suspicion slowly began to develop.
Bjork had worked up a high blood-alcohol content.
The dog was still sitting with his tongue hanging out, panting and impatient, his eyes shifting anxiously. After a while, Bjork got laboriously to his feet, set the bottle on the ice-cold floor, hiccuped a few times, and straightened up. He immediately fell against the wall, his legs splayed out. The dog got up too, staring at him with yellow eyes. He wagged his tail tentatively two or three times. Bjork fumbled for the revolver, which was stuck tight in his pocket. He got it out and cocked it, staring at the dog the whole time, as he listened to the sound of his own molars grinding against each other. He swayed, his hand shaking, but fought off the dizziness, raised his arm, and pulled. The violent explosion ricocheted off the walls. The skull split open, and the contents splashed across the walls, and some struck the dog on the snout. The shot continued to reverberate. Gradually it faded to what sounded like distant thunder. The dog lunged to break free, but the leash held. After repeated attempts, the animal was exhausted. He gave up and stood there, whimpering.
The gallery was located on a quiet street, not far from the Catholic church. Outside stood a Citroen, an older model, the kind with slanted headlights. Rather like Chinese eyes, Sejer thought. The car was covered with dust. Skarre went over and looked at it. The roof was cleaner than the rest of the car, as if something had been on top, protecting the surface. It was blue-green.
'No ski-box,' Sejer said.
'No, it's been removed. There are marks from the fastenings.'
They opened the gallery door and went in. It smelled quite similar to Mrs Johnas's shop, of wool and starch, with a faint hint of tar from the beams in the ceiling. A camera was aimed at them from a corner. Sejer stopped and peered into the lens. Everywhere lay great piles of carpets. A broad stone staircase led up to the floors above. Several carpets were spread out on the floor and some hung from poles on the walls. Johnas was coming down the stairs, dressed in flannel and velvet, red and green and pink and black. With his dark curls he seemed to fit his passion for carpets perfectly. There was something soft and gentle about him. His fierce temper, if it existed, was well concealed. His eyes were dark, almost black, and his whole manner was unmistakably that of a salesman. Friendly, slick, accommodating.
'Well, hello!' he said. 'Come on in. So you want to buy a carpet, is that right?'
He gave a wave of his arm, as if they were close friends he hadn't seen for a long time, or perhaps potential customers with a weakness for this particular kind of handwork. The knots. The colours. The patterns with the religious symbols. Birth and life and death, pain, victories, pride. To put under the dining-room table or in front of the TV. Indestructible, unique.
'You have a lot of space here,' Sejer said, looking around.
'Two whole floors, plus an attic. Believe me, this has been a big investment. I've practically skinned myself alive on this place, and it didn't look like this when I took over. Mouldy and grey. But I gave it a proper cleaning and whitewashed the walls, and that's really all it needed. Originally it was an old villa. Follow me, please.'
He pointed up the stairs and led them to what he called his office, but it was actually a spacious kitchen, with a stainless steel counter and stove, a coffee maker, and a small refrigerator. There were tiles above the counter with lovely, chastely attired Dutch girls, windmills, and thick waving grass. Old copper kettles with decorative dents hung from a beam in the ceiling. The kitchen table had brass edges and corners, as though it was from an old ship.
They sat down around the table, and without asking them Johnas went over to the refrigerator and poured grape juice into wine glasses.
'How did it go with the puppies?' Skarre asked him.
'Hera will get to keep one of them, and the other two are already spoken for. So it's too late for you to change your mind. Now what can I do for you?' He smiled and took a sip.
Sejer knew that his friendliness would quickly evaporate.
'Just a few questions about Annie. I'm afraid we need to go over the same ground again and again.' He wiped his mouth discreetly. 'You picked her up at the roundabout – is that right?'
Sejer's choice of words, his intonation, and the tiniest hint of doubt about his previous statement sharpened Johnas's attention.
'That's what I said before, and that's exactly what I did.'
'But she actually preferred to walk, didn't she?'
'Excuse me?'
'It took a little persuasion for you to get her into the car, is that correct?'
Johnas's eyes narrowed but he remained silent.
'She preferred to walk,' Sejer said. 'She declined your offer of a ride. Am I right?'
Johnas nodded suddenly and smiled. 'She always did that; she was so unassuming. But I thought it was too far to walk to Horgen's Shop. It's quite a way.'
'So you persuaded her?'
'No, no…' He shook his head hard and shifted position in his chair. 'I coaxed her a little. Some people have a tiresome habit of needing to be coaxed all the time.'
'So it wasn't that she didn't want to get into your car?'
Johnas heard quite clearly the extra stress on the words 'your car'.
'That's the way Annie was. A little aloof, maybe. Who have you been talking to?'
'Several hundred people,' Sejer said. 'And one of them saw her get into your car after a long discussion. You're actually the last person to see her alive, and we've got to focus on that, don't you agree?'
Johnas smiled back, a conspiratorial smile, as if they were playing a game and he was more than willing to participate.
'I wasn't the last person,' he said. 'Whoever killed her was the last person.'
'It's proving rather difficult to get hold of him,' Sejer said with deliberate irony. 'And we have nothing to corroborate that the man on the motorcycle was waiting for Annie. The only thing we have is you.'
'I'm sorry? What are you getting at?'
'Well,' Sejer said, throwing out his hands, 'I'm trying to get to the bottom of this case. It's the nature of my job to doubt what people say.'
'Are you accusing me of lying?'
'I'm afraid that's what I have to think,' Sejer said. 'I hope you'll forgive me. Why didn't she want to get in?'
Johnas was visibly uneasy. 'Of course she wanted to get in!' He had shown the first sign of anger, and now controlled himself. 'She got in and I drove her to Horgen's.'
'No further than that?'
'No, as I told you, she got out at the shop. I thought she was going there to buy something. I didn't even drive up to the door; I stopped on the road, and let her out. And after that,' he stood up to get a pack of cigarettes from the counter, 'I never saw her again.'
Sejer steered his interrogation on to a new track.
'You lost a child, Johnas. You know what it feels like. Have you talked to Eddie Holland about it?'
For a moment Johnas looked surprised. 'No, no, he's such a private person, I didn't want to bother him. Besides, it's not an easy thing for me to talk about either.'
'How long ago was it?'
'You've talked to Astrid, haven't you? Almost eight months. But it's not the sort of thing you forget or get over.'
He slipped a cigarette out of the pack. Lit up and smoked in an almost feminine way. Merits, filtertipped.
'People often try to imagine what it's like.' He stared at Sejer with weary eyes. 'They do it with the best of intentions. Try to picture the empty bed and imagine themselves standing there and staring at it. And I did do that often. But the empty bed is only part of it. I got up every morning and went out to the bathroom, and there was his toothbrush under the mirror. The kind that changes colours when it gets warm. The rubber duck on the edge of the bath. His slippers under the bed. I caught myself setting too many places at the table for dinner, I did it for days. There were stuffed animals that he had left in the car. Months later I found a Band-Aid under the sofa.'
Johnas was speaking through clenched teeth, as if with great reluctance he was revealing things to them that they had no right to know.
'I threw things out, a little at a time, and it felt as if I was committing a crime. It was painful to look at his
