Anne Holt - Fear Not

When Johanne woke with a start, she was soaked in sweat. The bedclothes were sticking to her body. She tried to escape from their damp embrace, but merely succeeded in getting her feet caught in the opening of the duvet cover. She felt trapped, and kicked desperately to free them. The duvet fought back. In the end she was free. She tried to remember what kind of nightmare she might have had.

Her head was completely empty.

Her hands were shaking as she reached for the glass of water on her bedside table and emptied it. As she was putting it back, it fell on the floor. She screwed up her eyes and pulled a face until she remembered that Kristiane was at Isak’s. Ragnhild never woke up this early.

She was still having some difficulty breathing as she flopped back against the pillow and tried to relax.

Despite the fact that she had spent more than twenty minutes talking to Adam on the phone the previous evening, she hadn’t mentioned the conversation with Kristiane. Nor had she said anything to Isak when he turned up after school, feeling rather annoyed. She had forgotten to tell him that she had picked Kristiane up, contravening all their plans and agreements. When he came up the stairs with an uncharacteristically angry expression on his face, she simply said that she had taken some time off work and for once had seized the opportunity to spend some time alone with Kristiane.

She naturally apologized for forgetting to let him know.

As usual Isak accepted everything, and when he set off home with his daughter he was just as good-humoured as always.

Kristiane had witnessed something in connection with the murder of Marianne Kleive. That much was certain. She must at least have seen the dead woman on the evening she was murdered. But still Johanne hadn’t really known what to say to Isak and Adam. Her daughter hadn’t actually told her what had happened. It was her body language and facial expression, her choice of words and the tone of her voice that had been crucial.

Exactly the kind of thing that made Isak laugh at Johanne, and made Adam try to hide how exhausted he was.

And if either of them had believed – against all expectation – that she might be right, then Adam, at least, would have insisted on contacting the police straight away. Isak, too, probably. He was a good father in many ways, but he had never understood how infinitely vulnerable Kristiane was.

If there was one thing she wouldn’t be able to cope with it was strangers trampling about in her own little sphere, asking her questions about something she had obviously managed to lock away, somehow. Clearing up a murder was important, of course, but Kristiane was more important.

This was something Johanne would have to tackle by herself.

Her pulse was steadier now. She was beginning to feel cold because of her night sweat, and decided to change the bed. She got out clean sheets and a duvet cover, and with practised hands she had a dry, cool bed in just four minutes. She hadn’t the energy to change Adam’s duvet. The bed looked odd with covers that didn’t match, but it could wait until tomorrow.

She settled down and closed her eyes.

She was wide awake. Turned over. Tried to think about something else.

Kristiane had seen something terrible. A crime, or the result of a crime.

Someone was watching Kristiane.

She flung herself on to her other side. Her pulse rate increased.

Suddenly she sat bolt upright. Things couldn’t go on like this. Right now there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t ring anyone at this time of the day, besides which Kristiane was perfectly safe with Isak. Somehow she had to get through the night.

Tomorrow she would talk to Adam.

The decision made her feel calmer.

She would ask him to come home. She didn’t have to say why. He would know from the sound of her voice that he had to come. Adam would return from Bergen, and she would tell him everything.

She couldn’t tell him anything.

If he believed she was right, it would destroy Kristiane.

This was impossible. She grabbed Adam’s pillow, placed it on her stomach and hugged it close, as if it were some part of her child.

She could get up and do some work.

No.

There were three books on the bedside table. She selected one of them. Turned to the page with the corner folded down and began to read. The Road by Cormac McCarthy didn’t make her feel one jot calmer. After three pages she closed both the book and her eyes.

Her mind was racing, and she felt physically ill.

For a long time Adam had wanted to have a television in the bedroom. Now she regretted not giving in. She was incapable of watching anything attentively, but she had an intense need to hear voices. For a moment she was tempted to wake Ragnhild. Instead, she switched on the clock radio. It was tuned to NRK P2 and classical music filled the room – music that was every bit as melancholy as McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel. She moved the dial until she found a local station that played chart music all night, then turned the volume up as loud as she dared; the neighbour’s bedroom was directly below theirs.

Dagens Næringsliv had fallen on the floor.

She bent down and picked it up. It was the current edition, and she hadn’t read it. Not that there was a great deal to read; the leading article and every other headline on the front page was about the financial crisis. Up to now the collapse of the world’s financial markets had felt largely irrelevant to her, even if she was reluctant to admit it. Both she and Adam were employed within the public sector, neither of them was in danger of losing their jobs, and interest rates were in free fall. They were already noticing that they had more disposable income than they’d had for a long time.

She started reading from the back as usual.

The main news on the stock market page was to do with the death of the installation artist Niclas Winter. Johanne had seen several of his pieces, and Vanity Fair, reconstruction in particular had made an impression when the whole family went into the city one day and spent an hour among Winter’s three installations on Rådhuskaia. Kristiane had been completely fascinated; Ragnhild had been more interested in the seagulls and the fountain; and Adam had snorted and shaken his head at the idea that this kind of thing was regarded as art.

It seemed Winter had no heirs.

His mother and maternal grandparents were dead. He had no siblings, and his mother had also been an only child. There was quite simply no one to inherit the small fortune Niclas Winter had unknowingly left behind. Apart from the completed piece I was thinking of something blue and maybe grey, darling , it turned out there were four more large installations in the deceased artist’s studio.

Connoisseurs in the art world were expressing themselves in particularly high-flown terms about CockPitt , a homo-erotic homage to Angelina Jolie’s husband. Evidently there had already been an anonymous bid of four million kroner for the work. Dagens Næringsliv ’s sources claimed that the actor himself wanted to buy it.

In spite of the financial crisis, it seemed there was no shortage of money when it came to Niclas Winter’s art now that he was dead. Statoil-Hydro had already put in a claim for the installation that they had ordered then cancelled, and only gave up when the administrator of the estate was able to produce the relevant documentation. His approximate and preliminary valuation of the sculptures was around 15 to 20 million kroner. Maybe more. The article mentioned that, ironically, Niclas had lived on a small income and the goodwill of various patrons of the arts, and only became a wealthy man after his death. A not uncommon fate among artists, as the businessman and art collector Christen Sveaas pointed out. He had two smaller installations by Niclas Winter in his extensive collection in Kistefos, and was able to confirm that the value of both pieces had risen dramatically.