Punishment aka What Is Mine

TWENTY-SIX

Johanne Vik had been working, half concentrating, all evening. The night manager at the Augustus Snow Inn was a boy who must have lied about his age to get the job. His mustache was obviously darkened with mascara and in the course of the evening it got lighter. And there were now black specks all around his nose, where he couldn’t help squeezing his pimples. He gave her the code of the hotel’s own Internet server, so Johanne could log on from her room. If she had any problems, all she needed to do was call room service. The boy smiled broadly and smoothed his mustache with his forefinger and thumb. It had now nearly disappeared.

She should be tired. She yawned at the thought. She was tired, but not like she usually was. Jet lag normally bothered her a lot more than this. It was already two o’clock in the morning and she worked out what time it would be if she were at home. Eight. Kristiane would have been up for ages already. She would be pottering about at Isak’s with the new dog, and Isak, no doubt, would be asleep. The dog had peed everywhere and Isak would let it dry without bothering to clean it up.

Irritated, she massaged her neck and let her eyes roam around the room. On the floor, just inside the door, was a note. It must have been lying there since she got back. The stairs up to the second floor were old and creaked loudly. She hadn’t heard anyone. There was no one else staying up here; the room across the hall was empty and dark. She had gone in and out of her room three times to get coffee, but hadn’t noticed the note before.

It was received at six o’clock pm.

Please call Ada Stubborn. Important. Any time. Don’t mind the time difference.

Stubborn. Stubo. Adam Stubo. The note included some phone numbers. At home, at work, and his mobile, she assumed. She wouldn’t call any of them. Her thumb ran gently over his name. Then she scrunched up the note. Instead of throwing it away, she stuffed it quickly into her pants pocket and logged on to Dagbladet’s home page.

A little girl had disappeared. Another one. Sarah Baardsen, eight years old, abducted from a full bus during rush hour, on her way to her grandmother’s. The police had no leads at the moment. The public was furious. In the areas around the capital, from Drammen to Aurskog, from Eidsvoll to Drøbak, all after-school activities for children had been cancelled until further notice. Chaperone services had been organized for children on their way to and from school. Some parents were demanding compensation for staying at home; after-school clubs could not guarantee that the children would be given adequate supervision one hundred percent of the time, and there wasn’t enough staff to reinforce supervision. Oslo Taxi had set up a special children’s taxi service, with women drivers who prioritized mothers travelling alone with children. The prime minister had called for calm and reason and the children’s ombudsman had cried openly on television. A psychic woman had had a vision of Emilie in a pigsty and was supported by a Swedish colleague. There is more to life than meets the eye, the Norwegian Farmers’ and Smallholders’ Union responded, and promised that every pigsty in the country would be searched by the weekend. A Progress Party politician from Sørlandet had in all seriousness submitted a proposal to the National Assembly for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Johanne got goose bumps on her arms and pulled down her sleeves.

Of course she wouldn’t help Adam Stubo. The stolen children became her own, in the same way that she always saw Kristiane, her own daughter, in pictures of starving children in Africa and seven-year-old prostitutes in Thailand. Turn off the TV, close the newspaper. Don’t want to see. This case was like that. Johanne wanted nothing to do with it. Didn’t want to hear.

But that wasn’t entirely true, either.

The case fascinated her. It appealed to her in a grotesque way that left her breathless. In a kind of unwelcome epiphany, she realized that she actually wanted to let everything else go. Johanne wanted to forget Aksel Seier, drop the new research project, turn her back on Alvhild Sofienberg. In fact, she wanted to get on the first plane home and let Isak look after Kristiane. Then she would concentrate on one thing and one thing only: finding this person, this beast who went around stealing people’s children.

The work had already begun. She was only able to concentrate fully on other things for short periods. Ever since Adam Stubo first contacted her, she had unconsciously, anxious and reluctant, tried to construct a preliminary picture of the man, but she didn’t have a firm enough foundation, enough material. Before she left, she had rummaged around in some old boxes under the pretense of organizing. Her notes from when she studied in the States were now on the enamelled shelves in her office. They were going to be moved somewhere else. A real spring cleaning. Nothing more than that, she had tried to convince herself as she stacked books in piles on the desk.

More than anything, Johanne wanted to help Adam Stubo. The case was a challenge. A real nut to crack. An intellectual test. A competition between her and an unknown offender. Johanne knew that she could all too easily allow herself to be sucked in, work day and night, like an exhausting competition to see who was strongest, she or the abductor; who was quickest, smartest, toughest. Who was victorious. Who was best.

Her fingers felt around in her pocket for the note. She opened it out on her knee, flattened the paper with the edge of her hand, and read it again, before suddenly tearing it into thirty-two pieces and dropping them into the toilet.