“Children,” said Johanne quietly, unable to take her eyes off Amund. “I can’t help thinking that the children are the key to understanding this case. At first I thought it was something to do with the murderer’s own childhood. Full of loss. A sense of loss linked to his childhood. And perhaps…”
She breathed in and out deeply.
“Maybe I’m right. But there’s something more. There’s something to do with these children. Even though they are not his. It’s as if…”
She got lost in her train of thought.
Adam said nothing. Amund was fast asleep. Johanne suddenly shook her head, as if returning from far-flung thoughts, and said, “Do you think he’s got a child that he can’t see?”
“I think you’re taking it a bit far now,” said Adam quietly, while straightening the boy’s head. “What makes you say that?”
“It just fits with everything. Let’s imagine that this is a man who attracts women, but who never manages to keep them. One of the women gets pregnant. She chooses to have the child. But the idea of letting him be with the child must be rather frightening. She might have…”
“But why these children in particular? If you’re right in thinking that Glenn Hugo, Kim, Sarah, and Emilie were not randomly chosen, what is it about them? If the guy had been going around getting women pregnant for years and all the victims were his children, then… But they’re not. At least, they don’t appear to be. What is it that made him choose them then?”
“I don’t know,” she said, suddenly tired. “I don’t know anything other than that there must be a reason. This man has a plan. There’s an absurd logic to what he’s doing, even though he differs from a typical serial killer in a number of ways. For example, the fact that there’s no obvious cycle in the abductions. No pattern, no obvious system. We don’t even know if he’s finished.”
Silence fell again. Adam tucked the blanket in around Amund and put his lips to the dark head. The child’s breathing was light and rhythmic.
“That’s what I’m most afraid of,” whispered Adam. “That he’s not finished yet.”
In the white house at the edge of the woods an hour and a half’s drive from Oslo, the murderer had just come back from jogging. His knee was bleeding. It was dark outside and he’d tripped on the root of a tree. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding heavily anyway. He usually kept the bandages in the third drawer beside the sink. The box was empty. Annoyed, he found a sterile compress in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He had to wind a bandage around the compress, as he’d run out of surgical tape as well. Of course he shouldn’t have gone jogging so late, but he was restless. He limped into the living room and switched on the TV.
He hadn’t been down to the cellar today. Emilie repulsed him more than ever. He wanted to get rid of her. The problem was that he had no one to deliver the damned child to.
“Nineteenth of June,” he half mumbled to himself, and flipped between the channels.
Everything would be over by then. Six weeks and four days after Emilie disappeared. He would drive in, take the fifth child, and deliver it back the same day. The date was not randomly chosen. Nothing was random in this world. There was a plan behind everything.
His boss had called him into the office on Friday. Given him a written warning. The only thing he’d done was taken some tools home. He didn’t even intend to steal them. They were only old tools and he was going to bring them back. The boss didn’t believe him. Someone must have blabbed.
He knew who was out to get him.
It was all part of a plan.
He could make plans, too.
“Nineteenth of June,” he repeated, and switched to teletext.
He would have to get rid of Emilie before then. Maybe she was dead already. He certainly didn’t intend to give her any more food.
His knee was really hurting.
“The letters,” she said out loud, interrupting herself midsentence.
Adam still had Amund on his lap, as if the conversation made it impossible for him to move him.
“The letters,” she repeated and slapped her forehead. “On Aksel’s chess table!”
Johanne had finally told Adam about the trip to Lillestrøm. About the connection between the mentally retarded Anders Mohaug and the author Asbjørn Revheim, who was the youngest son of Astor Kongsbakken, the prosecutor in the case against Aksel Seier. Adam’s reaction was difficult to interpret, but Johanne thought she saw a frown on his forehead that indicated that he felt the connection was too remarkable to put it down to coincidence.
“The letters?” he said in a questioning voice.
“Yes! After I’d been at Aksel Seier’s, I kept thinking there was something I’d seen there that didn’t belong. And I’ve just remembered what it was. A pile of letters on the chess table.”
“But letters… we all get letters every now and then.”
“The stamps,” said Johanne, “were Norwegian. The pile was tied together with a piece of string.”
“In other words, you only saw the one on top,” said Adam.
“Yes, that’s right.”
She nodded and continued, “But I’m sure that it was a pile of letters from the same person. They were from Norway, Adam. Aksel Seier gets letters from Norway. He’s in touch with someone here.”
“So?”
“He said nothing about it to me. It seemed as if he’d had nothing to do with his homeland since he left.”
“To be honest…”
Adam moved the child over to his other arm. Amund grunted but continued to sleep.
“You only had a fairly short conversation with the man! There’s nothing unusual about the fact that he’s kept in touch with someone here, a friend or someone from the family…”
“He doesn’t have any family in Norway. Not that I know of.”
“Now you’re making a mountain out of a molehill over something that probably has a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
“Could he… could he be getting money from someone? Is he being paid not to make a fuss? Is that why he never tried to clear himself? Is that the explanation for why he just disappeared when I wanted to help him?”
Adam smiled. Johanne didn’t like the expression in his eyes.
“Forget it,” he said. “That’s very conspiracy theory. I’ve got something far more interesting to tell you. Astor Kongsbakken is still alive.”
“What?”
“Yep. He’s ninety-two and lives with his wife on Corsica. They’ve got a farm there, some sort of vineyard, as far as I can make out. I was fairly sure he wasn’t dead, as I would have remembered if he’d died. So I poked around a bit. He retired from public life over twenty years ago and has lived down there ever since.”
“I have to talk to him!”
“You could try calling him.”
“Have you got his number as well?”
Adam chuckled.
“There are limits. No phone directory inquiries. According to my information, he’s still got a clear head on him but is physically frail.”
Adam got up slowly, without waking the boy. He pulled the blanket tight around him and looked questioningly at Johanne. She nodded back indifferently and went to collect Amund’s things from the bedroom.
“I’ll bring the blanket back tomorrow,” he said, and struggled to get everything with him in one go.
“Do that,” she said lamely.
He stood up straight and looked at her. Amund lay over his shoulder and was mumbling in his sleep. His pacifier had fallen to the floor, so she bent down to pick it up. When she held it up to Adam, he grabbed her hand and wouldn’t let go.
“There’s nothing special about Astor Kongsbakken being friends with Alvhild’s director general,” he insisted. “Lots of lawyers know each other. You know what it’s like these days! Norway is a small country. And it was even smaller in the fifties and sixties. All the lawyers must have known each other!”