Karin Fossum - Eva's Eye

“So you thought he sounded young?”

“No, I don’t know, I don’t notice things like that.”

“Artists always notice things like that,” he said briskly. “They’re observant, they take in everything, every detail. Isn’t that right?”

She didn’t answer. Her mouth was pursed into a tight line.

“I’m going to tell you something,” he said quietly. “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s your problem.”

“Shall I tell you why?” he asked.

“I’m not interested.”

“Because,” he went on, lowering his voice even more, “yours was the call that they all dream of getting. On the long, dull afternoon shift. A corpse is discovered. Nothing gets an officer more excited, more involved, than a dead man in the river on a humdrum afternoon, in among the domestic disturbances and the car thefts and all the swearing from the drunks in the holding cells. You see?”

“This one must have been an exception, then.”

“I’ve seen quite a lot of things in the service,” he confessed, and shuddered at the thought, “but never that.”

Now she’d dug right in, just stared at him defiantly.

“Are you working on a picture?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes, of course. That’s how I earn my living, as you know.”

She still hadn’t sat down, and so he couldn’t sit down either.

“It can’t be easy. To make a living from, I mean.”

“No. Like I said before, it isn’t easy. But we manage.”

She was getting impatient, but she didn’t dare hurry him. Nobody did. She waited, tensing her slender shoulders, hoping he would go so that she could breathe freely once again, as freely as she could with all she knew.

“‘Necessity is the mother of invention,’” he said sharply. “You’re unusually punctual paying your bills at the moment. Compared to the time before Ms. Durban died. You were late with everything then. It’s really quite admirable.”

“What on earth do you know about that?”

“I only had to make a phone call. To the council, to the power and phone companies. It’s funny, you know, when you ring from the police, information simply pours out.”

She wavered for a second, made a great effort to pull herself together, and met his gaze. Her eyes flickered like torches in a strong wind.

“Was your daughter in the phone box with you?” he asked mildly.

“No, she waited outside. It was so cramped in there. She takes up quite a lot of room.”

He nodded to himself. She’d turned again, away from him. “But you knew that Durban and Einarsson were acquainted, didn’t you?”

The question was a shot in the dark, and hung there in the room. She opened her mouth to reply, closed it again, and opened it once more, while he waited patiently with his gaze fixed on her golden eyes. He felt like a bully. But she knew something, he had to get it out of her.

She continued to struggle a little with her thoughts, then she mumbled: “I don’t know anything about it.”

“Lies,” he said slowly, “are like sand. Have you ever considered that? The first is just a minute grain, but sooner or later you’ve got to go a bit further and add another to the first, so that they’re growing all the time and getting bigger and bigger. In the end they’re so heavy you can’t bear the weight.”

She was silent. Her eyes filled, and she blinked rapidly a couple of times. And then he smiled. She stared at him a little confused, he was so different when he smiled.

“Aren’t you ever going to paint with colors?”

“Why should I?”

“Because reality isn’t black and white.”

“Well, then it probably isn’t reality I’m painting,” she said sullenly.

“So what is it?”

“I don’t know really. Emotions, perhaps.”

“Aren’t emotions real?”

There was no answer. She stood at the door a long time watching him as he went to the car, as if she wanted to hold him back with her eyes. And really wanted him to turn and come back.

Afterward he drove to his daughter’s house. He reached it just as Matteus had finished his bath. Warm and wet and with a thousand small glittering drops of water in his curly hair. He got into a pair of yellow pajamas and looked just like a chocolate wrapped in gold paper.

He smelt of soap and toothpaste, and the bath water still contained a shark, a crocodile, a whale, and a watermelon-shaped sponge.

“It’s high time,” his daughter said with a smile, and embraced him, slightly embarrassed, because it was so long between visits.

“It’s busy at work. But I’m here now. Don’t make anything extra, I’ll just have a sandwich if you’ve got one, Ingrid. And a coffee. Isn’t Erik at home?”

“He’s playing bridge. I’ve got a pizza in the freezer, and cold beer.”

“And I’ve got the car,” he smiled.

“And I’ve got the number of the taxi,” she parried.

“The way you twist things about!”

“No,” she laughed, “but I’ll twist this!” She pinched his nose.

He seated himself in the living room with Matteus and a gaudy children’s book of dinosaurs. The small, freshly bathed body was so warm in his lap that sweat began to prickle on his scalp. He read a few lines and ran his hand through the coal-black hair; he never ceased to be amazed at how crinkly it was, at how unimaginably small each individual curl was, and the feel of it against his hand. Not soft and silky like Norwegian children’s hair, but coarse, almost like steel wool.

“Grandad going to sleep here?” the boy said hopefully.

“I’ll sleep here if Mom lets me,” he promised, “and I’m going to buy you a Fina suit which you can wear when you’re mending your trike.”

Later he sat on the edge of Matteus’s bed for a while, and his daughter could hear indecipherable mumblings from within. There were growlings and rumblings, probably supposed to be a rendering of some nursery rhyme or other. His musical abilities weren’t much to boast about, but it achieved the desired effect for all that. Soon Matteus had fallen asleep with his mouth half-open, his small teeth shining like chalky-white pearls in his mouth. Sejer sighed, rose, and sat down to eat with his daughter, who’d begun to be seriously grown-up, and who was almost as beautiful as her mother had been, but only almost. He ate slowly and drank beer with the meal, registering all the while that his daughter’s house smelt exactly like his own when Elise was alive. She used the same detergents and the same toiletries, he’d recognized them on the bathroom shelf. She seasoned food in the same way her mother had done. And each time she rose to fetch more beer, he followed her movements clandestinely, and saw that she had the same walk, the same small feet, and the same mannerisms when she spoke and laughed. Long after he’d gone to bed in what they called the guest room, which in reality was a tiny child’s bedroom that they hadn’t yet managed to fill, he lay thinking about it. He felt at home. As if time had stood still. And when he closed his eyes and shut out the strange curtains, everything was almost as it had been long ago. And perhaps, in the morning, it would be Elise who would come to wake him.

Eva Magnus sat shivering in a thin nightie. She wanted to go to bed, but couldn’t seem to leave her chair. It was getting harder and harder to do the things she needed to, as if she felt the whole time that it was a wasted effort. She jumped when the phone rang. The clock told her it must be her father, nobody else phoned this late.

“Yes?” She got into a more comfortable position. She had to treasure the talks with her father, and they could be lengthy.

“Eva Marie Magnus?”

“Yes?”

An unknown voice. She’d never heard it before, at least she didn’t think so. Who would ring so late in the evening, if they didn’t even know her?