Once again there was a frightened expression in Goran's eyes.
'What do you think it looks like?'
'Don't know,' Goran said anxiously.
'You've given me some images. Can we call them memories?'
'I suppose we can.'
'Your memories of August 20th. A genuine attempt to reconstruct what happened between you and Poona Bai?'
'Yes. I suppose so.'
'So what have you in fact given me, Goran?'
Goran leaned across the table. In despair he sank his teeth into his shirtsleeve.
'A confession,' he said. 'I've given you a confession.'
Chapter 23
Friis tried to keep himself under control.
'Do you understand what you have done?' he said hoarsely. 'Do you understand the seriousness?'
'Yes,' Goran said. He lay dozing on the bunk. His body was entirely filled with serenity.
'You have confessed to the most serious crime of all, carrying the law's most severe penalty. Despite the fact that the police doesn't have a single conclusive piece of evidence. It is highly questionable whether they are able to bring a case on this weak basis at all. In addition they have to find a jury willing to convict you on postulations and hearsay.'
He paced the floor angrily.
'Do you really understand what you've done?'
Goran looked at Friis in surprise. 'What if I did it?'
'
'I don't care about that any longer. Perhaps I did do it. I've been sitting in that room for so many hours thinking so many thoughts. I don't know what the truth is any more. Everything is true, nothing is true. I don't get to work out. I feel like I'm drugged,' he snuffled.
'They've put pressure on you,' Friis said earnestly. 'I'm asking you to please withdraw your confession.'
'You could have sat in there with me! Like I asked you to! That's my right!'
'It's not a good strategy,' Friis said. 'It's best for us if I don't know what happened between the two of you. That way I can cast aspersions on Sejer's methods. Do you hear me? I want you to withdraw your confession!'
Goran looked at him in amazement. 'Isn't that a bit late?'
Friis started walking up and down the cell floor again.
'You've given Sejer the one thing he wanted. A confession.'
'Are you looking for the truth?' Goran said.
'I'm looking to save your skin!' he said sharply. 'It's my job and I'm good at it. Heavens above, you're a young man! If they convict you, you'll be going down for a long time. The best years of your life. Think about it!'
Goran turned towards the wall. 'You can go now. To hell with it all.'
Friis sat down next to him. 'No,' he said, 'I'm not going. Under duress you have confessed to a crime you didn't commit. Sejer is older than you, an authority. He has exploited your youth. It's a miscarriage of justice. You're probably completely brainwashed. We will withdraw the confession and they'll just have to lump it. Now lie down and rest. Try to get some sleep. There's still a long way to go.'
'You have to talk to my mum and dad,' Goran said.
The fact of the confession had barely been published when the papers had to inform their readers about its withdrawal. At Einar's Cafe people sat reading, their eyes wide. Those in doubt, who had maintained his innocence all along, felt tricked. In their heart of hearts they could not believe it. That a young man would confess to smashing a woman's head to a pulp in a meadow if he had not done it. They felt sick at the very thought. Goran wasn't the person they thought he was. They could not relate to the legal and technical arguments or the article itself, which listed examples of people who had confessed to murders and much else besides which they had never committed. One newspaper reeled off several cases. They examined themselves and felt the resistance, felt that it had to be impossible. And that the people who would be on the jury one day would think as they did.
It was quiet at the cafe, no fresh debates, just people in doubt, wavering. Mode said, no, for fuck's sake, I'd never have believed it. Nudel was silent and Frank shook his heavy head in disbelief. What the hell were you supposed to think? Ole Gunwald was relieved. He had fingered Einar, but he had turned out to be innocent as the driven snow. True, that was what he had assumed about young Seter, but on reflection he did have sufficient imagination to accept the notion of a raging, over-fit young man who had just been cast off by his girlfriend. And then his mistress, so it was said. How had the papers put it? 'A killer with brutal strength.'
Gunder had twice come to the telephone to listen to Sejer's explanations. First that they had finally achieved a result, then just hours later this retreat, which didn't worry him, he said, the confession would weigh heavily in court, it needed explaining. We're hopeful that Goran will be convicted, he said, sounding very persuasive. Gunder thanked him, but he didn't want to hear any more. He wanted it all to be over.
'How is your sister doing?' Sejer said.
'No change.'
'Don't give up hope.'
'I won't. I've got no-one else.' Gunder thought for a while. There was something he wanted to mention. 'By the way, I've received a letter. From Poona's brother. It's still in the drawer. A letter which Poona wrote to him after our wedding. In the letter she told him everything. He thought I'd like to have it.'
'Did it make you happy?'
'It's in Indian,' Gunder said. 'In Marathi. That's no use to me.'
'I can arrange to have it translated if you like.'
'I would, yes please.'
'Send it to me,' Sejer said.
Robert Friis staunchly maintained that Goran's confession was incomplete. That he had not in any way accounted for the murder. He didn't remember the woman's clothes, just that they were dark. There was no mention of gold sandals, likewise something as unusual as a Norwegian brooch on the woman's clothes. He had no opinion of the deceased's appearance, though everyone else who had had dealings with the victim had mentioned the protruding teeth. It's reconstruction, pure and simple, Friis thundered, volunteered in a moment of doubt and exhaustion. When questioned about where exactly in Norevann he had thrown the clothes, Goran was unclear. The initial confession was full of holes and unrelated detail. The later, subsequent reconstruction would reveal this. Friis ran into Sejer in the canteen and though the inspector stared resolutely at his prawn sandwich, Friis flopped down at his table. He was a gossip, but a real pro. Sejer was a man of few words, but equally sure of his ground.
'He's the right man and you know it,' he said tersely, harpooning a prawn with his fork.
'Probably,' Friis said immediately, 'but he shouldn't be convicted on this basis.'
Sejer wiped a trace of mayonnaise from his lips and looked at the defence lawyer.
'He'll be released back into the community sooner or later, but if he walks away from this, he'll still be ticking away like an unexploded bomb.'
Friis smiled and started on his own sandwich. 'You probably don't concern yourself with murders which have yet to be committed. You're busy enough as it is with the cases on your desk right now. So am I.'
For a while they both ate.
'The worst thing is,' Sejer said, 'that Goran felt at ease with himself for the first time in a long while. By withdrawing the confession he'll have to go through it all over again. It doesn't get him anywhere. He should have been spared this.'
Friis slurped his coffee.
'He should never have been charged in the first place,' he said. 'You're an old hand at this, I'm surprised you took the risk.'
