Don't Look Back

by Karin Fossum

  "Yes. But you're wrong."

  "Since you were Annie's boyfriend, you were a suspect. The problem was that we couldn't charge you with anything. But now your grandmother has done the job for us. I'm sure you hadn't expected that, Halvor, since she isn't very mobile. All of a sudden she decides to clean out the shed. Who would have thought that would happen?"

  "I have no idea where it came from! She found it in the shed, that's all I know."

  "Behind a foam mattress?"

  Halvor's face looked grimy and paler then ever. From time to time the taut corner of his mouth would twitch, as if finally, after a very long time, it wanted to tear itself away.

  "Someone's trying to frame me."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Someone must have put the bag there. I heard someone sneaking around outside my window the other night."

  Sejer smiled sadly.

  "Go ahead and sneer," Halvor said, "but it's true. Somebody put it there, someone wants me to take the blame, someone who knew that Annie and I were together. So it has to be someone she knew, doesn't it?"

  He gave the chief inspector a stubborn stare.

  "I've always thought that the killer knew her," Sejer said. "I think he knew her well. Maybe as well as you did?"

  "I didn't do it! Listen to me! I didn't do it!"

  He wiped his brow and tried to calm down.

  "Do you think there's someone we should talk to that we might have overlooked?"

  "I have no idea."

  "A new boyfriend, for instance?"

  "There wasn't anyone else."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "She would have told me."

  "Do you think girls come running to confess the minute they fall for someone else? How many girlfriends have you had, Halvor?"

  "She would have told me. You don't know Annie."

  "No, I didn't. And I realise that she was unusal. But she must have had some things in common with other girls, don't you think, Halvor? A few things?"

  "I don't know any other girls."

  He huddled on his chair. Stuck a finger between the rubber sole and the canvas of his shoe and began prising them apart.

  "Why don't you look for fingerprints on the bag?"

  "We will, of course. But it's not hard to wipe them clean. I have a strong suspicion that we won't find a single one, except for yours and your grandmother's."

  "I never touched it before. Not until today."

  "We'll see. Finding the bag also gives us reason to do a closer check on your motorcycle and gear and helmet. And the house you live in. Is there anything you need before we continue?"

  "No."

  The gap in his shoe was now quite big. He pulled his hand away.

  "Do I have to stay here tonight?"

  "I'm afraid so. If you could look at the situation objectively, you'd understand that I have to hold you."

  "For how long?"

  "I don't know yet."

  He looked at the boy's face across the table and changed tactics.

  "What have you been writing on your PC, Halvor? You sit in front of the monitor for hours, from the minute you get home after work until close to midnight every day. Can you tell me what you've been doing?"

  Halvor looked up. "Have you been spying on me?

  "In a way. We've been spying on a lot of people lately. Are you writing a diary?"

  "I just play games. Chess, for example."

  "With yourself?"

  "With the Virgin Mary," he said.

  Seje; blinked. "I would advise you to tell me what you know. You're keeping something from me, Halvor, I'm sure of that. Were there two of you? Are you covering up for someone?"

  Halvor remained silent.

  "If we end up charging you, we may have to confiscate your PC."

  "Go ahead," he said, smiling suddenly. "But you won't be able to get in!"

  "We won't get in? Why not?"

  Halvor stopped talking and went back to working on his trainer.

  "Because you've put a password on it?"

  His mouth was dry, but he didn't want to beg for a Coke. In the refrigerator at home he had a Vørter beer; he sat there thinking about it.

  "So I assume that it contains something important, since you've made sure that no one could find it."

  "I just did it for fun."

  "Could you give me more than one-line answers, Halvor?"

  "There's nothing important. Just things I scribble when I'm bored."

  Sejer stood up, and his chair slid back without a sound on the linoleum.

  "You look thirsty. I'll get us a couple of Cokes."

  Sejer left and the office closed in around Halvor. There was now a real hole in his trainer, and he peered at his filthy tennis sock. Far off in the distance he could hear a siren, but he couldn't tell what kind of emergency vehicle it came from. Otherwise there was a steady hum in the big building, like the sound in a movie theatre before the film starts. Sejer came back with two bottles and an opener.

  "I'm going to open the window a little. OK?"

  Halvor nodded. "I didn't do it."

  Sejer found two plastic cups and poured the Coke. Foam spilled over the sides.

  "There was no reason for me to do it."

  "It's not immediately clear to me either why you would do it." He sighed and took a sip of the Coke. "But that doesn't mean that you didn't have a reason. Sometimes our feelings can run away with us – that's often the simple answer. Has that ever happened to you?"

  Halvor didn't reply.

  "Do you know Raymond on Kolleveien?"

  "The guy with Downs syndrome? I see him in the street once in a while."

  "Have you ever been to his house?"

  "I've driven past. He has rabbits."

  "Ever talk to him?"

  "Never."

  "Did you know that Knut Jensvoll, who was Annie's coach, once served time for rape?"

  "Annie told me that."

  "Did anyone else know?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Did you know the little boy she used to baby-sit for? Eskil Johnas?"

  Now he looked up, startled. "Yes! He died."

  "Tell me about him."

  "Why?"

  "Just do as I ask."

  "Well, he was sweet... and funny."

  "Sweet and funny?"

  "Full of energy."

  "Difficult?"

  "A bit of a handful, maybe. Couldn't sit still. I think he took medication for it. Had to be strapped down all the time, to his chair, in the pushchair. I went along a few times when Annie took care of him. She was the only one who could handle him. But you know, Annie ..."

  He emptied his cup and wiped his mouth.

  "Did you know his parents?"

  "I know who they are."

  "How about the older son?"

  "Magne? I know what he looks like."

  "Did he ever show any interest in Annie?"

  "Just the usual. Long looks whenever she walked past."

  "What did you think about that, Halvor? The fact that other boys were giving your girlfriend the once over?"

  "First of all, I was used to it. Second, Annie let them know she wasn't interested."

  "And yet she went off with someone. There's an exception here, Halvor."

  "I realise that."

  Halvor was tired. He closed his eyes. The scar at the corner of his mouth shone like a silver cord in the light from the lamp. "There was a lot about Annie that I didn't understand. Sometimes she'd get angry for no reason, or really irritated, and if I asked what was the matter, she'd get even worse and snap at me, saying that it's not always easy to understand everything in this world."

  He gasped for breath.

  "So you have a feeling that she knew something? That something was bothering her?"

  "I don't know. I guess so. I told Annie a lot about myself. Almost everything. So she should have known that it wasn't dangerous to confide in someone."

  "But your own confide
nces couldn't have been exactly earthshaking. Maybe hers were worse?"

  Nothing could have been worse. Nothing in the world.

  "Halvor?"

  "There was something," he said in a low voice as he opened his eyes again, "that had locked Annie up tighter than a sealed drum."

  CHAPTER 11

  Something had locked Annie up tighter than a sealed drum.

  The sentence was so delicately formulated that he realised he believed it. Or was it simply that he wanted to believe it? In any case ... there was the school bag, hidden. The strong feeling that Halvor was keeping something concealed. Sejer stared at the pavement ahead of him and arranged several ideas in his mind. Annie liked to baby-sit for other people's children. The boy she preferred to take care of was particularly difficult, and he had died. She would never have had children of her own, and she didn't have long to live. She had a boyfriend at whom she occasionally snapped; she broke off with him and then took him back. As if she didn't really know what she wanted. He could see no clear connections between this set of facts.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets and headed across the car park, got into his car and carefully manoeuvred it out to the street. Then he drove to the next county, the community where Halvor had spent his childhood, or rather non-existent childhood. Back then the community police department was in an old villa, but now he found it located in a new shopping centre, squeezed in between a Rimi supermarket and the Inland Revenue office. He waited a short time in the reception area and was lost in thought when the community officer came into the room. A pale, freckled hand was extended. The man was in his late 40s, thin, with little pigmentation on his skin and scalp and barely concealed curiosity in his blue-green eyes. And entirely obliging. It wasn't every day that they were visited by a chief inspector from the city. Most of the time it felt as though the rest of the world had forgotten them.

  "It's good of you to take the time," Sejer said, following the community officer down the corridor.

  "You mentioned a homicide. Annie Holland?"

  Sejer nodded.

  "I've been following the case in the papers. And as you're here, I assume that you have someone in the spotlight whom you think I might know?"

  He pointed to a chair.

  "Well, yes, in a way. We do have someone in custody. He's just a boy, but what we found at his house gave us no choice but to arrest him."

  "And you would have preferred to have a choice?"

  "I don't think he did it." Sejer gave a little smile at his own words.

  "I see. That happens sometimes."

  The community officer's voice held no hint of irony. He folded his pale pink hands and waited.

  "In December 1992 you had a suicide here in your district. Two brothers were subsequently sent to the Bjerkeli Children's Home, and the mother ended up in the psychiatric ward of the Central Hospital. I'm looking for information on Halvor Muntz, born 1976, the son of Torkel and Lilly Muntz."

  The community officer recognised the name, and at once he looked anxious.

  "You dealt with the case, didn't you?"

  "Yes, unfortunately, I did. Along with a younger officer. Halvor, the older boy, called me at home. It happened at night. I remember the date, December 13, because my daughter had the role of Lucia at the school celebration that day. I didn't want to go out there alone, so I took along a new recruit. When it came to Halvor's family, we never knew what we might find. We drove out to the house and found the mother on the sofa in the living room, huddled under a quilt, and the two boys upstairs. Halvor didn't say a word. Next to him in bed was his little brother, who wouldn't even open his eyes. There was blood everywhere. We checked the boys, saw that they were still alive, and breathed a sigh of relief. Then we started searching. The father was lying inside an old, rotting sleeping bag. Half of his head was blown away."

  He stopped, and Sejer could almost see the images like shadows in the community officer's pupils as they tumbled out.

  "It wasn't easy to get anything out of the boys. They clung to each other and refused to say a word. But after a lot of coaxing, Halvor told us that his father had been drinking heavily since morning and had worked himself up into a terrible rage. He was ranting incoherently and had started smashing up the house. The boys had spent most of the day outside, but when night fell, they had to come in because it was cold. Halvor woke up to find his father bending over his bed with a bread knife in his hand. He stabbed Halvor once and then seemed to come to his senses. He rushed out and Halvor heard the door slam, and then they heard him struggling with the door to the shed and slamming it shut. They had one of those old-fashioned woodsheds behind the house. After a little while they heard a shot. Halvor didn't dare go out to investigate; he tiptoed down to the living room and called me. But he guessed what had happened. Told us he was afraid that something was wrong with his father. The Child Welfare Service had been trying to take custody of those kids for years, but Halvor had always refused. After that night, he didn't object."

  "How did he take it?"

  The community officer got up and paced the room. He seemed strained and uneasy. Sejer had no intention of filling the silence.

  "It was hard to tell what he was feeling. Halvor was a very closed sort of child. But to be honest, it definitely wasn't despair. It was more a sort of determination, maybe because he could finally start a new life. His father's death was a turning point. It must have been a relief. The boys had lived in constant fear, and they never had the things they needed."

  The community officer fell silent and stood with his back turned, waiting for Sejer's questions. He was the chief inspector, after all, who had come to him for assistance. But Sejer remained motionless. Finally he turned around.

  "It wasn't until later that we started to think about things." He went back to his chair. "The father was lying inside a sleeping bag. He had taken off his jacket and boots, had even rolled up his sweater and stuck it under his head. I mean, he had really settled in for the night. Not ..." he said, taking a breath, "not to die. So it occurred to us afterwards that someone might have helped him on his way to eternity."

  Sejer shut his eyes. He rubbed hard at a spot on one eyebrow and felt a scrap of dried skin fall.

  "You mean Halvor?"

  "Yes," the community officer said sombrely, "I mean Halvor. Halvor could have followed him out, watched him fall asleep, stuck the shotgun inside the sleeping bag, into his father's hands, and pulled the trigger."