Fear Not

Before the Day Dawns

Johanne felt remarkably contented when the alarm clock rang at the early hour of five-thirty on the morning of Monday, 12 January. At first she couldn’t work out why she was being woken up so early, and lay there in that pleasant no-man’s-land between dream and reality, while Adam hurled himself at the wretched thing and silenced it. The dry warmth beneath the covers made her draw them more closely around her. When Adam lay down again with a groan she wriggled up against his back.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he murmured. ‘The plane to Bergen leaves in two hours.’

‘Ragnhild’s asleep,’ she whispered. ‘Kristiane and Jack are at Isak’s. Can’t you stay for quarter of an hour?’

It cost him his breakfast, and as he sat in the car on the way to Gardermoen just after six-thirty, late and with grumbling pains in his stomach, he almost regretted it.

Johanne, on the other hand, felt better than she had for a long time. The evening with Karen Winslow had gone on until three o’clock on Saturday morning. It would have been even later if Karen hadn’t had to drive a good 200 kilometres to Lillesand the following day. Adam had taken Ragnhild to visit his son-in-law and his grandson Amund on Saturday morning, and stayed out all day. Johanne had slept for longer than she could ever remember. After a long breakfast and three hours with the Saturday papers, she had driven to Toyenbadet and swum 1,500 metres. In the evening Sigmund Berli had called round. Uninvited. He had brought pizza and warm beer. The unwelcome guest gave Johanne a good excuse to go to bed before ten o’clock.

It had done her good.

She was still feeling happy after meeting up with her old friend. Ragnhild had gone to bed too late on the Sunday, and she had finally reached the age where she caught up on some lost sleep the following day. Johanne ambled around in Adam’s huge pyjamas, made a big pot of coffee and settled down on the sofa with the laptop on her knee. Her teaching commitments hadn’t yet started post-Christmas, and she had decided to spend the day at home. She would leave Ragnhild to sleep until she woke up, despite the fact that the woman who ran the nursery got annoyed if she wasn’t dropped off before ten.

Johanne checked her e-mail; she had nine new messages. Most of them were of no interest. One was from the police. She glanced through it quickly, and realized immediately that it was the same message Adam had received on Saturday morning about the murder of Marianne Kleive. The police had obtained a complete guest list from the wedding reception at the Continental, and were making routine enquiries as to whether any of the guests had noticed anything that might be relevant to the case. Johanne deleted the message straight away. Adam had already replied for both of them, besides which she wanted to devote as little thought as possible to that terrible evening when Kristiane had almost been hit by a tram.

Karen Winslow had already replied to the question Johanne had sent the previous day. She pulled the blanket more tightly around her and opened the message as she sipped the scalding hot coffee.

Dear Johanne,

It was so great to see you! A wonderful evening and an interesting(!) walk through the city! Meeting your husband was fantastic, and I have to say – my own man has one or two things to learn from him. His warmth and generosity when we showed up in the middle of the night exceeded all expectations.

I’m writing you from Oslo Airport. The wedding was unbelievable, but the drive to and from Lillesand a nightmare.

As we agreed, I’ll fill you in on some of the most relevant parts of our research / intelligence as soon as I can. Just to respond to the questions in your message of this morning: the name ‘The 25’ers’ is based on the sum of the digits in 19, 24 and 27 (did I tell you that?). Our theory is that the numbers 24 and 27 point to St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapter 1 verses 24 and 27. Look it up yourself. The number 19 is claimed to have a somehow ‘magical’ significance in the Koran. It’s too complicated to explain here, but if you google ‘Rashad Khalifa’ you’ll figure it out. If our numerologists are correct, the name ‘The 25’ers’ is quite scary…

They’re calling my flight now, so I’ll have to run.

And don’t you forget – you and your family have PROMISED to come visit us this summer!

All the best and a big hug,

Karen

Johanne read through the message again. She needed a printout to remember the strange references. The printer was in the bedroom. As she opened the door the closed-in smell of sheets, sleep and sex hit her. Adam refused to sleep with the window open when the mercury dropped below minus five. Quickly she linked the computer to the printer. When the rasping sound told her that the document was being printed, she went over to the window and threw it wide open.

She closed her eyes against the fresh, cold air.

The Bible, she thought.

She wasn’t even sure if they had one, but she knew there was a copy of the Koran in Adam’s bookcase. He insisted on having a bookcase of his own in the bedroom, five metres of shelving containing an absurd mixture of books. The Book Club’s splendid series on holy scriptures stood alongside reference books on weapons, huge works on heraldry, almost twenty books about horses and bloodlines, an ancient edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, plus everything that had ever been drawn and published by Frode Overli. Leaving the window open, she crouched down in front of the bookcase on Adam’s side of the double bed. The Koran was easy to find: its spine was adorned with gold leaf and Oriental patterns. The book standing next to it was so worn that the spine was missing. When she carefully took it out, the covers felt soft with age.

The Bible.

Slowly she opened it. There was ornate handwriting on the flyleaf: To Adam from Grandma and Granddad, 16 September 1956. She quickly worked out that it must have been the day of his christening; Adam was born on Midsummer’s Eve that same year.

She half-closed the window and tucked both books under her arm. With the printout in one hand and the laptop in the other, she went back to the sofa.

She saw that Adam’s Bible was the old translation. She found Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and ran her finger down the page.

24. Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness: to dishonour their own bodies among themselves.

She stopped.

… to dishonour their own bodies among themselves…

‘Presumably that means they had sex with one another,’ she murmured, before her eyes found verse 27.

… And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts, one towards another: men with men, working that which is filthy and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.

Even though she basically understood what it meant, she closed the tattered book and pulled the laptop on to her knee. She should have thought of this in the first place, instead of rooting around in Adam’s bookcase. She had done something similar only once before, and he had been cross for hours afterwards.

It took her two minutes to find the same text on the Internet, but in the new translation.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.