Karin Fossum - Bad Intentions

When Axel had left for the second time, Reilly leaned over the edge of the bed and retrieved his bag. He took out the Koran, which was at the bottom, found a box of matches in the drawer of the bedside table and lit the paraffin lamp. He began to read. After a while he started to calm down. The text settled him. His life acquired a sense of direction. The kitten lay snuggled against the wall, purring. The wind took hold, nature surrendered and the door was opened for the third time. Reilly dropped the Koran and fumbled for the revolver.

‘What about the tip of your little finger,’ Axel asked. ‘Would you sacrifice the tip of your little finger for a million?’

Reilly groaned. ‘You’ve got to stop bothering me.’

‘You still don’t have the balls,’ Axel said. ‘And you’re not greedy either. How are you going to manage?’

‘Are you worried about me?’ Reilly asked.

Axel was now halfway across the threshold. Reilly could not see his right hand. Perhaps he was holding the knife. Any moment now he might leap across the room. It would only take him a few seconds.

‘Don’t stay up reading for too long,’ Axel said gruffly. ‘The light is bad. You’ll damage your eyes. My mum told me so.’

‘What else did your mum tell you?’ Reilly asked.

‘To always think the worst of people. Here you are, my best friend, reading the Koran. With your kitten asleep by your side. An image like that is just too good to be true. What do you say, Reilly? Is it true?’

‘Go to bed,’ Reilly growled.

‘Why do you still have all your clothes on when you’re in your sleeping bag?’ Axel wanted to know.

‘Because it’s chilly in here.’

‘Don’t forget your evening prayers. Allah is great, or whatever you say?’

‘Are you scared of the dark?’ Reilly asked. ‘Since you keep running back to my room?’

Axel made no reply. Instead he calmly retired. Reilly heard his footsteps crossing the floor. He heard a door slamming. And a murmur from the woods rose out of the silence at Dead Water.

Sejer suggested to Frank Robert that the two of them might like to share a beer. Frank Robert immediately ran to the kitchen and sat in front of the fridge. Sejer opened a can and poured half its contents into the dog’s bowl before sitting in his chair by the window. He heard the dog slurp beer in the kitchen and remembered that it was rather overweight, especially around its stomach. However, he was unsure whether this was due to the beer or to all the leftovers it got. His train of thought was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Jacob Skarre was standing outside. He was neither flushed nor out of breath.

‘You took the lift,’ Sejer remarked.

‘You live on the thirteenth floor,’ Skarre protested.

He shrugged.

‘It’s late, I know,’ he said. ‘Tell me if it’s a bad time, and I’ll be off at once. I just happened to be in your neck of the woods.’

Sejer beckoned him inside. ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘It’s fine. Come in. We can have a whisky, and you can leave your car here.’

They each settled down with a glass. Skarre took in the view of the gleaming river deep below. A goods train slowly glided into the station. From the thirteenth floor it looked like a Märklin toy train.

‘You’ve got a wonderful view,’ he commented.

‘Yes,’ Sejer said. ‘Every evening I sit here and look down on people.’

‘You’ve never looked down on anyone,’ Skarre said.

He tasted his whisky. It was room temperature.

‘I went to see Ingerid Moreno today,’ Skarre said. ‘She told me about Jon. About what his life had been like. He was born two months premature. When they examined him, they discovered he had only one kidney. When he was five, he developed allergies to grass pollen and a range of foods. When he was nine, he went straight over the handlebars of his bicycle and sustained minor brain damage which resulted in epilepsy. He grew out of that eventually, but he was on medication for years. When he was thirteen, he got cerebrospinal meningitis and very nearly died. And when he was sixteen, he suffered acute appendicitis which led to peritonitis. He underwent surgery at the last minute. Nature was clearly determined to torment him from the start.’

‘What about Frimann?’ Sejer asked. ‘What did you discover about him?’

‘He has distinguished himself his whole life,’ Skarre said. ‘First at school and later in the army. Clever. Popular. Ambitious. When it comes to Philip Reilly, the picture becomes more blurred. Not a shining light at school. Rather introverted and passive. A series of casual jobs which he performs adequately, but not terribly well. He gets high a lot. His current job as a hospital porter is in jeopardy after several incidents of carelessness. And there is something else I’ve noticed, a little oddity, which might have no significance whatsoever. Reilly, Van Chau and Moreno are all only children, and they all grew up completely or partially without a father.’

‘What about the relationship between them?’ Sejer said. ‘How would you describe that?’

‘Jon never asserted himself much, but perhaps he preferred being part of a group,’ Skarre said. ‘And this need led him to Axel and Reilly. Reilly is characterised by this strange passivity which prevents him from ever taking a stand, while Axel assumes the lead in every situation. And because he is strong and charismatic, the others followed him. Anywhere, possibly. But we’ve no chance of getting them convicted. We don’t even know what happened and we don’t have enough evidence to charge them. The only thing that could help us would be a confession.’

He drank his room-temperature whisky.

‘And we can forget about that.’

Afterwards they took the dog for a walk.

They crossed the car park in front of Sejer’s block of flats and turned on to a path. Frank Robert was let off his leash. He had a flashing blue light attached to his collar so he was clearly visible even when he darted in between the trees. Skarre’s eyes followed the blue light.

‘Dogs can sniff out drugs,’ Skarre said, ‘and explosives. And corpses. Some dogs can detect rot in timber. Scientists believe they might even be able to sniff out cancer. Imagine if we could teach them to detect guilt. Then we could take a dog to Frimann and Reilly and it would smell their guilt straight away.’ He stopped to light a cigarette. ‘But we can’t be sure that they meant to commit a crime. Incidentally, some people claim that criminality can be measured,’ he said.

‘And how is that done?’ Sejer asked.

‘An American professor has designed a scale from one to twenty-two. He gives the example of a woman who shot and killed her husband because he was having an affair. She caught him with someone else and acted on impulse. She scored only two points on the scale.’

‘We don’t own each other,’ Sejer remarked. ‘She got off lightly.’

‘And then there’s Ted Bundy,’ Skarre continued. ‘He scores seventeen points.’

‘Who scores twenty-two?’ Sejer asked.

‘Many top the scale,’ Skarre said. ‘John Edward Robinson, Dennis Rader. Kemper, Holmes and Sells. And John Wayne Gacy. And I am getting to the point. I’m making a point, I promise. Just because you’re to blame for something, doesn’t mean that you accept that blame. Or that you feel guilty. Gacy killed more than thirty people, but he said it was like squashing cockroaches. When he was finally caught, he went on about his childhood and how awful it had been. He spoke the following classic line when he was put in prison: “I’m the real victim here.”’

Skarre took a puff of his cigarette. ‘If we’re lucky we might nail Axel Frimann. And I have a strong feeling he’ll say the same thing.’