Karin Fossum - Don't Look Back

They thanked him and paused a moment at the door. "We'll probably be back; I hope you understand."

"Of course. If the puppies come tonight, I'll be home for a few days."

"Can you leave the shop closed?"

"My customers call me at home if there's something they want."

Hera gave a heavy sigh and whined plaintively, lying there on her Oriental rug. Skarre gave her a long look and then reluctantly followed his boss.

"Maybe we'll get to see them if we come back," he said. "The pups, I mean."

"No doubt," Johnas said.

"Don't come back," Sejer said. He was thinking about his own dog, Kollberg.

"Do you remember Halvor's helmet? The one he had hanging up in his room?"

They were sitting in the car.

"A whole helmet, black with a red stripe," Sejer said. "I guess we can call it a night now. And I have to take the dog for a walk."

"What do you think, Konrad? Do you have as much passion for your job as Johnas does?"

Sejer looked at him. "Of course. But maybe you don't think it shows?"

He fastened his seatbelt and started the engine. "I find it annoying when people gag themselves, in a show of solidarity for someone they don't even know, because they're convinced that he's an honourable person."

He thought about Halvor and felt a little sad. "Up until the day someone kills for the first time, he's not a murderer. He's just an ordinary person. But afterwards, when the neighbours find out that he actually did commit murder, then he's a murderer for the rest of his life, and from then on he's going to kill people right and left, like some kind of killing machine. Then they hug their children close, and nothing feels safe any more."

Skarre gave him a searching look. "So now Halvor is in the spotlight?"

"Of course. He was her boyfriend. But I wonder why Johnas wanted so badly to protect a boy he has only seen from a distance."

Ragnhild Album bent over the paper and started drawing. The notebook was new, and she had opened it reverently to the first untouched page. A car in a cloud of dust might not, in a sense, be worthy of the task that was going to rob the notebook of its chalk-white purity. The box held six different crayons. Sejer had been out shopping: one box for Ragnhild and one for Raymond. Today she had two pigtails on top of her head, pointing straight up like antennae.

"I like the way you've fixed your hair today," he said.

"With this one," said her mother, tugging on one pigtail, "she can get Operation White Wolf in Narvik, and with the other she gets her grandmother, who lives way up north on Svalbard."

He had to laugh.

"She says it was just a cloud of dust," she went on, anxiously.

"She says it was a car," said Sejer. "It's worth a try."

He put his hand on the child's shoulder. "Close your eyes," he said, "and try to picture it. Then draw it as best you can. And not just any old car. You should draw the car that you and Raymond saw."

"I know," she said impatiently.

He ushered Mrs Album out of the kitchen and into the living room so Ragnhild could draw in peace. Mrs Album went over to the window and looked at the blue mountains in the distance. It was a hazy day, and the landscape might have come straight out of an old romantic painting.

"Annie took care of Ragnhild for me lots of times," she said. "And whenever she baby-sat, she did a good job. That was a few years ago now. They would take the bus to town and stay out all day. Ride the train at the market, ride up and down on the escalator and in the lift at the department store, things that Ragnhild liked doing. She had a natural talent with children. She was different. Thoughtful."

Sejer could hear the little girl taking crayons out of the box in the kitchen. "Do you know her sister too? Sølvi?"

"I know who she is. But she's only her half-sister."

"Oh?"

"Didn't you know that?"

"No, I didn't."

"Everyone knows," she said. "It's not a secret or anything. They're very different. For a while they had difficulties with her father. Sølvi's father, I mean. He lost his visitation rights, and apparently he's never got over it."

"Why?"

"The usual trouble. Drunk and violent. That's the mother's version, of course, but Ada Holland is hard to take, so I'm not sure how much is true."

"But Sølvi is over 21 by now, isn't she? And can do what she wants?"

"It's probably too late. I dare say that things have probably gone sour between them. I've been thinking a lot about Ada," she said. "She didn't get her little girl back, the way I did."

"I'm done!" came a shout from the kitchen.

They got up and went in to have a look. Ragnhild was sitting with her head tilted, not looking especially pleased. A grey cloud filled most of the page, and out of the cloud stuck the front end of a car, with headlights and bumper. The bonnet was long, like on a big American car, the bumper was coloured black. It looked as if it had a big grin with no teeth. The headlights were slanted. Chinese eyes, Sejer thought.

"Did it make a lot of noise when it drove past?"

He leaned over the kitchen table and noticed the sweet smell of her chewing gum.

"It was really noisy."

He stared at the drawing. "Could you make me another drawing? If I ask you to draw the headlights on the car? Just the headlights?"

"But they looked just like this!" She pointed to the drawing. "They were slanted."

He nodded, as if to himself. "What about the colour, Ragnhild?"

"Well, it wasn't really grey. But there wasn't much to choose from here," she said precociously, shaking the box of crayons. "It was a colour that doesn't exist."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean a colour that doesn't have a name."

A string of colours swirled through his mind: sienna, petrol, sepia, anthracite.

"Ragnhild," he said, "can you remember if the car had anything on the roof?"

"Antennae?"

"No, something bigger. Raymond thought there was something big on top of the car."

She stared at him, thinking hard. "Yes!" she exclaimed. "A little boat."

"A boat?"

"A little black one."

"I don't know what I would have done without you," Sejer said, smiling, as he flicked his fingers at her antennae.

"Elise," he said, "you have a nice name."

"No one wants to call me that. Everyone calls me Ragnhild."

"But I can call you Elise."

She blushed shyly, put the lid on the box, closed up the notebook, and slid them over to him.

"No, they're yours to keep."

She opened the box at once and went back to drawing.

"One of the rabbits is lying on its side!"

Raymond was standing in the doorway to his father's room, rocking back and forth uneasily.

"Which one?"

"Caesar. The giant Belgian."

"Then you'll have to kill it."

Raymond got so scared that he farted. But the little release didn't make any difference in the stale air of the room.

"But it's breathing so hard!"

"We're not about to feed rabbits that are dying, Raymond. Put it on the chopping block. The axe is behind the door in the garage. Watch your hands!"

Raymond went outdoors and plodded dejectedly across the courtyard towards the rabbit cages. He stared at Caesar for a moment through the netting. It's lying there just like a baby, he thought, rolled up like a soft little ball. Its eyes were closed. It didn't move when he opened the cage and stuck his hand cautiously inside. It was just as warm as always. He took a firm grip of the skin on the scruff of its neck and lifted it out. It kicked half-heartedly, seeming to have little strength.

Afterwards he slumped in his chair at the kitchen table. In front of him lay an album with pictures of the national soccer team and birds and animals. He was looking very depressed when Sejer arrived. He was wearing nothing but tracksuit bottoms and slippers. His hair stood up from his head, his belly was soft and white. His round eyes looked sulky, and his lips were pursed, as if he were sucking hard on something.