Anne Holt - Fear Not

‘I won’t poke around,’ Adam smiled, holding up his hands. ‘Definitely not. I just want to take a superficial look. As I’ve mentioned several times already, it’s important for me to gain the clearest possible impression of the victims in the cases I investigate. That’s why I’m here. In Bergen, I mean. I want to try and get a clearer picture of your mother. Seeing her home helps a little. That should be OK, shouldn’t it?’

Once again Lukas shrugged his shoulders. Adam took this as a sign of agreement, and stood up. As he slipped his notepad in his pocket, he asked Lukas to show him around. ‘So that I don’t make a fool of myself,’ he said with a smile. ‘Like last time.’

The house on Nubbebakken was old but well maintained. The staircase leading to the upper floor was surprisingly narrow and unprepossessing compared with the rest of the house. Lukas led the way, warning Adam about a projection from the ceiling.

‘This is their bedroom,’ he said, opening a door. He stood there with his hand resting on the handle, partly blocking the opening. Adam got the message, and simple leaned in to take a look.

A double bed, neatly made.

The quilt was made up of different coloured pieces of fabric, and lit up the large and fairly empty room. There were piles of books on the bedside table, and a folded newspaper on the floor by the side of the bed nearest the door. Bergens Tidende , as far as Adam could make out. A large painting hung on the wall directly opposite the bed: abstract patterns in blue and lilac. Behind the door – so that Adam was only able to see it in the mirror between the large windows – stood a capacious wardrobe.

‘Thank you,’ he said, stepping back.

Apart from the main bedroom, the upper floor consisted of a recently renovated bathroom, two fairly anonymous bedrooms, one of which had been Lukas’s when he was a boy, and a large study where the couple each had a substantial desk. Adam was itching to get a closer look at the papers on the desks. However, he could tell that Lukas was running out of patience, so he nodded in the direction of the staircase instead. On the way they passed a narrow door with a wrought-iron key in the lock; he presumed it led up to an attic.

‘Why do they live here?’ Adam asked on the way downstairs.

‘What?’

‘Why don’t they live in the bishop’s residence? As far as I know, the diocese of Bjørgvin has a bishop’s residence that was designed by an architect.’

‘This is my father’s childhood home. They wanted to live here when we came back to Bergen. When my mother became bishop, my father insisted on moving here. I think he only agreed on that condition – to my mother becoming bishop, I mean.’

They had reached the long hallway outside the living room.

‘But isn’t it a statutory requirement?’ Adam asked. ‘As far as I know, the bishop has an obligation to-’

‘Listen,’ said Lukas, rubbing the top of his nose between his thumb and index finger. ‘There was a lot of fuss about getting permission, but I don’t really know. I’m very, very tired. Could you ask someone else?’

‘OK,’ Adam said quickly. ‘I’ll leave you in peace. ‘I just need to take a look in here.’

He pointed to the little bedroom he had found by mistake a couple of days earlier.

‘Carry on,’ Lukas mumbled, gesturing towards the door with his hand outstretched.

Only when he walked into the room did it strike Adam that Lukas hadn’t stood in his way. Quite the reverse – the bishop’s son had gone back into the living room, leaving Adam alone. He glanced around quickly.

The curtains were open, and the stuffy smell of sleep was less noticeable. The room was cooler than he remembered, and the clothes that had been hanging on the back of the chair were gone.

Otherwise everything seemed the same.

He bent down to read the titles of the books in a small pile on the bedside table. A thick biography of Jens Christian Hauge, the war hero; a crime novel by Unni Lundell, and an old, worn, leather-bound copy of Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil .

Adam stood motionless, all his senses alert. She had spent her nights in this room, he was sure of it. He carefully opened the wardrobe door.

Dresses and skirts hung alongside ironed shirts and blouses in one half; the other was divided into shelves. A shelf for underwear and a shelf for tights and stockings. A shelf for trousers and a shelf for belts and evening bags. And a shelf down at the bottom for everything that didn’t have a shelf of its own.

You don’t keep your everyday clothes in a guest room, thought Adam, silently closing the door.

A sense of revulsion rose within him, as it often did when he surfed into other people’s lives on the wave following a tragedy.

‘Have you nearly finished?’ Lukas shouted.

‘Absolutely,’ said Adam, scanning the room for one last time before returning to the hallway. ‘Thank you.’

At the front door he turned and held out his hand.

‘I wonder when it will pass,’ said Lukas, without taking it. ‘All this bad stuff.’

‘It never passes,’ said Adam, letting his hand fall. ‘Not completely.’

Lukas Lysgaard let out a sob.

‘I lost my first wife and my grown-up daughter,’ Adam said quietly. ‘More than ten years ago. A ridiculous, banal accident at home. I didn’t think it was possible for anything to hurt so much.’

Lukas’s face changed. The hostile, reserved expression disappeared, and he put his hands to the back of his neck in a despairing gesture.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Forgive me. To lose a child… And here am I…’

‘You have nothing to apologize for,’ said Adam. ‘Grief is not relative. Your grief is deep enough in itself. In time you’ll learn to live with it. There are brighter days ahead, Lukas. Life has a blessed tendency to heal itself.’

‘Yes, but I mean she was only my mother. You lost-’

‘I still wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, thinking that Elisabeth and Trine are still alive. It takes a second or two for me to realize where I am in terms of time. And the grief I feel at that moment is exactly the same as the day they died. But it doesn’t last as long, of course. Half an hour later I am able to sleep, the best and most secure sleep of all.’ He gave a faint smile. ‘But now I must go.’

The raw cold struck him as he walked out on to the low stone steps. The rain came lashing at him from the side, and he turned up his collar as he headed for the gate without looking back.

The only thought he could cope with was that one of the photographs on the shelf in the so-called guest room had disappeared. On Christmas Day there had been four photographs there. Now there were only three. One of Lukas as a child, on Erik’s knee. One of the whole family on a boat. The third was a photograph of a very young, serious Erik Lysgaard in his student cap. The tassel resting on his shoulder. The cap at an angle, as it should be.

When Adam opened the gate, pulling a face at the screeching of the hinge, he wondered if it had been stupid not to ask Lukas what had happened to the fourth photograph.

On the other hand, he probably wouldn’t have got an answer.

At least not one he would have believed.

The idea that anyone could believe such stories was completely incomprehensible.

Johanne was sitting with her laptop on her knee, surfing aimlessly. She had visited both the New York Times and the Washington Post , but was finding it difficult to concentrate. At least the web pages of The National Enquirer were entertaining.

Ragnhild was already fast asleep, and Isak was putting Kristiane to bed. Although she didn’t really like it, she caught herself hoping he would stay. In order to shake off the thought, she checked her e-mail. There were three new messages in her inbox, two of which were irritating adverts; one was for a slimming product made from krill and bears’ claws. There was also a message from someone whose name didn’t ring a bell at first, until she trawled her memory.