Authors: Anne Holt
She sat there leaning forward, her hands resting on the wheel. The adrenaline made her brain crystal-clear. She could plainly see how absurd it was to think anyone would be interested in watching a fourteen-year-old girl from Tåsen.
As soon as she put the car back in gear once more, she felt less worried.
*
‘You mustn’t worry because there isn’t enough to do,’ the secretary said sweetly, handing Kristen Faber a file. ‘If a client doesn’t turn up, it gives
you time to do so many other things. Tidying your desk, for example. It’s rather a mess in there.’
The solicitor grabbed the file and opened it as he headed for the door of his office. A miasma of sweat, aftershave and neat alcohol lingered in the air around the secretary’s desk. She opened a drawer and took out an air-freshener spray. Soon the smell of last night’s boozing mingled with the intense perfume of lily of the valley. She sniffed the air and pulled a face before putting away the aerosol.
‘Hasn’t he even called?’ shouted Kristen Faber, before a coughing fit saved her the trouble of replying. Instead she got to her feet, picked up a steaming cup of coffee from a low filing cabinet behind her and followed him into his office.
‘No,’ she said when he had finished spitting phlegm into an overflowing waste-paper basket. ‘I expect something came up. Here. Drink this.’
As Kristen Faber took the cup, he almost spilled the coffee.
‘This fear of flying is too bloody much,’ he muttered. ‘Had to drink all the way back from fucking Barbados.’
The secretary, a slim, pleasant woman in her sixties, could well imagine that there had been a great deal of fucking in Barbados. She also knew he hadn’t restricted his drinking to the duration of the flight.
She had worked for Kristen Faber for almost nine years. Just the two of them, plus one part-timer. On paper they shared the offices with three other solicitors, but the way the rooms were divided meant she could go for days without seeing the others. Faber’s office had its own entrance, reception and toilet. As his office was quite spacious, she rarely had to organize coffee and mineral water in the large conference room they all shared.
Twice a year, in July and at Christmas, Kristen Faber took a holiday. Along with a group from his university years – all men, all divorced and well off – he travelled to luxury destinations in order to behave as if he were still twenty-five. Apart from his financial position, of course. He came back in the same state every time. It took him a week to get back to normal, but then he didn’t touch a drop until it was time for the next trip with the lads. The secretary assumed he suffered from a particular type of alcoholism. But she could live with it.
‘Was the flight on time?’ she asked, mainly for something to say.
‘No. We landed at Gardermoen two hours ago, and if it hadn’t been for this appointment I would have gone home to have a shower and change my clothes. Fuck.’ He sipped at the black coffee. ‘Could I have a drop more, please? And I think you could postpone my two o’clock. I have to …’
He raised his arm and sniffed at his armpit. Salty sweat rings were clearly visible against the dark fabric of his suit. He recoiled.
‘Pooh! I have to go home!’
‘As you wish,’ said the secretary with a smile. ‘You have a client at three o’clock as well. Will you be back by then?’
‘Yes.’ He glanced at his watch and hesitated briefly. ‘I’ll tell you what. Postpone my two o’clock until half past, and then the three o’clock can wait a little while.’
She fetched the coffee pot and put down a little dish of chocolates. He was already busy leafing through some papers, and didn’t say thank you.
‘Bloody man,’ he mumbled, glancing over the documents in the thin file. ‘He was adamant he needed to see me as soon as I got back.’
The secretary didn’t reply, and went back to her own office.
This headache was killing him. He stuck his thumb in one eye and his index finger in the other. The pressure didn’t help at all. Nor did the coffee; the combination of caffeine and alcohol was giving him palpitations.
The tray containing ongoing cases was overflowing. When he put the latest file on top, it slid off and fell on the floor. He got up crossly and retrieved it. He thought for a moment, opened a drawer and slipped the file inside. Then he closed the drawer and left the room.
‘Shall I ring this … ?’ The secretary was looking at the diary over her half-moon glasses. ‘Niclas Winter,’ she went on. ‘To arrange another appointment, I mean. As you say, he did make an enormous fuss and—’
‘No. Wait until he rings us. I’ve got enough to do this week. If he can’t even be bothered to cancel, then tough.’
He picked up the large suitcase which he had thrown down when he arrived, and disappeared without closing the door behind him. He hadn’t asked his secretary one single question about how her
Christmas had been, visiting her children and grandchildren in Thailand. She sat there listening to his footsteps on the stairs. The suitcase bumped on every step. It sounded as if he had three legs and a limp.
Then, at last, there was silence.
*
The heavy snow muffled every sound. It was as if the peace of Christmas still lay over the area. Rolf Slettan had chosen to walk home from work, even though it took an hour and a half to get from the veterinary surgery on Skøyen to the house on Holmenkollen Ridge. The pavements were almost a metre deep in soft snow, and for the last two kilometres he had been forced to walk in the narrow track left in the middle of the road by the snowplough. The few cars that came slithering along from time to time forced him to clamber up on to the still-white mounds of snow at either side. He was breathing heavily, and soaked in sweat. Even so, he began to run when he reached the final stretch.
From a distance the house looked like a scene from a film about the Nazis. The white cap of snow hung down over the edges of the portico, partly hiding the rough-hewn text:
Home Sweet Home
. Thick drifts surrounded the courtyard, which would need clearing again in a few hours.
He stopped in the turning area outside the portico. Marcus probably wasn’t home yet. A layer of virgin snow some ten centimetres deep revealed that no one had come or gone for quite some time. Little Marcus had gone home with a classmate, and wouldn’t be back until about eight o’clock. The house was dark and silent, but several wrought-iron exterior lights provided a welcoming glow, making the snow sparkle. The turf roof was buried in snow. The dragons sticking out their tongues looked as if they might take off at any moment on their new white wings.
He was brushing the snow off his trouser legs when a tyre track caught his attention. A car had turned in and swung in a wide circle in front of the portico. It couldn’t have been long ago. Crouching down, he could still make out the tyre pattern. Someone had probably pulled in to give way to oncoming traffic, he thought. As he stood up he followed the marks down the drive and back to the road.
Strange.
He took a couple of steps – carefully, so as not to destroy the tracks. They quickly became less distinct. After another half-metre, they had almost completely disappeared. There was only the vaguest hint of a track leading all the way to the road.
Rolf turned and followed the tracks in the opposite direction, where they were just as clear as in the middle. With a sense of unease that he couldn’t really explain, he went back to the point where the tracks began, followed them carefully into the small courtyard and beyond until they blended with other tracks on the road. There was no snow piled up between the street and the house; Rolf and Marcus employed a company to clear the snow, and someone came along with a tractor twice a day. They must have come just after the snowplough.
He didn’t really understand what he was looking for. Suddenly he realized that the car must have stopped. It had been snowing for a long time, but the car must still have stood there for quite a while. The difference in the depth of the tracks was striking. He could tell from the width that it was a car, or at least not a lorry or anything bigger. It must have come from down below, pulled in and stayed there for a while. As it waited the snow had come whirling in behind the back wheels, but the tracks weren’t covered by quite as much snow where they were sheltered by the car.
Suddenly an engine started. He looked up and turned to face the slope just in time to see a car pulling away from the side of the road further up, from the bus stop right by the bend curving towards the east. The whirling snow and the gathering dusk made it impossible for him to read the number plate. Instinctively, he began to run. Before he had covered the fifty metres, the car had disappeared. Everything was silent once more. He could hear nothing but his own breathing as he crouched down to examine the tracks. Feather-light snowflakes danced in the air, covering a pattern he thought he recognized. Quickly he took out his mobile phone. It was so dark that the camera flash went off automatically.
‘Shit,’ he muttered, and ran back with the phone in his hand.
The quiet side road that wound its way upwards wasn’t a natural through route. The gardens were large, and the expensive houses were spread out and sheltered from onlookers. Recently there had been a
wave of break-ins around the area. Three of their neighbours had lost everything while they were away over Christmas, despite burglar alarms and a security company. The police believed they were dealing with professional thieves. Four weeks ago the family down at the bottom of the street had been the victims of a robbery. Three men had broken in during the night and taken the man of the house hostage. His nineteen-year-old son had been forced to drive to Majorstua with them in order to empty the family’s accounts with the four debit cards and three credit cards the attackers had got hold of by threatening the family and firing a shot at an expensive work of art.
The tracks by the portico were still quite clear. Rolf tried to hold his mobile at the same distance from the ground as he took another picture. He could upload them on to the computer and enlarge the pictures in order to compare them. As he was putting the phone in his pocket, he caught sight of a cigarette butt. It must have been covered by the snow, but had now become visible in one of his footprints. He bent down and scraped gently at the impression left by his boot. Another butt appeared. And another. When he examined the first one in the dim light of a street lamp, it told him nothing. He couldn’t even read the brand.
Three cigarettes. Rolf had given up smoking many years ago, but still remembered that it took about seven minutes to smoke a cigarette. Seven times three was twenty-one. If the driver had been chain-smoking, the car had been here for almost half an hour.
The police thought the burglars might be from Eastern Europe. In the newspaper they had said that people should keep their eyes open; this gang or gangs clearly undertook a considerable amount of preliminary investigation before they struck. The cigarette butts could be valuable evidence.
He carefully placed them in one of the black bags he kept in the pockets of all his jackets for picking up dog shit. Then he put the bag in his pocket and set off towards the house. He would ring the police immediately.
*
The answerphone cut out, but she had no idea why. Perhaps one of the children had pressed some button or other. At any rate, she hadn’t
heard the whole of Adam’s message. When she heard footsteps on the stairs she stiffened, before a familiar voice called: ‘It’s me. I’m home.’
‘So I see,’ she said with a smile, stroking his cheek as he kissed her gently. ‘Weren’t you going back to Bergen?’
‘Yes. I’ve already been there. But as there a number of things I can work on just as easily from Oslo, I caught an afternoon flight home. I’ll stay here for this week, I think.’
‘Excellent! Are you hungry?’
‘I’ve eaten. Didn’t you get my message?’
‘No, there’s something wrong with the phone.’
Adam pulled off his tie, after fumbling with the knot for so long that Johanne offered to help.
‘The person who invented this ridiculous item of clothing should be shot,’ he muttered. ‘What on earth is all this?’
He frowned at the piles of documents and books, journals and loose sheets of paper lying around her on the sofa and almost covering the coffee table completely. Johanne was sitting cross-legged in the middle of it all with her reading glasses perched on her nose and a large glass of steaming hot tea in her hand.
‘I’m getting into hatred,’ she smiled. ‘I’m reading about hatred.’
‘Good God,’ he groaned. ‘As if I don’t get enough of that kind of thing at work. What are you drinking?’
‘Tea. Two parts Lady Grey and one part Chinese Pu-erh. There’s more in the Thermos in the kitchen if you’d like some.’
He took off his shoes and went to fetch a cup.
Johanne closed her eyes. The inexplicable anxiety and unease were still there, but spending a chaotic afternoon with the children had helped. Ragnhild, who would be five on 21 January and hardly talked about anything else, had arranged a practice birthday for all her dolls and teddy bears. During dinner Johanne and Kristiane had acquired hats, made from Ragnhild’s knickers covered in Hannah Montana stickers. Kristiane had given a long lecture about the movement of the planets around the sun, concluding with the announcement that she was going to be an astronaut when she grew up. Since Kristiane’s perception of time could be difficult to understand, and as she rarely showed any interest in things that might happen more than a couple of days in the future, Johanne had
delightedly dug out all the books from her own childhood, when she had had exactly the same dream.
When the children were in bed, her unease had come back. In order to keep it in check, she had decided to work.
‘Tell me all about it,’ said Adam, flopping down into an armchair.
He held the cup of tea up to his face, letting the steam cover his skin like a moist film.
‘About what?’
‘About hatred.’
‘I should think you know more about it than I do.’