Karsten looked like Eva. Even with a tube in his nose, a tube in his mouth, tubes everywhere and bandages on his head; Aksel could see it. The same features, the big mouth and eyes, which were undoubtedly blue under the distorted, swollen lids. Aksel ran his finger over his son’s hand. It was ice-cold.
“It’s me,” he whispered. “Your dad is here.”
Karsten’s body shuddered. Then he lay completely still again, in a room where the only noise came from a wheezing respirator and a heart monitor that bleeped red above Aksel’s head.
“She’s not here. We just have to accept that.”
Johanne tried to put her hand on his arm. Adam pulled away and stormed over to the stairs leading down to the cellar. They’d already been down there three times. And up in the loft. Every cabinet and corner in the house had been searched. Adam had even pulled apart a double bed to check in all the empty spaces. He had checked the kitchen cupboards at random and even opened the dishwasher in vain several times.
“One more time,” he said in desperation, and thundered down the stairs without waiting for an answer.
Johanne stayed in the living room. Adam had broken in. They had broken into someone else’s property without a warrant. Emergency rights, he mumbled when he finally managed to open the front door. Bullshit, she answered, and followed him in. But Emilie was not in the house. Now, when Johanne finally had the chance to think, she realized that it was pure madness. Adam felt something. He felt that Emilie had been taken hostage and was being held somewhere on the farm by a man with a clean record, who had no more damning evidence against him other than that he had known some members of the families concerned.
But Adam had a hunch, and for that reason she was now standing in the middle of a strange and sterile living room in a small farmhouse up a hillside, far from civilization.
“Johanne!”
She didn’t want to go down there again. The cellar was damp and full of dust. She was already struggling to breathe and coughed.
“Yes,” she shouted back without moving. “What is it?”
“Come here! Can you hear the noise?”
“What kind of noise?”
“Come here!”
Reluctantly she made her way down the steep steps. He was right. When they both stood completely still in the middle of the concrete floor, they could hear a faint humming. A mechanical sound, regular and low.
“It’s almost like my computer,” whispered Johanne.
“Or a… air conditioning. It could be…”
Adam started to feel along the walls with his hands. The plaster fell off in several places. A huge wardrobe without doors stood against the shorter wall, which Johanne thought faced east. Adam tried to look behind it. He squatted down and studied the floor.
“Help me,” he said, and started to push away the large piece of furniture. “There are marks on the floor. This wardrobe has been moved more than once.”
He didn’t need her help. The wardrobe slipped away from the wall with ease. Behind it was a small trapdoor that reached to about hip height. It was obviously new, with shiny hinges and no lock. He opened it. Behind the door, a narrow passage sloped down, barely big enough for a grown man. Adam climbed in on all fours. Johanne followed, bent double. Two to three yards in, the passage opened out into a small room where they could both stand, with concrete walls and a glaring light from the strip light on the ceiling. Neither of them said anything. The sound of the air conditioning was clearer here. They both stared at a door in the wall, a heavy, shiny steel door. Adam pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and carefully put it over the handle. Then he slowly opened it. The hinges were well oiled and silent.
The rancid smell of human filth made Johanne retch.
The light inside the door was sharp as well. The room was perhaps ten square yards and contained a sink, a toilet, and a narrow pine bed.
There was a child in the bed. The child was naked. It wasn’t moving. On the floor there was a neatly folded pile of clothes, and at the end of the bed a dirty duvet with no cover. Johanne went into the room.
“Careful,” warned Adam.
He had noticed that the door had no handle on the inside. There was a hook that made it possible to fix the door to the wall, but to be on the safe side, he stayed and held it open.
“Emilie,” said Johanne quietly, and squatted down in front of the bed.
The child was a girl and she opened her eyes. They were green. She blinked a couple of times, without managing to focus her eyes. She had a Barbie doll astride her skinny chest, with a cowboy hat at a jaunty angle. Johanne gently put her hand on the girl’s and said:
“My name is Johanne. I’m here to take you to your Daddy.”
Johanne looked up and down the girl’s naked body: skin and bones, with big scabs on her knees. Her hips were like two sharp knives that looked as if they might break through the thin film of pale, transparent skin. Johanne started to cry. She took off her jacket, took off her sweater, her shirt; she stood there in her bra and pulled her own clothes over the tiny body without saying a word.
“There are some clothes on the floor,” said Adam tactfully.
“I don’t know if they’re hers,” said Johanne, and sobbed as she lifted Emilie up from the bed.
The child weighed nothing. Johanne hugged her close to her own bare skin.
“They might be his things. His clothes. They might be that fucking…”
“Daddy,” said Emilie. “I want my Daddy.”
“We’re going to drive to your Daddy right now,” said Johanne, and kissed the girl on the forehead. “Everything’s going to be just fine now, my love.”
As if anything will ever be fine again after this, she thought, and walked toward the steel door where Adam carefully put his own coarse jacket over her shoulders.
As if you will ever get over what you’ve experienced in this tomb.
As she left the room, slowly and gently so as not to frighten the child, she noticed a pair of man’s underpants on the floor by the door. They were worn out and green, with a cheeky elephant waving its thick trunk by the fly.
“Oh my God,” groaned Johanne into Emilie’s matted hair.
SIXTY-EIGHT
It was two o’clock in the morning of Friday, June 9, 2000. A light rain fell from low clouds over Oslo. The meteorologists had promised no rain and mild nights, but it couldn’t be more than forty degrees outside. Johanne closed the door to the terrace. It felt like she hadn’t slept for a week. When she tried to follow the drops that slid in stages down the living-room window, she got a headache. Her lower back ached when she tried to stretch her body. But it was impossible to go to sleep all the same. At about hip height, she could clearly see a print of Kristiane’s hand on the glass against the undefined pattern of the rain outside. Chubby fingers spread out like petals in an uneven circle. Johanne stroked the handprint.
“Do you think Emilie will ever get over it?” she asked quietly.
“No. But she’s at home now. They wanted to keep her in the hospital, but her aunt refused. She’s a doctor herself and felt that the child would be better off at home. Emilie will be well looked after, Johanne.”
“But will she ever get over it?”
When she touched it lightly, carefully, she could swear she felt the warmth from Kristiane’s hand on the smooth glass.
“No. Why don’t you sit down?”
Johanne tried to smile.
“I’ve got a sore back.”
Adam rubbed his face and yawned loudly.
“Apparently, there was a terrible dispute about visitation rights,” he started to say halfway through the yawn. “Karsten Åsli has been trying to see his son since he was born, and the mother left the hospital the day before she was due to leave. They went through three different instances and five court hearings and she consistently claimed that Karsten Åsli was not suited to have care of the child. She was adamant that he was a dangerous man. Sigmund managed to get ahold of copies of all the documentation this afternoon. Karsten Åsli won his case straight down the line, but the mother challenged the judgment and brought interlocutory appeals, delayed the outcome… and finally just ran away. Abroad, presumably. It would seem that Karsten Åsli doesn’t know where. He contacted a private detective agency…”