The Final Murder (28 page)

‘My family,’ she said, and lay down on the floor with her arms in the air in the middle of the meal. ‘Fy mamily. Dam-di-rum-ram.

I didn’t pee in Leonard’s bed.’

Even Marie, Johanne’s three-years-younger and childless sister, had managed not to pass comment on Johanne’s homemade

sweater and worn velvet trousers. She came to the table in a deep green suit that didn’t look as if it had been bought in Norway, and her hair must take at least an hour to style and curl every morning and evening. However, Johanne’s glasses had not escaped her

sister’s ambiguous remarks.

‘I’m sure you’d really suit smaller glasses,’ Marie had smiled as she tucked a loose lock of hair back in place. ‘Have you tried?’

‘I think her glasses are fine,’ Adam said, and helped himself to more beef, for the third time. ‘And in any case, it’s a waste of money buying designer glasses when Ragnhild will soon be

pulling them off. Solid frames, just what she needs.’

Isak had played with Ragnhild and claimed that she laughed.

Adam didn’t say much, but patted Johanne’s knee every now and then. Her father shed a couple of tears when he said a few words after the meal. Things were just as they had always been. Not one of them had noticed that Johanne checked the driveway outside the house several times during the meal and that she jumped

when the telephone rang.

It was nearly midnight.

It was as if the mere thought that it was close to bedtime made her wake up. She had yawned and dozed the whole day, but as

soon as it was dark it was impossible for her to find any rest. Her anxiety had been justified in the first couple of weeks after she’d given birth: she thought of Kristiane every time she saw the baby.

She remembered the strange baby with eyes that never looked at anything or anyone. When Ragnhild was feeding, Johanne was

reminded of the listless little bundle that didn’t want to eat, with fists that were always balled and lips that turned blue when she had one of her breathless, alien crying fits.

But Ragnhild was healthy. She screamed and was a glutton, she waved her arms and legs around and slept as she should. There was nothing wrong with her.

But healthy children could also die. Suddenly, without reason or explanation.

‘I need help,’ Johanne thought to herself, and picked up an

arch-lever file. ‘You can go mad if you don’t get enough sleep. I don’t smoke, I barely drink. I have to pull myself together. She’s not going to die. I won’t find her lifeless and limp in bed. She uses a dummy and sleeps on her back. Like they said she should.’

Adam had given up. When he went to bed, he didn’t ask any

more if she was coming. Sometimes he got up at night, sat with her for a while on the sofa, yawning, and then went back to bed.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Johanne thought. ‘Not with Ragnhild.

There’s nothing wrong with her. But there’s something that isn’t right. Someone is playing with us. Coincidences like that don’t happen. It’s too close to be a coincidence.’

She turned the pages in the file about the three murders, but without any real interest. The dividers were red. She resolutely ripped out the pages about Fiona Helle. Then she regretted it and tried to put them back in. And didn’t manage. The holes were torn. She went to fetch some Sellotape from a drawer in the

kitchen. With dogged determination, she set about repairing the damage she’d done, but then she threw the tape on the floor and put her face in her hands.

‘I can’t take any more. There’s someone out there.’

Aloud, she hissed with clenched teeth: ‘Pull yourself together.

Get a grip, Johanne.’

‘I agree.’

Adam was up again. Without saying another word, he went out

into the kitchen. The smell of coffee spread through the flat and Johanne closed her eyes. Adam could stay awake and be on guard.

If only she could keep Ragnhild in bed beside her, she was sure she would sleep then. But the baby might die if she let her sleep with them. That’s what the latest research had shown. She’d read about it in all the publications on her bedside table, medical periodicals and magazines for concerned parents. Ragnhild had to

sleep on her own and Johanne had to stay awake and watch over her, because there was someone out there, someone who wanted to harm them.

She fell asleep.

‘I fell asleep!’

She got a fright when he tried to put a blanket over her.

‘Just you carry on,’ he whispered.

‘No. Awake now.’

‘You need help.’

‘No.’

‘The risk of cot death is not…’

‘Don’t say that word!’

‘Strictly speaking the risk isn’t over until Ragnhild is two,’

Adam said drily.

He sat down heavily beside her. There was only one cup of

coffee on the table and he pushed it away when she reached for it.

‘And you bloody well can’t stay awake every night for two years!’

‘I’ve discovered something,’ she said.

‘Well, I would be very happy to hear about it in the morning,’

he said, and ran a hand over his hair, still unused to the short cut.

‘When the children have gone to bed and there is still a decent amount of time left of the day.’

She pulled the mug over. He shook his head and lay back in the sofa in resignation. She drank. He closed his eyes.

‘This series of killings has absurd similarities to something else,’ she started, hesitant, tentative, ‘… something that I …’

The sofa was full of Adam. His arms were resting along the

back of the sofa and his legs were wide apart. His head fell back with his mouth open, as if he was fast asleep.

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘I know you’re awake.’

He opened his eyes. He squinted at the ceiling. But didn’t say a word.

‘A lecture,’ Johanne said quickly and drank some more coffee.

‘What?’

‘I heard about these murders in a lecture. Thirteen years ago.’

He struggled to sit up properly.

‘You heard about these murders thirteen years ago,’ he

repeated, his voice expressionless. ‘Right.’

‘Not the actual murders, obviously.’

‘I guessed that.’

His voice was alert now.

‘But ones that were very similar,’ she finished.

‘Could I get my coffee back, love?’

He smiled reassuringly, as if she wasn’t all there and needed to be grounded in reality by a normal, simple act. She got up, keeping the cup firmly in her hands.

‘I was at Lina’s yesterday,’ she said. ‘That computer of ours is …’

‘I know,’ he interrupted. ‘I promised I’d get it fixed. One of the boys at work … It’s just that

‘I went on a kind of sentimental journey, if you like. Only it wasn’t that sentimental.’

Three clear furrows appeared in his brow as he leant forwards.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘For a long time, I’ve had a nagging feeling that there’s something familiar about the cases. The murders of Fiona Helle,

Vibeke Heinerback and Vegard Krogh. I just wasn’t able to grasp it. The feeling that is. The memory. But it had to be something She took a sip of coffee. The steam clung to her face.

‘Something what?’

‘It had to be something that I’d come across in Washington. Or Quantico. It was very distant. So … forgotten and long ago. And I was right. I didn’t need to look very far. When I saw … Just a picture of… Forget it.’

She tucked her hair behind her ear and didn’t want to let go of the warmth from the mug of coffee. She clutched the cup in both hands and turned her back on Adam.

‘My darling.’ ‘Sit down.,’

‘OK,’ he said reluctantly.

‘All I needed to see was the picture of the Academy,’ she said so quietly that he had trouble hearing. ‘Then I remembered. I remembered the class. I remembered the long days, the tiring, demanding, fun …’

She approached her reflection in the window, as if it was easier to talk to herself.

‘Now I even know which lecture series it was, Behavioural

Science. Warren amused us with a lecture he called “Proportional Retribution”.’

For a moment, Adam thought he saw the reflection smile.

‘Amused us,’ she repeated. ‘That was actually what he did. We laughed. Everyone laughed when Warren wanted us to laugh. It was towards the end of June. Almost the holidays. It was warm.

Very humid and warm. The air conditioning in the auditorium was broken. We were sweating. But not Warren. He always so cool - in every sense.’

Slowly she turned around. She lowered her cup. It was empty

and hung by the handle from her finger.

‘I expend so much effort on trying to forget,’ she said without looking at him. ‘Maybe it isn’t that strange that I found it so hard to remember. Although…’

Her eyes filled up. She leant her head back to prevent the tears from running. Adam started to get up again.

‘Don’t,’ she said harshly.

She smiled suddenly through the tears and wiped her left eye lightly with the back of her hand.

‘The lecture was about revenge, people with a strong sense of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”,’ she said. ‘About criminals with an exaggerated need for the punishment to fit the crime. At least symbolically. Warren loved things like that. He loved anything that was violent. Clear. Exaggerated.’

‘Sit down, Johanne.’

He patted the cushion next to him on the sofa.

‘No, I’d rather stand. I have to tell you this. While I still have the energy to do it. Or rather …’ Another fleeting, thin smile.

‘… When I don’t have the energy not to,’ she added.

‘To be honest, I have no idea what you’re talking about,

Johanne.’

‘He told us about five cases,’ she continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘One was … It was about one of those eccentrics that you only find in the States. A slightly twisted, intellectual type.

With green fingers. He had a beautiful garden, which he protected, tooth and nail. I can’t remember how he made a living, but

he must have had money, because the garden was the jewel of the neighbourhood. Then a neighbour sued him in connection with a boundary dispute. The neighbour claimed that the fence was a few metres too far into his property and the court ruled in his favour, having gone through several instances in the judicial system. I don’t remember all the details. The point is that…’

She froze, with the tip of her tongue on her lips and her head cocked.

‘Did you hear something?’

‘No. Can’t you…’

She swallowed and sighed deeply before carrying on.

‘The point is that the neighbour was found dead just after the final judgement. His tongue had been cut out and was lying in a folded envelope, made from the cover of House & Garden. A magazine.

About

207

‘Houses and gardens,’ said Adam, exasperated. ‘Can you please sit down. You’re freezing. Come here.’

‘Are you listening?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘His tongue had been cut out! And beautifully wrapped! The

most banal, vulgar symbol…’

‘I am sure,’ he interjected in a quiet voice, ‘that there are examples of bodies that have been dismembered in that way all over

the world, Johanne. Without it having anything to do with the death of Fiona Helle. You said it yourself, it was a long time ago and you don’t remember all…’

‘The worst thing is that I do remember’ she burst out. ‘I remember everything now. Please try to understand, Adam! Don’t you

know how… hard it is to force yourself to remember something that you have desperately tried to forget? How … how much it hurts to…’

‘It’s difficult for me to understand something I don’t know

about,’ Adam retorted and immediately regretted it. ‘I mean … I can see that it’s painful for you. That’s not difficult to …’

‘Don’t push it,’ she almost screamed. ‘I will never, I will never talk about what happened. I’m just trying to explain to you why this story got hidden. It’s so painfully close to…’

He got up. He grabbed her by the wrists and felt how thin she had become. Her watch, which had been too tight to wear in the last months of pregnancy, was now in danger of slipping over her hand. Without any resistance, she let him hold her. He stroked her back. He could feel the sharp vertebrae through her sweater.

‘You need to start eating,’ he said, with his face buried in her lifeless and matted hair. ‘You need to eat and sleep, Johanne.’

‘And you need to listen to me,’ she cried. ‘Can’t you just listen to my story? Without asking what… Without mixing everything …’

With a sudden angry movement she straightened up and put

her hands on his chest.

‘Can’t you just stop asking about things that are my business, and my business alone? Can’t you forget that and just listen to what I’m saying?’

‘It’s difficult. At some point you’re going to have to …’

‘Never. OK? Never. You promised not…’

‘We were getting married the next day, Johanne. I was frightened that you’d cancel the whole wedding if I didn’t go along with your demands. It’s different now.’

‘Nothing is different.’

‘Yes it is. We’re married. We’ve got children. You’re about to …

You’re upset, Johanne. You’re suffering because of something you refuse to let me in on. And I won’t accept that.’

‘You have to.’

He let go of her. They stood there for a while, close, but not touching. He was nearly a head taller than her. Johanne lifted her face. There was a darkness in her eyes that he didn’t recognize, and his heart started to race when for a moment he saw something that he thought might resemble … hate.

‘Johanne,’ he whispered.

‘I love you,’ she said quietly. ‘But you have to let it lie. Maybe one day I will be able to tell you about what happened between Warren and me. But not now. Not for a long time, Adam. I have spent the last few weeks trying to find my way back to that

memory and it’s been a tough journey. I can’t take any more. I want to leave it behind. To come back. To my life here. To you and the children. Us.’

‘Of course,’ he said in a hoarse voice. His heart was still pounding.