Karin Fossum - Calling Out For You aka The Indian Bride

She got out of bed and dressed. Her mum was gone to Switzerland for a load of chocolate. She took two Paralgin painkillers and washed them down with water. Put on her coat and found the bus timetable in the kitchen drawer. Then she went down the road to wait. The bus was practically empty, just her and one old man. She had a knife in her pocket. A vegetable knife with a serrated edge. When her mum chopped carrots with it they ended up with tiny, fine grooves. She curled up on her seat and felt the knife handle. Her own existence was no longer about college, job, husband and children, or her own salon with its very own smell of hairspray and shampoo. It was a question of her peace of mind. Only Jacob could give her that; dead or alive was irrelevant, she had to have peace of mind!

An hour later Skarre's car rolled quietly down Nedre Storgate. He was not thinking of what was going on in the street, his thoughts were far away. He parked alongside the kerb and pulled the handbrake. Sat there deep in thought. His mobile phone played the first few notes of Beethoven's Fifth and it startled him. It was Sejer. After the call, Skarre sat in the car thinking. Sejer had asked him a strange question, in that quaint, bashful manner of his when the subject was women. Imagine you know a woman, you visit her regularly. You have a relationship which is not about love, but about altogether different things.

Sex, Jacob had suggested.

Precisely. She's married to someone else and you're keeping the relationship secret. You come to her house when she's alone. Imagine such a relationship and such a visit.

Happy to, Skarre had grinned.

You know your way around the house, you've been there before. Soon you're on your way to her bedroom. You know that too, the furniture and the wallpaper. Then you make love, as Sejer put it.

Quite so, Jacob had said.

Afterwards you leave her house and you drive home. Now, my question is – and think carefully – would you remember her bed linen afterwards?

Skarre sat at the steering wheel contemplating this question. Tangled up in different bed linens. He thought of an evening with Hilde after they had been to the cinema to see "Eyes Wide Shut" and the lamp by her bedside with the red shade. The sheets were plum red, the sheet a lighter shade than the duvet cover and the pillow with the white flower. He thought of Lene with the golden hair and her bed with the Manila headboard. The duvet with the daisies. Incredible, he thought, and lifted his head. A shadow slipped round the corner. He sat there staring. Someone in a hurry, a sudden flurry and then gone. As if someone had been there watching him. He shook his head and got out of the car. Walked to the hallway looking for the keys to his flat. Again he heard a sound. He stopped and listened. I'm not afraid of the dark, he told himself, and let himself in. Walked up the stairs. Went to the window to look down at the empty street. Was someone there? He looked in the directory and picked up the telephone. It rang twice before she answered.

"Jacob Skarre," he said. "We spoke the other day. I was with Inspector Sejer. Do you remember me?"

Lillian Sunde said yes, how could you forget such a confrontation?

"I've just got one question," he said. "Do you have a set of sheets which is green and is embroidered with water lilies?"

After a long silence she said: "Is this a joke?"

"You are not answering my question," Skarre said.

"I couldn't tell you that. Not off the top of my head."

"Come on," Skarre said aggressively. "You know perfectly well what sort of bed linen you have. Green. With water lilies-"

He heard a click as she hung up. Her reaction troubled him.

Gøran was sitting on the bunk, eating his breakfast with the tray on his lap. It was going slowly. He had hardly slept. He had never thought that he wouldn't be able to sleep when they finally took him back to the cell after all those hours. His body ached and felt heavy like lead as he lay down, still with his clothes on. It was as though he was swallowed up and sinking into the thin mattress. But his eyes were open. He lay like that for most of the night, almost bodiless. Two wide-open eyes staring at the ceiling. From time to time he heard footsteps outside, a few times the jangling of keys.

He washed the bread down with cold milk. The food swelled up in his mouth. The feeling of being let down by his own body was terrifying. He had always been in total control. His body had always obeyed him. He wanted to scream out loud. Punch his fists through the wall. Inside his well-trained body a surplus was building up and it was threatening to blow him to pieces. He sat still on the bunk looking around, trying to find a point he could direct it at. He could throw the tray at the wall, tear the mattress to shreds. But he stayed on the bunk. Quiet as a mouse. In a kind of motor collapse. He stared at the food again. Watched his hands. They seemed unfamiliar. White and limp. The lock slammed. Two officers came in, time for the next interrogation, they said.

The bottles of Farris mineral water and Coca-Cola were in place, but no Sejer. The officers left without locking the door. He was seized by the crazy notion that he could just go. But they were probably right outside the door. Or were they? He sat in the comfortable chair. While he waited he heard the seven-storey building wake up and come alive. There was a gradually increasing humming around him of doors, footsteps and telephones. After a while he stopped hearing it. He wondered why. No-one came. Gøran waited. He smiled bitterly at the idea that this might be a sort of torture to soften him up. But he was ready now, not dizzy like yesterday. He looked at the clock. Changed position in the chair. Tried thinking of Ulla. She was so far out of reach. He felt really upset at the thought of Einar's Café. All of them sitting there gossiping. He couldn't be there to put them right. What were they thinking? What about his mum? She was most likely sitting in a corner of the kitchen snivelling. His dad was probably in the yard with his back to the windows, angrily keeping himself busy with an axe or a hammer. That was how they lived, he realised, with their backs to each other. Then there was Søren at the workshop. He must have an opinion. Perhaps people popped in to talk to him. As though Søren knew anything. However, they were probably everywhere now, all talking about him at Gunwald's and at Mode's petrol station. He would be out of here soon. Would be walking down the street and see all the faces, each with their own private thoughts. Were there pictures of him in the papers? Was that allowed when he hadn't been convicted? He tried to remember what the law said, but he couldn't. He could ask Friis. Not that it made any difference. Elvestad was a small village. Reverend Berg had baptised and confirmed him. An amusing thought struck him that perhaps the vicar was sitting at his breakfast table even now, praying for him. I ask you, Lord, be with Gøran in his hour of need. The door opened and it made him jump.

"Slept well?"

Sejer towered in the doorway.

"Yes, thank you," Gøran lied.

"That's good. Let's get going then."

Sejer sat down at the table. There was something light and effortless about him although he was a tall man. Long-limbed with broad shoulders and a lined face. It was probably true that he was in good shape, as he claimed. Gøran could see it now. A runner, Gøran thought, someone who runs along the road in the evening, mile after mile at a steady pace. A tough, persistent bastard.

"Is that mutt of yours walking?" Gøran said.

Sejer raised an eyebrow. "Dog," he corrected him. "Is that dog of yours walking. I don't have a mutt. No. He lies in front of the fireplace, limp as a bear skin."

"Aha. Then you'll have to have him put down," Gøran said, callously. "No animal should be reduced to that."