Karin Fossum - Don't Look Back

"Sølvi?" Sejer said.

She nodded and offered him a limp hand, then led the way inside and at once sought refuge next to her mother. Mrs Holland was sitting in the same corner of the sofa as before. Her face had changed somewhat over the course of a few hours; her expression was no longer so painfully desperate, but she looked sombre and strained and a good deal older. The father was not in evidence. Sejer tried to study Sølvi without staring. Her features and figure differed from her sister's; she didn't have Annie's wide cheekbones or firm chin or big grey eyes. Weaker and a little plump, he thought.

After half an hour of conversation it became clear that the two sisters hadn't been especially close. Each had led her own life. Sølvi had a cleaning job at a beauty parlour, had never been interested in other people's children, and had never played sports. Sejer thought that in all likelihood she had been preoccupied with herself, and with her appearance. Even now, as she sat on the sofa with her mother, in the aftermath of her sister's death, she had arranged her body in an attractive pose, out of habit. One knee was drawn up, her head was tilted slightly, her hands were clasped around her leg. Several gaudy rings glittered on her fingers. Her nails were long and red. A soft body without edges, without definition, as if she lacked a skeleton or muscles and was merely skin stretched over a lump of modelling clay, pink in colour. Sølvi was a good deal older than Annie, but her face had a naive look to it. Her mother had assumed a protective posture and patted Sølvi's arm steadily, as if she had to be comforted, or maybe admonished, Sejer couldn't decide which. The sisters were in fact very different. Annie's face in the photo was more mature. She peered at the camera with a wary expression, as if she didn't like being photographed but had nevertheless conceded to authority, perhaps simply out of good manners. Sølvi was posing more or less all of the time. She looks more like her mother, he thought, while Annie takes after her father.

"Do you know whether Annie had made any new friends recently? Met any new people? Did she talk about anything like that?"

"She wasn't interested in meeting people." Sølvi smoothed out her blouse.

"Do you know whether she kept a diary?"

"Oh no, not Annie. She wasn't like that. She was different from other girls, more like a boy. Didn't even use any make-up. Hated getting dressed up. She wore Halvor's medallion, but only because he pestered her about it. In fact, it got in the way when she went running."

Her voice was bright and sweet, as if she were a little girl and not six years older than Annie. Please be nice to me, her voice pleaded gently, you can see how small and fragile I am.

"Do you know her friends?"

"They're younger than me, but I know who they are."

She played with her rings and hesitated for a moment, as if she was trying to make sense of this new situation she had found herself in.

"Who do you think knew her best?"

"She spent time with Anette, but only when they had something specific to do. Not just to talk, I don't think."

"You live a little out of the way here," he said. "Do you think she would ever hitchhike?"

"Never. Neither would I," she said. "But we often can catch a ride when we walk along the road. We know just about everybody."

Just about, he thought.

"Do you think she seemed unhappy about anything?"

"Not unhappy. But she wasn't exactly jumping with joy either. She wasn't interested in much. I mean, girls' things. Just school and running."

"And Halvor, perhaps?"

"I'm not really sure. She seemed a little indifferent about Halvor too. Couldn't ever make up her mind."

Sejer saw an image in his mind's eye of a girl turned slightly away with a sceptical look on her face, a girl who did as she pleased, who went her own way, and who had kept all of them at a distance. Why?

"Your mother says she used to be livelier," he said. "Do you agree?"

"Oh yes, she used to be more talkative."

Sejer cleared his throat. "This change," he said, "did it happen suddenly, do you think? Or did it happen gradually, over a long period of time?"

"No," the two of them glanced at each other. "We're not quite sure. She just became different."

"Can you say anything about when it happened, Sølvi?"

She shrugged. "Last year sometime. She broke up with Halvor and right after that she stopped playing handball. Plus she was growing so tall. She grew out of all her clothes and got so quiet."

"Do you mean angry or sullen?"

"No. Just quiet. Disappointed, in a way."

Disappointed.

Sejer nodded. He looked at Sølvi. Her stretch pants were dazzling, the colour of lilacs from his childhood.

"Do you know whether Annie and Halvor had a sexual relationship?"

She turned bright red. "I'm not sure. You'll have to ask Halvor."

"I will."

"The sister," Sejer said, when they were back in the car, "is the kind of girl who often ends up a victim. Of a man with bad intentions, I mean. She's so preoccupied with herself and her appearance that she wouldn't notice the danger signals. Sølvi. Not Annie. Annie was reserved and sporty. Didn't care about making an impression on anyone. She didn't hitchhike and wasn't interested in meeting new people. If she got into someone's car, it would have been somebody she knew."

Skarre looked at him. 'That's what we keep saying."

"I know."

"You have a daughter who's been through puberty," he said inquisitively. "So what was it like?"

"Oh," Sejer said, looking out the window. "It was mostly Elise who handled that type of thing. But I do remember it. Puberty is a really rough time. She was a sunbeam until she turned 13, then she began to snarl. She snarled until she was 14, then she began to bark. And then it wore off."

It wore off, and he remembered when she turned 15 and became a young woman, and he didn't know how to talk to her. It must have been like that for Holland too. When your child is no longer a child, and you have to find a new language. Difficult.

"So it took a year or two? Before it was over?"

"Yes," he said thoughtfully, "I suppose it did."

"You seem to be focusing on this change in her."

"Something must have happened. I have to find out what it was. Who she was, who killed her and why. It's time we paid a visit to Halvor Muntz. No doubt he's been waiting for us. How do you think he feels?"

"No idea. Can I smoke in the car?"

"No. By the way, your hair is looking a little shaggy, don't you think?"

"I guess so, now that you mention it. Here, have a mint."

They each stared out at the road. Skarre fiddled with a lock of hair at the back of his neck and stretched it out full-length. When he let go, it curled up as swiftly as a worm on a hotplate.

She thought there was something familiar about him. That's why she'd scooted her chair closer and stuck her wrinkled face all the way up to the television. The light of the screen fell on her so that he could see the whiskers on her chin which were still growing. They should have been shaved off, he thought, but he wasn't sure how to mention it to her.

"It's Johann Olav Koss!" she shrieked. "He's drinking milk."

"Hmm."

"Good heavens, how handsome that boy is. I wonder if he knows it? He's just like a sculpture, he really is. A living sculpture!"

Koss wiped off his milk moustache and smiled with white teeth.

"Oh, just look at the teeth that boy has! Teeth as white as chalk! It's because he drinks milk. You should too, you should drink more milk. But he probably had a school dentist. We didn't."

She tucked the tartan blanket around her lap. "We couldn't afford to have our teeth fixed, just had to get them pulled out as they rotted away, one by one, but today all of you have school dentists and milk and vitamins and healthy diets and toothpaste and fluoride, and all manner of things."