Albertine “the lady” sometimes, mightn’t she?’
Ragnhild laughed out loud. The tears on her eyelashes sparkled in the bright light in the bathroom.
‘Silly Mummy! Kristiane calls Albertine Albertine, of course. But we don’t need a babysitter today, do we Mummy? You’re going to be here and-’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Johanne. ‘I’m going to look after you today.’
She was no longer there.
It wasn’t Johanne who took out a fluoride tablet and popped it in Ragnhild’s mouth. It wasn’t Johanne Vik who walked calmly into the kitchen to pick up the lunch boxes without even glancing at the newspaper. As she approached the stairs leading down to the outside door, she could hardly feel the soft little hand in hers.
Christmas dinner.
Kristiane’s words when they were talking about death.
‘Mummy,’ said Ragnhild when she had put her boots on. ‘I think you’re being really, really funny.’
Johanne couldn’t bring herself to reply.
Couldn’t even manage a smile.
Adam had always thought of Lukas Lysgaard as an extremely serious young man. Perhaps that wasn’t so strange; after all they had met in tragic circumstances. And yet he still thought he could detect something brooding, almost melancholy in Lukas’s demeanour. Something not necessarily related to his mother’s death.
He had never seen Lukas smile.
At the moment the man looked like a drowned cat, and the crooked smile seemed foolish.
‘Morning,’ he said, holding out his hand before changing his mind and withdrawing it. ‘Cold and soaking wet. I do apologize.’
‘We can go and sit in my car. It’s warm in there.’
Lukas obediently followed.
‘So,’ said Adam, sliding into the driver’s seat and placing his hands on the wheel without starting the car. ‘What was all that about?’
Lukas was still wearing the same expression, a silly teenager’s grin which suggested he hadn’t a clue what he was going to say.
‘Well,’ he said, taking his time. ‘I just wanted to… When I was little… before we moved to Stavanger, I used to do that sometimes. Climb across the roof. Playing the tough guy, perhaps. My mother was terrified when she caught me once. It was… cool.’
‘Mm,’ Adam nodded. ‘I’m sure it was.’ He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘And that’s why you decided to do the same thing again just before you turn thirty, in the pouring rain in January, a couple of weeks after your mother’s death, while your father is in the process of having some kind of breakdown?’
A sudden burst of hail rattled against the roof of the car. The noise was deafening. Adam took advantage of the pause in the conversation to start the car and turn the heating on full. He hadn’t really paid much attention to how the handbrake worked when the man at Avis was trying to explain, so he sat there with his foot on the brake pedal and the car in neutral.
‘Lukas, I have no intention of…’
Lukas snivelled and half-turned in the cramped seat.
‘I have no intention of handling you with kid gloves any more, OK?’ He looked the other man straight in the eye. ‘You’re an adult, a well-educated father of three children. It’s a little while now since your mother died. To be perfectly honest, I’m getting rather tired of the fact that you won’t answer my questions.’
‘But I’ve answered everything you’ve-’
‘Shut up!’ Adam snapped, leaning towards him. ‘A great deal has been said about my patience, Lukas. Some people say I’m too nice. Too nice for my own good, they sometimes maintain. But if you think for one moment that I’m going to let you leave here before you’ve explained to me what that performance up on the roof was all about, then you’re wrong. Completely, totally and utterly bloody wrong.’
The windows steamed up. Lukas didn’t speak.
‘What were you doing on the roof?’ Adam persisted.
‘I was coming down from the attic.’
Adam banged his fists on the steering wheel so hard that it shook.
‘
‘This has nothing to do with my mother’s death,’ Lukas mumbled, looking away. ‘It’s to do with something else. Something… personal.’
His teeth had begun to chatter, and he wrapped his arms around his body.
‘I’ll decide whether it’s personal or not,’ Adam hissed. ‘And you have exactly twenty seconds from now to come up with some satisfactory answers. Otherwise I promise you I’ll bloody well lock you up until you start cooperating.’
Lukas stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and something that was beginning to resemble fear.
‘I was looking for something,’ he whispered almost inaudibly.
‘What?’
‘Something quite… something that…’
He put his face in his hands.
‘A photo,’ said Adam. It was more of a statement than a question. ‘A photograph.’
Lukas stopped breathing.
‘The one that was in your mother’s bedroom,’ said Adam. ‘The one that was there when I came to see you the day after the murder, but then disappeared.’
The shower of hail had turned into torrential rain, huge drops exploding against the windscreen. The world outside the car was blurred and undefined. It was as if they were sitting inside a cocoon, and Adam could feel the unfamiliar, peculiar fury ebbing away as quickly as it had come.
‘How did you know?’ asked Lukas, his hands dropping to his knee.
‘I didn’t know. I guessed. Did you find it?’
‘No.’
Adam sighed and tried once more to find a comfortable sitting position in which he could relax.
‘Who is the photo of?’
‘I don’t know. Honestly. I really don’t know.’
‘But you have a theory,’ said Adam.
Once again silence fell. A car came towards them, its headlights transforming the windscreen into a kaleidoscope of yellow and pale grey, before leaving the interior in semi-darkness once more.
Lukas didn’t speak.
‘I’m perfectly serious,’ Adam said quietly. ‘I will do everything in my power to make life difficult for you unless you start communicating right now.’
‘I think I might have a sister somewhere. The photograph might be of my sister. My older sister.’
A child, thought Adam. The same idea had occurred to him several days ago.
A child that had disappeared. A child that perhaps hadn’t disappeared after all.
‘Thank you,’ he said almost inaudibly. ‘I just wish you’d found the photo.’
‘But I didn’t. Presumably my father got rid of it. What would you have done with it? If I’d found it, I mean?’
Adam smiled for the first time since Lukas came down from the roof. He ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head slightly.
‘If we had a photograph, Lukas, we’d find your sister in no time. If she’s still alive, and doesn’t live too far from Norway. If she is your sister, that is. We don’t know. We don’t know whether that photograph has anything whatsoever to do with the murder of your mother. But I can assure you that I would have devoted some time to
