?’
Agnes seemed to reflect on the question. She held the cup in front of her mouth without drinking, and her eyes narrowed.
‘Yes. I would say so, in fact. Even though I’ve only had one child myself, I am after all a nurse. I read up a great deal about sleep problems at that time and came to the conclusion that Sander was abnormally difficult. It probably didn’t help that they tried one course of treatment after another, and the boy got quite confused.’
‘And Ellen became worn out.’
‘Yes. Jon too, I believe, I’ll give him that, but at that time it became quite clear how advantageous it was for him that Ellen was no longer in paid work. He often slept in the guest bedroom, I think.’
‘When did it actually stop, then?’
‘To tell the truth, never. Admittedly, from the age of one Sander began to sleep through the night, and that was a major step forward. But it was a song and dance getting him to settle.’
Her stoical laugh made Johanne smile.
‘Jon really tried to tire him out before bedtime,’ Agnes went on. ‘They played games and caused mayhem. Without it being any help at all. Sometimes there was only one thing to do, and that was to put him in the car and drive around until he fell asleep. Carrying him in again without waking him became a real art. And eventually Jon got really good at it.’
‘Later, then?’
Agnes put down her cup and pushed the plate away.
‘The strange thing was that he behaved fairly well when he was at our house. We sometimes had him at weekends. He was always restless and lacked concentration, right up until...’
Again her eyes filled with tears.
‘Until we weren’t allowed to see him any longer,’ she said softly. ‘But there were a few tricks we learned eventually.’
‘Yes? What sort of thing?’
‘Such as letting him draw before he went to bed. He’s amazingly good at drawing. Was, I mean. Earlier. I don’t really know...’
‘He was always fond of drawing,’ Johanne said. ‘All over the place, I have the impression. Extremely good at it, too, from what little I saw.’
She pictured in her mind’s eye the faint, painted-over outlines of cars on the ceiling in Sander’s bedroom. They were more detailed and far better proportioned than anything either of her children would have succeeded in producing.
‘And then this business of soft toys,’ Agnes said. ‘For some reason they took away his teddy bear when he was three years old. They had got it into their heads that boys shouldn’t have that sort of thing for very long. Of course that’s sheer nonsense, isn’t it? At out house he had a brown rabbit that he loved. If he was allowed to draw for an hour, with the strict instruction that it would be time to say night-night immediately afterwards, and then he was allowed to sleep with Burre, he was actually pretty good.’
‘A disagreement about cuddly toys could hardly lead to such a dramatic break as the one between you and Ellen,’ Johanne commented.
‘No. There was more. After a while. We began to notice that Sander sometimes came to us with minor...’
She hesitated, as if she did not quite know what word she should use.
‘Injuries,’ she eventually decided upon.
Johanne did not speak in the ensuing silence.
‘A black eye,’ Agnes went on, after what seemed like an eternity. ‘A swelling here, a bruise on his arm or leg there. Sometimes minor burns. Nothing very serious, and at the start we didn’t stop to consider it. He’s so active, Sander, you know that yourself. We didn’t have much experience with boys before that, and even though the ADHD diagnosis hadn’t yet been made, we realized he was an unusually active boy.’
Jack had plumped down between them under the table, his snout resting on Johanne’s foot. He must have eaten something that had not agreed with him, because the smell he gave off at irregular intervals soon became intolerable.
‘Sorry about the dog,’ Johanne said as she went to open the nearest window. ‘He’s old now. An old man. Jack, go and lie down in the bedroom. Bedroom!’
This was the only command he ever obeyed. It involved free access to the prohibited bed, and he stood up and padded across the floor, his tail low and wagging.
‘Did you mention this to Ellen?’ Johanne asked as she sat down again.
‘No. Not until some time had passed. Quite simply, the idea that something might be seriously wrong didn’t cross our minds at all. That Sander, our own grandchild, could be... Who on earth imagines such things?’
Flinging out her hands expressively, she stared at Johanne.
No reply was forthcoming. She sighed and continued: ‘But eventually he didn’t want to go home. After staying at our house, I mean. At weekends. Sometimes we had him to stay during the week as well, and he was keen to go to nursery. But on a Sunday evening, after staying with us all weekend, he seemed clearly unhappy about leaving.’
‘It’s not unusual for children to thoroughly enjoy being with their grandparents,’ Johanne said, with a hint of a smile. ‘Ragnhild sometimes makes a real hullabaloo if
she’s had an extra-specially fun time at my mother’s. Not so long ago she squealed like a stuck pig all the way home because I had to collect her before she and her granny had finished a big jigsaw puzzle.’
Agnes did not return the smile.
‘I think I know enough about children to separate the wheat from the chaff here.’
‘Of course.’
‘This was something completely different. I believe he refused to go home because he was afraid of something. Of... ill-treatment! There you are. Now I’ve said it.’
Johanne felt a growing irritation she could not quite explain. She automatically believed this was a reaction to Agnes’ pleading demeanour, her beseeching eyes, the short interposed questions to assure herself that Johanne agreed with everything she said. Now she realized that she simply disliked the entire situation. Agnes could hardly be regarded as impartial in her assessment of Ellen, and certainly not of Jon. Their falling-out three years earlier had been total and, regardless of the cause, she could not in any way believe that Ellen had not had good reason for it. The meeting with Agnes had seemed a convivial occasion, even in the knowledge that she was weighed down by a terrible suspicion. In all probability it was unjustified, and Johanne had thought in advance that she would be able to comfort Agnes. Reassure her that Sander had been happy and that his death was a tragic event for which no individual bore responsibility.
She had been open-minded about listening to the older woman’s concerns, but this was beginning to look like mudslinging.
‘I appreciate you’re shattered about all that’s happened,’ she said. ‘Ellen and Jon are, too. I think, all the same, it’s a bit churlish to come out with such accusations. If you were so worried, why on earth didn’t you raise the alarm at the time? What’s the purpose of coming out with these assertions now, when Sander is dead? You haven’t even the foggiest notion of what kind of life he’s led for the past few years!’
Johanne was aware her voice was too loud. She was angry and tried to take the sting out of her impetuous flare-up by pushing the plate of dry biscuits closer to her guest.
‘Help yourself.’
‘I’ll show you,’ Agnes said in a monotone.
‘What?’
Agnes produced a mobile phone from her handbag: a smartphone, one of the very earliest HTC models. Adam had owned one exactly like it, Johanne recollected, but that must have been several years ago.
‘We’ve kept this,’ Agnes said. ‘This is when Sander was being picked up, the last time he was at our house. This was what I showed Ellen, and it made her refuse to have anything more to do with either of us ever again.’
Her voice had completely lost its imploring softness. When she switched on the mobile phone and tapped her way to what Johanne assumed would be a photograph, her face had taken on a determined, almost imperious expression. Her lips were taut, and her jaw muscles betrayed that she was grinding her teeth in an even, pulsating rhythm.
‘Here,’ she said, proffering the phone across the table.
Johanne did not want to accept it.
‘Don’t you dare to look?’ Agnes asked her.
Reluctantly, Johanne took the phone.
Not a photograph. It was a video, and she heard it before she saw it: a boy screaming. When she held the phone, she realized that the images were even worse than the sounds. The quality of the footage was technically poor, and the images were jerky. The room where the drama unfolded was too dark, but somehow not dark enough.
This was not defiance and reluctance. At barely four years of age, Sander’s tantrum was aeons away from childish, tired recalcitrance, such as when Ragnhild at four refused to budge, in rage at not being allowed to do whatever she wanted.
This was anguish. When an adult silhouette finally grabbed the boy to convey him through a door and disappear, the film clip ended.
‘Do you believe me now?’ Agnes Krogh asked, at last helping herself to a biscuit that she did actually eat.
*
Henrik Holme was back in his original office. Two stacks of case folders towered on the left of the desk. On the right side lay a far smaller bundle of cases that he considered finalized. It had not grown much larger in the course of the day.
When he had embarked on his job as a summer temp, the traffic cases had been fairly amusing. People offered the most incredible excuses for having broken the traffic regulations. A few were furious at the thought of losing their driving licence, but most chose the opposite strategy. They grovelled and flattered, wept and snivelled; losing a driving licence was obviously worse than either jail or whopping fines, for the majority of them. Henrik Holme understood them well. He had grown up in a tiny village where there were hardly any bus connections. You felt like a kid dependent on your parents until the day you turned eighteen and the Vehicle Licensing Authority could declare you an adult.
Now he was bored.
The cases were actually all very similar. Besides, most of them pertained to very ordinary people. Accountants and teachers, plumbers and old folk who had difficulty reading signs.
Henrik Holme had no desire to work at something that made life unpleasant for ordinary people. He wanted to prosecute criminals. The short week he had spent sniffing around a real case had reminded him of why he had wanted to become a police officer in the first place. He wanted to maintain law and order and protect defenceless victims. When, at the age of twelve, he had decided he was going to become a detective, this was not what he had envisaged.
Disheartened, he opened another folder.
A fifty-four-year-old man caught by an average-speed camera on the E6 near Alnabru doing 147 kilometres an hour. That was pretty crass, Henrik thought, and turned to his computer to type out a summons for interview. The man would have to serve time, for a violation like that.
The landline phone rang. Henrik stared at it for a moment before lifting the receiver. He cleared his throat and tried to deepen his voice.
‘Police Constable Holme here!’
‘Hello,’ the voice said at the other end. ‘My name’s Elin Foss. You asked me to contact you.’
It immediately dawned on Henrik that this was Sander’s assistant at school. There was a faint echo on the line, and a reedy, whistling sound beneath her words.
‘Yes! Er... You sound very far away.’
‘I am. I’m in Australia. Sorry I haven’t called before, but I wanted to wait until I could phone from a landline at a friend’s house. I’m on holiday, and it’s so expensive to use the mobile phone and...’
Her voice vanished in a series of scratching sounds.
‘Hello?’
‘I’m here,’ she almost shouted. ‘You said it was to do with Sander Mohr. What’s wrong with him?’
Henrik did not entirely know how to answer. In the message he had left on her voicemail after his visit to Haldis Grande, he had not mentioned that Sander was dead. It did not seem right to tell her that in a brief message. Elin Foss had been Sander’s assistant for several years and was probably fond of the boy. Strictly speaking, it was wrong of him to speak to her at all. He should direct her to the new investigator. Sander Mohr was no longer Henrik Holme’s case.
‘If you’re at a friend’s house, maybe you have access to broadband,’ he suggested in a loud voice.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Do you have a computer, and is Skype installed?’
‘Yes to both questions!’
There was a slight, but annoying, delay on the line.
‘Can I have your Skype name and then can you log on? I think that would be easier for us both.’
‘Elinfossecall,’ she said, spelling it out twice.
Henrik put down the receiver and opened his own personal laptop. It took them two minutes to make contact. Elin Foss was very different from how he had imagined her.
‘Hi,’ he said meekly.
‘Hi there!’ the woman replied.
Henrik Holme envisaged classroom assistants as young and unskilled. The fact that
she was on a round-trip to Australia had reinforced his mental picture of Elin Foss as being in her twenties, with hair dyed black, maybe a piercing on her nose and a tattoo on her neck.
‘I’m a bit anxious to hear what this is all about,’ she said, smiling directly into the camera. ‘It’s not very often that I’m in contact with the police!’
Her pepper-and-salt hair was drawn up into a kind of bun. It was difficult to say for definite, because he could only see her from the front. She was slim and cheerful, and in any case over fifty. Perhaps even older. The image quality was not of the best, but he thought he could detect a few indications that she was getting on in years. Her nose was narrow, rather crooked and so pointed that the shadow cast by the lamp at her side bisected the bridge of her nose like a knife. She was wearing a pink vest, and Henrik could discern a certain slackness under her upper arms. In any case, she was remarkably suntanned, and the skin on her throat, all the way down to the deep scooped neck of her top, was uneven and covered in age spots.
‘Isn’t it winter in Australia?’ he asked.
‘I’m in Cooktown,’ she said, smiling. ‘In the north. To us Norwegians, it’s high summer.’
She suddenly touched her mouth with a narrow hand, showing her short nails.
‘Does this have anything to do with the terrorist attack? I’ve had text messages from all of my family, and I don’t think I know anyone who—’
Her eyes grew even larger as she leaned towards the camera.
‘No, not that,’ Henrik rushed to say. ‘Certainly not!’
She dropped her hand and sighed audibly.
‘As I said, it’s to do with Sander Mohr,’ Henrik went on. ‘He’s dead.’
Elin Foss did not react. Not at all. She sat completely still, staring into the camera, and her smile of relief did not diminish.
‘Are you there?’ Henrik asked, waving his hand feebly in front of his own camera.
‘What did you say?’
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes. But what did you say before that?’
‘Sander Mohr is dead.’
She still sat without moving a muscle, as if the picture had frozen. Henrik was about to check the connection yet again when she put both hands in front of her face.
