He turned his back to them. Aimlessly, he rearranged some small pots on the windowsill.
‘Jon was also troubled by guilt,’ Sejer said. ‘It’s clear from his diary, which we’ve been studying in detail. But there’s something about his sense of guilt which disturbs us. We can understand that you’ve gone a few rounds with yourselves and from time to time felt a certain responsibility for what happened. But based on what you’ve just described, it’s hard to understand why Jon would choose to end his life. That decision is not in proportion with your story.’
Reilly resumed his pacing. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘It fits perfectly, but you didn’t know Jon. He believed everything rested with us. That we shouldn’t have left him in the street. But I think that’s excessive. No one else would take him. At least we brought him home. We dropped him off by the letterboxes at the bottom of the hill. When we left he was heading for the houses. A little unsteady on his feet, of course, but he was walking. The next day we learned that he had gone missing. We didn’t understand how that was possible.’
‘Was there any traffic in the area?’
‘The odd car.’
‘Did you talk to him when you dropped him off?’
Reilly nodded. ‘We told him to go to bed. We asked if he had a key, and he said yes, he had a key in his pocket. We were tired and we wanted to go home, so we turned the car around and drove off. That’s all I’ve got to say. I’ve told you this so many times, and I don’t know any more than you do. By the way, having this hang over your head month after month is actually very stressful,’ he said, ‘and I don’t mind admitting that I would like to put the whole mess behind me.’
‘I can understand that,’ Sejer said, ‘but it has only just started.’
CHAPTER 27
After interviewing Philip Reilly, Sejer and Skarre drove up to Glitter Lake. They passed the asylum seekers’ centre. In front of the low, barrack-like building a number of men were wandering about. A couple of them sat on a bench smoking. Others were tossing a basketball into a hoop.
‘Two brothers from Gambia drowned here last year,’ Skarre said. ‘Do you remember? They were eight and eleven. Their mother still lives at the detention centre. She never goes outside.’
‘I do remember,’ Sejer said. ‘It was last May. The water was cold.’
Shortly afterwards they turned right and immediately spotted the beach, which had a small hill beside it. Scrub grew around it like a dense wreath, and some of the vegetation overhung the water. Sejer started climbing and soon reached the highest point.
From there he could see the small jetty from which the Gambian boys had gone swimming. He could also see the whirlpool where Kim Van Chau had been found. On the other side of the water lay two or three wooden cabins. There was a bright reflection from a window. Something black scurried past a wall, a dog presumably. He imagined being able to hear his way to the crime, that shouts and screams still lingered in the air – if there had been shouting and screaming – and that he would be able to detect them if he concentrated hard enough. The energy must still be here, he thought, and the fear. The rage. Or despair, that is what makes us kill, and they might have killed him, perhaps to conceal another crime. Or to cover up a mistake. But what kind of mistake? How much can go wrong in a warm Mercedes driving from Skjæret to Nattmål? He looked down at Skarre. He appeared to be listening too. From time to time he would squat and dig his fingers into the coarse sand. Sejer climbed down from the hill.
‘Copacabana,’ Skarre said. ‘What do you think happened?’
Sejer thought about Philip Reilly, who had expressed so many contradictory feelings. Bitterness, despair and guilt. His explanation was unlikely to be true, but it was characterised by a form of righteous indignation, as if something external had taken control of their lives and they could not be held to account for that. Then he thought, Jon Moreno is dead. Reilly is the weakest link now. And he knows it.
‘They drove here,’ he said.
‘But why?’ Skarre asked.
‘Because something went wrong and they had to cover it up.’
‘Perhaps something had already happened at the party,’ Skarre suggested. ‘And they’re protecting each other.’
‘In that case there would be an awful lot of people who would need to keep their mouths shut for a very long time,’ Sejer said. ‘Someone is directly responsible for the situation that arose. They didn’t contact the emergency services. They agreed a story and they’ve all stuck to it. Reilly, Frimann and Moreno were tasked with disposing of the body because they had access to a car. That could have been what happened.’
He started walking back to the car. Skarre followed him slowly. When they were both back inside, Sejer sat silently with his hands on the wheel. He stayed like that for a long time, pondering. Skarre noticed how grey he had become and how he had grown leaner and more lined over the years. On his right hand he wore his late wife’s wedding ring. He had had it melted down with his own. He might be thinking about her now or maybe about the older man in the mirror who stared back at him each morning. Or perhaps he was thinking about Yoo Van Chau and the promise he had made her.
‘You’re bloody brilliant, but you can’t crack them all,’ Skarre said.
There was no reply. Sejer was lost in his own thoughts.
‘What I’m saying is that you’re only human,’ Skarre went on. ‘If you have to break your promise to Yoo Van Chau, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you have failed or that you haven’t met your own high standards. Do you lie awake at night, Konrad?’
‘Axel Frimann’s Mercedes,’ Sejer said. ‘I want it sent to forensics right now.’
CHAPTER 28
Ingerid Moreno was an attractive woman, but grief had ravaged her. Her cheeks were sunken and her fingers were feeble when she buttoned her coat. It was late October. She tied a floral shawl around her neck. She had decided to take action. Passively grieving or waiting for something that might never happen was making her ill. But it was hard for her to move. Her body was weighed down by lethargy, and the things she had done automatically, such as getting dressed, locking the front door and going to her car, took much longer than usual. She was used to her days being familiar, predictable entities, like a staircase she would walk up every morning and find her bed at the top. The staircase had collapsed now. It had been reduced to rubble and she did not know how to climb it.
The wind caught her shawl as she reached the flagstone path. It was a colourful shawl decorated with red poppies that she had bought in Naples. It was there she had met Tony Moreno. She got in her car and drove to Nattmål. She stopped at the foot of the hill and thought for a while. Then she got out to check the letterboxes to make sure she was in the right place. Do I dare, she wondered, have I really got the nerve? I have no right. Nevertheless she drove up the long hill until she reached the terraced houses. She stayed in her car listening to a piece of music on the radio. When it has finished, I’ll go in, she decided. A few minutes later she headed for Yoo Van Chau’s front door. Suddenly she was on the verge of tears. She had no idea what might happen to her. A furious woman might appear at the door, screaming, don’t come near me with your grief, I’ve got enough with my own. She heard a faint click from the lock. A tiny dark-haired woman gave her a quizzical look and Ingerid felt enormous and clumsy.
‘You don’t know me,’ she stuttered, ‘but I know who you are. I read about your son in the papers. About Kim.’
She wanted to hurry up and explain herself. She did not know how long the other woman would be prepared to listen.