"Honning Johnas?"
Sejer twirled a pen between two fingers and stared at him.
"Do you know why you're here?"
"What kind of a question is that?" he said hoarsely. "Let me say one thing: there's a limit to what I'll stand for. But if this has anything to do with Annie, then I have nothing more to say."
"We're not going to talk about Annie," Sejer said.
"I see."
He rocked his chair back and forth slightly, and Sejer thought he registered a hint of relief flit across the man's face.
"Halvor Muntz seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Are you still certain that you haven't seen him?"
Johnas pressed his lips together. "Absolutely positive. I don't know him."
"You're sure about that?"
"You may not believe it, but I'm still quite clear- headed, in spite of repeated harassment from the police."
"We were wondering what his motorcycle was doing in your garage. In the back of your truck."
Johnas uttered a snorting sound of fear.
"Excuse me? What did you say?"
"Halvor's motorcycle."
"It's Magne's motorcycle," he said. "I'm helping him repair it."
He spoke quickly, without looking at Sejer.
"Magne has a Kawasaki. Besides, you don't know anything about motorcycles – you're in a different field, to put it mildly. Try again, Johnas."
"All right, all right!" His temper flared and he lost his self-control, gripping the table with both hands. "He came trotting into the gallery and started pestering me. God, how he pestered me! Acting like he was on drugs, claiming that he wanted to buy a carpet. Of course he didn't have any money. So many strange people wander in and out of my shop, and I lost my temper. I gave him a slap. He ran off like the little brat he is, leaving behind his motorcycle and everything. I lugged it out to my truck and took it home with me. As punishment, he's going to have to come and get it himself. Beg me to give it back to him."
"For just a slap, your hand certainly took a beating, didn't it?" Sejer stared at the flayed knuckles. "The thing is that nobody knows where he is."
"Then he must have taken off with his tail between his legs. He probably had a guilty conscience about something."
"Do you have any suggestions?"
"You're investigating his girlfriend's murder. Maybe you should start there."
"I don't think you should forget, Johnas, that you live in a very small place. Rumours spread fast."
Johnas was sweating so heavily that his shirt stuck to his chest.
"So what? I'm going to move," he said.
"You mentioned that. Into town, is that right? So you taught Halvor a lesson. Maybe we should let him be for a while?"
Sejer wasn't happy. It just seemed like it.
"Could it be that you lose your temper rather easily, Johnas? Let's talk a little about that." He twirled the pen some more. "Let's start with Eskil."
Johnas was lucky. He had just bent down to take his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. He took his time straightening up.
"No," he groaned, "I don't have the strength to talk about Eskil."
"We can take all the time we need," Sejer said. "Start with that day, that day in November, from the moment you got up, you and your son."
Johnas shook his head and nervously licked his lips. The only thing he could think about was the disk, which he hadn't managed to read. Maybe Sejer had taken it and read through everything that Annie had written. The thought was enough to make him feel faint.
"It's hard to talk about it. I've tried to put it behind me. Why are you so interested in an old tragedy? Don't you have more pressing matters to occupy your time?"
"I realise that it's hard. But try anyway. I know that you were having a difficult time and that you really should have had professional help. Tell me about him."
"But why do you want to talk about Eskil!"
"The boy was an important part of Annie's life. And everything about Annie needs to be brought to light."
"I realise that, I realise that. I'm just confused. For a moment I thought you might have suspected me of… you know. Of having something to do with Annie's death."
Sejer smiled, a rare open smile. Then he gave Johnas a look of surprise and shook his head.
"Would you have a motive for killing Annie?"
"Of course not," he said. "But to be honest, it took a lot for me to call you and say that she had been in my car. I knew I was sticking my neck out."
"We would have found out anyway. Someone saw you."
"That's what I thought. That's why I called."
"Tell me about Eskil," Sejer said, unperturbed.
Johnas slumped forward and took a drag on his cigarette. He looked confused. His lips were moving, but not a sound came out.
In his mind everything was clear, but now the room was closing in around him, and all he could hear was the breathing of the man on the other side of the table. He glanced at the clock on the wall in order to organise his thoughts. It was early evening, 6 p.m.
Eskil woke up with a gleeful shout at 6 a.m. Tumbled around in our bed, hurling himself this way and that. Wanted to get up at once. Astrid needed to sleep some more, she hadn't slept well, and so I had to get up. He followed me out of the room and into the bathroom, hanging on to my pyjama legs. His arms and legs were everywhere, and he talked non-stop, an endless stream of sounds and shouts. He wriggled around like an eel when I tried desperately to put his clothes on him. He didn't want to wear nappies. Didn't want to wear the outfit I found for him, kept on reaching for anything that wasn't nailed down, and finally climbed up on the toilet lid and began pulling things down from the shelf under the mirror. Astrid's jars and bottles crashed to the floor. I lifted him down and was immediately swept up in the same old patterns. I scolded him, kindly at first, and shoved a Ritalin pill in his mouth, which he promptly spat out as he grabbed the shower curtain and managed to pull it down. I tried to get dressed, tried to make sure he didn't damage anything, didn't break anything. Finally we were both dressed. I lifted him up and carried him into the kitchen to put him in his chair. On the way across the room he suddenly threw his head back and hit me in the mouth. My lip split open and began to bleed. I strapped him in and buttered a piece of bread, but he didn't want the food I fixed for him; he shook his head and threw the plate across the table while he screamed that he wanted sausage instead.
"Johnas?" Sejer said. "Tell me about Eskil."
Johnas shook himself and looked at the inspector. At last he made a decision.
"All right, if that's what you want. November 7th. A day like any other day, which means an indescribable day. He was a torpedo, he was destroying the whole family in his wake. Magne was getting worse and worse grades in school and couldn't stand to be home any more. He would go off with his friends every afternoon and evening. Astrid never got enough sleep; I couldn't keep regular hours at the shop. Every meal was a trial. Annie," he said all of a sudden, smiling sadly, "Annie was the only bright spot. She would come and get him whenever she had time. Then silence would descend on the house like a hurricane. We would collapse wherever we were sitting or lying and completely pass out. We were exhausted and desperate, and no one gave us any help. We were told quite clearly that he would never grow out of it. He would always have trouble concentrating, and he would be hyperactive the rest of his life. The whole family would have to put up with him for years to come. For years. Can you even imagine that?"
"And that day, you had a fight with him?"
Johnas laughed wildly. "We were always fighting. It was a neurosis in our family. No doubt we did our part to make things worse for him; we had no idea how to tackle him. We screamed and shouted, and his whole life consisted of swear words and unpleasantness."
"Tell me what happened."
"Magne stuck his head in the kitchen and shouted goodbye. He went off to catch his bus with his bag over his shoulder. It was still dark outside. I buttered a new piece of bread and put some sausage on it. Then I cut it up in little pieces, even though he could easily have eaten the crust. The whole time he was banging his cup on the oilcloth-covered table, shouting and screaming, not with laughter or anger, just an endless stream of sounds. Suddenly he caught sight of the dessert waffles on the counter from the day before, and started nagging me for them, and even though I knew he would win, I said no. That word was like a red flag for him, so he refused to give up, banging his cup and rocking back and forth in his chair, which threatened to fall over. I stood at the counter with my back turned, shaking. Finally I stepped over and grabbed the plate, pulled off the plastic, and lifted up a ring of waffles. Threw the sausage bits in the trash and put the waffles in front of him. Tore off a couple of the hearts. I knew he wasn't going to eat them quietly. There was a lot more in store for me; I knew how he was. Eskil wanted jam on them. Furious, my hands shaking, I spread raspberry jam on two of the hearts. That's when he smiled. I remember it so well, that last smile. He was pleased with himself. I couldn't stand the fact that he was so happy, while I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He picked up his plate and started slamming it against the table. He didn't want the waffles after all, he didn't really like them, the only thing he wanted in all the world was to have his own way. The waffles slid off the plate and on to the floor, so I had to find a cloth. I looked everywhere, but couldn't find one, so I picked up the waffles and spread them out. He watched me with interest as I made a big lump. His little face didn't have a trace of fear for what was to come. I was boiling inside, and some of the steam had to be let out, I didn't know how. Suddenly I bent over the table and stuffed the waffles in his mouth, pushing them in as far as they would go. I still remember his surprised look and the tears that sprang to his eyes.
'"Right now!' I shrieked at him in fury. 'Right now you're going to eat your goddamn waffles!'"
Johnas collapsed like a broken stick.
"I didn't mean to do it!"
His cigarette was smouldering in the ashtray. Sejer swallowed and let his eyes slide towards the window, but he found nothing that could erase the image from his retina: the little boy with his mouth full of dessert waffles and his big, terrified eyes.
He looked at Johnas. "We have to accept the children we're given, don't you agree?"
"That's what they all said. Everyone who didn't know any better, and nobody knew. And now I'm going to be charged with abuse, resulting in death. I've charged and condemned myself long ago, and you can't make things any worse."
Sejer looked at him. "What exactly was the charge?"
"Eskil's death was entirely my fault. I was responsible for him. Nothing can be excused or explained away. The only thing is that I didn't mean for him to die. It was an accident."
"It must have been terrible for you," Sejer said. "You didn't have anyone to go to with your despair. At the same time you probably feel that you've never been properly punished for what happened. Is that how it is?"
Johnas was silent. His eyes flitted around the room.
"First you lost your youngest son, and then your wife left you, taking your older son with her. You were left all alone, with no one."
Now Johnas began to cry. It sounded as if he had porridge in his throat that he was trying to regurgitate.
"And yet you've carried on. You have your dog to keep you company. You expanded your business, which is thriving. It takes a lot of energy to start afresh the way you have."
Johnas nodded. The words felt like warm water.
Sejer had taken aim; now he fired his shot.
"And then, after you had finally got a grip on things and your life was getting back to normal – then Annie popped up, didn't she?"
Johnas gave a start.
"Maybe she looked at you with accusing eyes when you met on the street. You must have wondered about that, about why she seemed so unfriendly. So when you caught sight of her running along with her schoolbag on her back, you had to find out what it was all about, once and for all, didn't you?"
A girl came running down the hill. She recognised me at once and pulled up short. Her face froze and she gave me a cold look. Her whole posture rebuffed me, a stubborn, almost aggressive attitude that was alarming.
She started walking again, taking swift strides, without looking back. Then I called out to her. I refused to give up, I had to find out what it was about! Finally she relented and got in, sitting with her arms wrapped around the bag that she held on her lap. I drove slowly, wanting to speak but not knowing exactly how to begin or whether I was about to do something that could be dangerous for both of us. So I kept on driving, and out of the corner of my eye I was aware of her tense figure, like one big trembling accusation.
"I need someone to talk to," I started off, hesitantly, clutching the steering wheel hard in my hands. "Things haven't been easy for me."
"I know that," she replied, staring out of the window, but suddenly she turned and looked at me for a brief moment. It felt like a small opening and I tried to relax. There was still time to retreat and leave it alone, but now she was sitting there, listening to me. Maybe she was grown-up enough to understand everything, and maybe that's all she wanted, some sort of confession or plea for forgiveness. Annie and all her talk about justice.
"Can we drive somewhere and talk a little, Annie? It's hard to do in the car. If you have some time, just a few minutes, and then I'll drive you to wherever you're going afterwards."
My voice was thin and pleading; I saw that it touched her. She nodded slowly and seemed to relax a bit, settling back in the seat and staring out the window again. After a while we passed Horgen's Shop, and I saw a motorcycle parked next to it. The driver was bending over the handlebars, studying something, maybe a map. I drove slowly and carefully up the bad road to Kollen and parked at the turning place. Annie suddenly looked worried. She left her bag on the floor of my car. I try to remember what I was thinking at that moment, but I can't. I remember only that we trudged up the overgrown path. Annie was tall and straight-backed, walking beside me, young and steadfast, yet not unimpressionable. She went with me down to the water and sat hesitantly on a rock. Plucked at her fingers for a while. I remember her short fingernails and the little ring on her left hand.
"I saw you," she said quietly. "7 saw you through the window. Right when you bent over the table. I ran away. Later Papa told me that Eskil was dead."
"I knew you were accusing me," I told her sombrely, "because of the way you've been acting. Every day when we met on the street or at the letterboxes or by the garage. You were accusing me."
I started to cry. I leaned forward and sobbed into my lap while Annie sat motionless at my side. She didn't say anything, but when I was done, I glanced up and saw that she had been crying too. I felt better than I had for a long time, I really did. A warm breeze was stroking my back, and there was still hope.
"What should I do?" I whispered then. "What should I do in order to put this behind me?"
She looked at me with her grey eyes, almost in surprise. "Turn yourself in to the police, of course. And tell them the truth. Otherwise you'll never find peace!"
At that moment she looked at me. My heart turned to stone in my chest. I put my hands in my pockets, tried hard to keep them there. "Have you told this to anyone?" I asked her.
"No," she said. "Not yet"
"You should mind your own business, Annie!" I shrieked in desperation. Suddenly I felt as if I were rising up from the bottom, out of the darkness and into the light. A single paralysing thought occurred to me. That Annie was the only person in the whole world who knew about this. It was as if the wind had turned and was now roaring in my ears. Everything was lost. Her face wore the same astonished expression Eskil's face had. Afterwards I walked swiftly through the woods. I didn't turn around even once to look back at her.
Johnas studied the curtains and the fluorescent light on the ceiling as he kept on shaping his lips to form words that wouldn't come. Sejer looked at him. "We've searched your house and secured the forensic evidence. You will be charged with the negligent homicide of your own son, Eskil Johnas, and the premeditated murder of Annie Sofie Holland. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"You're wrong!"
His voice was a fragile peep. Several burst blood vessels had given his eyes a reddish sheen.
"I'm not the one who will assess your guilt."
Johnas stuck his fingers in his shirt pocket, searching for something. He was shaking so violently that he looked like an old man. Finally he pulled out a flat little metal box.
"My mouth is so dry," he said.
Sejer stared at the box. "But you didn't have to kill her, you know."
"What are you talking about?" he said faintly.
"You didn't have to kill Annie. She would have died on her own if you'd just waited a little longer."
"Are you joking?"
"No," Sejer said. "I would never joke about cancer of the liver."
"You must be mistaken. Nobody was healthier than Annie. She was standing by the water when I stood up and left, and the last thing I heard was the sound of a stone that she threw into the water. I didn't dare tell you the first time, that she actually went all the way up to the lake with me. But that's what happened! She didn't want to drive back with me; she wanted to walk instead. Don't you see that someone must have turned up while she was standing there at the lake? A young girl, alone in the woods. It's crawling with tourists up at Kollen. Does it ever occur to you that you might be mistaken?"
"It does occur to me on rare occasions. But you have to understand that you've lost the battle. We found Halvor."
Johnas grimaced, as if someone had stuck a needle in his ear.
"Sad, isn't it?"
Sejer sat motionless, his hands in his lap. He caught himself rubbing the spot above his wedding ring a few times. There wasn't much else to do. Besides, it was so quiet and practically dark in the small room. Once in a while he glanced up and looked at Halvor's ruined face, which had been washed and tended to, but was still almost beyond recognition. His lips were slightly parted. Several of his teeth had been smashed, and the old scar at the corner of his mouth was no longer visible. His face had split open like an overripe fruit. But his forehead was still whole, and someone had combed back his hair so that the smooth flesh was visible, a small indication of how handsome he had been. Sejer bowed his head and placed his hands carefully on the sheet. They could be clearly seen in the circle of light from the lamp standing on a table. He heard only his own breathing and in the distance a lift creaking faintly. A sudden movement under his hands made him start. Halvor opened one eye and looked at him. The other was covered with a big liquid lump of bandages, rather like a jellyfish. He wanted to speak. Sejer put a finger to his lips and shook his head. "It's nice to see that smile of yours, but you mustn't say anything. The stitches will burst out."
"Tanks," Halvor said indistinctly.
They looked at each other for a long time. Sejer nodded a few times, Halvor kept on blinking his green eye.
"The disk that we found at Johnas's place," Sejer said. "Is it an exact copy of Annie's diary?"
"Mm."
"Nothing was erased?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing was changed or corrected?"
More shaking of his head.
"All right then," Sejer said.
"Tanks."
Halvor's eye filled with tears. He began sniffling.
"Don't fret!" Sejer said. "The stitches will come out. And your nose is running. I'll find some tissues."
He stood up and found some tissues by the sink. Tried to wipe away the snot and blood running from the boy's nose.
"I expect you found Annie difficult once in a while. But now you probably understand that she had her reasons. As a rule, we all do. "And this was a huge burden for her to carry all alone. I know this may be a stupid thing to say," he said, trying to comfort the boy because he felt such pity for him as he lay in bed, his face pulverised. "But you're still young. Right now you've lost so much. Right now you feel as if Annie is the only one you would like to have near. But time will pass, and things change. Someday you'll think differently."
Jesus, what a speech, he thought.
Halvor didn't reply. He stared at Sejer's hands lying on the covers, at the broad gold wedding band on his right hand. His expression seemed to be accusatory.
"I know what you're thinking," Sejer said. "That it's easy for me to talk, sitting here wearing a big wedding band. A real gaudy, ten-millimetre ring. But you see," he said with a sad smile, "it's actually two five-millimetre rings welded together."
He twisted the ring around.
"She's dead," he said. "Do you understand?"
Halvor closed his eye and a little more blood and tears ran down his face. He opened his mouth, and Sejer could see the broken remains of his teeth.
"Mm solly."
Finally the sun was shining full force and Sejer and Skarre strolled down the street with the dog between them. Kollberg plodded along happily, with his tail held high like a banner.
Sejer had a bouquet of flowers hanging from a string around his wrist, red and blue anemones wrapped in tissue paper. His jacket was slung over his shoulders, and his eczema was better than it had been in a long time. He strode along with his easy, supple gait while Skarre hopped and leaped beside him. The dog walked at a surprisingly brisk pace. Not too fast; they were wearing newly pressed shirts and didn't want to sweat too much before they reached their destination.
Matteus was scurrying around, full of anticipation, a killer whale in his arms, made of black and white felt. His name was Free Willy, and he was almost as big as he was. Sejer's first impulse was to rush forward and lift him up, roaring out his great joy in a jubilant voice. That's the way all children ought to be greeted, with genuine, exuberant joy. But Sejer wasn't made that way. He took the boy carefully on his lap and looked at Ingrid, who was wearing a new dress, a butter-yellow summer dress with red raspberries. He wished her happy birthday and squeezed her hand. Before long they would be leaving for the other side of the globe, to heat and war, and they would be gone an eternity. He shook hands with his son-in-law while he held Matteus tight. They sat quietly and waited for the food.
Matteus never nagged. He was a well-mannered boy, blessedly free of defiant or contrary behaviour. The only thing Sejer didn't recognise from his own family was a tiny tendency for mischief. Matteus's daily life was all smiles and love, and his origins, about which they knew very little, seemed not to have given him genes that would manifest themselves in abnormal behaviour, drive family members out of their wits, or make them cross disastrous boundaries. Sejer's thoughts wandered. Back to Gamle Möllevej outside Roskilde when he himself was a child. For a long time he sat lost in memory. Finally he was listening. "What did you say, Ingrid?"
He looked in surprise at his daughter and saw that she was brushing a lock of blonde hair away from her forehead as she smiled in that special way she had, reserved just for him.
"Coke, Papa? Do you want a Coke?"
At the same time, somewhere else, an ugly van bumped along the road in low gear, and a big man, his hair sticking up, was hunched over the steering wheel. At the bottom of the hill he stopped to let a little girl, who had just taken two steps forward, cross the road. She stopped abruptly.
"Hi, Ragnhild!" he cried out.
She was holding a skipping rope in one hand, so she waved with the other.
"Are you out taking a walk?"
"I'm on my way home," she said firmly.
"Listen to this!" Raymond said in a loud, shrill voice to be heard over the roar of the engine. "Caesar is dead. But Påsan had babies!"
"But he's a boy," she said.
"It's not easy to tell whether a rabbit is a boy or a girl. They have so much fur. But at any rate he had babies. Five of them. You can come and see them if you want."
"They won't let me," she said, disappointed, staring down the road and hoping vaguely that someone would appear to rescue her from such a spellbinding temptation. Baby bunnies.
"Do they have fur?"
"They have fur and their eyes are open. I'll drive you back home afterwards, Ragnhild. Come on, they're growing up so fast!"
She glanced down the road one more time, shut her eyes tight and opened them again. Then she dashed across and climbed in. Ragnhild was wearing a white blouse with a lace collar and tiny little red shorts. No-one saw her get in. Everyone was in their backyards, preoccupied with planting and weeding, tying up their roses and the clematis. Raymond felt so fine in Sejer's old windbreaker. He put the van in gear. The little girl was sitting excitedly on the seat beside him. He whistled happily and looked around. Nobody had noticed them.