Karin Fossum - Don't Look Back

Something had locked Annie up tighter than a sealed drum.

The sentence was so delicately formulated that he realised he believed it. Or was it simply that he wanted to believe it? In any case… there was the school bag, hidden. The strong feeling that Halvor was keeping something concealed. Sejer stared at the pavement ahead of him and arranged several ideas in his mind. Annie liked to baby-sit for other people's children. The boy she preferred to take care of was particularly difficult, and he had died. She would never have had children of her own, and she didn't have long to live. She had a boyfriend at whom she occasionally snapped; she broke off with him and then took him back. As if she didn't really know what she wanted. He could see no clear connections between this set of facts.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and headed across the car park, got into his car and carefully manoeuvred it out to the street. Then he drove to the next county, the community where Halvor had spent his childhood, or rather non-existent childhood. Back then the community police department was in an old villa, but now he found it located in a new shopping centre, squeezed in between a Rimi supermarket and the Inland Revenue office. He waited a short time in the reception area and was lost in thought when the community officer came into the room. A pale, freckled hand was extended. The man was in his late 40s, thin, with little pigmentation on his skin and scalp and barely concealed curiosity in his blue-green eyes. And entirely obliging. It wasn't every day that they were visited by a chief inspector from the city. Most of the time it felt as though the rest of the world had forgotten them.

"It's good of you to take the time," Sejer said, following the community officer down the corridor.

"You mentioned a homicide. Annie Holland?"

Sejer nodded.

"I've been following the case in the papers. And as you're here, I assume that you have someone in the spotlight whom you think I might know?"

He pointed to a chair.

"Well, yes, in a way. We do have someone in custody. He's just a boy, but what we found at his house gave us no choice but to arrest him."

"And you would have preferred to have a choice?"

"I don't think he did it." Sejer gave a little smile at his own words.

"I see. That happens sometimes."

The community officer's voice held no hint of irony. He folded his pale pink hands and waited.

"In December 1992 you had a suicide here in your district. Two brothers were subsequently sent to the Bjerkeli Children's Home, and the mother ended up in the psychiatric ward of the Central Hospital. I'm looking for information on Halvor Muntz, born 1976, the son of Torkel and Lilly Muntz."

The community officer recognised the name, and at once he looked anxious.

"You dealt with the case, didn't you?"

"Yes, unfortunately, I did. Along with a younger officer. Halvor, the older boy, called me at home. It happened at night. I remember the date, December 13, because my daughter had the role of Lucia at the school celebration that day. I didn't want to go out there alone, so I took along a new recruit. When it came to Halvor's family, we never knew what we might find. We drove out to the house and found the mother on the sofa in the living room, huddled under a quilt, and the two boys upstairs. Halvor didn't say a word. Next to him in bed was his little brother, who wouldn't even open his eyes. There was blood everywhere. We checked the boys, saw that they were still alive, and breathed a sigh of relief. Then we started searching. The father was lying inside an old, rotting sleeping bag. Half of his head was blown away."

He stopped, and Sejer could almost see the images like shadows in the community officer's pupils as they tumbled out.

"It wasn't easy to get anything out of the boys. They clung to each other and refused to say a word. But after a lot of coaxing, Halvor told us that his father had been drinking heavily since morning and had worked himself up into a terrible rage. He was ranting incoherently and had started smashing up the house. The boys had spent most of the day outside, but when night fell, they had to come in because it was cold. Halvor woke up to find his father bending over his bed with a bread knife in his hand. He stabbed Halvor once and then seemed to come to his senses. He rushed out and Halvor heard the door slam, and then they heard him struggling with the door to the shed and slamming it shut. They had one of those old-fashioned woodsheds behind the house. After a little while they heard a shot. Halvor didn't dare go out to investigate; he tiptoed down to the living room and called me. But he guessed what had happened. Told us he was afraid that something was wrong with his father. The Child Welfare Service had been trying to take custody of those kids for years, but Halvor had always refused. After that night, he didn't object."

"How did he take it?"

The community officer got up and paced the room. He seemed strained and uneasy. Sejer had no intention of filling the silence.

"It was hard to tell what he was feeling. Halvor was a very closed sort of child. But to be honest, it definitely wasn't despair. It was more a sort of determination, maybe because he could finally start a new life. His father's death was a turning point. It must have been a relief. The boys had lived in constant fear, and they never had the things they needed."

The community officer fell silent and stood with his back turned, waiting for Sejer's questions. He was the chief inspector, after all, who had come to him for assistance. But Sejer remained motionless. Finally he turned around.

"It wasn't until later that we started to think about things." He went back to his chair. "The father was lying inside a sleeping bag. He had taken off his jacket and boots, had even rolled up his sweater and stuck it under his head. I mean, he had really settled in for the night. Not…" he said, taking a breath, "not to die. So it occurred to us afterwards that someone might have helped him on his way to eternity."

Sejer shut his eyes. He rubbed hard at a spot on one eyebrow and felt a scrap of dried skin fall.

"You mean Halvor?"

"Yes," the community officer said sombrely, "I mean Halvor. Halvor could have followed him out, watched him fall asleep, stuck the shotgun inside the sleeping bag, into his father's hands, and pulled the trigger."

The information made Sejer freeze.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing."

The community officer threw out his hands in a helpless gesture. "We didn't do anything at all. We didn't find anything that could connect him to it, nothing concrete. The wound was typical for a suicide. A 16 calibre, fired at close range, with the entrance wound under the chin and the exit wound at the top of the skull. No other fingerprints on the shotgun. No suspicious footprints outside the shed. Unlike you, we had a choice. But you might call it something else, I suppose. Breach of duty or a serious misjudgement?"

"I could probably think of even worse things." Sejer smiled. "If I was so inclined. But you talked to him?"

"We brought them in for questioning, but we didn't get anywhere. The younger brother was only about six; he didn't know a thing and couldn't confirm or deny the timing. The mother was full of Valium, and none of the neighbours heard the shot. Their house was quite isolated, a hideous place that had originally been a grocer's shop. A brick building with steep stone staircase and two huge windows on either side of the door."

He wiped his nose, a nervous gesture.

"But fortunately there were a number of contraindications."

"Such as?"

"If Halvor was the one who fired the shot, he would have had to lie down next to his father, with the shotgun pressed to his chest and the muzzle up under his chin. Would a 15-year-old be able to think that clearly, with his cheek sliced open?"