Anne Holt - Fear Not

He got out of the car.

It was cold, but there was barely a breath of wind.

He drank in the clear, pure air and smiled. When he looked up he could see stars, and part of the waning moon between two gently swaying treetops.

He closed his eyes and leaned his upper arms on the car roof, then rested his head on his joined hands.

‘Dear Lord,’ he whispered, ‘thank you for all your blessings.’

The familiar warmth rose in his body like a feeling of intoxication as he whispered his prayer.

‘Thank you for giving me the strength to follow your word, dear Lord. Thank you for giving me the energy and courage to fulfil your commands. Thank you for allowing me to be a tool in the battle against the darkness of Satan. Thank you for giving me the ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, true from false. Thank you for punishing me when I deserve it, and for rewarding me when I have earned it. Thank you for…’

He hesitated, then clasped his hands even more tightly and closed his eyes once more, his words sincere.

‘Thank you for allowing me to spare that beautiful young girl, that innocent angel. Thank you, O Lord, for enabling me to recognize the presence of Jesus. For everything is yours, and purity is the goal. Amen.’

Slowly he turned his face up to the sky. The strength that poured through him made him shudder; it was almost as if he had become weightless. A bird took off from a snow-laden branch hanging over the track, screeching eerily as it disappeared into the dark sky. The man stretched, breathed in the fresh smell of cold and fir needles, and fished a small red clover leaf in enamelled metal out of his pocket. He pushed his hands in a pair of gloves he had found in the underground station at the National Theatre, and rubbed the emblem thoroughly before drawing back his arm and hurling it in among the trees. As he got back in the car he felt happy.

He had to reverse the hundred metres back to the main road, but it wasn’t a problem. Fifteen minutes later he was back on the E6, heading towards Gothenburg. In two days he would be back in the States, and there wouldn’t be a single clue that he had ever been in Norway.

He was absolutely sure of that.

‘This is the best clue we have.’

Adam leaned back on the sofa and held the picture of Kristiane’s saviour up in front of him.

‘But that’s worth having.’

Johanne shuffled closer to him. He smelled of a long working day, and she pressed her nose against his arm and inhaled deeply.

‘Thank you for not being so cross any more,’ she mumbled.

He didn’t reply.

‘Or are you?’ She smiled and looked up at him.

‘No, no. I suppose I’m just… disappointed. Mostly disappointed.’

‘Now you sound as if you’re telling a child off.’

‘I expect that’s what I am doing, in a way.’

She sat up abruptly.

‘OK, Adam, that’s enough! I’ve said I’m sorry. I should have come to you first. It’s just that you… you’re so bloody… sceptical all the time! I knew you’d have doubts about my entire theory and I-’

‘Stop,’ he interrupted, waving his hand vehemently. ‘What’s done is done.’

‘And in any case, contacting Silje Sørensen turned out to be a lucky break.’

She forced an encouraging smile in the hope of evoking a smile in return.

It didn’t happen. Adam scratched his scalp with both hands and sighed wearily. Then he picked up the picture of the bald man in the dark clothes once again.

He examined it for a long time, then suddenly said: ‘You know, I have a good relationship with Isak. I’m perfectly happy for him to be here. However, I can’t accept the fact that you’re using him as a shield to protect yourself from me, that he’s sitting here waiting when I get home after working in another city for several days, when we haven’t spoken to one another for more than thirty hours, and we have a great deal that is… unresolved, to put it mildly. It must never, ever happen again.’

‘But you wouldn’t have believed me! I’ve had this horrible feeling ever since 19 December, and I haven’t dared say anything, either to you or to Isak! The conversation I had with Kristiane last Monday when I realized she was a key witness was so vague, with so little in terms of… concrete information that I… When Isak told me he also had the feeling that… You wouldn’t have believed me, Adam!’

‘It isn’t a question of believing or not believing, Johanne. Of course I have no problem believing that you – and subsequently Isak – had a feeling someone was watching Kristiane. Or that you believe she saw something significant with regard to the person or persons who murdered Marianne Kleive. But just because you have that kind of feeling, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually happened . Particularly when neither of you can come up with anything more concrete than “a feeling”.’

He was sitting up straight and drew quotation marks with his fingers on her cheeks.

‘The file was missing, and the man by the-’

‘The file is back, you said so yourself. It was just carelessness.’

‘But-’

‘OK, let’s just drop this, shall we? I’ve asked a patrol car to drive past a couple of times a day, just to be on the safe side. Beyond that, there’s not much we can do if you don’t want us to subject Kristiane to a formal interview, with the stress that would mean for her. So can we forget it? At least for the moment. Please?’

His hand grasped the wine glass.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t do that. I realize you’re hurt. I realize I should have come to you with all this right from the start. But listen, Adam, I’ve been thinking about-’

‘No,’ he broke in harshly. ‘Listen to me! If Kristiane really did witness something to do with the murder of Marianne Kleive, then why the hell didn’t they just kill her? ’

His last few words were so loud that they both gave a start, then instinctively sat still as they listened for signs that Kristiane might have woken up. The only thing they could hear was the sound of Mamma Mia on DVD coming from the apartment below. For the tenth time since Christmas – or so it seemed to Johanne.

‘Because they believe,’ she said. ‘Because they believe in God.’

‘What?’

‘Or Allah.’

‘Because they believe – so what?’

He seemed more interested now. Or perhaps just confused.

‘Because they believe, they don’t kill blindly,’ Johanne said. ‘They believe with a sincerity which is probably alien to most people. They’re fanatical, but they have a deep faith. Taking the lives of adults who in their view are sinners who must be punished with death in accordance with a God-given imperative is something completely different from killing an innocent child.’

She spoke very slowly, as if these thoughts were new to her, and she therefore had to choose her words with the greatest care.

Adam’s expression was no longer so dismissive when he asked: ‘But these people, these groups, are they really… are they really religious? Aren’t they just lost souls using God and Allah as some kind of… pretext?’

‘No,’ said Johanne, shaking her head. ‘Never underestimate the power of faith. And in some ways my theory is made more credible because…’

She lifted her feet on to the sofa and grabbed hold of one of them, as if she were cold.

‘… because Kristiane did actually see something. The man who murdered Marianne Kleive presumably realized straight away that Kristiane isn’t like everyone else. If the man who saved her from the tram really is the murderer, at least that incident proved to him that she’s… different. And if there’s one thing that’s more striking about my daughter than anything else, it’s…’