He let himself fall on to the sofa. His long hair cascaded forwards and concealed his face; only his big nose protruded from the tangled hair.
‘I mean, she thinks it’s her fault that Jon died, that she must have been a bad mum. This will haunt her for the rest of her life. She’ll be thinking about it when she gets up and last thing at night before she falls asleep. And when she visits his grave, she’ll think she was a bad mum who did everything wrong. And that’s not true.’
‘We all have bad stuff to deal with,’ Axel said, his face contorting with pain. ‘You’ve got to stop worrying about other people, Reilly, it restricts your ability to make the most of your life.’
‘What do you think Jon wrote in that diary?’ Reilly asked.
‘Probably nothing revealing,’ Axel said, ‘or Ingerid would have been here a long time ago.’
‘She won’t come here,’ Reilly declared. ‘She’ll go straight to the police. Do you know what I often think? They didn’t believe our explanation for one minute. They’ve simply been waiting for something to surface. And that’s happened now. They’re ahead of us, Axel. They have been the whole time.’
Reilly’s dark predictions sent Axel into a state of panic.
‘I feel nauseous and limp,’ he said, ‘and I’m clammy. Do you think I’ve got blood poisoning?’
Reilly ignored the question. ‘Someone might have seen us,’ he said. ‘I often think about that. We were so caught up in what happened that we wouldn’t have noticed if someone had been watching us.’
Axel was still sitting with the flannel pressed against his cheek. He looked like a wounded soldier.
‘Many people drown,’ he said. ‘It’s probably not our guy.’
CHAPTER 19
The simplest and most obvious explanation is often the right one, Sejer thought. Jon jumped into the lake because he was ill. I’ve been doing this job for too long. I’ve developed a profound scepticism and it follows me everywhere. I don’t trust anyone, I imagine that anything is possible, and I begin by assuming that he didn’t drown himself. It’s important to think like that. But it might be precisely what happened. Even if he couldn’t swim, he might have managed to wade out into the water before he sank. He might have panicked and struggled with a strength he didn’t know he possessed. His mortal struggle might have taken him further out. And even if he was planning on killing himself, he might have got dressed with just as much care as he always did, buttoned up his jacket, tied his shoelaces with double knots. There were no rules for what people might or might not do in such circumstances. He had heard numerous stories of bizarre behaviour before such an exit. Some tidied and put out the bin. Some dressed up and lit candles in the room where they were going to die. Some put on music, something to accompany them to the other side. Some took to the woods like old cats. And some took others with them when they went. Every life is unique, Sejer thought, and so is every death. He read the statements from Philip Reilly and Axel Frimann over and over. Something was wrong with their version of events. Frimann had seemed strangely unmoved despite the tragedy, and Reilly was very evasive. Yet he could see no motive for a crime. The three had known each other all their lives and Ingerid Moreno had vouched for both Philip and Axel. They had always looked after Jon like big brothers.
He sat listening to the hum of the police station. He liked being a part of a big engine. He liked interrogating people, he liked spotting the lie when it came. A lie had its own pitch, and over many years he had learned to recognise it. He liked the moment when the confession finally spilled out, when all the cards were on the table and the course of events could be mapped and filed. Your lawyer can now prepare a defence for you based on the information you have supplied. Give you what you are entitled to. Justice. Even understanding, possibly. And if there are mitigating circumstances, they will be taken into consideration. If you disagree with the verdict, you can appeal. And then you can appeal again.
He looked at his papers and noticed that Jon Moreno had gone to the cabin on Friday the 13th. An ominous date when anything could happen. How do I catch them, he speculated, and what do I actually charge them with?
He rolled his chair back from the desk and studied his legs. They were long and strong. They had always supported him. In the evenings he went running in the woods. He was healthy and tough; he had good stamina, he was fit. He leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees. He knew his legs were fine, they were not the source of the problem. The dizziness is in my head, he thought, I stumbled because something has happened up there.
The telephone rang. It was a relief to put his thoughts aside.
‘I’m working on the man from Glitter Lake,’ Snorrason said, ‘and I’m sorry to say this, but so far I haven’t been able to establish the cause of death. The length of time the body has spent in the water has made it difficult for us. It’s badly decomposed. It was probably there the whole summer. Water washes away a lot of important information.’
‘But you must have something,’ Sejer asked hopefully.
A longish pause followed. Perhaps the forensic examiner was reading through his papers. Sejer scratched his elbow. As always his psoriasis flared up when something happened.
‘I haven’t found one piece of evidence to suggest that someone hurt him.’
‘But he was dead when he ended up in the lake? You’re sure about that?’
‘I am.’
‘That’s enough evidence for me,’ Sejer said. ‘Dead people don’t throw themselves into lakes. What about his identity? Tell me you know who he is.’
‘The man’s identity is clear and that’s something at least,’ Snorrason said contentedly. ‘Or rather, the lad’s, because he was only seventeen years old. He lived in Norway with his mother from the age of eight. They’re from Vietnam. He disappeared in the middle of December and the circumstances surrounding his disappearance are unclear.’
‘His name?’ Sejer said.
‘Van Chau,’ Snorrason said. ‘Kim Van Chau.’
‘Could you repeat that, please?’
‘Kim Van Chau,’ Snorrason said.
Sejer noted it down on a pad. There was something familiar about that name and he racked his brains. Van Chau, he thought, Van Chau from Vietnam. Finally it surfaced in his memory, a missing person case from December, and the moment he remembered that, he caught a glimpse of something bigger, the breakthrough he had been waiting for and which had been there the whole time. Kim Van Chau had been reported missing after a party. After several extensive searches, they had given up on finding the young man. He seemed to have vanished without a trace. And Frimann, Reilly and Moreno had been involved. They had been brought in for routine questioning, but there had been no grounds for suspecting anything criminal. Now, many months later, his body had been found in Glitter Lake. Then another thought struck Sejer. His gaze swept across his desk to the rag doll with the blue overalls. Jon’s doll from Ladegården, whose name was Kim.
CHAPTER 20
Dear diary,
I like everything here at Ladegården.
My room and my bed and Hanna Wigert. I like my medication, which suppresses my anxiety. I like the structure and the routines, that there are always voices and sounds in the big building. I like the food we eat together at the long table in the dining hall. I like Dagny who works in the kitchen and Ruth, the night nurse, who looks in every hour during the night. The feeling of being cared for like a child. And perhaps that is what I am, a child still clinging to its mother’s petticoats. At the same time being here is also tough because I realise now that there is no magic solution, no cure that will fix everything in a fortnight. They expect that I will work with them by opening up, by revealing my innermost thoughts. But if I do that I’ll expose other people, and I don’t feel that I have the right to do that. Should I save myself and let others go down? When I talk about these things to Hanna, it doesn’t seem as though she understands the gravity. She says ‘but you want to get through this, don’t you, you want to change, don’t you?’ And, of course, I do because I can’t live with myself. I’m Jon the Coward. I tell myself that over and over.