'Andreas is an odd sort,' she said. She gave him an inscrutable look.
'What is that supposed to mean?'
'Just that he's different. He's probably come up with some wild idea.'
'You don't know anything about it!' His outburst surprised him. It surprised his mother too. She turned and went back to the kitchen. He grabbed the newspaper, ran downstairs and began reading through it. One article after another, page by page. It was a thick paper, so he was busy for quite a while. There was nothing about a woman and a pram. And nothing about the old lady, either. But then, that story had happened after the paper went to press.
*
'This had better not become a habit,' Sejer said. They were in the King's Arms, drinking beer. In the middle of the week.
'No, that would be dreadful, Konrad,' said Skarre, grinning.
They had not talked about the hash. Sejer had been thinking of mentioning it, but he didn't. If Jacob had any questions, he should for God's sake just ask them. Anyway, time was passing. And it was never going to happen again.
'Have you given it any thought?' Sejer said, halfway through his second pint. 'If the new police station is built in the Gr?nland area, and no-one wants to come up with money to extend the road network, we might end up waiting for a train every time we're called out.'
'What fun,' Skarre said. He pulled at a curl from the back of his neck and twisted it round his finger.
'Your hair is getting awfully long,' Sejer said.
'I know. I'm thinking that if I hold out a few more weeks, it'll be long enough for a ponytail.'
'A ponytail?' Sejer frowned.
'I'm telling you,' said Skarre earnestly. 'If I pull my hair back into a ponytail, it'll attract much less attention than it does now.'
'But a ponytail . . . What about the dress code?'
'I've checked Regulations: 'Hair and beard must be well-groomed and kept at moderate lengths. The hairstyle must not prevent the proper wearing of headgear or other equipment. Long hair must be either pinned up or gathered in a ponytail or braid. Hair-bands and ribbons are forbidden.''
'Jesus, you've got it off by heart! We're talking about a neutral appearance, Jacob.'
'Everyone and his uncle has a ponytail,' he insisted.
'What's it going to be next? Dangling earrings?'
'Studs, Konrad. I take them out before I come to work. But I don't strictly have to. 'Small ear studs that sit close to the ear may be worn.''
'I see. Well, you're not exactly a plain-clothes detective. But if we don't get the new police station soon, any kind of cooperation with the legal people is going to go up in smoke. It's just not working out right now, with them sitting 200 metres down the street. We need to be in the same building!'
Skarre lifted the bottle of Irish Stout and filled his glass. 'If I put on some gel, it will look shorter. I'll tell you one thing, though: Goran has longer hair than I do, just that his is so
'But would that look good on you, Jacob?
Having your hair plastered to your skull?'
'Don't know. But nobody takes me seriously with these curls. Mrs Winther thought I must be some kind of trainee or something.' He took a sip of the dark beer. 'How's it going with Robert?' Sejer sighed. 'Fine, given the circumstances. A cliche, I know but I have good reason to use it.'
'Those kids who were with him. Couldn't they have stopped him?'
Sejer traced a stripe through the moisture on his glass. 'Maybe they thought he was just trying to frighten her. Make the others lose face. If only he had settled for that.'
'But there must have been something they could have done! A chap who's dead drunk with a loaded shotgun in his hands, and they all stand there paralysed, looking on?'
'There's not always an explanation for everything,' Sejer said. Skarre didn't care for the idea that any human being could be prey, to such an extent, to their own primitive urges.
'They must have been totally taken by surprise,' Sejer said.
'Too much so to coax him out of the rage that must have overwhelmed him. And they didn't have time enough, or the psychological insight.' Sejer felt something tugging at the back of his mind. He felt like rolling a cigarette, but he smoked only one a day, and usually last thing before he went to bed. If he rolled one now, he would use up his quota. To smoke two would be unthinkable.
'He had made up his mind to shoot. He needed some kind of release.'
I could smoke half of one, he thought. And then the other half tonight. But that would be fooling myself.
'It's all so damned awful – forgive me,' said Skarre, casting a glance at the ceiling, 'the fact that they would just stand there and watch.'
'There's nothing so difficult as stepping forward to intervene. Hardly anyone ever does.'
'Maybe he'll drink a little less from now on,' Skarre mused.
'Maybe he'll drink even more,' Sejer said. Skarre clasped his hands and piously bowed his head. 'What if, as he raised the shotgun and took aim, Anita had burst into song, that beautiful and magnificent hymn, 'Onward Christian Soldiers'?' Sejer burst into uncontrollable laughter. The sound carried through the whole bar. 'What a splendid idea,' he chuckled. 'At least it would have been a surprise. It would have surely thrown him off balance for a moment.'
'We're talking about the power of God's word,' said Skarre. 'Don't you ever think about that?'
'No.'
'Everybody's at sea these days, drifting. No-one has an anchor to hold them down,' said Skarre theatrically.
'Can I ask you something?' Sejer said. 'Are you 100 per cent positive that you're going to go to heaven?'
'I don't know about 100 per cent positive. There are divided opinions up there, about whether I'll have a tussle with the angel.' He took a gulp of beer from the bottle. 'Mrs Winther called twice this afternoon,' he sighed. 'I hope he turns up. She's going to wear us out.'
'Mrs Winther?'
'The mother of Andreas, who has been missing since yesterday.'
'That's yours,' said Sejer dryly.
'Okay, okay. Roger that. It's my job, I know.' Skarre gave a brisk salute. 'Search, secure, collect clues that will make plausible the likely connections in the case, as well as the guilt of the accused.'
'Do they still teach that motto at Training College? Well, she has asked for our help, at any rate. People are strange,' Sejer went on. 'They witness the most unbelievable things. But there's no guarantee that they'll come rushing to file a report with us. Obviously someone knows where he is.'
'Why are you so sure about that?' Skarre wanted to know.
'As my mother used to say, when she could still talk: 'I just know'. A person might witness a murder and never say a word about it. They have a reason for keeping quiet, though it may not be a particularly good reason.'
'I wonder what he's up to.'
'Why are you devoting so much time to this one? We have plenty of other cases.'
Skarre bent over his glass. 'He's just so goodlooking.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'I reckon there are plenty of people who'd like to get their claws into him.'
'Is this the sort of thing that occurs to you when you try to picture what might have happened?'
'He looks quite like an angel. If he doesn't turn up soon, people are going to take notice. You look like a lizard, people don't give a damn. I mean, they couldn't care less. It's a law of nature. Beautiful people, on the other hand . . . take that woman over there for instance. Everyone is turning to look at her.'
Sara waved from the end of the room, ran her fingers through her hair and made her way to their table. She paid no heed to Sejer's shyness, bent down and kissed him on the forehead. Skarre beamed.
'Kollberg is tied up to the bicycle rack outside, against the wall,' she told him.
She drank a glass of white wine with them.
