Karin Fossum - The Water's Edge

'What else can you tell me?'

Snorrason opened the boy's mouth and looked inside.

'Caucasian boy aged eight to nine. Short and very slender. I estimate he weighs between twenty-five and thirty kilos. He's missing a tooth in his upper jaw. And,' here he looked up at Sejer, 'he's bitten his tongue deeply.'

Sejer listened without displaying any sign of emotion.

'Evidence suggests he was sexually assaulted,' Snorrason continued, 'but he shows no signs of other types of abuse. In other words, I don't know why he died.'

Sejer had to stand up, his knees were about to give way; he watched Skarre, who was on his mobile. Then he watched the couple waiting on the log. The man was blatantly staring at them, the woman stabbed at the heather with a stick. Skarre put his mobile back in his pocket.

'Anything?' Sejer asked.

'Duty officer received a call at two this afternoon. A mother in Huseby reported her son missing, he had slept over at a friend's house and was meant to walk home this morning. She has called everyone she can think of, and she has given us a description of his clothes.'

'And?' Sejer waited.

'It's very likely to be him,' Skarre said. 'Jonas August Løwe. Turns eight next month. Small and skinny with short, blond hair. He was wearing a black T-shirt with the word 'Kiss' on it. Red Bermuda shorts. White, brand new trainers. Have we found his shorts or his trainers?'

'No.'

Sejer took a few steps across the heather. He repeated the name to himself. The low sun made his grey hair glow. His face was still motionless, but it was possible for those who knew him well to detect a minute tightening of his jaw. He headed towards the waiting couple. Reinhardt Ris looked up at him in a rather direct manner.

'As I mentioned,' Sejer said, 'we'll need you to come down to the station.'

Reinhardt leapt up from the log and stood to attention before the inspector.

'Please go to your car,' Sejer said. 'Skarre and I will follow. Drive to the station, go to the reception area and wait.'

They walked briskly back to the barrier. Their lives will never be the same, Sejer thought, an experience like this will knock them off their course. They both showed signs of it, the man by exaggerating his own masculinity, the woman by stumbling helplessly after him. He watched them for a while as he reflected on this. Then he quickly walked back to Jonas August Løwe.

The police station towered over the busy street, a colossus of glass and red-brown stone. High up on its façade hung the emblem of the police force, its metal gleaming in the sunshine. Its architecture signalled power and authority. Reinhardt opened the glass door and entered, Kristine hurrying after him. The reception was a large, open area with a circular, dark-varnished counter, behind which a woman gave them a questioning look. The blue glare from a computer monitor drained her face of colour.

'Can I help you?' she asked.

'We're waiting for Konrad Sejer,' Reinhardt said.

They were directed to a sofa. Reinhardt started drumming his fingers on the armrest. The receptionist returned to her monitor, Kristine peeled off her red coat.

'Looks like we could be here for some time,' Reinhardt moaned.

'I don't mind staying here all night,' Kristine said. 'I wouldn't be able to do anything else anyway. Washing clothes, cooking dinner, it all seems so unimportant now.'

Reinhardt got up and crossed the floor. He stared impatiently out of the windows. He pulled his mobile out of his pocket, turning his back on her as he did so.

'What are you doing?' she asked anxiously.

'Sending a text message.'

She followed him nervously with her eyes. There was an air of excitement about him, she recognised it from earlier occasions. When he got a tax rebate of forty thousand kroner, when they bought the car, the silver Rover. The manner in which he had swaggered into the car showroom, like a bowlegged sailor. She hated this side to his personality, that he always had to show off, and her loathing grew with every passing year. Then she tried looking at it from a different point of view, a positive angle because he was her husband and she wanted to be generous. He was a faithful and hard-working man with well-built shoulders and coarse, sandy hair. His face was broad and strong, his thighs were muscular and rock hard. When she walked down the street with him, sometimes other women would turn to check him out. Her being so petite and him being so much taller than her had once appealed to her, she felt sheltered like a child. He was her protector; he was the one who dealt with things. Sometimes, out of the blue, he would turn into a big kid, lift her high in the air and be loving. Then she warmed to him again, became happy almost and once more she would put up with him. So it oscillated inside her and this duality was a source of immense confusion to her.

Finally he put away his mobile. He sat down and sighed deeply.

'Well,' he said, 'at least we'll have something to talk about now.'

'All we did was find a little boy,' she said quietly.

She did not look him in the eye, she was talking to her lap.

'But it's not a straightforward case,' Reinhardt said, 'of murder. I mean, first he did something else to him, well, I can't even say it out loud, and afterwards he killed him.'

'We don't know how he died,' she objected.

'Kristine,' he said in an exasperated voice. 'Don't tell me you haven't worked out what's happened here? Come on, what do you take me for?'

Reinhardt had found himself in an extraordinary situation. He had been the first person to arrive at a crime scene. Furthermore, he had observed a man at a distance of only a few metres, a man who was leaving. He regarded himself as significant and important. Kristine could please herself, but there was no way she was going to tell him how to handle the situation. Again he got up from the sofa and wandered around restlessly. The woman behind the counter trailed him with her eyes.

Finally, Sejer and Skarre arrived at reception, the door groaning shut behind them. Reinhardt and Kristine followed them noiselessly down the corridors on the green carpet. Kristine kept rewinding time, the images returned in fragments. She saw the man in the blue anorak, she recalled his car door slamming and his engine revving, grit and gravel spouting from underneath the tyres. What had she thought, what had she felt? That they had disturbed him? I can't tell them that, she thought, that's subjective. They're looking for accurate, factual observations, I can't speculate. Sejer and Skarre remained silent, but they walked as if they belonged together, as if they were a couple, she thought, as if they had grown accustomed to each other. There was trust between them.

They reached Sejer's office. Kristine entered, cradling her red coat. In the midst of this anonymous glass, stone and concrete building was a large, bright office with colourful curtains. She noticed individual details: a stately chair with a tall back, a lamp with a yellow shade and underneath it, a clumsy figure made from salt dough. The ravages of time had caused the figure to grow mouldy, but there was no doubt that it represented a police officer in a blue uniform. On the desk was a laminated desk pad with a map of the world; a pen covered Italy and the coastline of Tunisia. There were photographs on the walls. A man, who looked like Sejer, with a dog. A dark-skinned teenage boy. On a table there were some plants, there was a cupboard, and several red ring binders on a shelf. Criminal cases, she thought, human tragedies. Death and despair. The boy they had found would probably get his own space on the shelf. He would become one of the red binders.

'Do you know who he is?' she whispered. 'The boy, I mean?'