Punishment (3 page)

Alvhild Sofienberg had fallen asleep. There was a small scar near her narrow mouth, a cleft from the corner of her mouth up towards her ear. It made her look as if she was smiling.
Johanne crept out of the room, and as she went down to the ground floor a nurse came towards her. She said nothing, just stopped on the stairs and stepped to one side. The nurse also smelt of onions, a vague scent of onion and detergent. Johanne felt sick. She pushed past the other woman, not knowing whether she would return to this house where an old dying lady upstairs made the smell of decay cling to everything and everyone.

E
milie felt bigger when the new boy arrived. He was even more frightened than she was. When the man pushed him into the room a while ago, he had pooed his pants. Even though he was nearly old enough to be at school. At one end of the room there was a sink and a toilet. The man had thrown a towel and a bar of soap in with the boy and Emilie managed to tidy him up. But there were no clean clothes anywhere. She pushed the dirty pants in under the sink, between the wall and the pipe. The boy just had to go without pants and would not stop crying.

Until now. He had finally fallen asleep. There was only one bed in the room. It was very narrow and probably very old. The woodwork was brown and worn and someone had drawn on it with a felt-tip that was barely visible any more. When Emilie lifted the sheet she saw that the mattress was full of long hair; a woman's hair was stuck to the foam mattress and she quickly tucked the sheet back in place. The boy lay under the duvet with his head in her lap. He had brown curly hair and Emilie started to wonder if he could talk at all. He had snivelled his name when she asked. Kim or Tim. It was hard to make out. He had called for his mother, so he wasn't entirely mute.

‘Is he sleeping?'

Emilie jumped. The door was ajar. The shadows made it hard to see his face, but his voice was clear. She nodded weakly.

‘Is he sleeping?'

The man didn't seem to be angry or annoyed. He didn't bark like Daddy sometimes did when he had to ask the same question several times.

‘Yes.'

‘Good. Are you hungry?'

The door was made of iron. And there was no handle on the inside. Emilie did not know how long she had been in the room with the toilet and the sink in one corner and the bed in the other and nothing else apart from plaster walls and the shiny door. It was a long time, that was all she knew. She had tried the door a hundred times at least. It was smooth and ice cold. The man was scared that it would shut behind him. The few times that he had come into the room, he had fixed the door to a hook on the wall. Normally when he brought her food and something to drink, he left it on a tray just inside the door.

‘No.'

‘OK. You should go to sleep as well. It's night.'

Night.

The sound of the heavy iron door closing made her cry. Even though the man said it was night, it didn't feel like it. There was no window in the room and the light was left on the whole time, so there was no way of knowing whether it was day or night. At first she had thought that slices of bread and milk meant that it was breakfast and the stews and pancakes that the man left on the tray were supper. She finally understood, but then the man started to play tricks. Sometimes she got bread three times in a row. Today, after Kim or Tim had stumbled into her world, the man had given them tomato soup twice. It was lukewarm and there was no macaroni in it.

Emilie tried to stop crying. She didn't want to wake the boy. She held her breath so that she wouldn't shake, but it didn't work.

‘Mummy,' she sobbed, without wanting to. ‘I want my mummy.'

Daddy would be looking for her. He must have been looking for a long time. Daddy and Auntie Beate were no doubt still running around in the woods, even though it was night. Maybe Granddad was there too. Gran had sore feet, so she would be at home reading books or making waffles for the others to eat when they'd been to the Road to Paradise and the Heaven Tree and not found her anywhere.

‘Mummy,' whimpered Kim or Tim and then howled.

‘Hush.'

‘Mummy! Daddy!'

The boy got up suddenly and shrieked. His mouth was a great gaping hole. His face twisted into one enormous scream and she pressed herself against the wall and closed her eyes.

‘You mustn't scream,' she said in a flat voice. ‘The man will get angry with us.'

‘Mummy! I want my daddy!'

The boy caught his breath. He was gasping for air, and when Emilie opened her eyes she saw that his face was dark red. Snot was running from one nostril. She grabbed one corner of the duvet and wiped him clean. He tried to hit her.

‘Don't want,' he said and sobbed again. ‘Don't want.'

‘Shall I tell you a story?' asked Emilie.

‘Don't want.'

He pulled his sleeve across his nose.

‘My mummy is dead,' said Emilie and smiled a bit. ‘She's sitting in Heaven watching over me. Always. I'm sure she can watch over you too.'

‘Don't want.'

At least the boy was not crying so hard any more.

‘My mummy is called Grete. And she's got a BMW.'

‘Audi,' said the boy.

‘Mummy's got a BMW in Heaven.'

‘Audi,' the boy repeated, with a cautious smile that made him much nicer.

‘And a unicorn. A white horse with a horn in its forehead that can fly. Mummy can fly anywhere on her unicorn when she can't be bothered to use the BMW. Maybe she'll come here. Soon, I think.'

‘With a bang,' said the boy.

Emilie knew very well that her mother didn't have a BMW. She wasn't in Heaven at all and unicorns don't exist. There was no Heaven either, even though Daddy said there was. He liked so much to talk about what Mummy was doing up there, everything that she had always wanted, but they could never afford. In Paradise, nothing cost anything. They didn't even have money there, Daddy said, and smiled. Mummy could have whatever she wanted and Daddy thought it was good for Emilie to talk about it. She had believed him for a long time and it was good to think that Mummy had diamonds as big as plums in her ears as she flew around in a red dress on a unicorn.

Auntie Beate had told Daddy off. Emilie disappeared to write a letter to Mummy and when Daddy eventually found her, Auntie Beate shouted so loudly that the walls shook. The grown-ups thought Emilie was asleep. It was late at night.

‘It's about time you told the child the truth, Tønnes. Grete is dead. Full stop. She is ashes in an urn and Emilie is old enough to understand. You have to stop. You'll ruin her with all your stories. You're keeping Grete alive artificially and I'm not even sure who you're actually trying to fool, yourself or Emilie. Grete is dead. DEAD, do you understand?'

Auntie Beate was crying and angry at the same time. She was the cleverest person in all the world. Everyone said that. She was a senior doctor and knew everything about sick hearts. She saved people from certain death, just because she knew so much. If Auntie Beate said that Daddy's stories were rubbish,
then she must be right. A few days later, Daddy had taken Emilie out into the garden to look at the stars. There were four new holes in the sky, because Mummy wanted to see her better, he told her, pointing. Emilie didn't answer. He was sad. She could see it in his eyes when he picked up a book and started to read to her on the bed. She refused to listen to the rest of the story about Mummy's trip to Japan Heaven, a story that had stretched over three evenings and was actually quite funny. Daddy made money from translating books and was a bit too fond of stories.

‘I'm called Kim,' said the boy, and put his thumb in his mouth.

‘I'm called Emilie,' said Emilie.

They didn't know that it was starting to get light when they fell asleep.

One and half storeys above them, at ground level, in a house on the edge of a small wood, a man sat and stared out of the window. He was feeling remarkably good, nearly intoxicated, as if he was facing a challenge that he knew he could master. It was impossible to sleep properly. During the night he had sometimes felt himself slipping away, only to be roused again by a very clear thought.

The window looked west. He saw the darkness huddle in behind the horizon. The hills on the other side of the valley were bathed in strips of morning light. He got up and put the book on the table.

No one else knew. In less than two days one of the two children in the cellar would be dead. He felt no joy in this knowledge, but a feeling of elated determination made him indulge in a bit of sugar and a drop of milk in the bitter coffee from the night before.

‘W
elcome to the programme, Johanne Vik. Now, you are a lawyer and a psychologist, and you wrote your thesis on why people commit sexually motivated crimes. Given recent events . . .'

Johanne closed her eyes for a moment. The lights were strong. But it was still cold in the enormous room and she felt the skin on her forearms contract.

She should have refused the invitation. She should have said no. Instead she said:

‘Let me first clarify that I did not write a thesis on why some people commit sex crimes. As far as I know, no one knows that for certain. I did, however, compare a random selection of convicted sex offenders with an equally random selection of other offenders to look at the similarities and differences in background, childhood and early adult years. My thesis is called, Sexually Motivated Crime, a comp . . .'

‘Oh, that's a bit complicated, Ms Vik. So to put it simply, you wrote a thesis about sex offenders. Two children have been brutally snatched from their parents in less than a week. Do you think there can be any doubt that these are sexually motivated crimes?'

‘Doubt?'

She didn't dare to pick up the plastic cup of water. She clasped her fingers together to stop her hands from shaking uncontrollably. She wanted to answer. But her voice let her down. She swallowed.

‘Doubt has got nothing to do with it. I don't see how there can be any basis for making such a claim.'

The presenter lifted his hand and frowned in irritation, as if she had broken some kind of deal.

‘Of course it is possible,' she corrected herself. ‘Everything is possible. Children can be molested, but in this case it might equally be something different. I am not a detective and only know about the case from the media. All the same, I would assume that the investigation has not yet even concluded that the two . . . abductions, I guess that is what we should call them . . . are in any way connected. I agreed to come on the show on the understanding that . . .'

She had to swallow again. Her throat was tight. Her right hand was shaking so much that she had to surreptitiously push it under her thigh. She should have said no.

‘And you,' the presenter said cockily to a lady in a black jacket, with long silver hair. ‘Solveig Grimsrud, director for the newly established Protect Our Children, you are clearly of the opinion that this is a case of paedophilia?'

‘Given what we know about similar cases abroad, it would be incredibly naïve to think anything else. It is difficult to imagine any alternative motives for abducting children – children that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, if we are to believe the papers. We know of cases in the US, Switzerland, not to mention those gruesome cases in Belgium only a few years ago . . . We all know these cases and we all know what the outcome was.'

Grimsrud patted her heart. There was a loud scraping noise in the microphone that was attached to her lapel. Johanne noticed a technician holding his ears, just off camera.

‘What do you mean by . . . outcome?'

‘I mean what I say. Children are always abducted for one of three reasons.'

Her long hair was falling into her eyes and Solveig Grimsrud
pushed it behind her ears before counting on her fingers.

‘Either it is simply a case of extortion, which we can ignore in these cases. Both families have average incomes and are not wealthy. Then there are a small number of children who are abducted by either their mother or their father, generally the latter, when a relationship breaks down. And again, that is not the case here. The girl's mother is dead and the boy's parents are still married. Which leaves the last alternative. The children have been abducted by one or more paedophiles.'

The presenter hesitated.

Johanne thought about waking up and feeling a naked child's stomach against her back, the tickle of sleepy fingers against her neck.

A man in his late fifties with aviator specs and downcast eyes took a deep breath and started to talk.

‘In my opinion, Grimsrud's theory is just one of many. I think we should be . . .'

‘Fredrik Skolten,' interrupted the presenter. ‘You are a private detective, with twenty years' experience in the police force. And just to let our viewers know, NCIS Norway, the National Criminal Investigation Service, was invited to come on the show this evening, but declined. But, Skolten, given your extensive experience in the police, what theories do you think they are working on?'

‘As I was just saying . . .'

The man studied a spot on the table and rubbed his right index finger in a regular movement against the back of his left hand.

‘At the moment they are probably keeping things very open. But there is a lot of truth in what Ms Grimsrud said. Child abductions do generally fall into three categories, which she . . . And the first two would appear to be reasonably . . .'

‘Unlikely?'

The presenter leaned closer, as if they were having a private conversation.

‘Well. Yes. But there is no basis for . . . Without any further . . .'

‘It's time people woke up,' interrupted Solveig Grimsrud. ‘Only a few years ago we thought that the sexual abuse of children didn't concern us. It was something that only happened out there, in the USA, far away. We have let our children walk on their own to school, go on camping trips without adult supervision, be away from home for hours on end without making sure that they're being supervised. It cannot continue. It's time that we . . .'