What is Mine (35 page)

“Jojonne” he said, and stroked her cheek with his chubby hand.

Adam had left a bag with nonperfumed soap, three diapers, and a pacifier in the bathroom.

You assumed that the boy would sleep here,
she thought.
Taking pajamas might have been a bit obvious. But three diapers?

“Grandpa is an old fox,” she said, and lifted the boy up into the sink.

“Not wash bottom now,” said Amund with determination, and kicked his legs. “Not wash.”

“Yes,” said Johanne. “You’ve got poop there. Away with the poop.”

She wiped his bottom with a cloth. Amund laughed.

“Not wash,” he said, and hiccuped when she turned on the tap and let the warm water run over his skin.

“You have to be all clean and beautiful; then you’ll sleep well.”

“Bulances are white,” said Amund. “Not red.”

“You’re right, Amund. Ambulances are white.”

“Bulances,” he said.

“Smart boy.”

The boy snuggled into the towel.

“No more sleep,” he said and laughed.

“I don’t think so,” said Adam from the doorway. “Come here; Grandpa’ll put you back to bed. Thank you, Johanne.”

It didn’t work. Half an hour later, Adam emerged from the bedroom with the child in his arms.

“He’ll fall asleep here,” he said half-apologetically, and then gave the boy a dark look. Amund just smiled and pushed his pacifier in.

“He’ll just have to lie in my lap.”

The little boy almost disappeared in his grandfather’s arms. The tip of his nose was just visible over a green blanket. His eyes closed after only a few minutes and his regular sucking quieted. Adam pulled the blanket away from his face. His dark hair looked nearly black against Adam’s white shirt. The child’s eyelashes were wet and so long that they meshed together.

“Children,” said Johanne quietly, unable to take her eyes off Amund. “I can’t help thinking that the children are the key to understanding this case. At first I thought it was something to do with the murderer’s own childhood. Full of loss. A sense of loss linked to his childhood. And perhaps . . .”

She breathed in and out deeply.

“Maybe I’m right. But there’s something more. There’s something to do with these children. Even though they are not his. It’s as if . . .”

She got lost in her train of thought.

Adam said nothing. Amund was fast asleep. Johanne suddenly shook her head, as if returning from far-flung thoughts, and said, “Do you think he’s got a child that he can’t see?”

“I think you’re taking it a bit far now,” said Adam quietly, while straightening the boy’s head. “What makes you say that?”

“It just fits with everything. Let’s imagine that this is a man who attracts women, but who never manages to keep them. One of the women gets pregnant. She chooses to have the child. But the idea of letting him be with the child must be rather frightening. She might have . . .”

“But why
these
children in particular? If you’re right in thinking that Glenn Hugo, Kim, Sarah, and Emilie were not randomly chosen, what is it about them? If the guy had been going around getting women pregnant for years and all the victims were his children, then . . . But they’re not. At least, they don’t appear to be. What is it that made him choose them then?”

“I don’t know,” she said, suddenly tired. “I don’t know anything other than that there
must
be a reason. This man has a plan. There’s an absurd logic to what he’s doing, even though he differs from a typical serial killer in a number of ways. For example, the fact that there’s no obvious cycle in the abductions. No pattern, no obvious system. We don’t even know if he’s finished.”

Silence fell again. Adam tucked the blanket in around Amund and put his lips to the dark head. The child’s breathing was light and rhythmic.

“That’s what I’m most afraid of,” whispered Adam. “That he’s not finished yet.”

In the white house at the edge of the woods an hour and a half’s drive from Oslo, the murderer had just come back from jogging. His knee was bleeding. It was dark outside and he’d tripped on the root of a tree. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding heavily anyway. He usually kept the bandages in the third drawer beside the sink. The box was empty. Annoyed, he found a sterile compress in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He had to wind a bandage around the compress, as he’d run out of surgical tape as well. Of course he shouldn’t have gone jogging so late, but he was restless. He limped into the living room and switched on the TV.

He hadn’t been down to the cellar today. Emilie repulsed him more than ever. He wanted to get rid of her. The problem was that he had no one to deliver the damned child to.

“Nineteenth of June,” he half mumbled to himself, and flipped between the channels.

Everything would be over by then. Six weeks and four days after Emilie disappeared. He would drive in, take the fifth child, and deliver it back the same day. The date was not randomly chosen. Nothing was random in this world. There was a plan behind everything.

His boss had called him into the office on Friday. Given him a written warning. The only thing he’d done was taken some tools home. He didn’t even intend to steal them. They were only old tools and he was going to bring them back. The boss didn’t believe him. Someone must have blabbed.

He knew who was out to get him.

It was all part of a plan.

He could make plans, too.

“Nineteenth of June,” he repeated, and switched to teletext.

He would have to get rid of Emilie before then. Maybe she was dead already. He certainly didn’t intend to give her any more food.

His knee was really hurting.

“The letters,” she said out loud, interrupting herself midsentence.

Adam still had Amund on his lap, as if the conversation made it impossible for him to move him.

“The letters,” she repeated and slapped her forehead. “On Aksel’s chess table!”

Johanne had finally told Adam about the trip to Lillestrøm. About the connection between the mentally retarded Anders Mohaug and the author Asbjørn Revheim, who was the youngest son of Astor Kongsbakken, the prosecutor in the case against Aksel Seier. Adam’s reaction was difficult to interpret, but Johanne thought she saw a frown on his forehead that indicated that he felt the connection was too remarkable to put it down to coincidence.

“The letters?” he said in a questioning voice.

“Yes! After I’d been at Aksel Seier’s, I kept thinking there was something I’d seen there that didn’t belong. And I’ve just remembered what it was. A pile of letters on the chess table.”

“But letters . . . we all get letters every now and then.”

“The stamps,” said Johanne, “were Norwegian. The pile was tied together with a piece of string.”

“In other words, you only saw the one on top,” said Adam.

“Yes, that’s right.”

She nodded and continued, “But I’m sure that it was a pile of letters from the same person. They were from Norway, Adam. Aksel Seier gets letters from Norway. He’s in touch with someone here.”

“So?”

“He said nothing about it to me. It seemed as if he’d had nothing to do with his homeland since he left.”

“To be honest . . .”

Adam moved the child over to his other arm. Amund grunted but continued to sleep.

“You only had a fairly short conversation with the man! There’s nothing unusual about the fact that he’s kept in touch with someone here, a friend or someone from the family . . .”

“He doesn’t have any family in Norway. Not that I know of.”

“Now you’re making a mountain out of a molehill over something that probably has a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“Could he . . . could he be getting money from someone? Is he being paid not to make a fuss? Is that why he never tried to clear himself? Is that the explanation for why he just disappeared when I wanted to help him?”

Adam smiled. Johanne didn’t like the expression in his eyes.

“Forget it,” he said. “That’s very conspiracy theory. I’ve got something far more interesting to tell you. Astor Kongsbakken is still alive.”

“What?”

“Yep. He’s ninety-two and lives with his wife on Corsica. They’ve got a farm there, some sort of vineyard, as far as I can make out. I was fairly sure he wasn’t dead, as I would have remembered if he’d died. So I poked around a bit. He retired from public life over twenty years ago and has lived down there ever since.”

“I have to talk to him!”

“You could try calling him.”

“Have you got his number as well?”

Adam chuckled.

“There are limits. No phone directory inquiries. According to my information, he’s still got a clear head on him but is physically frail.”

Adam got up slowly, without waking the boy. He pulled the blanket tight around him and looked questioningly at Johanne. She nodded back indifferently and went to collect Amund’s things from the bedroom.

“I’ll bring the blanket back tomorrow,” he said, and struggled to get everything with him in one go.

“Do that,” she said lamely.

He stood up straight and looked at her. Amund lay over his shoulder and was mumbling in his sleep. His pacifier had fallen to the floor, so she bent down to pick it up. When she held it up to Adam, he grabbed her hand and wouldn’t let go.

“There’s nothing special about Astor Kongsbakken being friends with Alvhild’s director general,” he insisted. “Lots of lawyers know each other. You know what it’s like these days! Norway is a small country. And it was even smaller in the fifties and sixties. All the lawyers must have known each other!”

“But not all lawyers were involved in an alarming miscarriage of justice,” she said.

“No,” said Adam, giving up. “But we don’t know that they were, either.”

She followed him out to the car to help him with the doors. They didn’t say another word until Amund was belted into the car seat and the bags had been put in beside him.

“Speak to you soon,” said Adam lightly.

“Mmm,” said Johanne and went back into the empty apartment.

She wished at least the King of America were there.

F
IFTY-ONE

A
dam Stubo felt miserable. The waistband of his pants was pressing into his gut and the seat belt was far too tight. He had problems breathing. It was ten minutes since he’d turned off from the main road going north. The road he was on now was narrow and winding and was making him feel sick. When he spotted a bus stop, he swung in and stopped. He loosened his tie, opened the top button of his shirt, and leaned back against the headrest.

Adam Stubo was forty-five and felt old.

He was sixteen when he’d met Elizabeth. They got married as soon as they were old enough and had Trine immediately. He’d come home from work one day many years later to find a sleeping baby in an otherwise empty house.

It was in the middle of summer. The smell of jasmine drifted over the neighborhood at Nordstrand. Trine’s car, an old Fiesta that she’d gotten from her parents, was parked outside, its front wheels actually on the lawn. That annoyed him. He was irritated when he went in. He was hungry. He had promised to be home by five, but it was already a quarter past six. The silence was tangible and made him stop in the hall and listen. The house was empty—empty of noises and empty of people. No supper smells, no tinkling of glasses and crockery. He found himself tiptoeing in, as if he already knew what he would find.

He had managed to get an ink stain on his pants in the course of the day, just by the pocket. He’d been fiddling with a felt-tip pen that broke. Elizabeth had bought him new clothes only two days ago. When he tried them on, she shook her head and said that it was stupid to buy khaki pants for a man like Adam. She had kissed him and laughed.

He stood still in the living room. He couldn’t even hear the birds singing in the garden; he looked out the window and saw them flying around, but he heard nothing, even though the French doors were open.

Amund was upstairs. He was two months old and asleep.

When Adam found Elizabeth and Trine, he just stood there. He didn’t check their pulses. Trine stared at him, her brown eyes glazed over with a matte film. Elizabeth was gaping at the afternoon sky. Her front teeth had been knocked out and her nose had more or less disappeared.

Adam jumped. A bus honked its horn.

He slowly started the engine and slid out of the bus stop lane. He had to find somewhere else to stop. He was going to throw up.

He opened the car door at the next turnoff and emptied his stomach before the car had even come to a standstill. Luckily, he had a bottle of water with him.

He had stayed in the laundry room all night. The ink stain was stubborn. He tried everything. Paint thinner, stain remover, soft soap. Finally, when it started to get light, he grabbed a pair of scissors and cut out the stain.

Several of his colleagues said he could stay with them. He just waved them away. His son-in-law was in Japan and came home forty hours too late. Adam held onto Amund and started to cry, at last. He didn’t want to let go of the child. His son-in-law moved in and stayed for over a year.