Free What Never Happens by Anne Holt

felt flat. Or perhaps it was a sense of vague and almost indifferent irritation.
    She had never challenged them about it.
    She couldn’t be bothered.
    The false mother died soon after anyway.
    That was ten years ago now.
    Victoria Heinerback had always irritated her.
    Victoria Heinerback was a racist.
    Though naturally she wasn’t open about it and wouldn’t acknowledge it. The woman was, after all, politically savvy and had an almost impressive understanding of how the media worked. Her fellow party members, however, were constantly dropping stupid and completely ignorant comments about immigrants. For them, Somalians and Chinese were cut from the same cloth. Well-integrated Chinese people were lumped together with lazy Somalians. Victoria Heinerback’s party believed that a conscientious Pakistani who ran his own corner shop was the same burden on society as a gold-digger from Morocco who had come to Norway thinking he could just help himself to the women and government money.
    Victoria Heinerback was responsible for this.
    The woman who was spending the winter alone on the Riviera got to her feet suddenly and stood up. She was a bit unsteady; a wave of dizziness forced her to hold on to something.
    It was all so perfect, everything. Everything was working.
    She laughed quietly to herself, astonished by the force of her mood swings.
    Inspecting someone’s house can tell you more than a thousand interviews, she thought as the nausea ebbed away.
    Evening was falling, and she wanted to pour herself another glass of the good wine from the Old Town. The beam from the lighthouse at Cap Ferrat swept over her in a pulsing stroke when she turned to stare out over the bay. To the north, streetlights lit the roads that cut through the steep terrain.
    She was a master of her art, and from now on, she would not be judged by anyone other than herself.

Five
    T he visit to Victoria Heinerback’s apartment had not made Adam any less judgmental, but he now didn’t know what to expect from the memorial service. He parked some distance from the house. The cars sat bumper-to-bumper along the narrow road, making it almost impassable.
    The former party leader had generously offered his house for the occasion. His colossal villa by the water, only a few hundred yards from the old airport at Fornebu, was no longer plagued by pollution and noise following the long-awaited relocation of the main airport. The once beleaguered, uninhabitable timber house, with its scores of bay windows, large terraces, and two Ionic pillars framing the front door, had risen like a phoenix from the ashes, though the garden that sloped down to the fjord was still no more than clay and loose stones, ashen and snow white.
    The number of mourners dressed in dark clothes was impressive.
    Adam Stubo shook hands with a woman at the door and, just in case, mumbled his condolences. He had no idea who she was. He almost stumbled on an umbrella stand further down the hall. At least fifteen people were waiting to hang up their coats. Then he felt someone tug his sleeve, and before he could turn around, a young man with a thin neck and badly tied tie had taken his coat from him and given him a gentle push toward one of several public rooms.
    Before Adam knew it, he was standing with a half-full glass in his hand. As he was walking, he looked around in desperation for somewhere to put it down.
    “It’s non-alcoholic,” whispered a voice.
    He recognized the woman immediately.
    “Thank you,” he said, bewildered, and squeezed in to the side so he wouldn’t block the door. “You’re here too.”
    “Yes,” said the woman in a friendly, quiet voice that could be heard above the humming of the crowd. “Most of us are. This is more than politics. It’s a tragedy that’s touched us all.”
    She was wearing a tight black suit that contrasted with her short blonde hair and made her look paler than she did on TV. Adam looked down self-consciously and noticed that the