Fear Not by Anne Holt Page A

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