What Never Happens by Anne Holt Page B

“Teenager. At home alone, I bet.”
    Sigmund smiled and poked his nose into the glass. He was relaxed here, he found himself thinking, to his surprise. There was something about the atmosphere here, the tone, the light, the furniture. There was something about Johanne. People at work whispered about her being so stern. They were wrong, Sigmund thought as he dipped his sore lip into the alcohol. The burn stung in a nice way, and he took a sip.
    Johanne wasn’t stern. She was strong, he thought, even though she was obviously overanxious about the baby. Not so surprising, really, when you thought about her strange older daughter, odd little thing who looked like she was three years younger than she actually was. Adam had taken her to work a few times, and she could frighten the life out of anyone. One minute she behaved like a three-year-old, and then the next minute she said something that could have come out of a college student’s mouth. Evidently there was something wrong with her brain. They just didn’t know what.
    Sigmund had always liked Adam. He enjoyed the older man’s company. But they seldom spent time together outside of work. Sigmund had, of course, done as much as he could after the accident, when Adam’s daughter fell down on top of her mother while trying to clean the gutters, killing them both. He remembered the low sun through the trees and the two bodies in the garden. Adam hadn’t said anything, hadn’t cried, hadn’t spoken. He just stood there with his crying grandson in his arms, as if he was holding onto life itself and was in danger of crushing it.
    “Do you still have Amund over here on the weekends?” he asked suddenly.
    “In principle, we have him every other weekend,” Johanne said, taken aback by the question. “But now, with the baby and all that, well . . . originally the arrangement was to help give Adam’s son-in-law a break.”
    “No,” said Sigmund.
    “Sorry?” She turned toward him.
    “That wasn’t why it started,” he said calmly. “I talked to Bjarne a lot at the time, I did. The son-in-law, that is.”
    “I know Adam’s son-in-law’s name.”
    “Of course. But . . . well, that arrangement was really to help Adam. To give him something to live for. We were really worried, you know. Extremely worried, Bjarne and I. It’s good to see . . .” He downed the rest of the cognac in one go and cheerfully looked around. “You’ve got a good home,” he said with unexpected formality in his voice; his eyes were moist.
    Johanne shook her head and chuckled. She stood with her hands on her hips, cocked her head, and followed his hands with her eyes. He poured a generous amount into his glass before putting back the cork with a dramatic thump.
    “There, that’s enough for today. Here’s to you, Johanne. I have to say you’re a great lady. I wish I could come home every day to the wife and know that she was interested in what I did at work. Knew something about it. Like you. You’re a great girl. Cheers.”
    “And you’re a strange one, Sigmund.”
    “No, just a bit tipsy. Hi!” He raised his glass to Adam, who lifted his arms in triumph and clapped his hands above his head.
    “One baby, one nine-year-old, and one canine sleeping like logs. Dry and happy, all of them.”
    He plopped down on the bar stool.
    “Are you celebrating, Sigmund? On a Monday?”
    “Yes, there hasn’t been much of that recently,” Sigmund answered. He had started to hiccup. “But Johanne . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “If you were going to imagine the worst possible . . . the most difficult serial killer . . . To catch, I mean. If you were to draw a profile of the perfect serial killer, what would it be?”
    “Don’t you two have enough with the criminals who actually exist?” she said and leaned over the counter.
    “Go on,” Adam smiled. “Tell us. Tell what he’d be like.”
    The candle on the windowsill was about to burn out. There was a violent hissing. Bits of soot floated around