She had constantly been looking over her shoulder in Cape Cod. Of course they wouldn’t meet. First of all, it was a good fifteen-minute drive from Harwich Port to Orleans and second, there was no reason for anyone from Orleans to go to Harwich Port. The traffic went in the opposite direction. Orleans was big. Bigger, at least. More shops. Restaurants. The fabulous Nauset Beach on the Atlantic Ocean made Nantucket Sound look like a kiddie pool. She knew that she wouldn’t bump into him, but she kept looking over her shoulder all the same.
Again she ran her finger down the pages. Still they told her nothing. The director general, Alvhild’s boss in 1965, had been dead for nearly thirty years. Cross him off. Unfortunately, Alvhild’s closest colleagues had nothing to say. Alvhild had already asked them long ago if they remembered anything, knew anything about Aksel Seier’s extraordinary release. Cross them off.
Johanne dropped her felt-tip pen. It fell down into one of the folds in the duvet. A black stain grew instantly in the middle of all the white. The telephone rang.
Private Number, said the display.
Johanne didn’t know anyone who had a private number.
It must be Adam.
Adam and Warren were about the same age, she thought.
The phone continued to ring when she lay down and pulled the duvet over her head.
The next morning she had a dim memory of the telephone ringing a few times. But she wasn’t sure; her sleep had been heavy and dreamless, right through the night.
FORTY-ONE
Given the exceptional circumstances, the principal was nervous, even though staff numbers had been bolstered by two young trainee teachers. After all, she was the one who was responsible. In her opinion, a trip to the technology museum was reckless and unnecessary, but the others had convinced her. It was close enough for them to walk there and the ten children would be accompanied by four adults. The children had been looking forward to it for so long, and surely there were limits to the restrictions an insane abductor could impose on them. It was broad daylight and not yet noon.
The children were between three and five years old. They walked hand-in-hand, using the buddy system. The principal walked in front, with her arms out, as if she could somehow protect the children better that way. One of the students was at the back and the kindergarten’s only male employee walked beside them on the roadside, singing marching songs so that the children walked in time. Bertha, who was in fact the cook, was on the inside of the pavement.
“Left, right, hup-two-three, everyone keep up with me,” shouted the man. “One foot, two foot, on the ground, nobody look around. Keep your butt tight, shoulders back…”
“Shhhh,” said the principal.
“Butt,” screamed a child. “He said butt!”
Bertha stumbled over a crack in the asphalt and got left behind. One of the little girls let go of her friend’s hand to help.
“Butt,” repeated two boys. “Butt, butt!”
They passed the entrance to the Rema 1000 supermarket. A delivery van was trying to turn out onto Kjelsåsveien. The principal made angry gestures at the driver, who replied by giving her the finger. The van rolled slowly forward. Bertha screamed; little Eline stood petrified in front of the bumper. An unleashed dog lolloped over the road toward them. It wagged its tail and ran circles around three of the children, who eagerly tried to grab its green collar. The owner called from the path down by the Aker River. The dog pricked up its ears and bounded away again. A Volvo screeched on its brakes. The right fender clipped the dog, which howled and limped away on three legs. Eline was crying. The van driver rolled down his window and hurled abuse. The trainee teachers held their wards by the collar and tried to stop others from wandering into the road by standing with their legs apart on the edge of the pavement. Bertha picked up Eline. The van driver edged over the pavement and accelerated toward Frysjaveien. The dog whined in the distance. The owner was squatting beside it trying to calm it down. The driver of the green Volvo had stopped in the middle of the road, opened the door, and was obviously uncertain whether to get out or not. There were already four cars behind her, two of them honking angrily.
“Jacob,” said the principal. “Where’s Jacob?”
When Marius Larsen, the only male employee at Frysjakroken kindergarten, later tried to tell the police what had actually happened outside Rema 1000 on Kjelsåsveien, just before midday on Wednesday, May 31, he couldn’t remember the exact chain of events. He remembered all the elements of the incident. There was a dog and a Volvo. The van driver was foreign. The man who owned the dog was wearing a red sweater. Eline was howling and Bertha tripped on something. She was extremely overweight so it took a while for her to get up. The Volvo was green. They were singing marching songs. They were on their way to the technology museum. The dog was a pointer, gray and brown.
Marius Larsen had all the pieces, but couldn’t put them together. Eventually they asked him to write it all down. A patient officer gave him some yellow Post-its. One Post-it for each thing. He put them down in order, shuffled them around, thought about it, wrote new Post-its with stiff, bandaged fingers, tried again.
The end of the story was the only thing he was absolutely clear about.
“Jacob,” said the principal. “Where’s Jacob?”
Marius Larsen let go of two children. He spun around and saw that Jacob was already a hundred and fifty yards away, under the arm of some man who was opening the door of a car parked outside a garage further up the road, going east.
Marius ran.
He ran so fast that one of his shoes flew off.
When he was nearly at the car, no more than ten or twelve yards away, the engine started. The car swung out over pavement and into the road. Marius didn’t stop. Jacob wasn’t visible. He must be lying on the back seat. Marius threw himself at the car door. A broken beer bottle cut into his shoeless foot. The car door burst open with a thud, and Marius lost his balance. The driver hit the brakes. The door banged on its hinges. Jacob was crying. Marius didn’t let go of the door; he had a firm grip now, holding onto the window with his fingers. He wouldn’t let go. The car moved off again, jolting and jumping before suddenly accelerating, and Marius lost his grip. His hand was numb and the cuts on his foot were bleeding profusely. He lay on the asphalt in the middle of Kjelsåsveien.
Jacob was lying beside him, screaming.
It turned out the boy had broken his leg when he fell. But otherwise he was okay, all things considered.
Almost exactly five hours later, at ten to five on Wednesday afternoon, Adam Stubo, Sigmund Berli, and four detectives from Asker and Bærum Police stood at the entrance to a block of apartments in Rykkin. The stairwell smelled of wet concrete and cheap TV dinners. No curious neighbors stuck their heads out to have a look. No children approached them when they parked the three dark cars directly outside the building; three identical cars with badly disguised blue lights in front. All was quiet. It took them three minutes to pick the lock.
“I take it that all the formalities are in order,” said Adam Stubo, and entered the apartment.
“D’you know what, I don’t give a crap about that right now.”
The officer from Asker and Bærum followed him in. Adam turned around and blocked his way.
“It’s in just these situations that we need to be careful with things like that,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah. Everything’s fine. Now move.”
Adam didn’t know what he had expected. Nothing probably. Best that way. Nothing would surprise him, ever. He had his own little ritual for occasions like this. A short meditation with closed eyes before going in, to empty his brain, to let go of prejudices and assumptions that might or might not be well founded.