“The picture is very recent. Taken about three weeks ago. Lovely kid, isn’t she?”
“Is she the one they haven’t found?”
She coughed as her voice gave way.
“Yes. And this is Kim.”
Johanne held the photograph right up to her eyes. It was the same one that they had shown on TV. A boy clutching a red fire engine. Red fire engine. Sulamit. She dropped the picture quickly and had to pick it up from the floor before pushing it back to Adam Stubo.
“As Emilie is still missing and Kim is… What on earth makes you think that the crimes were carried out by the same person?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question.”
There were several photographs in the pile. For a moment it seemed that he intended to show them all to her. Then he clearly changed his mind and put the rest back in the envelope. The photos of Emilie and Kim remained on the table, side by side, both facing Johanne.
“Emilie was abducted on a Thursday,” he said slowly, “in the middle of the day. Kim disappeared on Tuesday night. Emilie is nine years old and a girl. Kim was a five-year-old boy. Emilie lives in Asker. Kim lived in Bærum. Kim’s father is a plumber and his mother is a nurse. Emilie’s mother is dead and her father is a linguist who earns a living translating literature. None of them know each other. We’ve hunted high and low to see if there are any connections between the two families. Apart from discovering that Emilie’s father and Kim’s mother both lived in Bergen for a while at the start of the nineties, there’s nothing. They didn’t even know each other there. All in all…”
“Strange,” said Johanne.
“Yes, or tragic, depending on how you choose to look at it.”
She tried to avoid looking at the photographs of the two children. It was as if they were reproaching her for not wanting to get involved.
“In Norway there’s always some kind of connection between people,” she said. “Especially when you live as close together as Asker and Bærum. You must have experienced that yourself. I mean, when you sit down and start talking to someone. You nearly always have a mutual acquaintance, an old friend, somewhere you’ve both worked, an experience in common. It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Um, yes…”
He paused. He seemed uninterested. Then he suddenly took a deep breath as if he were about to protest, but stopped himself.
“I need someone to construct a profile,” he said instead. “A profiler.”
His English pronunciation was broad, like an American TV series.
“Hardly,” Johanne interjected. The conversation was heading in a direction she did not like. “If you are to going to benefit at all from a profiler, you need more cases than this. Assuming that we are actually dealing with one and the same person.”
“God forbid,” said Adam Stubo. “That there should be more cases, I mean.”
“Obviously I agree with you on that. But it’s more or less impossible to draw any conclusions based on two cases.”
“How do you know that?”
“Elementary logic,” she replied sharply. “It’s obvious… The profile of an unknown criminal is based on the known common features of his crimes. It’s like one of those connect-the-dots drawings. Your pencil follows the numbered points until there is a clear picture. It doesn’t work with only two points. You need more. And on that point, you are absolutely right: let’s hope and pray that it doesn’t happen. That more points appear, I mean.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Why do you insist that this is one and not two cases?”
“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that you chose to study psychology and law. An unusual combination. You must have had a plan. A goal.”
“Complete coincidence, in fact. A result of youthful fickleness. And I also wanted to go to the States. And you know…”
She discovered that she was biting her hair. As discreetly as possible, she pushed the wet lock of hair behind her ear and straightened her glasses. “I think you’re wrong. Emilie Selbu and little Kim were not abducted by the same man.”
“Or woman.”
“Or woman,” she repeated, exasperated. “But now, however rude it may be, I’m going to have to ask you to… I have quite a lot I need to do today, because I’m… Sorry.”
Again she felt that pressure on her lungs; it was impossible to look at the man on the sofa. He got up from his uncomfortable position with remarkable ease.
“If it happens again,” he said, gathering up the photographs. “If another child is taken, will you help me then?”
Cruella De Vil screeched from the study. Kristiane shrieked with delight.
“I don’t know,” said Johanne Vik. “We’ll see.”
As it was Saturday and the project was going according to plan, he treated himself to a glass of wine. When he thought about it, he realized that it was the first time in months that he’d had alcohol. Normally, he was worried about the effects. A glass or two made him docile. Then halfway through the third he would get angry. Fury waited at the bottom of the fourth glass.
Just one glass. It was still light outside and he held the wine up to the light.
Emilie was difficult. Ungrateful. Even though he wanted to keep the girl alive, for the moment at least, there were limits.
He took a sip. It tasted musty; the wine tasted of cellars.
He had to smile at his own sentimentality. He was just too emotional. He was too kind. Why should Emilie live? What was the point? What had the girl actually done to deserve that? She got food, good food, often. She had clean water in the tap. She even had a Barbie doll that he had bought for her and yet she didn’t seem to be any happier.
Fortunately she’d stopped snivelling. To begin with, and particularly after Kim disappeared, she cried the minute he opened the door down there. She seemed to be having difficulties breathing, which was nonsense. He had installed a good ventilation system ages ago. There was no point in suffocating the child. But she was calmer now. At least she didn’t cry.
The decision to let Emilie live had come naturally. He hadn’t intended it to be that way from the start, at least. But there was something about her, even though she didn’t know it herself. He’d see how long it lasted. She’d have to watch herself. He was sentimental, but he had his limits.
She’d be getting company soon enough.
He put down the glass and pictured eight-year-old Sarah Baardsen. He had memorized her face, stored each feature in his mind, practiced putting her face together so he could call her up at will, whenever and wherever. He didn’t have any pictures. They could fall into the wrong hands. Instead he had studied her in the playground, on the way to her grandmother’s, on the bus. He’d once even sat next to her through an entire film. He knew what her hair smelled like. Sweet and warm.
He put the cork back in the bottle and left it on one of the half-empty shelves in the kitchen. When he glanced out the window, he stiffened. Right outside, only a few yards away, stood a fully grown roe deer. The beautiful animal lifted its head and looked right at him for a moment before sauntering off toward the woods to the west. Tears came to his eyes.
Sarah and Emilie were sure to get along during the time they were together.
SEVENTEEN
Boston’s Logan International Airport was one enormous building site. It smelled damp under the low ceiling and the dust lay thick. Everywhere she looked, warning signs screamed out at her, black writing on a red background. Watch out for the cables on the floor, the beams hanging loose from the walls, and the tarpaulins hiding cement mixers and materials. Four planes from Europe had landed in under half an hour. The line in front of passport control was long, and Johanne Vik attempted to read a paper she had already read from front to back while she waited. Every now and then she would push her carry-on luggage forward with her foot. A Frenchman in a dark camel coat poked her in the back each time she waited a couple of seconds too long before moving.