Fear Not Part 47

Long Day's Journey into Night.

When the telephone rang it was as if someone were tugging at him. Adam grunted, turned over and tried to get whoever was holding his calf to let go. He kicked out at thin air, pulled the covers over him and groaned again. The sound of the mobile grew louder, and Johanne put the pillow over her head.

'It's yours,' she said sleepily. 'Answer the b.l.o.o.d.y thing. Or switch it off.'

Adam sat up abruptly and tried to work out where he was.

He fumbled around on the bedside table in confusion. His old mobile had turned out to be beyond repair, and he wasn't used to the ringtone of the new one.

'h.e.l.lo,' he mumbled, and noticed that the glowing numbers on the clock were showing 05:24.

'Good morning, it's Sigmund! Were you asleep? Have you read VG yet?'

'Of course I haven't read the b.l.o.o.d.y paper, it's the middle of the night.'

'Do you know what's in it?'

'Of course I don't,' Adam growled. 'But I a.s.sume you're intending to tell me.'

'Go away,' Johanne groaned.

Adam swung his legs around and rubbed his face with one hand to wake himself up.

'Hang on,' he said, pus.h.i.+ng his feet into a pair of dark blue slippers.

Johanne and Adam had sat up until three. When they finally stopped discussing the case, they decided to wind down with an old episode of NYPD Blue. Detective series always made him sleepy.

Now he was practically unconscious.

He stumbled into the bathroom and the stream of urine splashed against the bowl of the toilet as he held the phone up to his ear and said: 'Right, I'm listening now.'

'Are you p.i.s.sing? Are you p.i.s.sing while you're talking to me?'

'What's going on with VG?'

'They've got every single b.l.o.o.d.y name. Of the victims.'

Adam closed his eyes and swore, silently and with feeling.

'I can't get my head round this at all,' said Sigmund. 'But all h.e.l.l has broken loose here, as you can imagine! There are journalists everywhere, Adam! They're calling me and everybody else non-stop, and-'

'n.o.body's called me.'

'They will!'

Adam shambled into the kitchen, trying not to make a noise as he picked up the kettle with one hand.

'I realize we're in deep s.h.i.+t when it comes to leaks,' he said with a yawn. 'But did you really have to wake me before half past five on a Sat.u.r.day morning to tell me?'

'That's not the main reason why I'm calling. I'm calling because ...'

The cafetiere was full of coffee grounds. As he rinsed it out under the tap, the water made such a noise splas.h.i.+ng against the gla.s.s that he couldn't really hear what Sigmund was saying.

'I didn't quite get that,' he muttered, the telephone clamped between his shoulder and ear. He pushed the measuring spoon down into the coffee tin.

'We've found the woman in the photo,' said Sigmund.

It was as if the very aroma of the coffee suddenly made Adam feel wide awake.

'What did you say?'

'The Bergen police have found the woman in your photograph. It probably doesn't mean as much as you'd like to think, but you've been so keen to-'

'How did they find her?' Adam interrupted him. 'In such a short time?'

'Somebody who works there actually recognized her! Here we are with our databases and our international collaboration and Lord knows what else, and it's actually the old methods that-'

'Who knows about this?' said Adam.

'Who knows about what?'

'That we've found her, for f.u.c.k's sake!'

'A couple of people in Bergen, I presume. And me. And now you.'

'Let's keep it that way,' Adam said decisively. 'For G.o.d's sake don't let anybody at headquarters know! And n.o.body with NCIS either. Ring your man in Bergen and tell him to keep his mouth shut!'

'It's a woman, actually. You've got so many preconceptions that I-'

'I couldn't give a toss about that! I just don't want this to end up in the paper, OK?'

The water was boiling; Adam measured out four spoonfuls of coffee, hesitated, then chucked in a fifth. He poured in the hot water and headed back towards the bathroom.

'So who is she?' he asked.

'Her name is ...'

Adam could hear papers rustling.

'Martine Braekke,' said Sigmund. 'Her name is Martine Braekke, and she's alive. Lives in Bergen.'

Adam stopped in the middle of the living room. The almost empty wine bottle from the previous night was still on the table. The newspaper with Johanne's scribbles was lying on the floor, the bowl of crisps tipped over beside it.

'How old is she?' he asked, feeling his pulse rate increase.

'I don't know,' said Sigmund. 'Oh yes, there it is! Born in 1947, it says here. She lives in-'

'Sixty-two this year. Johanne was right. Johanne might be b.l.o.o.d.y well right!'

'About what?'

'I have to go to Bergen,' said Adam. 'Are you coming?'

'Now? Today?'

'As soon as possible. Come and pick me up, Sigmund. Straight away. We have to go to Bergen.'

He rang off before Sigmund had time to reply.

Adam managed to shower, get dressed and drink a pitch-black cup of coffee without waking either Johanne or the children. When Sigmund's car obediently drove along Hauges Vei and parked outside the apartment block half an hour later, Adam was waiting by the gate.

It was Sat.u.r.day 17 January, and he was standing there with no luggage.

The man who had saved a girl from being hit by a tram on Stortingsgaten in Oslo twenty-nine days earlier was drinking expensive mineral water from a long-stemmed gla.s.s and wondering if his suitcase had made it on to the plane. He had been late arriving. Now he was sitting on board British Airways flight BA 0117 from Heathrow to JFK in New York, one of only three pa.s.sengers in first cla.s.s. The other two were already well into their third gla.s.s of champagne, but he politely refused when the flight attendant offered him more water.

He was enjoying the generous amount of s.p.a.ce he had, and the calm atmosphere in the front section of the plane. The curtain separating them from the other pa.s.sengers transformed the racket from behind into a low murmur, which combined with the even hum of the engines to make him sleepy.

On this final section of the journey home he was travelling under his own name. The high-level security measures within US air travel and border controls following 9/11 made entering the country under false papers a risky business. Since he hadn't booked in advance, and everything but first cla.s.s was sold out, he had had to pay out more than $7,000 for a single ticket to the United States. It couldn't be helped. He was going home now. He had to go home, and he was travelling under his real name: Richard Anthony Forrester.

During the two months he had spent in Norway, he hadn't called the United States once. The National Security Agency monitored all electronic traffic in and out of the country, and it was unnecessary to take such a risk. The instructions were clear from the start. If he needed to contact the organization for some unexpected reason, he could ring an emergency number in Switzerland. He hadn't needed to.

However, during Richard A. Forrester's stay in Norway, there had been a considerable amount of lively activity on his laptop. It was in Britain, being looked after by a short, stocky man with chalk-white teeth and a dark, close crewcut, who was visiting various rural communities presenting a new holiday offer from Forrester Travel. The company belonged to Richard. He had set it up two years after his wife and young son had been killed by a drunk driver, who had left the scene of the accident and killed himself in another crash four kilometres down the road.

As far as it was possible to check in practical terms, Richard A. Forrester had been in England since 15 November. It was only a safety measure, of course; no one would ever ask.

He lowered the back of his seat and covered himself with the soft blanket. It was only nine o'clock in the morning, but he hadn't slept much the previous night. It felt good to close his eyes.

When Susan and little Anthony died, his life had ended.

He had tried to follow them to heaven in a suicide attempt. It achieved nothing, apart from the fact that he could no longer count himself a US Marine. They had no use for suicidal soldiers, and Richard had to face the future without work as well as without his wife and child. All he had was a small pension, a suitcase full of clothes, and an insurance payout which he didn't really want from the accident.

'Can I get you anything else?' asked the attractive flight attendant. She leaned across the empty seat beside him and smiled. 'Coffee? Tea? Something to eat?'

He returned her smile and shook his head.

In the three months after the accident he had more or less become a tramp, usually drunk and constantly possessed by a blind, white-hot rage. One night he had quite rightly been thrown out of a bar in Dallas. He lay semi-conscious on the ground in some back street until a man appeared out of nowhere and offered him a meeting with G.o.d. Since Richard wasn't due to meet anyone else, he allowed himself to be helped up and led to a little chapel just two blocks away.

He met the Lord that night, just as the stranger had promised.

Richard Forrester ran a hand over his hair. It was nice to let it grow again, but he still had only a few millimetres of stubble covering his scalp. He was blessed with thick hair with no sign of bald patches yet, and he always kept it short. However, when he shaved his head his appearance changed considerably.

He settled down more comfortably, turned off the light above his head and pulled down the blind.

The G.o.d he had met in Dallas that November night in 2002 was completely different from the one he knew from home. His parents were Methodists, as were most people in the neighbourhood of the small town where he grew up. As a child Richard had thought of his religion as a kind of social partic.i.p.ation in a closed community more than as a personal relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d. There was a service every Sunday, and the odd church bazaar. There was the football team and the Mothers' Union, barbecues and Christmas parties. Richard had mainly grown up with a pleasant G.o.d who made little impression on him.

When the stranger took Richard along to the chapel, he met the omnipotent G.o.d. He had a revelation that night. G.o.d came to him with a violence that made him think he was going to die at first, but eventually he pa.s.sed into a state of peace and total surrender. That night in the chapel was Richard Forrester's catharsis. By the time the new day dawned, he was reborn.

His life as a soldier for his country, as a married man and a father, was over.

His life as a soldier of G.o.d had begun.

He never touched alcohol again.

Richard Forrester listened to the low hum of the engines, and saw the pretty girl in his mind's eye.

She had seen him. When the woman who was going to die went down into the cellar on her own, it provided him with a chance he just had to take. When the child appeared he was in despair for a moment, because of what he knew he must do.

Then he realized that this was a pure and honest child.

Just like Anthony, who had been born prematurely and with brain damage, which would have prevented him from ever maturing mentally. The girl was the same kind of child. Richard had understood that after just a few seconds.

He allowed her to run away, up the cellar steps.

In order to be completely sure, he had kept an eye on her. After he had saved her from being hit by the tram, it was easy to get one of the agitated observers dressed in his party clothes to tell him who she was. Richard had simply stood there on the opposite side of the street until the mother had carried the child inside. A man who was busy entertaining the constant stream of smokers with a dramatic eyewitness account had willingly given Richard the mother's name when he said he wanted to send her some flowers. He had found the address on the Internet.

Unfortunately, the girl had prevented him from killing the woman in the way he had originally intended, camouflaged as an accident. But it wasn't the child's fault. Fortunately, he had had the presence of mind to search through the woman's pockets and her bag; he had found the ticket to Australia and taken her mobile phone. Then he had gone into her room, collected her luggage and paid the bill. The chaos in reception suited him perfectly; he virtually disappeared among the crowd of partying guests and drunks. He had hidden her suitcase right at the back of an unlocked storeroom full of rubbish, underneath a big cardboard box that was so dusty it couldn't have been touched for years. He had to prevent her disappearance from being discovered immediately, and by sending a couple of short, nondescript texts over the next few days he had bought himself a decent interval. Every minute that elapsed between the murder and the start of an investigation reduced the chances of the case being solved.

'Can I get you a pillow?' he suddenly heard the flight attendant whisper.

Without opening his eyes he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

The child's mother had been hysterical. First of all she had slapped him across the face, once the girl was safe. In the period between Christmas and New Year he had once stood just a few hundred metres from the white building where the family lived. A man had come out of a neighbouring property and stopped by the fence to chat with the two girls playing in the garden. The mother was standing at the window, watching them. She was frightened out of her wits, and seemed beside herself when she came out to fetch them inside.

A bit like Susan, he thought, although he didn't allow himself to think about Susan very often. She was always anxious about Anthony, too.

It wasn't the first time he had noticed how the people he observed had a horrible feeling they were being watched. They never saw him, of course, just as the mother of the pretty girl hadn't seen him when he followed her to school in his neutral hire car, where he finally found confirmation that the child was different. He was too well trained ever to be seen. But she sensed his presence. It had taken Richard a little while to identify the girl's father, but he had become uneasy the very first time. Richard had wanted to find out if the child behaved differently away from her mother, and had observed them together on three separate occasions. The man started looking over his shoulder at an early stage.

The man who lived on a hill high above the city in a twisted caricature of a family had reacted in much the same way. Felt persecuted. His lover had been completely hysterical, rus.h.i.+ng around photographing tyre tracks on the Monday almost two weeks ago. Richard had been standing at a safe distance, watching the whole thing. Two dark-skinned lads had driven up in a big BMW. Pakistanis, he guessed. Oslo was crawling with them. They obviously had something to sort out between themselves, because they had driven into the little pull-in outside the gate of the house where the so-called family lived and stayed there for a good while, gesticulating violently and smoking countless cigarettes before they drove off.

The sodomite had sensed Richard's presence, but hadn't seen him. Just like the others.

They didn't see him and, come to think of it, they didn't sense his presence either.

What they sensed was the presence of the Lord, Richard Forrester thought. And even if that perverted travesty of a father had escaped on this occasion, his time would come.

Richard Forrester smiled and fell asleep.

The house looked as if it was lying at rest on the steep hillside. The windows were small and divided into four panes. The wooden building was tucked in between two similar but larger houses, and was a modest dwelling. Almost shy. A narrow opening led into a little back garden. A lady's bike was propped up against a stone wall, and a collection of brightly coloured ceramic pots had been piled up in one corner for the winter. Stone steps led up to a small green door, beside which hung a porcelain nameplate. The name, and the meadow flowers surrounding it, had faded to pale blue in the wind and rain and suns.h.i.+ne over the years.

M. Braekke, it said in ornate letters.

Adam Stubo hesitated. He stood on the stone steps with his back to the simple, wrought-iron fence and tried to think the whole thing through one more time.