Karin Fossum - Calling Out For You aka The Indian Bride

"Einar Sunde?"

"Yes." He bit his lip. "I recognised both him and his car. A green Ford Sierra."

"But it was late. Must have been almost dark."

"I saw it clearly. I'm certain of it. Unfortunately, I suppose I should say."

"How good is your eyesight?" Sejer indicated the thick lenses in the spectacles.

"It's fine when I'm wearing these."

Sejer forced himself to be patient. "It would have been smarter if you'd told us this straightaway."

Gunwald wiped his brow.

"No-one must know that I told you this," he whispered.

"I can't promise that," Sejer said. "I understand your anxiety. However, like it or not, you're an important witness."

"You get frowned on here if you say anything. Look at poor Linda Carling. No-one talks to her now."

"If either Gøran or Einar or both of them have anything to do with this, don't you think people in this community would want them to get their just deserts?"

"Certainly. If it were them."

Sejer inhaled deeply and breathed slowly out. "We want to think the best of people we know. But we all know someone."

Gunwald nodded heavily. "So are you going over to bring him in?"

"He will have to give us a satisfactory explanation, won't he?"

"Jomann will have a heart attack. He buys his paper from Einar."

Skarre took a long look at Gunwald. "How old are you?" he asked gently.

"How old am I? I'm sixty-five."

"Will you be retiring soon?"

"Maybe," he said wearily. "But how else will I pass the time? It's just him and me." He pointed at the fat dog in the corner.

"The days will pass anyway," Sejer said. "I appreciate what you've told us. Even if you did take your time." He bowed politely. "You'll be hearing from us."

Gunwald followed them with his eyes. He heard the car start and turn right in the direction of the café. Then he shuffled over to the dog.

"Perhaps it is time to call it a day," he said, stroking the dog's dark head. "Then we could have a lie-in every morning. And go for walks several times a day. You might lose some weight."

He stared out of the window. Imagined Einar's face. A few more seconds before the shit hit the fan.

He walked to the front door and double-locked it. It was very quiet. It had actually been quite easy.

"Come on," he said to the dog. "Come on, time we went home."

"Einar Emil Sunde?"

Einar squeezed a cloth between his hands.

"Yes?"

Two women were sitting there each with their coffee. They were staring openly. He had to support himself on the counter. Lillian was gone. Half the furniture was gone with her. The acoustics in the rooms were unfamiliar. Now the police stomping into the café. What would people say? Anger and fear came and went in the long face.

"You need to close up and come with us. There's something we want to talk to you about."

"And what might that be?" he said nervously. His voice failed him. Reduced to a mere squeak.

They drove in silence. The humiliation of having to ask the two women to leave had made him sweat.

"I'll come straight to the point," Sejer said.

They were sitting in his office.

"In the late evening of September 1st you were seen at Norevann. At the tip of the point. You were seen there holding a suitcase. You threw the suitcase into the lake and drove away in your green estate car. We retrieved the suitcase. It belonged to the deceased Poona Bai, who was murdered at Hvitemoen on August 20th."

Einar's head sank helplessly.

"We also know that she was with you, at your café. So the question, Sunde, is: why were you in possession of Poona's suitcase?"

Einar underwent a terrible transformation. In a few minutes he was stripped bare, robbed of all dignity. It was not a pretty sight.

"I can explain it all," he whispered.

"I hope you can," Sejer said.

"That evening a woman came into my café. I already told you that." He hawked and coughed.

"Yes?"

"Just to make it absolutely clear… What I'm telling you now is the truth. I should have said it before. That's my only crime!"

"I'm waiting," Sejer said.

"She sat for a while with her tea. In the corner by the jukebox. I didn't see her clearly and besides, I was busy with other things. But I did hear her cough a few times. There was no-one else in the café then. Just the two of us."

Sejer nodded.

"Suddenly I heard a chair scraping and footsteps across the floor. Shortly afterwards the door slammed. I was emptying the dishwasher so it took a while before I went to the table to fetch the empty cup." He looked up. His eyes were flickering. "Then I saw the suitcase."

"She left it behind?"

"Yes. But the woman was gone. I stood for a while staring at it, thinking it seemed a bit odd, that you would forget something that big. She was really very upset. So I thought that perhaps she'd just gone outside to get some fresh air. That she'd be back in no time. She wasn't. So I took it and put it in the back room. There it stayed. Should I take it home with me or what? I assumed she would come back for it. It was at the café overnight. Then I put it in the cold storage room – it took up so much space."

"Go on," Sejer said.

"I remember hearing about the murder on the radio the next day, but I didn't hear all of it. Such as the woman being foreign. It took a long time before someone stopped by and told me that the victim might be Pakistani. Or Turkish. Eventually I thought it could be her. And her suitcase was in the cold storage room. I realised the seriousness, given that she'd actually been in my café and we'd been alone. You could say that's when I started feeling nervous. Besides, I couldn't be sure it was her. But she hadn't come back asking for her suitcase. So I was worried. And the thing is that as time passed it got worse. Finally I knew it all. That she was Jomann's wife whom he'd met in India. And here I was with all her belongings! I thought, well, they'll catch the murderer anyway, with or without the suitcase. It wasn't going to be crucial to that investigation. So I decided to get rid of it. Who saw me?" he burst out.

Sejer tried to digest the story which he experienced as irritatingly plausible. For a long time he scrutinised Sunde's flushed face.

"Someone who wishes to remain anonymous."

"But it must be someone who knows me! I don't understand. It was quite dark. I didn't see a soul down there."

"Sunde," Sejer said, leaning forward, "I hope you realise the seriousness of this. If your story turns out to be true, you have withheld vital information in a murder investigation."

"If it's true?" Einar spat at him. "It's obviously true!"

"It's not obvious to us."

"Bloody wonderful! Now you know why I didn't call! I knew it would end up like this. You throw yourselves at every scrap you can get, just like I knew you would."

He spun round on his chair and turned his back on Sejer.

"Were you in touch with Gøran Seter during the day or the evening of the 20th?"

"We don't socialise. I'm nearly twice his age."

"But you shared something."

Bitterly Einar understood that he was referring to Lillian. "Not as far as I know," he said. "I've told you the truth. That's how it happened. I recognise now how stupid I've been, but I just didn't want to get involved."

"That's too late now," Sejer said. "You're very much involved. If you'd called straightaway we could have eliminated you a long time ago. As it is, we have now to look into a number of things. Such as your car and your house."

"No, damn it, no!" he screamed.

"Damn it, yes, Sunde. And in the meantime you'll wait here."

"You don't mean overnight?"

"As long as it takes."

"Hell no. I have kids and everything!"

"Then you'll have to tell them what you've just told me. The difference is that they'll forgive you. I won't."