Small Keys, Big Rooms

‘Good grief,’ said Adam Stubo, stopping dead in the doorway. ‘Did I wake you up?’

Lukas Lysgaard blinked and shook his head.

‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Or rather, yes. I hardly slept last night, so I sat down here and …’

He raised his head, smiling wanly. Adam hardly recognized him. The broad shoulders were drooping. His hair was getting greasy, and he had dark, puffy bags around his eyes. A blood vessel had burst in his left eye, staining it bright red.

‘That’s understandable,’ said Adam, pulling out a chair on the opposite side of the table.

Lukas Lysgaard shrugged his shoulders. Adam didn’t really know whether it meant he didn’t care whether Adam understood or not, or if it was a kind of apology for the fact that he had fallen asleep.

‘The wolves are out,’ Adam said as he sat down. ‘After all, it was only a matter of time before the press found out.’

The other man nodded.

‘Have they been after you already?’ Adam asked, glancing at the clock which showed that it was a few minutes after half past eight.

The man nodded dully.

‘Anyway, I’m very grateful to you for coming in,’ said Adam, gesturing with one hand. ‘I see my colleague has taken care of the formalities. Has anyone offered you something to drink? Coffee? Water?’

‘No thanks. Why are you actually here?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you mean?’

Lukas leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk.

‘You work for NCIS.’

Adam nodded.

‘NCIS is no longer what it was.’

‘No.’

Adam couldn’t understand what the man was getting at.

‘As far as I understand it, NCIS exists primarily to combat organized crime. Do you think it was the Mafia that killed my mother?’

‘No, no, no!’

For a brief moment Adam thought the man was serious. A humourless, almost imperceptible smile made him change his mind.

‘The very best resources have been allocated to this enquiry,’ he said, pouring himself a coffee from a Thermos. ‘Including me. How’s your father?’

No reply.

‘My intention is to give you some information to begin with,’ said Adam, pushing a thin file across the desk.

Lukas Lysgaard showed no sign of wanting to open it.

‘Your mother died of a stab wound. To the heart. This means that she died very quickly.’

Adam watched the other man’s face, looking for any indication that he ought to break off.

‘She had no other injuries apart from a few grazes, which in all probability are due to the fall itself. Therefore it seems likely that she did not offer any form of resistance.’

‘She was …’ Lukas raised a clenched fist to his mouth and coughed. ‘She was sixty-two years old. You can hardly expect her to put up much resistance when some man attacked her.’ He coughed again, then quickly added: ‘Or woman. I assume that happens from time to time.’

‘Absolutely.’ Adam nodded and stroked his cheek, wondering whether he ought to take back the untouched file. The silence between them went on for just a little bit too long. It became embarrassing, and Adam realized that Lukas Lysgaard’s fairly unfriendly attitude had hardly changed over the past twenty-four hours. He was staring at the desk with his arms folded.

‘My wife is a criminologist,’ Adam said suddenly. ‘And a lawyer. And she’s studied psychology as well.’

Lukas at least looked up, a furrow of surprise creasing his brow.

‘She’s quite a lot younger than me,’ Adam added.

Neither the most reluctant witness nor the most hostile thug could manage to remain unmoved when Adam started talking about his family for no particular reason. It seemed so unprofessional that the person being interviewed was annoyed, surprised, or quite simply interested.

‘She sometimes says …’ Adam picked up his cup and took a slow, noisy slurp. ‘She would rather her nearest and dearest died after a long, painful illness than as the victim of a crime, however quick it might be.’

As he spoke he felt the usual pang of conscience as he misrepresented Johanne, saddling her with views she didn’t hold. It disappeared when he saw Lukas’s reaction.

‘What does she mean … ? What do you mean by that? It’s terrible to wish something like that on someone you love, and—’

‘It is, isn’t it? I agree with you. But what she means is that the family of someone who has been the victim of a crime is subjected to a detailed investigation, and that can be a terrible strain. When someone dies of other causes, then …’

Adam held up his hands, palms facing outwards.

‘… then it’s all over. The family is overwhelmed with sympathy, and no one asks questions. Quite the reverse, my wife stubbornly maintains. A death from natural causes has the effect of laying to rest any secrets the family might have. However, when the deceased is the victim of a crime …’

He shook his head ruefully and stuck an imaginary key in an imaginary keyhole.

‘Everything has to be brought out into the open. That’s what she means. Not that I agree with her, as I said, but she is right to a certain extent. Don’t you think?’

Lukas peered at him without giving any indication of whether he agreed or not. Adam held his gaze.

‘I assume,’ Lukas said suddenly, leaning across the desk, ‘that what you’re trying to tell me is that there are secrets in my family that could explain why my mother was stabbed and murdered out in the street!’ His voice cracked at the end of the sentence. ‘That she’s the guilty party, somehow! That my mother, the kindest, most thoughtful …’

His voice broke and he started to cry. Adam sat motionless with the coffee cup in his right hand and a pen balanced between the index and middle fingers of his left hand.

‘I don’t think my mother had any secrets,’ said Lukas in despair, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Not my mother. Not her.’

Still Adam said nothing.

‘My mother and father loved each other more than anything in the world,’ Lukas went on. ‘They’ve had their disagreements, just like everyone else, but they’ve been married since they were nineteen. That’s …’ He sobbed as he worked it out. ‘That’s more than forty years! They’ve been married for more than forty years, and you come along claiming there are all these secrets between them! It’s … it’s …’

Adam made a few brief notes on the pad in front of him, then pushed it away so that it fell on the floor. When he picked it up, he put it back on the table face down.

‘You’ve got a nerve,’ Lukas said harshly. ‘Insinuating that my mother—’

‘I apologize if that’s the way you see it,’ Adam said. ‘That wasn’t my intention. But it’s very interesting that you immediately defend your parents’ marriage when I talk in completely general terms about the fact that everyone has experiences they don’t want to share with other people. Something they’ve done. Something they haven’t done. Something that might have made them enemies. Something that has harmed others. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that …’

He let the sentence dangle in the air in the hope that it was sufficiently vague.

‘My parents don’t have any enemies,’ said Lukas, clearly making an effort to pull himself together. ‘On the contrary, my mother was regarded as a mediator, an advocate of reconciliation. Both in her profession and in her private life. She never said anything to me about anyone wanting to kill her. That’s just …’

He swallowed and ran his fingers through his hair over and over again.

‘As for my father …’

He was finding it difficult to breathe.

‘My father has always been in my mother’s shadow.’

His voice altered as he slowly exhaled. Suddenly he seemed resigned. It was as if he was actually talking to himself.

‘I mean, that’s obvious. My mother with her career, and my father who never got any further than his degree. I don’t suppose he wanted to …’

He broke off again.

‘How did they meet?’ Adam asked gently.

‘At school. They were in the same class.’

‘High-school sweethearts,’ said Adam with a little smile.

‘Yes. My mother was saved when she was sixteen. She came from a perfectly ordinary working-class family. My grandfather worked at BMW.’

‘In Germany?’

Adam leafed through the file in front of him, looking somewhat surprised.

‘No. Bergen Mechanical Workshop. He was a member of the Norwegian Communist Party and a wholehearted atheist. My mother was the first member of the family to go to the grammar school. It was difficult for my grandfather to see his daughter reading theology, but at the same time he was incredibly … proud of her. Unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to see her become a bishop. That would have …’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘My father, on the other hand, came from a totally academic environment. His father was a professor of history, at the University of Oslo first of all. They moved to Bergen when my father was around eight years old. His mother was a lecturer. In those days it was quite unusual for women to …’

Once again he broke off.

‘But you know that,’ he added, eventually.

Adam waited.

‘In many ways my father is regarded as … how shall I put it? A weak person?’

He sobbed out loud as he said it, and the tears began to flow again.

‘Which he most definitely isn’t. He’s a wonderful father. Clever and well-read. Very thoughtful. But he just couldn’t … do everything … become the kind of person who … The thing is, his parents had great hopes for him. They expected a great deal of him.’

He sobbed and wiped his mouth.

‘My father is more of a thinker than my mother was. In religious terms he’s … stricter, in some ways. He’s absolutely fascinated by Catholicism. If it hadn’t been for my mother’s position I think he would have converted a long time ago. Last autumn my mother attended an ecumenical conference in Boston, and my father went with her. He visited every single Catholic church in the city.’

Lukas hesitated for a moment.

‘He’s also more strict with himself than my mother was. I don’t think he’s ever really got over the fact that his parents were disappointed in him. He’s their only child.’

He added this final comment with an expression that suggested it explained most things.

‘So are you, I notice.’ Adam looked at his papers again, turned over his pad and quickly scribbled down a couple of sentences.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re … twenty-nine years old?’

Adam was surprised when he saw Lukas’s date of birth in the file. The previous day he had assumed the bishop’s son was well into his thirties.

‘Yes.’

‘So your parents had been married for fourteen years when you were born.’

‘They studied for a long time. Well, my mother did, anyway.’

‘And they never had any more children?’

‘Not that I know of.’

The acidic alertness was back.

Adam smiled disarmingly and quickly asked: ‘When you say they loved each other more than anything in the world, what are you basing that on?’

Lukas looked stunned.

‘What am I … ? What do you mean?’ Without waiting for an answer he went on. ‘They showed it a hundred times a day! The way they spoke to one another, the experiences they shared, everything … for God’s sake, what kind of a question is that?’

His expression was almost frightening, with the blood-red eye wide open. Suddenly he stiffened, holding his breath.

‘Is something wrong?’ Adam asked after a few seconds. ‘Mr Lysgaard! What’s the matter?’

Slowly the man expelled the air from his lungs.

‘Migraine,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve just started to get visual disturbance.’ He spoke in a monotone, and was blinking rapidly. ‘One half is shimmering …’ He held up one hand, forming a barrier between his right and left eye.

‘It means that in exactly twenty-five minutes I will get a headache so severe that it’s indescribable. I have to get home.’

He stood up so quickly that his chair fell over. For a moment he lost his balance and steadied himself against the wall. Adam looked at his watch. He had allocated the entire day to this interview, which had hardly begun. Although he had already learned enough to give him something to think about, it was difficult to hide his irritation at this interruption. But that was of no consequence. Lukas Lysgaard was already lost to this world.

‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said quietly. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

‘No. Home. Now.’

Adam fetched Lukas’s coat from a hook on the wall. The man showed no sign of wanting to put it on. He simply took it and dragged it along behind him as he headed for the door. Adam moved quickly and got there first.

‘I can see you’re not well,’ he said, his hand resting on the door handle. ‘We will, of course, postpone the rest of this interview until a more suitable time. Unfortunately, however, there is one question I do have to ask. You heard it yesterday, in fact.’

Lukas Lysgaard’s expression remained unchanged. It almost seemed as if he was no longer aware that Adam was in the room.

‘What was your mother doing out walking on Christmas Eve?’

Lukas raised his head. He looked Adam straight in the eye, licked his lips and swallowed audibly. It was clearly taking a huge amount of effort to steel himself against the pain he knew would come.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I have no idea why my mother was out so late.’

‘Did she usually go out in the evening? Just before bedtime? I mean, was it normal for her to …’

Lukas was still holding his gaze.

‘I have to get home,’ he said hoarsely. ‘No. I have no idea where my mother was going or what she was doing. Take me home. Please.’

You’re lying, Adam thought as he opened the door. I can see that you’re lying.

‘I’m telling the truth,’ said Lukas Lysgaard, wobbling into the corridor.

*

‘You couldn’t tell a lie if you were being paid for it,’ Lina Skytter said with a laugh as she tucked her legs up on the sofa.

‘Leave it out,’ said Johanne, surprised that she felt slightly insulted. ‘I’m actually a specialist in lies!’

‘Other people’s lies, yes. Not your own. If you’d bought spare ribs at Rimi and told your mother they were from Strøm-Larsen, your nose would have grown from here to Sognsvann. Just as well you went for cod instead.’

‘My mother didn’t think so,’ Johanne mumbled into her wine glass.

‘Give over,’ said Lina. ‘Your mum’s lovely. Good with the kids and really kind. She’s just a little … emotionally incontinent, that’s all. It’s as if whatever’s on her mind has to come out of her mouth right away, kind of. Forget it. Cheers!’

Johanne raised her glass and tucked her feet underneath her. Her best and oldest friend had turned up just an hour ago, with two bottles of wine and three DVDs. Johanne had felt slightly irritated for a few minutes; she had actually been looking forward to an evening on her own with the computer. But now they were sitting at either end of the big sofa, and Johanne couldn’t remember when she had last felt so relaxed.

‘God, I’m so tired.’ She smiled and gave an enormous yawn. ‘I don’t notice it until I relax.’

‘You have to stay awake. We’re going to watch …’ Lina shuffled through the pile of films on the coffee table. ‘… What Happens in Vegas first. Ashton Kutcher is just gorgeous. And no critical comments. We’re just going to have a nice time.’

She kicked out at Johanne, who shook her head, her expression resigned.

‘How much time do you actually waste on stuff like this?’ she asked.

‘Don’t be so bloody tight-arsed. You like it, too.’

‘Well, can I at least watch the news first? Just so that we have some kind of basis in reality before we dive into a vat of syrup?’

Lina laughed and raised her glass in agreement.

Johanne switched on the TV and just caught the last few seconds of the opening headlines. The top story was as she expected: Bishop Eva Karin Lysgaard murdered in the street – the police have no leads so far.

‘What?’ said Lina, her mouth falling open as she sat up straight on the sofa. ‘Murdered? But how the hell … ?’

She put her feet on the floor, put down her glass and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees.

‘It’s been all over the net and on the radio all day,’ Johanne said, turning up the sound. ‘Where have you been?’

Christian Borch was wearing a dark suit and a serious expression.

‘The police have today confirmed that the bishop of Bjørgvin, Eva Karin Lysgaard, was murdered on the evening of the twenty-fourth of December. Yesterday it was announced that Bishop Lysgaard had died, but the circumstances surrounding her death were not made public until this morning.’

The picture changed from the studio to a rain-soaked Bergen, where a reporter gave a summary of the case, which was basically two minutes about nothing.

‘Is that why Adam’s away?’ Lina asked, turning to Johanne.

She nodded.

‘As far as we are aware, the police have no leads regarding the identity of the killer at this stage.’

‘Which means they have lots of leads,’ said Johanne. ‘But they have no idea what to do with them.’

Lina shushed her. They sat in silence and watched the entire item, which lasted almost twelve minutes. This was not only because the Christmas period was somewhat short on news as usual; this was something very special. You could see it in everyone who was interviewed – the police, church officials, politicians and ordinary people on the street, everyone was moved in a way that Norwegians didn’t normally show in public. Many had difficulty speaking. Some burst into tears while being interviewed.

‘It’s almost like when King Olav died,’ said Lina, switching off the TV.

‘Hmm. He died of old age, in his own bed.’

‘I know, but the atmosphere is kind of the same. Who in the world would want to kill a woman like that? I mean, she was so … kind, somehow. So good!’

Johanne recalled that she had reacted in exactly the same way almost two days ago. Not only had Eva Karin Lysgaard seemed to be a good person, she was also clearly blessed with a talent for diplomacy. In theological terms she was right in the middle of the fragmented landscape that comprised the Church of Norway. She was neither radical nor conservative. On the question of homosexuality, which had raged within the church for many years – constantly moving Norway closer to a non-denominational constitution – she had been the principal architect of the fragile peace agreement. There would be room for both points of view. Bishop Lysgaard had nothing against marrying homosexuals. At the same time, she had defended the right of her opponents to refuse to do so. Bishop Lysgaard stood out as an open, tolerant person, a typical representative of a broad and popular state church. Which, in fact, she was not. On the contrary, she had strong, fundamental misgivings when it came to the unsatisfactory self-regulation within the church, and never missed an opportunity to put forward her opinion.

Always pleasant. Always calm, with a subtle smile that smoothed the edges of the odd sharp word that might slip out on those rare occasions when Eva Karin Lysgaard became too involved.

As a rule, this concerned the issue of abortion.

Eva Karin Lysgaard held extreme views in only one area: she was against abortion. Totally and completely and in all circumstances. Not even after a rape or when the mother’s life might be in danger could she countenance interference to put an end to a life that had been created. For Bishop Lysgaard, God’s creation was sacrosanct. His ways were unfathomable, and a fertilized egg had the right to life, because God willed it so.

Strangely enough she was respected for her views, in a country where the debate on abortion had actually ended in 1978. The small minority that had continued to oppose the law legalizing abortion were largely regarded as ridiculously conservative and – at least in the eyes of the general public – fairly extreme. Even the feminists toned things down when they were in a debate with Eva Karin Lysgaard. By sticking so firmly to her principles, she distanced herself from the idea that the issue of abortion was anything to do with women’s liberation.

For her, abortion was a question of the sanctity of life, and nothing to do with gender.

‘I wonder what happened to her out there in the forest?’ Johanne said suddenly.

‘The forest? I thought she was murdered on the street?’

‘I don’t mean the murder, I meant that time … there was a profile of her in the Saturday supplement last week, did you see it?’

Lina shook her head and topped up her glass.

‘We were up at the cottage over the weekend. We did lots of skiing, but didn’t read a single newspaper.’

You never do anyway, wherever you are, thought Johanne, smiling as she went on.

‘She said she met God in the forest when she was sixteen. Something special happened, but she didn’t say what it was.’

‘Isn’t it Jesus they usually meet?’

‘What?’

‘I thought when somebody was saved they said they “met Jesus”.’

‘God or Jesus,’ Johanne muttered. ‘Same thing.’

She got up quickly and went into the bedroom. She came back with the supplement, and turned to the interview as she sat down again.

‘Here,’ she said, taking a deep breath.

‘I was in a very difficult situation. We human beings often find ourselves in this position when we are teenagers. Things become too big for us. And that’s what happened to me. Then I met Jesus.’

‘Ha!’ Lina exclaimed. ‘I was right!’

‘Shut up. What actually happened? That’s the journalist asking.’

Johanne glanced quickly at Lina over the top of her glasses and went on:

‘That’s a matter between me and God, the Bishop says with a smile, revealing dimples deep enough to hide in. We all have our secret rooms. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way it will always be.’

She slowly folded up the magazine.

‘And now I want to watch a film,’ said Lina.

‘We all have our secret rooms,’ Johanne repeated, gazing at the close-up of Eva Karin Lysgaard on the cover.

‘Not me,’ Lina said breezily. ‘Shall we watch What Happens in Vegas, or would you rather go straight for The Devil Wears Prada? I haven’t actually seen it yet, and I can watch Meryl Streep in anything.’

‘I’m sure even you have a couple of rooms with secrets in them, Lina.’ Johanne took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, then added: ‘It’s just that you’ve lost the keys.’

‘Could be,’ Lina said amiably. ‘But what you don’t know can’t hurt you, as they say.’

‘You’re completely wrong there,’ said Johanne, pointing half-heartedly at The Devil Wears Prada. ‘It’s actually what we don’t know that does hurt us.’