'Yes,' he said, 'it's just me and the dogs here.'
He commanded the dogs to lie down. Sejer and Skarre found a space on a sofa covered in long, white dog hairs. Naper was a man in his fifties, short and heavy-set with an impressive iron grey beard, which he kept stroking. Whenever he looked at them, it was with brief, sharp glances; most of the time his eyes rested on the dogs.
'Like I told you. It's not much that I can offer you, I didn't see any people or cars the day Edwin Asalid disappeared. But I saw the boys sitting on the jetty. Now the rumours have started. You might not have heard them, people don't like making accusations, they're scared they might be wrong. But I don't have any children at Solberg School so I don't care.'
He scratched one of the dogs energetically. The big animal rolled over on the floor.
'These rumours started before the boys disappeared. But now, of course, they've really caught on.'
Naper took his time. His hands were strong and hairy; they sank deeply into the neck of the dog.
'It's about a man who is gay,' he said, looking at them. 'And I'm not bothered by that, I've no axe to grind, live and let live I say. As long as you don't hurt anyone. Anyway, he lives with someone, has done for years, they live in Nordby where they bought an old house which they've done up. And to put it bluntly, a lot of young boys come to visit him.'
'Why do they do that?' Sejer asked.
Naper found an ashtray and took out a squashed packet of Petteroe tobacco from his shirt pocket.
'He's a teacher,' he said, 'at Solberg School.'
'Alex Meyer,' Sejer said.
'That's him. You've already heard, I thought you might have,' Naper said.
Sejer protested. 'Someone mentioned he was gay, that's all. Tell me how these rumours have come about.'
Naper rolled a misshapen cigarette, stuck it into the corner of his mouth and lit it.
'He brings the kids back home.'
'To his house?'
Skarre listened, his blue eyes fixed on Naper's face.
'No one's quite sure what goes on,' Naper said, 'or what part his boyfriend plays in all of this. But I do think it's odd that a teacher opens his home in this way. Sometimes the kids are there in the evenings. Don't ask me what they do, but I think that is strange. You'd have thought he would have had enough of them after a whole day at school.'
'Has anyone asked him?' Sejer asked.
'Don't know.'
'Do you happen to know the name of his boyfriend?'
'I do. Now, what was it? Johannes Kj?r.'
Skarre made a note of the name.
Naper flicked the ash from his cigarette. One of his dogs gave a long yawn and Sejer caught a glimpse of its impressive fangs.
'Rikard Holmen, who runs the Kiwi shop, has two grandchildren in Year Five,' Naper said, 'and they've been to Meyer's house lots of times. But perhaps it's all above board. Perhaps it's just what I said it might be. Gossip.'
Again he bent down and started scratching another dog. Sejer went over to the window and looked down at the loch.
'You can see the jetty,' he remarked.
'Yes,' Naper said. 'I don't mean to boast, but this house, which I bought in '94, has the best view in Huseby.'
'Do you know Edwin Asalid?'
'No. I don't know him, but I know who he is. Everyone does, he's hard to miss. And not that I know much about it, but I can't imagine what his mother thinks she's doing. The odd salad wouldn't have gone amiss.'
Skarre placed his notepad on the coffee table. 'Yes, if only it was that simple,' he said, flashing one of his dazzling smiles, as a result of which Naper missed his irony.
'I've tried to understand this thing about children,' he said. 'I mean, the men. Who want them. I suppose they actually prefer children. And sexual urges are strong, some perhaps can't control them. Like my dogs,' he grinned. 'But surely they've got a brain like everybody else, they must know that what they're doing is utterly wrong. They know it's a crime and that the children in question are permanently damaged. How can they be so selfish?'
Sejer returned to his seat, the dogs watching him warily.
'It's the way of the world, a few people just take what they want,' he said.
'What are you going to do if he abducts another child?' He stroked his beard and gave them a challenging look.
'We'll continue to do our job,' Sejer said.
'I can't believe that it has ended like this,' Naper said. 'It was the last thing on my mind when I was out with the dogs. I noticed the boys when I was walking towards Svart Ridge because one of them waved. And because I used to be a photographer I paid a bit more attention to them. The light over Loch Bonna that day was amazing and I thought what a superb picture they made. Three boys huddled together on a jetty.'
CHAPTER 31
The leaves were falling from the trees, twirling slowly and mournfully. October brought black, cool nights. Sejer was busy with reports and witness statements. He studied the results from the door-to-door inquiries in Huseby, where anyone who owned a white car had been asked to answer a few simple questions. They had found nothing. They had gone through the registers of Ford Granadas and Mitsubishi Galants before checking out the rest of the district. They had accessed Autosys and searched for white cars regardless of brand. They initiated new searches. They even dragged Loch Bonna. This time they searched beyond the headland all the way to Svart Ridge but without success. They uncovered drains, they searched woods, they went into outhouses and down into basements.
At Solberg School the teachers struggled to maintain calm.
The days seemed like regular school-days, yet a state of emergency existed and everyone was allowed to speak if there was something they wanted to talk about. Trauma counsellors had advised the teachers to encourage the children to voice their thoughts, and as a result one boy suggested that Edwin might have been cut up since he had not been found. 'He might be all over the place in a million little pieces,' he declared precociously. His claim caused the other children to give him horrified looks. Others were adamant that Edwin was at the bottom of Loch Bonna. Others that he had been kidnapped and taken aboard a ship where he might be someone's slave and was being starved; perhaps he was now as thin as a matchstick and unrecognisable. Edwin's calm nature, Edwin's lethargy, Edwin's soft, modest voice had left a huge void and the pupils surpassed each other in praising him whenever his name was mentioned. Even though they had said things about him behind his back, even though they had mimicked the way he waddled and nicknamed him Fatty, they were on their best behaviour now and they genuinely missed Edwin. They were untroubled by their transition from mockery to tolerance. During lessons they would stare at his empty chair.
There was a greater degree of calm in Jonas August's class because the children there had attended his funeral. He was buried behind the church in the last row between the family plots of Haraldson and Ruste. On several occasions they had all gone to the church and stood in a semicircle around his grave thinking sad thoughts. A few stamped the ground in front of the headstone cautiously. They suddenly realised with awesome impact that he lay alone in the black earth, right underneath their feet.
Almost reluctantly the press turned its attention to other cases. True, they were not nearly as spectacular, but they were fresh. On the two months' anniversary of the discovery of Jonas August's body
'Time's passing,' Skarre said, 'and we can't even be sure what sort of crime we're dealing with.'
