What is Mine (24 page)

“She’s dead,” Johanne said to herself, and put the photocopy in a plastic sleeve.

But she decided to try all the same. It was easy enough to find the address in a telephone directory from 1965. Directory Assistance informed her that a completely different woman now lived at Agnes Mohaug’s old address. Agnes Mohaug was no longer registered as having a phone, said the metallic voice.

Someone might remember her. Or her son. It would be best if someone could remember Anders.

It was worth a try, and the old address in Lillestrøm was as good a starting point as any. Alvhild would be happy. And for some reason that was now important to Johanne. To make Alvhild happy.

T
HIRTY-SEVEN

E
milie seemed smaller. She had somehow shrunk, and that irritated him. His jaw was tense; he heard his teeth grinding and tried to relax. Emilie couldn’t complain about the service. She got food.

“Why aren’t you eating?” he asked, harshly.

The child didn’t answer, but at least she tried to smile. That was something.

“You have to eat.”

The tray was slippery. The bowl of soup skidded from side to side as he bent to put it down on the floor.

“Promise me you’ll eat this?”

Emilie nodded. She pulled the duvet up, right up to her chin; he couldn’t see how thin she was anymore. Good. She stank. Even over by the door he could smell the urine. Unhealthy. For a moment he considered going over to the sink to see if she’d run out of soap. But then he decided against it. To be fair, she’d been wearing the same clothes for several weeks now, but she was hardly a baby. She could wash her underpants when she wanted to if there was soap left.

“Do you wash yourself?”

She nodded carefully. Smiled. Strange smile she had, that kid. Subservient, somehow. Womanly. The girl was only nine and had already learned to smile submissively. Not that that meant anything. Only betrayal. A woman’s smile. Again he felt a pain at the back of his jaw; he had to pull himself together. Relax. He had to regain control. He had lost it in Tromsø. Nearly. Things hadn’t quite gone according to plan. It wasn’t his fault that it was so cold. May! May and the child had been packed in as if it were midwinter. Surely it couldn’t be good for the child. But that didn’t matter now. The child was dead. He had managed to get back home; that was the most important thing. He was still in control. He took a deep breath and forced his thoughts into place, where they belonged. Why did he have this girl here?

“You watch yourself,” he said quietly.

He hated the smell of the child. He himself showered several times a day. He was never unshaven. His clothes were always freshly ironed. His mother could smell like Emilie sometimes, when the nurses were too late. He couldn’t stand it. Human decay. Degrading bodily smells that stemmed from a lack of control. He swallowed hard, his mouth filled with saliva, and his throat felt constricted and sore.

“Should I turn off the light?” he asked, and took a step back.

“No!”

She was still alive.

“No! Don’t!”

“Then you have to eat.”

In a way it was exhilarating to stand here like this. He had attached the iron door to the wall with a hook, but it could still close if he wasn’t careful. If he, for example, fell, or he lost his balance for a moment and fell toward the door, the hook would slip out of the eye and the door would slam behind him. They would both be done for. Him and the girl. He was breathing fast. He could go into the room and trust the hook. It was a solid bit of equipment; he’d made it himself. A screw eye secured deep into the wall, with an anchor to keep it firmly in place. A hook. Big. It was solid and would never jump out by itself. He walked further into the room.

Control.

The weather had let him down. He had to suffocate the child. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He hadn’t planned to abduct the boy, as he had with the other two. It was smart to do things differently each time. Confusing. Not for him, of course, but for the others. He knew that the boy slept outside for at least a couple of hours every afternoon. After an hour, it was too late. Not for him, but for the others.

It would have been better if Emilie was a boy.

“I’ve got a son,” he said.

“Mmm.”

“He’s younger than you.”

The child looked terrified. He took yet another step closer to the bed. Emilie clung to the wall. Her face was all eyes.

“You smell disgusting,” he said slowly. “Haven’t you learned how to wash yourself? You can’t come up and watch TV if you stink like that.”

She just continued to stare at him. Her face was white now, not skin-colored, not pink. White.

“You’re quite a little madam, you are.”

Emilie’s breathing was hyper fast. He smiled, relaxed.

“Eat,” he said. “It’s best you eat.”

Then he walked backward to the door. The hook felt cold against his skin. He lifted it carefully out of the screw eye. Then he let the door close slowly between him and the child. He put his hand on the light switch and was happy that he’d been smart enough to put it on the outside. He flicked the switch down. There was something peculiarly satisfying about the actual click, a pleasing resistance that made him do it several times. Off on. Off on off.

Finally he left the light on and went upstairs to watch TV.

T
HIRTY-EIGHT

W
e’ve got lists of all the people who flew in and out of Tromsø in the time before and after Glenn Hugo’s death. Tromsø Police have done a fantastic job of collecting videos from all the gas stations within a two-hundred-mile radius. The bus companies are trying to draw up passenger lists, but it’s a lot more difficult. The coastal express boat is doing the same and so are the local ferries.”

Sigmund Berli scratched his neck and tugged at his shirt collar.

“And there aren’t really many other ways to get in and out of the Paris of the North. We haven’t approached the hotels yet. Seems unlikely that the guy would stay in a hotel, somehow . . . having just killed a baby, I mean.”

“There must be . . . hundreds of names.”

“Several thousand, I’m afraid. The boys are working as quickly as they can to get them onto the computer system. Then they’re checked against . . .”

Berli looked over at Adam Stubo’s bulletin board, where pictures of Emilie, Kim, Sarah, and Glenn Hugo were pinned up with big blue pushpins. Only Kim was smiling shyly; the other children all stared solemnly at the camera.

“. . . the parents’ information, who they’ve met and known and been in contact with. Shit . . . These lists are getting ridiculous, Adam.”

His voice broke and he coughed.

“I know that it’s necessary. It’s just so . . .”

“Frustrating. A whole lot of names and no connections.”

Adam gave a long yawn and loosened his tie.

“What about the man who was seen in . . .”

He squeezed his eyes shut in concentration.

“Soltunveien,” he remembered. “The man in gray or blue.”

“No one has come forward,” said Sigmund Berli, his voice a bit stronger now. “Which makes the sighting all the more interesting. And our witness was right; the woman in the red coat was a neighbor; she said herself that she must have turned into the road from Langnesbakken around ten to three. The boy on the bike has also been identified; he came forward with his father this morning and obviously has nothing to hide. Neither of them saw or heard anything suspicious. The man who was rushing without wanting to . . . show it? He hasn’t come forward. So that could be . . .”

“Our man.”

Adam Stubo got up.

“He was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five. Had hair. Anything else?”

He was facing the pictures of the children, his eyes running over the series of photographs, backward and forward.

“Not really, I’m afraid. This witness, can’t remember his name off the top of my head, is evidently very careful not to say too much. He has described the walk and the build, but refuses to help to make an artist’s sketch of the face.”

“Sensible, really, if he doesn’t feel that he saw it properly. Why does he think the man was around thirty?”

“His body. His hair. The way he was walking. Energetic, but not youthful. His clothes. All of that. But between twenty-five and thirty-five is hardly precise.”

Adam Stubo rocked on his heels.

“But
if
. . .”

He suddenly turned around to face his colleague.

“
If
someone doesn’t come forward soon who fits that description and had some legitimate errand there that Sunday afternoon, we are definitely a step closer.”

“A step,” Berli repeated, and nodded. “But not much more. We’ve always assumed that it must be a man. In fact, he could be between twenty and forty-five. There are plenty of men in that age group in Norway. With hair too. But it could easily have been a wig, for all we know.”

The phone rang. It seemed for a second that Adam Stubo was not going to answer. He stared at the machine, then snatched up the receiver.

“Stubo,” he barked.

Sigmund Berli leaned back in the chair. Adam didn’t say much, but listened a lot. His face was empty of expression; only a slight rise of the left eyebrow indicated some surprise at what he was being told. Sigmund Berli ran his fingers over a cigar box on the desk in front of him. The wood was smooth and pleasing to the touch. He suddenly had an empty and uncomfortable feeling of hunger; his stomach hurt even though he didn’t really want any food. Adam finished the conversation.

“Anything new?”

Adam didn’t answer. Instead he let his chair swing halfway around on its axis, so that he could study the faces of the children on the wall again.

“Kim had a mother and a father who live together. Married. The same was true for Glenn Hugo. Sarah’s mother was single, but the girl stayed with her father every other weekend. Emilie’s mother is dead. She lived with her father.”

“Lives,” corrected Berli. “Emilie might still be alive. In other words, these children represent a fair average of children in Norway. Half of them live with both parents and half of them with one parent.”

“Only, Emilie’s father is
not
really Emilie’s father.”

“What?”

“That was Hermansen at Asker and Bærum,” said Adam, pointing to the phone. “A doctor contacted them. He didn’t know how important . . . or rather, if what he had to say was of any importance to the investigation. After this weekend’s events, he agreed with his superiors that he should break patient confidentiality and tell us that Emilie’s father is not her biological father.”

“Has Tønnes Selbu ever said anything to that effect?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t know that . . . he doesn’t know he’s not his daughter’s father?”

They both stared at the photograph of Emilie. The picture was bigger than the others, taken by a professional photographer. The child had a small chin with a hint of a cleft. Her eyes were big and serious. Her mouth was small, with full lips, and she had a crown of coltsfoot in her fair hair. One flower had fallen loose and hung down on her forehead.

“Tønnes Selbu and Grete Harborg were married when Grete got pregnant. Tønnes was automatically registered as the child’s father. No one has ever questioned it. Except perhaps the mother, she must . . . Anyway. Two years ago, Grete and Tønnes decided to register as bone marrow donors. There was something about a cousin who was ill and the whole family . . . Well, to the doctor’s great surprise, the tests showed that Tønnes was definitely not the father of his child. It was discovered by accident. The doctor had taken a test of Emilie earlier, in another context, and . . .”

“But they didn’t tell the man?”

“Why? What’s the point?”

Adam was standing up close to the photo of Emilie. He studied it in detail and drew his finger over the crown of yellow spring flowers.

“Tønnes Selbu is a good father.
Better
than most, according to the reports. I completely understand the doctors. Why should they foist that news on the man when he hasn’t asked for it? What good would it do him?”