Anne Holt - Fear Not

She hesitated for such a long time that he carried on for her: ‘That case is so unusual and absurd that nobody has actually made a connection with the fact that the victim is a lesbian.’

Silje went over to the board, took down the sheets of paper and the newspaper article, screwed them up and threw them in the waste-paper basket. Knut Bork remained standing there with his arms folded as she walked around the desk and sat down.

‘You and I,’ she said firmly, ‘are going to keep this to ourselves. For the time being. It could all be a coincidence, just as every connection can be pure chance; on the other hand it could be…’

‘Something very nasty indeed,’ Knut Bork supplied; his thumb had started to bleed.

For the second time in three weeks Johanne was at home alone, and it felt almost frightening. The apartment always seemed so different without the familiar sounds of the children. She noticed that she was moving cautiously across the floor, so as not to make any noise.

‘Pull yourself together,’ she muttered to herself, putting on a CD that Lina Skytter had compiled, burned and given to her for Christmas. Kristiane was at Isak’s until Friday, and every other Wednesday Ragnhild went to visit her maternal grandparents and stayed over.

She had been trying to get hold of Adam for several hours, but her calls went straight to voicemail. Presumably, he was in a meeting. When the day had finally dawned after the restless, fearful night, she had realized she had to talk to him. There was no more room for doubt – unlike last night when she kept changing her mind. She had made her decision now, and that very fact made her a little more optimistic about the whole thing.

If only she knew what Kristiane had actually seen.

Even though she realized there must be something, she was still unsure what it was. It didn’t feel right to press her daughter any further. Later, perhaps, she thought, as she tiptoed around in her stocking feet, not really knowing what to do.

The music Lina had put together wasn’t entirely to Johanne’s taste. She went over to the CD player and turned down Kurt Nilsen’s voice right in the middle of the chorus of one of his ballads.

She ought to eat something, but she wasn’t hungry.

Adam’s meeting must be taking a long time; it was three hours since she left the first message asking him to call her.

She could sit down and do some work, of course.

Or read.

Watch a film, perhaps.

She reached for the phone and keyed in Isak’s number without even thinking about it. He answered right away.

‘Hi, it’s Johanne.’

‘Hi.’ She could hear him smiling on the other end of the line.

‘I just rang to…’

‘To ask how Kristiane is,’ he supplied. ‘She’s absolutely fine. We’ve been to the pool at Bislett, even though children aren’t really allowed in except at weekends. She’s so quiet that the lady in the ticket office lets her in.’

‘Do you let her go into the women’s changing room on her own?’

‘Of course. She’s too big to come into the men’s with me! She’s starting to develop breasts, in case you haven’t noticed! And she’s got a little bit of hair down below too! Our little girl is growing up, Johanne, and, of course, I let her go into the women’s changing room on her own.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Johanne,’ he said wearily. ‘She’s fine! We’re making tacos, and she’s fried the mince all on her own. She’s chopping vegetables and doing a great job. When she’s with me we always cook dinner together. She’ll be fourteen this year, Johanne. You can’t treat her like a child all her life.’

She is a child.

She’s the most vulnerable child in the world.

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Johanne mumbled. ‘I’m here. I’m glad you’re having a good time. I just wanted to check if-’

‘Would you like to speak to her? She’s standing right here.’

There was a terrible clatter in the background.

‘Oops,’ said Isak. ‘Something just fell on the floor. Can I ask her to call you later on?’

‘No, no. There’s no need. Have a good time. See you Friday.’

‘See you!’

He disappeared and she tossed the telephone down on the coffee table. As she walked over to the big window, Johanne was no longer tiptoeing. She stomped angrily across the floor, unsure whether her aggression was directed at herself or Isak.

She still hadn’t bought any curtains.

The snow was so deep that the fence on Hauges Vei was no longer visible. The piles left by the snowploughs were enormous. People had nowhere to put the snow they had cleared from their drives. Not knowing what else to do, they spread it out in the middle of the road, which meant that a considerable amount ended up right back where it came from every time the snowplough rattled past.

There wasn’t a soul in sight. The cold from the window pane made her shudder. The big snowman the children who lived opposite had made stared at her with his coal-black eyes. He had lost his nose. His birch-twig arms stuck out like witch’s talons. He wore an old hat; a bright red scarf covered half his face.

He reminded her of the man by the fence.

She stepped to one side.

Tomorrow she would get some curtains.

It suddenly struck her that she had been completely wrong.

The anxiety that had tormented her since Christmas had not started with the man by the fence. The feeling that someone was watching Kristiane had not started when a strange man came up and asked her what she’d had for Christmas. The reason why Johanne had reacted so strongly on that occasion was because the fear already had her in its grip. The search for those damned spare ribs and all the stress of organizing a Christmas Eve that would satisfy her mother had just temporarily pushed it aside.

It wasn’t the man by the fence who had triggered her anxiety. It had been there since the wedding. Ever since Kristiane had stood on the tram lines and Johanne had been certain she was going to die, she had felt that her own despair was linked to something more, something greater than the fact that her daughter had been in mortal danger. It had all worked out in spite of everything, and even if she was worrying unnecessarily, she couldn’t remember feeling like this since Wencke Bencke had threatened her in her subtle way almost five years ago.

Johanne hurried over to the computer and switched it on.

It seemed to take an eternity for the start page to appear, and when she keyed in the name of the world-famous crime writer, she got it wrong four times before she was finally able to google the name: 26,900 hits. She tried limiting her search. The only thing she wanted to know about the author was whether she was still living in New Zealand.

Wencke Bencke had got away with murder. She had cold-bloodedly taken the lives of a series of celebrities during the winter and spring of 2004; Johanne had never fully understood her motives. Johanne had helped Adam and Sigmund with the wide-ranging investigation, but the only result was that the three of them became convinced that Bencke was guilty. They couldn’t prove a thing. The celebrated author had come to see her one beautiful spring day when it seemed clear that the murderer would never be caught. Johanne had been out pushing the newborn Ragnhild in her buggy when Wencke Bencke confessed, calmly and with a smile. Not that her confession would have stood up in a court of law, but it was clear enough to Johanne. The hidden threat she left hanging between them as she trudged away in the spring sunshine was also subtle, but it was sufficiently unambiguous to leave Johanne scared out of her wits. The fear didn’t really go away until the following year, when Bencke married a Maori man fifteen years her junior and emigrated to New Zealand. She had been back to Norway in connection with book launches, which made Johanne avoid the arts section of the newspapers for most of the autumn.