Punishment aka What Is Mine

“First of all, you would read all our documents,” continued Adam. “All the technical evidence and objective facts. Then you would make a profile for each of the victims. Which in this case would be relatively simple, as they’re children. And at the same time incredibly complicated, because you would also need to make profiles for their parents in order to get the whole picture. Then you would slowly start to develop a profile for our man, from scratch. If you’re right, that is. That it’s a man, I mean. That’s what you’d do. If only you were willing to help me.”

The intensity of the last sentence frightened her. She turned off the water and nearly dropped the jug on the floor.

“Why? Why?”

She spun around and hit the table with her empty hand.

“Can you give me one good reason why an experienced detective inspector in the NCIS would use so much energy and, to put it mildly, such unorthodox methods to get a worthless academic to help him with a case that is so gruesome that we’ve experienced nothing like it in this country before? Can you? Can you explain why you are apparently unable to take no for an answer?”

There was silence. He studied his hands. Johanne turned her back to him. The coffee machine gurgled and burped. Outside the kitchen window, a red Golf drove slowly from mailbox to mailbox down the small road that was closed to traffic.

“At the risk…” Adam started quietly, “… that you will think I’m just as crazy as… that you will think I’ve flipped.”

She still didn’t turn around. The man in the red Golf had stopped outside Number sixteen.

“When I was younger, I was proud of it in a way,” he continued as quietly. “In fact, I boasted about it. My intuition. The boys called me PS-Psychic Stubo. I… It’s not that I am actually psychic. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I can’t see where missing people are. But I… I’ve stopped talking about it. My colleagues started to look at me in a strange way. Whispering in corners and behind my back. So I kept quiet. You see, I have this ability… no, not ability. Tendency. I have a tendency to feel the cases I work on. It’s difficult to explain, really. I kind of develop a hypersensitivity. I dream my cases. See things.”

The driver of the red Golf flicked a cigarette stub out of the window, then made a U-turn. Johanne couldn’t see what he’d delivered, but the top of the mailbox in front of Number sixteen could no longer close.

“That’s not such a problem,” she said lightly. “All good investigators should have intuition. There’s nothing paranormal or supernatural about that. All intuition is, is the subconscious processing a number of known factors. It gives you answers that you couldn’t come up with using conscious calculation.”

Finally, she turned around again.

“Some people call it wisdom.” She gave a fleeting smile. “Maybe that’s why it’s generally seen as a female thing. But what does all this have to do with me?”

“I saw you on TV,” he said. “And was impressed. And thought that I had to talk to you. I’d forgotten the whole thing by the next day. Then later on in the day a friend from the U.S. called me. Warren Scifford.”

“Warren Sci…”

“Exactly. FBI.”

She felt the skin on her arms tightening, suddenly and uncomfortably.

“We’d passed on information about the abductions to Interpol, as a matter of course. Warren had come across it in connection with another case. He called me. I hadn’t spoken to him for over six months. At the end of the conversation, he asked if I by chance knew a woman named Johanne Vik. When I told him what you were up to and how you were, he urged me to use you. It was in fact the most heartfelt recommendation I’ve ever heard. The day passed and I had a lot to do. Then that night I had a dream. Or rather, a nightmare. I won’t bother you with the details. Because then you would think I was crazy.”

He burst out laughing, short and tense.

“But you played a part in my dream, a part that made it essential for me to talk to you. You have to help me. But you don’t want to. I’ll go.”

“No.”

She sat down again on the stool, opposite Adam.

“I hope that Warren didn’t mislead you,” she said, subdued. “I am not a profiler. I only took the one course and…”

“And was the best…”

“Wait,” she cut in, and looked him straight in the eyes. “You’ve been putting me on. You’ve been deceiving me by not saying that you knew what my background was all along. That’s not a very good basis for working together.”

She could have sworn that he blushed, a faint redness just under the eyes.

“But I’ll give you five minutes to tell me what you think,” she continued, looking over at the stove. “Five minutes.”

“This investigation is chaos,” he said truthfully. “There’s an order to the chaos, somewhere, but I keep losing sight of it, more and more frequently. After the first child, Emilie, disappeared, everything was still manageable. I was given overall responsibility and there was a small team working on the case. Then everything exploded. And the extreme interest of the media has lifted everything up to another level. The head honcho of the NCIS now gives all the statements himself. And since he does little else but talk to the media, he’s never really completely up to date. Sometimes he jumps the gun spectacularly and then one of us lower down the ranks gets the blame. I don’t mean to criticize. Honestly. I don’t envy anyone who has to face the public about a case where children are dying like flies and…”

He looked over at the coffee machine. Then he got up and poured the contents into a blue thermos.

“… we haven’t got a single fucking lead.” He finished his sentence with feeling.

Johanne had never heard him swear. In a way, it suited him.

“Or, to be fair, we have a million leads. But they all lead to nothing.”

He poured them both a cup of coffee.

“And things are even more complicated now that Oslo City Police are involved. We don’t normally help them with tactical investigations. They have lots of excellent people, there’s no doubt about that. But now we’ve made more mess than a day care center at feeding time.”

“And with all those cooks, why do you need me?”

He lowered his cup slowly. The handle was too small for his chubby fingers.

“I see you in the role of adviser, of some sort. Someone I can brainstorm with. It would be easier for me to get your ideas heard in the system. People will be very skeptical of you. So it would be sensible to have me as a middleman.”

He gave a crooked smile, as if he felt it necessary to apologize for his colleagues.

“I need someone to brainstorm with,” he said honestly. “Someone outside the system. Outside the chaos, if you like.”

“And how had you thought,” she interjected drily, “I would be able to read up on all the case documents when I had no formal working relationship with the NCIS?”

“That’s my responsibility.”

“It’s my responsibility to ensure that I’m not shown any material that is in breach of the confidentiality clause.”

He shook his head in frustration.

“Can’t you just give me an answer? This is the last time I will ask you. Even I draw the line somewhere, though it may not seem like that.”

Johanne popped a sugar cube onto her tongue. It melted against her palate, the sweet taste dripping down her teeth. He was about to leave. She could tell. She would never see him again.

“Yes,” she said lightly, as if the man had never asked her before. “I’ll help you, if I can.”

Johanne thought he was going to start clapping. Fortunately he didn’t. Instead, he started to clean up as if he belonged there.

Adam Stubo didn’t leave Johanne’s apartment until after seven that evening. Johanne had already opened the front door. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She tucked her thumbs into the top of her pants.

“You remind me of her,” Adam said calmly as he buttoned his jacket.