Bad Intentions

CHAPTER 11

The remains of the summer’s floral splendour glowed against the red walls of Mrs Moreno’s house. Above the doorbell was a porcelain sign in the shape of a salmon. INGERID AND JON LIVE HERE. Sejer and Skarre waited. It took some time before Ingerid opened the door and when she finally emerged, she did not speak a word. She disappeared inside.

‘How are you?’ Sejer asked.

She collapsed into an armchair, picked up a cushion and held it in front of her like a shield.

‘How am I? I’ve lost Jon, and I’ve lost the rest of my life.’

Sejer protested. ‘Don’t think about the rest of your life,’ he said. ‘No one can look ahead when they’re down.’ He placed his hand on her arm.

‘Jon kept a diary,’ she said. ‘Hanna Wigert brought it to the funeral yesterday. She found it in his room, in a drawer. It’s on my bedside table.’ Abruptly she got up from the armchair and went to her bedroom to fetch it.

Sejer touched the cover. The red fabric was coarse and quite plain.

‘May I read it, please?’ he asked.

‘What good would that do?’

‘We need it.’

She looked baffled.

‘We’ll talk more about it later,’ he said. ‘But first tell us about the funeral, please. Did you give Jon a lovely service?’

She pondered this for a while.

‘I met Molly,’ she said. ‘She and Jon were very good friends. She brought along a terrier which caused something of a commotion. Have you heard about it?’

‘Yes,’ Sejer said. ‘We’ve heard. How do you feel about what happened?’

‘I thought it might be a sign. That all of us who knew Jon, we couldn’t manage to hold on to him while he was alive. He got ill and he slipped through our fingers. And we didn’t manage to keep hold of him in death either. We lost him to the earth, plain and simple. It says something about us.’

‘What does it say?’ Sejer asked.

‘That we’re all to blame.’

She fell silent. She waited for Sejer to move the conversation forward.

‘When Jon was growing up, were you ever worried about him?’ Sejer asked.

She smiled bleakly.

‘Of course I was. He was my child. Is there anything we do but worry about them? There’s so much they have to cope with,’ she said. ‘They have to find a space for themselves among their siblings, and in the classroom, and they have to survive in the playground. They have to find a peer group to belong to and a couple of close friends. They need an education and a job, and they need girlfriends. And children. Do you have children?’ she asked.

‘I have a daughter and a grandchild. They have managed all the things you mention. But I’ve never taken it for granted.’

He looked at her gravely.

‘Ingerid. You need to listen to me. There is something I have to tell you and it’s very confusing.’

She did not reply, but the cushion was now back in her lap.

‘There are some details about Jon’s death which we find unusual. We can’t pinpoint anything in particular, yet we suspect that this case might be different, or that there’s more to it than we first thought.’

‘I don’t follow,’ she said.

‘There are a few things about Jon’s suicide which we don’t understand.’

She let go of the cushion.

‘What are you talking about? A few things? Are you saying someone else was involved? But there was no one up there, only Axel and Reilly. And they’re his friends,’ she said. ‘They were very close. Are you out of your mind?’

Sejer placed his hand on the red diary.

‘How much have you read?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Not a single line.’

‘Are you scared?’

‘Yes, I am.’

Memories from her own past surfaced and disturbed her. The summer she had travelled around Europe with a friend. One day they had found a wallet in a toilet. It had contained a thick bundle of notes, which after a brief discussion they chose to keep and later spent in an expensive restaurant. She remembered when she had had an abortion at nineteen. She was not even sure who the father was. Twice during her marriage to Tony Moreno she had been unfaithful. Both episodes had occurred when she had been travelling alone and she was drunk. When she recalled these incidents she felt woozy, and it struck her that she had not felt any remorse. Merely faint irritation, a slight jolt to the system. She had never, ever confided in anyone, simply stored it somewhere and later dismissed it as insignificant. But she remembered it now. She looked at the red diary. Did she have any sort of right to read Jon’s confessions? She opened it up at the first page and read a few lines. Then she put it away, quickly, as though she had burned herself.

‘I’ll read it,’ she said, ‘and I’ll let you know.’