What Never Happens Read online

  “Slate,” Adam said and rapped the stone with his knuckles. “She’s obviously restored a lot of the old features and mixed in some new ones.”

  “Classy,” Sigmund hesitated. “It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and expensive.”

  “How much do they earn in the Storting, do you think?”

  “Not enough,” Adam said and pinched his nose. “When were the police here?”

  “About seven o’clock this morning. Her boyfriend, his name is Trond Arnesen, had destroyed any evidence at the scene of the crime. Had thrown up everywhere and moved things around. He pulled her out of the bed and stuff like that. Have you seen the bedroom?”

  “Mmm.” Adam moved over to the kitchen window. Dusk was settling in the east, and heavy clouds hung over Lillestrøm in the distance, with the promise of snow during the night. He shifted a curved kitchen table with great care and put his face right up to the window, without touching the glass. He stood like that for a while, lost in his own thoughts, without responding to Sigmund’s comments, which sounded more distant and muffled as his colleague moved around the house.

  He looked at the compass on his sophisticated watch. He drew a map in his mind. Then he took a step back, closed one eye, and looked at the view again.

  If you were to fell the three spruce trees at the bottom of the garden and demolish the small housing development a few hundred yards away, you could see the house where Fiona Helle was murdered only a week ago.

  There couldn’t be more than a mile between the two places.

  “Is there any chance at all? I mean, that the cases are linked?”

  Adam helped himself to a healthy portion of the fried potatoes before reaching for the Heinz bottle.

  “Do you have to put ketchup on absolutely everything?”

  “Do you think there is? A connection?”

  “I’m going now,” Kristiane shouted from the hall.

  “Shit,” Johanne exclaimed and ran to the stairs with Ragnhild in her arms, “she’s not asleep.”

  Kristiane’s nose was squashed up against the front door. Her red down jacket was zipped up. Her scarf was wound tightly around her neck, and her hat was hanging down over her eyes. She had her boots on the wrong feet. She was clutching a mitten in each hand. She leaned her whole body against the locked door and announced, “I’m going.”

  “Not now, you’re not,” Johanne called and handed the baby to Adam. “It’s too late. It’s past nine o’clock. You were in bed and . . . Do you want to hold Ragnhild for a while? Isn’t she sweet and funny?”

  “Horrible,” hissed Kristiane. “Horrible child.”

  “Kristiane!” Adam Stubo’s voice was so sharp that Ragnhild started to cry. He rocked her in frustration and murmured into the soft blanket that was wrapped around her. Kristiane started to howl. She rocked from foot to foot and banged her forehead against the wood. Her howling changed into desperate, rasping sobs.

  “Daddy,” she growled in between the sobs. “My daddy. I’m going to my daddy.”

  Johanne threw up her hands and turned around to face Adam, who was standing halfway up the stairs. “It might be best,” she started. “I think maybe . . .”

  “No way,” Adam stopped her. “She’s been with Isak for a week. So now she’s going to stay with us. It’s important for her to feel included. That she’s part of the family. That . . .”

  The baby had finally stopped crying. Some gunk from her eyes ran down her rosy cheek. Her soft hair stuck to her skull. Suddenly she blinked her eyes, reluctantly, as if she had just woken up from a long, deep sleep. She made a face that bared her gums.

  “. . . that this is her sister,” he finished quietly, and his lips brushed the child’s skin. “Kristiane must stay here. She can go to Isak’s again in a few days.”

  “Daddy! I want to go to my daddy!”

  Adam descended into the small porch they had on the first floor. He could feel the under-floor heating burning through his wool socks. He was worried that the electricians had done something wrong when they were building the house. God knows when he would have time to check it. He carefully gave the baby back to Johanne.

  “Here comes Tiddly the Wriggling Tadpole,” he said and threw Kristiane over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, before marching back up the stairs.

  “Don’t,” giggled Kristiane, against her will, as he pulled one of her boots off and planted it in a flowerpot. “Don’t!”

  “This will grow into a boot flower in a week or two. And this one . . .”

  He threw the other boot into the wastepaper basket.

  “Haven’t got any use for this one,” he said and maneuvered her into a firm hold. “Tadpoles don’t need shoes.”

  He kicked open the door to her bedroom with a bang. Then he pulled off her clothes quick as a flash. Fortunately she still had her pajamas on underneath.

  “Quick,” he puffed. “Or the troll will sweat to death. I’m going to start counting now.”

  “Don’t,” shrieked Kristiane with delight as she buried herself under the duvet.

  “One,” he started. “Two, three. The magic is working now. Tiddly the Tadpole is fast asleep.”

  Then he pulled the door shut and shrugged his shoulders. “There!”

  Johanne stood with a blank face and Ragnhild over her shoulder.

  “That’s what we usually do when you’re not here,” he excused himself. “Fast and effective. Do you think there’s a connection? Between Fiona Helle’s and Victoria Heinerback’s murders?”

  “That’s how you put the girl to bed?” Johanne looked at him in disbelief.

  “So what! Forget it! She’s asleep now. Magic. Come on.” He padded into the living room and started to clear the dinner table. Leftovers were thrown out, apart from the fried potatoes, which he ate as he cleared. The grease ran down his fingers, and when he tried to pour himself more wine, the bottle nearly slid out of his hand.

  “Oops . . . do you want any? You don’t need to worry anymore, you know. I’m sure a small glass won’t hurt Ragnhild.”

  “No thanks. Actually . . .”

  Gently, she lay Ragnhild down in her crib, which Adam had eventually agreed could be moved in and out of the living room, depending on where they were themselves. It was by the end of the sofa now.

  “Maybe a small glass,” she said and sat down at the empty table.

  “Can you wipe the table with the cloth, please?”

  With an everyday, almost casual expression on her face, she grabbed the papers that Adam had thrown down when he came home. It was a thin file. This time there were no pictures. A couple of police reports, two handwritten memorandums, and a map of Lørenskog with a red cross over Victoria Heinerback’s address were stapled together. Johanne couldn’t figure out any system to it.

  “I see that you haven’t much to go on here, either.”

  “The murder was only discovered this morning.”

  “And you’ve censored the file. Did you want to spare me the photographs?”

  “No.” He seemed to be sincere and sat down and scratched his head. “They haven’t made enough copies yet,” he added, yawning. “But you’re not missing anything. Horrible sight. Especially the . . .”

  “Enough, thank you.” She shook her head and put up her hand. “You gave me enough details on the phone. And there are certainly similarities. Brutal murders. Both bodies have been mutilated.”

  Adam knitted his brow. He cocked his head and his mouth moved, as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know quite what.

  “Mutilated,” he repeated in the end. “Cutting out someone’s tongue definitely qualifies as mutilation. But Victoria Heinerback . . .”

  Again, his expression was one of doubt. He narrowed his eyes, blinked, and almost imperceptibly shook his head, as if the scenario of a killer on a deadly hunt for female celebrities was too much to take in. He glanced over at the crib.

  “Do you think she can understand any of this?”
/>   “She’s only three weeks old.”

  “Yes, but the brain’s like a sponge, you know. Maybe she’s subconsciously taking it all in and storing it. And it will affect her, later I mean.”

  “Don’t be a fool.” She stretched her hand over the table and stroked his cheek. “You’re scared that the press is right, aren’t you?” she said. “Have you seen the special editions?”

  He shook his head. She cupped his jaw with her hand.

  “They’re having a field day. It must be annoying for them that the murder wasn’t discovered until this morning and only announced later on in the day. The special editions are botch jobs. Full of inaccuracies, incredible speculation, incorrect facts, from what I can see. They’re calling him the celebrity killer.”

  “Or her,” said Adam and grabbed her hand. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it.

  “Or her. Okay. Don’t be such a pedant. Fortunately they were more reserved on the TV news, but there’s still speculation that there’s a madman on the loose who’s got it in for beautiful, successful women. VG even managed to get a well-known psychologist to outline a profile of a sexually frustrated woman-hater with a disability who was rejected by his mother.” She laughed quietly and took a sip from her glass. “You know, it’s only now that I realize how good this actually is. Having not tasted wine for ten months, that is.”

  “You are—”

  “Lovely,” she concluded for him and her smile broadened. “What do you think?”

  “About you?”

  “About there being a link. You must have given it some thought. You and Sigmund and several others are working on both cases. Both murders—”

  “Took place in Lørenskog, both victims are women, both are well known, both are high-profile celebrities, both—”

  “Are good looking. Were, at least.” She swiveled the glass in her hand and continued, “And in both cases, the killer left a message, a highly symbolic violation of the body.”

  She was talking more slowly now, and her voice dropped, as if she was alarmed by her own reasoning.

  “The press doesn’t know about the book yet,” he said. “About the Koran. It was actually taped between her legs. It would appear that the intention was to stuff it up her cunt, but . . .”

  “Don’t use that word!”

  “Sorry, vagina. The book was taped to her thighs, right up by the vagina.”

  “Or anus.”

  “Or anus,” he repeated, somewhat surprised. “Hmm, that’s probably what he meant. Up yours, or something like that.”

  “Maybe. You want some more?”

  He nodded, and she poured the rest of the bottle into his glass. She had only taken a sip from her own.

  “If you were to look for similarities, apart from the obvious ones, which could be purely coincidental, I think the power of the symbolism is one of the most striking features,” she said. “Cutting out someone’s tongue and splitting it in two is such an unambiguous statement with such obvious symbolism that you could almost imagine that the killer read too many Red Indian books as a boy. The Muslim bible up her butt is hardly a divine message.”

  “I don’t think our new compatriots would appreciate you calling the Koran a bible,” said Adam, massaging his neck. “Would you mind?”

  With an exasperated smile she got up and stood behind him. She leaned back against the kitchen island and took a firm grip of Adam’s neck muscles.

  He was so broad. So big. She could feel that his muscles were knotted under the surprisingly soft skin. It was his size that had first attracted her. She was captivated by this man, who must have weighed 250 pounds without actually appearing to be fat. Just after they moved in together, she had tried to put him on a diet. “Just thinking of your health,” she said, but gave up after three weeks. Adam didn’t get irritable when he ate less, he got desperate. She had stopped her project one afternoon when he wiped away something that could have been tears when faced with a plate of boiled cod with not a trace of fat, one potato, and a spoonful of steamed carrots. Then he disappeared into the bathroom and stayed there for the rest of the meal. He had butter with everything, sauces and gravy with most things, and believed that a proper meal should always be finished off with dessert.

  “Obviously, it’s too early to say,” Johanne said and pressed her thumbs into the muscles between his shoulder blades and spine. “But I would advise against assuming it’s the same killer.”

  “Of course we’re not assuming anything,” he groaned. “More. A bit further up. But the truth is, just the thought is enough to frighten the life out of me. I mean—Ow! There, right there.”

  “You mean if there really is only one murderer, you can expect more,” Johanne said. “Victims, that is. More murders.”

  His muscles stiffened under her fingers. Adam straightened his back, pushed her gently away, and rearranged his shirt. Ragnhild’s light breathing and snuffles could be heard from the living room. A cat was obviously courting outside somewhere. The yowling cut through the evening quiet, and Johanne was convinced she could smell cat spray all the way up to the second floor.

  “I hate those semiferal beasts,” she said and sat down.

  “Can you help me?” Adam asked in an urgent voice, almost insistent. “Can you get anything at all out of the papers?”

  “There’s too little. You know that. I need to look through . . . I need to have . . .” She laughed feebly and shrugged her shoulders. “Good God, of course I can’t help you. I’ve got a newborn to look after! I’m on maternity leave! Obviously we can talk about it—”

  “There’s no one as good as you in the country. There are no real profilers here, and we—”

  “I am not a profiler,” she said, agitated. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m fed up with—”

  “Okay,” he interrupted and held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “But you damn well know enough about profiling to be one. And I don’t know anyone other than you who has been taught by the FBI’s best—”

  “Adam!”

  The evening before they got married, he had promised, with his hand on his heart, never to ask about Johanne’s time with the FBI. They had argued in a way that was harsh and unfamiliar to both of them; she had used words he never imagined she could use, and he was positively furious that such an important period of her life was closed off to him.

  But she would not share it. Never, not with anyone. As a naive young psychology student in Boston, she had been given the opportunity to participate in one of the FBI’s profiler courses. The head of the course was Warren Scifford, already a legend in his fifties, as much for his knowledge as for his relentless bedding of promising young female students. They called him the Chief, and Johanne had trusted the man who was nearly thirty years her senior. In the end she started to believe that she was something special. That she had been chosen, by him and the FBI, and that of course he would divorce his wife as soon as their children were old enough.

  It all went wrong and nearly cost her her life. She got on the first possible flight back to Oslo, started to study law three weeks later, and graduated from the university in record time. Warren Scifford was a name she had tried to forget for the past thirteen years. Her time in the FBI, her months with Warren, the catastrophic event that resulted in the Chief having to work behind a desk for six months as punishment until it all blew over and he was one of the big boys again, was a chapter in her life that occasionally came to mind, but she only thought about it reluctantly. It made her feel sick and she never, no matter what, wanted to talk about it again.

  The problem was that Adam knew Warren Scifford. In fact, they’d met up again only last summer, when Adam went to an international police conference in New Orleans. When he came home and mentioned Warren’s name in passing over supper, Johanne smashed two plates in a sudden outburst of anger. Then she ran into the guest room, locked the door, and cried herself to sleep. For three days, he only managed to get monosyllabic replies out of her.

&nb
sp; And now he was dangerously close to breaking his promise again.

  “Adam,” she repeated harshly. “Don’t even go there.”

  “Take it easy. If you don’t want to help, you don’t want to help.” He leaned back in the chair with an indifferent smile. “After all, it’s not your problem, all this.”

  “Don’t be like that,” she said, dejected.

  “Like what? I’m only stating the obvious. It’s not your problem that a couple of famous women have been killed and mutilated just outside Oslo.” He emptied his glass and put it down, a bit too hard.

  “I’ve got children,” Johanne said with feeling. “I’ve got a demanding nine year old and a two-week-old baby and more than enough to keep me busy without taking on a major role in a difficult murder investigation!”

  “Okay, okay, I said it was all right.” He stood up suddenly and got two dessert bowls out of the cabinet. “Fruit salad,” he said. “Do you want some?”

  “Adam, honestly. Sit down. We can . . . I am perfectly willing to discuss the cases. Like now, in the evening, when the girls have gone to bed. But both you and I know that profiling work is extremely demanding, and so far-reaching that—”

  “You know what,” he interrupted and banged a bowl of whipped cream down so hard on the table that the cream jumped. “Fiona Helle’s death is one thing. A tragedy. She was a mother and a wife and far too young to die. Victoria Heinerback didn’t have any children, but I still think that twenty-six is too young to die. But all that aside, people die. People get killed.” He stroked his nose, his straight, beautifully shaped nose with nostrils that quivered when he, on rare occasions, got really angry.

  “For God’s sake, people are killed every second day in this country. But what upsets me, what really frightens me . . .”