Punishment (38 page)

Her hand was heavy and dry. She sat down. At first glance it was hard to believe that this woman was over eighty. Her movements were strong and her hands were steady when she put them on the table. It was only when Johanne looked more closely that she could see that her eyes had that pale, matt film that old people get when they are so old that nothing surprises them any more.

‘I'm very grateful that you were willing to meet me,' said Unni Kongsbakken calmly.

‘It was the least I could do,' said Johanne, and drank the rest of her water. ‘Shall we order something to eat?'

‘Just a cup of coffee for me, thank you. I'm quite tired after the journey.'

‘Two cups of coffee,' said Johanne to the waiter, hoping that he wouldn't insist on them eating.

‘Who are you?' asked Unni Kongsbakken. ‘Before I give you my side of the story, I want to know more about who you are. Astor and Geir were a bit . . .'

She smiled weakly.

‘. . . vague, I think.'

‘Well, my name is Johanne Vik,' Johanne started. ‘And I work at the university.'

*

The TV in Adam Stubo's office was on. Sigmund Berli and one of the secretaries were standing watching just inside the door. Adam himself was sitting with his feet on his desk and chewing on an unlit cigar. It was a long time until the end of the day. He had to have something to bite. Something with no calories. He spat out some bits of dry tobacco and realised that he was starving.

‘This is very American,' said Sigmund, and shook his head. ‘TV-transmitted man hunt. Grotesque. Is there nothing we can do to stop it?'

‘Nothing that hasn't already been done,' said Adam.

He had to get something to eat. Even though it was only an hour since he'd dug into two big rolls with salami and tomato, he could feel the hunger burning under his ribcage.

‘This is going to end in disaster,' said the secretary, and pointed at the screen. ‘That's a madman's driving, and then the pack of journalists behind . . . Something's got to go wrong!'

The helicopter pictures on TV2 showed the Mazda accelerating. On a bend, the back of the car slid out of control. The journalist went wild:

‘Laffen Sørnes has spotted us,' he screamed with delight.

‘Along with five police cars and a couple of bear hunters,' muttered Sigmund Berli. ‘The guy must be petrified.'

Again the Mazda skidded on a bend. The edge of the road was loose, and stones and gravel sprayed the left side of the
car. For a moment it looked as if the car would drive off the road. It took the driver a second or two to regain control and then pick up speed even more.

‘He can certainly drive a car,' said Adam drily. ‘Any more on Karsten Åsli's son?'

Sigmund Berli didn't answer. He stared wide-eyed at the TV screen. His mouth gaped but not a sound came out. It was as if he was trying to give warning but knew there was no point in saying anything.

‘Oh, my God,' said the secretary. ‘What . . .'

*

It would later transpire that more than seven hundred thousand viewers had watched TV2's live transmission of the car chase. Over seven hundred thousand people, most of them at work, as it was twelve minutes past three in the afternoon, watched as the dark blue Mazda 323, 1987 model, skidded sideways into a bend and collided with an Opel Vectra, also dark blue, coming in the opposite direction.

The Mazda was nearly ripped in two before it turned over. It bounced on the roof of the Opel, which continued to skid forwards. The Mazda got stuck on the Opel in a crazy metallic embrace. The road barrier spat sparks at the car doors before the Opel was thrown to the other side of the road, with the Mazda still on the roof. A large stone marking the edge of the road tore the bonnet of the Opel in two.

Seven hundred and forty-two thousand viewers held their breath.

They all waited for an explosion that never came.

The only sound from the TV speakers was the throbbing of a helicopter that circled just fifty metres above the accident. The cameraman zoomed in on the man who only a few seconds ago had been fleeing the police in a stolen car. Laffen Sørnes was hanging half out of a broken side window. His face
was turned upwards and it looked as if his back was broken. His arm, the one in plaster, had been ripped off at the shoulder and lay a few metres away from the interlocked car wrecks.

‘Bloody hell,' screamed the journalist.

Then the sound disappeared completely.

*

‘It happened the night Astor was to present the arguments for the prosecution,' said Unni Kongsbakken, pouring a bit of milk into her half-empty coffee cup. ‘And you have to remember that . . .'

Her thick grey hair was put up in a loose bun that was held together with black, enamelled Japanese chopsticks. A lock had fallen out at the side. With deft hands she put her hair up again.

‘Astor was absolutely convinced that Aksel Seier was guilty,' she continued. ‘Absolutely convinced. There was, after all, plenty to imply that he was guilty. He had also contradicted himself and been unwilling to cooperate since his arrest. It's easy to forget that . . .'

She paused and took a deep breath. Johanne could see that Unni Kongsbakken was tired now, even though they had only been talking for fifteen minutes. Her right eye was red round the edges, and for the first time, Johanne got the impression that Unni Kongsbakken hesitated.

‘. . . after so many years,' she sighed. ‘Astor was . . . convinced. The way things transpired, the way I . . . No, I'm confusing things now.'

Her smile was shy, nearly perplexed.

‘Listen,' said Johanne, leaning towards Unni Kongs bakken. ‘I really think this should wait. We can meet again later. Next week.'

‘No,' said Unni Kongsbakken with surprising force. ‘I'm old. I'm not helpless. Let me continue. Astor was sitting in
his study. He always spent a lot of time on the pleadings. Never wrote them out. Keywords only, a sort of arrangement on cards. Lots of people thought he made his arguments spontaneously . . .'

She gave a dry laugh.

‘Astor did nothing spontaneously. It was no fun having to disturb him when he was working. But I had been down in the cellar, in the laundry. Right at the back, behind some pipes, I found Asbjørn's clothes. A sweater I'd knitted myself – that was before I . . . I hadn't established myself as a tapestry weaver yet. The sweater was bloody. It was covered in blood. I got angry. Angry! Of course I thought he had gone over the top with one of his protests again, killed an animal. Well. I stomped upstairs to his room. I don't know what made me . . .'

It was as if she was looking for the words, as if she had rehearsed this for a long time, but still couldn't find the words to say what she wanted to say.

‘It was a feeling. That's all. As I went up the stairs. I thought about the evening when little Hedvig disappeared. Or rather, I thought about the following day. At some point early in the morning, well . . . of course, we didn't know about Hedvig then. It was only announced a day or two after the little girl had disappeared.'

She pressed her fingers to her temple, as if she had a headache.

‘I had woken up about five in the morning. I often do. I've been like that all my life. But that morning in particular, which would later prove to be the day after Hedvig was killed, I thought I heard something. I was frightened of course, Asbjørn was in his most manic period and did things that were well beyond what I had imagined a teenager could do. I heard steps. My first instinct was to get up and find out what had happened. But then I just couldn't be bothered. I felt absolutely exhausted. Something held me back. I don't
know what. Later, at the breakfast table, Asbjørn was sullen and silent. He wasn't normally like that. He normally talked incessantly. Even when he was writing, he talked. Chatted away and gesticulated. Always. He had opinions about everything. He had too many opinions, he . . .'

Again, a shy smile slipped over her face.

‘But enough of that,' she interrupted herself. ‘Anyway, he was silent. Geir, on the other hand, was lively and chirpy. I . . .'

She half closed her eyes and held her breath. It was as if she was trying to recreate it all, to visualise the breakfast table that morning in a small town just outside Oslo, long ago, in 1956.

‘I realised that something must have happened,' said Unni Kongsbakken slowly. ‘Geir was the quiet one. He normally said nothing in the mornings. Just sat there, helplessly . . . He was always in Asbjørn's shadow. Always. And his father's. Even though Asbjørn was an unusually rebellious teenager and didn't even want to carry his father's name, it was as if Astor . . . admired him, you could say. He saw something of himself in the boy, I think. His own strength. Stubbornness. Self-assertion. It was always like that. Geir was somehow . . . superfluous. Always. But that morning he was chatty and bright and I knew that something was wrong. Of course, I didn't think of Hedvig. As I said, we knew nothing about the little girl's fate until later. But there was something about the boys' behaviour that made me so frightened that I didn't dare to ask. And then when I later, weeks later, the evening before Astor was going to argue that Aksel Seier was guilty of killing Hedvig Gåsøy . . . when I went upstairs with Asbjørn's bloody sweater in my arms, angry as sin, suddenly . . .'

She folded her hands again. Locks of hair fell down heavy and grey on one shoulder. Tears flowed from the red eye. Johanne was not sure whether the old lady was crying or whether her eye was infected.

‘It struck me, like a kind of vision,' said Unni Kongsbakken, tensely. ‘I went into Asbjørn's room. He was sitting writing as usual. I threw the sweater at him; he shrugged his shoulders and carried on writing. Without saying anything. Hedvig, I said. Is this Hedvig's blood? Again he shrugged and carried on writing, at a furious pace. I thought I was going to die. There and then. Everything went black and I literally had to lean against the wall to stop myself from falling. The boy had given me endless sleepless nights. He always made me anxious. But I had never, never . . .'

Her hand hit the white tablecloth, Johanne jumped. The glass and cutlery chimed and the waiter came running over.

‘. . . never thought that he had it in him to do anything like that,' Unni Kongsbakken concluded.

‘No, thank you,' Johanne said to the waiter, who withdrew with some hesitation. ‘What . . . what did he say then?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Nothing?'

‘No.'

‘But . . . did he admit . . .'

‘He had nothing to admit, it turned out.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't quite . . .'

‘I just stood there, leaning against the wall. Asbjørn wrote and wrote. To this day I don't know how long we stayed there on our own. It could well have been half an hour. It was like . . . like losing everything. It's possible I asked him again. But he didn't answer. Just wrote and wrote, as if I wasn't there. As if . . .'

Now she was really crying. Her tears fell from both eyes and she fished around in her sleeve for a hanky.

‘Then Geir came in. I didn't hear him. Suddenly he was just there, beside me, staring at the sweater that had fallen on the floor. He started to cry. “I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to.” Those were precisely the words he used. He was eighteen
years old and he was crying like a baby. Asbjørn jumped up and threw himself at his brother. “Shut up!” he screamed, again and again.'

‘Geir? Geir said that he didn't mean to, that he . . .?'

‘Yes,' said Unni Kongsbakken, and straightened her back. She pressed her hanky gently to her eyes before tucking it back up her sleeve. ‘He wasn't able to say much more. Asbjørn literally knocked him out.'

‘But, does that mean . . . I'm not sure what . . .'

‘Asbjørn was the kindest person you could imagine,' said Unni Kongsbakken, calmer now and breathing freely; she was no longer crying. ‘Asbjørn was an affectionate boy. Everything he wrote later, all that awful, offensive . . . Blasphemy. The attacks. It was only words. He just wrote, Asbjørn. In reality he was a very kind man. And he was very fond of his brother.'

Johanne tried to swallow, but something was blocking her throat, just below the larynx. It was difficult. She had to say something, anything. She had no idea what.

‘It was Geir who killed little Hedvig,' said Unni Kongsbakken. ‘I am almost certain of it.'

*

It took the emergency services over three quarters of an hour to get the man out of the wreckage of the blue Opel. His leg had been ripped off at the thigh. His left eyeball had been crushed; a bloody clump had fallen out of the eye socket and dangled helplessly on his cheek. The steering wheel lay some hundred metres away at the foot of a pine tree; the wheel shaft had plunged deep into the man's stomach.

‘He's alive,' panted one of the rescue men. ‘Fucking hell! The man's alive!'

Barely an hour later, the driver of the blue Opel was on the operating table. Things didn't look hopeful, but there was still life in him.

Laffen Sørnes, on the other hand, was still staring blankly at the sky with his body twisted halfway out of the side window of a stolen Mazda 323. An inexperienced policeman was bending over a stream, crying openly. Three helicopters still hovered above the accident. Only one of them belonged to the police.

TV2 was about to break the record for afternoon viewers.

*

People passed outside the big windows of the Grand Café. Some were in a hurry. Others ambled down the street aimlessly; they had all the time in the world and Johanne's gaze followed them. She was trying to gather her thoughts. Unni Kongsbakken had apologised, got up and left the table, without saying where she was going. She left behind her bag, a big, brown leather bag with metal details. Presumably she had just gone to the toilet.

Johanne felt exhausted.