Karin Fossum - Eva's Eye

He stood up with difficulty, and she put a steadying hand under his arm. Emma decided she’d sing to him, to send him off to sleep more quickly, and he was all for it. Eva went back into the kitchen, stuffed some money into the jam jar that held his savings, and filled the sink with water. Soon Emma’s voice rang through the house. She sang “Morningtown Ride,” until Eva was left bending over the washing-up, her tears of mirth and misery dripping into the suds.

In the evening she spread a rug over him and propped him up on a couple of pillows. They’d switched off most of the lights and sat in the semidarkness. Emma’s bedroom door was open, they could hear her snoring softly.

“D’you miss Mom?” she asked, stroking his hand.

“Every hour of the day.”

“I think she’s here now.”

“Of course she is, in some way or other. But I don’t know just how, I can’t work it out.” His hand fumbled over the table toward his cigarettes, and she lit one for him. “Why was she unhappy, d’you think?”

“I don’t know. Do you believe in God?” she continued.

“Don’t be silly!”

They fell silent again for a long while. He drank the red wine steadily, and she knew he’d fall asleep on the sofa and wake up with a backache, as he always did.

“When I’m grown up I’m going to marry you,” she said wearily. She closed her eyes and knew that she would drop off too, sitting with her head on the back of the sofa. She couldn’t be bothered to fight it. While she was here in her father’s living room, she felt safe. As she had when she’d been little and he could protect her. He couldn’t protect her anymore, but it was a good feeling all the same.

Sejer awoke with a stiff neck. As usual he’d fallen asleep in his armchair after dinner and, added to this, his feet were soaking. The dog had slobbered on them. He headed for the shower. Slowly he undressed without looking in the mirror; once under the spray he stretched himself gingerly and grimaced each time he touched the wall tiles. They were vinyl, a kind of imitation marble. They’d yellowed with the years. When he thought about it, he couldn’t imagine anything more ugly to put on a bathroom wall. Elise had nagged him for ages, begged him to put up something different, she thought they were hideous too. Yes, yes, he’d said, I’m working on it. We’ll do it in the spring, Elise. And so the years had passed. And later, when she was lying there hairless, ill and as emaciated as an old, old woman, and he, in his despair, wanted to tackle the damn bathroom, she had shaken her head. She’d rather he sat by her bedside. You’ll have plenty of time for the bathroom later, Konrad, she’d said feebly.

A huge sorrow overwhelmed him, and he had to blink hard to stop it gaining the upper hand. He hadn’t time for that, not now at any rate. When he’d dried and dressed himself he went into the living room and phoned his daughter, Ingrid, she was the only child they’d had. They talked about this and that for a long while, and before he rang off he said good night to Matteus. After this he felt better. Before going out, he stopped in front of the photograph of Elise which hung above the sofa, she smiled at him, a brilliant smile with perfect teeth and without a care in the world. Not then. He’d always liked this picture. But just recently it had begun to irritate him, he wanted a different expression now, perhaps a portrait in which she was looking serious, something that more closely matched his own mood. Like the one Ingrid had hanging above her piano. Perhaps they could do a swap. He thought about it vaguely as he let Kollberg jump into the back seat and drove in the direction of Frydenlund. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to talk about when he got there, but as usual he relied on his talent for improvisation, which was considerable. People usually felt duty-bound to fill in the gaps that cropped up during a conversation, they always thought silences were painful. It was this kind of febrile talk he encouraged, because occasionally they would blurt out things he found useful. And Jostein Magnus didn’t know he was coming. He couldn’t confer with his ex-wife beforehand. He could, of course, refuse to open his mouth at all, but they never thought of that. The notion made him smile.

Magnus had let Eva keep their old detached home at Engelstad and had moved into an apartment in Frydenlund. These were far from the ugliest blocks of apartments he’d ever seen, they were certainly nicer than the one he lived in himself. Surrounded by a large, parklike area, the five-story blocks stood in a semicircle, like inverted dominoes, white, with black spots. If an outer one fell, the whole row would come crashing down. The occupants were a creative lot. There was a profusion of beds and bushes along the walls and in front of the entrances, and they would soon be flowering. The outside was tidy, the asphalt up to the doors had been hosed clear of all gravel and dust. The door to each apartment was tastefully decorated with a pretty nameplate or dried flowers.

It was his partner who answered. He studied her with curiosity, trying to form an opinion about this woman who had supplanted Eva Magnus. She was a buxom, feminine type with a figure that burgeoned out everywhere; Sejer hardly knew where to look. Eva Marie, with all her lean, dark earnestness, wouldn’t have stood a chance against this curly cherub.

“Sejer,” he said mildly, “police.”

She flung open the door immediately. Because he was smiling as broadly as he could she didn’t ask if anything was wrong, the way people often did if he wore a different expression, the serious mask, as he did sometimes. But she had a questioning look. “I’ve only come to have a chat,” he went on, “with Mr. Magnus.”

“Oh yes! He’s inside.”

He followed her in. A red-haired giant got up from the sofa. On the table in front of him, on top of a newspaper, lay a tube of glue and a dinosaur made of wood. It had lost one of its legs.

They shook hands, the giant hadn’t learnt to control his strength, but anyway, he probably considered it unnecessary to hold back with Sejer. Even so, the policeman was slight by comparison and his hand got some rough treatment.

“Please sit down,” he said. “Have we got anything to drink, Sofie?”

“This is just an informal visit,” he commenced, “I’m just being inquisitive.” He settled comfortably in his seat and continued. “I’ve come simply and solely because you were married to Eva Magnus and must, I’m sure, recall the murder of Maja Durban.”

Magnus nodded. “Yes, I remember that, of course. It was a grisly business. Haven’t you caught anyone yet? It’s a long time ago. Well, I didn’t keep up with it in the papers, and Eva never spoke about it anymore, you see — but I thought this was about something else, I’d almost forgotten that stuff about Durban. But you ask away. If I know the answer, I’ll tell you.” He opened his arms wide. A sympathetic man, warm and generous.

“What did you think I came about?” Sejer asked inquiringly.

“Er — could we talk about that later?”

“Okay.”

He was handed a glass of fizzy orange and expressed his thanks.

“Did you know Maja Durban?”

“No, not at all. But I’d heard about her. Eva and Maja went their separate ways when they were girls. But they’d obviously been pretty close friends while it lasted. You know how girls are, it’s like life and death to them. She read about Maja’s killing quite by chance in the newspaper. They hadn’t seen each other since ’sixty-nine. Or maybe it was ’seventy?”

“Exactly. Apart from the day she was killed, that is.”

“The day before she was killed.”

“That was when they met each other in town. The following day she visited Durban in her apartment.”