Hell Fire

15 July 2005

Bonnie and Simon Hayden were buried at Haugane Church on July 15, ten days after they were murdered. Sejer and Skarre drove up the avenue of trees in an unmarked car, looking for a parking space. A lot of people had come. Many of them had to drive back down and park along the roadside. Skarre had changed out of his uniform into a dark suit and shorn the curls for which he was so well known. Sejer glanced at him sideways and thought that he looked like a stranger. They sat in the car for a while, looking up at the church and the steady stream of people. Then they noticed a white minibus edging its way closer. At first they couldn’t understand what a minibus was doing at the church, but then Sejer realized it was Bonnie’s clients. Presumably the council had rented a bus. The doors opened and he saw the driver release two steps and Ragnhild Strøm climbed out. Ingemar Kroken was the last person out. He had been collected from Hallingstad and had a nurse with him. The gray-haired procession progressed slowly across the parking lot to the church steps. Once they had disappeared inside, Sejer and Skarre followed and found themselves a couple of places in the back row, whereas Bonnie’s clients were sitting closer to the front with Ragnhild. Henny Hayden was sitting in the front row with Bonnie’s father, Henrik.

“Our man,” Skarre whispered. “Do you think he’s here?”

“No, it’s not very likely. Mind you, the whole case is pretty unbelievable, so who knows.”

The congregation was all dressed respectfully in black. The two coffins lay side by side at the front, one big and one small. A well-loved brown teddy sat on top of the small one. Sejer thought about the two bodies. Presumably Simon was wearing his finest pajamas, and Bonnie was in a beautiful dress. The priest, Oscar Berg, who had been at the Norwegian Seamen’s Mission in Antwerp for many years, had come to Haugane Church with his wife and four children, and was well liked in the parish. Even though he had a seemingly impossible task in front of him, he did not hesitate for a moment. There’s something about priests, Sejer thought. They manage to find the right words for every occasion. And if they can’t find their own, they borrow from the scriptures. But there was definitely something about Oscar Berg all the same — something genuine and sincere that made an impression. Unlike other priests who were often slow, heavy, and solemn, he had an energy and strength in his voice. He was, quite simply, full of life and not afraid to show it. It was as if everyone woke up when he spoke. The service lasted an hour and then the church bells rang. Six strong men carried Bonnie’s coffin and four carried little Simon. Henny and Henrik went first. Henrik Hayden looked so lost that he wasn’t much support to his wife at all, but followed the coffins with small reluctant steps. What was going on around him bore no relation to him. He knew it was about death; he could smell the lilies.

The birch trees that lined the churchyard were at their best, and the mother and son were buried side by side in front of the chapel. They sang a final hymn. Sejer noticed that Henny was taking everything in. She wanted to see who had come. She seemed to forget the psalm and the priest, her eyes drawn to a man at the back of the group of mourners. She broke out of the ring and walked briskly toward him. He looked as though he could be around sixty and was wearing a leather jacket, jeans, and dirty sneakers with gray laces. When he saw Henny approaching, he looked uneasy.

She leaned forward, right up in his face. But no one could hear what she said.

“How old are they?” Skarre asked, talking about Henny and Henrik.

“She’s seventy and he’s seventy-five,” Sejer told him. “Which isn’t really that old these days. And as for you, you’re just a whippersnapper. But not to worry, because you’re a smart whippersnapper.”

He popped a Fisherman’s Friend in his mouth and tried to scratch his elbow through his jacket. He suffered from a mild form of psoriasis, which bothered him sometimes.

Later, when he was back in the office, it felt odd to be at work in a dark suit. And yet he hadn’t taken the time to drive home and change. He sat there at a loss for a while. He had plenty of things to do — it wasn’t that. In the end, he decided to drive over to the pathology lab and talk to Snorrason.

The doctor’s office had a window into the autopsy room. The dead could teach the living. Sejer stared at the blinding white tiles. Tubes and drains where the last remains of life were washed away. Snorrason had spent most of his working life in this cold and sterile environment. For some reason, he had chosen a room where he was alone with the dead.

On the wall in his office, he had an enlarged black-and-white photograph, slightly out of focus, taken in Brentwood, USA. It was a portrait of a dead woman. Her head was tilted back and her face was puffy and formless with large dark patches of discoloration, any features wiped out. Her eyes were swollen and closed, her mouth open. Fair stripes of hair were pushed back from the forehead. It was hard to discern whether she had been a beauty or not. But Sejer knew that she had been, because it was Marilyn Monroe. The picture had been taken a few days after her death in 1962.

“You’re looking very smart today,” the doctor remarked. “Designer suit?”

“Now that would be something,” Sejer replied. “Standard off the rack.”

Snorrason knew why Sejer had come. He wanted to think out loud, as he had done so often before. They pulled the pictures of Bonnie up on the screen, and even though the inspector had seen them before, he leaned forward. He looked at the tattoo on her left shoulder, a small lizard that looked as though it was creeping over to her collarbone. It had probably been there for a few years — it wasn’t black anymore, more bluish-green.

“In a way, a tattoo is the same as self-harming,” Snorrason said.

“In what way?”

“Well, it hurts. It shows a need to be noticed. And it’s permanent. Like when young girls cut themselves and then later sit there running their fingers over the scars.”

Sejer liked the little lizard and the three moles on her breast.

“The knife was clearly not blunt,” Snorrason continued. “Look, the edges are even and sharp. He was aiming for her face, but she turned her head to the side. I talked at length with the funeral directors. I wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t let the parents see her — some people simply insist. Think they can take it. Feel they should, for the dead person’s sake.”

He moved on to a picture of Simon. They were both silent for some time.

“Have you found anything?” Snorrason asked, looking up at the inspector.

“Well,” Sejer said thoughtfully. “There have been lots of phone calls, mostly about cars that have been seen in Geirastadir and Haugane. We’re working our way through them at the moment. The men who call in can give the car make, and often the model, whereas the women don’t see the details. Just the color. But they spot things that the men don’t. You know how it is. Someone must have seen him on his way there on July fifth; it was a lovely day. People would have been out in their gardens or sitting on their terraces.”

“Do you think he’s a local man?”

“I assume so, because he managed to find his way to the trailer. We’ve gone through the criminal records for the area, but we haven’t found anything that would point to something like this. But all the same, we think he must have stood out in some way from an early age. We just don’t know how.”

“How many people are you taking in for questioning to begin with?”

“At the moment, seventeen. Everyone who had dealings with her in one way or another. Then we’ll widen the search.”

“What do you console yourself with when you lie awake at night?”

“Our clearance rate. It’s unbeatable.”

In the evening, he put on his sneakers and went for a run along the path behind the block of apartments. Frank ran alongside him, with his tongue hanging out. The dog was a little overweight and Sejer was doing all he could to slim him down. Even so, on occasion, he was tempted to give him something tasty: a sausage or a chop that was left over from dinner. If they met a bitch on their way, Frank was like the possessed, pulling at the leash, while Sejer tried to explain to the fat dog that he didn’t stand a chance with a long-legged greyhound or a small white poodle.

He ran with a light step and relaxed shoulders. He had always been fit and hoped that he could keep age at bay by staying in good shape. He sometimes went to the gym and no one had yet beaten him at arm wrestling, not even the young guns there. He was strong, lean, and had stamina. He never got stressed, but he was a serious man and sometimes prone to deep melancholy. Occasionally when the weather was good and there was no wind, he would drive down to Jarlsberg airstrip. He’d climb into a Cessna, go up to three thousand feet, and jump out with a French-made parachute on his back.

He turned around after three miles and ran back. As he ran, he thought about Henny Hayden and the man she had spoken to by the graves. He had the feeling that it was significant. It was always the small things, the links between people and where they could lead. Frank started to flag on the stairs up to the twelfth floor, so Sejer scooped him up and carried him in his arms.