Free Punishment by Anne Holt

impossible.
    â€˜This is impossible,’ he’d said, throwing up his hands. He had gone as far back as secondary school and couldn’t remember the names of more than four school friends. ‘Is it really necessary?’
    The policewoman had been patient.
    â€˜We’ve asked Kim’s parents to do the same,’ she said in a calm voice. ‘Then we can compare. See if you have any mutual acquaintances. Or if you ever had. It’s not only necessary, it’s very important. We think that these cases are connected, so it is important to find a common link between the families.’
    Tønnes Selbu ran his hand over Emilie’s bed, over the letters she had written in felt pen on the blond wood when she was learning the alphabet. He wanted to bury his face in her pyjamas. It was impossible. He couldn’t bear to smell her.
    He wanted to lie down in Emilie’s bed. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get up either. He ached all over. Maybe he shouldring Beate after all. Maybe someone should come, someone to fill the empty space around him.
    Tønnes Selbu stayed sitting on the edge of his daughter’s bed. He prayed, intensely and continuously. Not to God – he was an unfamiliar figure he only used in the fairy tales he told to Emilie. Instead, he prayed to his dead wife. He hadn’t looked after Emilie well enough, as he had promised Grete, in the hours before she died.

15
    A man approached the terraced house. The red and white tape that the police had put up had not been removed yet, but had loosened here and there. The night wind made the tired plastic wheeze at the man who slowly climbed over the fence and hid in the bushes. He seemed to know what he wanted to do, but wasn’t quite sure if he dared to. If anyone had seen him, the first thing they would have remarked on was his clothes. He was wearing a thick, polo-neck sweater under a down jacket. He had a big hat on his head, with earflaps and a peak that hung down over his eyes. The boots would have been more appropriate for a soldier fighting a winter war, enormous and black with laces far up the lower leg. A pair of coarse woollen socks stuck up over the top.
    It was the night of 19 May and a mild south-westerly wind had brought warmer temperatures of around fourteen degrees with it. It was twenty to twelve. The man stood in the cover of a gooseberry bush and two half-grown birch trees. Then he pulled off one of his gloves. Slowly he pushed his right hand down into his wide camouflage trousers. He tried to keep his eyes fixed on a window on the ground floor, where the curtains were drawn, which they weren’t supposed to be. He wanted to see the green teddy bear. The man didn’t have time to get annoyed about it, with a groan he went loose at the hips. He pulled his hand out of his trousers. He stood completely still for a couple of minutes. His ears were buzzing and he had to close his eyes, even though he was scared. Then he put hisglove back on, climbed back over the fence and walked off down the short road, without looking back.

XVI
    I t was already late when Johanne got up on Saturday 20 May. At least, for Kristiane. The child woke up at the crack of dawn, weekdays and weekends alike. Though the six-year-old obviously liked being on her own first thing in the morning, she had no concept of how to avoid waking her mother. Johanne’s alarm clock was a rhythmical dam-di-rum-ram from the sitting room. But Kristiane wanted nothing to do with her. From six o’clock until eight, she was incommunicado. When Johanne went back to work again, once Kristiane’s illness was no longer life-threatening, it had been a complete nightmare getting the girl ready for nursery every morning. In the end, she gave up. Kristiane just had to be left to her own devices for those two hours. The university was a flexible employer. And what’s more, when she had applied to teach only every second term, this favour