Bad Intentions (7 page)

"I don't know. I don't understand it. According to his mother he started getting ill last winter. Up until then he was well-adjusted, but very sensitive. In some way he was predisposed, of course, but we are not aware of any inherited tendencies, and he never hinted at an experience or a trauma which might explain what happened."

"Did he confide in any of the patients?"

"He became friends with one of the girls here. She doesn't understand it either."

She scrutinized him.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"It's pure routine in cases like this one..."

"In case he didn't take his own life," she completed the sentence for him. "But met his death in some other way?"

"Yes," Sejer conceded. "I suppose you're right."

"What have you found out?"

Sejer hesitated.

"I can't discuss that," he said.

"But you've found something, haven't you?"

"Let me put it this way," Sejer said. "There are a couple of things that disturb us. Details which we don't understand."

Hanna Wigert stared down at her lap. She reminded him of a defiant little girl.

"He couldn't swim," she said.

"We know," Sejer said.

"Those two friends of his," she continued. "They had a great deal of power over him."

"Where are you going with this?"

She retreated as though she was on shaky ground, and he did not get a reply.

He was still holding Kim in his lap. He pinched the coarse yarn hair and carefully tugged at the tiny white socks. They reminded him of the rubber caps you put on your fingertips when you want to leaf through a stack of papers. Reacting to an impulse he could not account for, a small request escaped him.

"Please may I take this with me?"

"The doll?"

"I want to keep it in my office."

"But what do you want with it?"

"It's a link to Jon," he said. "And after all, it's important to be a little childish."

Afterward he spoke to Molly Gram.

She refused to come downstairs, but she had said he could go to her room. When he entered, she was sitting on her bed with the white dog on her lap. It was a terrier, he noticed. It pricked up its ears. Sejer held out his hand, but she did not take it. The dog, however, expressed interest: it licked and sniffed it. He pulled out a chair and sat down by her bed.

"You can ask your questions now," she said.

Sejer studied the sullen young woman with paternal interest. Her hair was in a total mess, dry and soft like cotton grass. Underneath the black make-up she was sweet, but she wanted to come across as something else; the make-up served almost as a declaration of war. She was fierce, bitter and dismissive, and it was not up to him to decide if she had good cause to be. For a while he pondered how to approach her. Her body might be small and fragile, he thought, but she had an old head on those young shoulders.

"There's a game I like to play when I meet new people," he said.

She rolled her eyes. She stroked Melis across his back.

"I give them a place in the animal kingdom," Sejer said. "According to their attributes. And their appearance."

She continued to caress the dog with her fingers as thin as noodles, and he could see that she was listening.

"I decide very quickly," Sejer said, "and if an animal doesn't spring to mind immediately, then I'll never find out who they are. Some are impossible to categorize or too vague, while others are blatantly obvious."

Long pause. She had hunched her shoulders, and he noticed a wasp tattoo on her white neck.

"When I saw you, I made up my mind almost immediately," he said. "It took me seconds."

She stopped caressing Melis. Her eye make-up was so dark that it looked like a mask, but this time she was watching him intently.

"You're a raccoon," Sejer said.

She pulled a face. She needed time to decide what she thought about the comparison, but before she had time to feel anything at all, she was interrupted.

"They're fast and smart and cheeky," Sejer said, "and they steal food from others. They're rogues, and they get everywhere. And they're beautiful, of course."

She might be an old soul, but Molly managed a smile. At least Sejer thought he saw something flicker across her face.

"Do you want me to go on?" he said. "Do you want me to tell you more about the raccoon?"

She deigned to shrug, which he took to mean that he could do whatever he wanted.

"Raccoons are very popular," he said. "Do you know why?"

She did not reply.

"Molly," he said. "Can you imagine why everyone wants a raccoon?"

"No," she mumbled.

"Well, this might sound a little brutal," he smiled, "but you're no sissy. Their meat is very tasty and their fur is the loveliest in the world. And they happen to thrive in captivity," he added. He let his eyes flash around her room.

"You can put them in cages and they won't lose their integrity."

"They came to fetch Jon's things," she said. "Those two friends of his."

Sejer pricked up his ears.

"Go on."

She held Melis up to her face. "I can play this game too, and I got Axel's number at once."

"He's no pussycat," Sejer said. "We agree on that, don't we?"

"He's a snake," she said. "He slithers around."

"And Reilly?" Sejer asked.

She pondered this.

"He's a lizard," she declared. "They aren't easy on the eye, but they're better than their reputation. The bigger ones can be dangerous to humans and the smaller ones can make good pets. You never know with lizards. Perhaps they become what you make them."

She put Melis down on the bed, pinched a corner of the duvet and started twisting it.

"You can ask your questions now," she said again.

Sejer looked at the raccoon on the bed. She was wearing a red minidress and black knee-high socks.

"You were the last person to talk to Jon before he got into the car. What did you talk about?"

She kept picking at the duvet.

"That will remain between Jon and me," she said.

"But can you tell me anything about his state of mind?"

"State of mind? He was happy."

"Really?" Sejer said. "He was happy? I'm sorry. I'm a bit taken aback. It was my impression that he didn't want to go on the trip at all. That he went along because the staff here thought it was important. But you're saying that he was happy?"

"He was happy."

"He said so?"

"You can tell."

"Tell me what you saw," Sejer asked.

"He started running," she explained. "The car pulled up in front of the building and Jon started running."

Sejer waited but nothing more followed.

"And that means that he was happy?"

She looked up.

"No one runs here at Ladegården," she sighed. "We're depressed, we drag ourselves around. Surely you can understand that."

Sejer smiled and shook his head.

"So what did you say to him?" he asked. "What made him run so fast?"

She grew shy and looked away.

"That will remain between Jon and me," she said. "But let me put it this way, we were making plans."

"For the future, you mean?"

She nodded. Again she held Melis up to her face.

"Jon spent the night in the company of those two reptiles," she said, "and I don't know what happened. But we had plans."

R
EILLY PUT SOME
fine sand in a turquoise plastic box and placed it below the kitchen window. The kitten instantly knew that it was meant to do its business there. At night the kitten slept in Reilly's bed, curled up at his throat, and when it purred it felt like humming against his vocal cords. When Reilly wandered around his flat, it followed him faithfully. You think you're a puppy, don't you, though cats are supposed to be independent, didn't you know that? But the kitten was not independent. It stuck to him like a limpet. Every time Reilly let himself fall into a chair to get high or to read the Koran it would claw at his corduroy trousers to be allowed up. In the morning when he had to go to work, it looked after him with lost eyes which were still blue. Reilly worked as a porter at the Central Hospital. He thought constantly about the kitten while he rolled beds down the corridors. He rolled children to the playroom, he rolled people in for surgery, he rolled the deceased down to
the mortuary in the basement. He was in the habit of whistling quietly as he walked. And all the while he thought about the kitten.

Over the years, Reilly had started making mistakes, and sometimes the beds had ended up in the wrong place. He had been given a warning and he pulled himself together after that. God forbid that I roll someone who is still breathing down to the mortuary, he thought.

Reilly was going through his wardrobe looking for some smart clothes to wear for Jon's funeral, but he had never owned nice clothes. Everything he had was worn and faded and almost none of it was clean. Most of what he found looked like rags, and he threw them in a pile on the floor. The kitten leapt on top of it to play. Having searched carefully for a long time, he found a high-necked sweater and a pair of khaki combat trousers with numerous pockets. The trousers were creased and it worried him. Yet he felt reasonably pleased, though other thoughts soon dragged him down. The kitten watched him while he got dressed and when he had finished, he took out the Koran.

"What is the Day of Noise and Clamor? And what will explain to thee what the Day of Noise and Clamor is? It is a Day whereon men will be like moths scattered about, and the mountains will be like carded wool. Then, he whose balance of good deeds will be found heavy, will be in a life of good pleasure and satisfaction. But he whose balance of good deeds will be found light will have his home in a bottomless Pit. And what will explain to thee what this is? It is a Fire blazing fiercely!"

He put the book away. He had studied the Koran extensively, but he did not believe in God. He just liked to pretend that a higher power existed. Now he had read that a punishment awaited him for everything he had done. It was a pit of burning fire. He did not believe in that either and that was a relief, but he told
himself that he was atoning in his own way by repeatedly exposing himself to the violent threats in the Koran.

Axel picked him up in the Mercedes.

He was wearing a well-cut suit and a plum-colored shirt, and he looked Reilly up and down.

"We're saying goodbye to Jon," he said. "And you look like a tramp."

Reilly looked aghast. He did not think the sweater was as bad as that, and the khaki trousers were his best pair.

"Jon would not have cared about a few creases," he muttered.

He trudged down the stairs after Axel and got into the car. From the corner of his eye he studied Axel's suit. It was charcoal with thin lapels and he also wore a long coat.

"You could have done something with your hair," Axel continued. "It's just hanging there."

He leaned forward to see what Reilly was wearing on his feet.

"You haven't even got laces in your shoes," he pointed out. "Why not?"

"They snapped," Reilly said. He fumbled with the seat belt.

"It's about time you took a good look at yourself in the mirror," Axel said.

"I haven't got one," Reilly said.

"You must have one in your bathroom?"

"It broke."

"And how did you manage that?"

"I don't remember exactly. I must have been high. I don't have to account for every minute of the day," he added, a little hurt because Axel was pinpointing his bad habits.

Nothing more was said. They drove on in silence and Reilly watched people through the car windows. Each and every one of them was going somewhere, yet it looked as if they were all lost. As if they did not know the streets and were complete strangers to the town.

"It would be very odd," he said out loud, "if there's no purpose behind it all. Life. And us."

"Don't start all that," Axel said.

"But think about snowflakes," Reilly said. "And the northern lights."

"They're beautiful," Axel said, "but they prove nothing."

"So you think that beauty is completely random?" Reilly said. "People who require proof of everything are impoverished," he carried on. "They're afraid to surrender to something. They're scared to lose control."

"You're a dreamer," Axel said. "You'll never make anything of yourself."

"You mean I'll never earn what you earn?"

"Correct," Axel said.

"I was right," Reilly replied. "You're dirt poor."

Again he stared out of the window at all the lost people.

"Do you think his dad will be there?" he said.

"Tony Moreno, you mean?"

"Yes."

"No idea. They never had any contact. Perhaps he's got a new family. Perhaps Jon has a pile of siblings he never got to meet, a bunch of mini-Morenos running around in Naples."

"What do you intend to say in the church?" Reilly asked.

"Just the usual," Axel said. "The stuff people want to hear."

A dark, slender man sat in the front pew close to the wall, and though he was small, his white linen suit made him stand out. It was Tony Moreno, who had come all the way from Naples. He was huddled up on the pew as though he did not want to be seen, as though he did not want people to remember that he had left when Jon was little. The vicar had done his bit. He moved
aside when Axel stepped up in his well-cut suit. In his hand he held a sheet of paper which quivered, but his voice was clear and sincere when he spoke.

"Jon," he said. "You were a unique person."

A sigh rippled through the congregation. His voice carried beautifully through the church and he looked very handsome in his gray suit. He stood close to the coffin. It was made from mahogany, and an abundance of flowers covered the dark wood. He was obviously deeply moved. The fact that he had lied about some important details surrounding Jon's death did not strip him of the right to mourn, he believed, and it was good to feel a little sentimental.

"You were intelligent, humble and compassionate," he carried on. "And you had a strong conscience which reacted to the slightest thing. You were a better person than us. You cared about the weak, you felt the injustice of the world, and sometimes you allowed it to torment you. You were in the eye of the storm your whole life."