Karin Fossum - The Drowned Boy

The fact that he moved so slowly fooled many into believing that he was intellectually dull and deliberate, whereas he was actually sharp as a knife, despite his age, disability, and thick glasses.

“So, are you going to arrest them?” he asked with a hint of a smile. “Are there any contradictions?”

“The lovely Miss Carmen Zita is rather confused with regard to the sequence of events,” Sejer told him. “She was hesitant and seemed unsure when I asked her to tell me about what happened today. I know that it’s not much to go on, a minor detail perhaps. And she is in shock. But obviously the confusion could mean something, so I’m keeping an open mind. The father seems to be reliable and his grief is genuine. There’s something artificial about Carmen; I think she’s acting. Though her tears are real enough and the waterworks are constant. Never seen crying like it. And unlike you, I didn’t have any tissues.”

Holthemann leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head.

“It will be hard to present evidence, all the same,” he said. “I mean, if anything suspect has taken place. He could easily have gone down to the water under his own steam. She said he was active and had just learned to walk and was into everything. What does Snorrason say? Have you spoken to him yet?”

“He’s promised to give us the results as soon as possible. But I’m afraid there won’t be any conclusive evidence. What would it be? As far as we can tell, he wasn’t injured in any way. Our first priority has to be establishing whether he was still alive when he fell in the water. I’m trying to think of everything and I may just be seeing ghosts in broad daylight. But ghosts won’t get us very far in court, will they? And I guess we should be happy about that, don’t you agree?”

“You shouldn’t be so proud of our system,” Holthemann admonished. “It’s not infallible. Do we have anything on them from before?”

“No,” Sejer said. “Neither of them has any previous convictions. Your leg” — he changed the subject and nodded at Holthemann’s leg — “is it still alive?”

“Only just,” Holthemann replied gloomily. “I’ve got practically no feeling in it; it’s just numb.”

“Get yourself on a treadmill,” Sejer suggested. “It’ll improve your circulation.”

The chief shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “What will be, will be. No one is going to get me to run like a rat in a wheel.”

Tenth of August. Evening.

Carmen watched him from the window. She stood there for a while, wringing her hands. Nicolai had walked across the yard and onto the jetty. Now he was sitting on the edge and looked terrible. She went down after him, slowly, hesitantly, uncertain what to say. The words she was so frantically trying to catch seemed to grow like toads in her mouth, and suddenly she felt thirsty.

“Nicolai,” she said gently, “he’s never coming back. And we have to deal with it somehow. The future, I mean, and how we cope. Come inside, Nicolai. We have to eat; it’s getting late.” She stood on the jetty and begged and pleaded. But Nicolai was ashen with grief, his thin brown hair bedraggled. She had never seen him like this before, never seen him so helpless and forsaken.

“How can you think about food,” he said, “when Tommy’s gone forever? I just don’t get how you can think about food.”

She sat down beside him and took him by the arm. Her nails against his skin felt like sharp claws.

“If we don’t eat, then we’ll die too. And Tommy wouldn’t have wanted that,” she said seriously.

Nicolai flared up, unable to help himself.

“You know nothing about what Tommy would want,” he said, his voice bitter. “You should have shut the door. You know what he’s like, that he gets everywhere. People say those children are slow, but not our Tommy. He was quick as lightning.”

“Yes, but it was so hot,” she complained. “And you were in the cellar as usual. It’s nice and cool down there, so it’s easy for you to talk. You don’t need to put the blame on me,” she added. “That’s not fair. It’s bad enough as it is, without you making it worse. We’re going to have to talk sometime. We have to sort out the funeral and a whole lot of other things. Pappa Zita will be here soon; he’ll help us get started.”

Nicolai picked at a loose splinter in the dark wood with nails that were bitten to the quick.

“What did they ask you about?” she said after a pause. “They asked me all kinds of things. They even wanted to know if I breastfed him. I don’t see why they have to go into such detail. It just seems nosy to me.”

“You don’t understand anything, do you? You don’t get how serious this is. Tommy’s dead and gone. He drowned, and it’s our fault because we didn’t keep an eye on him. He wanted to know what you were doing when Tommy left the house. What were you doing?”

She thought about it. “I was just puttering around, tidying up, you know. And I wanted to clean the fish for supper. I went into the bathroom to rinse out some washing. Everything happened so fast. And I looked for him in all the rooms before I even thought about the pond. Come on now, we have to go in,” she nagged. “Mom and Dad will be here soon, and they’ll help us with supper.”

“You and your supper,” he snapped. “Just go and stuff your face, why don’t you. I’m not going anywhere. If your dad wants anything, he can come down here to the jetty, because this is where I’m going to be all night.”

She stood up, exasperated and desperate. She looked out at the water and the single water lily. Strange that there was only one, so beautiful and white and delicate. And then she spoke without thinking, the words falling from her mouth before she had a chance to stop them.

“We can have another one. We’re so young.”

Nicolai let out a small gasp, as if the thought was monstrous.

“I want to move,” he said quickly. “I don’t want to live by the water, not with children. And I don’t want another one; can you just stop?”

She didn’t reply. Instead she started to walk back to the house, and he followed her slender body with his eyes. There was something strange about her behavior, the way she was walking in her cropped top. In spite of everything, her steps were quick and light, as if she was unaffected by it all. Then a terrible thought struck him, and a shiver ran down his spine despite the warmth in the air. The fact that she seemed so indifferent, that she wanted to engage in life again right away, even though they were in mourning. A deep, bottomless pit of grief. He couldn’t even contemplate food or sleep or work, or the days ahead that would roll on regardless.

“Are you coming?” she turned around and called.

“Didn’t I just say no?” he yelled.

Suddenly he couldn’t contain himself any longer.

“Go, just go. Go and get on with your life!”

She stood there looking at him, astounded by this outburst. She didn’t recognize him, didn’t know this fury. She had never seen it before.

“Do you want a divorce?” she asked out of the blue. Now she was angry as well, because he was being so horrible and difficult.

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe I do. Then you can grieve in your own weird way.”

More than anything, he wanted to keep her in his shirt pocket, close to his heart. He wanted to take her everywhere with him and protect her from all fear and suffering, protect her from all danger. Because he loved Carmen Cesilie more than anything in the world, this slip of a blond thing who was his daughter. He had a father’s unstinting patience. He held her to him tight, bursting with love. She disappeared into his embrace and stayed there for a long time. Marian Zita was big and heavy, with a sturdy barrel-shaped body, thin legs, and broad duck’s feet. He had thick, curly black hair peppered with gray, and huge worn hands that were used to hard work. In private, Zita had cursed God and the Virgin, all the deities who had betrayed him, raging with sorrow and despair. Carmen cried against his chest, inconsolable. Her father had always been her loyal ally; he stood by her through thick and thin no matter what. And over the years there had been a number of times when she needed his help. Like the time when the boyfriend she had before Nicolai had hit her. And when she became pregnant with Tommy at seventeen. But this was a crisis. Her mother looked around the yard, then further down toward the water, where she saw Nicolai sitting at the end of the jetty.