“I’m not going to help you catch my brother.”
“Now, now, Ms. Odegard. Cop to cop—we wouldn’t want to be obstructing justice or becoming an accessory after the fact, now, would we?”
“I think there’s a hard line to be drawn,” says Sigrid, “between aiding a fugitive and not working for you for free.”
“You’re smart,” says Irv, pointing at her and nodding his head. “A smart cucumber.”
Sigrid says nothing.
“And quiet. Do you have Asperger’s or something?”
“No.”
“You’re a quiet one,” he says quietly.
“I think Americans can’t abide silence.”
“You only got here yesterday.”
“The pattern is robust.”
Irv puts his finger back in the holster and leans back against the bars to his cell. “What kind of cop are you?”
“I’m a section chief in Oslo.”
“Oslo’s the capital.”
“Yes.”
“How big is it?”
“The city is around six hundred and fifty thousand and the urban area is closer to a million.”
“So you’re a capital-city cop with a serious job. And you’re how old?”
“Forty.”
“You’ve been promoted pretty fast. You must be talented or have good connections. What does your father do?”
“He talks to ducks.”
“Are they police ducks?”
“No,” she says. And—worried she might be falling into the rabbit hole of pointless American banter—adds, “We’re a farming family. Marcus stayed in agriculture generally and I went off to the big city to fight crime.”
“So we’ll go with smart and talented for now. You seen much in your time on the job?”
“Yes.”
“That face, right there? See, that’s interesting,” Irv says, pointing at her again. He uncrosses his legs and leans forward. “You’re quiet but you’ve got an expressive face. I’m guessing you’ve been through something. And recently. Which is why none of this fazes you. Your bar is set higher. Not just in your heart,” he says, tapping his chest, “but in your soul.”
Sigrid leans back against the bars to put a little more distance between herself and Irv’s analysis. She glances at his cowboy boots and he notices.
“Like ’em?” he asks.
“No.”
“They’ll grow on you.”
“Do you really have time for all this?” Sigrid asks. “This useless talk?”
Irv taps out a bongo solo on his knee and scrunches up his face. “It’s only useless if you don’t know how to listen to it. Meanwhile, we’ve looked in all the usual places and some exceptional ones to find Marcus and we can’t; every place Tommy Lee Jones would have us look, we’ve looked. But . . . you know . . . this is a very, very big country that is very, very easy to move around in. At the moment we’re watching the credit cards and stuff, but it’s quiet. What you could do is help us collect him. If he’s innocent, he walks. If not—it’s best no one gets hurt as we determine that, right?”
“We’re at cross purposes, Sheriff.”
“It’s family and you obviously believe in him. I get it. I’m not that cop in all the action movies who doesn’t get it. But he does have to come in and talk to us. He was the woman’s lover and there’s an eyewitness putting him at the scene of her death. So consider this,” Irv says, leaning forward again and resting his arms on his knees, “just in case you decide to get clever and try to find him on your own. I’ve got local police, state police, and FBI if I need it. I was born and raised here and I know this land and these people. You’re a foreigner. You don’t know anyone and you’re traveling alone. There is no way that one foreigner in an unfamiliar land can outfox the local police.”
“I’ve seen it done,” says Sigrid. And she adds, “Recently.”
“Against someone as smart as me?”
“Too soon to tell.”
“OK. But consider this. If we work together, and we find him together, you are guaranteed to be the first one in to talk him out. But if you go off on your own, and you don’t get there first? All bets are off.”
“You haven’t called her death a murder yet.”
“You don’t miss a thing, do you?”
The case folder is still on Sigrid’s legs, and for the first time she turns her attention to it. She knows that Irv isn’t wrong, and if she were in his position, holding this same file, she would have made a similar appeal—though with fewer words.
In truth, it would be better if Marcus came in. Whatever happened to Lydia Jones, it wasn’t caused by Marcus. He never exhibited an explosive personality, was never enraged, was never abusive to women, and has never been in a fight even as a boy, as far as she knows. His flaws run the opposite direction. He is too sensitive, too vulnerable. Her father used to say that he suffered from perspective. His view of the world is too broad to permit attention to the banal but otherwise necessary activities of life. In her two decades as a police officer, Sigrid has never once arrested a person like that for violence.
She opens the file and what she sees startles her.
During the past month she has reviewed hundreds of photos from the assault on the summer house in Glåmlia. When the emergency response team engaged the criminals inside, they had ascertained that they were armed, they were dangerous, and the hostage situation was fragile. They opted to go in shooting, which Sigrid supported. When it was over there was paperwork. She’s been looking at
