Before the Day Dawns

Johanne felt remarkably contented when the alarm clock rang at the early hour of five-thirty on the morning of Monday, 12 January. At first she couldn’t work out why she was being woken up so early, and lay there in that pleasant no-man’s-land between dream and reality, while Adam hurled himself at the wretched thing and silenced it. The dry warmth beneath the covers made her draw them more closely around her. When Adam lay down again with a groan she wriggled up against his back.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he murmured. ‘The plane to Bergen leaves in two hours.’

‘Ragnhild’s asleep,’ she whispered. ‘Kristiane and Jack are at Isak’s. Can’t you stay for quarter of an hour?’

It cost him his breakfast, and as he sat in the car on the way to Gardermoen just after six-thirty, late and with grumbling pains in his stomach, he almost regretted it.

Johanne, on the other hand, felt better than she had for a long time. The evening with Karen Winslow had gone on until three o’clock on Saturday morning. It would have been even later if Karen hadn’t had to drive a good 200 kilometres to Lillesand the following day. Adam had taken Ragnhild to visit his son-in-law and his grandson Amund on Saturday morning, and stayed out all day. Johanne had slept for longer than she could ever remember. After a long breakfast and three hours with the Saturday papers, she had driven to Tøyenbadet and swum 1,500 metres. In the evening Sigmund Berli had called round. Uninvited. He had brought pizza and warm beer. The unwelcome guest gave Johanne a good excuse to go to bed before ten o’clock.

It had done her good.

She was still feeling happy after meeting up with her old friend. Ragnhild had gone to bed too late on the Sunday, and she had finally reached the age where she caught up on some lost sleep the following day. Johanne ambled around in Adam’s huge pyjamas, made a big pot of coffee and settled down on the sofa with the laptop on her knee. Her teaching commitments hadn’t yet started post-Christmas, and she had decided to spend the day at home. She would leave Ragnhild to sleep until she woke up, despite the fact that the woman who ran the nursery got annoyed if she wasn’t dropped off before ten.

Johanne checked her e-mail; she had nine new messages. Most of them were of no interest. One was from the police. She glanced through it quickly, and realized immediately that it was the same message Adam had received on Saturday morning about the murder of Marianne Kleive. The police had obtained a complete guest list from the wedding reception at the Continental, and were making routine enquiries as to whether any of the guests had noticed anything that might be relevant to the case. Johanne deleted the message straight away. Adam had already replied for both of them, besides which she wanted to devote as little thought as possible to that terrible evening when Kristiane had almost been hit by a tram.

Karen Winslow had already replied to the question Johanne had sent the previous day. She pulled the blanket more tightly around her and opened the message as she sipped the scalding hot coffee.

Johanne read through the message again. She needed a printout to remember the strange references. The printer was in the bedroom. As she opened the door the closed-in smell of sheets, sleep and sex hit her. Adam refused to sleep with the window open when the mercury dropped below minus five. Quickly she linked the computer to the printer. When the rasping sound told her that the document was being printed, she went over to the window and threw it wide open.

She closed her eyes against the fresh, cold air.

The Bible, she thought.

She wasn’t even sure if they had one, but she knew there was a copy of the Koran in Adam’s bookcase. He insisted on having a bookcase of his own in the bedroom, five metres of shelving containing an absurd mixture of books. The Book Club’s splendid series on holy scriptures stood alongside reference books on weapons, huge works on heraldry, almost twenty books about horses and bloodlines, an ancient edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, plus everything that had ever been drawn and published by Frode Øverli. Leaving the window open, she crouched down in front of the bookcase on Adam’s side of the double bed. The Koran was easy to find: its spine was adorned with gold leaf and Oriental patterns. The book standing next to it was so worn that the spine was missing. When she carefully took it out, the covers felt soft with age.

The Bible.

Slowly she opened it. There was ornate handwriting on the flyleaf: To Adam from Grandma and Granddad, 16 September 1956. She quickly worked out that it must have been the day of his christening; Adam was born on Midsummer’s Eve that same year.

She half-closed the window and tucked both books under her arm. With the printout in one hand and the laptop in the other, she went back to the sofa.

She saw that Adam’s Bible was the old translation. She found Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and ran her finger down the page.

24. Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness: to dishonour their own bodies among themselves.

She stopped.

… to dishonour their own bodies among themselves …

‘Presumably that means they had sex with one another,’ she murmured, before her eyes found verse 27.

… And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts, one towards another: men with men, working that which is filthy and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.

Even though she basically understood what it meant, she closed the tattered book and pulled the laptop on to her knee. She should have thought of this in the first place, instead of rooting around in Adam’s bookcase. She had done something similar only once before, and he had been cross for hours afterwards.

It took her two minutes to find the same text on the Internet, but in the new translation.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

Much clearer, she thought, with a slight shake of her head.

Verse 27 was also clearer when clothed in more modern language.

In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Johanne regarded herself as an agnostic. For her that was just a more elegant word for ‘indifferent’. However, she had to deal with believers in her work and always tried to do so with due respect. Apart from a brief flirtation with religion in her teens, faith in God had never really interested her.

Until now.

Over the past few months she had been forced to develop a relationship with various religions on the most intense level. Texts such as the ones she had just read didn’t frighten her in themselves. As a researcher and a non-believer, she looked at them within the historical context and found them quite interesting. However, taken literally with relevance to people living in 2009, she thought Paul’s words were appalling.

If Karen and the APLC were right, and the name ‘The 25ers’ really could be traced back to these verses, then they must be an organization working directly against homosexuals and lesbians. Without paraphrasing. No church group. No religious community.

A pure hate group.

If ultra-conservative Christians really had joined up with radical Muslims in a new organization of their own, there was every reason to believe that their hatred was more violent than any she had spent the last few months examining more closely.

She read the last line again:

… received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

She shuddered and picked up the printout of Karen’s e-mail.

The number 19. The Arabic-sounding name Rashad Khalifa. Her fingers flew over the keyboard: 4,400 hits on Google.

‘Morning, Mummy. I need porridge.’

Ragnhild scurried across the living-room floor on bare feet. Johanne just had time to put the laptop on the coffee table before her daughter hurled herself into her arms.

‘I’m not going to nursery today,’ Ragnhild laughed. ‘Today you and me are going to have a Teddy Bear Day!’

Johanne gently pushed her daughter away in order to make eye contact, then she said: ‘No, sweetheart. You are going to nursery today. It’s Monday.’

‘Teddy Bear Day,’ Ragnhild said mulishly, pushing out her lower lip.

‘Another time, chicken. Mummy has to work today, and you have to go to nursery. Don’t you remember? You’re all going skiing in Solem Forest. You’ll be cooking sausages over the fire and everything!’

The sulky face split into a big smile.

‘Oh yes! And how many days is it till my birthday?’

‘Nine days. It’s only nine days until you’re five!’

Ragnhild laughed happily.

‘And I’m going to have the best birthday in the world, with bells on!’

‘So to make sure you get to be such a big girl, we’re going to make porridge. But first of all you and I are going to hop in the shower.’

‘Yess!’ her daughter replied, hopping off towards the bathroom like a rabbit.

Johanne smiled at the sight of her. It had been a lovely weekend, and she intended to enjoy an hour alone with her youngest daughter before she tackled a new week.

If only she could push away the thought of The 25’ers.

*

The last person to push open the door of the small chapel at Østre Crematorium was called Petter Just. He stood there for a moment, wondering if he was in the right place. It was three minutes to twelve, but there couldn’t be more than twenty people in the chapel. Petter Just, a classmate of Niclas Winter’s who hadn’t seen his old friend for many years, had thought it would be packed. Niclas had done very well in life, from what he had read. Sold his work to museums and private collectors. A year ago the local paper had run a big article about Niclas and his work, and Petter Just had got the impression that he was on his way to a major international breakthrough.

A thin, elderly man wearing glasses that suggested he was almost blind pushed a folded sheet of paper into his hand. A photograph of Niclas adorned the front page, with his name and the dates of his birth and death printed in an old-fashioned typeface underneath.

Petter Just took the small leaflet and sat down quietly right at the back.

The clock struck its last four chimes, then fell silent as the organ took over.

The chapel was simple, almost plain: slate slabs on the floor and beige stone walls that turned into severe, rectangular windows for the last few metres. Instead of an altarpiece, the front wall was adorned with a fresco that Petter Just didn’t understand at all. More than anything it reminded him of an old advertising poster for Senterpartiet, with trees and seeds, farmers and fields and a horse that looked an awful lot like a Norwegian fjord horse. At any rate, no animal like that had ever trotted around in the Middle East, he thought, as he tried to find an acceptable sitting position on the hard pew that was covered in red material with stains on it.

He really had thought that Niclas was famous. Not a celebrity like the people you see in magazines and on VG, of course, but fairly well known within his field. A real artist, kind of. When Petter decided to go to the funeral, it had been mainly because he had once had a lot of fun with Niclas. They’d had a pretty cool time for a while, in one way or another. Niclas had been completely crazy when it came to drugs and so on. He hadn’t been all that particular about who he went to bed with, either.

Petter Just almost blushed at the thought.

At any rate, he didn’t do that kind of thing any more. He had a girlfriend, a fantastic girl, and they were expecting their first child in July. He had never been like Niclas really, but when his mother happened to mention that his old friend was dead and the funeral was today, he wanted to pay his respects.

Hardly anyone was singing.

He didn’t even bother miming, which he suspected the two men sitting on the other side of the aisle three pews ahead of him were doing. Some of the time, anyway.

There was only one woman in the chapel, and she didn’t exactly seem crushed. Nor had she managed to dig something black out of her wardrobe. Her suit was elegant, fair enough, but red wasn’t really appropriate for a funeral. She was sitting there looking bored stiff.

The music came to an end. The priest stepped up to the pulpit, directly in front of the central aisle, which resembled an oversized bar stool that might fall over at any moment.

The two men in front of Petter started a whispered conversation.

At first he was annoyed. It wasn’t right to talk during a sermon. Well, maybe ‘sermon’ wasn’t the right word, but any rate it was rude not to keep quiet while the priest was talking.

‘… found several works of art … no children or siblings …’

Petter Just could hear fragments of the conversation. Although he didn’t really want to, he found himself concentrating on them.

‘… in his studio … no heirs …’

The priest indicated that the congregation should stand. The two men were so absorbed that they didn’t react until everyone else was on their feet. They kept quiet for a little while, then started whispering to each other again.

‘… lots of smaller installations … sketches … a final masterpiece … nobody knew that …’

The bastards were ruining the entire service. Petter leaned forward.

‘Shut up, for God’s sake!’ he hissed. ‘Show a little respect!’

Both men turned to look at him in surprise. One was in his fifties with thinning hair, narrow glasses and a moustache. The other was somewhat younger.

‘Sorry,’ said the older man, and both of them smiled as they turned to face the front.

He must have given them a real fright, because they didn’t say another word for the rest of the ceremony. It didn’t last much longer anyway. No one spoke, apart from the priest. Not like when Lasse died in a car accident two years ago; he had been one of three little boys racketing around in Godlia in the eighties. His funeral had been held in the large chapel next door, and there still wasn’t room for everyone who wanted to attend. There had been eight eulogies, and even a live band playing ‘Imagine’. A sea of flowers and an ocean of tears.

Nobody here was crying, and there was just one wreath on the coffin.

The thought brought tears to his eyes.

He should have got in touch with Niclas long ago. If it hadn’t been for the aspect of their relationship that he really wanted to forget, the aspect that had never really been his thing, he would have kept up the friendship.

Suddenly he didn’t want to be there any more. Just before the final note died away, he got up. He pushed the old, short-sighted man out of the way and yanked open the heavy wooden door.

It had started snowing again.

He started to run, without really knowing what he was racing towards.

Or from.

*

‘Changing the subject,’ said Sigmund Berli, before kicking off his shoes and putting his feet up on the little table between the two armchairs in Adam’s hotel room. ‘I’ve got myself a girlfriend.’

Adam held his nose, pulled a face and stabbed his index finger several times in the direction of his colleague’s feet.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, laughing behind his clenched fist, ‘but your socks stink to high heaven. Take them away! Put your shoes back on!’

Sigmund leaned forward as far as he could towards his own feet. Sniffed hard and wrinkled his nose slightly.

‘They’re all right,’ he said, settling down again. ‘I haven’t had any complaints from my girlfriend, anyway.’

‘Who is she?’ asked Adam, moving over to the bed, as far from Sigmund as possible. ‘And how long has this been going on?’

‘Herdis,’ Sigmund said eagerly. ‘She’s … Herdis is … Guess! Guess what her job is!’

‘No idea,’ Adam said impatiently. ‘Are you actually going to offer me a drink or what?’

Sigmund fished a plastic bottle of whisky out of his inside pocket. He picked up one of the glasses Adam had fetched from the bathroom and poured a generous measure before handing it to his friend.

‘Thanks.’

Sigmund poured himself a drink.

‘Herdis,’ Sigmund repeated contentedly, as if just speaking her name was a pleasure. ‘Herdis Vatne is a professor of astrophysics.’

‘Hmff … !’ Adam sprayed whisky all over himself and the bed. ‘What did you say? What the hell did you say?’

Sigmund straightened up, a suspicious look in his eyes.

‘I suppose you thought I couldn’t pull an academic? The trouble with you, Adam, is that you’re always so bloody prejudiced. You defend those Negroes to the death. Despite the fact that they’re over-represented in virtually all the crime statistics we have, you’re always going on about how difficult things are for them, and—’

‘Pack it in,’ said Adam. ‘And don’t use that word.’

‘That’s a form of prejudice, too, you know! Always thinking the best of people just because they belong to a particular group! You never think the best of anyone else. You’re sceptical about every white person we pick up, but if their skin’s just a little bit darker than ours, you start pointing out how decent they probably are, and how—’

‘Pack it in! I mean it!’ Adam suddenly sat up straight on the bed.

Sigmund hesitated, then added sullenly: ‘And you don’t believe for a moment that I’ve got a girlfriend who works at the university. You think it’s funny. That’s definitely what I call having preconceived ideas. And it’s actually quite hurtful, to be perfectly honest.’

‘Sorry,’ said Adam. ‘I apologize, Sigmund. Of course I’m very happy for you. Have you … ?’ He pointed to Sigmund’s mobile phone. ‘Have you got a picture of her?’

‘You bet!’

Sigmund fiddled with his phone and eventually found what he was looking for, then held it out to Adam with a broad grin.

‘Not bad, eh? Beautiful as well as clever. Almost like Johanne.’

Adam took the phone and examined the picture. A fair-haired woman in her forties was looking back at him with a big smile. Her teeth were white and even, her nose upturned slightly in an attractive way. She must be quite slim, because even on the little display screen he could see deep laughter lines, with a furrow running from the corners of her mouth down to her chin on either side. Her eyes were blue and she was wearing just a little bit too much eye make-up.

She looked like just about any competent Norwegian woman in her forties.

‘Not bad at all,’ he mumbled, handing back the phone.

‘I was going to tell you on Saturday, before Johanne suddenly went off to bed. But then I decided to wait, because yesterday Herdis was meeting my boys for the first time. Well, it wasn’t really the first time, because her son plays hockey with Snorre. They’ve been good friends for ages. But I had to see how things went when we kind of … met up privately. All of us. I mean, I can’t have a girlfriend who doesn’t like my boys. And vice versa.’

‘So I gather it went well?’

‘Couldn’t have gone better. We went to the cinema, then back to her place for a meal afterwards. You should see her apartment! Stylish and spacious. In Frogner. I almost feel like a stranger in that part of town. But it’s lovely there, I have to admit.’

He sipped contentedly at his whisky and leaned back in his armchair.

‘Love is a beautiful thing,’ he announced solemnly.

‘Indeed it is.’

They sat in silence for a while as they worked their way through about half of their generous drinks. Adam could feel the tiredness creeping up on him as he lay there on the bed, three pillows providing a soft support for his back and neck. He closed his eyes, then gave a start as he almost dropped his glass.

‘What do you think about our woman?’ said Sigmund.

‘What woman? Herdis?’

‘Idiot. Eva Karin Lysgaard.’

Adam didn’t reply. The two of them had spent the day trying to impose some kind of system on the vast amount of documents relating to the case. Nineteen days had passed since the Bishop was stabbed to death, and basically the Bergen police were no closer to a solution. You couldn’t actually blame them, thought Adam. He was just as much at a loss. So far they and Sigmund had worked well together, with no friction. To begin with Adam had taken responsibility for interviewing the witnesses who were most central to the case, while Sigmund had acted as a link between Kripos and Hordaland police district. This was a role he fulfilled admirably. It was difficult to find a more jovial soul than Sigmund Berli. He was a strong all-rounder who could usually sort out any potential conflict before things turned serious. For the last week they had both worked in a slightly different capacity, evaluating the material gathered so far. The Bergen police were responsible for all aspects of the investigation and coordination. They operated entirely independently, while Adam and Sigmund tried to gain an overview of all the information that came pouring in.

‘I think we’ve made a mistake,’ Adam said suddenly. ‘The opposite of the mistake we usually make.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ve been looking at too wide an area.’

‘Rule Number One, Adam: keep all doors open at all times!’

‘I know,’ said Adam with a grimace. ‘But listen …’

He picked up a notepad and pen from the bedside table.

‘With regard to this theory about a madman, one of those ticking bombs that everybody is talking about all the time—’

‘An asylum seeker,’ Sigmund chipped in, and was about to expand on this theme when a crushing glance from Adam made him hold up his hands in a placatory gesture.

‘If that were the case, we would have found him long ago,’ said Adam. ‘That type of murder is carried out by psychotic individuals who happily roam the streets after doing the deed, spattered with blood and tormented by inner demons until we find them a few hours later. It’s been three weeks now, and we’ve seen no sign of any maniac. No one is missing from the psychiatric clinics, nothing suspicious has been discovered at the centres for asylum seekers, and I think it’s actually …’

He tapped the pad with his pen.

‘… out of the question that we’re looking for that kind of murderer.’

‘I should imagine that’s exactly what the Bergen police are thinking.’

‘Yes. But they’re still keeping the door open.’

Sigmund nodded.

‘That door should just be closed,’ said Adam. ‘Along with several other doors that are just creating draughts and chaos with all their possibilities. These poison-pen letters, for example. Have you ever been involved in a case where the murderer was one of the people who’d sent that sort of thing?’

‘Well,’ Sigmund said hesitantly. ‘In the Anna Lindh case the murderer was unhappy about—’

‘The Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs was murdered by a madman,’ Adam interrupted. ‘In every practical respect, if not in the legal sense. A misfit with a psychiatric background who suddenly caught sight of a focus for his hatred. He was arrested two weeks later, and he left so many clues that—’

‘That you and I would have picked him up in less than twenty-four hours,’ Sigmund smiled.

Adam grinned back.

‘They’ve been really unlucky, the Swedes, in several really, really serious cases …’

Once again they fell silent. From the room next door came the sound of a running shower and a toilet being flushed.

‘I think that’s a blind alley, too,’ said Adam. ‘Just like this abortion business the papers are making so much of at the moment. It’s the anti-abortion lobby that sometimes commits murders in support of their point of view. In the US, anyway. Not the pro-abortionists. That’s just too far-fetched.’

‘So what are you thinking, then? You’ve gone through virtually every possibility we’ve got! What the hell are you sitting there pondering?’

‘Where was she going?’ said Adam, staring blankly into space. ‘We have to find out where she was going when she was murdered.’

Sigmund emptied his glass and stared at it briefly before resolutely opening the plastic bottle of Famous Grouse and pouring himself another decent measure.

‘Take it easy,’ said Adam. ‘We’ve got to make an early start.’

Sigmund ignored his warning.

‘The problem is, of course, that we can’t ask Eva Karin Lysgaard,’ he said. ‘And her husband is still flatly refusing to say anything about where she was heading. Our colleagues here have told him he has a duty to answer, and have even threatened him with a formal interrogation. With the consequences that could have—’

‘They’ll never subject Erik Lysgaard to a formal interrogation. It would be pointless. He has suffered enough – and is still suffering. We’ll have to come up with something else.’

‘Like what?’

Adam emptied his glass and shook his head when Sigmund lifted the bottle to offer him a top-up.

‘Door-to-door enquiries,’ Adam said tersely.

‘Where? All over Bergen?’

‘No. We need to …’ He opened the drawer of the bedside table and took out a map of the town. ‘We need to concentrate on a limited area somewhere around here,’ he said, drawing a circle with his index finger as he held the map up to show his colleague.

‘But that’s half of bloody Bergen,’ Sigmund said wearily.

‘No. It’s the eastern part of the centre. The north-eastern part.’

Sigmund took the map.

‘You know what, Adam? This is the stupidest suggestion you’ve ever come up with. It’s been made absolutely crystal-clear in the media that there’s a great deal of uncertainty about why the Bishop was out walking on Christmas Eve. If anyone out there knew where she was going, they would have contacted the police long ago. Unless, of course, they have something to hide, in which case there’s still no bloody point in going around knocking on doors.’

He threw the map on the bed and took a large swig from his glass.

‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘she might just have gone out for a walk. In which case we wouldn’t be any closer to finding an answer.’

Adam’s face took on the glassy expression Sigmund knew so well.

‘Any more bright ideas?’ he said, sipping his whisky. ‘Ideas I can shoot down right now?’

‘The photo,’ said Adam firmly, before glancing at his watch.

‘The photo. Right. What photo?’

‘It’s half past eleven. I need to get some sleep.’

‘Which photo are you talking about?’

Sigmund showed no sign of heading off to his own room. On the contrary, he settled himself more comfortably in the armchair and rested his legs on the bed.

‘The one that disappeared,’ said Adam. ‘I told you about the photograph that was in the “spare room” …’

He drew quotation marks in the air.

‘… where Eva Karin used to go when she couldn’t sleep, according to the family. There were four photographs in there the first time I saw the room, and three when I went back two days later. The only thing I remember is that it was a portrait.’

‘But Erik Lysgaard doesn’t want to—’

‘We’ll just have to forget Erik. He’s a lost cause. I’ve spent far too long thinking the key to finding out more about this mysterious walk lies with him. But we’ve reached stalemate there. Lukas, however—’

‘Doesn’t seem all that keen to cooperate either, if you ask me.’

‘No, you could be right there. Which means we have to ask ourselves why a son who is obviously grieving – and who really wants to find out who murdered his mother – is so reluctant to help the police. There’s usually only one explanation for that kind of thing.’

He looked at Sigmund with raised eyebrows, challenging him to follow his reasoning through to its conclusion.

‘Family secrets,’ said Sigmund in a dramatic tone of voice.

‘Bingo. They often have nothing to do with the matter in hand, actually, but in this case we can’t afford to make any assumptions. My impression of Lukas is that he’s not really …’

There was a long pause. Sigmund waited patiently; his glass wasn’t empty yet.

‘… he’s not really sure of his father,’ Adam said eventually.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They’re obviously very fond of each other. There’s a striking resemblance between them, both physically and in terms of personality, and I have no reason to believe there’s any problem with the relationship between father and son. And yet there’s something unresolved between them. Something new. You notice it as soon as you’re in the same room with both of them. It’s a long way from hostility, it’s more a kind of …’

Once again he had to search for the right words.

‘… broken trust.’

‘Do they suspect each other?’

‘I don’t think so. But there’s something unspoken between them, some kind of deep scepticism that …’

Once again, mostly as a reflex action, he looked at his watch.

‘I mean it, Sigmund. I have to get to sleep. Clear off.’

‘You always have to spoil the party,’ mumbled his colleague, putting his feet on the floor. His room was two doors away, and he couldn’t be bothered with his shoes. He picked them up with two fingers of his right hand, and carried the whisky bottle in the other.

‘What time are you having breakfast?’

‘Seven. Then I’m going out to Os. I want to catch Lukas before he goes to work. That’s what we have to hope for – that Lukas will agree to help us.’

He yawned and weakly raised two fingers to his forehead in a farewell salute. In the doorway Sigmund turned back.

‘I think I’ll get up a bit later,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll go straight down to the police station about nine. I’ll let them know you’ve gone to talk to Lukas again. They seem to think it’s OK for you to go off on your own here in Bergen. You’d never get away with it back home!’

‘Fine. Good night.’

Sigmund mumbled something inaudible as the door closed behind him with a muted bang.

As Adam undressed and got ready for bed, he realized he’d forgotten to ring Johanne. He swore and looked at his watch, even though it was only two minutes since he’d established that it was eleven thirty-six.

It was too late to call, so he went to bed.

And couldn’t get to sleep.

*

It was the number 19 that was keeping Johanne awake. She had spent the entire evening reading about Rashad Khalifa and his theories about the divine origins of the Koran. Whatever she tried to think about in order to tempt sleep, that damned number 19 popped up again, and she was wide awake once more.

After an hour she gave up. She would find something mindless to watch on TV. A detective programme or a sitcom; something to make her sleepy. It was already after one o’clock, but TV3 was usually showing some kind of crap at this time of night.

The sofa was a complete mess. Papers everywhere, every single one a printout from the Internet.

Johanne threatened her own students with death and destruction if they ever used Wikipedia as a source in a piece of academic work. She used it all the time. The difference between Johanne and her students was that she had the sense to be critical, in her opinion. This evening it had been difficult. The story of Rashad Khalifa made riveting reading, and every link had led her deeper into this remarkable story.

It was so fascinating.

She padded silently into the kitchen and decided to follow her mother’s advice. Milk in a pan, two large dessert spoonfuls of honey. Just before it boiled she added a dash of brandy. As a child she hadn’t had a clue about the final ingredient. As an adult she had confronted her mother, telling her it was totally irresponsible to give a child alcohol to get her to sleep. Her mother had waved away her objections, pointing out that the alcohol evaporated, and that in any case alcohol could be regarded as medicine. At least in these circumstances. Besides which they were very rarely given her special milk mixture, she had added, when Johanne still didn’t seem convinced.

She smiled and shook her head at the thought. Poured the milk into a big mug. It was almost too hot to hold.

She put it down on the coffee table and made some space on the sofa. Switched on the TV and flicked on to TV3. It was difficult to work out what the film was actually about. The pictures were dark, showing trees being blown down in a violent storm. When a vampire suddenly appeared among the tree trunks, she switched off.

Without really making a conscious decision, she reached for a pile of papers next to her mug of milk. Despite the fact that it was a stupid thing to do in view of the late hour, she settled down to read more about Rashad Khalifa and his peculiar theory about the number 19.

The Egyptian had emigrated to the United States as a young adult, and trained there as a biochemist. Since he found the English translation of the Koran unsatisfactory, he re-translated the whole thing himself. During the course of his work, towards the end of the Sixties, he got the idea that the book ought to be analyzed. From a purely mathematical point of view. The aim would be to prove that the Koran was a divine text. After several years and a great deal of work, he put forward his theory about the number 19 as a kind of pervading, divine key to the word of Allah.

Johanne didn’t have the requisite knowledge to follow the strange Muslim’s great leaps of thought. The whole thing seemed to be based on comparatively advanced mathematics, while in some parts it seemed utterly banal. For example, he noted that in the Koran, ‘Basmalah’ is mentioned 114 times, which is a number divisible by 19. In certain places he based his comments more directly on the text, such as when he referred to the fact that sura 74:30 said, ‘Over it is nineteen.’

Tentatively, she took a sip of the hot milky drink. Her mother’s theory didn’t stand up; the alcohol burned on her tongue and prickled in her nose.

Rashad Khalifa carried out an inconceivable number of calculations, she noted once more. The most ridiculous was to add up all the numbers mentioned throughout the whole of the Koran, and to show that this total was also divisible by 19. At first she really couldn’t understand what was special about that, but then she realized that 19 was a prime number, and therefore divisible only by itself, and that made things slightly easier to understand.

‘But then there are a hell of a lot of prime numbers,’ she muttered to herself.

The room was cold.

They had installed a thermostat with a timer on every radiator in an attempt to protect both their bank account and the environment. While Adam kept on turning up the radiators to maintain the heat overnight, she kept turning them down to allow the system to work as it was meant to. She regretted it now. For a moment she considered lighting a fire, but instead she went into the bedroom and fetched a blanket.

Her drink was beginning to cool down. She took a big gulp, then put the mug down again and started to read.

To begin with, the Muslim world had seemed delighted with the eccentric Khalifa’s discoveries. At first his work was taken seriously. Muslims the world over accepted the idea of mathematical evidence for the existence of Allah. Even the well-known sceptic Martin Gardner referred to Khalifa’s mathematical discoveries as interesting and sensational in one of his articles in Scientific American.

Then things went downhill for the Egyptian-American Rashad Khalifa.

He wrote himself into the Koran.

Not content with regarding himself as a prophet on the same level as the Prophet, he created his own religion. According to ‘The Submitters’, all other religions, including corrupt Islam, would simply die out when the prophet foretold in both the Koran and the Bible arrived, and Islam would rise again in a pure, unadulterated form.

She was going cross-eyed. Johanne put down the papers.

Perhaps she would be able to sleep on the sofa.

She wasn’t going to think about Rashad Khalifa any more.

Still, it was hardly surprising that he gained supporters, she thought, trying to get comfortable. Many modern Muslims welcomed his attack on the Muslim priesthood. On the other hand, numerology would always tempt those with a weakness for fanaticism – extremists of all kinds. Khalifa’s theories were still accepted, in spite of the fact that the man himself had been murdered in 1990.

By a fanatical Muslim, following a fatwa issued at the same meeting as the one against Salman Rushdie.

‘Oh my God,’ she mumbled, trying to close her eyes. ‘These religions!’

The number 19 was performing Riverdance on the inside of her eyelids.

It was ten past two.

Tomorrow would be terrible if she didn’t get to sleep soon. She got up abruptly, and with the blanket tucked under her arm she padded into the bathroom to take a sleeping tablet. The very thought that they were there was usually enough, but this time she took one and a half tablets, swilled down with running water from the tap.

Fifteen minutes later she was fast asleep in her own bed, untroubled by dreams.

*

Lukas Lysgaard had waited until everyone was asleep. He left a note for Astrid saying that he was worried about his father and was going to check that everything was OK, but would be back later that night. He had left the car parked on the street so that the garage door wouldn’t wake anyone.

The drive did him good. While his mother had always adored the light, Lukas was a man who felt comfortable at night. As a child he had always felt safe in the dark. The night was his friend, and had been ever since he was little and lived in the big house on Nubbebakken. From the age of six or seven he had often woken up and been fascinated by the shadows dancing on his bedroom wall. The big oak tree whose branches scraped against the window pane was illuminated from behind by a single yellow street lamp, making the most beautiful patterns on his bed. All of a sudden, when he could no longer sleep, he would tiptoe out of his room and up the steep stairs leading to the attic. In the semi-darkness, among trunks and old furniture, moth-eaten clothes and toys that were so old nobody knew who had owned them originally, he could sit for hours, lost in dreams.

Lukas Lysgaard drove from Os through the damp winter darkness into a Bergen that was heavy with sleep; he had finally made a decision.

When he thought back to his own childhood, he didn’t have much to complain about.

He was a much-loved child, and he knew it. His parents’ faith had been good for him when he was little. He accepted their God just as easily as all children accept their parents’ ideals until they are old enough to rebel. His rebellion had taken place in silence. From seeing the Lord as a comforting father figure – forgiving, watchful and omnipresent – he had begun to have his doubts at the age of twelve.

There was no room for doubt in the house on Nubbebakken.

His mother’s faith in God had been absolute. Her kindness towards others, regardless of their faith or conviction, her generosity and tolerance towards even the weakest among the fallen, all of this was firmly anchored in her certainty that the Redeemer was the Son of God. When Lukas became a teenager he discovered that his mother wasn’t a believer. She knew. Eva Karin Lysgaard was absolutely sure about her religion, and he never dared confront her with his own doubts. God stopped answering his prayers. Christianity became more and more of a closed book to him, and he started to seek the answers to the mysteries of life elsewhere.

After completing his military service he began to study physics, and abandoned his religion. Still without saying a word. He and Astrid had been married in church – what else would they do? Their children had been baptized. He was pleased about that now; his mother had been so happy each time she held up one of her grandchildren before the congregation, after administering the sacrament herself.

It had always been different at home with his parents, he thought, as he drew closer to his father’s house.

When he was a boy he had never noticed it. Since his mother’s death he had been trying to remember when it first arose, this vague feeling that she was hiding something. Perhaps it had happened gradually, alongside his own dwindling faith. Although she had always been there as a mother, always spiritually and often physically, as he grew older it had become increasingly clear to him that he was sharing her with someone else. It was like a shadow hanging over her. Something missing.

He had a sister. That must be the answer.

It was difficult to work out how and why, but it had to be connected in some way to his mother’s salvation as a sixteen-year-old. Perhaps she had been pregnant. Perhaps Jesus had spoken to her when she was thinking of having an abortion. That would explain the one area in which she was immovable and sometimes almost fanatical: it was not given to man to end a life created by God.

He quickly worked out that his mother had been sixteen in 1962.

It wasn’t easy to be pregnant and unmarried in 1962, and most definitely not for a young girl.

The woman in the photo was so like him; he remembered that, despite the fact that on the few occasions when he had paid any real attention to the picture he had felt an antipathy, almost a sense of loathing towards this nameless woman with the attractive, slightly crooked teeth.

Lukas was going to find that photograph. Then he was going to find his sister.

On Nubbebakken he parked a short distance from his father’s house. When he reached the front door, he tried not to rattle the bunch of keys.

Once inside, he stopped and listened.

It was never really silent in his parents’ house. The wood creaked, the hinges squealed. Branches scraped against the window panes when it was breezy. The ticking of the grandfather clock was usually so loud that you could hear it more or less anywhere on the ground floor. The pipes sighed at irregular intervals; his childhood home had always been a living house. The floors were old, and he still remembered where to put his feet so that he wouldn’t wake anyone.

Now everything was dead.

There wasn’t a breath of wind outside, and even when he stood on a floorboard that usually protested beneath his weight, he could hear nothing but his own pulse beating against his eardrums.

He walked towards the narrow staircase, holding his breath until he reached the top. The door of his father’s bedroom was ajar. The slow, regular breathing indicated that he was asleep. Lukas moved cautiously over to the door leading up to the attic. As usual the old wrought-iron key was in the lock, and he lifted the handle up and towards him while turning the key at the same time, which he knew was the trick. The click as the door unlocked made him hold his breath once more.

His father was still asleep.

With infinite slowness he opened the door.

Eventually he was able to slip through.

He placed his feet as close to the wall as possible on each step, as he had learned to do when he was only six years old. Silently he made his way up to the big, dusty room. He slipped the torch out of his waistband and began to search.

It was a reunion with his own childhood.

In the boxes piled up by the little round window in one gable he found clothes and shoes that had belonged to him when he was a little boy. Next to them were several boxes containing more clothes; his mother had thrown nothing away. He tried to remember when he had last been up here, and worked out that it must have been before they moved away for the first time, when he was twelve, and he had cried himself to sleep for two months at the thought of leaving Bergen.

And yet everything seemed so strangely familiar.

The smell was still the same. Dust, mothballs and rusty metal mixed with shoe polish and indefinable, comforting scents.

Suddenly he turned away from the boxes by the window and moved silently back to the staircase. He swept the beam of the torch over the floor at the top of the stairs. In the thick dust he could clearly see his own footprints. He could also see another impression, with no pattern on the sole, like the marks left by slippers. There were several when he looked more closely, and they went in both directions. Someone had been here recently.

Lukas couldn’t help smiling. His father had always thought the attic was a safe place. Every Christmas Eve when he was a little boy, Lukas had pretended to be surprised at his presents. His father had hidden them up here until Christmas Eve, but he had no idea that Lukas had become an expert at opening presents and sealing them up again without anyone being able to tell.

He stretched and looked around.

The attic was large, covering the same area as the ground floor of the house. A hundred square metres, if he remembered rightly. His courage almost failed at the thought of how long it would take to search through all this rubbish – all these memories – for something as small as a photograph.

Once again the beam of the torch danced across the footprints by the stairs.

The impressions left by the slippers– almost invisible – were pointing in the opposite direction from where Lukas had been. They led over to the western end of the attic, where the little window was nailed shut. He traced them carefully.

A sound from downstairs made him stiffen.

The sound of footsteps. The footsteps stopped.

Lukas held his breath.

His father was awake. He could almost hear him breathing, even though there must be more than fifteen metres between them. It sounded as if he was standing by the attic door.

Shit. Lukas’s lips silently formed the word. He hadn’t closed the door, simply because he was afraid of making a noise later, when he came down from the attic. Presumably his father was going to the toilet, and, of course, he had noticed that the attic door was open.

Sometimes, if they had forgotten to lock the door, it would open by itself. Lukas closed his eyes and prayed to God for the first time in living memory.

Let Dad believe the door opened by itself.

This time his prayer was answered.

He heard his father muttering to himself, then the door closed.

And the key was turned.

God hadn’t answered his prayer after all. Now he was locked in, and how the hell was he supposed to explain that? A stream of quiet curses poured out of his mouth before it occurred to him that he could use the roof light. He was only six years old when he climbed out of the little window in the roof for the first time; it was right next to the chimney, and he clambered down the sweep’s ladder, scrambled along the guttering and across to the big oak tree just outside his old bedroom.

From there getting down to the ground was a simple matter.

But first he must find the photo of his sister.

He waited for ten minutes to make sure his father had gone back to sleep. Then he crept quietly across the floor.

It was all so simple that he couldn’t really believe it. Underneath a banana box full of old newspapers – on top of a footstool he thought he remembered from when they lived in Stavanger – lay the photograph. The frame shone when the beam of the torch caught it. Only now did it occur to him that it was made of silver. The metal had oxidized over the years, but the weight and the quality of the chased frame convinced him.

A pang shot through him as he let the beam rest on her smiling face.

The woman was possibly in her twenties, although it was hard to tell. The only part of her clothing that was visible was a blouse with a small collar and something that might be flowers embroidered on the point at each side, white on white. On top of the blouse she was wearing a darker jacket – it looked like a thin, knitted jacket. One single colour.

Not particularly modern, he thought.

Quickly, he took the photograph out of the frame. He wanted to look for the name of the photographer or some other clue that might take him further in the hunt for the sister in whose existence he had believed for so long; now he had no intention of giving up until he found her.

Nothing.

The photograph was completely anonymous. He put down the frame and went over to an old armchair standing by the long wall on the southern side of the house. He sat down and balanced the torch on his shoulder so that the light was shining directly on the photograph.

If his mother had been pregnant in 1962, then this woman must be forty-six now, perhaps forty-seven; he had never known what time of year his mother had had her alleged revelation.

So the photograph must have been taken at least twenty-five years ago: 1984.

He had been five years old then. He didn’t know much about the fashion in those days, apart from the fact that his best friend’s older brother had worn pastel-coloured mohair jumpers which he tucked into his trousers, and his hair had been permed into fantastic curls.

His ran his fingertips over the woman’s face.

She didn’t have a perm, and although it was difficult to guess colours from a black-and-white photograph, he thought the jacket might be red.

Lukas had never missed having siblings. He grew up with a sense of being unique, the only child with whom his parents had been blessed. He found it easy to make friends, and they had always been welcome at home. His friends envied him: Lukas had his parents’ undivided attention, and he often had the latest thing before other parents had even had time to consider whether they could afford it.

He felt as if the woman in the photograph was talking to him. There was something between them, a mutual love.

Quickly, he tucked the photograph inside his shirt and secured it in the waistband of his trousers. He put the frame back where he had found it, then moved over to the roof light, hoping it would still open after all these years.

It did.

Cold, damp air poured in, and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again he began to wonder if it would still be possible for him to squeeze out through the narrow opening. He looked around for something to stand on, and caught sight of a small stepladder, which he remembered from the kitchen in Stavanger. He carefully unhooked it from the wall, opened it out and placed it directly under the roof light. He just about managed to squeeze his shoulders through the gap. Once his upper body was through, the rest wouldn’t be a problem.

However, there were other challenges.

He immediately realized that it would be madness to attempt to get over the roof and down the big oak tree in the dark. There was only a faint glow from the solitary street lamp, which didn’t provide enough light to see what he was doing. Since he needed both hands to make his way over the roof and into the tree, the torch wouldn’t be much use. Of course, he could fix it in his belt, but it wouldn’t be enough.

Lukas Lysgaard was a 29-year-old father of three, and no longer a boy with no fear and no sense. Carefully, he wriggled back down and managed to get back inside without making too much noise.

He sat down in the armchair again, fished out his mobile and keyed in a message to Astrid.

Spending the night at Dad’s. Will ring in the morning. Lukas.

Then he switched the phone to silent.

He would wait for daylight, even if the dawn came late at this time of year. Once again he took out the photograph of the person he now knew was his sister and studied it for a long time in the blue-white glow of the Maglite.

Perhaps he had nieces and nephews.

At least he had a sister.

The very thought made him dizzy, and suddenly tiredness crept up on him. His limbs were as heavy as lead, and he was no longer capable of holding the photograph steady. He tucked it back inside his shirt, switched off the torch and leaned back in the lovely, comfortable armchair.

In the small hours of the morning, he fell asleep.