Fear Not Part 9

'Yes.'

'So your parents had been married for fourteen years when you were born.'

'They studied for a long time. Well, my mother did, anyway.'

'And they never had any more children?'

'Not that I know of.'

The acidic alertness was back.

Adam smiled disarmingly and quickly asked: 'When you say they loved each other more than anything in the world, what are you basing that on?'

Lukas looked stunned.

'What am I ... ? What do you mean?' Without waiting for an answer he went on. 'They showed it a hundred times a day! The way they spoke to one another, the experiences they shared, everything ... for G.o.d's sake, what kind of a question is that?'

His expression was almost frightening, with the blood-red eye wide open. Suddenly he stiffened, holding his breath.

'Is something wrong?' Adam asked after a few seconds. 'Mr Lysgaard! What's the matter?'

Slowly the man expelled the air from his lungs.

'Migraine,' he said quietly. 'I've just started to get visual disturbance.' He spoke in a monotone, and was blinking rapidly. 'One half is s.h.i.+mmering ...' He held up one hand, forming a barrier between his right and left eye.

'It means that in exactly twenty-five minutes I will get a headache so severe that it's indescribable. I have to get home.'

He stood up so quickly that his chair fell over. For a moment he lost his balance and steadied himself against the wall. Adam looked at his watch. He had allocated the entire day to this interview, which had hardly begun. Although he had already learned enough to give him something to think about, it was difficult to hide his irritation at this interruption. But that was of no consequence. Lukas Lysgaard was already lost to this world.

'I'll drive you home,' he said quietly. 'Is there anything else I can do for you?'

'No. Home. Now.'

Adam fetched Lukas's coat from a hook on the wall. The man showed no sign of wanting to put it on. He simply took it and dragged it along behind him as he headed for the door. Adam moved quickly and got there first.

'I can see you're not well,' he said, his hand resting on the door handle. 'We will, of course, postpone the rest of this interview until a more suitable time. Unfortunately, however, there is one question I do have to ask. You heard it yesterday, in fact.'

Lukas Lysgaard's expression remained unchanged. It almost seemed as if he was no longer aware that Adam was in the room.

'What was your mother doing out walking on Christmas Eve?'

Lukas raised his head. He looked Adam straight in the eye, licked his lips and swallowed audibly. It was clearly taking a huge amount of effort to steel himself against the pain he knew would come.

'I don't know,' he said. 'I have no idea why my mother was out so late.'

'Did she usually go out in the evening? Just before bedtime? I mean, was it normal for her to ...'

Lukas was still holding his gaze.

'I have to get home,' he said hoa.r.s.ely. 'No. I have no idea where my mother was going or what she was doing. Take me home. Please.'

You're lying, Adam thought as he opened the door. I can see that you're lying.

'I'm telling the truth,' said Lukas Lysgaard, wobbling into the corridor.

'You couldn't tell a lie if you were being paid for it,' Lina Skytter said with a laugh as she tucked her legs up on the sofa.

'Leave it out,' said Johanne, surprised that she felt slightly insulted. 'I'm actually a specialist in lies!'

'Other people's lies, yes. Not your own. If you'd bought spare ribs at Rimi and told your mother they were from Strm-La.r.s.en, your nose would have grown from here to Sognsvann. Just as well you went for cod instead.'

'My mother didn't think so,' Johanne mumbled into her wine gla.s.s.

'Give over,' said Lina. 'Your mum's lovely. Good with the kids and really kind. She's just a little ... emotionally incontinent, that's all. It's as if whatever's on her mind has to come out of her mouth right away, kind of. Forget it. Cheers!'

Johanne raised her gla.s.s and tucked her feet underneath her. Her best and oldest friend had turned up just an hour ago, with two bottles of wine and three DVDs. Johanne had felt slightly irritated for a few minutes; she had actually been looking forward to an evening on her own with the computer. But now they were sitting at either end of the big sofa, and Johanne couldn't remember when she had last felt so relaxed.

'G.o.d, I'm so tired.' She smiled and gave an enormous yawn. 'I don't notice it until I relax.'

'You have to stay awake. We're going to watch ...' Lina shuffled through the pile of films on the coffee table. '... What Happens in Vegas first. Ashton Kutcher is just gorgeous. And no critical comments. We're just going to have a nice time.'

She kicked out at Johanne, who shook her head, her expression resigned.

'How much time do you actually waste on stuff like this?' she asked.

'Don't be so b.l.o.o.d.y tight-a.r.s.ed. You like it, too.'

'Well, can I at least watch the news first? Just so that we have some kind of basis in reality before we dive into a vat of syrup?'

Lina laughed and raised her gla.s.s in agreement.

Johanne switched on the TV and just caught the last few seconds of the opening headlines. The top story was as she expected: Bishop Eva Karin Lysgaard murdered in the street the police have no leads so far.

'What?' said Lina, her mouth falling open as she sat up straight on the sofa. 'Murdered? But how the h.e.l.l ... ?'

She put her feet on the floor, put down her gla.s.s and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees.

'It's been all over the net and on the radio all day,' Johanne said, turning up the sound. 'Where have you been?'

Christian Borch was wearing a dark suit and a serious expression.

'The police have today confirmed that the bishop of Bjrgvin, Eva Karin Lysgaard, was murdered on the evening of the twenty-fourth of December. Yesterday it was announced that Bishop Lysgaard had died, but the circ.u.mstances surrounding her death were not made public until this morning.'

The picture changed from the studio to a rain-soaked Bergen, where a reporter gave a summary of the case, which was basically two minutes about nothing.

'Is that why Adam's away?' Lina asked, turning to Johanne.

She nodded.

'As far as we are aware, the police have no leads regarding the ident.i.ty of the killer at this stage.'

'Which means they have lots of leads,' said Johanne. 'But they have no idea what to do with them.'

Lina shushed her. They sat in silence and watched the entire item, which lasted almost twelve minutes. This was not only because the Christmas period was somewhat short on news as usual; this was something very special. You could see it in everyone who was interviewed the police, church officials, politicians and ordinary people on the street, everyone was moved in a way that Norwegians didn't normally show in public. Many had difficulty speaking. Some burst into tears while being interviewed.

'It's almost like when King Olav died,' said Lina, switching off the TV.

'Hmm. He died of old age, in his own bed.'

'I know, but the atmosphere is kind of the same. Who in the world would want to kill a woman like that? I mean, she was so ... kind, somehow. So good!'

Johanne recalled that she had reacted in exactly the same way almost two days ago. Not only had Eva Karin Lysgaard seemed to be a good person, she was also clearly blessed with a talent for diplomacy. In theological terms she was right in the middle of the fragmented landscape that comprised the Church of Norway. She was neither radical nor conservative. On the question of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, which had raged within the church for many years constantly moving Norway closer to a non-denominational const.i.tution she had been the princ.i.p.al architect of the fragile peace agreement. There would be room for both points of view. Bishop Lysgaard had nothing against marrying h.o.m.os.e.xuals. At the same time, she had defended the right of her opponents to refuse to do so. Bishop Lysgaard stood out as an open, tolerant person, a typical representative of a broad and popular state church. Which, in fact, she was not. On the contrary, she had strong, fundamental misgivings when it came to the unsatisfactory self-regulation within the church, and never missed an opportunity to put forward her opinion.

Always pleasant. Always calm, with a subtle smile that smoothed the edges of the odd sharp word that might slip out on those rare occasions when Eva Karin Lysgaard became too involved.

As a rule, this concerned the issue of abortion.

Eva Karin Lysgaard held extreme views in only one area: she was against abortion. Totally and completely and in all circ.u.mstances. Not even after a rape or when the mother's life might be in danger could she countenance interference to put an end to a life that had been created. For Bishop Lysgaard, G.o.d's creation was sacrosanct. His ways were unfathomable, and a fertilized egg had the right to life, because G.o.d willed it so.

Strangely enough she was respected for her views, in a country where the debate on abortion had actually ended in 1978. The small minority that had continued to oppose the law legalizing abortion were largely regarded as ridiculously conservative and at least in the eyes of the general public fairly extreme. Even the feminists toned things down when they were in a debate with Eva Karin Lysgaard. By sticking so firmly to her principles, she distanced herself from the idea that the issue of abortion was anything to do with women's liberation.

For her, abortion was a question of the sanct.i.ty of life, and nothing to do with gender.

'I wonder what happened to her out there in the forest?' Johanne said suddenly.

'The forest? I thought she was murdered on the street?'

'I don't mean the murder, I meant that time ... there was a profile of her in the Sat.u.r.day supplement last week, did you see it?'

Lina shook her head and topped up her gla.s.s.

'We were up at the cottage over the weekend. We did lots of skiing, but didn't read a single newspaper.'

You never do anyway, wherever you are, thought Johanne, smiling as she went on.

'She said she met G.o.d in the forest when she was sixteen. Something special happened, but she didn't say what it was.'

'Isn't it Jesus they usually meet?'

'What?'

'I thought when somebody was saved they said they "met Jesus".'

'G.o.d or Jesus,' Johanne muttered. 'Same thing.'

She got up quickly and went into the bedroom. She came back with the supplement, and turned to the interview as she sat down again.

'Here,' she said, taking a deep breath.

'I was in a very difficult situation. We human beings often find ourselves in this position when we are teenagers. Things become too big for us. And that's what happened to me. Then I met Jesus.'

'Ha!' Lina exclaimed. 'I was right!'

'Shut up. What actually happened? That's the journalist asking.'

Johanne glanced quickly at Lina over the top of her gla.s.ses and went on: 'That's a matter between me and G.o.d, the Bishop says with a smile, revealing dimples deep enough to hide in. We all have our secret rooms. That's the way it should be. That's the way it will always be.'

She slowly folded up the magazine.

'And now I want to watch a film,' said Lina.

'We all have our secret rooms,' Johanne repeated, gazing at the close-up of Eva Karin Lysgaard on the cover.

'Not me,' Lina said breezily. 'Shall we watch What Happens in Vegas, or would you rather go straight for The Devil Wears Prada? I haven't actually seen it yet, and I can watch Meryl Streep in anything.'

'I'm sure even you have a couple of rooms with secrets in them, Lina.' Johanne took off her gla.s.ses and rubbed her eyes, then added: 'It's just that you've lost the keys.'

'Could be,' Lina said amiably. 'But what you don't know can't hurt you, as they say.'

'You're completely wrong there,' said Johanne, pointing half-heartedly at The Devil Wears Prada. 'It's actually what we don't know that does hurt us.'

Vanity Fair.

The worst thing of all would have been not knowing, thought Niclas Winter. He had lived on the verge of financial collapse for so long that the certain knowledge his buyer was no longer interested had once again made him drink a little too much, a little too often. Not to mention all the other stuff he took to keep his nerves under control. In actual fact he had knocked all that c.r.a.p on the head long ago. It dulled his senses and made him lazy. And listless. Unproductive.

Not the way he wanted to be.

When the financial crisis. .h.i.t the whole world in the autumn of 2008, it didn't have the same effect in Norway as in many other countries. With billions in the bank, the Red-Green coalition government introduced the sort of expensive counter-measures that few could have imagined a few months earlier. Norway had been pumping money out of the North Sea for so long that it seemed more or less fireproof after the financial collapse in the United States. The property market in Norway, which for some time had been over-inflated and overactive, did indeed hit rock bottom in the early autumn. But it had already recovered or there were signs of life, at least. The number of bankruptcies had rocketed in recent months, but many people regarded this as a healthy cleansing process, stripping away the companies that were never really viable. Unemployment was growing in the building industry, which was naturally taken very seriously. However, it was an industry that relied largely on an imported workforce. Poles, Swedes and workers from the Baltic states had one especially attractive quality: they were happy to go back home when there wasn't any work at least, those who hadn't actually realized that they could pick up plenty of money through the Norwegian social security system. There were also enough economists who, quietly and in private, regarded an unemployment rate of around 40 per cent as good for the flexibility of the total labour market.

On the whole, Norway plc was moving forward; things may have changed, but at least the global financial crisis had not been a major catastrophe for the country and its people. They were still buying food; they still needed clothes for themselves and their children; they treated themselves to a bottle of wine at the weekend as usual and they were still going to the cinema just as often as before.

It was the luxury goods that were no longer attracting a significant number of buyers.

And, for some reason, art was regarded as a luxury.

Niclas Winter tore the foil off the bottle of champagne he had bought the day his mother died. He tried to remember if he had ever purchased such a bottle before. As he fumbled with the wire around the cork, he decided this was the first time. He had certainly drunk his fair share of the n.o.ble French wine, particularly in recent years, but always at others' expense.

The champagne foamed up and he laughed to himself as he poured the bubbling, gently fizzing drink into a plastic gla.s.s on the edge of his overfilled desk. He put the bottle down on the floor to be on the safe side and raised the gla.s.s to his lips.

The studio, which measured almost 300 square metres and had originally been a warehouse, was flooded with daylight. To an outsider the room would have given an impression of total chaos, with light coming in from above and from the huge bay windows in the wall facing south-east. Niclas Winter, however, was in complete control of everything. There were welding torches and soldering irons, computers and old toilets, cables from the North Sea and half a wrecked car; the studio would be a paradise for any eleven-year-old. Not that such a person would ever have been allowed through the door. Niclas Winter, installation artist, suffered from three phobias: large birds, earthworms and children. It had been difficult enough to get through his own childhood, and he couldn't cope with being reminded of it by seeing children playing and shouting and having fun. The fact that the studio lay just 200 metres from a school was a tragedy that he had somehow learned to live with. In every other way the location was perfect; the rent was low, and most of the kids kept out of the way once he put a BEWARE OF THE DOG sign with a picture of a Dobermann on the door.