Karin Fossum - Don't Look Back

He sat in his room and waited, his heart pounding in his throat and the curtains open so he could see the car when it pulled into the courtyard. It took exactly 30 minutes before the technician appeared in a white Kadett Combi with the Ra Data logo on the door. A surprisingly young man got out of the car and glanced uncertainly at the house.

Halvor ran to open the door. The systems specialist turned out to be a nice guy, plump as a dumpling, with deep dimples. Halvor thanked him for taking the trouble. Together they went to his room.

The technician opened his briefcase and took out a stack of charts. "Is it a numerical or alphabet password?" he asked.

Halvor turned bright red.

"Can't you even remember that much?" he asked in surprise.

"I've used so many different ones," Halvor muttered. "I change them regularly."

"Which file is it?"

"That one."

"'Annie'?"

He didn't ask any more questions. A certain etiquette went with the job, after all, and he had big ambitions. Halvor went over to the window and stood there, his cheeks burning with a mixture of shame and nervousness, and his heart was hammering so hard that it might have been a drumroll. Behind him he heard the keys clacking rapidly, like distant castanets. Otherwise there wasn't a sound, just the drumroll and the castanets. After what seemed like an eternity, the technician got up from the chair.

"OK, man, there it is!"

Halvor slowly turned around and stared at the screen. He took the invoice that was handed to him for signature.

"What? 750 kroner?" he gasped.

"Per hour and any fraction thereof," said the young man with a smile.

His hands trembling, Halvor signed the dotted line at the bottom of the page and asked to have the bill posted to him.

"It was a numeric password," said the expert, smiling again. "One seven one one nine four. Date and year, right?"

His dimples got even deeper. "But obviously not your birth-date. In that case you wouldn't be more than eight months old!"

Halvor escorted him out and thanked him, then ran back and sat down in front of the monitor. A new command had appeared on the screen: "Please proceed".

He had to press his hand to his heart because it was beating so hard. The words scrolled into view and he started reading. He had to lean on the desk and blink several times as he scrolled through the document. Something had happened, Annie had written it down, and finally he had found it. He read with his eyes wide, and a terrible suspicion slowly began to develop.

Bjørk had worked up a high blood-alcohol content.

The dog was still sitting with his tongue hanging out, panting and impatient, his eyes shifting anxiously. After a while, Bjørk got laboriously to his feet, set the bottle on the ice-cold floor, hiccuped a few times, and straightened up. He immediately fell against the wall, his legs splayed out. The dog got up too, staring at him with yellow eyes. He wagged his tail tentatively two or three times. Bjørk fumbled for the revolver, which was stuck tight in his pocket. He got it out and cocked it, staring at the dog the whole time, as he listened to the sound of his own molars grinding against each other. He swayed, his hand shaking, but fought off the dizziness, raised his arm, and pulled. The violent explosion ricocheted off the walls. The skull split open, and the contents splashed across the walls, and some struck the dog on the snout. The shot continued to reverberate. Gradually it faded to what sounded like distant thunder. The dog lunged to break free, but the leash held. After repeated attempts, the animal was exhausted. He gave up and stood there, whimpering.

The gallery was located on a quiet street, not far from the Catholic church. Outside stood a Citroen, an older model, the kind with slanted headlights. Rather like Chinese eyes, Sejer thought. The car was covered with dust. Skarre went over and looked at it. The roof was cleaner than the rest of the car, as if something had been on top, protecting the surface. It was blue-green.

"No ski-box," Sejer said.

"No, it's been removed. There are marks from the fastenings."

They opened the gallery door and went in. It smelled quite similar to Mrs Johnas's shop, of wool and starch, with a faint hint of tar from the beams in the ceiling. A camera was aimed at them from a corner. Sejer stopped and peered into the lens. Everywhere lay great piles of carpets. A broad stone staircase led up to the floors above. Several carpets were spread out on the floor and some hung from poles on the walls. Johnas was coming down the stairs, dressed in flannel and velvet, red and green and pink and black. With his dark curls he seemed to fit his passion for carpets perfectly. There was something soft and gentle about him. His fierce temper, if it existed, was well concealed. His eyes were dark, almost black, and his whole manner was unmistakably that of a salesman. Friendly, slick, accommodating.

"Well, hello!" he said. "Come on in. So you want to buy a carpet, is that right?"

He gave a wave of his arm, as if they were close friends he hadn't seen for a long time, or perhaps potential customers with a weakness for this particular kind of handwork. The knots. The colours. The patterns with the religious symbols. Birth and life and death, pain, victories, pride. To put under the dining-room table or in front of the TV. Indestructible, unique.

"You have a lot of space here," Sejer said, looking around.

"Two whole floors, plus an attic. Believe me, this has been a big investment. I've practically skinned myself alive on this place, and it didn't look like this when I took over. Mouldy and grey. But I gave it a proper cleaning and whitewashed the walls, and that's really all it needed. Originally it was an old villa. Follow me, please."

He pointed up the stairs and led them to what he called his office, but it was actually a spacious kitchen, with a stainless steel counter and stove, a coffee maker, and a small refrigerator. There were tiles above the counter with lovely, chastely attired Dutch girls, windmills, and thick waving grass. Old copper kettles with decorative dents hung from a beam in the ceiling. The kitchen table had brass edges and corners, as though it was from an old ship.

They sat down around the table, and without asking them Johnas went over to the refrigerator and poured grape juice into wine glasses.

"How did it go with the puppies?" Skarre asked him.

"Hera will get to keep one of them, and the other two are already spoken for. So it's too late for you to change your mind. Now what can I do for you?" He smiled and took a sip.

Sejer knew that his friendliness would quickly evaporate.

"Just a few questions about Annie. I'm afraid we need to go over the same ground again and again." He wiped his mouth discreetly. "You picked her up at the roundabout – is that right?"

Sejer's choice of words, his intonation, and the tiniest hint of doubt about his previous statement sharpened Johnas's attention.

"That's what I said before, and that's exactly what I did."

"But she actually preferred to walk, didn't she?"

"Excuse me?"

"It took a little persuasion for you to get her into the car, is that correct?"

Johnas's eyes narrowed but he remained silent.

"She preferred to walk," Sejer said. "She declined your offer of a ride. Am I right?"

Johnas nodded suddenly and smiled. "She always did that; she was so unassuming. But I thought it was too far to walk to Horgen's Shop. It's quite a way."

"So you persuaded her?"

"No, no…" He shook his head hard and shifted position in his chair. "I coaxed her a little. Some people have a tiresome habit of needing to be coaxed all the time."

"So it wasn't that she didn't want to get into your car?"

Johnas heard quite clearly the extra stress on the words "your car".