Hell Fire

8

Robert Randen saw the car through the kitchen window. He had been expecting the police, so he immediately went out to meet them and ushered them back into the kitchen.

“We can talk in here.”

There was a long sanded wooden table with eight chairs, each with a simple pattern carved on the back. Randen himself stood by the countertop.

“I can’t sleep,” he said. “I keep remembering the smell. It smelled like a slaughterhouse.”

Sejer thought to himself that it would be impossible to live with the scene that Randen had discovered. He would remember it even when he was sitting in an old people’s home. It would haunt him until the end of his days.

“How many people live here on the farm?” Skarre asked.

“My wife Solveig, myself, and our four girls in the main house. My mother lives in the cottage on the other side of the yard. And there are four Poles in the outbuilding. So that’s eleven in total.”

“Could the killer have walked through the farm?”

“Well, of course. I mean, we’re not always standing at the window. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t, as there’s practically always someone outside here. Certainly in summer. No, I reckon he crossed the fields. From the woods. If he had a car, he might have parked it in Geirastadir. Lots of walkers do that: there’s plenty of room for cars there. In the autumn, people come to pick berries to sell at the market, but they usually come on mopeds. And most of them are from Lithuania.”

“Can you tell me about your four Polish farmhands?” Sejer asked. “Do they come back every year?”

Randen had decided that he wanted to sit down after all, and he pulled out a chair. Like most farmers, he was strong, lean, and weathered. His thick hair was the color of sand, and he would never lose it.

“This is the eighth year that they’ve come, so I know them well. They all have families back in Poland and they all have children. They’ve also got jobs to go back to in the autumn, and all four of them work hard and well, without complaining. We’ve never had any problems with them and they’re never ill. They get up before us and go to bed late. I understand why you have to ask, but I would vouch for all four of them. Why on earth would they have anything to do with this? It’s out of the question.”

Skarre shook his head. “We don’t think they’re involved either, but we still have to question them. Could they manage in English?”

“Woiciech speaks Norwegian. He’s pretty good.”

“Tell me about Bonnie Hayden and her son,” Sejer said. “In as much detail as possible.”

“Well, they just appeared here on the steps. They were holding hands. The mother had picked a bunch of wildflowers, and she seemed a bit embarrassed, as if she was reluctant to ask. It was obvious that she was doing it for the boy; he was practically hopping on the spot. She asked if I owned the old trailer at the bottom of the field, and when I said yes, the boy could hardly contain himself. She told me that they’d walked past it and the boy wondered if they could spend the night there. That’s all she said, and she squeezed the boy’s hand while they waited for an answer. I said of course they could.

“To be honest, I was touched by the pair of them, but I did tell them that the trailer was in a terrible state — it’s practically uninhabitable. But then they said that they’d already been inside and that it was good enough for them for just one night. They would go home to get some food and bring their bedding back with them. I said that was fine, and the boy really did jump for joy. ‘How much would you like for the night?’ she asked. I almost laughed. ‘My dear,’ I said, ‘I don’t want anything for it. The trailer hasn’t been used for years and should really be taken to the junkyard.’ They looked around at all the farm buildings. She asked if they could park here, and I showed them a place behind the outbuilding, where the car wouldn’t be in the way. And then they set off toward Geirastadir, to drive home and get all they needed. They waved to me before they disappeared. ‘We’ll be back this evening, then,’ the mother called to me. She seemed happy enough. And then they were gone.”

Randen folded his hands on the solid table. “When the men came back that evening, I told them that the pair of them were coming, so that they’d know. The Opel drove into the farm around seven o’clock. It was barely holding together, in a worse state than the trailer. I went out to greet them and to see if they needed any help carrying things down. The mother had a couple of comforters over her arm and the boy was holding a pillow and an old teddy bear. No, they’d manage themselves, they said. I watched them walk down across the fields; there was something quite sad about them.”

“What do you mean by that? Sad in what way?”

“I’m not really sure how to put it. Like they were two lonely souls in a big world. They came back again later and disappeared around to the car, only to reappear a few minutes later carrying a pizza box and a bag, which they took down to the trailer. Then I forgot about them and got on with other chores — there’s always plenty to do on a big farm like this.”

He focused on a knot in the table; they could hear his breathing.

“Why did you go down to the trailer the next day?” Sejer asked. “You found them at 2 p.m. What were you doing down there?”

“I just went to say hello. To ask how the night had been.”

He told them that his wife had been busy baking all morning. An apple cake and an almond cake. The girls wanted the almond cake, and they decided to give the apple cake to the pair in the trailer. Emilie, aged ten, was allowed to put the thin slices of Pink Lady apples in the bottom of the tin like brickwork. Solveig rolled the dough into thin sausages that she then wove in a pattern on the cake and covered it with generous helpings of nib sugar and almonds. “So I took the apple cake and went down across the field,” Randen explained. “The door was open. I knocked on the wall and called out hello so they wouldn’t get a fright when I suddenly appeared in the doorway.

“This might sound a bit dramatic, but I don’t think my life will ever be the same.”

The four Poles were waiting outside the house and were all clearly affected by what had happened. Two of them had seen Simon outside the trailer, carrying his teddy bear. His mother had been standing in the doorway and waved to them as they passed, and they had touched their caps with their brown working hands and waved back. Beautiful weather, they had called, and she had smiled and nodded.

“Think carefully now,” Sejer urged them. “Did you see anything that might be of importance? I mean, people or cars in the vicinity of the farm in the days beforehand?”

They looked at each other. They had talked about this. The oldest of them, Woiciech, who was in fact a butcher back home in Poland, had seen an unknown car on the road up to the farm. It might have been following the Opel, but it had stopped some distance from the farm.

“Can you describe the car?” Skarre said.

“Definitely not new,” Woiciech replied. “Red.”

Skarven Farm had been in the Randen family for four generations, and Robert Randen and his wife Solveig were used to working hard from morning to night. Their four daughters also had duties, and Randen hoped that the eldest girl, Johanne, would take over the farm in a few years’ time. The family was sitting around the table eating supper in silence. Eventually Solveig put down her fork and turned to her husband.

“When can we get rid of the trailer?”

“As soon as the police give us permission.”

“Will they wash it?” she asked.

“I very much doubt it. That’s not the way it works. We should ask the boys in this evening; we need to talk.”

The youngest daughter, Emilie, looked at her father. “Are we going to the funeral?”

“No, sweetheart,” Randen said. “We won’t be. We’re not family.”

“But they died here. In one of our fields.”

“Yes, Emilie. But we should leave the family in peace.”

“Will they be in the same coffin?”

“No, sweetie, they’ll each get their own. One big, one small.”

Ma, the cat, wandered in through the open door. She was a beautiful gray cat and well preened. She jumped up onto Emilie’s lap and curled up in a ball. Emilie’s mother wanted to push the cat down, but she stopped herself. Everything was topsy-turvy on Skarven Farm. Nothing was as it should be, and she felt it might never be again.

The girls cleared the table and put everything in the dishwasher. Then they pushed all the chairs back in under the table. Randen lay down on the sofa in the living room and the cat came running over and jumped up onto his chest. The cat was heavy and made it harder to breathe, but he let the animal lie there. He felt Ma’s warmth through his shirt and it calmed his nerves. Randen was a levelheaded man, but now his thoughts were racing. Because whoever had used that knife in the trailer was alive somewhere. He lived, he breathed, he ate, he slept. He talked and interacted with people who knew nothing, who smiled and laughed. While he waited for his pursuers. And in no way regretted what he had done.

I hope it will rain before too long, Randen thought. The farm needs rain. Perhaps we should go to the funeral. They did die here after all, on our property, in our field.