The Water's Edge

by Karin Fossum

  'What? Who's taken another boy?'

  'Well, we don't know yet, but my money's on that man from Linde Forest,' he said. 'The missing boy is from Huseby. There's total panic now.'

  'No,' she said, baffled. She shook her head in disbelief. Her hair was wet and drops of water trickled into her eyes.

  'Is that what they were saying on the radio?'

  'Yes, I've just heard it. But they didn't give away many details, you know, they never do at this stage. But it's a ten-year-old boy and he goes to the same school as Jonas August.'

  Kristine stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. She watched him with wide eyes.

  'But where did they find him? Was he dressed?'

  'No,' Reinhardt said, 'they haven't found him yet, they're still looking.'

  'What do you mean they haven't found him?'

  She took a smaller towel and wrapped it around her hair like a turban.

  'Then how do we know what's happened to him?' she objected.

  'Oh, they'll find him,' Reinhardt said, 'but by then it will be too late. Kristine! We're the only witnesses, the only ones to have seen him up close.'

  Kristine got dressed. She was troubled by what Reinhardt had told her, by scenarios she did not want to entertain, by thoughts she did not want to think. They went down to the kitchen to have breakfast. Reinhardt made coffee.

  'When I'm out and about I'll keep my eyes open. Just in case he might show up.'

  Kristine took her usual place at the table. 'But what if you see someone, you tell the police and it turns out it's not him,' she objected. 'Imagine how awful that would be.'

  'I really can't worry about that. If you think about it,' he added, 'not many people in this world can stop him from taking a third boy. But you and I can, we're in a unique position.'

  It gives him a buzz, she thought, that it might be so.

  She buttered a slice of bread.

  'You might be right,' she said, 'but there's not much we can do in our unique position. Unless he shows up somewhere.'

  'And he will, sooner or later. The question is: how many kids will he kill before that?'

  'What's his name?' Kristine asked. 'The missing boy?'

  'Something unusual,' Reinhardt said. 'Edwin. What a hopeless name for a small boy.'

  She shrugged. 'He's probably named after someone. His grandfather, perhaps.'

  'It doesn't suit him,' Reinhardt stated. 'Edwin is an adult's name. The name of someone who's fifty or sixty.'

  'But he's going to grow up,' Kristine said. 'He's only a boy for the first ten years.'

  She stopped talking. All he would get now was those ten years. She looked at Reinhardt. He seemed unperturbed. She had no idea what that signified.

  'There's something about you men,' she said.

  'Is there now?' He looked down at her. 'Why don't you tell me what that is?'

  'You're so simple.'

  'Are we really?'

  'If someone gives you a ball, you'll chase it for hours.'

  'Ha ha,' Reinhardt laughed, he was finding all this highly amusing.

  'You never stop playing. Whereas we girls, we grow up when we turn twelve, because we know we'll become mothers one day. One child can't take care of another, we have to be responsible.'

  Reinhardt's smile stiffened and became acidic.

  'Besides, our brains are very different,' she continued. 'I saw something about it on TV once. They had created this image, which highlighted the differences. Active areas of the brain were coloured red.'

  'Good heavens,' Reinhardt chuckled.

  'And inactive areas were coloured yellow.'

  She swallowed another sip of her coffee. 'And do you know something?'

  Her eyes met his across the table.

  'The male brain showed just a small red spot,' she said. 'The active parts were limited to a small area. Whereas the female brain was almost entirely red. Because we're capable of thinking about many different things simultaneously,' she said triumphantly.

  'While we focus on one thing,' Reinhardt said. 'And that's why we achieve more than you do. Whereas you busy yourselves with trifles and that's why everything you do is mediocre and halfhearted.'

  The discussion was starting to make her dizzy.

  'You're always the ones to stop when there's been a road accident,' she said, 'or a fire. Or any other disaster, for that matter.'

  'So what?' he replied. 'We like the adrenalin, Kristine: that doesn't make us inferior human beings.'

  'That's not what I said,' she defended herself.

  'I know you,' he said, 'and I know what you're thinking. But I don't mind admitting it. I'm interested in the missing boy from Huseby.'

  She risked touching a sore point. 'Only a man who has no children of his own would say that,' she said.

  He nodded. 'A good reason for not having any, wouldn't you agree? If you have a kid and then lose it, the rest of your life's ruined.'

  'We can't think like that,' she protested.

  He washed down his bread with milk.

  'That is precisely how we should be thinking,' he said. 'Every eventuality must be taken into consideration. We have a child and he gets sick. Or we have a child and he is knocked down by a car. We could have a disabled child, born without arms or legs perhaps. We might have a badly behaved child. And we are left with the guilt and the shame. Or,' he concluded, 'we might have a child that gets murdered.'

  'But why should that happen?' she said, aghast.

  'Sweetheart,' he said, 'it happens all the time, and we're at the centre of it. You're hopelessly naive, you never think that such a tragedy could hit us. Do you really think we're that special?'

  She brushed some crumbs off the table. 'But we have to concentrate on living,' she argued. 'If we always thought like that, we would never do anything, and we would never achieve anything.'

  'I think like that,' Reinhardt said, 'and I enjoy my life.'

  A pause arose. Kristine added sugar to her coffee and Reinhardt buttered another slice of bread. He had very forceful hands with coarse hairs on the back. She looked out of the window: on the small patch of garden a crow leapt about eagerly. She kept watching it. It struck her that she had never looked properly at a crow. It's pretty, she thought, and perhaps it really was a bearer of bad tidings, there was something mysterious about it, something secretive. Suddenly it raised its head and looked at her through the window.

  Reinhardt interrupted her train of thought.

  'He's got nothing to lose now,' he said. 'He's crossed the line. It might cause him to lose control completely.'

  'You're just guessing now,' she said. 'Perhaps they'll find the boy alive and well.'

  She swallowed a mouthful of bread.

  'You're just being naive again,' he declared.

  'I can't bear the thought,' she said, 'that a grown man would do that to a child.'

  'You've always been so sensitive,' he said, 'but that's what I like about you.'

  He got up from the table. As he did so, he gave her a look she had never seen before.

  'If you ever leave me, I'll beat you to within an inch of your life.'

  She wanted to laugh, but was unable to. Why would he say something like that? Two more crows had joined the first one on the lawn, they had settled by the hedge. While she sat watching them another two arrived and soon a whole flock had gathered.

  'Look,' she said, pointing at the birds.

  Reinhardt spotted them.

  'They're eating something,' he said. 'I'll pop out to check.'

  He disappeared out into the hall. She heard the door slam. More crows came flying, each one landing by the hedge. There was a mass of black and grey colour, she could see how they sat there pecking away. And she was reminded of a Hitchcock film she had once seen, The Birds. Then she saw Reinhardt walk across the lawn. The crows scattered and took off. He bent down to have a look, placing his hands on his knees for support: there was something in the grass and he was studying it carefully. He retur
ned, smiling broadly.

  'You ready then?' he asked. 'Time to get going.'

  She got up from the table.

  'So what was it?' she asked.

  'A rotting badger,' he said, 'a huge, fat one, well over a metre long.'

  CHAPTER 24

  He looked out of the window, resting his palms on the broad windowsill for support. The farmer's mother was walking across the yard. Fetching eggs, he guessed. She had her arm stuck through the handle of an old-fashioned metal basket. It upset the rhythm of her walk and made her look less mobile than she actually was. He noticed that she was terribly bowlegged. She was bent double from age as well as gravity. He thought that if she were to fall, she would break every bone in her body. He pulled back a little so that she would not see him standing in the window. I'm a quiet sort of man, he thought, I don't draw attention to myself, and if I happen to meet anyone, I'm polite and respectful.

  The old woman disappeared in the direction of the henhouse and he shifted his gaze to the hilltop. A car was approaching. It stopped by the letter boxes. Probably delivering his benefit cheque. He had been waiting for that. He went over to his sofa, sat down and fidgeted with his hands. I haven't been feeling very well, he thought, not at all well. It would have been nice to take a trip into town, but being recognised was now a serious risk. People were looking for him, they kept their eyes peeled. He could not relax until the evenings, when the darkness crept in around the cottage and yet another day had passed without the police finding him. He worried about what the police called their 'success rate'. He knew that they had allocated all their resources to finding him, that other offenders would escape because he was their priority. The police had announced that they would be carrying out door-to-door inquiries and his brain was working overtime trying to come up with a plan. But given that his name did not appear on any registers, surely he was safe, wasn't he? In order to bring him in for questioning they would need actual grounds for suspecting him, beyond the fact that he had happened to be in the area. He got up and paced the floor. He was restless and bursting with energy at the same time. To hell with them all, he thought, as his bitterness made his cheeks burn, to hell with everyone who doesn't understand.

  When he relived what had happened, he felt a throbbing and an ache between his legs. At times it was like a pulse beating all the way up to his tongue. Desperately, he prepared his own defence: the child had come on to him, had offered him a tantalising smile. And he was a good person, at least he wanted to be, and there was something strangely bewildering about lust, wasn't there? He remembered his mother walking in on him as he sat on his bed with no underpants on, playing with himself, almost absentmindedly. Something inexplicable had happened in the doorway. His mother had been overcome by a hysterical rage, her voice had contorted. What are you doing, what on earth do you think you're doing? Where are your manners, what is wrong with you?

  He tried to relate his own actions to her reaction, but failed. Instead he was left alone with his lust and whenever his hands wanted to slip inside his trousers, his cheeks would start to burn. Every day with his mother was like being put through a grinder, he came out in thin strips. When she finally grew old, she would not die, either. For months she was confined to bed in terrible pain. He had sat patiently by her bedside, waiting because he did not want to miss the moment when she died. She groaned and screamed, she gurgled and rattled. For weeks and months, and every hour was filled with agony. He was unaffected by watching her, he felt neither joy nor relief, merely fascination. At long last she emptied her lungs in one final scream. 'That's enough!'

  She spoke no more. Her chin sank down and her eyes stared at something beyond life.

  He thought his fate was hard to bear. Others could love and follow their desires, but he was doomed to a life of celibacy, to fantasies that drained and tormented him. He would probably burn in hell for what he had done, he would burn in prison as well, no one would want to know him or talk to him after this. He thought about committing suicide and felt a stinging sensation underneath his eyelids. Perhaps it was best to end it all. He could go down to Loch Bonna one night, go out on the headland and let himself fall into the water. What did the future hold for him – nothing but contempt and condemnation? No money and no respect from the outside world? Not that he was much to look at, either, he didn't stand a chance with today's women, there was no end to what they demanded by way of appearance and success. And what was he? An ageing man with a limp and bad teeth, a man on benefits. He was not very adept at getting on with people. His social skills were poor, he did not understand the game and lost every time. Again he collapsed on to the sofa and stared at the old wheelchair in the corner from Plesner Medical Supplies. It had been his mother's and he should have returned it to the hospital, but he had never got around to it. It had been in his living room so long it had become part of his modest furniture. Now he got up and went over to it, lowered himself carefully into it. Clasped the wheels and felt the soft rubber against his palms. Something about sitting in the wheelchair made him feel he was in the right place. Of course he was disabled, he could not manage what others managed. He rolled silently and smoothly across the floor. All he needed was a blanket across his knees to make the illusion complete. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the newspapers on the coffee table, the photos and huge headlines.

  Following Edwin's disappearance, the police considered him to be highly dangerous.

  CHAPTER 25

  'I've been reading about various types of paraphilia,' Skarre said. 'Experts have identified more than one hundred preferences. I can't deny that I'm fascinated. By the way,' he added, 'paidos means boy and philia means love.'

  'I know,' Sejer said.

  'And there's another variant,' Skarre went on. 'Gerontophilia.'

  'What's that?'

  'Being attracted to old people.'

  Sejer frowned.

  'And acrotomophilia. A desire for people with missing limbs.'

  'Is that possible?'

  'It is. And of course there's necrophilia—'

  'I know, I know. Let's change the subject. Can paedophilia be treated?'

  'To some extent,' Skarre said, 'but the success rate is poor, on the whole. Ideally a person needs to be in therapy before they turn fourteen. And it's hard to make anyone do that. At this point very few will have started abusing.'

  'But when does a person know that they're sexually attracted to children?'

  'Early on. A conflict erupts between a child and its parents, an emotional conflict, and the child seeks a solution to it. The solution, that is, paraphilia, is one they usually discover between the ages of eight and nine, some as young as six. And over the years it grows stronger. There's very little research on the subject, that's the problem.'

  'Go on.'

  'In some states in the US,' Skarre continued, 'it is illegal to teach sex education to anyone under the age of sixteen.'

  'Why?' Sejer wondered out loud.

  'It's regarded as a form of assault. And consequently the system does not pick them up. And their paraphilia, if they have one, is allowed to develop unchecked. And even though we despise and reject what they do, their abuse is an attempt to solve a problem.'

  'That part I understand,' Sejer said, 'but in this case I'm not prepared to make excuses for anyone.'

  'There's another point,' Skarre said, 'which is worth considering. It's based on culture. We call it abuse, but what defines it as such? Religion? Morality? Experts, the authorities or we as individuals? In other cultures,' he went on, 'things go on which in Norway would meet with universal outrage and severe punishments.'

  'Like what?'

  'Polynesian mothers masturbate their young children to make them settle at night.'

  'Good heavens.'

  'Boys in New Guinea have to service older men in order for them to be regarded as real men. I won't go into detail about what they have to do; after all, you're easily embarrassed.'

  'Thank you.'

 
; 'And then there are Portuguese grandmothers.'

  'Are you about to slander Portuguese grandmothers?' Sejer asked, appalled. 'I've been on holiday in Portugal, I've seen them close up, they're the very image of respectability.'

  'They rub small boys in church,' Skarre said, 'so they'll sit still during evening mass.'

  'I've never heard anything so outrageous.'

  'But up here in the cold and freezing north there's really very little the law allows you.'

  'We should be grateful for that,' Sejer said. 'We need to enforce it and we cannot have any grey areas.' He gave Skarre a stern look. 'If you put a child on your lap, there must be no ulterior motives.'