“Three hours, possibly?”
“I’d say so, perhaps even more as the weather wasn’t particularly cold, but it depends if he was exposed or out of the wind.”
Gunna tried to adjust her calculations and resorted to fingers. “So, Oskar appeared here that evening, after being badly beaten and lying unconscious for as long as four hours, would you say?”
“I’d say that would be probable. Why are you so interested in this?”
“Because I have a strong suspicion that the person responsible for Oskar’s condition committed another crime the same day, and I’d like to know if he had time to do both, or if I should be looking for two people. By the way, how was he brought in?”
“Ah, in that case I see why the timing’s so important. A serious crime?”
“Oh yes.”
“All right. I won’t ask. Oskar wasn’t brought in. He walked in himself and practically collapsed by the door. You could ask him yourself, but he discharged himself this afternoon, very much against my advice. Though I doubt it’ll be long before he’s back to get some more painkillers.”
“Don’t you be so sure. Oskar’s not one to have too much trouble getting hold of pills if he needs them.”
“HE’S ASLEEP,” ERLA said querulously, opening the door a crack.
“He should be in hospital,” Gunna replied. “Open the door, Erla.”
She swung it back warily, and Gunna could see her haggard face, eyes red with tears and lack of sleep.
“I suppose you’d better come in,” she said resignedly. “He’d still be in hospital if you lot didn’t keep hassling him,” she accused.
The little house’s front room was a mess of mismatched furniture and toys scattered across the floor, dominated by a vast TV screen on which characters in a soap opera mimed to each other with the sound turned off. Fanney sat upright on a hard chair and looked accusingly at Gunna.
“Can’t you leave my boy alone?”
“I’ll leave him alone when he tells me the truth,” Gunna replied grimly. “Look, somewhere out there is the villain who did this to him, and it’s not just your Oskar who’s been on the receiving end of all this. I’d love to catch the bastard, but I can’t if Oskar won’t say anything and just sticks to this stupid story about some Pole we all know doesn’t exist. So, who’s going to start the ball rolling?”
She looked from one woman to the other, challenging them to speak out. Erla gazed down at the floor. Gunna saw that a dewdrop had formed on the tip of her nose and she sniffed as she wiped it away. Fanney sat rigidly, staring into the distance, hands crossed in her lap.
“I told you,” Fanney said at last, her fury surging to the surface, then she lapsed back into silence while Erla sniffed. Gunna stood by the door and watched the pair of them, waiting for one of them to say something.
“It was that Omar,” Erla suddenly sobbed. “He came here looking for Skari, him and another man. I tried to call him and let him know, but his phone was dead. They must have found out where he works and gone there.”
With the tension broken, Erla continued to sniffle, her shoulders hunched and convulsed with each new spasm of misery, while Fanney sat, still in her overcoat, her mouth set in a thin, hard line.
“Have you caught him?” she demanded abruptly.
“Oh, yes. Omar is firmly back in Litla-Hraun.”
“That’s a blessing, I suppose,” the old lady admitted. “Erla, my girl. The man’s back in prison. Don’t you think it’s high time you two stopped being so stupid and told this lady what’s been going on?”
Erla’s shoulders heaved, but a series of nods could be made out among the tremors.
“Where is Oskar?” Gunna asked softly.
“Up-up-upstairs,” Erla said finally, parting the mane of wild ringlets that spilled over her face. “He’s asleep and you won’t be able to wake him up. He’s taken a few pills to help him sleep.”
Instinct began to ring an alarm bell in Gunna’s mind.
“Show me where he is,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. Fanney stood up while Erla sat looking stupidly ahead of her with an open mouth.
Gunna took the steep stairs two at a time and Fanney followed behind. There was only one room in the house’s attic, and Oskar lay sweating profusely and muttering to himself in a king-sized bed surrounded by the detritus of a family living in not enough space.
“Skari, can you hear me?” Gunna demanded loudly, sitting herself at his side while Fanney stood in the doorway, her habitual angry expression replaced for the first time by something approaching true concern.
The duvet that Oskar had thrown off was drenched with sweat, and Gunna felt for the man’s pulse, finding it racing.
“What’s the address here?” she asked suddenly.
“Sjavarbraut 18,” Fanney replied. “Why?”
Without taking her eyes off the man in the bed, Gunna clicked her communicator. “Control, ninety-five- fifty.”
“Ninety-five-fifty, control,” the instant laconic answer came back. “I’m at Sjavarbraut 18 in Hvalvik. Can you get an ambulance to me? Possible overdose.”
“Will do. Conscious?”
“Semi-conscious,” Gunna replied.
“They’re on their way. Can you find out what he’s taken? I’ve opened the channel so the ambulance team can call you direct. OK?”
“Thanks. Out.”
Fanney looked horror-struck in the doorway at the wreck of her son in the bed. Gunna glanced at her questioningly.
“Fanney, would you tell Erla to come up here? Right now?”
Fanney disappeared, and moments later the clumping of Erla’s heavy footfalls could be heard on the wooden staircase.
“Is he all right?” she asked fearfully.
“He will be. Now, Erla, come over here,” Gunna instructed, placing Oskar’s hand carefully across his chest and patting the bed beside her. “I want you to sit here.”
She stood up and steered Erla into position.
“Right, all I want you to do is hold his hand and talk to him. I don’t care what you say, just keep talking. Tell him what the weather’s like or something. Just so he hears your voice. All right?”
Erla nodded and immediately launched into a patter about how much rain there had been, while Gunna backed down the stairs.
Fanney was standing at the bottom, fear in her face. “Is my boy going to be all right?”
“He’s going to be fine. But he should never have left hospital, and he’s going back there. Where are the kids, Fanney?”
“They’re at Jona’s house.”
“Jona?”
“My daughter. The one who lives next door to the old bakery.”
“That’s fine, then. Can they stay there for a while?”
Fanney nodded.
“Good. Right, I’m going back upstairs to make sure Erla’s all right. What I want you to do is stay here by the front door, wait for the ambulance to turn up and then show them where to go. OK?”
The old lady nodded her agreement a second time, and Gunna climbed the stairs again to where Erla was rattling through a childhood story while Oskar’s eyes rolled in his head. She held his hand with an unfaltering iron grip.
“Skari, my sweet. It’s a lot easier that way. Then you don’t have to do it twice like we used to,” Erla rambled. “But if you can get the old car fixed, then it would be so much easier to get to the shops.”
Gunna took in the tiny bedroom with its huge bed, the TV in one corner with DVD cases stacked on top of it, the clothes spilling out of a rickety wardrobe and the pile of unwashed clothes heaped by the door. She quickly swept a collection of pill bottles into a bag and hunted around for more. It was a relief when she heard the wail of the ambulance.
