Punishment (11 page)

*

For some reason, he noticed that it was five o'clock. Someone had hung an old station clock on the stable wall. The hour hand was broken and only a short stump pointed at what was probably the number five. Adam Stubo felt uneasy and double-checked the time.

‘Here Amund. Come to Gramps.'

The boy was standing between the front legs of a brown horse. The animal bent its head and whinnied. Adam Stubo picked up his grandchild and put Amund astride the saddleless horse.

‘You have to say goodbye to Sabra now. We have to go home and eat supper. You and I.'

‘And Sabra.'

‘No, not Sabra. Sabra lives here in the stable. There's no room for her in Grandpa's living room.'

‘Bye-bye, Sabra!'

Amund leaned forward and buried his face in the horse's mane.

‘Bye-bye.'

The sense of unease would not leave him. It was nearly painful, a cold finger up his spine that grabbed him by the neck and made him stiffen. He pulled the boy close to him and started to walk towards the car. He felt uncomfortable
as he strapped Amund into his seat. In the old days, before the accident, he thought he was psychic. Even though he had never really believed in things like that. But he still quite liked it when others noticed that there was something, a sensitivity that made him special. Every now and then he would feel freezing waves washing over his body that made him look at the clock. Note the time. He had found it useful before. Now he felt ashamed.

‘Get a grip,' he mumbled to himself, and put the car in gear.

I
t later transpired that no one actually noticed Sarah Baardsen on the bus. It was in the middle of rush hour and people were squeezed together like sardines. All the seats were taken. There were lots of children on the bus, most of them with adults. The only thing that was clear after more than forty witnesses had been interviewed was that Sarah was put on the no. 20 bus at five to five, as she was every Tuesday. Her mother's statement was supported by two colleagues who had waited for her while she waved the girl off. Sarah was eight years old, and for over a year had been taking the bus on her own to see her grandmother in Tøyen. It wasn't a long journey, barely a quarter of an hour. Sarah was described as a sensible and independent girl, and although the mother was distraught that she hadn't gone with her, no one was likely to blame the single mother for letting an eight-year-old take the bus alone.

So it was clear that Sarah was put on the bus and it was equally clear that she never arrived at her destination. Her grandmother was waiting for her at the usual bus stop. Sarah knew perfectly well where it was and usually jumped down into her grandmother's arms as soon as the doors opened. This time she didn't get off. Her grandmother had the presence of mind to hold the bus. Slowly she went through it twice herself, ignoring the irritated bus driver. Sarah was nowhere to be seen.

A couple of people thought they had seen the girl get off at Carl Berner. They were absolutely certain that she had a blue
hat on. They had been standing by the back doors and were surprised to see such a small girl alone on the full bus.

Sarah was not wearing a hat.

An elderly lady said she had specifically noticed a little girl of around six with a grown man. The girl had blonde hair and was carrying a rag doll. She was crying so much, said the lady. The man seemed to be angry with her. A gang of teenagers said that the bus had been full of shouting and screaming kids. An IT guru with a degree of celebrity that he seemed to think obviously made him a more reliable witness claimed to have seen a girl with a Coke bottle sitting on her own at the front of the bus. She suddenly got up and off the bus without any adults, as if she'd seen something unexpected at the bus stop by the Munch museum.

Sarah had dark hair and was not carrying a Coke bottle. She had never owned a rag doll, and in any case was eight and big for her age.

But if the passengers on the no. 20 bus had been more observant on that Tuesday towards the end of May, they would have noticed a man approaching a girl at the back of the bus. They would have seen the girl give her seat to an old lady, just as her mother had taught her. They would have seen her smiling. They might also have seen the man squat down in front of her in the crush and that he smiled back and said something before taking her by the hand. Had it not been exactly five o'clock in the afternoon, when everyone was hungry and drowsy due to low blood sugar and therefore thinking about supper, they might have been able to tell the police that the girl seemed confused, but that she willingly followed the man when he got off at the next bus stop.

The police gathered over forty witness statements from the no. 20 bus. None of them seemed to say anything that could explain what had happened to little Sarah Baardsen.

T
his time she came on foot. Even though lots of people had started the season early and Harwichport was already full of tourists and new and old summer visitors, he recognised her immediately. She came ambling down Atlantic Avenue, as if she was out on some plausible errand. She stopped by the parking place, where the view to the beach was not blocked by houses and walled gardens, and turned to the south, towards the ocean. But she didn't go up to the fence. She was wearing sunglasses, but he could swear that she was actually looking at his house. At him.

Aksel Seier shut the garden gate. His fear was about to spill over into anger. If she wanted something from him, then she at least could have the guts to contact him directly. He pulled at his sweater; it was warm now, past midday. Down on the beach, he could hear the noises of a group of teenagers swimming in Nantucket Sound. The water was still freezing. Two days ago, the mercury had stood at sixty degrees Fahrenheit when he measured the temperature in the water before going fishing. The woman in the windcheater walked slowly past on the other side of the road.

‘What do you want, dammit!'

Aksel was holding the hammer so hard that he didn't dare do anything other than drop it to the ground. The slate slabs that he was standing on rang out. The blood pounded in his ears. Fear was so alien to him now, a thing of the past. It was years since he had finally overcome the nameless fear that he
first experienced when he was held in custody in January 1957.

It was a few weeks after his arrest. Aksel's mother had taken her own life. He was not allowed to go to the funeral. The old policeman rattled his keys and stared him in the eye. Everyone knew that Seier was guilty, he growled. The keys hit against the wall, again and again. Aksel didn't stand a chance of being found innocent. He might as well admit it, if only to ease the pain of poor little Hedvig's parents. Hadn't they suffered enough? The policeman's eyes were full of disdain. He rubbed them roughly with the sleeve of his jacket and Aksel realised that everything was lost. Fear kept him awake for four whole days. In the end he started to hallucinate and was given medicine so he would sleep.

Aksel became a creature of the night who only rested for a few hours in the afternoon and then counted the stars through the bars while others slept. Fear accompanied him to the hostel, to the eight bare square metres where he lived after his sudden release. It followed him over the ocean and plagued him frequently. Right up until March 1993. Aksel Seier woke up late one day, amazed that he had slept through the night without interruption. For the first time in thirty-six years, the policeman with the keyring and the running eyes had left him in peace.

‘What the hell do you want?'

The woman stopped. She seemed to hesitate. Even though his heart was pounding, making it hard to breathe normally, he noticed that she was beautiful. In a boring way, as if she could not be bothered to do anything about it. She was probably around thirty-something and dressed in pretty neutral clothes. Jeans and a red V-neck sweater. Trainers. Aksel noticed that he was studying her, storing a picture of her for later use. Her eyes were brown, he noticed as she came towards him with some trepidation, taking off her sunglasses and putting on her normal ones. Her hair was dark, shoulder length, with waves
that might become curls in damp weather. Her hands were slim, with long fingers that she pulled aimlessly through her hair. Aksel bit his tongue.

‘Aksel Seier?'

Fear was about to strangle him. The woman pronounced his name in a way that he hadn't heard since 1966. He wasn't called Aksel Seier any longer. His name was Axel Sayer, drawn out and round. Not hard and precise: Aksel Seier.

‘Who's asking?' he managed to say.

She held out her hand. He didn't take it.

‘My name is Johanne Vik. I work at the University of Oslo and I've come because I would like to talk to you about being wrongly accused of the rape and murder of a child a long time ago. If you want to, that is. If you can bear to talk about it now, so many years later.'

Her hand was still held out towards him. There was a kind of defiance in the gesture, an insistence that made him open his mouth and press air down into his lungs before grasping it.

‘Axel Sayer,' he said in a hoarse voice. ‘That's what I'm called now.'

The candyfloss lady padded towards them from the beach. She walked round the fence and gasped loudly and demonstratively before exclaiming:

‘Female visitor, Aksel! I'll say!'

‘Come in,' said Aksel, turning his back on the pink sweater.

*

Johanne didn't know what she had expected. Even though she had had a clear picture of what Aksel Seier looked like, she had never thought about what his surroundings would be like, what his life in the States was like. She stood in the doorway. The living room opened on to the kitchen and was full of things. The only furniture was a small coffee table with a worn sofa and a roughly made kitchen table with a single
wooden chair. But it was still hard to see where she should put her feet. There was a big dog in one corner. She got a fright. It was only when she looked again that she saw that the fur was carved hair by hair from wood and that the yellow eyes were glass. In the opposite corner there was a galleon figurehead hanging from the low ceiling. It was a big-bosomed woman with a distant look in her eyes and deep-red, nearly purple lips. Her golden-yellow hair flowed down over her arched body. The figure was far too big for the room. It looked like it might fall from the wall at any moment. In which case the woman would crush an army of what looked like tin soldiers that were spread out in a tremendous battle covering about two square metres of the floor. Johanne stepped gingerly towards the army and squatted down. The soldiers were made of glass. Tiny blue jackets, individualised soldiers with bayonets and cannons, hats and marks of rank, fighting against the Confederate soldiers in grey.

‘They're so . . . so incredibly beautiful!'

She picked up a general to look at him more closely; he sat securely on his horse, some distance from the raging battle. Even his eyes were clear, light blue with an indication of black pupils in the middle. His horse was foaming at the mouth and she could almost feel heat coming off the sweating animal.

‘Where . . . did you make this? I've never seen anything like it in my life!'

Aksel Seier didn't answer. Johanne heard the rattle of pans. He was hidden by the worktops.

‘Coffee?' he asked in a strained voice.

‘No, thank you. Yes, actually . . . if you're making some. But don't make it just for me.'

‘A beer.'

It didn't sound like a question.

‘Yes, please,' she said with some hesitation. ‘I'd love a beer.'

Aksel Seier straightened up and kicked the cupboard door
shut with his foot. He looked relieved. The fridge groaned reluctantly when he took out two cans. The annoying hum dissolved into a moan. Rays of sunlight forced their way through the dirty windows. Dust danced in the patches of light outlined on the floor. A cat appeared from nowhere over by the kitchen. It purred and rubbed against Johanne's legs. Then it disappeared again out through a cat flap in the door. Beside the galleon figure, behind the soldiers, was a fish barrel with rusty hoops. A plastic doll in a Samí costume was standing on the top. The colours, which had once been strong and clear, red and blue and yellow and green, had faded to tame pastels. The doll looked blankly at the opposite wall, which was covered by an impressive piece of embroidery, a wall hanging really. The motif started figuratively in one corner, a medieval knight ready for a jousting tournament, in his coat of armour with raised lance. This then became non-figurative and flowed into an orgy of colours up towards the right.

‘I must . . . Is it you who has made all these fantastic things?' Aksel Seier stared at her. He slowly raised the beer can to his mouth. He drank, then dried his mouth on his sleeve.

‘What did you say?'

‘Is it you who . . .'

‘When you came. You said something about me being . . .'

‘I have reason to believe you were wrongly convicted.'

She looked at him and tried to say something more. He took a step back, as if the sunlight from the kitchen window bothered him. He gave a slight nod and the shadow from his mop of hair, heavy and grey, hid his eyes. She looked at him and regretted having said anything.

She had nothing more to offer him. No redress. No restored honour. No compensation for lost years, both in and out of prison. Johanne had come over the ocean, more or less on impulse, with nothing in her luggage other than an old woman's absolute conviction and a lot of unanswered
questions. If it was true that Aksel Seier had been wrongly convicted of the awful crime, the most horrible attack – how did he feel right now? How must it feel finally, after all these years, to hear someone say: I think you are innocent! Johanne had no right to do this. She should not have come.

‘I mean . . . Some people have studied your case more carefully . . . One person . . . She is . . . Can we sit down?'