Death In Oslo

XIII

Detective Chief Inspector Adam Stubo walked home from his parents-in-law after a far too long and rather unusual national-day celebration.

He could, of course, have gone in the car with Johanne when she was finally allowed by her mother to go home. Ragnhild had fallen asleep long before. Kristiane was absolutely exhausted and confused when Isak, her biological father, turned up to collect her around seven. Even though they were all affected by the day’s events, it was Kristiane who had taken it most to heart. They had managed to calm her down in the morning, and the girl had enjoyed being in the parade, though she hadn’t let go of Adam’s hand for a second. But things had got gradually worse throughout the day. She was obsessed with the lady who had disappeared and clung to her mother, terrified, until her father finally came and tempted her away by telling her about a new train set that only she could look after.

Adam could have gone in the car, but he chose to walk.

Instead of cutting down to Kjelsåsveien and crossing Storo, then heading towards Tåsen and home, he took a detour over the hill at Grefsen. The air was cool and fresh and the May light was still hovering in the western sky. His feet crunched on the asphalt. The council hadn’t removed all the grit from the winter. It had rained earlier in the day, and the smell of last year’s rotten leaves wafted over from the gardens. The flowerbeds were full of tulips that were past their best. Behind every window a TV screen flickered.

He stopped by a white picket fence.

The house was also white, but the evening light made it look almost blue. The curtains were open. An elderly couple were watching the news. He saw the woman lift her coffee cup. When she put it down again, she clasped the man’s hand. They stayed sitting like that, frozen, hand in hand, as they watched the news that presumably told them nothing more than they had heard ten times already over the course of the day.

Adam stood there for a while.

He was cold, but it felt good. It cleared his brain. He couldn’t drag himself away. The old couple in the small white house with tulips outside the sitting room window and the news on the TV somehow epitomised what had happened in Norway on this strange day that had started with celebrations and was now about to end with a threat that no one fully understood yet.

An assassination would, paradoxically, have been easier to accept, he thought. Death might be a sudden end, but it was also the start of something else. Death was something that could be mourned. A disappearance was endless purgatory, impossible to bear.

The man in the house got up stiffly. He shuffled over to the window and for an embarrassing moment Adam thought he had been seen and took two quick steps back. The man pulled the curtains shut; heavy, flowery material that closed out the rest of the world for the night.

Adam decided to go all the way up to Stilla, and then follow the path along the river. The water was breaking the banks. The geese had returned after winter a while ago, and here and there a mallard struggled against the stream, ducking down at regular intervals for some night food. Adam started to walk faster. He tried to keep up with the swollen spring river; he had to jog.

They chose not to assassinate her, he thought, out of breath. If there is such a thing as ‘they’. They chose not to kill her. Was that what they wanted? The purgatory? And if they wanted to create a confused vacuum, they…

He was running as fast as he could now, in his good shoes, a suit, and a coat that was a touch on the tight side. He stumbled here and there, but found his balance again and stormed on.

He wanted to get home. He ran and tried to think about something else. About summer, which was just around the corner; about the horse he was thinking about buying, though Johanne had refused to have any more pets other than the yellowy-brown slavering dog that Kristiane called Jack, King of America.

How were they going to use that vacuum?