Karin Fossum: Bad Intentions

Reilly felt like giving up right there and then. They would want to know everything. They would talk to Jon’s mother and his friends, the staff at the hospital and his colleagues at Siba Computers, where he had worked over the past year, and everyone would add a piece to the puzzle. All the police would have to do was put them together.

I need to get high, he thought.

‘It started last winter,’ Axel said.

He had decided to tell the truth as far as possible. Other people would remember that was when it had started. It was a question of being one step ahead.

‘He was having trouble sleeping. It must have been around Christmas. He lost weight. He was off sick from work. In spring it got worse; eventually he couldn’t manage even the simplest things and he spent the whole summer in bed. We went to visit him a couple of times, but he turned his face to the wall and wouldn’t talk to us. He was admitted four weeks ago. We’ve been so worried,’ Axel said, ‘and we don’t know what’s happened, but we fear the worst.’

‘Let’s not meet trouble halfway,’ Sejer said.

‘It usually works out all right,’ Skarre said.

Four hours later they found the body of Jon Moreno.

The rubber dinghy was pulled ashore and the search in the forest was called off. The Alsatian padded over the grass, alert, its ears pricked up. Axel and Reilly went down to the lake to see Jon. Axel with the solemnity befitting a man in mourning, Reilly with downcast eyes and trembling hands.

Jon was lying on a stretcher. Never before had he looked so small, so defenceless. Reilly turned away and took a few steps towards the forest. Poor Jon. Consumed with guilt and shame. The next instant he felt bitter because he would have to bear this torment until the day he died. And even worse, it dawned on him, Ingerid Moreno would ask them to be pall-bearers. From now on they would have to pretend. They would have to fake it for the rest of their lives, weigh up every single word, calculate every gesture, every glance.

He stopped and looked back. It was not easy to see that it was Jon lying on the stretcher, it was just a skinny carcass with the face of a stranger. How much death takes from us, he pondered – warmth, colour and vitality. Now there is only wet, grey skin over sharp bones. Axel went over to the stretcher. He fell to his knees and mumbled a few words which the wind carried in Reilly’s direction.

‘Sorry, Jon, for not taking better care of you.’

They were told to come to the police station.

Axel closed the windows in the cabin and Reilly cleared up the rooms. All the way back to town he sat with the cake tin on his lap as he fretted about what the police would do to them. Axel insisted it would be a mere formality. Everything would be over and done with in a matter of minutes.

‘What more can we say apart from what we’ve already told them?’ he said. ‘Jon went to bed around midnight and that was the last we saw of him. We’ve just simplified events. They can’t pin anything on us. What evidence is there?’

Reilly stroked the kitten. They did not talk much the rest of the way because ultimately no words could express what had happened.

Three hours later they parked outside the police station. They had to wait in reception. Again Reilly voiced his concerns about everything that could go wrong.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Axel reassured him. ‘It’s a straightforward story. It’s impossible to screw it up.’

Reilly became aware of two people crossing the room. One of them seemed familiar. He gripped Axel’s arm.

‘It’s Ingerid,’ he whispered.

Reilly had known that this was something they would have to get through, but it was happening sooner than he had imagined, and he hadn’t had time to prepare himself. Ingerid Moreno was accompanied by a female police officer and now she spotted them. She collapsed and started sobbing. Axel shot up from his seat.

‘We didn’t know he was in such a bad way,’ he said. ‘If we had known, we would have taken better care. And if the hospital had known about his intentions, they would not have given him permission to leave for the weekend. Ingerid. Listen to me. None of us could have foreseen this.’

Ingerid Moreno nodded and wiped away her tears. Reilly remained in his seat without saying anything. Ingerid did not appear to see him. She was caught in the light which always surrounded Axel. If Axel could act so convincingly, with such apparent sincerity, how often had he himself been deceived? What was the basis of their friendship? Was it all just one big lie, a star performance?

‘You must come and visit me some time,’ Ingerid pleaded. ‘We need to talk. Please.’

‘We’ll come,’ Axel said. ‘There is so much we want to tell you. All the things we shared with Jon. Which you don’t know about.’

‘Tell me he was a good boy,’ Ingerid begged. ‘Tell me that he was a good person.’

‘Yes,’ Axel Frimann said. ‘Jon was a good person.’

‘It’s possible that Jon Moreno took his own life,’ Sejer said.

Axel and Reilly looked at him in amazement. His words were so unexpected that they gawped. Was he considering other options? Why would he do that? Was it an automatic response? Perhaps he instinctively thought they were dishonest because in the course of his work he was unaccustomed to meeting honest people? It struck them that this man never made assumptions, not even about an obvious suicide. And if he decided Jon’s death had been a suicide, he would still want to know why it had happened and if it could have been prevented. If Jon had tried to kill himself before, if there had been warning signs, if they had ever discussed the subject of death and what, if anything, Jon had expressed. Anxiety, relief, longing. If he was taking something in addition to his prescribed medication, if he had said anything during the evening which had made them wonder.

‘Think back,’ he said. ‘Go through everything that happened. What about the drive there in the car: did something happen on the way, did you stop anywhere?’

They had not expected such attention to detail. Calmly and methodically Sejer worked through the events of the past two days and Skarre noted down everything that was said.

‘In cases such as this,’ Sejer went on, ‘we follow a procedure. It consists of a series of questions. We will come back to you when we have more information such as the autopsy report, and after other friends and relatives have been interviewed.’

Skarre had pushed his chair towards the wall. He exuded a boyish enthusiasm as though these routines had not yet started to affect or bore him.

‘Let’s talk about last night,’ Sejer said. ‘His final hours. Was he in a particular mood or had anything about him changed?’

‘It was a quiet evening,’ Axel said. ‘We just discussed stuff as friends do.’

‘Such as?’

‘You want to know what we talked about?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘But why?’

‘It’s one of the questions we need to ask.’

Axel Frimann raised an eyebrow.

‘We talked about films,’ he said. ‘We go to the cinema a lot and we have strong views about what we see.’

‘Are you interested in acting?’

‘I’m fascinated by it,’ Axel admitted. ‘All the roles we need to play. If we’re good, we’ll go far.’

‘Are you good?’ Sejer wanted to know.

Axel smiled a patronising smile.

‘I do all right,’ he said.

Skarre’s pen raced across the pad. From time to time he looked up, alert.

‘What about Jon?’ Sejer asked. ‘Could he play a role? Was he capable of acting?’

Axel hesitated.

‘Jon was quite helpless,’ he said. ‘What can I say? He was at the mercy of reality. No shield. So I suppose the answer is no.’