squatted down and studied the floor.
“Help me,” he said, and started to push away the large piece of furniture. “There are marks on the floor. This wardrobe has been moved more than once.”
He didn’t need her help. The wardrobe slipped away from the wall with ease. Behind it was a small trapdoor that reached to about hip height. It was obviously new, with shiny hinges and no lock. He opened it. Behind the door, a narrow passage sloped down, barely big enough for a grown man. Adam climbed in on all fours. Johanne followed, bent double. Two to three yards in, the passage opened out into a small room where they could both stand, with concrete walls and a glaring light from the strip light on the ceiling. Neither of them said anything. The sound of the air conditioning was clearer here. They both stared at a door in the wall, a heavy, shiny steel door. Adam pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and carefully put it over the handle. Then he slowly opened it. The hinges were well oiled and silent.
The rancid smell of human filth made Johanne retch.
The light inside the door was sharp as well. The room was perhaps ten square yards and contained a sink, a toilet, and a narrow pine bed.
There was a child in the bed. The child was naked. It wasn’t moving. On the floor there was a neatly folded pile of clothes, and at the end of the bed a dirty duvet with no cover. Johanne went into the room.
“Careful,” warned Adam.
He had noticed that the door had no handle on the inside. There was a hook that made it possible to fix the door to the wall, but to be on the safe side, he stayed and held it open.
“Emilie,” said Johanne quietly, and squatted down in front of the bed.
The child was a girl and she opened her eyes. They were green. She blinked a couple of times, without managing to focus her eyes. She had a Barbie doll astride her skinny chest, with a cowboy hat at a jaunty angle. Johanne gently put her hand on the girl’s and said:
“My name is Johanne. I’m here to take you to your Daddy.”
Johanne looked up and down the girl’s naked body: skin and bones, with big scabs on her knees. Her hips were like two sharp knives that looked as if they might break through the thin film of pale, transparent skin. Johanne started to cry. She took off her jacket, took off her sweater, her shirt; she stood there in her bra and pulled her own clothes over the tiny body without saying a word.
“There are some clothes on the floor,” said Adam tactfully.
“I don’t know if they’re hers,” said Johanne, and sobbed as she lifted Emilie up from the bed.
The child weighed nothing. Johanne hugged her close to her own bare skin.
“They might be his things. His clothes. They might be that
“Daddy,” said Emilie. “I want my Daddy.”
“We’re going to drive to your Daddy right now,” said Johanne, and kissed the girl on the forehead. “Everything’s going to be just fine now, my love.”
As she left the room, slowly and gently so as not to frighten the child, she noticed a pair of man’s underpants on the floor by the door. They were worn out and green, with a cheeky elephant waving its thick trunk by the fly.
“Oh my God,” groaned Johanne into Emilie’s matted hair.
SIXTY-EIGHT
It was two o’clock in the morning of Friday, June 9, 2000. A light rain fell from low clouds over Oslo. The meteorologists had promised no rain and mild nights, but it couldn’t be more than forty degrees outside. Johanne closed the door to the terrace. It felt like she hadn’t slept for a week. When she tried to follow the drops that slid in stages down the living-room window, she got a headache. Her lower back ached when she tried to stretch her body. But it was impossible to go to sleep all the same. At about hip height, she could clearly see a print of Kristiane’s hand on the glass against the undefined pattern of the rain outside. Chubby fingers spread out like petals in an uneven circle. Johanne stroked the handprint.
“Do you think Emilie will ever get over it?” she asked quietly.
“No. But she’s at home now. They wanted to keep her in the hospital, but her aunt refused. She’s a doctor herself and felt that the child would be better off at home. Emilie will be well looked after, Johanne.”
“But will she ever get over it?”
When she touched it lightly, carefully, she could swear she felt the warmth from Kristiane’s hand on the smooth glass.
“No. Why don’t you sit down?”
Johanne tried to smile.
“I’ve got a sore back.”
Adam rubbed his face and yawned loudly.
“Apparently, there was a terrible dispute about visitation rights,” he started to say halfway through the yawn. “Karsten Asli has been trying to see his son since he was born, and the mother left the hospital the day before she was due to leave. They went through three different instances and five court hearings and she consistently claimed that Karsten Asli was not suited to have care of the child. She was adamant that he was a dangerous man. Sigmund managed to get ahold of copies of all the documentation this afternoon. Karsten Asli won his case straight down the line, but the mother challenged the judgment and brought interlocutory appeals, delayed the outcome… and finally just ran away. Abroad, presumably. It would seem that Karsten Asli doesn’t know where. He contacted a private detective agency…”
Adam smiled without joy.
“… when the police just shrugged their shoulders and said there wasn’t much they could do. The detective agency invoiced him for sixty-five thousand kroner for a trip to Australia, which resulted in nothing more than a three-page report that said that Ellen Kverneland and her little boy were presumably not there either. The agency wanted to investigate some leads in Latin America, but Karsten Asli didn’t have any more money. That’s about all we know at the moment. Maybe we’ll have a more complete picture in a day or two. Not a nice case.”
“No custody cases are nice,” said Johanne in a terse voice. “Why do you think I agreed to share the care of Kristiane?”
“I thought perhaps…”
She interrupted:
“This Ellen Kverneland was right, in other words. Not surprising she ran away. Karsten Asli can’t exactly have promised to be the perfect father. It’s so difficult to get people to understand things like that in court. He had a clean record and obviously knew how to behave to make the right impression.”
“But the case itself, this dispute about custody, might have…”
“Made him psychopathic? No. Of course not.”
“That’s perhaps the worst thing,” said Adam. “That we’ll never know why he… who Karsten Asli actually was.
Johanne slowly shook her head. The windowpane was cold against her fingertips now and she put her hands in her pockets.
“The worst thing is that three children are dead,” she said. “And that Emilie will probably never…”
She couldn’t bear to cry anymore. But her eyes filled up all the same, and she felt a cramp in her diaphragm that made her bend forward; she leaned her forehead against the window and tried to breathe slowly.
“You don’t know how Emilie will cope,” said Adam, and got up. “Time heals most wounds. At least, it can help us to live with them.”
“You saw her,” Johanne flared, and pulled away from the hand on her left shoulder. “Didn’t you see the state she was in? She will
