The Water's Edge (12 page)

Four Polish men would turn up to work in the fields every May and they would stay on until November. They were nodding acquaintances, but he never stopped to talk to them. They slept in the storehouse. Sometimes, in the evenings, he would hear laughter and voices coming from in there, in a language he did not understand but found exotic. One of them was good at playing the mouth organ and another had a distinctive laugh, which would roll across the farmyard from time to time. They were polite, friendly and hard-working people.

As he stood there staring out into the farmyard it suddenly occurred to him that pulling the curtain had been a stupid thing to do. He was not in the habit of doing that and it might arouse suspicion. He flung the fabric aside and the light flooded in. Whether he wanted to or not, he would have to start his car and go food shopping. His white car. The car they were looking for. And he would buy a newspaper, obviously, if he could muster the courage. How much did they know, what had they found, were they about to catch him, was it only a matter of days before they would break down his door? He remembered his anorak, he could never wear it again, he had to get rid of it. He hurried out into the hall to see what else was hanging on the coat stand. A coat with big pockets and an old leather jacket, its lining had practically been worn away and the leather had cracked on the elbows. In the pocket he found an ancient cinema ticket and the stick from an ice-cream.

He went back into the kitchen to have a shower, pulled aside the shower curtain, stepped inside and turned on the taps. While he showered he made more plans. Don't change your habits, he thought, keep doing the things you always did, say hello to people and be friendly, or better still, fling out your arms and laugh heartily. Go outside and wash the car, perhaps, give the Poles a friendly nod, talk about the weather. If anyone heard a rumour about him, they would dismiss it instantly. Not him, they would say, he's behaving completely normally.

CHAPTER 17

Isn't it odd, Kristine mused, that I can be absolutely certain that Reinhardt has come home, when I haven't even seen him yet. Everyone has their own individual sound, their particular way of going through the rooms. Reinhardt was a big man; he was not in the habit of tiptoeing around the place. A hanger clattered on to the floor, she heard the thud as he kicked off his shoes, first one then the other.

'Hello, sweetheart!'

He had a thick bundle of newspapers tucked under his arm. Kristine appeared from the kitchen.

'How long are you going to keep buying all those papers?'

'As long as there's something about Jonas Løwe,' he said. 'Look, plenty of coverage.'

He held up
Dagbladet
to show her.

'There's a photo of Jonas on the front page again today, it's a unique case in Norwegian crime history, do you realise that? I want to know all about it, every detail.'

He gestured towards the growing pile of old newspapers. 'You're always telling me to get a hobby, that I should be doing something other than playing computer games. I've come to a decision. I will follow this case every day until it has been solved and when they get him, I'll follow his trial.'

Kristine snatched
Dagbladet
from his hands. She leafed through it, scanning it quickly.

'But there's nothing new,' she said. 'They just repeat the same old stories.'

'Don't throw them away,' he said. 'I need to cut out the articles.'

'What do you mean, cut them out?'She gave him a puzzled look.

'As a matter of fact,' he said solemnly, 'it's terribly interesting, for once, to follow a case right from the start, follow it week by week as it develops. It's like a discipline of some sort.' He ran his fingers through his hair. 'Perhaps I should quit my job at Hafslund and become a crime reporter. I think I've got the bug.'

Kristine shook her head in disbelief.

'When I think about it,' he reasoned, 'I realise that I have never read the news in this way before. I've been superficial. None of the world's misery has ever gripped me. But this has, it's a totally new sensation.'

He let himself flop into a chair and grabbed hold of
VG
magazine.

'But why?' she asked.

'Because we found him, Kristine. It's that simple.'

'But we didn't know him.'

'I feel I know him now. I've been reading about Jonas for days. The whole sequence of events rolls before my eyes like a film.'

'But we don't know the sequence of events,' she reminded him. 'Look here.'

She pointed and read aloud: '"The police have released very little information about Jonas August and his tragic death".'

'Well,' Reinhardt said, 'if you ask me I would say that means they've no idea what happened, but they're afraid to admit it, they don't want to lose face.'

Kristine continued to look at him sceptically.

'We saw him, Kristine,' Reinhardt went on. 'We saw him quite clearly. You and I are the only two people in the world to have seen him in person. In fact, I see him more clearly now than I did then. I'd recognise the bastard anywhere.'

'But we don't know if he really was the killer,' she said. 'You just can't say things like that. All he did was walk past us, and he was startled, but that's normal.'

Reinhardt thumbed through the newspaper. 'Take a look here, then, if you don't believe me. Listen to this: "After several days the mystery man from Linde Forest has yet to come forward." There. Now he's finally become the mystery man. But you and I knew that instantly.'

'Perhaps he's shy and introverted,' she said. 'Perhaps he's gone abroad.'

'The latter I can believe,' Reinhardt said. 'In which case he must be guilty. My theory is that this is a straightforward case: the man we met killed Jonas August. He walked right into us and he panicked. He has probably bought all the newspapers today as well, and right now he's going though them with his heart pounding.'

Kristine went back out into the kitchen. It disturbed her that he was so obsessed by the murder. Then she wondered if he would start looking for something else once the case had been solved or whether he would become his old self again. She did not want that either, she liked neither the new nor the old version of Reinhardt. And again she felt ashamed, as she always did. She felt the days had become so unreal, she felt the harvest sunlight was too harsh, the night air too raw, the wind too sharp. She thought Reinhardt was behaving strangely. She took out a packet of ox liver from the fridge and started trimming the dark pieces with a knife. Reinhardt came over to stand next to her and he patted her cheek affectionately.

'Now what's that serious face all about, wifey?' he joked.

She continued cutting without answering. The liver oozed blood, the chopping board grew wet and slippery.

'You're gripped by this too,' he claimed, 'but for some reason you won't admit it. You have your reasons, I suppose.'

She continued to stay silent.

'Everyone's talking about it,' he pressed on. 'People are interested in these things, of course they are.'

'But talking isn't enough for you,' she said. 'You wallow in it.'

'I cut interesting articles out of newspapers,' he said. 'Now don't exaggerate.'

Again she refused to reply.

Suddenly he changed the subject. 'Shall I tell you a secret?' he said. 'I've always hated liver.'

At this she looked up quickly. 'But you eat it. You always have.'

'Yes,' he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. 'Because you put it in a casserole. With onion, mushrooms and bacon. That makes even liver appetising.'

She kept working, her fingers moving swiftly. She hated him being so close to her, and it confused her when his moods changed so rapidly.

'Where do you think he lives, Kristine?' Reinhardt asked as he buried his face in her neck. 'I think he lives somewhere isolated. I can't imagine him right in the middle of some huge residential estate. Or perhaps he's got an old, ramshackle house his mother left him, something in the forest. Or an old, crumbling cottage.'

'We don't know the first thing about where he lives,' she said in an exasperated voice.

'No, I'm just speculating. That's what the police are doing when they have nothing else to go on. They know a lot about people who eat small children.'

'Eat them?' she shuddered.

'It's just an expression,' he smiled. 'Now, don't go getting all serious. But one thing's certain: Jonas August is becoming a celebrity. There's been plenty of interest from foreign papers, and he is unique in Norwegian crime history. They always take girls, you know. Women and girlfriends. Or ex-girlfriends. This is different. You don't understand,' he said abruptly. 'You don't understand how exceptional this is.'

Kristine cut the liver into thin strips.

'Yes,' she sighed, 'this is exceptional. It makes me dizzy,' she admitted.

'And we're a part of it,' he said.

'We're not.'

'You don't want to be,' he corrected her. 'That's a different matter. You just want to move on, you want to forget about it. You're a true woman, you shy away from confrontation.'

'Yes,' she said. 'I want to move on. You're utterly wrong. There is nothing we can do, Reinhardt, let the police deal with it, please!'

'Like I thought,' he said. 'You don't appreciate how serious this is. But you and I can identify him, we can place him at the crime scene, or a few metres away from it at any rate. Don't you understand how important we are? The police need us. Think about it: we can put him away for twenty-one years!'

He was becoming melodramatic, the pitch of his voice was rising. She turned on the cooker and put butter in the frying pan.

'I can barely recall what he looked like,' she said.

Reinhardt's jaw dropped. 'How can you say that? You were so sure back then. About his clothes and everything? Hans Christian Andersen, that's what you said, wasn't it? Hans Christian Andersen, of all things.'

'Yes,' she said reluctantly, 'but I'm not so sure any more, about any of it.'

Reinhardt folded his arms across his chest. 'But I am. I'm sure. And there's nothing wrong with my eyesight.'

The butter was browning, she added the liver; the smell spread through the kitchen.

'There must have been something wrong with his parents,' Reinhardt said distantly.

She glanced at him across her shoulder.

'Why?'

'Since he turned into a pervert.'

'We can't be sure of that, can we?' she said. 'We don't know if it had anything to do with his parents.'

'People don't get damaged for no reason,' he said.

She added seasoning, inhaled the good smell.

'It's a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,' Reinhardt went on. He was leaning against the worktop and he shook his head sadly. 'I mean, poor little Jonas August, who came walking along the road on the very day, the very moment the killer drove past. What are the chances of that?'

Kristine turned over the liver in the frying pan. The strips were browning nicely.

'I really don't think this was premeditated,' she said. 'Perhaps he hadn't even planned it, perhaps he just passed him in his car and acted on impulse.'