PART II
January 2009
Persecuted
‘I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing in telling you this. We haven’t actually found any signs of a break-in, and the Head doesn’t want to involve the police. It’s just that I-’
‘Could you just…?’ Johanne began, and cleared her throat. ‘Could you just go through all that again?’
She tried to find a position where she could sit still.
‘Well…’
Live Smith, Director of Studies, ran her fingers through her thick grey hair. She had seemed pensive when she met Johanne in the corridor and asked her to come into the office. Now it was as if she regretted her action, and would prefer to forget the whole thing.
‘Because we’re a special school,’ she said hesitantly, ‘we hold a considerable amount of detailed information about every child. As you know, our pupils have widely differing forms of functional disability, and in order to maximize the education we are able to offer each individual child, we-’
‘I know what this school is and what it’s able to offer,’ Johanne said. ‘My daughter is a pupil here.’
Her voice sounded unfamiliar. Hard and expressionless. She coughed and had to pick up the glass of water, even though her hands were shaking.
‘Is everything all right?’
Live Smith was looking at the water trickling down Johanne’s sweater.
‘Just a bit of a dry throat. I think I might be catching a cold. Can we get on?’
She forced a smile and made a circular motion with her hand. Live Smith adjusted her jacket, tucked her hair behind her ears and sounded offended when she spoke.
‘You were the one who wanted me to start from the beginning.’
‘Sorry. Could you possibly-?’
‘OK. The short version is that when I came in last Friday to get things ready for the new term, I had the feeling that someone had been here.’
Her hand swept around the room. It was a spacious office with filing cabinets along one wall and a door leading into a smaller room. The other walls were covered in children’s drawings in IKEA frames. The curtains were bright red with yellow spots and fluttered gently in the warm air from the radiator under the window.
‘I just had a funny feeling. There was a different… smell in here, perhaps. No, that’s wrong. It was more like a different atmosphere, somehow.’
She seemed embarrassed, and smiled before quickly adding: ‘You know.’
Johanne knew.
‘Not that I believe in the supernatural,’ said Live Smith with a disarming smile. ‘But I’m sure you recognize the feeling that-’
‘There’s nothing supernatural about it,’ Johanne broke in. ‘On the contrary, it’s one of our most finely tuned capabilities. The subconscious notices things that we can’t quite manage to bring to the surface. Something might have been moved. As you say, an almost imperceptible smell might linger. The more we have lived, the more capable our accumulated experience is of telling us more than we are able to define on a first impression. Some people are better than others at understanding what they feel.’
She finally managed to get some water down.
‘Sometimes they refer to themselves as clairvoyant,’ she added.
The sarcasm made her pulse slow down.
‘And then there was the file,’ said Live Smith.
Once again that smile behind every sentence, as if she were trying to make herself insignificant. Not really worth bothering about. Not to be taken all that seriously. Under normal circumstances, Johanne would have found this feminine display unbelievably irritating, but right now it took all of her strength to keep her voice steady.
‘Kristiane’s file,’ she nodded.
‘Yes, it’s…’
Live Smith stopped herself in the middle of a breath as if she were searching for the least dangerous word. Disappeared? Lost? Stolen?
‘Perhaps it’s just been mislaid,’ she said eventually.
Her expression said something completely different.
‘How did you find out it was missing?’
‘I wanted another file from the same drawer, and I discovered it wasn’t locked. The drawer, I mean. It hadn’t been broken open or anything like that. It just wasn’t locked. I was annoyed with myself, because as far as I can remember I was the last one to lock up before Christmas. We have very strict rules when it comes to storing information about our pupils. Partly because the files contain sensitive medical information, and I…’
This time the smile was followed by a slight shrug.
Johanne said nothing.
‘Since there was no sign of a break-in on the door or the cupboards and drawers, I assumed it was down to my own carelessness. But just to be on the safe side I checked that everything was where it should be. And it was. Apart from…’
‘Apart from Kristiane’s file.’
Exactly.
Johanne felt an almost irresistible urge to wipe that smile off her face.
‘Why don’t you want to report it to the police?’
‘The Head doesn’t think it can have been a break-in. Nothing has been damaged. There are no marks on the doors, at least not that we can see. Nothing has been stolen. Not that there’s much of value in this room, apart from the computer perhaps.’
She laughed this time, a high, strained little laugh.
And what about my child? thought Johanne. Kristiane’s life, all the investigations, diagnoses and non- diagnoses, the medication and the mistakes, her progress and her setbacks, the whole of Kristiane’s existence lay documented in a file that had been gathered together over years of trust, and now it was gone.
‘I would say the children’s files are worth a little bit more than your computer,’ said Johanne.
At last the smile took a break.
‘Of course,’ said Live Smith. ‘And that’s why I thought I ought to speak to you. But perhaps the Head is right. This was an error on my part. I’m sure the file will turn up later today. I just thought that since I had that feeling, and since you actually work for the police-’
‘I don’t work for the police. I’m employed by the university.’
‘Oh yes. It’s your husband who’s in the police, isn’t it? Kristiane’s father.’
Johanne didn’t have the strength to correct her again. Instead she got to her feet. Glanced at the archive room in the back.
‘You were quite right to let me know,’ she said. ‘Could I have a look at the cupboard?’
‘The cabinet?’
‘Yes, if that’s what you call it.’
‘It’s really only the Head and I who… As I said, we have very strict rules about-’
‘I only want to look. I won’t touch a single file!’
The Director of Studies got up. Without a word she went over to the door, picked out the right key from a
