Don't Look Back

CHAPTER 14

Axel Bjørk put the leash on his dog and let him out of the car.

He cast a swift glance in both directions, saw no one, and headed across the square, fishing a master key out of his uniform. He turned again and looked back at his car, which was parked in full view in front of the main entrance, a leaden-grey Peugeot with a ski-box on the roof and the security company's logo on the door and bonnet. The dog waited, unsuspecting, while he fumbled with the lock; they had done this so many times before, in and out of the car, in and out of doors and lifts, thousands of different smells. The dog followed faithfully. He had a good life for a dog, with plenty of exercise, an abundance of changes of scene and good food.

The factory building was quiet and empty, no longer in operation, used only as a warehouse. Crates, boxes and sacks were piled up from floor to ceiling; the place smelled of cardboard and dust and mouldy wood. Bjørk didn't turn on the lights. Hanging from his belt was a torch, which he switched on as they walked through the dark hall. His boots rang hollowly on the stone floor. Each step echoed, unique, in his mind. His own footsteps, one after another, alone in the silence. He didn't believe in God, the dog was the only one who heard them. Achilles walked along on a slack leash, taking measured steps, meticulously trained. The dog anticipated calm, not danger, and he loved his master.

They approached the machinery, a huge rolling machine. Bjørk squeezed himself in behind the iron and metal, pulling the dog with him. He fastened the leash to a steel lever and gave the command to sit. The dog sat down but stayed alert. A smell was starting to spread through the room. A smell that was no longer unfamiliar, that was becoming a bigger and bigger part of their daily life. But there was something else too. The rank smell of fear. Bjørk slid down to the floor; a rustling noise from his nylon coveralls and the panting of the dog the only audible sounds. He took a bottle out of his hip pocket, unscrewed the top, and began drinking.

The dog waited, his eyes shining, his ears alert. He knew he wouldn't be getting any biscuits just then, but he sat there all the same, waiting and listening. Bjørk stared into the dog's eyes, not a word passed his lips. The tension in the dark hall grew. He could feel the dog watching him, as he watched the dog. In his pocket he had a revolver.

Halvor grunted with displeasure. Not a living soul is going to get into this file, he thought despondently. The hum of the monitor had started to annoy him. It was no longer a gentle sighing but an endless din, as if coming from some vast machine far away. It stayed with him all day long; he felt almost naked each time he shut off the computer and silence took over for a few seconds, until the sound reappeared inside his own head. Spit it out, Annie, he thought. Talk to me!

The movie theatre was showing a travelogue. She bought Smarties and lemon drops at the kiosk while he waited at the entrance with the tickets in his hand. "Do you want anything to drink?" she asked. He shook his head, too preoccupied with looking at her, comparing her to all the others crowded together in front of the theatre. The attendant appeared in the doorway, dressed in a black uniform and holding a punch in his hand, and as he clipped everyone's tickets, he studied the faces before him. Most of the kids kept their eyes lowered because they were under the age restriction for this movie. A Bond film. The very first one they had seen together, their first date, practically like a real couple. He swelled with pride. And the movie was a good one, at least according to Annie. He hadn't actually followed much of it; he was much too preoccupied with staring at her out of the corner of his eye and listening to the sounds she made in the dark. But he did remember the title: For Your Eyes Only.

He typed the title into the field and waited for a moment, but nothing happened. Got up impatiently, took a couple of steps, and tore the lid off a jar standing on the windowsill where he kept a packet of King of Denmark tobacco. This was hopeless. He shoved any trace of guilt to the far corner of his mind. It was a secret part of his mind, and it contained something from his past. There was no stopping Halvor now; he walked through the kitchen to the living room and over to the bookshelf where the phone was. He looked up the listing for computer equipment, found the number he wanted, and punched it in.

"Ra Data. Solveig speaking."

"Hi. I'm calling about a locked file," he stammered. His courage disintegrated; he felt small, like a thief or a voyeur. But it was too late for that now.

"You can't get in?"

"Er, no. I can't remember the password."

"I'm afraid the technician has left for the day. But wait just a minute and I'll ask somebody."

He was pressing the receiver to his head so hard that his ear went numb. On the other end of the line he could hear the hum of voices and telephones. He glanced over at his grandmother, who was reading the paper with a magnifying glass, and he thought, "Annie should have known you could do this."

"Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"Do you live far away?"

"On Lundebysvingen."

"You're in luck. He can drop by on his way home. What's your address?"

He sat in his room and waited, his heart pounding in his throat and the curtains open so he could see the car when it pulled into the courtyard. It took exactly 30 minutes before the technician appeared in a white Kadett Combi with the Ra Data logo on the door. A surprisingly young man got out of the car and glanced uncertainly at the house.

Halvor ran to open the door. The systems specialist turned out to be a nice guy, plump as a dumpling, with deep dimples. Halvor thanked him for taking the trouble. Together they went to his room.

The technician opened his briefcase and took out a stack of charts. "Is it a numerical or alphabet password?" he asked.

Halvor turned bright red.

"Can't you even remember that much?" he asked in surprise.

"I've used so many different ones," Halvor muttered. "I change them regularly."

"Which file is it?"

"That one."

"'Annie'?"

He didn't ask any more questions. A certain etiquette went with the job, after all, and he had big ambitions. Halvor went over to the window and stood there, his cheeks burning with a mixture of shame and nervousness, and his heart was hammering so hard that it might have been a drumroll. Behind him he heard the keys clacking rapidly, like distant castanets. Otherwise there wasn't a sound, just the drumroll and the castanets. After what seemed like an eternity, the technician got up from the chair.

"OK, man, there it is!"

Halvor slowly turned around and stared at the screen. He took the invoice that was handed to him for signature.

"What? 750 kroner?" he gasped.

"Per hour and any fraction thereof," said the young man with a smile.

His hands trembling, Halvor signed the dotted line at the bottom of the page and asked to have the bill posted to him.

"It was a numeric password," said the expert, smiling again. "One seven one one nine four. Date and year, right?"

His dimples got even deeper. "But obviously not your birth-date. In that case you wouldn't be more than eight months old!"

Halvor escorted him out and thanked him, then ran back and sat down in front of the monitor. A new command had appeared on the screen: "Please proceed".

He had to press his hand to his heart because it was beating so hard. The words scrolled into view and he started reading. He had to lean on the desk and blink several times as he scrolled through the document. Something had happened, Annie had written it down, and finally he had found it. He read with his eyes wide, and a terrible suspicion slowly began to develop.

Bjørk had worked up a high blood-alcohol content.

The dog was still sitting with his tongue hanging out, panting and impatient, his eyes shifting anxiously. After a while, Bjørk got laboriously to his feet, set the bottle on the ice-cold floor, hiccuped a few times, and straightened up. He immediately fell against the wall, his legs splayed out. The dog got up too, staring at him with yellow eyes. He wagged his tail tentatively two or three times. Bjørk fumbled for the revolver, which was stuck tight in his pocket. He got it out and cocked it, staring at the dog the whole time, as he listened to the sound of his own molars grinding against each other. He swayed, his hand shaking, but fought off the dizziness, raised his arm, and pulled. The violent explosion ricocheted off the walls. The skull split open, and the contents splashed across the walls, and some struck the dog on the snout. The shot continued to reverberate. Gradually it faded to what sounded like distant thunder. The dog lunged to break free, but the leash held. After repeated attempts, the animal was exhausted. He gave up and stood there, whimpering.

The gallery was located on a quiet street, not far from the Catholic church. Outside stood a Citroen, an older model, the kind with slanted headlights. Rather like Chinese eyes, Sejer thought. The car was covered with dust. Skarre went over and looked at it. The roof was cleaner than the rest of the car, as if something had been on top, protecting the surface. It was blue-green.

"No ski-box," Sejer said.

"No, it's been removed. There are marks from the fastenings."

They opened the gallery door and went in. It smelled quite similar to Mrs Johnas's shop, of wool and starch, with a faint hint of tar from the beams in the ceiling. A camera was aimed at them from a corner. Sejer stopped and peered into the lens. Everywhere lay great piles of carpets. A broad stone staircase led up to the floors above. Several carpets were spread out on the floor and some hung from poles on the walls. Johnas was coming down the stairs, dressed in flannel and velvet, red and green and pink and black. With his dark curls he seemed to fit his passion for carpets perfectly. There was something soft and gentle about him. His fierce temper, if it existed, was well concealed. His eyes were dark, almost black, and his whole manner was unmistakably that of a salesman. Friendly, slick, accommodating.

"Well, hello!" he said. "Come on in. So you want to buy a carpet, is that right?"

He gave a wave of his arm, as if they were close friends he hadn't seen for a long time, or perhaps potential customers with a weakness for this particular kind of handwork. The knots. The colours. The patterns with the religious symbols. Birth and life and death, pain, victories, pride. To put under the dining-room table or in front of the TV. Indestructible, unique.

"You have a lot of space here," Sejer said, looking around.

"Two whole floors, plus an attic. Believe me, this has been a big investment. I've practically skinned myself alive on this place, and it didn't look like this when I took over. Mouldy and grey. But I gave it a proper cleaning and whitewashed the walls, and that's really all it needed. Originally it was an old villa. Follow me, please."

He pointed up the stairs and led them to what he called his office, but it was actually a spacious kitchen, with a stainless steel counter and stove, a coffee maker, and a small refrigerator. There were tiles above the counter with lovely, chastely attired Dutch girls, windmills, and thick waving grass. Old copper kettles with decorative dents hung from a beam in the ceiling. The kitchen table had brass edges and corners, as though it was from an old ship.

They sat down around the table, and without asking them Johnas went over to the refrigerator and poured grape juice into wine glasses.

"How did it go with the puppies?" Skarre asked him.

"Hera will get to keep one of them, and the other two are already spoken for. So it's too late for you to change your mind. Now what can I do for you?" He smiled and took a sip.

Sejer knew that his friendliness would quickly evaporate.

"Just a few questions about Annie. I'm afraid we need to go over the same ground again and again." He wiped his mouth discreetly. "You picked her up at the roundabout – is that right?"

Sejer's choice of words, his intonation, and the tiniest hint of doubt about his previous statement sharpened Johnas's attention.

"That's what I said before, and that's exactly what I did."

"But she actually preferred to walk, didn't she?"

"Excuse me?"

"It took a little persuasion for you to get her into the car, is that correct?"

Johnas's eyes narrowed but he remained silent.

"She preferred to walk," Sejer said. "She declined your offer of a ride. Am I right?"

Johnas nodded suddenly and smiled. "She always did that; she was so unassuming. But I thought it was too far to walk to Horgen's Shop. It's quite a way."

"So you persuaded her?"

"No, no…" He shook his head hard and shifted position in his chair. "I coaxed her a little. Some people have a tiresome habit of needing to be coaxed all the time."

"So it wasn't that she didn't want to get into your car?"

Johnas heard quite clearly the extra stress on the words "your car".

"That's the way Annie was. A little aloof, maybe. Who have you been talking to?"

"Several hundred people," Sejer said. "And one of them saw her get into your car after a long discussion. You're actually the last person to see her alive, and we've got to focus on that, don't you agree?"

Johnas smiled back, a conspiratorial smile, as if they were playing a game and he was more than willing to participate.

"I wasn't the last person," he said. "Whoever killed her was the last person."

"It's proving rather difficult to get hold of him," Sejer said with deliberate irony. "And we have nothing to corroborate that the man on the motorcycle was waiting for Annie. The only thing we have is you."

"I'm sorry? What are you getting at?"

"Well," Sejer said, throwing out his hands, "I'm trying to get to the bottom of this case. It's the nature of my job to doubt what people say."

"Are you accusing me of lying?"

"I'm afraid that's what I have to think," Sejer said. "I hope you'll forgive me. Why didn't she want to get in?"

Johnas was visibly uneasy. "Of course she wanted to get in!" He had shown the first sign of anger, and now controlled himself. "She got in and I drove her to Horgen's."

"No further than that?"

"No, as I told you, she got out at the shop. I thought she was going there to buy something. I didn't even drive up to the door; I stopped on the road, and let her out. And after that," he stood up to get a pack of cigarettes from the counter, "I never saw her again."

Sejer steered his interrogation on to a new track.

"You lost a child, Johnas. You know what it feels like. Have you talked to Eddie Holland about it?"

For a moment Johnas looked surprised. "No, no, he's such a private person, I didn't want to bother him. Besides, it's not an easy thing for me to talk about either."

"How long ago was it?"

"You've talked to Astrid, haven't you? Almost eight months. But it's not the sort of thing you forget or get over."

He slipped a cigarette out of the pack. Lit up and smoked in an almost feminine way. Merits, filtertipped.

"People often try to imagine what it's like." He stared at Sejer with weary eyes. "They do it with the best of intentions. Try to picture the empty bed and imagine themselves standing there and staring at it. And I did do that often. But the empty bed is only part of it. I got up every morning and went out to the bathroom, and there was his toothbrush under the mirror. The kind that changes colours when it gets warm. The rubber duck on the edge of the bath. His slippers under the bed. I caught myself setting too many places at the table for dinner, I did it for days. There were stuffed animals that he had left in the car. Months later I found a Band-Aid under the sofa."

Johnas was speaking through clenched teeth, as if with great reluctance he was revealing things to them that they had no right to know.

"I threw things out, a little at a time, and it felt as if I was committing a crime. It was painful to look at his things day after day, it was horrible to pack them away. It haunted me every second of the day, and it haunts me still. Do you know how long a person's smell stays in a pair of cotton pyjamas?"

He fell silent, and his tanned face had turned grey. Sejer didn't say a word. He suddenly thought about Elise's wooden clogs, which always stood outside the door so that she could stick her feet into them if she had to take out the rubbish or go downstairs to get the post. Opening the door, picking up the shoes, and bringing them inside was something that he remembered with great pain.

"Not long ago we went over to the cemetery," Sejer said. "Has it been a while since you were there?"

"What kind of question is that?" Johnas asked, his voice hoarse.

"I just want to know if you realise that something has been removed from the grave."

"You mean the little bird. Yes, it disappeared just after the funeral."

"Did you consider getting another one?"

"There certainly are a lot of things you want to know. Yes, of course I considered it. But I couldn't stand going through the same thing again, so I decided to leave it the way it was."

"Do you know who took it?"

"Of course not!" he said, his voice sharp. "If I did, I would have reported it at once, and if I had the chance, I would have beaten the culprit within an inch of his life."

"You mean a verbal beating?"

He smiled acidly. "No, I do not mean a verbal beating."

"Annie took it," Sejer said lightly.

Johnas opened his eyes wide.

"We found it among her things. Is this it?"

He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out the bird. Johnas took it with trembling fingers. "It looks like it. It looks like the one. But why…"

"We don't know. We thought you might be able to help us discover why."

"Me? Dear God, I have no clue. I don't understand it. Why on earth would she take it? She wasn't exactly the type to steal things. Not the Annie I knew."

"That's why she must have had a reason for doing it. A reason far more important than merely wanting to steal things. Was she angry with you for something?"

Johnas sat and stared at the bird, struck dumb with surprise.

He didn't know about this, thought Sejer, casting a scowl at Skarre, who sat beside him with glass-blue eyes, studying the man's slightest movement.

"Do her parents know that she had this?" Johnas said at last.

"We don't think so."

"And it wasn't Sølvi? Sølvi is a little different, you know. Just like a magpie, grabbing anything that glitters."

"It wasn't Sølvi."

Sejer raised his glass by the stem and drank the grape juice. It tasted like a light wine.

"Well, I guess she had her secrets. We all do," Johnas said. "She was a bit secretive. Especially as she got older."

"She took it hard – Eskil's death?"

"She couldn't make herself come to see us any more. I can understand it; I couldn't be around people either for a long time. Astrid and Magne left me, and so much happened all at once. An indescribable chapter," he muttered, wincing at the memory.

"You must have talked to each other, though?"

"Just brief nods when we met on the street. We were practically neighbours, after all."

"Did she try to avoid you?"

"She seemed embarrassed, in a way. It was difficult for all of us."

"And what's more," Sejer said, as if he had only just thought of it, "you had a fight with Eskil right before he died. That must have made it even harder."

"You keep Eskil out of this!" he said bitterly.

"Do you know Raymond Låke?"

"You mean that strange fellow up near Kollen?"

"I asked you whether you know him."

"Everybody knows Raymond."

"Just give me a yes or no answer."

"I do not know him."

"But you know where he lives?"

"Yes, I do. In that old shack of a house, though he must think it's just fine, since he looks so idiotically happy."

"Idiotically happy?" Sejer stood up, pushing his glass aside. "I think idiots are just as dependent on other people's good will to feel happy as the rest of us are. And here's something you should never forget: even though he can't interpret his surroundings in the same way you can, there's nothing wrong with his vision."

Johnas's face stiffened slightly. He escorted them out. As they went down the stairs to the first floor, Sejer felt the camera lens like a laser beam on the back of his neck.

They went to Sejer's apartment to collect Kollberg, and let him stretch out on the back seat of the car. The dog is alone too much, Sejer thought, tossing him an extra piece of dried fish. That must be why he's so impossible.

"Do you think he smells bad?"

Skarre nodded. "You should give him a Fisherman's Friend lozenge."

They drove towards Lundeby, turned off at the roundabout, and parked next to the letterboxes. Sejer walked along the street, fully aware that everyone could see him, all 21 houses. Everyone would think he was going to see Holland. But at the end of the road he stopped and looked back, towards the house belonging to Johnas. It looked semi-vacant. The curtains were drawn in many of the windows. Slowly he walked back.

"The school bus leaves the roundabout at 7.10 a.m. every morning," he said. "All the kids in Krystallen going to school take it. So they leave home at about 7 a.m. in order to catch the bus."

A slight breeze was blowing, but not a hair on his head moved.

"Magne Johnas had just left for school when Eskil got the food caught in his throat."

Skarre waited. A prayer for patience flitted through his mind.

"And Annie left a little later than the others. Holland remembered that they had overslept. She walked past his house, maybe while Eskil was sitting there eating breakfast."

"Yes. What about it?" Skarre looked at Johnas's house. "Only the windows to the living room and bedroom face the street. And they were in the kitchen."

"I know, I know," he said irritably. They kept on walking, approached the house, and tried to imagine that day, that very November day, at 7 a.m. It's dark at that time in November, Sejer thought.

"Do you think she might have gone inside?"

"I don't know."

They stopped and stared at the house for a moment. The kitchen window was on the side, facing the neighbours' house.

"Who lives in the red house?" asked Skarre.

"Irmak. With his wife and child. But isn't that a pathway between the houses?"

Skarre looked. "Yes, it is. And someone's coming."

A boy appeared between the two houses. He was walking with his head bowed and had not yet noticed the two men in the road.

"It's Thorbjørn Haugen, the boy who helped search for Ragnhild."

Sejer stood and waited for him as he strode briskly along the path. Over his shoulder he was carrying a black bag, around his forehead was the same patterned bandanna that he'd worn before. They watched him carefully as he passed Johnas's house. Thorbjørn was tall, and he reached to the middle of the kitchen window.

"Taking a short cut?" Sejer asked.

"What?" Thorbjørn stopped. "This path goes straight down to Gneisveien."

"Do most people take this route?"

"Sure, it saves you five minutes."

Sejer took a few steps along the path and stopped outside the window. He was taller than Thorbjørn and had no trouble peering into the kitchen. There was no high chair there now, just two ordinary kitchen chairs, and on the table an ashtray and a coffee cup on the table. Otherwise the house seemed practically uninhabited. The seventh of November, he thought. Pitch black outside and brightly lit indoors. Anyone outside could look in, but those inside wouldn't be able to see out.

"Johnas gets a little cranky when we go this way," Thorbjørn said. "Says he's sick of this short cut past his house. But he's moving."

"So all the young people use this short cut to catch the school bus?"

"Everyone who goes to the junior high and high school."

Sejer nodded to Thorbjørn and turned back to Skarre. "I remember something Holland said when we talked in my office. On the day Eskil died, Annie came home from school earlier than usual because she was sick. She went straight to bed. He had to go to her room to tell her about the accident."

"Sick in what way?" Skarre wanted to know. "I thought she was never sick."

"He said that she wasn't feeling well."

"You think she saw something, don't you? Through the window?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"But why didn't she say anything?"

"Maybe she didn't dare. Or maybe she didn't fully understand what she had seen. Maybe she confided in Halvor. I've always had the feeling that he knows more than he's telling us."

"Konrad," Skarre said, "don't you think he would have told us?"

"I'm not so sure he would. He's an odd character. Let's go and have a talk with him."

At that moment his beeper went off, so he went over to the car to ring the number. Holthemann answered.

"Axel Bjørk has shot himself in the head with an old Enfield revolver."

Sejer had to lean on the car for support. The news tasted like bitter medicine, leaving an uncomfortable dryness in his throat.

"Did you find a suicide note?"

"Not on the body. They're searching his apartment. But the man obviously had a guilty conscience about something, don't you think?"

"I don't know. He had lots of problems."

"He was an irresponsible alcoholic. And he had a grudge against Ada Holland that was as sharp as a shark's tooth," Holthemann said.

"He was mostly just unhappy."

"Hatred and despair often look alike. People show whatever suits them best."

"I think you're wrong. He had finally given up. And that must be why he put an end to it all."

"Maybe he wanted to take Ada with him?"

Sejer shook his head and glanced down the street, towards the Holland house.

"He wouldn't have done that to Sølvi and Eddie."

"Do you want to find the killer or not?"

"I just want the right one."

He hung up and looked at Skarre. "Axel Bjørk is dead. I wonder what Ada Holland will think now. Maybe the same as Halvor did when his father died. That it was a relief."