Don't Look Back
Page 21
CHAPTER 10
Astrid Johnas owned a wool shop on the west side of Oslo.
She was sitting at a knitting machine and working on something soft and angora-like, perhaps something for a new-born. He walked across the room and cleared his throat, stopping behind her to admire her work with a slightly awkward expression on his face.
"I'm making a blanket," she said, smiling. "To put in a baby's pram. I make them on commission."
He stared at her, at first with some surprise. She was a good deal older than her former husband. But more than that, she was astonishingly beautiful, and for a moment her beauty took his breath away. Hers was not the gentle, restrained beauty that Elise had possessed, but rather a dark beauty evident at first glance. Against his will he stood there staring at her. It was only then that he noticed her fragrance, perhaps because she gestured towards him. She smelled like a sweet shop, with the faint scent of vanilla.
"Konrad Sejer," he said. "From the police."
"I thought so." She gave him a smile. "Sometimes I wonder why it's always so easy to tell, even when you're not wearing a uniform."
He blushed and wondered whether he might have acquired a different posture or a way of dressing after so many years on the police force, or whether she was simply more astute than most people.
She stood up and turned off her work lamp.
"Come into the back room. I have a small office where I eat my lunch."
She moved in a very feminine way.
"This whole thing with Annie is so awful that I almost can't even think about it. And I feel so guilty for not going to the funeral, but to be honest, I just couldn't face it. I sent flowers."
She pointed to a chair. He stared at her, slowly overcome by an almost forgotten sensation. He was with a beautiful woman, and there was no one else in the room that he could hide behind. She smiled at him, as if the same thought had occurred to her. But she didn't lose her composure. After all, she had always been beautiful.
"I knew Annie well. She spent a lot of time at our house and took care of Eskil. We had a son who died last year," she said. "His name was Eskil."
"I know."
"You've talked to Henning, of course. Unfortunately, we lost contact with her afterwards; she didn't come to see us any more. Poor thing, I felt so sorry for her. She was only 14, and at that age it's not easy to know what to say."
Sejer nodded as he fumbled with the buttons on his jacket. It was suddenly very warm in the small office.
"Have you any idea who might have done it?" she asked.
"No," he said. "At the moment we're just gathering information. Then we'll see if we can move on to what we call the tactical phase."
"I'm afraid I won't be of much help." She looked down at her hands. "I knew her well; she was a lovely girl, much smarter and nicer than most girls her age. She was never silly. She trained hard and kept in shape and paid attention in school. She was pretty too. She had a boyfriend, a boy named Halvor. But maybe they weren't together any more?"
"Yes, they were," he said.
There was a pause. He waited to see what her reaction would be.
"What is it you want to know?"
He said nothing, studying her. She had a trim, slender figure and dark eyes. All of her clothes were knitted, like one big advertisement for her shop. An attractive suit with a straight skirt and fitted jacket, deep red with green and mustard-coloured borders. Black, low-heeled shoes. A simple, straight hair style. Lipstick that matched the red in her outfit. Bronze arrowhead earrings, partially hidden by her dark hair. Some years younger than Sejer, with the first hint of fine lines at her eyes and mouth. She was clearly much older than her former husband. Her son Eskil must have been born at the very end of her youth.
"I'm not looking for anything in particular," he said. So Annie came to your house to baby-sit Eskil?"
"Several times a week," she said. "No one else wanted to baby-sit for him; he wasn't easy to deal with. But you've probably heard this already."
"Yes, it was mentioned," he lied.
"He was so full of energy, almost bordering on the abnormal. Hyperactive, I guess it's called. You know, up and down, always restless."
She gave a rather helpless laugh. "I hope you understand that this isn't an easy thing to admit. But to be quite frank, he was a difficult child. Annie was one of the few who could handle him."
She paused and thought for a moment. "She came over a lot. Henning and I were always so worn out, and it was a blessing whenever she appeared in the doorway, smiling and offering to baby-sit. He would sit in the pushchair, and we usually gave them some money so they could go downtown and buy something. Sweets or ice cream or something like that. It would take them an hour or two; I think she deliberately took her time. Now and then they'd take the bus into the city and be gone the whole day. They would ride around in the little train at the marketplace. I was working the night shift at the hospital and often needed to sleep during the day, so it was a welcome break for me. We have another son, Magne. But he was too old to go out pushing a pram. At any rate, he didn't want to. So he wriggled out of it, as most boys do."
She smiled again and shifted her position on the chair. Every time she moved he noticed the scent of vanilla. She kept an eye on the shop door as she spoke, but no one came in. Talking about her son seemed to make her uneasy. Her eyes were on everything except Sejer's face, flitting around like a bird trapped in much too small a space, moving from the shelves of wool to the table to the front of the shop.
"How old was Eskil when he died?" Sejer asked.
"Only 27 months," she whispered, and seemed to flinch.
"Did it happen while Annie was baby-sitting him?"
She glanced up. "No, thank God. I kept on saying how lucky that was; it would have been unbearable. It was bad enough for poor Annie; she didn't need to have that on her conscience too."
Another pause. He breathed as quietly as he could and took a new approach.
"But... what kind of accident was it?"
"I thought you talked to Henning," she said.
"I did," he lied. "But he didn't go into detail."
"Eskil got some food caught in his throat," she said. "I was upstairs in bed. Henning was in the bathroom shaving and didn't hear a thing. But Eskil couldn't scream anyway, with the food caught in his throat. He was strapped to his chair with a harness, the kind children have at that age. They are meant for their protection. He was sitting there eating his breakfast."
"I know them. I have a daughter and a grandchild," he said.
She swallowed and then went on. "Henning found him hanging in the harness, blue in the face. It took the ambulance more than 20 minutes to arrive, and by then there was no hope."
"They came from the central hospital?"
"Yes."
Sejer looked at the front room of the shop and saw a woman at the window. She was admiring a jumper that Mrs Johnas had on display.
"So it happened in the morning?"
"Early in the morning," she said.
"And you were asleep the whole time, is that right?"
Suddenly she looked him straight in the eye. "I thought you wanted to talk about Annie."
"You're welcome to tell me something about Annie," he said, and he felt a twinge in his chest.
But she didn't say anything. She sat up and crossed her arms.
"I take it you've talked to everybody who lives in Krystallen?"
"Yes, we have."
"So you already know all about this?"
"Yes, that's true. But what concerns me is Annie's reaction to the accident," he said. "The fact that she reacted so strongly."
"That's not so strange, is it?" she said, her voice a little sharp. "When a two-year-old dies like that. A boy she knew well. They were very attached to each other, and Annie was proud of the fact that she was really the only one who could handle him."
"I suppose it's not so strange. I'm just trying to find out who she was. What she was like."
"I'm not sure."
"You're not? Well, that's what I assumed straight away, since it said that she was found naked. You know, after reading the papers, and they're always talking about sex." Now she was blushing as she fidgeted with her fingers. "What else could it be?"
"That's the question. As far as we know, she had no enemies. But if the motive wasn't sex, then the question is: what was it?"
"Those kinds of people probably aren't very logical. I mean, crazy people. They don't think like the rest of us."
"We have no idea how crazy he might be. How long were you married to your husband?"
She gave a start. "For 15 years. I was pregnant with Magne when we got married. Henning – he's a lot younger than I am," she said, as if to confirm something that she thought might have surprised him. "Eskil was actually the result of long discussions, but we were in total agreement, we really were."
"A kind of afterthought?"
"Yes." She stared at the ceiling, as if there were something of interest up there.
"So your older son is getting on for 17 now?"
She nodded.
"Does he have contact with his father?"
She gave him a look of dismay. "Of course he does! He often goes to Lundeby to visit old friends. But it's not always easy for us. After everything that has happened."
"Do you go out to Eskil's grave very often?"
"No," she said. "But Henning tends to it. It's difficult for me. As long as I know it's being looked after, I can bear it."
He thought about the neglected grave. Then the door opened and a young man came into the shop. Mrs Johnas glanced up.
"Magne! I'm in here!"
Sejer turned and studied her son. He bore a strong resemblance to his father, although he was much more heavily built. He paused in the doorway, apparently reluctant to talk. His expression was stony and remote; it suited his black hair and the bulging muscles of his upper arms.
"I must get going, Mrs Johnas," Sejer said, standing up. "You'll forgive me if I have to come back another time."
He nodded to mother and son, and was gone. Mrs Johnas stared after him for a long time and then gave her son an agonised look.
"He's investigating Annie's murder," she said. "But all he wanted to talk about was Eskil."
Outside the shop, Sejer paused for a moment. A motorcycle was parked next to the entrance; perhaps it belonged to Magne Johnas. A big Kawasaki. Leaning on the motorcycle, with her rear end against the seat, was a young woman. She didn't notice him because she was concentrating on her nails. Maybe she'd broken one of them and was now trying to save it by scraping at the break with another fingernail. She was wearing a short red leather jacket covered with studs, and she had a cloud of blonde hair that reminded him of angel-hair, the kind they used to put on the Christmas tree when he was a child. Then she looked up. He smiled and straightened his jacket.
"Hello, Sølvi," he said, and headed across the street.
He drove slowly, ordering his thoughts in neat rows. Eskil Johnas. A difficult child whom only Annie could handle. And who suddenly died, all alone, harnessed to his chair, with no one to help him. He thought of his own grandson and shivered as he took the Lundeby exit and headed for Halvor's house.
Halvor Muntz was standing in the kitchen, running cold water over some spaghetti. He kept forgetting to eat. Now he felt dizzy, and the sleeping pill he had taken in the night had left him feeling heavy and sluggish. He didn't hear the car pull up outside because the water was gushing out of the tap. But he heard his grandmother slam the door, mutter something to herself and shuffle across the floor in her Nike trainers with their black stripes. She looked comical. On the counter stood a bottle of ketchup and a bowl of grated cheese. He remembered that he had forgotten to add salt. His grandmother was groaning in the living room.
"Look what I found in the shed, Halvor!"
Something fell to the floor with a thud. He peeked into the room.
"An old school bag," she said. "With books inside. It's fun to look at old textbooks. I didn't know you were saving them."
Halvor took two steps forward and then stopped abruptly. From the buckle on the bag hung a bottle opener with an ad for Coke on it.
"That's Annie's," he whispered.
A pen had leaked blue ink through the leather and made little blotches along the bottom of the zippered compartment.
"Did she leave it here?"
"Yes," he said quickly. "I'll put it in my room for the time being and take it over to Eddie later."
His grandmother looked at him, and an anxious expression spread over her wrinkled face. Suddenly a familiar figure appeared in the dimly lit hallway. Halvor felt his heart sink; he stiffened and stood as if frozen to the spot, with the bag dangling from one strap.
"Halvor," Sejer said. "You'll have to come with me."
Halvor swayed and had to take a step sideways in order not to fall. The ceiling was moving down towards him, soon he would be crushed against the floor.
"You can take the bag to Annie's house on the way," his grandmother said nervously, twisting her wedding ring, which was much too big, around and around. Halvor didn't reply. The room was starting to swirl around him, and sweat poured out of him as he stood there shaking, with the bag in his hand. It wasn't very heavy because Annie had removed most of its contents. Inside was Sigrid Undset's novel The Wreath, the new biography of the author, and a notebook – along with her wallet, which contained a picture of him from the previous summer when he looked tanned and handsome, with his hair bleached by the sun. Not as he looked now, with sweat on his forehead and his face chalk-white with fear.
The mood was tense. Normally he had no trouble staying the course and taking whatever came his way. But now he felt caught off guard.
"You realise that this was necessary?" Sejer said.
"Yes."
Halvor raised one leg and studied his trainer, the frayed laces and the sole, which was beginning to separate along the edges.
"Annie's school bag was found in the shed at your house, which directly connects you with the murder. Do you understand what I'm saying?"