Karin Fossum - Don't Look Back

"That's the way Annie was. A little aloof, maybe. Who have you been talking to?"

"Several hundred people," Sejer said. "And one of them saw her get into your car after a long discussion. You're actually the last person to see her alive, and we've got to focus on that, don't you agree?"

Johnas smiled back, a conspiratorial smile, as if they were playing a game and he was more than willing to participate.

"I wasn't the last person," he said. "Whoever killed her was the last person."

"It's proving rather difficult to get hold of him," Sejer said with deliberate irony. "And we have nothing to corroborate that the man on the motorcycle was waiting for Annie. The only thing we have is you."

"I'm sorry? What are you getting at?"

"Well," Sejer said, throwing out his hands, "I'm trying to get to the bottom of this case. It's the nature of my job to doubt what people say."

"Are you accusing me of lying?"

"I'm afraid that's what I have to think," Sejer said. "I hope you'll forgive me. Why didn't she want to get in?"

Johnas was visibly uneasy. "Of course she wanted to get in!" He had shown the first sign of anger, and now controlled himself. "She got in and I drove her to Horgen's."

"No further than that?"

"No, as I told you, she got out at the shop. I thought she was going there to buy something. I didn't even drive up to the door; I stopped on the road, and let her out. And after that," he stood up to get a pack of cigarettes from the counter, "I never saw her again."

Sejer steered his interrogation on to a new track.

"You lost a child, Johnas. You know what it feels like. Have you talked to Eddie Holland about it?"

For a moment Johnas looked surprised. "No, no, he's such a private person, I didn't want to bother him. Besides, it's not an easy thing for me to talk about either."

"How long ago was it?"

"You've talked to Astrid, haven't you? Almost eight months. But it's not the sort of thing you forget or get over."

He slipped a cigarette out of the pack. Lit up and smoked in an almost feminine way. Merits, filtertipped.

"People often try to imagine what it's like." He stared at Sejer with weary eyes. "They do it with the best of intentions. Try to picture the empty bed and imagine themselves standing there and staring at it. And I did do that often. But the empty bed is only part of it. I got up every morning and went out to the bathroom, and there was his toothbrush under the mirror. The kind that changes colours when it gets warm. The rubber duck on the edge of the bath. His slippers under the bed. I caught myself setting too many places at the table for dinner, I did it for days. There were stuffed animals that he had left in the car. Months later I found a Band-Aid under the sofa."

Johnas was speaking through clenched teeth, as if with great reluctance he was revealing things to them that they had no right to know.

"I threw things out, a little at a time, and it felt as if I was committing a crime. It was painful to look at his things day after day, it was horrible to pack them away. It haunted me every second of the day, and it haunts me still. Do you know how long a person's smell stays in a pair of cotton pyjamas?"

He fell silent, and his tanned face had turned grey. Sejer didn't say a word. He suddenly thought about Elise's wooden clogs, which always stood outside the door so that she could stick her feet into them if she had to take out the rubbish or go downstairs to get the post. Opening the door, picking up the shoes, and bringing them inside was something that he remembered with great pain.

"Not long ago we went over to the cemetery," Sejer said. "Has it been a while since you were there?"

"What kind of question is that?" Johnas asked, his voice hoarse.

"I just want to know if you realise that something has been removed from the grave."

"You mean the little bird. Yes, it disappeared just after the funeral."

"Did you consider getting another one?"

"There certainly are a lot of things you want to know. Yes, of course I considered it. But I couldn't stand going through the same thing again, so I decided to leave it the way it was."

"Do you know who took it?"

"Of course not!" he said, his voice sharp. "If I did, I would have reported it at once, and if I had the chance, I would have beaten the culprit within an inch of his life."

"You mean a verbal beating?"

He smiled acidly. "No, I do not mean a verbal beating."

"Annie took it," Sejer said lightly.

Johnas opened his eyes wide.

"We found it among her things. Is this it?"

He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out the bird. Johnas took it with trembling fingers. "It looks like it. It looks like the one. But why…"

"We don't know. We thought you might be able to help us discover why."

"Me? Dear God, I have no clue. I don't understand it. Why on earth would she take it? She wasn't exactly the type to steal things. Not the Annie I knew."

"That's why she must have had a reason for doing it. A reason far more important than merely wanting to steal things. Was she angry with you for something?"

Johnas sat and stared at the bird, struck dumb with surprise.

He didn't know about this, thought Sejer, casting a scowl at Skarre, who sat beside him with glass-blue eyes, studying the man's slightest movement.

"Do her parents know that she had this?" Johnas said at last.

"We don't think so."

"And it wasn't Sølvi? Sølvi is a little different, you know. Just like a magpie, grabbing anything that glitters."

"It wasn't Sølvi."

Sejer raised his glass by the stem and drank the grape juice. It tasted like a light wine.

"Well, I guess she had her secrets. We all do," Johnas said. "She was a bit secretive. Especially as she got older."

"She took it hard – Eskil's death?"

"She couldn't make herself come to see us any more. I can understand it; I couldn't be around people either for a long time. Astrid and Magne left me, and so much happened all at once. An indescribable chapter," he muttered, wincing at the memory.

"You must have talked to each other, though?"

"Just brief nods when we met on the street. We were practically neighbours, after all."

"Did she try to avoid you?"

"She seemed embarrassed, in a way. It was difficult for all of us."

"And what's more," Sejer said, as if he had only just thought of it, "you had a fight with Eskil right before he died. That must have made it even harder."

"You keep Eskil out of this!" he said bitterly.

"Do you know Raymond Låke?"

"You mean that strange fellow up near Kollen?"

"I asked you whether you know him."

"Everybody knows Raymond."

"Just give me a yes or no answer."

"I do not know him."

"But you know where he lives?"

"Yes, I do. In that old shack of a house, though he must think it's just fine, since he looks so idiotically happy."

"Idiotically happy?" Sejer stood up, pushing his glass aside. "I think idiots are just as dependent on other people's good will to feel happy as the rest of us are. And here's something you should never forget: even though he can't interpret his surroundings in the same way you can, there's nothing wrong with his vision."

Johnas's face stiffened slightly. He escorted them out. As they went down the stairs to the first floor, Sejer felt the camera lens like a laser beam on the back of his neck.

They went to Sejer's apartment to collect Kollberg, and let him stretch out on the back seat of the car. The dog is alone too much, Sejer thought, tossing him an extra piece of dried fish. That must be why he's so impossible.

"Do you think he smells bad?"

Skarre nodded. "You should give him a Fisherman's Friend lozenge."

They drove towards Lundeby, turned off at the roundabout, and parked next to the letterboxes. Sejer walked along the street, fully aware that everyone could see him, all 21 houses. Everyone would think he was going to see Holland. But at the end of the road he stopped and looked back, towards the house belonging to Johnas. It looked semi-vacant. The curtains were drawn in many of the windows. Slowly he walked back.