What is Mine by Anne Holt Read Free Book Online

synch. Seconds no longer followed seconds. One minute did not lead to another. The hours were stacking up. They were eternal and then suddenly very short. They came back when they were finally over; she recognized them, like old enemies that would not leave her in peace.
    The fear that first morning was at least something real, for both of them. Something they could channel into a round of telephone calls, to the police, to their parents. To work. To the fire department, who came on a wild-goose chase and were of no help at all in finding the little five-year-old boy with brown curly hair who had disappeared during the night. Lasse rang everyone he could think of: the hospital, which sent an ambulance but found no one they could take away. She rang all the neighbors, who were skeptical and stopped at the gate when they saw uniformed police in the front garden.
    The fear could be used. Since then, things had just got worse.
    She stumbled on the cellar stairs.
    The training wheels had fallen down from the wall. Lasse had just taken them off Kim’s bike. He had been so proud. Rode off with his blue helmet. Fallen, got up again. Rode on. Without training wheels. They hung them by the cellar steps, just inside the door, like a trophy.
    “So that I can see how clever I am,” Kim said to his father, jiggling his loose front tooth. “It’s going to fall out soon. How much will I get from the tooth fairy?”
    They needed jam.
    The twins needed jam. And the jam was in the cellar. She made it last year. Kim had helped to pick the berries. Kim. Kim. Kim.
    The twins were only two years old and needed jam.
    There was something lying in front of the storeroom. She couldn’t think what it might be. An oblong package, a roll of something?
    It wasn’t big. Just over a yard, maybe. Something wrapped up in gray plastic, with a piece of paper on the top. It was taped on. Red felt-tip pen on a big white sheet of paper. Brown tape. Gray plastic. A head was sticking out of the bundle, the top of a head, a child’s head with brown curly hair.
    “A note,” she said lamely. “There’s a note there.”
    Kim was smiling. He was dead and he was smiling. There was a slight red hole in his upper gum where he had lost a tooth. She sat down on the floor. Time ran in circles and she knew that this was the start of something that would never end. When Lasse came down to look for her, she had no idea where she was. She did not let go of her boy until someone gave her an injection and she was taken to the hospital. A policeman opened the boy’s closed right hand.
    Inside was a tooth, a white tooth with a small, bloody root.
    Even though the office was relatively big, the air was already stuffy. Her thesis was still lying on the edge of the desk. Adam Stubo ran his index finger over the pale winter landscape before pointing at her.
    “You are a psychologist and a lawyer,” he insisted.
    “That’s not true. Not entirely. I’ve got a college degree in psychology. From the U.S. Not a graduate degree. Lawyer, on the other hand—that’s correct.”
    She was sweating and asked for a glass of water. It struck her that she had been forced to come here, more or less commandeered against her will, by a policeman who she wanted nothing to do with. He was talking about a case that had nothing to do with her. It was well beyond the scope of her expertise.
    “I would like to go now,” she said politely. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you. You obviously know people in the FBI. Ask them. They use profilers. As far as I know.”
    She nodded at the shield on the wall; it was blue, tasteless, and eye-catching.
    “I’m an academic, Stubo. And I’m the mother of a young child. This case repulses me. It frightens me. Unlike you, I’m allowed to think like that. I want to go.”
    He poured some water from a bottle without a top and put a paper cup down in front of her.
    “You were thirsty,” he reminded her. “Drink. Do you really mean