Hell Fire

by Karin Fossum

  8

  ROBERT RANDEN SAW the car through the kitchen window. He had been expecting the police, so he immediately went out to meet them and ushered them back into the kitchen.

  “We can talk in here.”

  There was a long sanded wooden table with eight chairs, each with a simple pattern carved on the back. Randen himself stood by the countertop.

  “I can’t sleep,” he said. “I keep remembering the smell. It smelled like a slaughterhouse.”

  Sejer thought to himself that it would be impossible to live with the scene that Randen had discovered. He would remember it even when he was sitting in an old people’s home. It would haunt him until the end of his days.

  “How many people live here on the farm?” Skarre asked.

  “My wife Solveig, myself, and our four girls in the main house. My mother lives in the cottage on the other side of the yard. And there are four Poles in the outbuilding. So that’s eleven in total.”

  “Could the killer have walked through the farm?”

  “Well, of course. I mean, we’re not always standing at the window. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t, as there’s practically always someone outside here. Certainly in summer. No, I reckon he crossed the fields. From the woods. If he had a car, he might have parked it in Geirastadir. Lots of walkers do that: there’s plenty of room for cars there. In the autumn, people come to pick berries to sell at the market, but they usually come on mopeds. And most of them are from Lithuania.”

  “Can you tell me about your four Polish farmhands?” Sejer asked. “Do they come back every year?”

  Randen had decided that he wanted to sit down after all, and he pulled out a chair. Like most farmers, he was strong, lean, and weathered. His thick hair was the color of sand, and he would never lose it.

  “This is the eighth year that they’ve come, so I know them well. They all have families back in Poland and they all have children. They’ve also got jobs to go back to in the autumn, and all four of them work hard and well, without complaining. We’ve never had any problems with them and they’re never ill. They get up before us and go to bed late. I understand why you have to ask, but I would vouch for all four of them. Why on earth would they have anything to do with this? It’s out of the question.”

  Skarre shook his head. “We don’t think they’re involved either, but we still have to question them. Could they manage in English?”

  “Woiciech speaks Norwegian. He’s pretty good.”

  “Tell me about Bonnie Hayden and her son,” Sejer said. “In as much detail as possible.”

  “Well, they just appeared here on the steps. They were holding hands. The mother had picked a bunch of wildflowers, and she seemed a bit embarrassed, as if she was reluctant to ask. It was obvious that she was doing it for the boy; he was practically hopping on the spot. She asked if I owned the old trailer at the bottom of the field, and when I said yes, the boy could hardly contain himself. She told me that they’d walked past it and the boy wondered if they could spend the night there. That’s all she said, and she squeezed the boy’s hand while they waited for an answer. I said of course they could.

  “To be honest, I was touched by the pair of them, but I did tell them that the trailer was in a terrible state—it’s practically uninhabitable. But then they said that they’d already been inside and that it was good enough for them for just one night. They would go home to get some food and bring their bedding back with them. I said that was fine, and the boy really did jump for joy. ‘How much would you like for the night?’ she asked. I almost laughed. ‘My dear,’ I said, ‘I don’t want anything for it. The trailer hasn’t been used for years and should really be taken to the junkyard.’ They looked around at all the farm buildings. She asked if they could park here, and I showed them a place behind the outbuilding, where the car wouldn’t be in the way. And then they set off toward Geirastadir, to drive home and get all they needed. They waved to me before they disappeared. ‘We’ll be back this evening, then,’ the mother called to me. She seemed happy enough. And then they were gone.”

  Randen folded his hands on the solid table. “When the men came back that evening, I told them that the pair of them were coming, so that they’d know. The Opel drove into the farm around seven o’clock. It was barely holding together, in a worse state than the trailer. I went out to greet them and to see if they needed any help carrying things down. The mother had a couple of comforters over her arm and the boy was holding a pillow and an old teddy bear. No, they’d manage themselves, they said. I watched them walk down across the fields; there was something quite sad about them.”

  “What do you mean by that? Sad in what way?”

  “I’m not really sure how to put it. Like they were two lonely souls in a big world. They came back again later and disappeared around to the car, only to reappear a few minutes later carrying a pizza box and a bag, which they took down to the trailer. Then I forgot about them and got on with other chores—there’s always plenty to do on a big farm like this.”

  He focused on a knot in the table; they could hear his breathing.

  “Why did you go down to the trailer the next day?” Sejer asked. “You found them at 2 p.m. What were you doing down there?”

  “I just went to say hello. To ask how the night had been.”

  He told them that his wife had been busy baking all morning. An apple cake and an almond cake. The girls wanted the almond cake, and they decided to give the apple cake to the pair in the trailer. Emilie, aged ten, was allowed to put the thin slices of Pink Lady apples in the bottom of the tin like brickwork. Solveig rolled the dough into thin sausages that she then wove in a pattern on the cake and covered it with generous helpings of nib sugar and almonds. “So I took the apple cake and went down across the field,” Randen explained. “The door was open. I knocked on the wall and called out hello so they wouldn’t get a fright when I suddenly appeared in the doorway.

  “This might sound a bit dramatic, but I don’t think my life will ever be the same.”

  The four Poles were waiting outside the house and were all clearly affected by what had happened. Two of them had seen Simon outside the trailer, carrying his teddy bear. His mother had been standing in the doorway and waved to them as they passed, and they had touched their caps with their brown working hands and waved back. Beautiful weather, they had called, and she had smiled and nodded.

  “Think carefully now,” Sejer urged them. “Did you see anything that might be of importance? I mean, people or cars in the vicinity of the farm in the days beforehand?”

  They looked at each other. They had talked about this. The oldest of them, Woiciech, who was in fact a butcher back home in Poland, had seen an unknown car on the road up to the farm. It might have been following the Opel, but it had stopped some distance from the farm.

  “Can you describe the car?” Skarre said.

  “Definitely not new,” Woiciech replied. “Red.”

  Skarven Farm had been in the Randen family for four generations, and Robert Randen and his wife Solveig were used to working hard from morning to night. Their four daughters also had duties, and Randen hoped that the eldest girl, Johanne, would take over the farm in a few years’ time. The family was sitting around the table eating supper in silence. Eventually Solveig put down her fork and turned to her husband.

  “When can we get rid of the trailer?”

  “As soon as the police give us permission.”

  “Will they wash it?” she asked.

  “I very much doubt it. That’s not the way it works. We should ask the boys in this evening; we need to talk.”

  The youngest daughter, Emilie, looked at her father. “Are we going to the funeral?”

  “No, sweetheart,” Randen said. “We won’t be. We’re not family.”

  “But they died here. In one of our fields.”

  “Yes, Emilie. But we should leave the family in peace.”

  “Will they be in the same coffin?”

  “No
, sweetie, they’ll each get their own. One big, one small.”

  Ma, the cat, wandered in through the open door. She was a beautiful gray cat and well preened. She jumped up onto Emilie’s lap and curled up in a ball. Emilie’s mother wanted to push the cat down, but she stopped herself. Everything was topsy-turvy on Skarven Farm. Nothing was as it should be, and she felt it might never be again.

  The girls cleared the table and put everything in the dishwasher. Then they pushed all the chairs back in under the table. Randen lay down on the sofa in the living room and the cat came running over and jumped up onto his chest. The cat was heavy and made it harder to breathe, but he let the animal lie there. He felt Ma’s warmth through his shirt and it calmed his nerves. Randen was a levelheaded man, but now his thoughts were racing. Because whoever had used that knife in the trailer was alive somewhere. He lived, he breathed, he ate, he slept. He talked and interacted with people who knew nothing, who smiled and laughed. While he waited for his pursuers. And in no way regretted what he had done.

  I hope it will rain before too long, Randen thought. The farm needs rain. Perhaps we should go to the funeral. They did die here after all, on our property, in our field.

  9

  December 2004

  MASS HAD A full-length mirror in her bedroom, and she was standing there now, twisting and turning in front of it, with a dissatisfied look on her face. Everything had started to droop: her jowls, her breasts, her stomach, a great roll over the top of her pants like rising white dough. As she stood there, looking at her reflection, she felt a dull pain at the base of her spine. There, you see, she said to herself, that’ll be all the cleaning I did yesterday, getting ready for Christmas. She had carried the heavy rugs out onto the snow and cleaned the floors. She had washed everywhere in every room; she was thorough. Eddie was no good at cleaning. All he could do was clear the snow. But the pain in her back—well, she wasn’t actually stiff; it was more of a pulsing ache. The pain came in waves, running up and down her spine. She had never felt anything like it before. She turned her back to the mirror as if to look for an explanation. But there was nothing to see, of course. And as she stared into the glass, the pain disappeared just as suddenly as it had come. She pulled a brush through her thick hair, got dressed, and went out into the living room. Eddie was sitting at the computer, as usual. She stood and studied his broad back. She often wondered about her grown son. He had never been given a diagnosis so had fallen between all the checkpoints in the system. She had managed to fight her way to a small allowance for him, after many visits to the doctor who knew him well. And she had sent endless forms to the welfare office and the employment office. What will happen to him when I’m no longer here? she fretted. Even though he did have some skills, he was still helpless and so dependent on her. It was exhausting. He clung to her, nagged her, was on her constantly. But he was all she had, so she accepted it without complaint, because he also brought her a lot of joy.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as she sat down and reached for the newspaper.

  “On the Internet,” he said, without turning around. “Google.”

  “What are you looking for? Seems to me that you’re always sitting there.”

  Eddie’s fat fingers bounced on the keyboard. He muttered quietly at regular intervals. Mass was now very curious. She put down the newspaper, got up, and went over to him.

  “What have you found?”

  Eddie read: “ ‘The authorities in Ohio are now planning to try the new method using only one injection, after the execution of one felon took a full two hours, as they had great difficulties finding a vein. The usual method comprises three injections: the prisoner is first injected with a dose of barbiturate, then something to paralyze the muscles, and finally, an injection to stop the heart.’ ”

  Mass had her arm around Eddie’s shoulder. She put her hand against his warm neck; she loved his wonderful soft curly hair and played with it as often as she had the chance, and he never tried to stop her.

  “Or,” Eddie continued, “the electric chair. Two thousand volts to the head, with a big wet sponge under the helmet. They can choose how they want to die. What would you choose?”

  Eddie looked at his mother and smiled. “I’m curious about everything,” he explained, “and it’s fun finding out about stuff.”

  “Death and destruction are hardly fun,” Mass scolded. “Find something else.”

  “Did you know,” Eddie continued enthusiastically, “when you’re hanged, everything goes black after seven seconds? It’s an underrated method, I think.”

  He finished what he was doing and got up from the chair. He walked heavily across the room, plonked down on the sofa, and picked up the paper. He turned to the crossword on the second-to-last page and started to chew his pencil as he read. He liked the taste. He was well trained after all these years, and he seldom needed to erase anything. When he did, he sniffed it because it smelled sweet. He knew most of the compilers, knew what they were interested in: science, history, geography and politics, the human body. Astronomy. The odd abbreviation and the occasional made-up word that didn’t actually exist. Cheating nonsense, was what he thought then, no fun at all. But now he was stuck. Gas escape, two words, fifteen letters.Was a gas explosion the same as a gas escape? Only twelve letters. Volcano explosion? Sixteen letters. He wrote it down with some uncertainty but soon realized that it had to be wrong. Because that involved magma, which turned to lava when it ran down the mountainside. But where would you find gas? In nature. And presumably in heavy industry. He carried on with the crossword and got the first letter of the second word, which was a “p.” And the last letter was “r.” Then he got an “m” and an “s.” Solar prominence. The great flames on the surface of the sun that can reach for thousands of miles into space. He pondered the next clue: seam. Six letters, the second of which was “u.” Suture. Thread, six letters—that was hard. The first was “c” and the fifth was “u.” Catgut. When he was halfway through the crossword, he decided to keep the rest for later. So he turned to the obituaries. Fredrik was only twenty-two when he chose to leave life. The service will end at the grave. No flowers please. Twenty-two, he thought. He must have had a miserable life. Eddie couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to take their own life, to die when they didn’t need to.

  “Don’t forget to take Shiba out,” his mother called from the kitchen, where she was peeling root vegetables. Eddie walked out to the hall to get his jacket and pulled a hat down over his curls. He put a leash on the fat dog and went out into the snow. Before he turned onto the road, he stopped and admired his snow lantern, which was still standing. Every evening after dark, he lifted off the top snowballs and lit a new candle.

  Shiba stopped as soon as they were out on the road. She went down on her haunches and did her business. When Eddie tried to make her continue walking, she resisted, but he hauled her over to the mailbox all the same. He opened it and took out the mail: two bills, electricity and telephone. Just as he was about to turn around, their neighbor, Ansgar, came out of the house. His cat, Kennedy, slipped out behind him, a dirty, scraggy yellow cat with slit eyes. Eddie didn’t like Ansgar at all, and he didn’t like the horrible cat either. That cat, he often thought to himself. One day, I’m going to lure him inside. And I’m going to boil him in a large pan on the stove until the meat’s falling off the bones. Then I’ll leave the carcass on Ansgar’s step. I’ll hide behind a tree and watch his horror. No doubt there’ll be an uproar, and Ansgar will call the police and the local paper.

  “Hi,” Ansgar said merrily. “You walking the dog? I guess it’s good to have something to do; the days must drag when you don’t work.”

  Eddie didn’t answer. He started to pull at Shiba’s leash, but she’d sat down and wouldn’t budge.

  “There was a job advertised in the paper yesterday,” Ansgar continued. “I don’t know whether you saw it. A maintenance company was looking for people. And I thought of you, you know, because you don
’t really need a degree to change a light bulb.”

  “They do more than just changing light bulbs,” Eddie muttered. “Anyway, I’m not fit for work; the doctor says so.”

  Ansgar grinned. His teeth were small and sharp and rather yellow. “But most people can do something. You clear the snow like a professional. You could clear snow for me as well, if you like,” he added. “I’d pay you.”

  Eddie jerked the leash violently, pulling Shiba to her feet, and tramped off down the road without saying a word. When he got back inside, he undid the leash and took off his jacket. Then he went into the kitchen and put the two envelopes down on the table. Mass looked at them despondently and turned back to what she was doing. Eddie sank down onto a chair and Shiba collapsed in the corner and fell asleep.

  “She can hardly walk,” Eddie stated. “There’s something wrong with her back legs.”

  Mass turned to her son. “I know. I keep meaning to take her to the vet and then I put it off.”

  “Well, I think I know what’s going to happen,” Eddie said and put his great hands down on the table.

  Now it was Mass’s turn not to answer. She wearily brushed the hair back from her forehead. Eddie got up and went over to Shiba. He lay down on the floor beside her, despite his size. The dog moved uneasily and wanted to get away, but she didn’t have the energy. Eddie edged his hand in under her chest. He could feel her little dog heart beating softly.

  10

  July 2005

  “TAKE ALL CALLS SERIOUSLY,” Konrad Sejer said. “Write down all the details: names, places, times, cars, and people. And, for that matter, any random suspicions. People who are simply curious or who have a fertile imagination. Divide them up among yourselves and be vigilant. I want to know every little thing. And if you’re in doubt, talk to Skarre; we can’t afford to overlook anything. Put everything else to one side.”