The weeds were ruining her lawn and had to be removed. And then she had called to him with her voice full of fear.
'Shut up!' he screamed, trembling.
'Excuse me,' said Morgan wearily. 'I just wanted to tell you that I really don't give a damn what happens.'
'I'll do whatever I want. You can't tell me what to do!' Errki shouted, shaking his fist at the world outside the window.
'That's exactly what I'm saying,' Morgan mumbled. He rolled over on to his side, keeping one hand like a protective shield over his nose. 'When I wake up I'm going to be very sick. Maybe you should go down to the village to get help. I wouldn't mind if you did. I just don't care any more. I promised to get the money, and I did.'
'My name is Errki Peter Johrma. I'm going to lie down.'
'Do whatever you want,' Morgan muttered. His voice was scarcely a whisper in the silence.
Errki went into the bedroom. He leaned down and rummaged under the mattress until he found the gun, and stuck it into the waistband of his trousers. He was ready. He curled up with his jacket under his head and fell into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER 14
'What Kannick needs right now is to win a trophy,' Margunn said firmly. 'One he can keep shiny and polished and show to his mother. He could do it, he's certainly good enough. In fact, archery is the only thing he is good at.' She nodded twice to emphasise her remark.
They were sitting in her office. Sejer smiled, indicating that he too wished Kannick could win that trophy.
'Is he having trouble dealing with what happened?' he asked, staring at her face with fascination. Beautiful she was not. She looked like a man, with a high forehead, wrinkled skin, the hint of a moustache and a deep voice. And she was filled with an unshakeable faith in the goodness of human beings, and especially the individuals in her charge. Benevolence spread like an attractive, blushing eagerness over her rough face.
'He's handling it fine. At least, he seems to be able to focus on the archery match, and in that way hold everything else at bay. You should also bear in mind that the boys here have been through a little of everything. It takes a lot to unsettle them.'
'I understand,' said Sejer. 'Tell me about Kannick.'
Her chair scraped as she shifted position.
'Kannick is what we call a good old-fashioned accident. The result of his mother's impulsiveness and lack of character, which, from what I know of her family, she never had a chance to develop. Just like Kannick, she was always in the way. Nothing but a bother. Every summer Polish labourers come here to work on the farms. She was working at the petrol-station shop where the labourers would turn up every week to buy cheap cigarettes and maybe a porn magazine if they were feeling extravagant. No doubt they were the highlight of her week. Different, exotic. And, as she told me, much more gallant towards women than the men she was used to. She said, 'They treated me like a lady, Margunn!' It's clear that things like that made an impression on a girl who had long ago lost all trace of innocence, nor was remotely sorry for it. One day he turned up at the shop: Kannick's father. He'd been away from Poland for four months and was homesick, she said. It's not hard to imagine.'
Margunn gave Sejer a conciliatory smile. 'Kannick was conceived in the stockroom, after the station closed for the evening, among crates of crisps and chamois cloths. And it never occurred to her to regret it, at least not until she realised that the boy was on the way. He cried a lot as a baby, but she discovered that as long as he was full, he didn't fuss. What this technique has led to, you'll soon see. The mother was busy trying to find someone who would love her, and she still is. She doesn't want Kannick. She doesn't dislike him, but she just can't see that he's her responsibility. She feels that he was inflicted upon her, like an illness.'
'What kind of problems caused him to end up here?'
'At first he acted up and was much too impulsive to function at a regular school. But now he's starting to close himself off. He spends a lot of time daydreaming, can't manage to show enthusiasm for anything, and doesn't make friends. He craves attention, and when he's in the spotlight, he blossoms. If he doesn't get everyone's attention, then he doesn't want any at all. An instructor comes to give him archery lessons every week, and in that situation he's more lively, because it's all about Kannick and what he can or can't do. But in a school setting he's just one of many students, and then he shows no interest in participating.'
'So it's all or nothing?'
'Yes, something like that.'
'Where is his room?'
'On the second floor, right at the back. There's a sticker for Freia Marabou chocolate on the door.'
Sejer had brought along a bag of sweets. He knew he wasn't visiting a sick patient, but the poor boy had been through a terrible experience, and he could do with some extra kindness. But when Sejer saw the fat boy lying on his bed, he was sorry he had thought to bring sweets.
'Hello, Kannick. My name is Konrad.'
He was standing in the doorway of the room that Kannick shared with Philip. Kannick was lying on his back, reading a comic, and chewing on something crunchy. He looked up, first at Sejer, and then at the bag he held in his hand.
'I'm from the police.'
Kannick tossed his comic aside. 'I told the other boys that I was sure you would come, but they didn't believe me. They said I wasn't important enough.'
Sejer smiled. 'Of course you're important. I've been talking to Margunn in her office. Mind if I sit down on the edge of the bed?'
The boy tucked up his legs. Carrying around that much weight must be like carrying a friend on his back, Sejer thought, as he handed the boy the sweets.
'Do you promise to share with the others?'
'OK.' He put the bag on the bedside table.
'So you were the one who notified Officer Gurvin?'
The boy brushed back the shock of hair from his forehead. He was wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt, with black moccasins on his feet.
'He kept asking me about the time, but I wasn't wearing my watch. I had taken it to be fixed.'
'I'm sorry to hear that,' Sejer said. 'Verifying the time is something that's very important for the police. Knowing the exact time that something happened can often help explain everything, or expose people who are trying to trick us.'
Kannick gave him a scared look, as if Sejer might be insinuating something.
'Well, I can't trick you,' he said, 'since I had no way of telling what time it was anyway. But I know that it was seven o'clock when I left here, because of this.' He pointed at the alarm clock on the bedside table.
'So you're something of an early bird, then. It's the summer holiday right now, isn't it?'
'It was so hot. I couldn't sleep. And Philip wheezes very loudly because of his asthma.'
Sejer looked around the room. There was a hollow in the bed where Philip might have been lying before he came in. On the bedside table were bottles of medicine and an inhaler. Through the window he could see the heads of three boys who were examining his police car. Every once in a while they looked up at the window.
'It's still possible for us to arrive at an approximate time, if we help each other. Try to go over the day in your mind, from the moment you left here. You say that it was 7 a.m. And from here you walked up to the woods?'
'Yes.'
'And you had your bow with you?'
'Uh, yes.' He looked down.
'I'm not going to arrest you for it. It's Margunn's job to discipline you. Did you walk fast?'
'Not really.'
'Did you stop along the way?'
'Sometimes I stopped to listen for a while. For crows, and things like that. Maybe a couple of times.'
