Sejer, who had bought an old-fashioned marzipan loaf, followed his gaze. 'That fjord is deep, more than 300 metres. Never gets above 17 degrees Celsius.'
'Do you know anyone here?'
'I don't, but my daughter Ingrid does. She's been here on a folklore walk, the kind of thing they organise in the autumn. 'Know your district.' She loves stuff like that.'
He rolled the candy wrapper into a thin strip and stuck it into his shirt pocket. 'Do you think someone with Down's syndrome can be a good driver?'
'No idea,' Karlsen said. 'But there's nothing wrong with them except for having one chromosome too many. I think their biggest problem is that they take longer to learn something than other people do. They also have bad hearts. They don't live to be very old. And there's something about their hands.'
'What's that?'
'They're missing a line on their palm or something.'
Sejer gave him a surprised look. 'Anyway, Ragnhild certainly let herself be charmed.'
'I think the rabbits helped.'
Karlsen found a handkerchief in his inside pocket and wiped the chocolate from the corners of his mouth. 'I grew up with a Down's syndrome child. We called him 'Crazy Gunnar'. Now that I think of it, we actually seemed to believe that he came from another planet. He's dead now – only lived to be 35.'
They got into the car and drove on. Sejer prepared a simple little speech that he would serve up to the department chief when they were back at headquarters. A few days off to go up to his cabin seemed tremendously important all of a sudden. The timing was right, the long-term prospects were promising, and the girl showing up safe and sound at home had put him in a good mood. He stared over fields and meadows, registered that they had slowed down, and saw the tractor in front of them. A green John Deere with butter-yellow wheel rims was crawling at a snail's pace. They had no chance to overtake it; each time they came to a straight stretch, it proved to be too short. The farmer, who was wearing a gardener's cap and earmuffs, sat like a tree stump, as though he was growing straight up out of the seat. Karlsen changed gears and sighed.
'He's carrying Brussels sprouts. Can't you reach out and grab a box? We could cook them in the kitchen at the canteen.'
'Now we're going as fast as Raymond does,' muttered Sejer. 'Life in second gear. That really would be something, don't you think?'
He settled his grey head against the head-rest and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 2
After the quiet of the countryside the city seemed like a filthy, teeming chaos of people and cars. The main route for traffic was still through the town centre; the city council was fighting tooth and nail for a tunnel which they had ready on the drawing-board, but new groups kept popping up to protest against it with one or another weighty argument: the eyesore that the ventilation towers would create in the landscape by the river; the noise and pollution of the construction work; and, last but not least, the cost.
Sejer stared down at the street from the chief's office. He had put in his request, and now he was waiting for the reply. It was a formality: Holthemann would never dream of turning down Konrad Sejer. But the chief did like everything done by the book.
'You've checked the duty rosters? Talked to the rest of the team?'
Sejer nodded. 'Soot will take two shifts with Siven; I expect she'll keep him in line.'
'Then I don't see any reason to-'
The telephone rang. Two short peeps, as if from a hungry bird. Sejer wasn't religious, but he said a prayer anyway – possibly to Providence – that his holiday wouldn't be snatched from under his nose.
'You want to know if Konrad is in my office?' Holthemann said. 'Yes, he's here. Put the call through.'
He pulled on the cord and handed Sejer the receiver. He took it, thinking it might be his daughter Ingrid wanting him for something. He hoped it wasn't bad news. It was Mrs Album.
'Is everything all right with Ragnhild?' he asked.
'Yes, she's fine. Perfectly fine. But she told me something very odd when we were finally alone. I had to ring you, I thought it sounded so peculiar, and she doesn't usually make things up, so to be on the safe side I thought I'd better let you know. In any case, I will have told someone.'
'What is it about?'
'This man she was with, he showed her the way home. His name is Raymond, by the way, she remembered it afterwards. They drove up the far side of Kollen and past Serpent Tarn, and there they stopped for a while.'
'Yes?'
'Ragnhild says there's a woman lying up there.'
He blinked in surprise. 'What did you say?'
'That there's a woman lying up at the lake. Quite still and with no clothes on.' Her voice was anxious and embarrassed at the same time.
'Do you believe her?'
'Yes, I do. Would a child think up something like that? But I don't dare go up there alone, and I don't want to take her with me.'
'I'll have it looked into. Don't mention this to anyone. We'll be in touch.'
He hung up and in his mind he closed up his cabin. The scent of sea spray and fresh-caught cod sprats vanished abruptly. He smiled at Holthemann.
'You know, there's something I have to take care of first.'
Karlsen was out on patrol in the only squad car they could spare that day, and it had to cover the entire city centre. So he took Skarre with him instead, a young curly-haired officer about half his age. Skarre was a cheerful little man, mild-mannered and optimistic, with traces of the rhythmic Southland dialect in his speech. They parked again by the letterbox in Granittveien and had a brief talk with Irene Album. Ragnhild clung like a burr to her mother's dress. A number of admonitions had undoubtedly been impressed on the tow-headed child. Her mother pointed and explained, saying they had to follow a signposted path from the edge of the woods facing the house, uphill to the left past Kollen. For active men like them it would probably take 20 minutes, she said.
The tree trunks were marked with blue arrows, indicating the way. They eyed the sheep shit bale-fully, stepping out into the heather now and again, but persevered upwards. The path grew steeper and steeper. Skarre was panting a little, while Sejer walked easily. He stopped once, turning to stare down towards the housing estate. They could see only the roofs, brownish-pink and black in the distance. Then they set off again, no longer talking, partly because they needed their breath for the climb, partly because of what they were afraid of finding. The forest was so thick that they were walking in semi-darkness. Instinctively, Sejer kept his eyes on the path, not because he was afraid of tripping, but if something had indeed happened up here, it was crucial to take note of everything. They had been walking for exactly 17 minutes when the forest opened up and the sunlight shone through. Now they could see the water. A mirror-like tarn, no bigger than a large pond, lying among the spruce trees like a secret space. For a moment they scanned the terrain, following the yellow line of the reeds with their gaze, and caught sight of something that looked like a beach a little farther away. They set out towards it at a good distance from the water; the belt of rushes was fairly wide, and they had only their street shoes.
It could hardly be called a beach, but was more like a muddy patch with four or five large stones, just enough to keep the reeds out, and probably the only place that allowed access to the water. A woman lay in the mud and dirt. She was on her side with her back to them, a dark anorak covering her upper body. Otherwise she was naked. Blue and white clothes lay in a heap next to her. Sejer stopped short and automatically reached for the mobile phone on his belt. Then he changed his mind. He approached carefully, hearing the gurgling in his shoes.
'Don't move,' he said in a low voice.
Skarre obeyed. Sejer was at the water's edge. He balanced himself on a rock a little way out in the tarn so he could see the woman from the front. He didn't want to touch anything, not yet. Her eyes had sunk in a little. They were half-open and fixed on a point out in the lake. The eye membrane was dull and wrinkled. Her pupils were large and no longer quite round. Her mouth stood open; above it and extending up over her nose was a yellowish bit of
