Anne Holt - Fear Not

The building was quiet. The neighbours downstairs must have gone away. When Johanne got home at about eight o’clock, the ground floor was in darkness. In her own apartment she went from room to room, switching on all the lights. She left all the doors open; the dog liked to wander around if he wasn’t shut in Kristiane’s room at night. The soft pattering of his paws and the cheerful thud every time Jack settled down on the floor always made her feel slightly less lonely on the rare occasions when she actually was alone. Eventually she took her laptop into the living room, sat down on the sofa and sipped a glass of wine as she surfed the net, without concentrating on anything in particular. She was looking for some kind of Scrabble game when the phone rang.

‘Hi, it’s me.’

It was a long time since she had been so pleased to hear his voice.

‘Hi darling. How’s it going up there?’

Adam laughed.

‘Well, basically I’ve trodden on the toes of the Bergen police; I called to see the widower just a few hours after he’d been told that his wife was dead. I’ve already fallen out with his son, I think, and on top of all that I’ve eaten so much for dinner that I feel ill.’

Johanne laughed too.

‘That doesn’t sound good. Where are you staying?’

‘At the SAS Hotel on Bryggen. Nice room. They moved me to a suite when they found out where I was from. It’s not exactly packed out here at Christmas.’

‘So did they know why you were there?’

‘No. It’s a miracle. It’s almost exactly twenty-four hours since Bishop Lysgaard was murdered, and so far not a single bloody journalist has got wind of it. All that Christmas food must have finished them off.’

‘Or the schnapps. Or maybe it’s just that the Bergen police are better at keeping quiet than their colleagues in Oslo. By the way, I’ve just been watching the evening news. They had a little piece about the case, but they more or less just said she was dead.’

On the other end of the line she could hear noises that indicated Adam was taking off his tie. She suddenly felt quite emotional. She knew him so well she could hear something like that on the phone.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to take off my shoes and this damned noose around my neck. That’s better. What kind of a day have you had? Was it horrible having to do all that clearing up with the kids around? You must be worn out. I’m sorry I-’

‘It was fine. As you know I can get by perfectly well without one night’s sleep. The kids played in the garden for a couple of hours and I just…’

She had managed to push away the thought of the strange man for the entire afternoon and evening. Now a feeling of unease stabbed through her, and she fell silent.

‘Hello? Johanne?’

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘Is something wrong? Johanne?’

Adam would simply dismiss it. He would sigh his weary sigh and tell her not to be so worried about the children all the time. Adam would have very little understanding of the fact that Johanne had discovered that a complete stranger knew the name of her elder daughter. Besides which, the man had been so well wrapped up in his overcoat, hat and scarf that Adam would maintain it could have been a neighbour if she told him about the incident; and that horrible little coldness would come between them and make it more difficult for her to get to sleep later, alone, with no other sounds around her apart from Jack’s snuffling and constant farting.

‘No, no,’ she said, trying to make her voice smile. ‘Except that you’re not here, of course. Ragnhild wanted to stay over with Isak’s parents.’

‘That’s good. Isak really is generous. He puts-’

‘As if you weren’t every bit as kind to his daughter! As if-’

‘Calm down, Johanne! That wasn’t what I meant. I’m glad you all had a nice evening, and that you’ve got some time for yourself. That certainly doesn’t happen very often.’

She moved the laptop on to the coffee table and drew the blanket more tightly around her.

‘You’re right,’ she said, this time with a genuine smile. ‘It’s actually really nice to be all on my own. Apart from Jack, of course. By the way, there must be something wrong with his food. He’s farting like mad.’

Adam laughed. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Doing a little bit of work. Surfing the net a little bit. Drinking a little drop of wine. Missing you.’

‘That all sounds good. Apart from the work – it’s Christmas Day! I’m just about to go to bed. I’m worn out. Tomorrow I’m hoping to interview the Bishop’s son. God knows how that will go – he’s already taken a dislike to me.’

‘I’m sure he hasn’t. Everybody likes you. And because you are the very best detective in the whole wide world, I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

Adam laughed again.

‘You mustn’t keep saying that to the kids! Just before Christmas when we were queuing at the checkout in Maxi, Ragnhild suddenly stood up in the shopping trolley and announced at the top of her voice that her daddy was the very, very, very best – I think she must have said “very” ten times – detective in the world. Embarrassing. People laughed.’

‘But she’s right,’ said Johanne with a smile. ‘You’re the best in the world at most things.’

‘Idiot. Night-night.’

‘Night-night, my love.’

Adam’s voice disappeared. Johanne stared at the telephone for a while, as if she was hoping he might still be there and would reassure her that the man by the fence posed no threat. Then she got up slowly, put down the phone and went over to the window. The new moon was suspended at an angle above the apartment block next door. There was still frost on the ground. The cold had sunk its teeth into Oslo, but the sky was clear, day after day, and all week there had been the most breathtaking sunsets. The few sparse snowflakes that had fallen during the afternoon covered the garden like a thin film. The sky was clear once again, it was dark, and after a while Johanne felt ready for bed.

A woman stared out of a window, not knowing if she would ever sleep again. Perhaps she was already sleeping. Everything was strange and unreal, like a dream. She had been born in this house, in this room, she had always lived here and looked out of this leaded window, a cross dividing the view into four different parts of the world, as her father had told her when she was little and believed every word he said. Now everything was twisted and distorted. She was used to the rain against the window pane. It often rained, almost all the time. It was raining in Bergen and she wept and didn’t know what she was seeing. Life had been chopped into pieces. The view from the little house was no longer hers.

She had waited for twenty-four hours – a long night and an even longer day – in a state of not knowing which she could do nothing about. Just as her life had followed a course that had been determined by circumstances beyond her control, so these endless hours of waiting had been something she just had to suffer. There had been no way out, not until the woman on TV had told her what she had, in fact, already known when she woke up in the armchair in front of the screen exactly twenty-four hours earlier, with a fear that grasped her by the throat and made her hands shake.

Because she had waited before.

She had waited all her life, and she had got used to it.

This time everything was different. She had felt a confirmation of something that couldn’t be true – shouldn’t be true – and yet she still knew, because she had lived like this for such a long time, utterly, utterly alone.

The doorbell rang, so late and so unexpectedly that the woman gave a little scream.