Karin Fossum - Bad Intentions

‘I’m sorry,’ Axel said, ‘but I’ve got an infected wisdom tooth, so I’m not quite myself. Ingerid, dear. You’ve got to explain what all this is about because I don’t understand.’

Ingerid Moreno continued to stare at him. She might attack me at any time, Axel thought, she has lost Jon, she has nothing more to lose. She might claw out my eyes and people would understand. Poor Ingerid, they would say, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’s mad with grief.

‘I’ve read his diary,’ she said. ‘He wrote in it every single day and it’s about you three. He writes that he has a guilty conscience, that the three of you did something dreadful, and if that was what killed him, then I have to know what it was!’

‘The three of us did something?’ he frowned.

He breathed with forced calm. But the rest of him was ready to strike. What do I do if we’ve been found out? he thought. I’ll wring her neck. No, of course I won’t. Damn you, Jon, for putting your guilty conscience on paper for everyone to see.

‘He writes that we did something together?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The diary makes it quite clear. I didn’t bring it with me, Axel, but there’s no doubt. I knew Jon. He speaks as if a great sin was committed.’

‘A great sin? And he’s saying that Reilly and I were involved?’

He gave her a look of compassion, as you would look at an errant child. He was also trying to ignore the infernal pain from the wisdom tooth, which constantly threatened to knock him off balance.

‘He doesn’t say that in so many words,’ she said, ‘but he was only ever with you. He had no other friends.’

‘He says we’ve done something dreadful, but he doesn’t say what?’ Axel whispered.

Ingerid bit her lip. She was finding it hard to sit still, she ached all over.

Axel had never seen her so agitated. Yet simultaneously he experienced a relief so tremendous that the agony from his tooth faded.

‘Jon was ill,’ he said softly.

His voice took on a comforting tone which made her listen.

‘Do you hear, Ingerid? He was ill.’

Ingerid broke free from his hypnotic voice and turned sharp again. ‘That diary was written in despair, not in madness. Don’t underestimate me,’ she snarled. ‘Don’t underestimate me because I’m a woman. Because I’m grieving. Because I’m older than you. Don’t you dare do that!’

‘You knew Jon,’ Axel said calmly. ‘You know what kind of conscience he had. He fretted about the slightest thing. Jon was a sensitive boy, his nerves forever fraying. I simply cannot imagine what could have tormented him to such an extent that he could not go on. There is nothing between us that can explain what happened. Perhaps he’s referring to some trivial incident, something Reilly and I have long since forgotten, but which Jon brooded over. Perhaps it grew in magnitude and overwhelmed him. I’m so very sorry, Ingerid, but I don’t understand a word of this.’

Ingerid Moreno was close to tears. She looked at Axel’s face like a beggar. She had been so sure he had the answer.

‘Please remember one thing,’ Axel continued. ‘Some people have a tendency to blow their sins and faults completely out of proportion. Tiny errors of judgement turn into monsters which consume them. That’s probably what Jon did. It’s called paranoia.’

Ingerid fought her tears. Axel’s composure was beginning to make her have doubts.

‘But there’s something there,’ she stuttered. ‘Page after page about remorse. Page after page of self-loathing. I was so sure you would be able to help me. I’ll go to Reilly now, I’ll ask him.’

Axel gave her a compassionate look. ‘I think you should. Do what you have to, but I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. Jon didn’t do much wrong, I can assure you of that. Jon was sensitive and decent and upright. And though I know how hard it must be, you may have to accept that he could have been delusional.’

Ingerid got up and went to the door. ‘Jon was nothing of the sort,’ she said, ‘I would have known about it. His doctor would have known. I’ll unravel this somehow and if you’re hiding something, I’ll never forgive you!’

She started screaming again. She lost control, not that it was worth anything without Jon.

‘I’ve known you since you were a little boy,’ she shouted, ‘and I know your mother. I’ve put plasters on your knees, made you toast and orange squash. You’ve come to my house for years and I’ve always thought well of you. You were a brat, but you were Jon’s friend. And don’t you dare deceive me now, I won’t tolerate it!’

She slammed the door as she left. Axel grabbed his mobile and phoned Reilly.

‘Are you awake?’ he asked. ‘Are you lucid? Ingerid Moreno will be with you in ten minutes.’

Yoo Van Chau was a small woman with round childlike cheeks. When she saw Sejer, she spun around and buried her face in her hands. Some coats hung on one wall and she disappeared between a jacket and an overcoat. Sejer noticed two things. She had black silky hair and wore tiny embroidered slippers on her feet.

Having hidden behind the clothes for a while, she reappeared with an apologetic smile. He followed her into the living room and spotted a photo of Kim Van Chau straight away. It stood on a tall chest of drawers. A candle burned next to it. Kim was a handsome boy and he could not stop himself from thinking of the body they had dragged out of the water. It was not handsome, but Yoo Van Chau did not know that.

She gestured towards a sofa. It was red with golden trim. She sunk into a chair. Sejer could not take his eyes off the embroidered slippers. He thought he could make out a motif of fire-breathing dragons.

‘I can make tea,’ Yoo Van Chau said.

‘Please don’t trouble yourself,’ Sejer said.

Her hands settled in her lap and a stream of words poured out of her. She spoke good Norwegian with a charming accent, and her voice was that of a little girl.

‘They told me he was found close to the shore,’ she said. ‘That he’s been lying there a long time. It’s nine months now since he went missing. So I’m happy in a way. Because I had given up. I thought that all was lost and that my hands would be empty for ever.’

‘Do you have any other children?’ Sejer asked, hoping she would say yes. That any second now a teenage daughter would appear from one of the rooms and put her arms around her mother’s neck. Or a small child might crawl up into her lap. She seemed young.

‘Kim’s my only one,’ she explained. ‘We never had any more children, my husband died when he was only thirty-two. I couldn’t support us on my own. Kim was only eight years old when we moved to Norway. We come from Yen Bai. We decided on Norway because we have family here and they said it was a fine country.’

‘And what do you think?’ Sejer asked. ‘Is Norway a fine country?’

‘You want for nothing,’ she said simply.

Sejer did not reply.

‘Kim didn’t have many friends,’ she went on. ‘And whenever he found someone to spend time with, they wanted to go out drinking. That’s what he said to me: if I want to hang out with them, I have to go drinking.’

She stopped her flow of words.

Sejer had listened in silence. To come all this way, he thought, from beautiful Vietnam, to the dark Norwegian winter with ice and snow and lose everything you have. And yet sit there calmly talking with your hands in your lap. Tiny porcelain hands. And fire-breathing dragons on your feet.

‘Isn’t it odd that some people end up without friends?’ she said. ‘After all, he wanted for nothing. He did well at school and you can see from the photo that he was good-looking, so it’s hard for me to understand. It’s very hard indeed.’