ALSO BY KARIN FOSSUM
Don't Look Back
He Who Fears the Wolf
Calling Out For You
Karin Fossum
W H E N THE
DEVIL H O L D S
THE CANDLE
Translated from the
Norwegian by Felicity David
Copyright © J.W. Cappelens Forlag, A.S. 1998
English translation copyright © Felicity David 2004
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by
The Harvill Press Vintage
With thanks to Terje Ringstad and Tor Buxrud
If you had never existed, you wouldn't have read this.
And it wouldn't have made any difference. And when you no longer exist, it will be as if you had never read this. It makes no difference. But now, as you are reading , something happens: it eats up a few seconds of your time, like a tiny gnawing animal furry with letters, blocking the path between you and your next minute. You will never get it back.
Undisturbed, i t chews on the micro - organisms of time. It never gets its fill.
Nor do you.
– Tor Ulven
C H A P T E R 1
The courthouse. September 4, 4 p.m.
Jacob Skarre glanced at his watch. His shift was over. He slipped a book out of his inside jacket pocket and read the poem on the first page. It's like playing Virtual Reality, he thought. Poof! – and you're in a different landscape. The door to the corridor stood open, and suddenly he was aware that someone was watching him. Whoever it was was just beyond what he could see with his excellent peripheral vision. A vibration, light as a feather, barely perceptible, finally reached him. He closed his book.
'Can I help you?'
This woman didn't move, just stood there staring at him with an odd expression. Skarre looked at her tense face and thought that she seemed familiar. She was no longer young, maybe about 60, wearing a coat and dark boots. A scarf around her neck. Enough of the pattern was discernible under her chin. The design seemed a sharp contrast to what she most likely possessed in the way of speed and elegance: racehorses with jockeys in colourful silks against a dark blue background. She had a wide, heavy face that was elongated by a prominent chin. Her eyebrows were dark and had grown almost together. She was clutching a handbag against her stomach. But most noticeable of all was her gaze. In that pale face her eyes were blazing. They fixed him with a tremendous force and he could not escape them. Then he remembered who she was. What an odd coincidence, he thought, and waited in suspense. He sat there as if riveted by the probing silence. Any moment now she was going to say something momentous.
'It has to do with a missing person,' was what she said.
Her voice was rough. A rusty tool creaking into motion after a long repose. Behind her white forehead burned a fire. Skarre could see the flickering glow in her irises. He was trying not to make assumptions, but obviously she was in some way possessed. Gradually it came to him what sort of person he was dealing with. In his mind he rehearsed the day's reports, but he could not recall whether any patients had been listed as missing from the psychiatric institutes in the district. She was breathing hard, as if it had cost her immeasurable effort to come here. But she had made up her mind, and at last had been driven by something. Skarre wondered how she had made it past the reception area and Mrs Brenningen's eagle eye, coming straight to his office without anyone stopping her.
'Who is it that's missing?' he asked in a friendly voice.
She kept staring at him. He met her gaze with the same force to see if she would flinch. Her expression turned to one of confusion.
'I know where he is.'
Skarre was startled. 'So you know where he is?
He's not missing, then?'
'He probably won't live much longer,' she said. Her thin lips began to quiver.
'Who are we talking about?' Skarre said. And then, because he guessed who it might be. 'Do you mean your husband?'
'Yes. My husband.'
She nodded resolutely. Stood there, straight- backed and unmoving, her handbag still pressed to her stomach. Skarre leaned back in his chair.
'Your husband is sick, and you're worried about him. Is he old?'
It was an inappropriate question. Life is life, as long as a person is alive and means something, maybe everything, to another being. He regretted the question and picked up his pen from the desk, twirling it between his fingers.
'He's almost like a child,' she said sadly. He was surprised at her response. What was she really
