Eva's Eye

34

“Where have you been?”

Karlsen was waiting in reception. He had been looking out for Sejer’s car for some time now, minutes were passing and no one had phoned with the glad tidings that little Ragnhild had come home long ago and was fit and well. She was still lost. Karlsen was stressed.

“With Jorun Einarsson.” Sejer was tense and excited, which was unusual. “Come on, I’ve got to talk to you.”

They nodded to Mrs. Brenningen and retreated down the corridor.

“We need to bring in a bloke for questioning,” Sejer said, “right away. Peter Fredrik Ahron. The only person in Einarsson’s circle who occasionally was allowed to borrow his Manta. Very occasionally. He works at the brewery, and now he’s chasing after Jorun. He’s been interviewed before, when Einarsson went missing. I’ve just met him outside the house in Rosenkrantzgate, and d’you know what? They look pretty similar. In poor light it would be hard to tell them apart. See what I mean?”

“Where is he now?”

“Still at the house, I hope. Album will have to wait, we’ve got people on that anyway. Take Skarre and bring him in right away, I’ll wait here.”

Karlsen nodded and turned to go. Then he stopped. “By the way, I’ve got a message for you from Eva’s solicitor.”

“Yes?”

“Larsgård’s dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“The taxi driver found him.”

“Does she know yet?”

“I’ve sent one of the girls in to her.”

Sejer shut his eyes and shook his head. He walked up the stairs, digesting the news as best he could, just now he hadn’t time to think more carefully about what it would mean for the remand prisoner on the fifth floor. He shut himself in his office, opened the window and let in some fresh air. Tidied the desk a bit. Went quickly to the sink and washed his hands, drank some water from a paper cup. Opened the file drawer and took out a cassette, it was 360 minutes long and contained Eva Magnus’s confession. He loaded it in the cassette player on the desk and began fast-forwarding it. He stopped it now and then, fast-forwarded a bit more, and found the episode he was searching for at last. He paused the tape and adjusted the volume. Then he settled down to wait, and his thoughts began to wander. Perhaps Ahron had made a run for it, he mused, in which case he might already be a long way off on that fast motorbike of his. But he hadn’t. He was sitting reading the newspaper on Jorun’s sofa, a pouch of tobacco at his side. She was in the middle of the room with an ironing board and a pile of freshly laundered clothes. She looked uncertainly at the two policemen and then at the man on the sofa, who contented himself with raising a single eyebrow, as if they were taking him in at a most inconvenient moment. He rose from the sofa with apparent resignation and followed them out. Jan Henry watched them as they walked to the car. He said nothing. It mattered little to him what they were going to do with Peddik.

“Your name is Peter Fredrik Ahron?”

“Yes.” He rolled a cigarette without asking permission.

“Born the seventh of March, 1956?”

“Why ask when you know all this?”

Sejer glanced up. “I’d advise you to tread carefully.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Now he was smiling disarmingly. “Certainly not. We don’t threaten here, we simply advise. Address?”

“Tollbugata 4. Born and raised in Tromsø, youngest of four, National Service: yes. I don’t mind helping you out, but the fact is I’ve said everything I have to say.”

“In that case we’ll go through it again.”

He wrote on, unperturbed, Ahron smoked furiously, but he kept control of himself. Kept control for the moment. He leaned across the desk with a resigned expression. “Give me one good reason why I should go around killing my best friend!”

Sejer dropped his pen and looked at him in astonishment. “My dear Mr. Ahron, is there anyone who thinks you did? That’s not why you’re here. Did you think that was the reason?” He studied him acutely and noticed how the germ of a suspicion grew in Ahron’s pale blue iris.

“It’s hardly surprising I thought that,” he said hesitantly, “the last time you turned up it was because of Egil.”

“Then you’re on the wrong track completely,” Sejer said. “This is about something quite different.”

Silence. The smoke from Ahron’s roll-up curled in thick white spirals toward the ceiling. Sejer waited.

“Well? So?”

“So what? What do you mean?”

Sejer folded his arms on the desktop and never relinquished Ahron’s eyes. “I mean, aren’t you going to ask what it’s about? As it isn’t about Einarsson?”

“I haven’t got the faintest idea what it’s about.”

“No, exactly. That’s why I thought you might want to ask. I would have done,” he said frankly, “if I’d been hauled in while I was buried in the sports pages. But perhaps you’re not the inquisitive type. So I’ll enlighten you a bit. Little by little at all events. Just one tiny question first: what’s your attitude to women, Mr. Ahron?”

“You’ll have to ask them that,” he said sullenly.

“Yes, you’re right there. Who do you think I should ask? Have there been lots of them?”

He made no reply. All his energies were directed at keeping his composure.

“Maybe I should ask Maja Durban. Would that be a good idea?”

“You’ve got a sick sense of humor.”

“Possibly. She didn’t have much to say when we found her on her bed. But she had something to give us all the same. The murderer left his visiting card. Know what I mean?”

Ahron’s head trembled. He licked his lips.

“And I’m not talking about the sort you order in batches from the stationer’s. I’m talking about a unique personal genetic code. Every one of the earth’s four billion inhabitants has a different code. Just let that figure sink in, Mr. Ahron. When we magnify it, it resembles a mad piece of modern art. Black and white. But of course you know all this, you read the papers.”

“You’re just guessing. You’ve got to have a court order before you can start testing me, if that’s what you plan to do. And you won’t get it. I’m no fool. And anyway I want a solicitor. I’m not saying another word without a solicitor, not a thing!”

“Fine.” Sejer leaned back. “I can continue the conversation alone. But I ought to tell you that a court order for blood tests is the least of my problems.”

Ahron pursed his lips and kept smoking.

“First of October. You were at the King’s Arms with several mates, including Arvesen and Einarsson.”

“I’ve never denied it.”

“When did you leave the pub?”

“I assume you know that already, as it was you lot that came and picked me up!”

“I mean before that. When you took Einarsson’s car and went off. About half past seven, would that be?”

“Einarsson’s car? Are you joking? No one was allowed to borrow Einarsson’s car. Complete rubbish. And I’d been drinking.”

“That never stopped you before. You’ve got a conviction for drunk-driving. And according to Jorun you were the only person who was allowed to borrow the car. You were an exception. You were a good friend and you didn’t have a car.”

He took two deep drags on his cigarette and blew the smoke out. “I didn’t go anywhere, I just sat there drinking all evening.”

“Undoubtedly. You were totally intoxicated, according to the cook. Don’t forget that he was at work and sober and that he keeps an eye on people. Who comes and who goes. And when they come and go.”

He was silent.

“So you went out, maybe you took a look at the street life and finished your little trip at Durban’s, where you parked Einarsson’s car on the pavement and rang the bell at exactly eight o’clock. Two short rings, wasn’t it?”

Silence.

“You paid, and demanded the goods you’d paid for. And after that” — Sejer nodded slightly and stared at him — “you began to argue with her.”

Sejer had lowered his voice, Ahron had lowered his head. As if he had something interesting lying in his lap.

“You’ve got a dangerous streak, Mr. Ahron. Before you knew what had happened, you’d killed her. You raced back to the pub, hoping it would serve as an alibi and that no one would notice that you’d actually been away for a time. And then you began to drink.”

Ahron shook his head disparagingly.

“Through the haze of alcohol you realized just what you’d done. You made a clean breast of it to Einarsson. You thought he might be able to help you with an alibi. He was a friend, after all. You boys looked out for one another. And it had been an accident, hadn’t it? You were just some poor devil who was having a bad time, and of course Egil would understand, so you took the chance and told him. He was sober as well, perhaps the only one of the group who was, he would have believed.”

Ahron missed the ashtray, probably on purpose.

“But then, clearly, things got on top of you. You were foolish, you made a real spectacle of yourself. Late at night the landlord contacted us and requested you be taken in drunk and disorderly. Einarsson followed you in his car. Perhaps he was scared you’d talk while you were in the van, or in the cells. He wasn’t only trying to save you from the holding cells, but also from a murder conviction. And the amazing thing was, he managed it! It probably didn’t strike you just how incredible this was until the next day, but then I imagine you shuddered at the thought of just what a close call it had been.”

Ahron lit another cigarette.

“It must have been strange for you when Einarsson vanished. Have you thought at all about why he died? I mean, really thought it through. It was actually a genuine misunderstanding, just as you said.”

Ahron gathered himself and lay back in his chair.

“And then you began to visit Jorun. You knew that we were questioning her. Perhaps you were frightened that Egil had managed to talk?”

“You’ve obviously been working on this tale a long time.”

“But listen to this. I just happen to have an interesting piece of news for you. You were seen. A witness saw you, and by that I don’t mean saw you as you left the scene of the crime in Einarsson’s Opel. A witness saw you kill Maja Durban.”

This statement was so extraordinary that it made Ahron smile.

“Sometimes people are frightened to come forward. Sometimes they have good reasons for not doing so, so it took some time. But she came in the end. She was sitting on a stool in the adjoining room and was looking at you through the door that was open a crack. She’s just made a statement.”

Peddik’s eyes wavered slightly, then he smiled again.

“Quite a claim, isn’t it?” continued Sejer. “I agree. But you see, this time it isn’t a bluff. You killed her, and you were seen. It was a gross and totally unnecessary murder. Totally unfair. She was a woman” — Sejer got up from his chair and took a few paces — “and a small woman at that, with only a fraction of your musculature. According to the pathologist’s report she was one meter fifty-five tall and weighed fifty-four kilos. She was naked. You were sitting over her. In other words” — he lowered himself into his chair again — “she was utterly defenseless.”

“She wasn’t fucking defenseless, she had a knife!”

His shout reverberated around the room, then there came a sob.

Ahron hid his face in his hands and attempted to keep his body calm. It had begun to shake violently. “I want that solicitor now!”

“He’s on his way, he’s on his way.”

“Right this damn moment!”

Sejer leaned over to the cassette player and switched on the tape. The voice of Eva Magnus was crisp and clear, even slightly monotonous, she’d been tired by that time, but there could be no mistaking her.

“‘You tarts are fucking greedy. I’ve laid out a thousand for a five-minute job, d’you know how long it takes me to earn that much at the brewery?’”

“Now perhaps you see why Egil died? You looked quite similar. Easy to make a mistake in that dim light.”

“The solicitor!” he cried hoarsely.