The Water's Edge

by Karin Fossum

  CHAPTER 29

  He felt hungry, but he was unable to eat anything.

  Not that there was much to eat either: the fridge was empty. A few times he opened the fridge door to look inside while he tried to find his inner resolve. He found none. On the contrary, he discovered as the days passed that his hunger seemed to protect him, he felt encapsulated by it as if it made him invisible to the rest of the world. This feeling quelled some of his fear, because he did feel fear. He had pulled a chair over to the window where he rested his elbows on the windowsill, or he would sit in front of the television where he watched every news broadcast, the photos of the two boys glowing at him. Various experts analysed the incidents; all their theories were wrong. He was spending more time in the wheelchair, he experienced an odd joy rolling around in it. He rolled out into the kitchen to get some water, he rolled back into the living room and parked in front of the television. In the wheelchair he became someone else, in the wheelchair he was a geriatric with withered limbs, a poor thing you could not blame for anything. It was a relief to turn into someone else. He started going to bed early, it made the days shorter. Sometimes he had long, imaginary conversations with the police.

  Listen to me, please, I can explain this!

  Later in the evening, he would collapse in self-pity and shed bitter tears. If they became unstoppable, and this had happened, he would throw himself on the sofa, face away from the room and pull a blanket over himself. This is a dreadful existence, he thought, I'm a prisoner in my own home. I might as well be in prison, at least I would get a hot meal there and I could chat to the guards. He licked away his own tears, their salty taste awakened raw memories in him. He lay alone in the dark like this, but all the time coiled like a spring. He knew they would come and if he did not let them in, they would break down his door.

  CHAPTER 30

  They asked themselves these questions over and over:

  Why can't we find Edwin? Is it a good sign that we haven't found him yet? Does it mean that he might still be alive? And if we're talking about the same offender, why has he taken the trouble to hide Edwin Åsalid while Jonas August was dumped beneath some trees? Was it possible for two paedophiles to carry out separate attacks in the same place in the space of one week? They thought of every possible scenario; absolutely every single permutation was examined. Were they dealing with a child suicide? Had Edwin's life been harder than the adults had realised? And if it was not about sex, what was the motive for a crime they could only sense the outline of?

  A man called the station about some rumours which had started in Huseby and suggested that they might want to look into them.

  'Joakim Naper,' Sejer said. 'Let's go and have a word with him.'

  'Naper?' Skarre said. 'The man with the dogs? He's already been questioned.'

  'I know,' Sejer said, 'but he has heard something. We've got to work with what little we have.'

  The doorbell triggered fierce barking and they noticed claw marks on the woodwork.

  'You've got to catch this man,' Naper said, 'and you'd better do it quickly.'

  There was a violent commotion in the doorway as Naper yanked the dogs to one side and showed them to a living room with a view of the loch. The dogs had left their mark on the house and there was little left of the parquet flooring. His furniture was ancient and worn and some filthy brown strips of fabric hung by the windows, some sort of curtain supposedly. There were several photographs on the walls, all depicting dogs: dogs in the snow, dogs in front of a sledge, dogs on a beach.

  'Yes,' he said, 'it's just me and the dogs here.'

  He commanded the dogs to lie down. Sejer and Skarre found a space on a sofa covered in long, white dog hairs. Naper was a man in his fifties, short and heavy-set with an impressive iron grey beard, which he kept stroking. Whenever he looked at them, it was with brief, sharp glances; most of the time his eyes rested on the dogs.

  'Like I told you. It's not much that I can offer you, I didn't see any people or cars the day Edwin Åsalid disappeared. But I saw the boys sitting on the jetty. Now the rumours have started. You might not have heard them, people don't like making accusations, they're scared they might be wrong. But I don't have any children at Solberg School so I don't care.'

  He scratched one of the dogs energetically. The big animal rolled over on the floor.

  'These rumours started before the boys disappeared. But now, of course, they've really caught on.'

  Naper took his time. His hands were strong and hairy; they sank deeply into the neck of the dog.

  'It's about a man who is gay,' he said, looking at them. 'And I'm not bothered by that, I've no axe to grind, live and let live I say. As long as you don't hurt anyone. Anyway, he lives with someone, has done for years, they live in Nordby where they bought an old house which they've done up. And to put it bluntly, a lot of young boys come to visit him.'

  'Why do they do that?' Sejer asked.

  Naper found an ashtray and took out a squashed packet of Petterøe tobacco from his shirt pocket.

  'He's a teacher,' he said, 'at Solberg School.'

  'Alex Meyer,' Sejer said.

  'That's him. You've already heard, I thought you might have,' Naper said.

  Sejer protested. 'Someone mentioned he was gay, that's all. Tell me how these rumours have come about.'

  Naper rolled a misshapen cigarette, stuck it into the corner of his mouth and lit it.

  'He brings the kids back home.'

  'To his house?'

  Skarre listened, his blue eyes fixed on Naper's face.

  'No one's quite sure what goes on,' Naper said, 'or what part his boyfriend plays in all of this. But I do think it's odd that a teacher opens his home in this way. Sometimes the kids are there in the evenings. Don't ask me what they do, but I think that is strange. You'd have thought he would have had enough of them after a whole day at school.'

  'Has anyone asked him?' Sejer asked.

  'Don't know.'

  'Do you happen to know the name of his boyfriend?'

  'I do. Now, what was it? Johannes Kjær.'

  Skarre made a note of the name.

  Naper flicked the ash from his cigarette. One of his dogs gave a long yawn and Sejer caught a glimpse of its impressive fangs.

  'Rikard Holmen, who runs the Kiwi shop, has two grandchildren in Year Five,' Naper said, 'and they've been to Meyer's house lots of times. But perhaps it's all above board. Perhaps it's just what I said it might be. Gossip.'

  Again he bent down and started scratching another dog. Sejer went over to the window and looked down at the loch.

  'You can see the jetty,' he remarked.

  'Yes,' Naper said. 'I don't mean to boast, but this house, which I bought in '94, has the best view in Huseby.'

  'Do you know Edwin Åsalid?'

  'No. I don't know him, but I know who he is. Everyone does, he's hard to miss. And not that I know much about it, but I can't imagine what his mother thinks she's doing. The odd salad wouldn't have gone amiss.'

  Skarre placed his notepad on the coffee table. 'Yes, if only it was that simple,' he said, flashing one of his dazzling smiles, as a result of which Naper missed his irony.

  'I've tried to understand this thing about children,' he said. 'I mean, the men. Who want them. I suppose they actually prefer children. And sexual urges are strong, some perhaps can't control them. Like my dogs,' he grinned. 'But surely they've got a brain like everybody else, they must know that what they're doing is utterly wrong. They know it's a crime and that the children in question are permanently damaged. How can they be so selfish?'

  Sejer returned to his seat, the dogs watching him warily.

  'It's the way of the world, a few people just take what they want,' he said.

  'What are you going to do if he abducts another child?' He stroked his beard and gave them a challenging look.

  'We'll continue to do our job,' Sejer said.

  'I can't believe that it has ended like this,' Naper said. 'It was the
last thing on my mind when I was out with the dogs. I noticed the boys when I was walking towards Svart Ridge because one of them waved. And because I used to be a photographer I paid a bit more attention to them. The light over Loch Bonna that day was amazing and I thought what a superb picture they made. Three boys huddled together on a jetty.'

  CHAPTER 31

  The leaves were falling from the trees, twirling slowly and mournfully. October brought black, cool nights. Sejer was busy with reports and witness statements. He studied the results from the door-to-door inquiries in Huseby, where anyone who owned a white car had been asked to answer a few simple questions. They had found nothing. They had gone through the registers of Ford Granadas and Mitsubishi Galants before checking out the rest of the district. They had accessed Autosys and searched for white cars regardless of brand. They initiated new searches. They even dragged Loch Bonna. This time they searched beyond the headland all the way to Svart Ridge but without success. They uncovered drains, they searched woods, they went into outhouses and down into basements.

  At Solberg School the teachers struggled to maintain calm.

  The days seemed like regular school-days, yet a state of emergency existed and everyone was allowed to speak if there was something they wanted to talk about. Trauma counsellors had advised the teachers to encourage the children to voice their thoughts, and as a result one boy suggested that Edwin might have been cut up since he had not been found. 'He might be all over the place in a million little pieces,' he declared precociously. His claim caused the other children to give him horrified looks. Others were adamant that Edwin was at the bottom of Loch Bonna. Others that he had been kidnapped and taken aboard a ship where he might be someone's slave and was being starved; perhaps he was now as thin as a matchstick and unrecognisable. Edwin's calm nature, Edwin's lethargy, Edwin's soft, modest voice had left a huge void and the pupils surpassed each other in praising him whenever his name was mentioned. Even though they had said things about him behind his back, even though they had mimicked the way he waddled and nicknamed him Fatty, they were on their best behaviour now and they genuinely missed Edwin. They were untroubled by their transition from mockery to tolerance. During lessons they would stare at his empty chair.

  There was a greater degree of calm in Jonas August's class because the children there had attended his funeral. He was buried behind the church in the last row between the family plots of Haraldson and Ruste. On several occasions they had all gone to the church and stood in a semicircle around his grave thinking sad thoughts. A few stamped the ground in front of the headstone cautiously. They suddenly realised with awesome impact that he lay alone in the black earth, right underneath their feet.

  Almost reluctantly the press turned its attention to other cases. True, they were not nearly as spectacular, but they were fresh. On the two months' anniversary of the discovery of Jonas August's body Dagbladet ran a major article about the boys. A unique case in Norwegian crime history, an extraordinary riddle for the police. Everyone feared that there would be a third attack.

  'Time's passing,' Skarre said, 'and we can't even be sure what sort of crime we're dealing with.'

  'Do you remember Helén Nilsson?' Sejer said. 'She, too, was ten years old. Helén Nilsson from Hörby in Sweden. She was found on a woodland road wrapped in a bin liner. It took police fifteen years to find her killer. Fifteen years and ten thousand interviews. We just have to keep going.'

  CHAPTER 32

  Reinhardt had fantasised about it countless times, the moment he would finally come face to face with the man from Linde Forest. And how that moment would be filled with surprise and triumph. But he had never imagined that his heart would pound like this or that his cheeks would start to burn. It was the middle of December and they had gone to the ICA superstore to do their shopping. Reinhardt pushed the trolley and Kristine selected the groceries. She jumped when Reinhardt grabbed her arm.

  'Kristine,' he whispered. 'Look!'

  She tried to free herself. She had no idea what he was talking about, but she looked in the direction he was pointing and noticed a middle-aged man in a worn leather jacket. He was standing in the fruit section choosing some apples.

  'Hans Christian Andersen,' Reinhardt whispered.

  Kristine's eyes widened.

  'It's the man from Linde Forest,' he said.

  'Him?' Kristine asked. 'With the apples? No.'

  'Yes,' Reinhardt insisted. 'You can see that it's the same man. Don't you dare tell me I'm wrong. Remember we saw him clearly, just a few metres away and in broad daylight.' He shook his head in disbelief. 'Bloody hell. And here he is now, doing his shopping, pretending nothing has happened.'

  The man had his back to them, but then he turned and they could see his profile. Kristine could not believe that it was him; this man looked utterly pathetic and selecting a few apples seemed an insurmountable task for him. He would pick one up, turn it this way and that, put it back down, take another, his whole being seemed weary and wretched. She just could not imagine him being responsible for the murder of two children. She had expected someone evil because her mind had embroidered on her actual experience and moulded him in the light of his crime. His eyes were blacker and his cheeks more hollow, that was how she remembered him.

  'Just look at his profile,' Reinhardt said.

  'He resembles him, that's all,' she declared, wanting to finish their shopping. She felt confused, she clung to the trolley. The man had turned away and all they could see was his back.

  'It is him,' Reinhardt stated. 'We need to call the police.'

  Kristine went over to the fruit section where she got some clementines. She glanced briefly at the man in the leather jacket and the memories came flooding back. She had to agree that he resembled him, but she still had doubts.

  'I don't understand how you can be so sure,' she said. 'We only saw him for a few seconds and it was more than three months ago.'

  'I'm certain,' he stated firmly. 'I'll never forget that face. Don't be silly now. This is what the police have been waiting for all this time.'

  The man headed for the checkout.

  'He's limping,' Kristine said.

  'Exactly,' Reinhardt said. 'He's dragging one leg. Now do you believe me?'

  Kristine was overcome by a sudden, inexplicable fear. She did not like being near him. She hated that he walked around all ordinary looking, buying apples like normal people.

  'We've got to find out if he drives a Granada,' Reinhardt said. 'I bet you he does. Hurry up, we can't lose him!'

  'I haven't finished my shopping,' Kristine objected.

  'That's not important right now,' Reinhardt snapped.

  They followed him at a suitable distance. He went to the checkout and placed his shopping on the belt.

  'We'll take the checkout next to him,' Reinhardt said, 'otherwise he'll finish before we do. You pay and I'll pack!'

  He slipped past her and waited while the cashier scanned their groceries. Kristine paid and they left. They quickly loaded their shopping and got into their car, where they waited for him. Shortly afterwards he appeared with a carrier bag in each hand.

  'Do you see a Granada anywhere?' Kristine asked.

  No, Reinhardt thought, no Granada, but he could have been wrong about the car. He did not say so out loud because he hated being wrong. The man was now heading towards a white car.

  'A Carina,' he exclaimed. 'An old Toyota Carina. It looks like a Granada from the back, I should have known it was a Carina! We must get a look at the number plate. Do you have something to write with, Kristine? We'll get his registration number and give it to the police. Hurry up. For God's sake what are you waiting for?'

  She fumbled around in her handbag for a pen and some paper while the man put his shopping in the boot of his car. There was something slow and hesitant about him, as if everything was an uphill struggle. Kristine scribbled down the registration number on a scrap of paper.