Karin Fossum - Don't Look Back

"How do you make your living now?"

Bjørk stared at Sejer with a gloomy expression. "I'm sure you already know that. I work for a private security company. Run around at night with a dog and a torch. It's okay. Not much action, of course, but I guess I've had my share."

"When was the last time the girls were here?"

He rubbed his forehead, as if he were trying to dredge up the date from the depths of his mind. "Sometime last autumn. Annie's boyfriend was here too."

"So you haven't seen the girls since then?"

"No."

"Did you go out to see her?"

"Several times, and each time Ada called the police, claiming that I was trying to force my way in. That I was standing at the door and making threats. I'd have had problems at work if there was any more trouble, so I had to give up."

"What about Holland?"

"Holland's all right. Actually, I suspect he thinks it's a nasty business, but he's a wimp. Ada has got him by the balls, she really has. He does what he's told, and so they never fight. You've talked to them, I'm sure you've seen the set-up."

He got up suddenly and went over to stand by the window with his back to them, pulling himself up to his full height.

"I don't know what happened to Annie," he said in a low voice. "But I would have understood it better if something had happened to Sølvi. She's so unbelievably gullible."

Sejer wondered why everyone said that. As if the whole thing were a big misunderstanding, and Annie had been killed by mistake.

"Do you own a motorcycle, Bjørk?"

"No, I don't," he said. "I had one when I was younger. Kept it in a friend's garage, but I finally sold it. A Honda 750. I only have the helmet left."

"What kind of helmet?"

"It's hanging in the hallway."

Skarre peered into the hall and caught sight of the helmet, a full helmet, all black, with a smoke-coloured visor.

"A car?"

"I only drive the Peugeot from the security company. I've made an important discovery," he said, looking at them. "I've seen the mother-child phenomenon up close. It's a kind of holy pact that no one can break. It would be more difficult to separate Ada and Sølvi than to pull Siamese twins apart with your bare hands."

The image made Sejer blink.

"I have to be honest with you," he continued. "I hate Ada, and I don't feel like hiding it. And I know what the worst possible thing would be for her. It would be for Sølvi to grow up enough to fully understand what happened, so that sooner or later she would dare to defy Ada and come here. So we could have a father-daughter relationship, what we were always meant to have, and what we're both entitled to. A proper relationship. That would take the wind out of her sails."

He suddenly looked worn out. A tram thundered past outside, its bell clanging, and Sejer stared at the picture of Sølvi again. He tried to imagine his own life taking a different turn. What if Elise had ended up hating him and had moved out, taking Ingrid with her, even winning a court ruling forbidding them from seeing each other? The thought made him dizzy.

"So," he said softly, "Annie Holland was the kind of girl you wish Sølvi had been?"

"Yes, in a way. She's independent and strong. Was," he said, and turned around. "This is goddamned awful. I hope for Eddie's sake that you find the bastard who did it, I really do."

"For Eddie's sake? Not for Ada's?"

"No," he said fervently. "Not for Ada's sake."

"Quite an eloquent man, wasn't he?"

Sejer started the car.

"Do you believe him?" Skarre asked, signalling for him to turn right at Rundingen.

"I don't know. But there was a lot of despair behind that gruff mask of his, and it seemed genuine. I'm sure there are mean and calculating women in the world. And women do have a kind of first claim to their children. It must be bitter to be slapped with something like that, accusations that it won't do any good to deny. Maybe it really does have to be that way," he said as he steered the car away from the tram tracks. "Perhaps it's a biological phenomenon that's supposed to protect the children. A real bond with the mother that is totally unbreakable."

"Jesus!" Skarre listened, shaking his head. "You've got a child – do you really believe what you're saying?"

"No, I'm just thinking out loud. What do you think?"

"I don't have any children!"

"But you have parents, don't you?"

"Yes, I have parents. And I'm afraid that I'm an incurable mama's boy."

"I am too," Sejer said.

Eddie Holland left the accounting offices, said a few words to his secretary, and left. After driving for 20 minutes, he pulled the green Toyota into a large car park. He turned off the engine and sank back against the seat. After a moment, he closed his eyes and stayed like that, quite still, waiting for something that would make him turn around and drive back without completing his mission. Nothing happened.

After a while he opened his eyes and looked around. It was a beautiful place, of course. There was a good-sized building, nestled in the landscape like a large flat rock, surrounded by shimmering, green lawns. He stared at the narrow pathways where the gravestones stood in symmetrical rows. Lush trees with drooping crowns. Solace. Silence. Not a soul, not a sound. He dragged himself reluctantly out of the car, slammed the door hard with the faint hope that someone might hear it and come out of the door to the crematorium to ask him what he wanted. Make it easy for him. But no one came.

He wandered along the paths, reading a few names, but mainly taking note of the dates, as if he were searching for someone who wasn't very old, who might have been only 15, like Annie. He found several. He realised after a while that lots of people had been through this before him, they had merely made it a little further along in the process. They had made a series of decisions, for instance that their son or daughter should be cremated, and what kind of gravestone should be placed over the urn and what kind of plants should be planted. They had brought flowers and music to the funeral and told the minister what their child had been like, so that the sermon would have as personal a ring as possible. His hands were shaking, and he stuffed them in his pockets. He was wearing an old coat with a tattered lining. In his right pocket he felt a button, and it occurred to him that it had been there for years.

The cemetery was quite large and at the far end, down by the road, he caught sight of a man wearing a dark blue nylon coat, walking around among the graves, perhaps someone who worked there. Without thinking, he headed in the man's direction, hoping he was the talkative type. He wasn't feeling very outgoing himself, but maybe the man would stop and say something about the weather. There was always the weather, thought Eddie. He looked up at the sky and saw that it was slightly overcast, mild and with a faint breeze.

"Hello!"

The dark blue coat did stop, after all.

Holland cleared his throat. "Do you work here?"

"Yes." He nodded towards the crematorium. "I'm what you call the superintendent here."

The man gave him a pleasant smile, as if he were not afraid of anything in the world and had seen what there was to see of human inadequacy.

"Been working here for 20 years. It's a beautiful place to spend your days, don't you think?"

He had a casual and friendly manner. Holland nodded.

"Yes, I do. And here I am walking around," he stammered, "thinking about the future and things like that." He laughed nervously. "Sooner or later we all end up in the ground. There's no getting away from it."

He clenched his hands in his pockets, and felt the button.

"You're right about that. Do you have family members here?"

"No, not here. They're buried in the cemetery back home. We don't have a tradition of cremation in my family. I don't really know what it is," he said. "To be cremated, I mean. I suppose there's not much difference when it comes right down to it, but a person has to make up his mind. Not that I'm so old, but I've been thinking that I ought to decide soon whether to be buried or cremated."