That Kristiane was not her property.
Tears fell from one eye. It could be the wind.
They could do something nice together, all three of them.
Unni Kongsbakken had seemed so strong when she came to the Grand Café and so tired and worn out when she left. Her youngest son had died years ago. She had lost her husband yesterday. And today she had in a way given away the only thing she had left: an untold story and her oldest son.
Johanne put her hands in her pockets and decided to walk to Isak’s.
Her cell phone rang.
It was probably the office. She hadn’t been there since yesterday. She’d phoned in this morning to say that she was going to work at home, but she hadn’t even checked her e-mails. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Right now she wanted to be left in peace to face the truth about little Hedvig’s murder in 1956. She needed to digest the fact that Aksel Seier had served someone else’s sentence. She had no idea what she was going to do or whom she should talk to. She wasn’t even sure if she would tell Alvhild what she knew. The telephone stayed in her bag.
It stopped ringing.
Then it started again. Irritated, she rummaged around in her bag. The display said ANONYMOUS. She pushed the answer button and put the phone to her ear.
“Finally,” said Adam, relieved. “Where are you?”
Johanne looked around.
“In Rosenkrantzgate,” she said. “Or to be exact, CJ Hambros Plass. Just outside the courts.”
“Stay there. Don’t move. I’m only a couple of minutes away.”
“But…”
He had already hung up.
The policeman seemed to be uncomfortable. He stared at the piece of paper in his hand, even though there was obviously nothing there that could ease the situation. The woman in the bed was crying quietly and had no questions.
Aksel Seier would stay in Norway.
He would later marry Eva. A quiet ceremony with no guests and no gifts other than a bunch of flowers from Johanne Vik. But he didn’t know that yet, as he stood there in the warm yellow room with his future wife, his hands clenched at his sides, with cropped hair and a pair of pink and turquoise plaid golfing pants. Even though he would never be formally cleared of the crime for which he was sentenced, over time he would straighten his back, secure in the knowledge of what had actually happened. A journalist from Aftenposten would write an article that verged on libel, and even though Geir Kongsbakken’s name was not mentioned in the paper, the sixty-two-year-old decided shortly after that it might be wise to wind up his small firm in Øvre Slottsgate. As a result of the article and an application by Johanne Vik, Aksel Seier would receive an ex gratia payment from the Norwegian parliament that he felt was as good as an acquittal in court. He framed the accompanying letter, which then hung over Eva’s bed until she died fourteen months after their wedding. Aksel Seier would never meet the man he had been sentenced for, and never felt the need to either.
But Aksel Seier knew none of this as he stood there, groping for words, questions for the man with the chessboard wrapped around his legs. The only thing he could think about was a day in July 1969. He had moved from Boston to Cape Cod and the weather was good. Eva’s letter, the July letter, had come. As it had the summer before, and the summer before that. Every Christmas, every summer, since 1966, when Aksel left Norway without knowing that Eva would give birth to a son five months later, Aksel Seier’s son. She only told him about it in 1969.
Aksel Seier sat on a red stone on the beach with shaking hands when he discovered that he had a child who was nearly three years old.
But he wasn’t allowed to go back. Eva was living with her mother in a small place outside Oslo, and nothing must change. Her mother would kill her, she wrote. Her mother would take the boy away from her if Aksel came home. He wasn’t allowed to come back, said Eva, and he could see that she’d been crying. Her tears had stained the paper, dry patches of smudged ink that made the words nearly illegible.
Aksel Seier had never understood why Eva waited so long. He didn’t dare ask.
Not even now; he fiddled with the permanent crease in his pants and didn’t know what to say.
“Right,” said the policeman with some skepticism, and stared even harder at the piece of paper. “It says nothing here about a father…”
Then he shrugged.
“But if…”
The look he sent to the woman in the bed was full of doubt, as though he thought Aksel was lying. Eva Åsli could hardly protest the man’s claimed fatherhood. All she could do was cry, unbearably softly, and the policeman wondered whether he should call a doctor.
“Take me to Karsten,” said Aksel Seier, stroking his head.
The policeman shrugged again.
“Okay,” he mumbled, and looked over at Eva again. “If that’s alright with you, then…”
He thought he saw a slight movement in answer. Maybe it was a nod.
“Come on then,” he said to Aksel. “I’ll drive you. It’s possible there’s not much time.”
“There’s not much time,” snapped Adam. “We’ve got to damn well hurry! D’you not understand?”
Johanne had asked him to slow down three times. Each time Adam responded by accelerating. The last time he had whipped the blue light out through the window and thumped it on the roof, taking a curve at full speed. Johanne closed her eyes and crossed her fingers.
They had barely exchanged a word since he explained to her where they were going and why. They had driven furiously in silence for an hour. They must be nearly there now. Johanne noticed a gas station where a fat man with bright red hair was pulling a tarpaulin over a couple of cords of wood. He raised his hand automatically as they swerved into a curve.
“Where the hell is that turnoff?”
Adam was nearly shouting, but slammed on the brakes when he saw the small, unmarked road up the hill.
“First a right, then two lefts,” he remembered and repeated: “First a right, two lefts. Right. Two lefts.”
Snaubu was beautifully situated on the crown of a hill, with a view over the valley, sunny and isolated. The house looked almost derelict from a distance. As they got closer, Johanne saw that one of the walls had recently been repanelled and painted. There were also some foundations that might be for a garage or an outhouse. When the car stopped, she felt her pulse thundering in her ears. The wind was still cold up here on the hillside and she caught her breath as she got out.
“Do you really think she’s here?” she said, and shivered.
“I don’t think,” said Adam, running into the house. “I know.”
Aksel Seier sat on the edge of the metal chair with his hands in his lap.
Karsten Åsli was unconscious. They had managed to stop the internal bleeding. A doctor explained to Aksel that several more operations were needed, but that they would wait until the patient’s condition had stabilized. Something in the doctor’s eyes told Aksel that the chances were slim.
Karsten was going to die.
The respirator sighed heavily and mechanically. Aksel had to concentrate so as not to breathe in rhythm with the big bellows; it made him dizzy.