In the Darkness (13 page)

‘Yes, Eva. What? D’you know my Eva? Is it possible?’ He was rocking slightly, as if he were anxious about something.

‘Yes, a little bit, by chance. Her pictures are good,’ Sejer added quickly. ‘People are a bit slow on the uptake. Just wait, she’ll come into her own, you’ll see.’ He rubbed his jaw in disbelief. ‘So, you’re Eva Magnus’s father?’

‘Is there anything wrong with that?’

‘Certainly not,’ Sejer said. ‘Tell me, Liland wouldn’t be her middle name or anything like that?’

‘No. She’s just called Magnus. And she certainly hasn’t the money to buy another car. She’s divorced now, lives alone with little roly-poly Emma. My only grandchild.’

Sejer rose, ignoring the old man’s astonished look, and pushed his face right up to the painting on the wall. He examined the signature.
E. M. MAGNUS.
The letters were sharp and inclined, they were a bit like old-fashioned runes, he thought, and looked down at the note.
LILAND.
Precisely the same letters. One didn’t even need a handwriting expert to see that. He drew breath.

‘You’ve every reason to be proud of your daughter. I just had to look into this note. So you don’t know the handwriting?’ he asked again.

The old man didn’t answer. He pursed his lips as if suddenly afraid.

Sejer put the note back into his pocket. ‘I won’t disturb you any longer. I can see this is a mistake.’

‘Disturb? You must be mad, how often do you think someone like me gets a visitor?’

‘It’s quite possible I may pop round again,’ he said as lightly as he could. He walked slowly to the front door so that the old man could follow him out. He halted at the top of the steps and stared across the fields. He could hardly believe that he’d run across the name Eva Magnus yet again. As if she had a finger in every pie. It was strange.

‘Your name’s Sejer,’ the old man said suddenly. ‘It’s Danish, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did you grow up in Haukervika?’

‘I did,’ he said, surprised.

‘I think I remember you. A thin little lad forever scratching himself.’

‘I still do. Where did you live?’

‘In that rambling green place behind the sports ground. Eva loved that house. You’ve grown since I last saw you!’

Sejer nodded slowly. ‘I suppose I must have.’

‘But what have we got here?’ He peered at the back seat and caught sight of the dog.

‘My dog.’

‘Good lord, quite a size.’

‘Yes, he certainly is a big boy.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Kollberg.’

‘Huh? What a name! Well well, you’ve got your reasons, no doubt. But I think you could have brought him in.’

‘I don’t as a rule. Not everybody likes it.’

‘But I do. I had one myself, years ago. A Dobermann. She was a bitch, and I called her Dibah. But her real name was Kyrkjebakkens Farah Dibah. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?’

‘Yes.’

He got into the Peugeot and turned on the engine. Things will be heating up for you now, Eva, he thought, because in a couple of minutes you’ll have your old dad on the line, and that’ll give you something to think about. He was annoyed that there was always someone around who could phone and warn her!

‘Drive slowly through the fields,’ Larsgård admonished, ‘lots of animals running back and forth across the road.’

‘I always drive slowly. She’s an old car.’

‘Not as old as me.’

Larsgård waved after him as he drove off.

Chapter 14

EVA STOOD WITH
the phone in her hand.

He’d found the note. After six months he’d found the note.

The police had handwriting experts, they could find out who’d written it, but first they had to have something to compare it with, and then they could study each little loop, the joins and circles, dots and dashes, a unique pattern which revealed the writer, with every characteristic and neurotic tendency, perhaps even sex and age. They went to college and studied all this, it was a science.

It wouldn’t take Sejer many minutes to drive from her father’s place to her own house. She hadn’t much time. She dropped the receiver with a clatter and steadied herself a moment against the wall. Then as if in a daze she went to the hall and took her coat from the peg. She laid it on the dining table with her bag and a packet of cigarettes. She sprinted to the bathroom, packed her toothbrush and some toothpaste in a bag, threw in a hairbrush and the packet of paracetamol. She ran into the bedroom and grabbed some clothes out of the
wardrobe
, underwear, tee shirts and socks. Every now and again she checked the time; she made her way into the kitchen and opened the freezer, found a packet marked ‘Bacon’ and dropped it in her bag, ran back into the living room and switched off the lights, checked that the windows were properly fastened. It had only taken a few minutes, so she stood in the middle of the room and looked round one last time. She didn’t know where she’d go, only that she had to get away. Emma could live with Jostein. She liked it there, perhaps she’d really prefer to be there anyway. This realisation almost paralysed her completely. But she couldn’t give way to sobs now; she went into the hall, put on her coat, slung the bag on her shoulder and opened the door. There was a man outside on the steps, staring at her. She’d never seen him before in her life.

Sejer drove out of the tunnel, his brow deeply furrowed.

‘Kollberg,’ he said, ‘this is really odd.’

He put on his sunglasses. ‘I wonder why we always come back to this woman. What an earth is she up to?’

He stared down at the town, which was dirty and grey after the winter. ‘The old chap certainly hasn’t got anything to do with it, he must be eighty if he’s a day, possibly more. But what the hell would an erudite artist like her want with a clod of a brewery worker? He certainly had no money. By the way, are you hungry?’

‘Woof!’

‘Yes, me too. But we must get to Engelstad first. Afterwards we’ll enjoy ourselves, stop at 7-Eleven on our way home. A pork chop for me and some dry biscuits for you.’

Kollberg whined.

‘Only pulling your leg! Two pork chops and a beer for each of us.’

The dog lay down again, happy. He didn’t understand a word of the conversation, but he liked the sound of his master’s voice when he said the final bit.

Chapter 15

EVA STARED OPEN-MOUTHED
at the stranger. Behind him was a blue Saab, she didn’t recognise that either.

‘Sorry,’ she stammered, ‘I thought you were someone else.’

‘Oh yes? Why did you think that, Eva?’

She blinked uncertainly. Then she was filled with a horrible suspicion. It struck her mind like lightning, her face stiffened and felt like thick paper. After six months the note had turned up, she didn’t know where from. After six months he was at her door, the man she’d been waiting for. She thought he’d given up. He mounted the last couple of steps and leant with one arm on the door frame. She could feel his breath.

‘Know what I found recently? When I was clearing out Maja’s things? I found a painting. Quite an exciting painting as a matter of fact, with your name in one corner. I hadn’t thought of that. She mentioned you the evening she rang, that she’d met you in town. It was that evening, you know – the evening before she died. An old childhood friend, she said. The kind you swap all your secrets with.’

His voice sounded as if it emanated from a reptile, it was rough and hoarse.

‘You shouldn’t leave your paintings around like that with a signature and everything. I cleared out some furniture to sell, and there it was. I’ve been looking for you, I’ve been looking for six months. It wasn’t easy, there are so many Evas. What happened, Eva, was the temptation too great? She told you about the money, eh, and then you killed her?’

Eva had to steady herself on the wall. ‘I did not kill her!’

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘I don’t give a fuck about that! The money’s mine!’

She backed into the hallway and slammed the door shut. It had a night latch. She stumbled through the living room, hearing him begin to work on the lock, quietly at first, as if he had a picklock. She wasted no time. She shot down the cellar steps, ran through it, squeezing past the old carpenter’s bench, and found the main electricity switch. Everything went black. Now, from up above, she heard him attacking the door with heavier tools, there was banging and scraping. She fumbled her way to the cellar door, ran her hands over the woodwork, her temples pounding. The door hadn’t been used for years, perhaps it was locked, perhaps with a padlock, she couldn’t remember, but it led out into a wilderness of garden, and just behind the hedge was her neighbour’s garden and a side street she could escape into. More violent blows upstairs: the sound of metal splintering woodwork, perhaps he was wielding an axe. She found the bar that ran across the door and hoped it wasn’t padlocked, she couldn’t feel anything, but it wouldn’t budge, it had probably rusted fast. Quickly, she removed a shoe and used the heel to hit it from below, she struck it again and again while the man upstairs smashed his way through the door
and
tramped into the living room, and at last it gave. She lifted it carefully, because now he’d halted, he stood still listening, at any moment he’d see the stairs down to the cellar and realise that she was standing down here in the dark, that perhaps there was a way out, she couldn’t open it now that he was so silent. She waited for him to move again, and he did, he approached the stairs, the soles of his shoes sighing on the parquet flooring, she popped her shoe back on and pushed the door open with one shoulder, she hoped it wouldn’t creak, but it gave a squeal that reverberated in the cellar’s space. Now there was only the cellar hatch above her. She thought it was open, she’d never normally locked it, so she ascended the four steps and had begun to push at it with her shoulder when she heard his footfall on the stairs, he’d realised now that she’d fled this way, so he began to hurry, while Eva used her shoulder as a battering ram and drove it up against the hatch again and again. It opened a crack, then closed again, through the gap she saw that someone had put a peg through the steel catch outside, perhaps it had been Jostein, he’d always been so practical. But if it were a wooden peg it would break, sooner or later it would break, so she continued to attack the hatch with her shoulder, the chink got larger, it felt as if her shoulder would break before the peg, it was numb, almost without feeling, so she continued, and suddenly she saw his foot on the bottom step of the cellar stairs, a light-coloured moccasin, and his white teeth in the dark. He moved a few paces and stretched out an arm, and Eva battered her shoulder into the hatch with all her might. Just then the peg broke and the hatch flew up with a crash. She fell down the four steps, got up them again, shot out of the opening and was making for the hedge when she felt his
hands
round her ankle, he had a firm hold, he yanked her towards him, her chin bumped down the steps. The cement floor was icy. She couldn’t feel her shoulder any more. The inside of her mouth was bleeding. He dropped her foot with a little thud.

Eva lay on her stomach. He stood astride her and she caught the scent of his aftershave, a strangely alien smell in the musty cellar. Her thoughts swam for an instant, then she thought: he isn’t particularly large, he’s quite slender, and the cellar hatch is open. I’ve got longer legs, if I could only surprise him …

‘Lie still,’ he snarled.

She tried to make a plan. She had to think of something, ruin his concentration, catch him off balance. There were four steps up to the garden, if she took two at a time …

‘Tell me where you’ve hidden the money, and nothing will happen to you.’ His voice was almost comforting. ‘But if you don’t, things will heat up, in lots of places.’

He struck a match. She gulped back the beginnings of nausea and tried to think, how many seconds would she need to stand up and dash out, get through the hedge and cross her neighbour’s lawn? She went through the movement in her mind, drawing her arms and legs under her, leaping up, two steps, into the hedge, across the lawn, down the street, traffic, people …

‘I can’t hear you,’ he said huskily.

‘I don’t keep it here,’ she groaned. ‘You didn’t really think I would, did you?’

He laughed softly. ‘It doesn’t matter to me where it is. Provided you show me the way.’

What would surprise him, she thought, some unexpected action, perhaps a loud scream, the scream that never materialises from the throat when you’re truly
frightened
, but sticks there blocking the breath? A scream. Perhaps that would paralyse him for a couple of seconds, just long enough to get halfway up from the floor.

She raised her head.

‘Yes?’ he said.

She drew air into her lungs, filled them to capacity and got ready.

‘Which will it be?’

The match went out. And then she screamed. Her scream reverberated, bouncing off the cellar walls in piercing waves from room to room, she jumped up, drew in more air and screamed again, and now he collected himself, sprang after her just as she took the four steps in two bounds, she crossed the garden and dived into the hedge, felt it catching and tearing at her skin and hair, and heard her coat ripping and his panting right behind her, as she pushed her way through and suddenly was out again, picking up speed, went on round her neighbour’s house and out through the gate, down the street, which was silent now, cut in through another gate, she was covering the distance with her long legs, the pain and the fear gave her strength, she heard his feet a little way behind, ran round the house, found a further hedge, she could go through it and continue across another property, but she decided against it, ran instead round the house and stopped at the opposite corner, just in time to see him in pursuit. He thought she’d carried on through the next hedge, but she ran out on to the road again, following the ditch so that her shoes wouldn’t make a noise on the asphalt, caught a glimpse of the main road far ahead, and the first car lights, then she put on speed, no longer looking back, but drove on, with lungs bursting and gasping for breath, and at last caught sight of a car, it
was
moving slowly, she leapt out into the road and heard the screeching of brakes. She collapsed on to the bonnet like a sack. Sejer stared at her in alarm through the windscreen. It was several seconds before she recognised him. Then she spun round, cut across the road and turned into a drive on the other side, she heard his car make a U-turn to that side of the road. It halted, a car door opened, she heard his feet on the pavement. Eva’s strength was exhausted, but still she ran, with her skirt flapping round her legs, Sejer followed her into the garden, he was running on gravel, she could hear him clearly although her ears were ringing, and then another sound, a well-known sound that made her throat tighten. A dog. Kollberg wanted to join in the game. He watched lovingly as his master sped off, it took the dog a few seconds to catch him up, he wagged his tail eagerly, jumping up and tugging at his jacket, then he suddenly noticed the woman running a little way ahead and the flapping of her long skirt in the twilit garden. He forgot Sejer and bounded after her. Eva turned and saw the huge dog and its red jaws, steam was coming from its mouth, its tongue was lolling from side to side like a pendulum as it tore through the garden. She had no thought of Sejer now, she was just running from the dog, from those yellow teeth and big canine paws which cut through the long grass in huge strides, ate up the distance in great bites. There was a small Wendy house amongst the old apple trees. She careered towards it with the very last of her strength, yanked open the door and slammed it shut behind her. Inside here she was safe from the dog. At least she was safe from the dog.