CHAPTER 12

Kollberg needed to pee. Sejer walked the dog behind the apartment building, let him do his business in the barberry bushes, and then took the lift back upstairs. Padded out to the kitchen and peered inside the freezer. A packet of sausages, hard as cement, a pizza, and a little package marked "bacon". He squeezed it with a smile, remembering something. He decided on eggs instead, four fried eggs with salt and pepper, and a sliced sausage for the dog. Kollberg gulped down his food and then stretched out under the table. Sejer ate his eggs and drank some milk, his feet nestled under the dog's chest. The meal took him ten minutes. He had the newspaper spread out next to his plate. "Boyfriend Taken into Custody." He sighed, feeling annoyed. He didn't have much patience with the press and the way they covered life's miseries. He cleared off the table and plugged in the coffee maker. Maybe Halvor had killed his father. Pulled on a pair of gloves, stuck the shotgun inside the sleeping bag and pressed it into his hands, pulled the trigger, swept the ground in front of the shed door, and ran back to the bedroom to his brother. Who felt such an intractable loyalty to Halvor that he wouldn't have said so even if Halvor had been out of his bed when the shot was fired.

Sejer took his coffee to the living room. When he'd finished, he took a shower and then leafed through the catalogue of bathrooms and fixtures. They were having a sale on bathroom tiles, including some white ones adorned with blue dolphins. He lay down on the sofa, which wasn't very comfortable. It was too short for him, and he had to prop his feet up on the armrest. It kept him from falling asleep. He didn't want to ruin the chance of a good night's rest; sleeping was hard enough because of his eczema. He stared at the window and noticed that it needed cleaning. Being on the thirteenth floor meant that he could see nothing out the window but the blue sky, which was starting to deepen into twilight.

Suddenly he saw a fly crawling across the glass on the inside. A fat, black bluebottle. That too was a sign of spring, he thought, as one more appeared, crawling across the pane and circling near the first one. He didn't really have anything against flies, but there was something disgusting about the way they rubbed their legs. It seemed such a private gesture, something equivalent to a person scratching his private parts in front of others. The flies seemed to be looking for something. Another one appeared. Now he was staring at them intently; and an uneasy feeling came over him. Three flies on his window at the same time. Strange that they didn't fly away. There was another one now, and another; soon the window was swarming with big black flies. Finally they flew away and disappeared behind the chair near the window. There were so many now that he could hear them buzzing. Reluctantly he raised himself up from the sofa with a feeling of dread. There must be something behind the chair, something they were feasting on. He stood up, walked across the room, approaching cautiously, his heart in his throat. He pulled the chair aside. The flies flew in all directions, a whole swarm of them. The rest had congregated on the floor, eating something. He poked at it with his toe. An apple core. Rotten and soft.

He sat up, feeling a little dizzy, still on the sofa. His shirt was soaked with sweat. Confused, he rubbed his eyes and looked at the window. Nothing. He'd been dreaming. His head felt heavy and dazed; his neck was stiff, and so were his calves. He stood up and couldn't resist the impulse to look behind the chair. Nothing. He went to the kitchen to fetch his bottle of whisky and packet of tobacco. Kollberg stared at him expectantly. "OK," he said, changing his mind. "Let's go for a walk."

It took them an hour to walk from the block of flats to the church in the middle of town and back. He thought about his mother. He ought to visit her; it had been a long time since he'd seen her last. Someday, he thought dejectedly, his daughter Ingrid would glance at her calendar and think the same thing: I suppose I should pay the old man a visit. It's been a long time. With no delight; only a sense of duty. Perhaps Skarre was right after all, perhaps it was unreasonable to live to be as ancient as a spruce tree and then just lie in bed, nothing but a burden. He picked up the pace, a little overwhelmed by these thoughts. Kollberg leaped and bounded beside him. But it wasn't good just to let yourself go. He would fix up the bathroom. Elise would have liked those tiles, he was sure of it. If she knew that he still hadn't got around to it… no, he didn't even want to think about that. Eight years with imitation marble was shameful.

At last he poured himself a well-earned whisky. It was late enough now; he might be able to fall asleep. The doorbell rang as he was putting the top back on the bottle.

It was Skarre, not quite as shy as he'd been the previous time. He had come on foot, but frowned when Sejer offered him a whisky.

"Do you have any beer?"

"I don't, but I can ask Kollberg. He sometimes has a small supply at the back of the fridge," Sejer said. He went out and then returned with a beer.

"Do you know how to put up bathroom tiles?" he asked.

"I certainly do. I took a course in it. The key is not to skimp with the preparation. Do you need help?"

"What do you think about these?" Sejer pointed to the blue dolphins in the brochure.

"Those are great. What do you have now?"

"Imitation marble."

Skarre nodded sympathetically and raised his beer. "Halvor's fingerprints don't match the ones on Annie's belt buckle," he said. "Holthemann has agreed to release him for the time being."

Sejer didn't reply. He felt a sense of relief, mixed with irritation. He was glad that it wasn't Halvor, but frustrated because they didn't have a suspect.

"I had a nasty dream," he said, a little surprised by his own candour. "I dreamed that there was a rotten apple behind that chair over there. Completely covered with big, black flies."

"Did you check?" Skarre said with a grin.

Sejer took a sip of his whisky. "Just some dust. Do you think the dream means anything?"

"Maybe there's a piece of furniture that we've forgotten to look behind. Something that's been standing there the whole time, and we've forgotten all about it. It's definitely a warning. Now it's just a matter of identifying the chair."

"So we should go into the furniture business?" Sejer chuckled at his joke, a rare phenomenon.

"I was hoping you still had a few cards up your sleeve," Skarre said. "I can't believe that we haven't made any progress. The weeks keep passing. Annie's file is getting older. And you're the one who's supposed to be giving advice."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Your name," Skarre said. "Konrad means: 'The one who gives advice'."

Sejer raised one eyebrow in an impressive arc without moving the other. "How do you know that?"

"I have a book at home. I look up a name whenever I meet someone new."

"What does Annie mean?" Sejer asked at once.

"Beautiful."

"Good God. Well, at the moment I'm not living up to my name. But don't let that discourage you, Jacob. What does Halvor mean, by the way?" he asked with curiosity.

"Halvor means 'the guard'."

He called me "Jacob", Skarre thought with astonishment. For the very first time he used my Christian name.


*

The sun was low in the sky, slanting across the pleasant balcony and making a warm corner so they could take off their jackets. They were waiting for the grill to heat up. It smelled of charcoal and lighter fluid, along with lemon balm from Ingrid's planter-box which she had just watered.

Sejer was sitting with his grandson on his lap, bouncing him up and down until his thigh muscles began to ache. Something inside him would disappear with the boy's youth. In a few years he would be taller than his grandfather and his voice would change. Sejer always felt a sort of wistfulness when he held Matteus on his lap, but at the same time he felt a shiver run down his back from sheer physical well-being.

Ingrid picked up her clogs from the floor of the balcony and banged them together three times. Then she stuck her feet into them.

"Why do you do that?"

"An old habit," she said, smiling. "From Somalia."

"But we don't have snakes or scorpions here."

"I can't help myself. And we do have wasps and garter snakes."

"Do you think a garter snake would crawl into your shoe?"

"I have no idea."

He hugged his grandson and snuggled his nose in the hollow of his neck.

"Bounce more," Matteus said.

"My legs are tired. Why don't you find a book and I'll read to you instead?"

The boy hopped down and raced into the apartment.

"So how are things going otherwise, Papa?" Ingrid said, her voice as light as a child's.

Otherwise… he thought. What she means is in reality; how are things going in reality? How was he feeling deep inside, in the depths of his soul? Or it could be a camouflaged way of asking whether anything had happened? Whether, for instance, he had found a girlfriend, or was having a longdistance romance with someone. Which he wasn't. He couldn't imagine anything like that.

"Fine, but what do you mean?" he said, trying to sound sufficiently guileless.

"I was wondering if perhaps the days don't seem so long any more."

She was being terribly circumspect. It occurred to him that she had something on her mind.

"I've been very busy at work," he said. "And besides, I have all of you."

This last comment prompted her to start fidgeting with the salad servers. She tossed the tomatoes and cucumbers energetically. "Yes, but you see, we're thinking of going south again. For another term. The last one," she said quickly, giving him a glance and looking more and more guilty.

"South?" He hung on to the word. "To Somalia?"

"Erik has an offer. We haven't given them our answer yet," she said quickly. "But we're giving it serious consideration. Partly because of Matteus. We'd like him to see some of the country and learn the language. If we leave in August, we'll be there in time for the start of the school year."

Three years, he thought. Three years without Ingrid and Matteus. In Norway only at Christmas. Letters and postcards, and his grandson taller each visit, and a year older, such abrupt changes.

"I have no doubt that you're needed down there," he said, making an effort to keep his voice steady. "You're not thinking that my welfare should stop you from going, are you? I'm not 90, Ingrid."

She blushed a little.

"I'm thinking about Grandmother too."

"I'll take care of my mother. You're going to crush that salad to bits," he said.

"I don't like it that you're all alone," she said.

"I have Kollberg, you know."

"But he's just a dog!"

"You should be glad he doesn't understand what you're saying." Sejer cast a glance at Kollberg who was sleeping peacefully under the table. "We do pretty well. I think you should go if that's what you really want to do. Is Erik tired of treating appendicitis and swollen tonsils?"

"Things are different there," she said. "We can be so much more useful."

"What about Matteus? What will you do with him?"

"He'll go to the American kindergarten, along with a whole bunch of other children. And besides," she said, "he actually has relatives there that he's never met. I don't like that. I want him to know everything."

"American?" he said. "What do you mean by 'know everything'?"

He thought about Matteus's real parents and their fate.

"We won't tell him about his mother until he's older."

"You should go!" he said.

She looked at him and smiled. "What do you think Mama would have said?"

"She would have said the same thing. And then she would have had a good cry in bed later on."

"But you won't?"

Matteus came running over with a picture book in one hand and an apple in the other. "'It was a dark and stormy night.' Doesn't that sound a little scary?" Sejer said.

"Ha!" his grandson snorted, climbing up on to his lap.

"The coals are hot," Ingrid said. "I'm going to put on the steaks."

"Put them on," he said.

She placed the meat on the grill, four pieces in all, and went inside to get the drinks.

"I have a green rubber python in my room," Matteus whispered. "Should we put it in her shoe?"

Sejer hesitated. "I don't know. Do you think that's a good idea?"

"Don't you?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't."

"Old people are such chickens," he said. "I'm the one she'll blame."

"OK," he said. "I'll look the other way."

Matteus hopped down, ran to get his snake, and then carefully stuffed it inside his mother's clog.

"You can keep reading now."

Sejer cringed at the thought of the awful rubber snake and how it would feel against her toes. '"It was a dark and stormy night. There were robbers in the mountains, and wolves as well.' Are you sure this isn't too scary?"

"Mama has read it to me lots of times." He bit into his apple and chewed contentedly.

"Don't take such big bites," Sejer said. "You might get it caught in your throat."

"Read, Grandpa!"

I must be getting old, he thought. Old and anxious.

'"It was a dark and stormy night,'" he began again, and just at that moment Ingrid came back, carrying three bottles of beer and a Coke. He stopped and gave her a long look. Matteus did too.

"Why are you staring at me like that? What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," they said in unison, bending over their book. She set the bottles on the table, opened them, and looked around for her shoes. Picked them up, turned them upside down, and knocked them together three times. Nothing happened. It's stuck in the toe, they thought gleefully. Then everything happened at once. Sejer's son-in-law Erik appeared in the doorway, Matteus jumped down from his lap and rushed across the room. Kollberg leaped up from under the table and wagged his tail so hard that the bottles fell to the floor, and Ingrid stuck her feet inside her shoes.

Sølvi stood in her room, taking things out of a box. For a moment she straightened up and peered outside. Directly across the street, Fritzner was standing at his window, watching her. He had a glass in his hand. Now he raised it, as if offering a toast.

Sølvi turned her back on him at once. True, she didn't mind men looking at her, but Fritzner was bald. Imagining life with a bald man was as unthinkable as imagining life with a man who was fat. They had no place in her dreams. That her stepfather was both bald and fat didn't trouble her. Other men could be bald, but not the one she went out with. She looked up again. He was gone. He was probably sitting in his boat again, the weirdo.

She heard the doorbell ringing and went out to open the door, wearing a light-blue trouser suit with a silver belt around her waist and ballet slippers on her feet.

"Oh!" she said. "It's you! I'm cleaning up Annie's room. Come on in. Mama and Papa will be home in a minute."

Sejer followed her through the living room to her own room, which was next to Annie's. It was quite a bit bigger, decorated in pastels. A photograph of her sister stood on her bedside table.

"I have inherited a few things from her," she said with an apologetic smile. "Some knick-knacks and clothes and things like that. And if I can persuade Papa, I want to knock down the wall to Annie's room so I'll have one big room."

"That will be very nice," Sejer said. But at the same time he felt a little ashamed at the emotions that crept over him. He had no right to judge anyone. They were struggling to go on with their lives and had every right to do it in their own way. No one could tell anyone else how to grieve. He gave himself this little reprimand and then looked around. He had never seen a room with so many knick-knacks.

"And I'm going to get my own TV," she said. "With an extra antenna so I can get TV-Norway." She bent down to a cardboard box on the floor and began pulling more things out of it. "It's mostly books. Annie didn't have any make-up or jewellery or anything like that. Plus a bunch of CDs and cassettes."

"Do you like to read?"

"Not really. But the bookshelves look nice when they're full."

He nodded in agreement.

"Has something happened?"

"Yes, actually. But we don't know yet what it means."

She took one more thing out of the box. It was wrapped in newspaper.

"So you know Magne Johnas, Sølvi?"

"Yes," she said. He thought she blushed, but she had such rosy cheeks, he couldn't be sure. "He's living in Oslo now. Works for Gym & Greier."

"Did you know that he and Annie once had something going?"

"Had something going?" She gave him a look of pure incomprehension.

"That they might have had a romance, or that Magne might have been in love with her, or might have tried something? Before your time?"

"Annie just laughed at him," she said, her tone almost plaintive. "Not that Halvor was anything to boast about. At least Magne looks like a guy should. I mean, he has muscles and everything."

She pulled away the newspaper wrapping, avoiding his eye.

"Do you think he might have been offended?" he asked carefully as something shiny appeared in the newspaper.

"He could have been. It wasn't enough for Annie to say no. She could be really snide sometimes, and she wasn't impressed by muscles. Everybody keeps on talking about how wonderful and nice she was, and I don't mean to say anything bad about my half-sister. She was often snide, but nobody dares talk about it. Because she's dead. I can't understand how Halvor could bear it. Annie was the one who decided on everything."

"Is that right?"

"But she was nice to me. She was always nice." For a moment she looked stricken at the memory of her sister and everything that had happened.

"How long have you and Magne been together?" he asked.

"Only a few weeks. We go to the movies and stuff like that." Her reply was a little too quick.

"He's younger than you, isn't he?"

"Four years," she said reluctantly. "But he's very mature for his age."

"I see."

She held something up to the light and squinted at it. A bronze bird sitting on a perch. A chubby little feathered creature with its head tilted.

"It's broken," she said uncertainly.

Sejer stared in astonishment. The sight of the bronze bird struck him like an arrow at his temple. It was the sort of thing that was placed on the gravestones of small children.

"I could roll up a lump of clay and make a stand for it," Sølvi said. "Or Papa might help me. It's really pretty."

A picture of a new Annie was slowly taking shape, a more complex Annie than the one Halvor and her parents had presented to him.

"What do you think it's for?" he said.

Sølvi shrugged. "No idea. Just some kind of decoration that's broken, I suppose."

"You've never seen it before?"

"No. I wasn't allowed in Annie's room when she wasn't home."

She put the bird on her desk, and bent down to the box again.

"Has it been a long time since you saw your father?" he asked as he continued to stare at the bird. His brain was working in high gear.

"My father?" She straightened up and looked at him in confusion. "You mean… my father who lives in Adamstuen?"

He nodded.

"He was at Annie's funeral."

"You must miss him, don't you?"

She didn't answer. It was as if he had touched on something that she rarely examined properly. Something unpleasant that she tried to forget, a trace of guilty conscience perhaps, about not visiting her father. Sejer felt a little too aggressive at that moment. He had to remember to be respectful, to approach people on their own terms.

"What do you call Eddie?" he asked.

"I call him Papa," she said.

"And your real father?"

"I call him Father," she said simply. "That's what I've always called him. It's what he wanted, he was always so old-fashioned."

Was. As if he no longer existed.

"I hear a car!" she said, sounding relieved.

Holland's green Toyota pulled up in front of the house. Sejer saw Ada Holland set one foot on the gravel and cast a glance at the window.

"That bird, Sølvi, could I have it?" he said quickly.

"The broken bird? Sure, take it."

She handed it to him with an inquisitive look.

"Thanks. I won't disturb you any longer," he said, and left the room. He tucked the bird into an inside pocket and went back to the living room. He leaned against the wall and waited.

The bird. Torn from Eskil's headstone. In Annie's room. Why?

Holland came in first. He nodded and held out his hand, with his face turned away. There was something resigned about him that hadn't been there before. Mrs Holland went to the kitchen to make coffee.

"Sølvi's going to have Annie's room," Holland said. "So it won't stand there empty. And we'll have something to keep us busy. We're going to take out the dividing wall and put up new wallpaper. It'll be a lot of work."

Sejer nodded.

"I have to get something off my chest," Holland said. "I read in the paper that an 18-year-old boy was taken into custody. Surely Halvor couldn't be the one who did this? We've known him for two years. It's true that he's not an easy person to get to know, but I have good instincts about people. Not to insinuate that you don't know what you're doing, but we just can't imagine Halvor as a murderer, we just can't, none of us can."

Sejer could. Murderers were like most people. Maybe he'd blown his father's head off, killed him in cold blood as he slept.

"Is Halvor the one in custody?"

"We've released him," Sejer said.

"Yes, but why was he taken into custody?"

"We had no choice. I can't tell you any more than that."

"So as not to prejudice the investigation?"

"That's right."

Mrs Holland came in with four cups and some cookies in a bowl.

"But has something else come up?"

"Yes." Sejer stared out the window, searching for something that would divert their attention. "For the time being I can't say much."

Holland gave him a bitter smile. "Of course not. I imagine we'll be the last people to find out. The newspapers will know long before we do, when you finally catch the killer."

"That's not true at all." Sejer looked into his eyes, which were big and grey like Annie's. They were brimming with pain. "But the press is everywhere, and they have contacts. Just because you read something in the paper doesn't mean that we've given them the information. When we make an arrest, you will be told, I promise you that."

"No one told us about Halvor," Holland said in a low voice.

"That's because, quite simply, we don't think he was the right person."

"Now that I think about it, I'm not sure that I even want to know who did it."

"What are you saying?"

Ada Holland was staring at him in dismay.

"It doesn't matter any more. It's like the whole thing was an accident. Something unavoidable."

"Why do you say that?" she asked in despair.

"Because she was going to die anyway. So it doesn't matter any more."

He stared down at his empty cup, picked it up and began swirling it, as if trying to cool off the hot coffee that wasn't there.

"It does matter," Sejer said, stifling his anger. "You have the right to know what happened. It may take time, but I'll find out who did it, even it turns out to be a very long process."

"A very long process?" Holland smiled, another bitter smile. "Annie is slowly disintegrating," he said.

"Eddie!" Mrs Holland said in anguish. "We still have Sølvi!"

"You have Sølvi."

He stood up and left the room, disappearing somewhere in the house. Neither of them went after him. Mrs Holland shrugged her shoulders dejectedly.

"Annie was a daddy's girl," she said.

"I know."

"I'm afraid that he'll never be the same again."

"He won't. Right now he's getting used to being a different Eddie. He needs time. Perhaps it will be easier when we do discover the truth."

"I don't know whether I dare find out."

"Are you afraid of something?"

"I'm afraid of everything. I imagine all kinds of things up there at the lake."

"Can you tell me about it?"

She shook her head and reached for her cup. "No, I can't. It's just things that I imagine. If I say them out loud they might come true."

"It looks as if Sølvi is managing all right," he said, to change the subject.

"Sølvi is strong," she said, suddenly sounding confident.

Strong, he thought. Yes, maybe that is the proper term. Perhaps Annie was the weak one. Things began whirling through his mind in a disquieting way. Mrs Holland went out to get cream and sugar. Sølvi came in.

"Where's Papa?"

"He'll be right back!" Mrs Holland called from the kitchen in a firm voice, perhaps in the hope that Eddie would hear her and reappear. It's bad enough that Annie is dead and gone, Sejer thought. But now her family is falling apart, the welded seams are failing, there are big holes in the hull, and the water is gushing in, and she's stuffing old phrases and commands into the cracks to keep the ship afloat.

She poured the coffee. Sejer's fingers were too big for the handle and he had to hold the cup in both hands.

"You keep talking about why," she said wearily, "as if he must have had a good reason for doing it."

"Not a good reason. But the killer had a reason, which at that moment seemed to him to be the only choice."

"So evidently you understand them – these people that you lock up for murder and other appalling crimes."

"I couldn't stay in the job otherwise." He drank some more coffee and thought about Halvor.

"But surely there must be some exceptions."

"They're rare."

She sighed and glanced at her daughter. "What do you think, Sølvi?" she said. Softly, using a different tone than he'd heard her use before, as if for once she wanted to penetrate that carefree blonde head of her daughter's and find an answer, maybe even one that would make sense of it all. As if the only daughter she had left might be a different person than she had initially thought, maybe more like Annie than she knew.

"Me?" Sølvi stared at her mother in surprise. "For my part I've never liked Fritzner across the street. I've heard that he sits in his dinghy in his living room and reads all night long, with the rowlocks full of beer."

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