Anne Holt - Fear Not

Without opening his eyes he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

The child’s mother had been hysterical. First of all she had slapped him across the face, once the girl was safe. In the period between Christmas and New Year he had once stood just a few hundred metres from the white building where the family lived. A man had come out of a neighbouring property and stopped by the fence to chat with the two girls playing in the garden. The mother was standing at the window, watching them. She was frightened out of her wits, and seemed beside herself when she came out to fetch them inside.

A bit like Susan, he thought, although he didn’t allow himself to think about Susan very often. She was always anxious about Anthony, too.

It wasn’t the first time he had noticed how the people he observed had a horrible feeling they were being watched. They never saw him, of course, just as the mother of the pretty girl hadn’t seen him when he followed her to school in his neutral hire car, where he finally found confirmation that the child was different. He was too well trained ever to be seen. But she sensed his presence. It had taken Richard a little while to identify the girl’s father, but he had become uneasy the very first time. Richard had wanted to find out if the child behaved differently away from her mother, and had observed them together on three separate occasions. The man started looking over his shoulder at an early stage.

The man who lived on a hill high above the city in a twisted caricature of a family had reacted in much the same way. Felt persecuted. His lover had been completely hysterical, rushing around photographing tyre tracks on the Monday almost two weeks ago. Richard had been standing at a safe distance, watching the whole thing. Two dark-skinned lads had driven up in a big BMW. Pakistanis, he guessed. Oslo was crawling with them. They obviously had something to sort out between themselves, because they had driven into the little pull-in outside the gate of the house where the so-called family lived and stayed there for a good while, gesticulating violently and smoking countless cigarettes before they drove off.

The sodomite had sensed Richard’s presence, but hadn’t seen him. Just like the others.

They didn’t see him and, come to think of it, they didn’t sense his presence either.

What they sensed was the presence of the Lord, Richard Forrester thought. And even if that perverted travesty of a father had escaped on this occasion, his time would come.

Richard Forrester smiled and fell asleep.

The house looked as if it was lying at rest on the steep hillside. The windows were small and divided into four panes. The wooden building was tucked in between two similar but larger houses, and was a modest dwelling. Almost shy. A narrow opening led into a little back garden. A lady’s bike was propped up against a stone wall, and a collection of brightly coloured ceramic pots had been piled up in one corner for the winter. Stone steps led up to a small green door, beside which hung a porcelain nameplate. The name, and the meadow flowers surrounding it, had faded to pale blue in the wind and rain and sunshine over the years.

M. Brække , it said in ornate letters.

Adam Stubo hesitated. He stood on the stone steps with his back to the simple, wrought-iron fence and tried to think the whole thing through one more time.

He was about to deprive this woman of a secret she had kept for almost half a century, as far as he could tell. By placing his finger on the brass bell below the nameplate he would intrude upon a life that had been difficult enough already. The woman who lived in the little white house had made her choice and lived her whole life in the shadow of another’s marriage.

The female employee at Bergen police station who had recognized the woman in the photograph had briefed him during the drive from Flesland. Martine Brække was a tutor at Bergen’s cathedral school, unmarried and childless. She lived a quiet life, cut off from most things, but she was a respected teacher and also gave private piano lessons. She had once been a promising concert pianist herself, but at the age of nineteen she had been struck by a form of rheumatism which put an end to the brilliant career she had envisaged.

Fragile, tentative music could suddenly be heard from somewhere inside. Adam shook his head and listened to the piece being played on the piano. He didn’t recognize it. It was light, dancing, and it made him think of the spring.

He lifted his hand and rang the doorbell.

The music stopped.

When the door opened, he recognized her at once. She was still beautiful, but her eyes were red-rimmed and the area around her mouth was puffy from crying.

‘My name is Adam Stubo,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m a police officer. I’m afraid I need to talk to you about Eva Karin Lysgaard.’

The fear in her eyes made him glance to the side, as if he could still change his mind and leave.

‘I’m alone,’ he said. ‘As you can see, I’m completely alone.’ She let him in.

‘I really don’t want to hear any more about that will, thank you,’ Kristen Faber’s secretary said to her husband as she was making sandwiches for lunch. ‘It has absolutely nothing to do with you.’

Bjarne was sitting at the kitchen table with the photocopy in his hand, peering short-sightedly at the small writing.

‘But you have to understand,’ he said crossly, which was unusual for him, ‘that this could actually mean the man has been conned out of a considerable inheritance!’

‘Niclas Winter is dead. There are no heirs. That’s what it said in the paper. A dead man can’t be conned out of anything. Except life, of course.’

She snorted decisively and placed a generous portion of salmon on top of the mountain of scrambled eggs.

‘So that’s the end of that. Lunchtime!’

‘No, Vera, that’s not the end of anything!’

He banged his fist down on the table.

‘This could involve a crime! I mean, it says here…’

He slapped his other hand down on that day’s copy of VG , which was lying open at a double-page article about some terrible gang from America that had killed six people out of blind hatred for homosexuals and lesbians. Bjarne Isaksen was shocked. Admittedly, he wasn’t too keen on the sordid things that kind of person got up to, but there had to be limits. You couldn’t just go around killing people in the name of God just because you weren’t a fan of their love lives.

‘It says here that Niclas Winter was murdered!’

Vera turned to him, put her hands on her hips and cleared her throat, as if bracing herself for what she intended to say.

‘That will has nothing to do with Niclas Winter’s death. I’ve read the article to you three times now, and there is no mention of money, an inheritance or a will. Those lunatics from America have just been killing indiscriminately, Bjarne! They can’t possibly have known anything about a document that was lying in a dusty old cupboard in Kristen Faber’s office!’

She was getting more and more angry as she went on.

‘I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my entire life,’ she said crossly, turning back to the worktop.

‘I’m going to call the police,’ Bjarne said obstinately. ‘I can call them without saying who I am, then I can suggest they get in touch with Faber and ask him about a will with Niclas Winter as the beneficiary. They have those information lines, where you can ring up without saying who you are. That’s what I’m going to do, Vera. And I’m going to do it now.’

Vera groaned theatrically and ran her slender hand over her hair.

‘You are not going to call the police. If anyone in this house is going to speak to the police, it’s me. At least I can explain how I…’