Skarre was on duty. He sat reading a paperback with his feet on the table. The cover looked gory.
“In the early hours of the second of October,” Sejer announced tersely, “there was some trouble at the King’s Arms, and we nearly arrested a man for drunkenness.”
“Nearly?”
“Yes. Apparently he got off at the last moment. I want to have his name.”
“If it was entered!”
“He was saved by a mate. More precisely by Egil Einarsson. But that could be in the report. They call him Peddik. Try it!”
“I remember him,” Skarre said. He bent over the keyboard and began searching while Sejer waited. Now it was evening at last, his whiskey was within reach and the darkness was falling outside the window, as if the courthouse was a great parrot cage and somebody had thrown a cover over it. Everything went quiet. Skarre clicked away, cast his eyes over break-ins and domestics and stolen bikes, he used all ten digits on the keyboard.
“Have you been on a course?” Sejer asked.
“Ahron,” he answered. “Peter Fredrik Ahron. Tollbugata number four.”
Sejer took in the name, pulled the bottom desk drawer out with the toe of his boot, and put his foot on it.
“Of course. The one we had dealings with when Einarsson went missing. Peter Fredrik. You interviewed him, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right. I spoke to several of them. One of them was called Arvesen, I think.”
“Can you remember anything? About Ahron?”
“Certainly. I remember that I didn’t like the bloke. And that he was pretty nervous. I remember I was taken aback slightly, he was supposed to have had a violent quarrel with Einarsson, I learnt that afterwards when I talked to Arvesen, but it didn’t stand up to further scrutiny. He spoke very nicely about Einarsson. Said he wouldn’t have harmed a fly, and if anything had happened to him it must have been a big mistake.”
“Did you do a routine check on their records?”
“I did. Arvesen had fines for speeding, Einarsson was clean, and Ahron had a conviction for drunk driving.”
“You’ve got a very retentive memory, Skarre.”
“Yes, I have.”
“What are you reading?”
“A crime novel.”
Sejer raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t you read crime, Konrad?”
“Christ, no, at least not any longer. I used to sometimes. When I was younger.”
“This one here,” said Skarre, waving the book, “is just brilliant. In a different league, you can’t put it down.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“You ought to try it, you can borrow it when I’ve finished.”
“No thanks, I’d rather not. But at home I’ve got a whole heap of really good crime novels, which you can borrow. If you like that sort of thing.”
“Er, are they very old?”
“About as old as you,” he said smiling, and gave the drawer a gentle kick. It closed with a snap.
11
Saturday dawned calm and clear. As he turned into Jarlsberg Aerodrome he looked at the windsock. Nodding there against its post it resembled some huge discarded condom hurled down by one of the gods. He parked, locked up, and lifted his parachute out of the trunk. His suit was in a carrier bag. The weather was ideal, two jumps perhaps, he thought, and caught sight of part of the younger contingent busy over at the packing table. They looked as if they’d been poured into their mauve and red and turquoise jumpsuits, and once packed their parachutes looked like small daysacks.
“Do you spray those things on?” he said, looking at the thin boyish bodies, where every muscle, or lack of it, was visible beneath the gossamer-thin fabric.
“That’s right,” said a fair-haired youth. “You can’t get any speed up in that six-man tent you’re carrying there, you know.” He was referring to the boiler suit. “But maybe it’s hectic enough at work?”
“You could say that. This’ll slow me down a bit.”
He dropped the suit and the parachute on the ground, and stared up at the sky, shading his eyes with a hand.
“What are we flying in?”
“The Cessna. Five at a time, and the older ones jump first. Hauger and Bjørneberg are coming down later, so you could make up a little three-man formation. You’re all about the same weight I should imagine. Otherwise you’ll lose those old skills, you know.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said dryly. “But I can hold hands on the ground. One of the things I like up there,” he said, nodding skywards, “is the loneliness. And up there it’s really immense. You’ll understand that kind of thing when you’re older.”
Formation jumping was about as popular with Sejer as synchronized swimming. He bought a Coke from the machine and sat near the packing table for a while. He drank slowly and watched the jumpers who’d begun to descend. First there was a drop of beginners. They looked like wounded crows as they came to earth in the strangest ways. The first ended up in the ploughed field, chin first, the second struck the wing of an aggressive model plane which was buzzing in the grass. They had to share their drop zone with the aeromodeling club, a cause of constant friction which sometimes almost boiled over into hostilities. Now there were the sounds of oaths and curses. There wasn’t a perfect landing roll to be seen. It seemed so easy when you did it from a kitchen chair, he thought, that was how they practiced, jumping ten or fifteen times off a kitchen chair, rolling and springing up again as easy as winking. The reality was different. He’d broken his ankle the first time, and Elise had smiled as he limped into the apartment with his foot in plaster, not unkindly, but she had warned him in advance. That apart, he’d got off lightly, almost too lightly. After 2,017 jumps he’d never had to use his reserve parachute, and that in itself was disturbing. Everyone did eventually, sooner or later it would be his turn. Perhaps it’ll be today, he thought, as he always did each time he put it on the packing table getting ready for his first jump. He must never forget that sooner or later he would pull the cord, glance up at the blue sky and realize that there was no parachute above him. The blue and green parachute which he’d had for fifteen years and which he’d never had any reason to replace.
He got up again and put the bottle in the car. He looked at the lazy landscape, which was dull and flat here on the ground, but became a lovely pastel-tinted panorama at ten thousand feet. The air was crystal clear, the sun flashed brightly in the car windows. He pulled on his blue boiler suit, buckled up his parachute, and ambled toward the red and white plane that was slowly coming in to land. Two youths and a girl of about sixteen clambered in first. He was sitting by the door, they were all closely packed like sardines in a tin with their knees drawn up under their chins and their arms folded around their legs. He tightened his bootlaces and pulled his leather helmet over his head, nodded to the fifth man who scrambled in and squeezed down facing him. The pilot turned, gave a thumbs-up, and started the engine. There wasn’t much noise, but there was a bit of bumping as they began to move. At such moments he always tried to empty his head of thoughts, he watched the parked cars flashing past and felt the wheels leave the ground. He followed the needle on the altimeter as they rose to check that it was working. They were approaching five thousand feet. He saw the fjord twinkling blue, and the traffic on the motorway. From this altitude the cars moved slowly, as if in slow motion, although they were doing ninety or a hundred kilometers per hour. A throat was cleared, the three youngsters went through their formation with their hands, they looked like little children in brightly colored playsuits, in the middle of a singing game. He heard the engine revs drop and tightened his chinstrap, glanced yet again at his bootlaces and at the altimeter, which was still going up, and smiled a little at the stickers on the aircraft door, white clouds containing various epithets: Blue sky forever. Chickens, turn back! And: Give my regards to Mom. Then they were up, and he nodded again to Trondsen opposite to signify that he’d jump first. He turned to face the inside of the plane with his back to the door and stared right into the young faces, which were so strangely smooth, they really did look like small kids. He couldn’t ever remember being so sleek himself, but it was a long time ago, more than thirty years, he thought, and Trondsen opened the door, so that the noise from outside and the pressure of the wind pushed him into the small plane and prevented him from falling out until he was ready. Your parachute may not work, Konrad, he said to himself. He always said this as he sat waiting, so that he wouldn’t forget it. He gave a thumbs-up, stared unsmilingly one last time at the young faces. They didn’t smile either. Then he tipped over backward and fell.