The Final Murder Read Free Page B

in the numerous interviews she had given over the past three years. On the Move with Fiona was one of national TV’s greatest successes since the sixties, when there was little else for people to do other than gather round their TV screens to watch the one channel and share the experience of what a Saturday night was in Norway.
    ‘You liked those programmes! A grown man sitting there
    crying!’
    Johanne smiled at Adam, who had come back wearing a bright
    red fleece, grey tracksuit bottoms and orange woollen socks.
    ‘I did not cry,’ Adam protested, pouring the coffee into the cups. ‘I was touched, though, I admit that. But cry? Never!’
    He moved a stool in closer to her.
    ‘It was that episode about the war baby whose father was a
    German soldier,’ he remembered quietly. ‘You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by her story. Having been persecuted and bullied throughout her childhood, she goes to the US
    and gets a job cleaning floors in the World Trade Center when it was first built. Then she took her first and only day off sick on the eleventh of September. And she had always remembered the little Norwegian boy next door who …’
    ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Johanne, wetting her lips with the steaming hot coffee. ‘Shhh!’
    She froze.
    ‘It’s Ragnhild,’ she said tersely.
    ‘It’s not,’ he started, trying to catch her before she ran into the bedroom.
    Too late. She rushed across the floor without a sound and disappeared.
    Only her anxiety remained. A bitterness gripped his
    stomach and made him pour more milk in his coffee.
    His story was worse than hers. But to compare was not only
    mean, it was impossible. Pain cannot be measured and loss cannot be weighed. All the same, he couldn’t help it. When they first met one dramatic spring, nearly four years ago now, he had found himself getting irritated a little too often by Johanne’s sorrow at
    Kristiane’s strangeness.
    She had a child, after all. A child that was alive and had a voracious appetite for life. Different from most, but in her own way
    Kristiane was a lovely and very alert young child.
    ‘I know,’ Johanne said suddenly. She had come round the corner from the hall without him noticing. ‘You’ve had to deal with more than me. Your child is dead. I should be grateful. And I am.’
    A quiver in his lower lip, barely visible in the dim light, made her stop. His hand covered his eyes.
    ‘Was Ragnhild OK?’ Adam asked.
    She nodded.
    ‘I just get so frightened,’ she whispered. ‘When she’s asleep, I’m scared that she’ll die. When she’s awake, I think she’s going to die. Or that something will happen.’
    ‘Johanne,’ he said, helplessly, and patted the chair beside him.
    ‘Come here and sit down.’
    She sank down beside him. His hand rubbed her back, up and
    down, just a bit too roughly.
    ‘Everything’s fine,’ he said.
    ‘You’re angry,’ she whispered.
    ‘No.’
    ‘You are.’
    His hand stopped, and he squeezed her gently on the neck.
    ‘No, I said. But now …’
     
    ‘Can’t I just be …’
    ‘D’you know what?’ he interrupted with forced jolliness. ‘Let’s just agree that the children are fine. Neither of us can sleep. So now we can take an hour or so to look at this …’ He tapped Fiona Helle’s face with his stubby fingers. ‘And then we can see
    whether it’s possible to sleep. OK?’
    ‘You’re so good,’ she said and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘And this case is worse than you fear.’
    ‘Right.’
    He finished his coffee and pushed the cup out of the way
    before spreading the papers over the large counter. The photograph lay between them. He ran his finger over Fiona Helle’s
    nose, circled her mouth and paused a moment before picking up the picture and looking at it closely.
    ‘What exactly do you think we’re worried about?’
    ‘No clues whatsoever” she said lightly. ‘I skimmed through all the papers.’
    She was looking for a document