Calling Out For You (25 page)

Gøran paused. Sejer felt a trembling in his body, which slipped away and was then replaced by unease. What he was witnessing was the actual story. It made him both relieved and sad. A cruelty he didn't want to see, but had become a part of. Forever, perhaps.

"I remember her plait," Gøran said. "I wanted to pull it right off."

"Why?" Sejer said.

"It was so long and thick and tempting.

'"You angry?' she asked, pretty cautiously, and I said, 'Yes, very angry. You women are so stingy.' Then she got a strange look on her face and shut her mouth.

"'Or maybe you're not stingy?' I said. 'Not if you're prepared to settle for old Gunder, and in that case I should be good enough for you.'

"She looked at me blankly. Started fiddling with the car door. I said, no, leave the fucking door, but she panicked and pulled and pushed like a maniac and I thought: she's one of those emotional women who don't know what they want. First she wants to get in the car, now she wants to get out. So I drove on. As we passed Gunder's house she gave me a really distressed look. Started screaming and shouting. So I slammed the brakes on. She wasn't wearing a seatbelt and went slap into the front window. Not that hard, but she started howling."

Gøran inhaled deeply. His breathing grew faster. Sejer imagined a car, askew on the road, and the agile woman, pale with fear, with her hand on her forehead.

Gøran's voice changed suddenly. It became lifeless, almost commentating. He straightened up and looked at Sejer.

"'Do Indian women have just as much room down there as Norwegian ones?' I asked her, and stuck my hand down between her thighs. She went off her rocker. Lost it completely. She got the door open and stumbled out. Ran out into the meadow, terrified."

And Linda, Sejer thought, is approaching on her bike, perhaps she is right around the bend. Any second now she'll see the car.

"I grabbed one of the dumbbells from the back seat and ran after her," Gøran said dully. "I'm in good shape. Running was easy, it turned me on, but she was fast too, she ran like a bloody rabbit through the grass. I caught up with her at the edge of the wood. It was weird, I saw a light flash in one of Gunwald's windows. But it didn't worry me."

"Did she scream?" Sejer said.

"No. She was busy running. All I heard was her feet through the grass and my own breathing."

"So you caught up with her. Then what did you do?"

"I don't remember any more."

"Of course you do. What were you feeling?"

"I felt incredibly strong. My body was on fire. Besides, she was pathetic."

"In what way?"

"Everything was pathetic. Her going to Jomann's. The way she looked. Her clothes and jewellery. All that tinsel. She wasn't young either."

"She was thirty-eight," Sejer said.

"I know. It said so in the paper."

"Why did you hit her?"

"Why? I was holding the dumbbell in my hand. She curled up with her hands over her head waiting for the blow."

"Couldn't you have turned round and left?"

"No."

"I need to know why."

"Because I'd reached a boiling point. I could hardly breathe."

"Did you hit her many times?"

"I don't think so."

"Could you breathe again once she collapsed?"

"Yes, I could breathe again."

"Did she get up again, Gøran?"

"What?"

"Did you toy with her?"

"No. I just wanted to finish the job."

"There were traces after you ran all over the meadow. We need to get this right."

"But I don't remember any more."

"Let's move on. What did you do when she finally lay still in the grass?"

"I drove to Norevann."

"What did you do with your clothes?"

"Threw them in the lake."

"You put on your gym clothes?"

"I must have."

"And the dumbbells?"

"I put them in the car. One of them was bloody."

"You had scratches to your face. Did she scratch you?"

"Not that I remember. She hit my chest with her fists."

"How long were you by the lake, Gøran?"

"Don't know."

"Do you remember what you were thinking as you got back in the car and drove home?"

"It's difficult. I drove to Lillian's."

"You're getting fact and fiction mixed up again."

"But I know that's how it was. I would see her in the rear-view mirror. She waved from the window, hidden slightly by the curtain."

"Why did you return to the crime scene?"

"Did I?"

"Had you lost something? Which you absolutely had to find?"

Gøran shook his head.

"No. I panicked. What if she was still alive and able to talk? So I got up and went back to the car. Got in and drove back. Then I spotted her. She was staggering around the meadow like a drunk. It was a nightmare. I couldn't believe that she was still alive."

"Go on."

"She was crying for help, but very feebly. She'd almost lost her voice. Then she spotted me. It was strange, but she raised her hand and called for help. She didn't recognise me."

"You'd changed your clothes," Sejer said.

"Yes. Of course."

He lost his concentration for a moment. "Then she collapsed in the grass. She was in a totally different place to where I'd left her. I grabbed one of the dumbbells and ran out into the meadow. Bent down and stared at her. That's when she recognised me. Her eyes at that moment, they were indescribable. Then she called – it seemed – for help, feebly, in a foreign language. Perhaps she was praying. Then I hit her many times. I remember thinking it was strange that there could be so much life in a person. But in the end she stopped moving."

"The dumbbell, Gøran? What did you do with it?"

"Don't remember. I might have thrown it in the lake."

"So you went back to Norevann?"

"No. Yes. I'm not sure."

"And afterwards?"

"I drove around for a bit."

"So you went home at last. Tell me what happened then."

"I chatted to my mum a bit and then I took a shower."

"And your clothes? Gym clothes?"

"I put them in the washing machine. Afterwards I threw them out. I couldn't get them clean."

"Think about the woman. Do you recall what she was wearing?"

"Something dark."

"Do you remember her hair?"

"She was Indian. I guess it was black."

"Was she wearing earrings? Do you recall them?"

"No."

"Her hands, which she hit you with."

"Brown," he said.

"With rings?"

"Don't know. Don't know any more," he mumbled.

He flopped on to the table.

"Do you confess to murdering this woman, Poona Bai? On August 20th at 9 p.m.?"

"Confess?" Gøran said, frightened. It was as if he suddenly woke up. "I don't know. You asked to see my images and that's what you got."

Sejer looked at him calmly.

"What shall I write in the report, Gøran? That these are your images of Poona's murder?"

"Something like that. If that's all right."

"It's not very clear," Sejer said slowly. "Do you consider this a confession?"

"Confession?"

Once again there was a frightened expression in Gøran's eyes.

"What do you think it looks like?"

"Don't know," Gøran said anxiously.

"You've given me some images. Can we call them memories?"

"I suppose we can."

"Your memories of August 20th. A genuine attempt to reconstruct what happened between you and Poona Bai?"

"Yes. I suppose so."

"So what have you in fact given me, Gøran?"

Gøran leaned across the table. In despair he sank his teeth into his shirtsleeve.

"A confession," he said. "I've given you a confession."

Friis tried to keep himself under control.

"Do you understand what you have done?" he said hoarsely. "Do you understand the seriousness?"

"Yes," Gøran said. He lay dozing on the bunk. His body was entirely filled with serenity.

"You have confessed to the most serious crime of all, carrying the law's most severe penalty. Despite the fact that the police doesn't have a single conclusive piece of evidence. It is highly questionable whether they are able to bring a case on this weak basis at all. In addition they have to find a jury willing to convict you on postulations and hearsay."

He paced the floor angrily.

"Do you really understand what you've done?"

Gøran looked at Friis in surprise. "What if I did it?"

"
What if!
You said you were innocent. Have you changed your mind?"

"I don't care about that any longer. Perhaps I did do it. I've been sitting in that room for so many hours thinking so many thoughts. I don't know what the truth is any more. Everything is true, nothing is true. I don't get to work out. I feel like I'm drugged," he snuffled.

"They've put pressure on you," Friis said earnestly. "I'm asking you to please withdraw your confession."

"You could have sat in there with me! Like I asked you to! That's my right!"

"It's not a good strategy," Friis said. "It's best for us if I don't know what happened between the two of you. That way I can cast aspersions on Sejer's methods. Do you hear me? I want you to withdraw your confession!"

Gøran looked at him in amazement. "Isn't that a bit late?"

Friis started walking up and down the cell floor again.

"You've given Sejer the one thing he wanted. A confession."

"Are you looking for the truth?" Gøran said.

"I'm looking to save your skin!" he said sharply. "It's my job and I'm good at it. Heavens above, you're a young man! If they convict you, you'll be going down for a long time. The best years of your life. Think about it!"

Gøran turned towards the wall. "You can go now. To hell with it all."

Friis sat down next to him. "No," he said, "I'm not going. Under duress you have confessed to a crime you didn't commit. Sejer is older than you, an authority. He has exploited your youth. It's a miscarriage of justice. You're probably completely brainwashed. We will withdraw the confession and they'll just have to lump it. Now lie down and rest. Try to get some sleep. There's still a long way to go."

"You have to talk to my mum and dad," Gøran said.

The fact of the confession had barely been published when the papers had to inform their readers about its withdrawal. At Einar's Café people sat reading, their eyes wide. Those in doubt, who had maintained his innocence all along, felt tricked. In their heart of hearts they could not believe it. That a young man would confess to smashing a woman's head to a pulp in a meadow if he had not done it. They felt sick at the very thought. Gøran wasn't the person they thought he was. They could not relate to the legal and technical arguments or the article itself, which listed examples of people who had confessed to murders and much else besides which they had never committed. One newspaper reeled off several cases. They examined themselves and felt the resistance, felt that it had to be impossible. And that the people who would be on the jury one day would think as they did.

It was quiet at the café, no fresh debates, just people in doubt, wavering. Mode said, no, for fuck's sake, I'd never have believed it. Nudel was silent and Frank shook his heavy head in disbelief. What the hell were you supposed to think? Ole Gunwald was relieved. He had fingered Einar, but he had turned out to be innocent as the driven snow. True, that was what he had assumed about young Seter, but on reflection he did have sufficient imagination to accept the notion of a raging, over-fit young man who had just been cast off by his girlfriend. And then his mistress, so it was said. How had the papers put it? "A killer with brutal strength."

Gunder had twice come to the telephone to listen to Sejer's explanations. First that they had finally achieved a result, then just hours later this retreat, which didn't worry him, he said, the confession would weigh heavily in court, it needed explaining. We're hopeful that Gøran will be convicted, he said, sounding very persuasive. Gunder thanked him, but he didn't want to hear any more. He wanted it all to be over.

"How is your sister doing?" Sejer said.

"No change."

"Don't give up hope."

"I won't. I've got no-one else." Gunder thought for a while. There was something he wanted to mention. "By the way, I've received a letter. From Poona's brother. It's still in the drawer. A letter which Poona wrote to him after our wedding. In the letter she told him everything. He thought I'd like to have it."

"Did it make you happy?"

"It's in Indian," Gunder said. "In Marathi. That's no use to me."

"I can arrange to have it translated if you like."

"I would, yes please."

"Send it to me," Sejer said.

Robert Friis staunchly maintained that Gøran's confession was incomplete. That he had not in any way accounted for the murder. He didn't remember the woman's clothes, just that they were dark. There was no mention of gold sandals, likewise something as unusual as a Norwegian brooch on the woman's clothes. He had no opinion of the deceased's appearance, though everyone else who had had dealings with the victim had mentioned the protruding teeth. It's reconstruction, pure and simple, Friis thundered, volunteered in a moment of doubt and exhaustion. When questioned about where exactly in Norevann he had thrown the clothes, Gøran was unclear. The initial confession was full of holes and unrelated detail. The later, subsequent reconstruction would reveal this. Friis ran into Sejer in the canteen and though the inspector stared resolutely at his prawn sandwich, Friis flopped down at his table. He was a gossip, but a real pro. Sejer was a man of few words, but equally sure of his ground.

"He's the right man and you know it," he said tersely, harpooning a prawn with his fork.

"Probably," Friis said immediately, "but he shouldn't be convicted on this basis."

Sejer wiped a trace of mayonnaise from his lips and looked at the defence lawyer.

"He'll be released back into the community sooner or later, but if he walks away from this, he'll still be ticking away like an unexploded bomb."

Friis smiled and started on his own sandwich. "You probably don't concern yourself with murders which have yet to be committed. You're busy enough as it is with the cases on your desk right now. So am I."

For a while they both ate.

"The worst thing is," Sejer said, "that Gøran felt at ease with himself for the first time in a long while. By withdrawing the confession he'll have to go through it all over again. It doesn't get him anywhere. He should have been spared this."

Friis slurped his coffee.

"He should never have been charged in the first place," he said. "You're an old hand at this, I'm surprised you took the risk."

"You know that I had to," Sejer said.

"And I know how you work, too," Friis said. "You're on his side. Buttering him up. Listening sympathetically, slapping him on the shoulder. Complimenting him. You're the only one who can get him out of that room and to some other place, irrespective of all his rights. They're the first thing you take away from him."

"I could shout and beat him up," Sejer said simply. "Would you have preferred that?"

Friis didn't answer. He chewed carefully for a long time. And then he said sharply: "You've planted an Indian woman in his consciousness. Like a scientist once planted a polar bear. An experiment, pure and simple."

"Really?" Sejer said.

"Play that game with me. If you know it."

"I think I do."

"Think about anything at all for a few seconds. Create an image of anything you like. Everything is allowed except this: that the image must not contain a polar bear. Apart from that, everything is allowed. But don't think about a polar bear. Do you get my drift?"

"Better than you think," Sejer said.

"So, start thinking."

Sejer thought, but he went on eating. An image came to him quickly. He remained sitting watching it.

"Well?" Friis said.

"I see a tropical beach," Sejer said. "With azure blue water and a single palm tree. And white foaming waves."

"And what comes padding along the beach?" Friis teased.

"The polar bear," Sejer admitted.

"Exactly. You escaped as far from the north of Norway as you could go, but that blasted bear followed you all the way to the tropics. Because I planted it there. Just as you planted Poona Bai in Gøran's mind."

"If you disapprove of my methods, you'll just have to accompany your clients to the interrogations."

"I've too many of them," Friis said.

"The video of the interrogation will be ready soon," Sejer said. "Then you'll have to change tack."

He went to his office and found Skarre there. Without a word Skarre handed him an envelope with a small newspaper cutting. Sejer read it.

"'Man (29) found stabbed in Oslo street. He died later from his injuries.' In your letterbox? No postmark?"

"That's right."

Sejer looked at him searchingly. "Does it worry you?"

Skarre messed up his curls nervously. "My tyres were slashed with a knife. We're talking about a knife here, too. Whoever it was has come right to my front door. Followed me. Wants something from me. I don't understand it."

"How about Linda Carling? Have you considered her?"

"I have, as a matter of fact, but this isn't a particularly feminine thing to do. Neither is slashing tyres."

"Perhaps she's not very feminine."

"I'm not quite sure what she is. I called her mother recently. She is very concerned about her. Says she's changed completely. Stopped going to college. Dresses differently and has become really withdrawn. Plus she's knocking back painkillers. One bottle after another. Then she said something really strange. That her voice had changed."

"What?"

"You remember her? The high-pitched voice, that distinctive chirping which teenage girls have?"

"Well?"

"It's gone. Her voice is deeper."

Sejer looked again at the cutting.

"Would you do me a favour and watch yourself?"

Skarre sighed. "She's sixteen years old. But, OK, I'll keep looking over my shoulder. However, I keep thinking about those pills."

"She's drugging herself," Sejer said.

"Or she's in pain," Skarre said. "From being attacked, perhaps."

Linda was sewing something on a white blouse. She sat very still beneath the lamp, sewing with a dedication and a meticulousness her mother had never seen in her. Didn't know where she'd got the blouse from either.

"Is it new? Where did you get the money?"

"I bought it from Fretex, 45 kroner."

"It's not like you to wear a white blouse."

Linda tilted her head. "It's for a special occasion."

Her mother liked the reply. She supposed it meant that there was a boy involved, which to some extent was true.

"Why are you swapping the buttons?"

"Gold buttons look silly," Linda said. "The tortoiseshell ones are better."

"Did you hear the news today?"

"No."

"They're going to put Gøran on trial. Even though he withdrew his confession."

"I see," Linda said.

"It'll come to court in three months. I can't believe he did it."

"I can," Linda said. "I wasn't sure at first, but now I am."

She kept on sewing. Her mother saw that her daughter was beautiful. Older. More quiet. Nevertheless she felt anxious about something.

"You never see Karen any more?"

"No."

"It's a shame. She's a nice girl."

"True," Linda said. "But dreadfully ignorant."

Her mother was taken aback. "Ignorant about what?"

Linda put down the blouse. "She's just a kid." Then she went on sewing. Looped the thread around the button and tied a knot.

"It's strange about Gøran," her mother said pensively. "Can they convict him solely on circumstantial evidence? The defence says there's not one shred of conclusive evidence." She was quoting from the newspaper.

"One shred of circumstantial evidence wouldn't mean much," Linda conceded. "But if there are enough of them that changes the character of the case."

"How so?" She looked at her daughter in amazement.

"Preponderance of evidence."

"Where on earth did you learn words like that?"

"The newspapers," Linda said. "He drove a car like the one I saw. He was dressed like the man I saw. He can't find the clothes he was wearing or his shoes. He can't account for where he was, he's told several lies to give himself an alibi, all of which have been repudiated. His face was scratched the day after the murder. He kept something, which definitely could have been the murder weapon in his car. Traces of magnesium were found on the victim that probably came from Adonis, and he came straight from being there with his girlfriend right after she'd broken up with him. And last, but not least: during the interrogation he confessed to having murdered her. What more do you need?"

Her mother shook her head in confusion. 'Uo, good God. I wouldn't know." She looked once more at the white blouse. "Wher '1 you be wearing it?"

"I'm meeting someone."

"Now, tonight?"

"Sooner or later."

"That's cryptic." Once again her mother felt uneasy. "You're strange these days. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't get you. Is everything all right?"

"I'm very happy," she said precociously.

"But what about college and everything? What about that?"

"I just need a break." She looked up, lost in thought. Held the white garment up against the light. In her mind she could clearly see the blouse red and sticky from Jacob's blood. She would save it forever and ever as a token of her love. Suddenly she had to laugh. She shook her head giddily. It was a long way from thinking something to actually doing it, this much she understood. However, she enjoyed the game. It made her feel alive. Take the bus into town. Hide in the stairwell with the knife behind her back. Suddenly she spots Jacob as he comes in from the street. In the light from the streetlamp his curls shine like gold. She springs out of the darkness. His voice filled with wonder. The last words he would ever say: Linda. Is that you?