What is Mine (44 page)

It had been a while since he’d turned off the TV. It was revolting to see how the journalists buzzed around in a blood haze without giving any thought to the seriousness of the tragedy that had just occurred live on television. He shuddered and started to sort his documents.

Sigmund Berli burst into the room.

Adam looked up and frowned.

“That was quite an entrance,” he said laconically, tapping his finger on his desk and nodding at the door. “Have we completely forgotten our manners?”

“The crash,” puffed Sigmund Berli. “Laffen Sørnes died, as you’ve no doubt heard. But the other . . .”

He gasped for breath, bent over slightly, and pressed his palms against his knees.

“The other . . . the man in the other car . . .”

“Sit down, Sigmund.”

Adam pointed to the other chair.

“Jesus Christ, the other one was . . . Karsten Åsli!”

Adam felt like his heart had short-circuited. Everything stopped. He tried to focus, but his eyes were locked onto Sigmund’s chest. His tie was tucked in between two buttons on his shirt. It was far too red, with birds on it. The tail of a yellow goose stuck out from an opening on his chest. Adam didn’t even know if he was still breathing.

“Did you hear what I said?” Sigmund shouted. “It was Karsten Åsli who crashed with Laffen! If you’re right, that means that Emilie . . .”

“Emilie,” Adam repeated. His voice gave way; he tried to cough.

“Karsten Åsli is about to die too! If you’re right, how the fuck are we going to find Emilie, Adam? If Karsten Åsli has forgotten her and decides to log off for good?”

Adam got up from the chair slowly. He had to support himself by holding onto the edge of the table. He had to think. He had to focus.

“Sigmund,” he said, in a more normal voice. “Go to the hospital. Do everything you can to get the man to talk, if at all possible.”

“He’s unconscious, you idiot!”

Adam straightened up.

“Yes, I realize that,” he said pointedly. “That’s why you have to be there, in case he wakes up.”

“And you? What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“I’m going to go to Snaubu.”

“But you’ve got no more on the guy than you did yesterday, Adam! Even though Karsten Åsli has been seriously injured, you can’t just break into his property without a warrant!”

Adam pulled on his jacket and looked over at the clock.

“I don’t care,” he said calmly. “Right now, I don’t give a damn.”

S
IXTY-SIX

A
ksel Seier was amazed at how at home he felt in the small room where Eva lived. The walls were a warm yellow color, and even though the bed was metal and it said Oslo City Council on the bedclothes, it was still Eva’s room. He recognized a couple of things from the efficiency apartment in Brugata, where she’d cleaned the wound on the back of his head with iodine that night in 1965. The pale blue porcelain angel with open wings and remnants of gold paint that she’d been given for her confirmation. He remembered it as soon as his fingers stroked the cool figurine. The painting of Hovedøya at sunset that he’d given her. It was hanging above the bed, the colors paler than when he had put down fifteen kroner on the counter in a secondhand shop and taken the picture with him, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

Eva had also faded.

But she was still his Eva.

Her hand was old and destroyed by illness. It was as if her face had been worn out, its expression frozen in a relentless grimace. Her body was now just a motionless shell around the woman that Aksel Seier still loved. He didn’t say much. It took some time for Eva to tell him the story. She had to rest every now and then. Aksel kept quiet and listened.

He felt at home in the room.

“He changed so much,” said Eva quietly. “Everything went to pieces. He didn’t have enough money to pursue the case. If he used what was left of the inheritance from Mother, he would have nowhere to live. And then he certainly wouldn’t stand a chance. It killed him, Aksel. He hasn’t even been to see me for the past few months.”

Everything would be okay, Aksel soothed her. He had taken out his credit cards. Platinum, he explained, holding the shiny piece of plastic up to her eyes. These cards were only given to the wealthy. He was wealthy. He would straighten everything out.

Everything would be okay, now that Aksel had finally come.

“I could have come earlier.”

She just hadn’t asked him to. Aksel knew that; it wasn’t possible to come to Norway before Eva wanted him to. Even though she hadn’t really invited him now, there was a plea for help in what she wrote. The letter came in May, not in July like it should have. It was a desperate letter, and he had answered her by leaving everything behind and coming home.

Aksel drank some juice from a large glass that was standing on the bedside table. It tasted fresh. It tasted of Norway, black currant syrup and water. The real thing. Norwegian juice. He dried his mouth and smiled.

Aksel heard something and half turned around. Fear blasted through his body. He let go of Eva’s hand and balled his fist without being aware of it. The policeman with the keys and watery eyes, the one who wanted Aksel to admit to something he had not done and who had haunted him in his dreams had worn a different uniform. More old-fashioned, perhaps. This man had a loose jacket and a black and white checkered band around his trouser legs. But he was a policeman. Aksel saw that immediately and looked out the window.

“Eva Åsli?” asked the man, coming nearer.

Eva whispered that she was. The man cleared his throat and came even closer to the bed. Aksel caught the smell of leather and car oil from his jacket.

“I’m sorry to tell you that your son has been in a serious accident. Karsten Åsli. He is your son, isn’t he?”

Aksel got up and straightened his back.

“Karsten Åsli is our son,” he said slowly. “Eva’s and my son.”

S
IXTY-SEVEN

J
ohanne trudged the streets without knowing where she was going. A bitter wind whistled between the tall buildings in Ibsenkvartalet and she vaguely registered that she was on her way to the office. She didn’t want to go there. Even though she was freezing, she wanted to stay outdoors. She picked up her pace and half decided to visit Isak and Kristiane. They could go for a walk out on Bygdøy, all three of them. Johanne needed it now. After nearly four years of sharing responsibility for Kristiane, she had gotten used to the arrangement. And when she missed Kristiane too much, she could just visit her at Isak’s. He appreciated it when she came and was always friendly. Johanne had gotten used to the situation. But getting used to something was not the same as liking it. She had a constant yearning to hold the girl, to hug her tight and to make her laugh. Sometimes the feeling was unbearably strong, like now. Usually it helped to reason that it was good for Kristiane to be with her father. That he was as important to her daughter as she was. That was the way it had to be.

That Kristiane was not her property.

Tears fell from one eye. It could be the wind.

They could do something nice together, all three of them.

Unni Kongsbakken had seemed so strong when she came to the Grand Café and so tired and worn out when she left. Her youngest son had died years ago. She had lost her husband yesterday. And today she had in a way given away the only thing she had left: an untold story and her oldest son.

Johanne put her hands in her pockets and decided to walk to Isak’s.

Her cell phone rang.

It was probably the office. She hadn’t been there since yesterday. She’d phoned in this morning to say that she was going to work at home, but she hadn’t even checked her e-mails. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Right now she wanted to be left in peace to face the truth about little Hedvig’s murder in 1956. She needed to digest the fact that Aksel Seier had served someone else’s sentence. She had no idea what she was going to do or whom she should talk to. She wasn’t even sure if she would tell Alvhild what she knew. The telephone stayed in her bag.

It stopped ringing.

Then it started again. Irritated, she rummaged around in her bag. The display said ANONYMOUS. She pushed the answer button and put the phone to her ear.

“Finally,” said Adam, relieved. “Where are you?”

Johanne looked around.

“In Rosenkrantzgate,” she said. “Or to be exact, CJ Hambros Plass. Just outside the courts.”

“Stay there. Don’t move. I’m only a couple of minutes away.”

“But . . .”

He had already hung up.

The policeman seemed to be uncomfortable. He stared at the piece of paper in his hand, even though there was obviously nothing there that could ease the situation. The woman in the bed was crying quietly and had no questions.

Aksel Seier would stay in Norway.

He would later marry Eva. A quiet ceremony with no guests and no gifts other than a bunch of flowers from Johanne Vik. But he didn’t know that yet, as he stood there in the warm yellow room with his future wife, his hands clenched at his sides, with cropped hair and a pair of pink and turquoise plaid golfing pants. Even though he would never be formally cleared of the crime for which he was sentenced, over time he would straighten his back, secure in the knowledge of what had actually happened. A journalist from
Aftenposten
would write an article that verged on libel, and even though Geir Kongsbakken’s name was not mentioned in the paper, the sixty-two-year-old decided shortly after that it might be wise to wind up his small firm in Øvre Slottsgate. As a result of the article and an application by Johanne Vik, Aksel Seier would receive an ex gratia payment from the Norwegian parliament that he felt was as good as an acquittal in court. He framed the accompanying letter, which then hung over Eva’s bed until she died fourteen months after their wedding. Aksel Seier would never meet the man he had been sentenced for, and never felt the need to either.

But Aksel Seier knew none of this as he stood there, groping for words, questions for the man with the chessboard wrapped around his legs. The only thing he could think about was a day in July 1969. He had moved from Boston to Cape Cod and the weather was good. Eva’s letter, the July letter, had come. As it had the summer before, and the summer before that. Every Christmas, every summer, since 1966, when Aksel left Norway without knowing that Eva would give birth to a son five months later, Aksel Seier’s son. She only told him about it in 1969.

Aksel Seier sat on a red stone on the beach with shaking hands when he discovered that he had a child who was nearly three years old.

But he wasn’t allowed to go back. Eva was living with her mother in a small place outside Oslo, and nothing must change. Her mother would kill her, she wrote. Her mother would take the boy away from her if Aksel came home. He wasn’t allowed to come back, said Eva, and he could see that she’d been crying. Her tears had stained the paper, dry patches of smudged ink that made the words nearly illegible.

Aksel Seier had never understood why Eva waited so long. He didn’t dare ask.

Not even now; he fiddled with the permanent crease in his pants and didn’t know what to say.

“Right,” said the policeman with some skepticism, and stared even harder at the piece of paper. “It says nothing here about a father . . .”

Then he shrugged.

“But if . . .”

The look he sent to the woman in the bed was full of doubt, as though he thought Aksel was lying. Eva Åsli could hardly protest the man’s claimed fatherhood. All she could do was cry, unbearably softly, and the policeman wondered whether he should call a doctor.

“Take me to Karsten,” said Aksel Seier, stroking his head.

The policeman shrugged again.

“Okay,” he mumbled, and looked over at Eva again. “If that’s alright with you, then . . .”

He thought he saw a slight movement in answer. Maybe it was a nod.

“Come on then,” he said to Aksel. “I’ll drive you. It’s possible there’s not much time.”