Punishment aka What Is Mine

FORTY

It was only eleven o’clock in the evening on Monday, May 29, but Johanne had already been in bed for an hour. She should have been exhausted, but something was making her uneasy, keeping her awake, without her knowing what it was. She closed her eyes and remembered that it was Memorial Day. Cape Cod would have had its first real weekend of the summer season. Shutters would have been stored away. Houses aired. The Stars and Stripes would be flying from newly painted flagpoles; the red, white and blue national pride flapping in the wind while the sailboats cruised between Martha’s Vineyard and the mainland.

Warren would no doubt have been in Orleans and installed the wife and children for the summer, in the house with a view over Nauset Beach. The children must be grown up by now. Teenagers, at least. Without wanting to, she started calculating. Then she forced herself to think about Aksel Seier. She had a list of names of people who had worked in the Ministry of Justice in the period from 1964 to 1966 in front of her. It was a long list and it told her nothing. Identities. People. People she didn’t know and whose names meant nothing to her.

She had constantly been looking over her shoulder in Cape Cod. Of course they wouldn’t meet. First of all, it was a good fifteen-minute drive from Harwich Port to Orleans and second, there was no reason for anyone from Orleans to go to Harwich Port. The traffic went in the opposite direction. Orleans was big. Bigger, at least. More shops. Restaurants. The fabulous Nauset Beach on the Atlantic Ocean made Nantucket Sound look like a kiddie pool. She knew that she wouldn’t bump into him, but she kept looking over her shoulder all the same.

Again she ran her finger down the pages. Still they told her nothing. The director general, Alvhild’s boss in 1965, had been dead for nearly thirty years. Cross him off. Unfortunately, Alvhild’s closest colleagues had nothing to say. Alvhild had already asked them long ago if they remembered anything, knew anything about Aksel Seier’s extraordinary release. Cross them off.

Johanne dropped her felt-tip pen. It fell down into one of the folds in the duvet. A black stain grew instantly in the middle of all the white. The telephone rang.

Private Number, said the display.

Johanne didn’t know anyone who had a private number.

It must be Adam.

Adam and Warren were about the same age, she thought.

The phone continued to ring when she lay down and pulled the duvet over her head.

The next morning she had a dim memory of the telephone ringing a few times. But she wasn’t sure; her sleep had been heavy and dreamless, right through the night.