Einar frowned. 'Why? Have you spoken to him?'
'He called me. It was a car crash.'
'Really?' Einar said tentatively. 'Did he call to tell you that? You two aren't usually so close.'
'No.' Kalle hesitated. 'It so happens that Gunder was expecting a visitor from abroad, but instead of going to the airport he had to be with his sister in the hospital. That's why he called me. He asked if I would drive to Gardermoen and get this… visitor.'
'I see,' Einar said. Something was at work beneath the red hair. Kalle wasn't sure what.
The journalists were watching them. Kalle spoke as quietly as he could. 'You know Gunder went to India?' he said.
Einar nodded. 'His sister said so. She was here buying cigarettes.'
'But do you know what he did down there?'
'On holiday, I suppose?'
'Yes and no. But the thing is that he went and got married down there. To an Indian woman.'
Einar looked up then. His eyes were wide with genuine surprise.
'Jomann? To an Indian woman?'
'Yes. That's why he called me. Because his wife was arriving on this plane. So he sent me to pick her up. Because he had to stay with his sister.'
Einar was shocked. Kalle couldn't stop talking now.
'He explained everything, which flight and so on. Her name and what she looked like. He was very upset that he couldn't go himself. So I drove there.' Kalle swallowed and looked at Einar. 'But I couldn't find her.'
'You couldn't find her?' Einar said, bewildered.
'I looked everywhere, but I couldn't find her.'
Einar was now openly staring at him. An impulse made Kalle turn. The journalists were still watching them. He lowered his voice still further.
'So I called Gunder at the hospital and explained what had happened. We agreed that she'd probably taken another taxi and gone to his house. That she would be waiting there. After all, she had his address. But she wasn't there either.'
A long pause followed. Einar could tell where Kalle was going with this. He looked haunted.
'Then I heard the news – about the dead woman at Hvitemoen. I got really scared. There aren't many foreign women around here. So I called him.'
'What did he say?'
'He sounded strange. Didn't really answer my questions, said something about her probably being on her way. I've begun to think that it's her. That someone killed her on her way to Gunder's. Hvitemoen – that's not very far from Gunder's house. Just one kilometre.'
'Just one kilometre,' Einar said. 'So, do you know her name?'
Kalle nodded earnestly.
'You have to call the police,' Einar said firmly.
'I don't think I can,' Kalle said. 'Gunder needs to call himself. But I don't think he dares. He's pretending that nothing's happened.'
'You have to talk to him,' Einar said.
'He's at the hospital,' Kalle said.
'But what about his brother-in-law?'
'He's in Hamburg,' Kalle said. He suddenly felt exhausted.
'This hotline,' said Einar. 'You can call anonymously.'
'No, if I call, then I'll give my name. After all, I'm not doing anything wrong by calling. But it will make them go straight to his house.'
'Well, they won't find him if he's at the hospital.'
'They'll find him sooner or later. And what if I'm wrong?'
'It's good if you're wrong, I suppose,' Einar said.
'I don't know. I don't know him that well either. He is very private, is Gunder. Doesn't say much. Could you call?'
Einar rolled his eyes.
'Me? No, I couldn't.' He dismissed the idea. 'You're the one who was involved in this.'
Kalle put his cup on the counter.
'It's only a phone call,' Einar said. 'It's not the end of the world.'
Once again there was the sound of Linda's shrill laughter. One of the journalists was standing bent over the girls' table.
'I'll think about it,' Kalle said.
Einar lit a cigarette. He watched the journalists in animated conversation with Linda and Karen. Then he opened the door to his office. A tiny room where he could take a break or could sit and do his bookkeeping. Behind the office was a cold-storage room where he kept the food. He opened this door, too. For a while he stood, at a loss, staring into the narrow room. His anguished eyes rested on a large brown suitcase.
Chapter 7
The press descended like flies, behaving as though they owned the whole village. They were on the prowl, their mouths their weapons. Every one of them had their own point of view and an original headline which no-one else had thought of. They took dramatic photographs, which showed nothing at all because they had not been allowed close to the scene of the crime. Nonetheless, they had crawled on their stomachs and focused in on it through the rushes and the grass with their camera lenses. So that man's incomprehensible inhumanity to man could be portrayed in the form of white tarpaulin with a few withered flowers in the foreground. They had a huge talent for empathetic facial expressions and they perfectly understood people's need for their fifteen minutes of fame.
The young certainly appreciated the excitement. At last we've got something to look at, said Karen. Linda preferred the ones in uniform, reporters are so scruffy, she complained. They had stopped giggling. Both had acquired an expression of mature horror. They discussed the awful murder in subdued voices and were emphatic in their conviction that it could not have been committed by anyone from the village. They had lived there all their lives, after all, and knew everyone.
'Where were you around nine o'clock last night?' one of the journalists asked them. He watched their young faces as they retraced the hours.
'I was with her,' Linda said, pointing at Karen.
Karen nodded. 'You left at a quarter to nine. Why nine o'clock?' she said.
'The murder is supposed to have happened around nine o'clock,' the reporter told them. 'A shopkeeper who lives near the crime scene has said that he heard faint cries and the revving of an engine. Halfway through the evening news.'
Linda was saying nothing. You could tell that she was trawling through a myriad of thoughts. Then it came to her, what they had been giggling so foolishly about just now. When she had ridden home from Karen's, she had passed the meadow at Hvitemoen. She was back there now in her mind. Zooming along noiselessly on her bike. She had spotted a car parked on the roadside and had to swerve. Then she had glanced at the meadow and seen two people there. They were running after each other like in some giddy game, it was a man and a woman. He had caught her and pushed her over. She had seen arms and legs flail about violently and was suddenly really shaken because she had known at once what she was seeing. Two people who clearly wanted to have sex. Quite explicitly, in the open while she was going by on her bike and could see everything. She was both embarrassed and aroused at the sight, while feeling cross at the same time because she was still a virgin. A fear that she might die an old maid had nagged her for a long time. That was why she made sure she always behaved as if she was up for it. But those two people! Linda thought it through. The journalists were waiting. A disturbing idea came to her. What if they had not been playing at all? What if he was trying to catch her, if what she had seen was not a game, but the actual murder? It didn't look like a murder, though. The man ran after the woman. The woman fell. Arms and legs.
