Don't Look Back

CHAPTER 13

Skarre had turned off most of the lights in his office. Only the desk lamp was on, 60 watts in a white spotlight on his papers. A gentle, steady hum came from the printer as it spewed out page after page, covered with perfect text, set in Palatino, the typeface he liked best. In the background, as if from far away, he heard a door open and someone come in. He was about to look up to see who it was but just at that moment the pages tumbled off the printer. He bent down to get them, straightened up, and discovered that something was sliding into his field of vision, across an empty page. A bronze bird sitting on a perch.

"Where?!" he said at once.

Sejer sat down. "At Annie's house. Sølvi has inherited her sister's things, and this was among them, wrapped in newspaper. I went out to the cemetery. It fits like a glove." He looked at Skarre. "Someone could have given it to her."

"Who?"

"I don't know. But if she went there and took it herself, really went there, under cover of darkness, and used some kind of tool to break it off the headstone, then that's quite an unscrupulous thing to do."

"But Annie wasn't unscrupulous, was she?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I'm not sure about anything any more."

Skarre turned the lamp away from the desk so that it made a perfect half-moon on the wall. They sat and stared at it. On impulse, Skarre picked up the bird, gripping it by its perch, and held it up to the lamp with a swaying motion. The shadow it made in the white moon was like a giant drunken duck on its way home from a party.

"Jensvoll has resigned from his job as coach of the girls' team," Skarre said.

"What did you say?"

"The rumours are starting to circulate. The rape conviction has come out, and it's hovering over the waters. The girls stopped showing up."

"I thought that would happen. One thing leads to another."

"And Fritzner was right. Things are going to be tough for a lot of people now, until the murderer is caught. But that will happen soon, because by now you've worked it all out, haven't you?"

Sejer shook his head. "It has something to do with Annie and Johnas. Something happened between the two of them."

"Maybe she just wanted a keepsake to remind her of Eskil."

"If that was it, she could have knocked on the door and asked for a teddy-bear or something."

"Do you think he did something to her?"

"Either to her or maybe to someone else she had a relationship with. Someone she loved."

"Now I don't follow you – do you mean Halvor?"

"I mean his son, Eskil. He died because Johnas was in the bathroom shaving."

"But she couldn't very well blame him because of that."

"Not unless there's something unresolved about the way Eskil died."

Skarre whistled. "No one else was there to see what happened. All we have to go on is what Johnas said."

Sejer picked up the bird again and gently poked at its sharp beak. "So what do you think, Jacob? What really happened on that November morning."

Memories flooded over him as he opened the double glass doors and took a few steps inside. The hospital smell, a mixture of antiseptic and soap, combined with the sweet scent of chocolate from the gift shop and the spicy fragrance of carnations from the flower stand.

Instead of thinking about his wife's death, Sejer tried to think about his daughter Ingrid on the day she was born. This enormous building held memories of both the greatest sorrow and the greatest joy of his life. Back then he had stepped through these same doors and noticed the same smells. Involuntarily he had compared his own new-born daughter to the other infants. He thought they were redder and fatter and had more wrinkles, and that their hair was more rumpled. Or they were born prematurely and looked like undernourished miniature old men. Only Ingrid was utterly perfect. The recollection helped him to relax at last.

He was not arriving unannounced. It had taken him exactly eight minutes on the phone to locate the pathologist who had overseen the autopsy of Eskil Johnas. He made it clear in advance what he was interested in, so they could find the files and reports and get them out for him. One of the things he liked about the bureaucracy, that unwieldy, cumbersome, difficult system that governed all departments, was the principle that everything had to be recorded and archived. Dates, times, names, diagnoses, routines, irregularities, everything had to be on the file. Every facet of a case could be taken out and re-examined, by other people with different motives, with fresh eyes.

That's what he was thinking as he got out of the lift. He noticed the hospital smell grow stronger as he walked along the corridor of the eighth floor. The pathologist, who had sounded staid and middle-aged on the phone, turned out to be a young man. A stout fellow with thick glasses and soft, plump hands. On his desk stood a card file, a phone, a stack of papers, and a big red book with Chinese characters on it.

"I have to confess that I took a quick glance at the case file," the doctor said. His glasses made him look as if he were in a constant state of fear. "I was curious. You're a chief inspector, isn't that what you said?"

Sejer nodded.

"So I'm assuming that there must be something unusual about this death?"

"I have no opinion about that."

"But isn't that why you're here?"

Sejer looked at him and blinked twice, and that was all the answer he gave. When he remained silent, the doctor started talking again – a phenomenon that never ceased to amaze Sejer, one that had produced numerous confessions over the years.

"A tragic case," the pathologist said, looking down at the papers. "A two-year-old boy. An accident at home. Left without supervision for a few minutes. Dead on arrival. We opened him up and found a total obstruction of his windpipe, in the form of food."

"What type of food?"

"Waffles. We were actually able to unfold them, they were practically whole. Two whole, heart-shaped dessert waffles, folded together into one lump. That's an awful lot of food for such a small mouth, even though he was a sturdy boy. It turned out that he was quite a greedy little fellow, and hyperactive too."

Sejer tried to picture the waffle-iron that Elise used to have, with five heart shapes in a circle. Ingrid's iron was a more modern kind with only four hearts that weren't properly round.

"I remember the autopsy clearly. You always remember the very sad cases; they stay in your mind. Most of the people we see, after all, are between 80 and 90 years old. And I remember the waffle hearts lying in the bowl. Children and dessert waffles go together. It seemed especially tragic that they should have caused his death. He was sitting there having such a good time."

"You said 'we'. Were there others working with you?"

"Arnesen, the head pathologist, was with me. I had just been hired back then, and he liked to keep an eye on the new people. He's retired now. The new departmental head is a woman." The thought made him glance down at his hands.

"Two whole waffles shaped like hearts. Had he chewed them?"

"No, apparently not. They were both nearly whole."

"Do you have children?"

"I have four," he said happily.

"Did you think about them when you were doing the autopsy?"

The doctor gave Sejer a look of uncertainty, as if he didn't quite understand the question.

"Well, yes, I suppose I did. Or I might have been thinking more about children in general, and how they behave."

"Yes?"

"At that time my son had just turned three," the doctor went on. "And he loves dessert waffles. I'm forever scolding him, the way parents do, about stuffing too much food into his mouth at one time."

"But in this case no one was there to scold the boy," Sejer said.

"No. Because then, of course, it wouldn't have happened."

Sejer didn't reply. Then he said, "Can you picture your own son when he was about the same age with a plate of waffles in front of him? Do you think he would have picked up two of them, folded them in half, and stuffed both into his mouth at the same time?"

Now there was a long silence.

"Well… this was a special kind of child."

"Where exactly did you get that information from? I mean, the fact that he was special?"

"From his father. He was here at the hospital all day. The mother arrived later, together with his half-brother. By the way, all of this is included in the file. I've made copies for you, as requested."

He tapped the pile in front of him and pushed the Chinese book aside. Sejer recognised the first character on the cover, the symbol for "man".

"From what I've been told, the father was in the bathroom when the accident occurred, is that right?"

"That's right. He was shaving. The boy was strapped to his chair; that's why he couldn't get loose and run for help. When the father came back to the kitchen the boy was lying across the table. He had knocked his plate to the floor so it broke. The worst thing was that the father actually heard the plate fall."

"Why didn't he come running?"

"Apparently the boy broke things all the time."

"Who else was home when it happened?"

"Only the mother, from what I understood. The older son had just left to catch a school bus or something, and the mother was asleep upstairs."

"And didn't hear anything?"

"I suppose there was nothing to hear. He didn't manage to scream."

"Not with two heart-shaped waffles in his mouth. But she was awakened eventually – by her husband, of course?"

"It's possible that he shouted or screamed for her. People react very differently in those kinds of situations. Some can't stop screaming, while others are completely paralysed."

"But she didn't come with the ambulance?"

"She arrived later. First she went to get the older brother from school."

"How much later did they arrive?"

"Let's see… about half an hour, according to what it says here."

"Can you tell me a little about how the father acted?"

Now the doctor fell silent, closing his eyes as if he were conjuring up that morning, exactly the way it was.

"He was in shock. He didn't say much."

"That's understandable. But the little he did say – can you remember what it was? Can you remember any specific words?"

The doctor gave him an inquisitive look and shook his head. "It was a long time ago. Almost eight months."

"Give it a try."

"I think it was something like: 'Oh God, no! Oh God, no!'"

"Was it the father who called the ambulance?"

"Yes, that's what it says here."

"Does it really take 20 minutes from here to Lundeby?"

"Yes, unfortunately, it does. And 20 minutes back. They didn't have personnel with them who could perform a tracheotomy. If they had, he might have been saved."

"What are you talking about now?"

"About going in between two cartilages and opening up the windpipe from the outside."

"You mean cutting open his throat?"

"Yes. It's actually quite simple. And it might have saved his life, although we don't know how long he sat in that chair before his father found him."

"About as long as it takes to shave?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so." The doctor leafed through the papers and shoved his glasses up. "Do you suspect something… criminal?"

He had been holding back this question for a long time. Now he felt that he finally had the right to ask it.

"I can't imagine what that might be. What do you mean?"

"How could I have any opinion about that?"

"But you opened up the boy afterwards and examined him. Did you find anything unnatural about his death?"

"Unnatural? That's the way children are. They stuff things in their mouth."

"But if he had a plate full of waffles in front of him and was sitting there alone and didn't need to worry that anyone was going to come and take them away from him – why would he stuff two pieces in his mouth at once?"

"Tell me something: where are you going with these questions?"

"I have no idea."

The doctor sat there, lost in thought; he was thinking back again, to the morning when little Eskil lay naked on the porcelain table, sliced open from his throat down. To the moment when he caught sight of the lump in his windpipe and realised that it was two waffles. Two whole hearts. One big sticky lump of egg and flour and butter and milk.

"I remember the autopsy," he said. "I remember it in great detail. Maybe by that I mean that I was actually surprised. No, I can't really say that. But," he added suddenly, "how did you come up with the idea that there might be something irregular about his death?"

Irregular. A vague word that could cover so many different possibilities.

"Well," said Sejer, looking closely at the doctor, "he had a baby-sitter. Let me put it this way: some of the signals she sent out in connection with the death have made me wonder."

"Signals? You can just ask her, can't you?"

"No, I can't ask her." Sejer shook his head. "It's too late."

Dessert waffles for breakfast, he thought. They must have been left over from the day before. It was unlikely that Johnas had got up and bustled around so early in the morning. Dessert waffles from the day before, tough and cold. He buttoned his jacket and got into his car. No one would wonder about it. Children were always putting things down their throats. As the pathologist had said: they stuff things in. He started the car, crossed Rosenkrantzgaten, and drove down to the river, where he turned left. He wasn't hungry, but he drove to the courthouse, parked, and took the lift up to the cafeteria, where they sold waffles. He bought a plate of them, with some jam and coffee and sat down by the window. Carefully he tore loose two of the hearts. They were freshly made and crisp. He folded them in half and then again in half and sat there staring at them. With a little effort he could put two of them in his mouth and still have room to chew. He did so, feeling the way they slid down his oesophagus without any trouble. Newly made dessert waffles were slippery and greasy. He drank some coffee and shook his head. Against his will he allowed the flickering pictures to force their way into his mind, pictures of the little boy with his throat full. The way he must have flailed and waved his hands, breaking the plate and fighting for his life without anyone hearing him. His father had heard the plate smash. Why hadn't he come running? Because the boy was always breaking things, said the doctor. But still – a little boy and a smashed plate. Even I would have come running at once, he thought. I would have imagined the chair toppling over, that he might have been hurt. But his father had finished shaving. What if the mother had been awake after all? Would she have heard the plate fall? He drank more coffee and spread jam on the rest of the waffles. Then he began reading through the report. After a while he stood up and went out to his car. He thought about Astrid Johnas, who had been lying in bed alone upstairs, with no idea what was going on.

Halvor picked up a sandwich from the plate and turned on his computer. He liked the fanfare sounds and the stream of blue light in the room when the programme started up. Each fanfare was a solemn moment. He thought of it as welcoming him like a VIP, as if he were expected. Today he decided on a special strategy. He was in a reckless mood, the way Annie often was. That's why he started off with "Leave me alone", "Private", and "Hands off'. It was the sort of thing she would say whenever he put his arm around her shoulder, very tentatively and in a purely affectionate way. But she always said it kindly. And when he dared to ask her for a kiss she would threaten to bite off his sullen grin. Her voice said something different from her words. Of course that didn't mean he could ignore what she said, but at least it made it a little easier to bear. Basically he was never allowed to touch her. But she still wanted him around. They used to lie close together, stealing warmth from each other. That alone wasn't half bad, lying like that in the dark, close to Annie, listening to the silence outside, free from the terror and nightmares of his father. The bad dreams could no longer come rushing in to tear off the covers; they could no longer reach him. Safety. He was used to having someone lying next to him, the way his brother had for so many years. Used to hearing someone else breathing and feel their warmth against his face.

Why had she written anything down in the first place? What was it about? And would he even understand it if he did find it? He chewed on the bread and liverwurst, listening to the roar of the TV in the living room. He felt a little guilty because his grandmother was sitting in there all alone in the evenings, and she would continue to do so until he came up with the password and found his way into Annie's secret. It must be something dark, he thought, since it's so inaccessible. Something dark and dangerous that couldn't be said out loud, could only be written down and then locked away. As if it were a matter of life and death. He typed that in. "Life and death". Nothing happened.

Mrs Johnas was having her lunch break. She peered at him from the back room, a piece of crispbread in one hand, wearing the same red suit as the time before. She looked uneasy. She put the food down on the paper it had been wrapped in, as if it would be inappropriate to sit there and chew while they were talking about Annie. She concentrated on her coffee instead.

"Has something happened?" she asked, taking a sip from her thermos cup.

"Today I don't want to talk about Annie."

She lifted her cup and looked at him, her eyes wide.

"Today I want to talk about Eskil."

"Excuse me?" Her full lips became smaller and narrower. "I'm done with all that; I've put it behind me. And if you don't mind my saying so, the effort has cost me a great deal."

"I'm sorry I can't be more considerate. There are a few details about the boy's death that interest me."

"Why is that?"

"That's not something I have to tell you, Mrs Johnas," Sejer said gently. "Just answer my questions."

"And if I refuse? What if I just can't bear to talk about it?"

"Then I'll leave," he said. "And give you time to think. And I'll come back another day with the same questions."

She pushed her cup aside, put her hands in her lap, and straightened her back. As if this was exactly what she had expected and needed to steel herself.

"I don't like it," she said. "When you came here before, wanting to talk about Annie, it never occurred to me to refuse to co-operate. But if this has to do with Eskil, tell me what you want to know and then you'd better leave."

She fumbled with her hands and then clasped them tight. As if there were something frightening her.

"Just before he died," Sejer said, looking at her, "he knocked his plate to the floor and it smashed. Did you hear it?"

The question surprised her. She stared at him with astonishment, as if she had expected something else, perhaps something worse. "Yes," she said.

"You heard it? So you were awake?" He studied her face, noted the little shadow that flitted over it, and then went on. "You weren't asleep after all? Did you hear the electric shaver?"

She bowed her head. "I heard him go into the bathroom and the door slam."

"How did you know he was going into the bathroom?"

"I just knew. We lived in that house for a long time. Each door had its own sound."

"And before that? Before he went there?"

She hesitated a little, searching her memory.

"Their voices, in the kitchen. They were having breakfast."

"Eskil was eating dessert waffles," he said cautiously. "Was that usual in your house? Dessert waffles for breakfast?" He added a warm smile to his question.

"He must have begged for them," she said wearily. "And he always got what he wanted. It wasn't easy to say no to Eskil because it would set off an avalanche inside him. He couldn't stand any kind of resistance. It was like blowing on hot embers. And Henning wasn't especially patient; he hated to hear him screaming.

"So you heard him screaming?"

She tore her hands apart and reached for her cup.

"He was always making a great deal of noise," she said, staring at the steam rising from her coffee.

"Were they having a fight, Mrs Johnas?"

She smiled faintly. "They fought all the time. Eskil was begging for waffles. Henning had buttered some toast and he wanted him to eat it. You know how it is – we do all we can to get our kids to eat, so he must have got out the waffles, or maybe Eskil had caught sight of them. They were on the counter covered with plastic from the night before."

"Could you hear any words? Anything they said to each other?"

"What are you driving at with all these questions?" she blurted out. Her eyes had darkened. "You should talk to Henning about it. I wasn't there. I was upstairs."

"Do you think he has anything to tell me?"

Silence. She folded her arms, as if to lock him out. Her fear was growing.

"I can't speak for Henning. He's not my husband any more."

"Was it the loss of your child that made your marriage difficult?"

"Not really. We would have split up anyway. We argued too much."

"Were you the one who wanted to leave?"

"What does this have to do with anything?" she said.

"Most likely nothing. I'm just asking." He placed his hands on the table, turning them palm up. "When Henning found Eskil at the table, what did he do? Did he call out to you?"

"He just opened the door to the bedroom and stood there staring. It struck me how quiet it was, there wasn't a sound from the kitchen. I sat up in bed and screamed."

"Is there anything about your son's death that seems unclear to you?"

"What?"

"Have you and your husband gone over what happened? Did you ask him about it?"

Again Sejer saw a trace of fear in her eyes.

"He told me everything," she said carefully. "He was inconsolable. Blamed himself for what happened, thought he hadn't paid enough attention. And that's not an easy thing to live with. He couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear it. We had to go our separate ways."

"But there's nothing about the death itself that you didn't understand, or that hasn't been resolved?"

Sejer had big, slate-grey eyes that at the moment were very gentle because she was on the edge of something, and maybe, if he was lucky, she would take the next step.

Her shoulders began to shake. He sat still for a moment, waiting patiently, knowing that he mustn't move, mustn't break the silence. She was getting close to a confession. He recognised it; it was in the air. Something was bothering her, something she didn't dare think about.

"I heard them screaming at each other," she whispered. "Henning was furious; he had a fierce temper. I was lying in bed with a pillow over my head. I couldn't stand listening to them." Go on.

"I heard Eskil making a lot of noise, he might have been banging his cup against the table, and Henning was shouting and slamming drawers and cupboard doors.

"Could you make out any words they said?"

Her lower lip began trembling. "Only one sentence. The last thing I heard before he rushed off to the bathroom. He screamed so loud that I was afraid the neighbours would hear him, afraid of what they might think of us. But we didn't have it easy. We had a child who didn't behave the way we had expected. We had an older boy, as you know. Magne was always so quiet; he still is. There were never any problems, he did what we told him to do, he…"

"What did you hear? What did he say?"

The bell suddenly rang in the shop, and the door opened. Two women swept in and looked around at all the wool, their eyes alight. Mrs Johnas jumped up, about to head into the shop. Sejer stopped her by putting his hand on her shoulder.

"Tell me!"

She bowed her head, as if she were ashamed.

"It just about destroyed Henning. He could never forgive himself. And I couldn't live with him any more."

"Tell me what he said!"

"I don't want anyone to know. And it doesn't matter any more. Eskil is dead."

"But he's no longer your husband, is he?"

"He's Magne's father. He told me how he stood there in the bathroom, shaking with despair because he couldn't act the way he should. He stood there until he calmed down; then he was going to go back and apologise for being angry. He couldn't bear to go to work without clearing the air. Finally he went back to the kitchen. You know the rest."

"Tell me what he said."

"Never. I'll never tell a living soul."

The ugly thought that had taken root in his mind was beginning to sprout and grow. He had seen so much that it was rare for him to be surprised. Maybe it would have been convenient to be rid of a child like Eskil Johnas.

He collected Skarre from his office and took him down the corridor.

"Let's go and look at some Oriental carpets," he said.

"Why?"

"I just came from Astrid Johnas's shop. I think she's tormented by some terrible suspicion, the same one that has occurred to me. That Johnas is partially to blame for the boy's death. I think that's why she left him."

"But how was he to blame?"

"I don't know. But she's terrified by the idea. Something else has occurred to me. Johnas didn't say a single word about the boy's death when we talked to him."

"That's not so strange, is it? We were there to talk about Annie, after all."

"I think it's strange that he didn't mention it. He said there weren't any children to baby-sit any more because his wife had left him. He didn't mention that the boy Annie took care of had died. Not even when you commented on the picture of him that was hanging on the wall."

"He probably couldn't stand to talk about it. You have to forgive me for mentioning this," Skarre said, lowering his voice, "but you've also lost someone close to you. How easy is it for you to talk about it?"

Sejer was so surprised that he stopped in his tracks. He felt his face grow pale, as if someone had drained it of colour. "Of course I can talk about it… If it's a situation where I felt it was appropriate or absolutely necessary. If other considerations were stronger than my own feelings."

The smell of her, the smell of her hair and skin, a mixture of chemicals and sweat, her forehead had an almost metallic gleam. The enamel of her teeth was destroyed by all the pills, bluish, like skimmed milk. The whites of her eyes slowly turned yellow.

In front of him stood Skarre, with his head held high, not in the least self-conscious. Sejer had expected this; hadn't he babbled too much, crossed the line in getting too friendly with Skarre? Shouldn't he apologise?

"But you've never felt it was necessary?"

Now he was staring at the young man standing in front of him. He seemed to be holding out a fist.

"No," he said firmly, shaking his head.

He started walking again.

"I see," Skarre said, unperturbed. "What did Mrs Johnas say?"

"They had a fight. She heard them screaming at each other. The bathroom door slammed, the plate smashed. Johnas had a bad temper. She says he blames himself."

"I would too," Skarre said.

"Do you have anything at all encouraging to say?"

"In a way. Annie's school bag."

"What about it?"

"Remember that it had some kind of grease on it? Most likely to wipe away any fingerprints?"

"So?"

"We've identified what it is. A kind of cream that contains tar, among other things."

"I have cream like that," Sejer said, surprised. "For my eczema."

"No. It's a special cream for dogs. For injured paws."

Sejer nodded. "Johnas has a dog."

"And Axel Bjørk has a German shepherd. And you have a lion. I'm just mentioning it," Skarre said quickly, holding the door open. The chief inspector led the way, feeling rather confused.