The Water's Edge (20 page)

Towards the end of the service the vicar asked the children to come forward. Each of them was carrying one long-stemmed red rose. They lined up in the centre aisle and stepped forward, one by one, to leave their flower on the coffin, twenty-three roses in all. It was impossible not to be moved by this image, the children, the roses and the coffin. Then they found their seats again and sat down happily on the wooden pews because they had completed their task. A task they had discussed at great length and, as they saw it, they had executed it with style and dignity.

Then something happened. No one was prepared for it. The vicar was shocked, everyone could see that. Some people clasped a hand over their mouth in fear, and Sejer felt an icy chill shoot down his back. Elfrid Løwe started to scream. The service had helped her maintain her composure, she had clung to the vicar's voice, but now she was screaming uncontrollably, heartbreakingly, a protest which made people jump in their pews. The screams came from deep within her and pushed their way out with a force no one would have believed such a tiny woman possessed. For the best part of an hour the vicar had built a fragile construction of comfort and resignation. Now she tore it down. She screamed and she demolished it and people could no longer mourn with dignity.

'Come on,' Sejer whispered to Skarre. 'We're leaving now.'

The men left quietly and inhaled the fresh September air outside. Again they heard the organ, now muted behind the closed doors. Skarre fished out a packet of cigarettes from his dark jacket.

'My hands are shaking,' he admitted. He managed to light a cigarette and inhaled deeply. 'And if you dare to mention God right now, I'll leave.'

Sejer shook his head. 'No, but there's something else I want to tell you.'

'What's that?'

'Did you notice the man sitting in the last pew? On his own, wearing a grey suit, sitting closest to the wall?'

'No. What about him?'

'That,' Konrad Sejer said, 'was Reinhardt Ris.'

CHAPTER 28

The sight of Reinhardt in his grey suit was so unexpected that Kristine did a double-take. It was five minutes past four and her shift at the Central Hospital had finished. The Rover rolled smoothly to a halt at the front entrance, and she looked at him sitting in his best suit, she saw the white collar and the wine-coloured tie.

'Why are you wearing a suit?' she asked. 'Where have you been?'

She got in and slammed the door shut. She folded her raspberry-red jacket and put it on her lap. Reinhardt eased the Rover past a stationary ambulance. An important smile played around his mouth, signalling that she would just have to rein in her curiosity.

'Didn't you go to work?' she asked.

He braked for a car coming from the right. He looks good, Kristine thought, he has long legs and broad shoulders and the suit fits him perfectly.

'Of course I've been to work,' he said, 'but I left early. I went to Jonas August's funeral.'

He speeded up as he turned out into the street. Kristine sat with her mouth hanging open. She could not believe her own ears. A myriad thoughts rushed through her head: he was nosy; or mad, even. A peeping Tom or, worse, a thief. Someone who stole other people's life experiences.

'I was curious,' he said calmly. 'I thought that a funeral of that kind would be different from any other funeral, and it was.'

'But you didn't know him,' she said. Again she felt outraged, as if he was some spoilt child she had to justify herself to.

'We found him,' he replied.

'Yes, but that doesn't mean we have to do anything, does it?'

'Perhaps not.' He hesitated. 'But it gives me certain rights, in my opinion. Think about it, sweetheart, we found him, we called the police, we waited, we answered their questions. We lay awake half the night.'

Kristine went over the recent events in her head. Next to her was a man who had finally discovered his purpose in life, a man who regarded other people's tragedies as entertainment, who thought that the murder of a child accorded him certain rights. This was the man she was married to, the man who had denied her what she longed for more than anything. She was bound to him until death did them part. She meant to keep that promise, but right now she needed to make a few demands of her own.

'Did you talk to her?' she asked.

'No, she was busy, so to speak.'

'Do you know what?' she continued, and she could no longer restrain herself. 'I would have understood you better if you had gone over to Jonas's mother, I mean after the service, and introduced yourself. If you had told her that it was you who found him. And that was why you were there. That would have been the mature, compassionate thing to do and it would have given her the explanation I think she is entitled to. But you sneak in just to get a cheap thrill from her tragedy and her grief.'

'I couldn't go over to her,' he said. 'I wanted to, of course, but it was impossible.'

'Why?'

His hands clenched the steering wheel. 'Because she started to scream. I've never heard anyone scream like that. I thought the stained-glass windows would shatter.'

Kristine gave him a shocked look. He was deathly serious now, as if the screaming woman had actually managed to upset his equilibrium. He increased his speed. She watched him out of the corner of her eye and it struck her that he would most probably never make a good father; he was too wrapped up in himself and his own affairs. This realisation made her feel uncomfortable and despondent. But I would make a good mother, she thought, and many are on their own with a child and they manage. I can manage, I can be strong if I have to. I want the love that others have, the love that lasts until death. I want it now. Yet again she peered at Reinhardt. He was happy to be who he was for as long as it lasted. He liked what he had, his job, his house and his car. I'm growing older, she thought, time's running out. These thoughts gnawed at her more and more. Slowly an idea began to emerge. She would do something irresponsible, she would quite simply deceive him. Help herself and take what she wanted. Men talked of female wiles, she told herself, well, I'll resort to those now. The thought of this made her heart beat faster and she feared her eyes would betray her plan. So she closed them and leaned her head against the headrest.

CHAPTER 29

He felt hungry, but he was unable to eat anything.

Not that there was much to eat either: the fridge was empty. A few times he opened the fridge door to look inside while he tried to find his inner resolve. He found none. On the contrary, he discovered as the days passed that his hunger seemed to protect him, he felt encapsulated by it as if it made him invisible to the rest of the world. This feeling quelled some of his fear, because he did feel fear. He had pulled a chair over to the window where he rested his elbows on the windowsill, or he would sit in front of the television where he watched every news broadcast, the photos of the two boys glowing at him. Various experts analysed the incidents; all their theories were wrong. He was spending more time in the wheelchair, he experienced an odd joy rolling around in it. He rolled out into the kitchen to get some water, he rolled back into the living room and parked in front of the television. In the wheelchair he became someone else, in the wheelchair he was a geriatric with withered limbs, a poor thing you could not blame for anything. It was a relief to turn into someone else. He started going to bed early, it made the days shorter. Sometimes he had long, imaginary conversations with the police.

Listen to me, please, I can explain this!

Later in the evening, he would collapse in self-pity and shed bitter tears. If they became unstoppable, and this had happened, he would throw himself on the sofa, face away from the room and pull a blanket over himself. This is a dreadful existence, he thought, I'm a prisoner in my own home. I might as well be in prison, at least I would get a hot meal there and I could chat to the guards. He licked away his own tears, their salty taste awakened raw memories in him. He lay alone in the dark like this, but all the time coiled like a spring. He knew they would come and if he did not let them in, they would break down his door.

CHAPTER 30

They asked themselves these questions over and over:

Why can't we find Edwin? Is it a good sign that we haven't found him yet? Does it mean that he might still be alive? And if we're talking about the same offender, why has he taken the trouble to hide Edwin Åsalid while Jonas August was dumped beneath some trees? Was it possible for two paedophiles to carry out separate attacks in the same place in the space of one week? They thought of every possible scenario; absolutely every single permutation was examined. Were they dealing with a child suicide? Had Edwin's life been harder than the adults had realised? And if it was not about sex, what was the motive for a crime they could only sense the outline of?

A man called the station about some rumours which had started in Huseby and suggested that they might want to look into them.

'Joakim Naper,' Sejer said. 'Let's go and have a word with him.'

'Naper?' Skarre said. 'The man with the dogs? He's already been questioned.'

'I know,' Sejer said, 'but he has heard something. We've got to work with what little we have.'

The doorbell triggered fierce barking and they noticed claw marks on the woodwork.

'You've got to catch this man,' Naper said, 'and you'd better do it quickly.'

There was a violent commotion in the doorway as Naper yanked the dogs to one side and showed them to a living room with a view of the loch. The dogs had left their mark on the house and there was little left of the parquet flooring. His furniture was ancient and worn and some filthy brown strips of fabric hung by the windows, some sort of curtain supposedly. There were several photographs on the walls, all depicting dogs: dogs in the snow, dogs in front of a sledge, dogs on a beach.

'Yes,' he said, 'it's just me and the dogs here.'

He commanded the dogs to lie down. Sejer and Skarre found a space on a sofa covered in long, white dog hairs. Naper was a man in his fifties, short and heavy-set with an impressive iron grey beard, which he kept stroking. Whenever he looked at them, it was with brief, sharp glances; most of the time his eyes rested on the dogs.

'Like I told you. It's not much that I can offer you, I didn't see any people or cars the day Edwin Åsalid disappeared. But I saw the boys sitting on the jetty. Now the rumours have started. You might not have heard them, people don't like making accusations, they're scared they might be wrong. But I don't have any children at Solberg School so I don't care.'

He scratched one of the dogs energetically. The big animal rolled over on the floor.

'These rumours started before the boys disappeared. But now, of course, they've really caught on.'

Naper took his time. His hands were strong and hairy; they sank deeply into the neck of the dog.

'It's about a man who is gay,' he said, looking at them. 'And I'm not bothered by that, I've no axe to grind, live and let live I say. As long as you don't hurt anyone. Anyway, he lives with someone, has done for years, they live in Nordby where they bought an old house which they've done up. And to put it bluntly, a lot of young boys come to visit him.'

'Why do they do that?' Sejer asked.

Naper found an ashtray and took out a squashed packet of Petterøe tobacco from his shirt pocket.

'He's a teacher,' he said, 'at Solberg School.'

'Alex Meyer,' Sejer said.

'That's him. You've already heard, I thought you might have,' Naper said.

Sejer protested. 'Someone mentioned he was gay, that's all. Tell me how these rumours have come about.'