What Never Happens (18 page)

“Stop it,” she muttered, scared of waking Ragnhild.

The cold wind ripped through her duffel coat, but she liked sitting here, on her own, rocking the carriage, back and forth, back and forth with one hand. It was Tuesday, February 17. She could make the call at midday. In eight minutes, she discovered when she looked at her cell phone. Fiona Helle’s best friend had said that she would be back in the office by then. She seemed puzzled but happy to talk. Johanne had not introduced herself as a policewoman, but her choice of words may have given Sara Brubakk the impression that her inquiry was of an official nature.

Not good.

It wasn’t like her. In fact, she wanted to pull out of the case, or at least not get in any deeper, and certainly not use methods that verged on the unethical.

Johanne blew her nose. She was getting a cold, as expected.

There were no people around. Then a jogger came puffing by in a cloud of condensation. He nodded and smiled, but then jumped when Jack came tearing out of some bushes and snapped at his heels.

“Keep your dog on a leash,” he shouted and raced on.

“Come here, Jack.”

He wagged his tail as she tied him to the carriage. Then he lay down.

It was twelve o’clock. She dialed the number.

“Hi, this is Johanne Vik,” she started. “We spoke earlier this morning and . . .”

“Oh yes, hello again. Just a minute while I sit down. I’ve just got in the door and—”

Scraping. Scratching. A bang.

“Hello?”

“I’m still here,” Johanne confirmed.

“There. I’m ready. Now, how can I help you?”

“I’ve just got a couple of questions about Fiona Helle’s time in high school. You were in her class, weren’t you?”

“Yes. As I said when I was questioned, Fiona and I were at school together from elementary school on. We were inseparable. Always friends. It’s just been so awful since . . . I couldn’t face coming back to work until a week ago, in fact. I got bereavement leave. My boss is so—”

“I understand,” Johanne assured her. “And I definitely won’t keep you long. I just wanted to find out if Fiona was ever . . . away from school? For a long period of time, I mean.”

“Away from school—”

“Yes. Not just for a few days because she had a cold, I mean, something longer.”

“She was away at Modum Bad in our first year. For quite a while.”

“Sorry?” Johanne wasn’t cold anymore. She switched the phone to her right hand and asked again. “Excuse me, what did you just say?”

“Fiona had some kind of nervous breakdown, I think. It was never really talked about. We were about to go back to school after the summer break. I remember I’d been in France all summer with my family, so I was really looking forward to seeing Fiona again. We . . . She didn’t come. She was in the hospital.”

“At Modum Bad?”

“Well . . . to tell the truth, I’m not sure. I’ve always just presumed it was Modum Bad because I didn’t know of anywhere else you could go for that sort of thing. Breakdowns, I mean.”

“How do you know it was a breakdown?”

Silence.

More scraping, not as loud this time.

“Now that you ask,” Sara Brubakk said slowly, “I’m actually not sure about any of it. Except that she wasn’t there. For a long time. I seem to remember that she wasn’t back until after Christmas. Or no . . . she came back just before. We always had a school show and started rehearsals at the beginning of December.”

“School show? Right after a nervous breakdown?”

Jack growled at an overconfident drake. It puffed out its feathers and tried to take a piece of bread that was only a couple of yards from the dog’s snout.

“Quiet,” Johanne said.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry. I’m talking to the dog. So, did Fiona take part? Did she tell you why she’d been away?”

“Yes. Well, not . . . Oh, it was all so long ago.”

Her voice sounded slightly apologetic. But it also sounded as if she really wanted to help.

“Like I said, we were best friends. Talked about everything and anything, like best friends do. But I remember that I was a bit put out, hurt, that Fiona didn’t really want to tell me where she’d been and what was actually wrong with her. That I’m sure about. I remember my mother said I should just let it lie. That kind of . . . sickness was never easy.”

“But Modum Bad and the nervous breakdown could easily be your own conclusions, not necessarily something you know or are certain about,” Johanne summarized.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Could you just give me an idea of what she was like when she came back?”

“No . . . what she was like? Just normal, really. Like before. I hadn’t seen her for, well . . . five months, it must have been. From midsummer until the end of November. And at that age you grow up so fast. But we were best friends. Still, I should say.”

A group from the day care walked by, two by two, hand in hand, waddling down the path in their oversized winter clothes. A little boy with his hat down over his eyes and a snotty nose was crying. A woman took him by the arm and called, “Not far to go now, children. Come along!”

“Do you think she might have been pregnant?” asked Johanne.

“Pregnant? Pregnant?” Sara Brubakk laughed lightly. “No, you can forget that. Goodness, time showed that it was extremely difficult for her to get pregnant at all. You know that Fiorella was a test-tube baby?”

Johanne didn’t know. In fact, there was a bit too much about Fiona Helle’s life that hadn’t found its way into the NCIS investigation files.

“In any case,” Sara Brubakk added, “I’m a hundred percent certain that Fiona would’ve told me if it was anything like that. We were like two peas in a pod. Pregnant? No, never.”

“But you didn’t see her for five months,” Johanne argued.

“No. But pregnant? Absolutely not.”

“Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time.”

“Was that all?”

“For the moment, yes. Thank you.”

“Are you getting anywhere with the case?”

“We generally manage to solve them,” Johanne said evasively. “It just takes time. I realize that it must be very difficult for you all. Family and friends.”

“Yes. Just give me a call if there’s anything else I can do. I am more than willing to help.”

“Thank you, I understand. Good-bye.”

The line of children had turned into Mor Go’hjertasvei and disappeared between the apartment buildings. The ducks had settled down. They were sitting in groups on the ice, their legs underneath them and their beaks tucked into the heat of their breast feathers.

Johanne started to wander up the path along the river.

“For a long time there were no secrets in this case,” she thought to herself. Jack lollopped obediently along beside her. “It was remarkably free of hate and secrets. But then they popped up. As they always do, in all cases, after all murders. Lies. Half-truths. Veiled facts and forgotten, hidden stories.”

Ragnhild started to cry. Johanne looked into the carriage. Her toothless gums were bared in a furious howl. Her mother filled the gaping hole with the pacifier. All was quiet.

She had pondered it for a long time. Why both cases, Fiona’s and Victoria’s, were so strangely free of contradictions and underlying conflicts.

She picked up speed. The wind was bitter and biting. Ragnhild would fully wake up soon. They had to get home.

“Maternal rejection has ended in murder before this,” she mused as she struggled with the curb in Bergensgate. “But why nearly twenty-six years later? Had the child, now an adult, only just found out the truth? Could the revelation of a past betrayal have stirred such hate? Could it be the driving force behind a murder like this, a gruesome, symbolic execution? Or . . .”

She stopped. Jack looked at her in surprise, with his tongue hanging out of his slavering mouth. A bus drove past. The exhaust made Johanne cough and turn away.

Maybe the rejection wasn’t that long ago.

The thought had struck her the night before, when Adam warned her against unfounded speculation. Maybe Fiona Helle’s secret child had only recently traced his or her biological mother. Ironic, she thought to herself, if Fiona herself had become an object of desire, like those she had exploited for entertainment, on which she had built her career. “Don’t speculate. Adam was right. This is too vague. And if the child really does exist, what the hell would that person have to do with Victoria Heinerback?” she asked herself aloud and then shook her head.

It had to be two murderers.

Or maybe not.

Yes, two. Or one.

“I’ve got to stop,” she thought. “This is crazy. Unprofessional. A profiler uses sophisticated data programs. Works in a team. Has access to archives and know-how. I am not a profiler. I’m an ordinary woman out walking with her baby and dog. But there’s something, there’s something that . . .”

She started to run. Ragnhild was screaming in the carriage, which rattled and shook and nearly turned over when Johanne slid on some ice as she turned the corner into Haugesvei.

When she finally got home, she locked the door and put on the security chain before taking off her coat and boots.

Trond Arnesen couldn’t sleep. It was two o’clock on Wednesday morning. He had been up a couple of times to get water. His mouth felt like sandpaper, but he didn’t know why. There was nothing on TV. At least nothing that caught his interest, or stopped him from worrying, or gave him a few minutes’ respite from his brain that was churning things over and over and keeping sleep at bay.

He gave up. Got up for the fourth time. Got dressed.

He thought he would take a walk, get some air.

The snow had started to fall at around eight. It lay like a clean, light blanket over the ground, over the rotting leaves and winter remains, dirty gray snow banks and sludgy roads. The gravel crunched under his feet, and the gate squealed when he opened it. He walked aimlessly up the hill, as if lured by the streetlight.

There was no way he could tell the truth.

He couldn’t even have told the truth right away, at the time, when he still had a chance, in that sweaty room with the policeman who looked like he was about to burst out laughing.

It had definitely been the last time that Friday, and it had been so easy to forget.

Then Bård came.

Idiot.

Trond thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his down jacket. He walked fast. There was no else around at this time of night, and people had gone to bed hours ago in the dark houses along the road. A cat darted across the road, stopped for a moment, and stared at him with yellow, luminescent eyes before disappearing between the trees on the other side.

He missed Victoria. There was a vacuum behind his ribs, a longing that he couldn’t remember ever having felt before, but it was like missing his mom when he went to camp as a boy.

Victoria was so strong. She would have figured things out.

The tears left frozen tracks on his cheeks.

He sniffed, blew his nose in his fingers, and then stood still. This was where the taxi had stopped for him to throw up. He prodded the snowdrift with the toes of his boots. It was lighter up here, with streetlights every five yards or so. The snow shimmered like blue white diamonds when he kicked it.

His watch suddenly appeared.

Puzzled, he bent down.

It was his watch. He blew on it and shook off the snow, held it up to his eyes. Ten past three. The second hand ticked loyally on, and the date showed the 18th.

When he put the watch on, the plastic burned ice-cold against his skin.

He was glad and smiled. The watch reminded him of Victoria, and he put his hand around the black watchband and squeezed it.

He should tell them.

He’d made such a fuss about the diving watch that he should let Adam Stubo know that he’d found it. Trond had simply been mistaken. He hadn’t left it at home but had worn it to the party, and it’d fallen off when he was bent double, puking up his guts.

The policeman might have moved heaven and earth to try and find the watch. And Trond didn’t want heaven and earth to be moved. He wanted peace and quiet, and to have as little as possible to do with the police.

He could send a text message. That was the solution. Stubo had given him his number and assured him that he could call whenever he wanted. Texting would be safest. It was ordinary and undramatic, the modern way to communicate trivial messages and minor events.

Found my watch. Had dropped it in the snow. Sorry about the fuss! Trond Arnesen.

There, it was done. He turned around. Couldn’t wander the streets all night. Maybe he could find a DVD to kill time. He could take one of Victoria’s sleeping pills. He’d never tried one before. It would probably knock him out completely. The idea was very appealing.

He didn’t care about the book that had disappeared. Rudolf Fjord could buy a new copy.

“Adam.”

She prodded him.

“Hmmm.”

“I’m scared.”

“Don’t be scared. Go to sleep.”

“I can’t.”

He gave a demonstrative sigh and pulled the pillow down over his face.

“We have to sleep sometime,” was Adam’s muffled response. “Every now and then.”

He peeped out from behind the pillow and yawned.

“What are you frightened of now?”

“I woke up because your phone was beeping and then—”

“Did my phone ring? Crap, I should’ve . . .”

His hands fumbled around trying to find the light switch on the bedside table. He knocked over a glass of water.

“Shit,” he groaned. “Where . . . ?”

The light exploded in his face. He squinted and sat up in bed.

“It didn’t ring,” Johanne explained quickly. “Just beeped. And then—”

“Jesus,” he mumbled. “Great time to send a text. Poor boy. Guess he can’t sleep either. Seems a bit pathetic, to tell the truth.”

“Who?”

“Trond Arnesen. Forget it. Nothing important.”

He got out of bed and pulled on his boxer shorts.

“It’s good that you’ve finally agreed to let Ragnhild sleep in her own bed. Otherwise we’d all be going around like zombies. As if we don’t already.”

“Don’t be angry. Where are you going?”