Punishment by Anne Holt Page B

kind. Why should Emilie live? What was the point? What had the girl actually done to deserve that? She got food, good food, often. She had clean water in the tap. She even had a Barbie doll that he had bought for her and yet she didn’t seem to be any happier.
    Fortunately she’d stopped snivelling. To begin with, and particularly after Kim disappeared, she cried the minute he opened the door down there. She seemed to be having difficulties breathing, which was nonsense. He had installed a proper ventilation system ages ago. There was no point in suffocating the child. But she was calmer now. At least she didn’t cry.
    The decision to let Emilie live had come naturally. He hadn’t intended it to be that way, from the start, at least. Butthere was something about her, even though she didn’t know it herself. He’d see how long it lasted. She’d have to watch herself. He was sentimental, but he had his limits.
    She’d be getting company soon enough.
    He put down the glass and pictured eight-year-old Sarah Baardsen. He had memorised her face, stored each feature in his mind, practised putting her face together so he could call her up at will, whenever and wherever. He didn’t have any pictures. They could fall into the wrong hands. Instead he had studied her in the playground, on the way to her grandmother’s, on the bus. He’d once even sat next to her through an entire film. He knew what her hair smelt like. Sweet and warm.
    He put the cork back in the bottle and left it on one of the half-empty shelves in the kitchen. When he glanced out of the window, he stiffened. Right outside, only a few metres away, stood a fully grown roe deer. The beautiful animal lifted its head and looked right at him for a moment before sauntering off towards the woods to the west. Tears came to his eyes.
    Sarah and Emilie were sure to get on, for the time they were together.

XVII
    B oston’s Logan International Airport was one enormous building site. It smelt damp under the low ceiling and the dust lay thick. Everywhere she looked, warning signs screamed out at her, black writing on a red background. Watch out for the cables on the floor, the beams hanging loose from the walls and the tarpaulins hiding cement mixers and materials. Four planes from Europe had landed in under half an hour. The queue in front of passport control was long, and Johanne Vik attempted to read a paper she had already read from front to back while she waited. Every now and then she would push her hand luggage forward with her foot. A Frenchman in a dark camel coat poked her in the back each time she waited a couple of seconds too long before moving.
    Lina had turned up the evening before with three bottles of wine and two new CDs. Kristiane had been safely delivered to Isak and her best friend was right, Johanne did not need to worry about tomorrow as she didn’t have to be at Gardemoen Airport until midday. And there was no point in going to work first. Lina’s wine disappeared, along with a quarter bottle of cognac and two Irish coffees. When the airport express train rolled into the platform at the new international airport on the morning of 22 May, Johanne had to dash to the toilet to rid herself of the remains of a very good night. It would be a long journey.
    Fortunately she had fallen asleep somewhere over Greenland.
    Finally it was her turn to show her passport. She triedto hide her mouth. The cloying taste of sleep and an old hangover made her uncertain. The passport inspector took longer than was necessary; he looked at her, stared down, hesitated. Then he finally stamped the necessary documentation in her passport with a resigned thump. She was waved in to the USA.
    Normally it was so different. Coming to America was usually like taking off a rucksack. The feeling of freedom was tangible, she felt lighter, younger, happier. Now she shivered in the bitter wind and couldn’t remember where the bus stop