by Anne Holt
A sudden burst of hail rattled against the roof of the car. The noise was deafening. Adam took advantage of the pause in the conversation to start the car and turn the heating on full. He hadn’t really paid much attention to how the handbrake worked when the man at Avis was trying to explain, so he sat there with his foot on the brake pedal and the car in neutral.
‘Lukas, I have no intention of …’
Lukas snivelled and half-turned in the cramped seat.
‘I have no intention of handling you with kid gloves any more, OK?’ He looked the other man straight in the eye. ‘You’re an adult, a well-educated father of three children. It’s a little while now since your mother died. To be perfectly honest, I’m getting rather tired of the fact that you won’t answer my questions.’
‘But I’ve answered everything you’ve—’
‘Shut up!’ Adam snapped, leaning towards him. ‘A great deal has been said about my patience, Lukas. Some people say I’m too nice. Too nice for my own good, they sometimes maintain. But if you think for one moment that I’m going to let you leave here before you’ve explained to me what that performance up on the roof was all about, then you’re wrong. Completely, totally and utterly bloody wrong.’
The windows steamed up. Lukas didn’t speak.
‘What were you doing on the roof ?’ Adam persisted.
‘I was coming down from the attic.’
Adam banged his fists on the steering wheel so hard that it shook.
‘What the hell were you doing in the attic, and why couldn’t you come down the stairs like a normal person?’
‘This has nothing to do with my mother’s death,’ Lukas mumbled, looking away. ‘It’s to do with something else. Something … personal.’
His teeth had begun to chatter, and he wrapped his arms around his body.
‘I’ll decide whether it’s personal or not,’ Adam hissed. ‘And you have exactly twenty seconds from now to come up with some satisfactory answers. Otherwise I promise you I’ll bloody well lock you up until you start cooperating.’
Lukas stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and something that was beginning to resemble fear.
‘I was looking for something,’ he whispered almost inaudibly.
‘What?’
‘Something quite … something that …’
He put his face in his hands.
‘A photo,’ said Adam. It was more of a statement than a question. ‘A photograph.’
Lukas stopped breathing.
‘The one that was in your mother’s bedroom,’ said Adam. ‘The one that was there when I came to see you the day after the murder, but then disappeared.’
The shower of hail had turned into torrential rain, huge drops exploding against the windscreen. The world outside the car was blurred and undefined. It was as if they were sitting inside a cocoon, and Adam could feel the unfamiliar, peculiar fury ebbing away as quickly as it had come.
‘How did you know?’ asked Lukas, his hands dropping to his knee.
‘I didn’t know. I guessed. Did you find it?’
‘No.’
Adam sighed and tried once more to find a comfortable sitting position in which he could relax.
‘Who is the photo of ?’
‘I don’t know. Honestly. I really don’t know.’
‘But you have a theory,’ said Adam.
Once again silence fell. A car came towards them, its headlights transforming the windscreen into a kaleidoscope of yellow and pale grey, before leaving the interior in semi-darkness once more.
Lukas didn’t speak.
‘I’m perfectly serious,’ Adam said quietly. ‘I will do everything in my power to make life difficult for you unless you start communicating right now.’
‘I think I might have a sister somewhere. The photograph might be of my sister. My older sister.’
A child, thought Adam. The same idea had occurred to him several days ago.
A child that had disappeared. A child that perhaps hadn’t disappeared after all.
‘Thank you,’ he said almost inaudibly. ‘I just wish you’d found the photo.’
‘But I didn’t. Presumably my father got rid of it. What would you have done with it? If I’d found it, I mean?’
Adam smiled for the first time since Lukas came down from the roof. He ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head slightly.
‘If we had a photograph, Lukas, we’d find your sister in no time. If she’s still alive, and doesn’t live too far from Norway. If she is your sister, that is. We don’t know. We don’t know whether that photograph has anything whatsoever to do with the murder of your mother. But I can assure you that I would have devoted some time to finding out!’
‘But what would you … ? How could you use an anonymous photograph to … ?’
‘We have huge databases. Comprehensive computer programs. And if all the technology in the world wasn’t enough, then …’
The foot on the brake pedal was going to sleep, so he put the car in first gear and switched off the engine.
‘If I had to knock on every door in Bergen myself, if I had to put up posters with my own hands all over the country, ring round every single TV station and newspaper, I would find her. You can rest assured of that.’
Lukas nodded.
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I thought you’d say. Can I go now? My car’s parked just up the road.’
Adam’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Lukas.
‘Yes. But don’t forget what I’ve said to you today. From now on it’s zero tolerance as far as I’m concerned when it comes to keeping secrets. OK?’
‘OK,’ Lukas nodded, opening the door. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Once outside the car, he turned and leaned in.
‘Thank you for not saying anything to my father,’ he said.
‘No problem,’ said Adam, waving as he started the engine, indicated and pulled away.
Lukas scurried to his own car, keeping one hand on his stomach where he could feel the outline of a photograph he had no intention of sharing with anyone.
Not yet, anyway.
*
‘School isn’t over yet,’ said Kristiane for at least the fiftieth time when they eventually got home. ‘School isn’t over yet.’
‘No,’ Johanne said calmly. ‘But I want to talk to you about something really important, sweetheart. That’s why I had to pick you up early today.’
‘School isn’t over yet,’ Kristiane repeated, walking up the stairs like a mechanical doll. ‘School finishes at four o’clock, and then I’m going to Daddy’s. I’m staying at Daddy’s today. School finishes at four o’clock.’
Johanne followed her without saying any more. Only when they were in the living room did she spread her hands encouragingly and confess: ‘We’re going to have a duvet day today, Kristiane! Just the two of us! Would you like some hot chocolate with whipped cream?’
‘Dam-di-rum-ram,’ said Kristiane as she slowly began rocking from side to side on the sofa.
Johanne went over to her daughter and sat down beside her. She pulled Kristiane’s sweater and vest out of the waistband of her trousers and allowed her fingers to dance gently over her daughter’s slender young back. Kristiane smiled and lay down across her knee. They sat there for several minutes until Kristiane began to sing a folk song.
‘Bind deg ein blomekrans, kom so til leik og dans, fela ho let no så vakkert i lund.’
‘That’s a lovely song,’ whispered Johanne.
‘Sit ikkje stur og tung, syn at du óg er ung …’
Kristiane stopped singing.
‘A lovely spring song,’ Johanne said. ‘A spring song in January. What a clever girl you are.’
‘If you sing about the spring, it will come.’
Kristiane’s laughter was as fragile as glass. Johanne ran her forefinger along the contours of her spine, all the way down from the nape of her neck.
‘That tickles,’ Kris
tiane smiled.
‘Do it again.’ ‘Do you remember Aunt Marie’s wedding?’
‘Of course. Where’s Sulamit, anyway?’
‘Sulamit was worn out, sweetheart. You remember that, don’t you?’
When she was one year old, Kristiane had been given a little red fire engine. She decided it was actually a cat, and called it Sulamit. It had been her faithful companion for more than eight years. The wheels had fallen off one by one, the colours had faded. The ladder on the roof was long gone. The eyes on the headlights were blind, and little Sulamit looked like neither a fire engine nor a cat when Adam reversed over it by mistake on the drive one day.
Kristiane had been inconsolable.
‘Sulamit was a wonderful cat,’ she said now. ‘Can I have another cat, Mum?’
‘But we’ve got Jack,’ said Johanne. ‘He’s not all that keen on cats, as you well know.’
‘I am the invisible child,’ said Kristiane.
Johanne’s fingers hovered like butterflies over the thin skin on her back.
‘Sometimes no one can see me.’
‘When?’ whispered Johanne.
‘Sulamit, sulamat, sulatullamit on the mat.’
‘Was it at Marie’s wedding that no one could see you?’
‘More. Tickle more, Mum.’
‘Did you see anyone? Even if they couldn’t see you?’
Johanne was desperately trying to remember what Kristiane had actually said that night at the hotel, when she herself had been terrified, furious and in no state to take in anything at all.
‘A lady was murdered there,’ said Kristiane, suddenly sitting up next to her mother. ‘Marianne Kleive. Nursery school teacher. Married to the noted award-winning documentary film-maker Synnøve Hessel! Women can marry each other in Norway. So can men.’
Her voice had suddenly reverted to a monotonous chant.
‘You read too many newspapers,’ smiled Johanne, putting her arm around her daughter and drawing her close.
‘Dearly loved, sadly missed.’
‘Have you started reading the death notices?’
‘A cross means the dead person was a Christian. A Star of David means the deceased was Jewish. What does the bird mean, Mum?’
At last Kristiane’s eyes met her mother’s gaze for a fleeting moment.
‘That you hope the dead person will rest in peace,’ Johanne whispered.
‘I want a bird in my death notice.’
‘You’re not going to die.’
‘I’m going to die one day.’
‘We’re all going to die one day.’
‘You too, Mum.’
‘Yes, me too. But not for a long time.’
‘You can’t know that.’
Silence. They were only whispering, sitting close together on the sofa, Johanne with her arm around the slender fourteen-year-old like a safety belt as the daylight poured in across the living-room floor, almost dazzling them. She could feel the budding breasts, the unavoidable signs that Kristiane, too, would become an adult, even if puberty had come late.
‘No,’ Johanne said eventually. ‘I can’t know that. But I don’t think it will happen for a long time. I’m healthy, Kristiane, and not so very old. Have you ever seen a dead person?’
‘You’ll die before me, Mum.’
‘I hope I do. No parent wants their child to die before them.’
‘Who will look after me when you die?’
Johanne had been asking herself that same question, over and over again, ever since Kristiane was just a few hours old, and Johanne was the only one who realized there was something wrong with her child.
‘You’ll be an adult by then, sweetheart. You’ll be able to look after yourself.’
‘I’ll never be able to look after myself. I’m not like other children. I go to a special school. I’m autistic.’
‘You’re not autistic, you’re …’
Johanne quickly sat up straight and placed her hand beneath Kristiane’s chin.
‘You’re not like other children. That’s quite true. You are just yourself. And I love you so much, just for being you. And you know what, Kristiane?’
Kristiane responded to her smile, her eyes focusing on Johanne.
‘I’m not exactly like other people either. Actually, I think we all feel that way. None of us feels exactly like other people. And there will always be someone to look after you. Ragnhild, for example. And Amund, too. He’s your nephew, after all!’
Kristiane’s laughter was brittle and as clear as a bell.
‘They’re younger than me!’
‘Yes, but by the time I die they’ll be grown up. And then they can look after you.’
‘I’ve seen a dead person. The soul weighs twenty-one grams. But you can’t see it leaving.’
Johanne said nothing. She still had her hand under Kristiane’s chin, but her daughter’s gaze was turned inward again, focused on a place no one else could reach, and her voice was expressionless and mechanical once more as she went on: ‘Marianne Kleive, forty-two years old, died 19 December 2008. Bishop Eva Karin Lysgaard, dearly loved, sadly missed, unexpectedly taken from us on Christmas Eve 2008. Funeral arrangements to be notified at a later date. The cross means she was a Christian.’
‘Stop,’ Johanne whispered, quickly drawing the girl close. ‘Stop now.’
It was exactly twelve o’clock, and a cloud drifted across the unforgiving January sun. A pleasant darkness filled the living room. Johanne closed her eyes as she held her daughter tightly, rocking her from side to side.
‘I am the invisible child,’ Kristiane whispered.
Fear
Perhaps he should never have had children.
The very thought made the acid in his stomach eat away at his duodenum. He drew up his knees and placed both hands on the spot where in his younger days he had been able to feel the end of his ribs and the beginning of his stomach. Now it was all just one soft mass, in spite of the fact that he was lying on his back: a flabby belly that was far too big, with a stabbing pain deep inside a layer of fat.
Marcus Koll’s entire life revolved around his son.
His work, his company, his extended family – it was all meaningless without little Marcus. When Rolf came into their lives they were already a twosome, but the three of them soon became a family, and Marcus would do anything to protect that family. But the boy remained the very hub of Marcus Koll’s family wheel.
Little Marcus quickly accepted Rolf, and the love was mutual. After a while Rolf had tentatively raised the question of whether he might adopt his stepson.
As time went by, he dropped the subject.
Marcus had never told anyone about the dreams he used to have when he was young.
He wanted children.
He had been a strong boy; breaking with his father had taken real courage. It had cost him surprisingly little to come out as what and who he was. As a teenager his wilfulness could sometimes make him appear stubborn, but as an adult he became cleverer and more skilful. His obstinacy turned into purposefulness. Arrogance turned into pride. He took the sting out of his unconventional inclination with self-irony, and had never felt the need to seek out the gay haunts he knew existed in both Bergen, where he attended business college, and in Oslo when he returned home after completing his studies. On the contrary, he had always regarded seduction as a challenge. Until he met Rolf, he had seduced only heterosexual men. He was quietly proud of the fact that before him they had slept only with women. He wasn’t quite so thrilled when they then returned to their straight lives.
Marcus Koll Junior hadn’t exactly been a typical gay man of his time.
In addition, he wanted a child more than anything. His only sorrow – when, aged sixteen or seventeen, he had decided to stop pretending to be something he was not – was that the future would not bring him any offspring. He had never shared this sorrow with anyone, although his mother had been aware of it in the way that mothers can sometimes read their child better
than the child himself. But they had never talked about that little empty space in Marcus’s heart: the lack of a child of his own to love.
However, for many years Marcus Koll had been a contented young man anyway.
Things went well for him, and he never felt that his sexuality was being used against him, neither professionally nor among friends and colleagues. For a long time he served as their politically correct alibi. During the late eighties and early nineties, open homosexuality was not at all common, and his presence in the lives of other people somehow gave them something to show off about.
He was so happy with his life that he didn’t even notice he was starting to burn out. He became so popular that he didn’t realize he was putting too much energy into dealing with his status as an outsider. In the entirely heterosexual life he was leading – with the minor difference that he went to bed with men without lying about it – his soul slowly crumbled until he collapsed with exhaustion; he hadn’t even seen it coming.
Then his friends started to have children.
Marcus Koll wanted children, too.
He had always wanted children.
He made the decision.
When he travelled to California to sign a contract with a surrogate mother and egg donor, he had recently taken over the running of his father’s old company. The future lay before him. He had been blessed with money, and was able to explain away his frequent visits to America over the following year as essential business trips.
One evening in late January 2001 he had simply turned up at his mother’s apartment with the boy in his arms. As soon as she opened the door she understood everything, and burst into tears. Gently, she took her new grandchild, held him close to her breast and carried him into the spacious apartment which her children had bought her when they suddenly became wealthy. She had never quite got used to the apartment, but when Marcus arrived with the child she sat down right in the middle of the sumptuous sofa that no one had ever used. With her nose against the boy’s cheek she whispered almost inaudibly: ‘Grandma’s home, little one. Grandma’s home at last. And you’re at home with Grandma.’
