The Drowned Boy (12 page)

“I’ll take them in for questioning then,” he said brusquely. “Both of them. But we’ll give them a couple of days. The boy’s not long in the ground. Yes, thank you. I’ll keep you posted.”

He finished the call and pulled out onto the road again.

“It’s as we feared,” he said to Skarre. “Tommy presumably had some help in reaching heaven, or at least it certainly looks like it. You can send another complaint in to God.”

HE WALKED SLOWLY
through the empty rooms and listened. Tommy’s absence was deafening. No more hiccupping laughter, no more sobbing tears. The child was dead and buried, and over time the body would decompose, disintegrate, and become dust. But the bones would remain. A fragile, tiny skeleton in the black earth.

“It’s all just empty words,” he said. “‘Until you return to the ground, for out of it were you taken.’ It’s just garbage. To be honest, I feel ashamed.”

Carmen wriggled out of the black dress, threw it down on the bed, and put on some everyday clothes. “The priest was nice, wasn’t she?” she commented. She was now wearing jeans and a T-shirt. “Should we just take his crib down now? I mean, we don’t need it anymore and it takes up quite a lot of space. We could put it in the cellar until we have another baby.”

Nicolai gasped. To be saying that now—what was she thinking?

“Jesus, you’re in a rush to get rid of any traces,” he said, upset.

She pushed past him and went out into the kitchen. She opened a cupboard, took out a glass, and turned on the faucet. She drank water in greedy gulps until she was sated. Some water trickled down over her chin and between her breasts.

“I don’t need all these reminders,” she said. “It just makes things worse, going to bed at night with the empty crib staring at us. That’s just the way I am; I want to forget it. I don’t want to be upset by memories.”

He walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa. He felt so tired, like he’d shifted down a gear. Everything that normally happened in his body was now so slow, and he felt cold, despite the late summer heat. The warmth of the sun pressed in against the windows and glittered on the surface of the vile pond with its single water lily.

“Maybe we should move,” Carmen called from the kitchen. “Get away from it all. Start again somewhere else. I can talk to Dad. Because if I want a new house, he’ll get me a new house.”

Nicolai protested. He felt they had to stay in the neighborhood, close to the church and the boy. Tommy should be within easy reach, and the grave by Møller Church was only twenty minutes away. He was up between the birch trees beside Louisa.

Carmen had come into the living room. She stood there with the glass of water in her hand. He saw her nipples stiffen under her T-shirt, despite the heat. He had never seen a girl with such small breasts as Carmen; she could almost be a boy.

“If we dismantle the crib, it will take less room,” she said. “And there’s so much junk in the cellar already.”

Junk, Nicolai thought. So she thinks Tommy’s bed is junk.

Carmen drank some more water and dried her mouth.

“I want to start working again,” she said with determination. “The days go faster. Don’t you want to start working again too?”

He nodded. She went into the kitchen again and he heard her opening a drawer.

“Do you think they’ve buried him by now?” she shouted. “Was it stupid of us not to go to the grave?”

“Yes, it was stupid. I told you it was. You could have listened. You always want your own way, but I’ve got opinions too. Opinions and wishes.”

“We can go there tomorrow, if you like,” she called, in an attempt to placate him. “To look at the grave. It’s great, isn’t it, that he got a place under the birch trees? Just like I wanted. I’m so glad.”

Tommy is dead and buried, he thought, and you stand here and say you’re glad. Jesus, you’re unbelievable. But everyone grieves differently, he reminded himself. Carmen is not someone to dwell on things. She’s impatient and wants to move on. I have to remember that, he thought. But he felt overwhelmed by her energy and will all the same.

“I’m sure we’ll have another baby, sooner or later,” she said. “Life goes on, doesn’t it? You do agree?”

He went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He studied her narrow back at the counter.

“But that’s not what I want,” he said defiantly. “Not anymore, at least. Don’t go on about it; it just makes me depressed.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” she said, offended. “I’m just trying to hold things together. It’s hard for me too, you know.”

He looked at her with doleful eyes. I don’t think I love her anymore, he thought. He felt exhausted and helpless and sad. Everything we had is falling to pieces and too much has happened to get over it. How, he thought, will it ever pass?

“We need to eat,” Carmen said after a few seconds’ silence. “I’ll make some spaghetti and meatballs.”

He declined. No, he was sure he didn’t want any food. He wanted to punish himself by not eating to atone for Tommy’s death, for the fact that he hadn’t looked after him better and put up that damn fence. Instead he had gone down into the cellar to tinker with bikes. As if that was important. There are always moments like that, he thought. A few minutes when the child is not being watched. But then Tommy had just learned to walk, and the door was open and he had toddled off toward the glittering water. Children and water. Of course it was just waiting to happen. He followed Carmen with his eyes as she wiped the counter with a cloth. She opened a cupboard and took out a box of spaghetti.

“Whatever the priest says,” he started, “Tommy won’t go to heaven. We’re both hypocrites. We’re hypocrites because we got a priest, and I feel like shit.”

She turned around and looked at him in exasperation. “Speak for yourself. Others can believe what they like. I can’t imagine where else the soul would go. And Tommy had a soul. You agree on that, don’t you?”

Yes, he thought, that’s true. But it was extinguished with his body. No living body, no energy, and therefore no soul.

“So you think you’re going to meet Tommy again?” he sneered. “Up in heaven?”

“Don’t be so mean,” she said. “It’s just that I believe in another existence. If you want to play the atheist, that’s fine by me. But you don’t have the answer either. And there are smarter people than you who believe, so there.”

He leaned his elbows on the table and had to admit that she had a point. He watched as she worked at the counter. She was quick, Carmen, everything was fast. And he was actually very hungry. He couldn’t ignore the fact that he needed food.

“Did you see what I got from Pappa Zita?” she asked. “I got a present.”

Yes, he had, but had forgotten it in the midst of everything else. Pappa Zita had given her a package when they got back to the car after the church service was over. He guessed it was a book; it was certainly a slim, flat package. Perhaps a book about death that she could read and find comfort in. That would be so like Zita, because that was the way he thought—that everything could be said in words.

“I’m going to keep a diary,” she said contentedly. “He wants me to write about what’s happened. And about everything that’s going to happen in the future. But you’re not allowed to read it. Diaries are secret, so there.”

She opened one of the kitchen drawers and held up the book. It was beautiful and small, with a red cover. There was a label on the front where she had written her name in careful letters.

“Can I have a look?” he asked, holding his hand out. He opened it at the first page, which was still blank.

“Are you going to write in it every day?”

“Yes,” she said, determined. “I’m going to write every single day.”

“But what if nothing happens?”

“Of course something will,” she said. “Things happen all the time. Today we buried Tommy. Tomorrow we’ll go and visit his grave under the birch trees. And the day after, we’ll go to the stonemasons out by Kruttverket. We did agree to do that, didn’t we? And if nothing happens, then I can write just that,” she said, full of enthusiasm. “Today is over and nothing has happened.”

She went over to the desk and put the book away in the bottom drawer. “Hands off,” she said with a smile. Then she went back into the kitchen and put the spaghetti in the boiling water, leaving the lid off to one side. She sat down at the table and took his hands in hers and squeezed them hard.

“It’ll get easier,” she said without doubt. “Even the most painful things pass. But you can’t think of the future.”

“No,” he objected. “It will never get easier.”

“You don’t want to forget,” she said quietly.

“No, that’s right. And I can see that you do. I don’t understand how you’re made.”

“I’ve always been strong,” she said. “You know that I’m really like Dad.”

TWENTY-SEVENTH OF AUGUST
. Morning.

The late summer heat continued, and many people were now longing for autumn with its soothing dusk, cool nights, and calming dark. But from daybreak the sun burned relentlessly in a blue sky. It stung one’s eyes and parched the fields. Nature was thirsty and needed some fresh, regenerating rain.

It wasn’t that he was triumphant, that wasn’t his nature. Revenge, hate, and bitterness had never been part of his life and had never played a role in his very particular profession. To prove guilt or innocence, to clear or condemn—that was his duty. He was not looking forward to the interview; it was probably a match he would not win in the end. There were only losers in this case: Tommy, Nicolai and Carmen, Marian and Elsa. And yet he felt reinvigorated. His intuition had always been strong, and he had the feeling he would be proved right, that the boy’s life had been snuffed out intentionally.

Carmen came into the room and he showed her to a seat. They weren’t in the office this time, with its lovely view from the window and his dog on a blanket. Now they were in one of the station interview rooms, the saddest room there was. Bare with coarse stone walls and glaring lights. She remained standing for a moment and looked around the Spartan room. She seemed confused and uncertain but tried to compose herself. It was not a particularly welcoming room and reminded her more of a cave in the mountains. No windows and nothing on the walls. Just the uncomfortable lighting, two chairs and a table, a laptop, a work lamp with a halogen bulb, and strip lights.

“I don’t understand what all the fuss is about,” she said. “I’ve got nothing more to say; you’ve got to stop.”

“We’ll see,” Sejer said phlegmatically. “Sit yourself down, because we need to talk. It’s important.”

She was wearing a sleeveless dress that was almost as short as a T-shirt. When she sat down, it slid up over her thighs, revealing how thin she was. She couldn’t weigh much more than ninety pounds, give or take a couple. The sandals on her feet had obviously given her blisters, as there were bandages on her heels.

He sorted his papers, pressed the record button on the Dictaphone, and put it down on the table between them. It was about the size of a cigarette pack, with an ominous blinking red eye.

“Carmen,” he said gravely. “I would like to go through what happened by Damtjern on August 10 once more. It’s true that you have already given a statement, but we have found some striking new evidence that means that we need to go through this again.”

“What have you found?” she asked, playing tough.

Thus far, she was not giving an inch.

“We’ve done an autopsy on Tommy,” Sejer reminded her. “This involved a thorough internal and external examination. A number of samples were taken. Of his blood, his saliva, and his tissue. The pathologist doesn’t miss much, and you of course have the right to know what we have found. Naturally we look for signs of external violence, among other things. And for poison or what we call ‘toxins.’ The lab results have come in and that is why you have been called in again. This is serious, Carmen. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Carmen Zita pulled herself together. Poison and external violence, mere fantasy, she thought. She raised her chin and was defiant and proud and unassailable.

“And no,” he said, before she had time to protest. “We have found no evidence of violence. Nor have we found toxins. But we did find something else.”

She nodded, almost mechanically. Her lips were tight and he knew her heart was beating faster, because her cheeks flushed red with the sudden surge.

“So, Carmen,” he said firmly, “think back and be as precise as you can. The tenth of August, around one o’clock. Nicolai is in the cellar working on a bike. You’re busy in the kitchen. Tommy is playing around on the floor without any clothes on, because it’s so warm.”

“Yes,” she complied. “I was preparing some food. And when I’d finished, I had to go into the bathroom. And I’m really sorry, but I was gone for quite a while. But that’s hardly a crime, is it?”

“Why?” Sejer asked. “Tell me what it was that kept you there. I’m curious.”

“I’d put some socks in to soak, so I rinsed them and hung them up to dry. I don’t wash socks in the machine because they shrink. And it took a few minutes. So there, now you know.”

“Can you be more precise than a few?” Sejer asked.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe six or seven minutes. Or more, I’m not sure. When I came back into the kitchen, Tommy was gone. So I went to look for him in the living room, in the hallway, and in the bedroom. It took some time before I realized that he wasn’t in the house. I didn’t think about the pond, not right away. But then it’s always been there, and I didn’t think he’d be able to walk that far in such a short time. And he had no shoes on and the gravel is sharp.”

Again her hand went up to her eyes, and the tears started to flow steadily.

“So I ran out and down to the pond and I saw him right away. Beside the jetty. It wasn’t my fault, no matter what you think.”

Sejer made a brief note.

“What do you think I think?” he commented patiently.

“Well,” she said hesitantly, “that it was my fault. But I don’t have eyes in the back of my head and I’m totally innocent.”

“So what did you do then? Tell me.”

“I threw myself into the water as fast as I could. I pulled him up onto the grass and tried to give him mouth-to-mouth. But it didn’t help—nothing helped. He was gone. And there was all this foam around his mouth. I was terrified.”