“Hurt your foot?” he asked abruptly.
“Only twisted it a bit. Was there anything in particular?” Reluctantly she sat down in the chair facing him.
“Just a few things. I’d like to go through the statement you made last time, from start to finish. There are some details I need more information about.”
Eva was nervous. She fumbled for a cigarette right away and wondered suddenly if she could refuse to answer. She wasn’t suspected of anything after all. Or was she? “Tell me,” she said in a cocky tone, “am I actually obliged to make a statement about this?”
Sejer stared open-mouthed. “No,” he said in surprise, “certainly not!” His eyes, gray in reality, took on an innocent blue tint. “But does that mean you’ve got something against making one? I thought, as she was your friend, that you’d be only too willing. So that we can find the perpetrator. But if you’ve got objections...”
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.” She recoiled quickly, regretting her question.
“The first of October,” he went on, “Thursday. Let’s begin at the beginning. You took a taxi to Tordenskioldsgate. The taxi got here at six P.M.?”
“Yes, as I said.”
“From what you told me, you spent roughly an hour at Ms. Durban’s apartment.”
“Yes, I must have. Not much longer anyway.” How long had it really been, she thought — two hours?
He’d opened a notebook and was reading from it. It was horrible. Everything she’d said was written down, now he could use it against her. “Can you tell me what you did during that hour? In as much detail as you can?”
“What?” She stared uneasily at him.
“From the time you entered the apartment until she closed the door behind you. Absolutely everything that happened. Just begin at the beginning.”
“Well, er, I had a cup of coffee.”
“Did you wash it up afterwards?”
“Uh?” She felt her head begin to spin.
“I ask because there was no used coffee cup found. But there was a glass which had obviously contained Coke.”
“Oh yes! Of course! Coke. I’m getting mixed up. Does that really matter?”
He gave her a sharp look. And she fell silent again just like the last time. Eva sat staring and waiting, she knew she was sinking in deeper and deeper, there were so many things she hadn’t thought of, far too many.
“Yes, I had a sandwich and a Coke. Maja made me a sandwich.”
“Yes. A tuna sandwich?”
Eva shook her head in wonder. She couldn’t keep up anymore, maybe he’d been there when it happened, she thought, maybe he’d been hiding in a cupboard and seen everything.
“Can you tell me,” he asked all at once, as he changed position on the sofa, he was looking thoughtful and inquisitive, “can you tell me why you vomited that sandwich up again?”
Eva felt like passing out. “Well, I felt ill,” she stammered. “I’d had a couple of beers, and fish doesn’t really agree with me all that much. We’d had such a late night the evening before. And I hadn’t eaten much, I’m not that bothered about food, so I hadn’t eaten anything, and she absolutely insisted I had it, she thought I was thin.” She stopped and drew breath. What was that about saying as little as possible, why couldn’t she remember!
“Was that why you took a shower while you were there? Because you felt ill?”
“Yes!” she replied quickly. Now she was the one who was silent. He saw the beginnings of rebellion in her eyes. Quite soon she would clam up completely.
“You managed to do quite a lot while you were there. In only one hour. Did you also take a little nap, too, in the guest room?”
“A nap?” she asked wanly.
“Someone had lain on the bed in there. Or is the simple truth, Mrs. Magnus, that you were really Durban’s partner, and that you shared the apartment? Just like her, you had a little sideline in prostitution to ease the finances?”
“No!” Eva screamed and stood up. Her chair shot back. “No, I did not! I didn’t want anything to do with it. Maja was the one who tried to persuade me, but I wouldn’t!” She was shaking like a leaf and her face was chalky white. “Maja was always trying to persuade me, she had the oddest ideas. Once, when we were thirteen...” Then she began to sob.
Somewhat taken aback, he stared at the tabletop and waited. Outbursts like these embarrassed him. Suddenly she looked so pathetic. Her turban had come undone and had fallen to her shoulders, her hair was wringing wet.
“I’m beginning to wonder,” Eva whispered, “if you don’t think I’m the one who did it.”
“Obviously that’s a possibility we’ve considered,” he said quietly, “and here I’m not thinking so much about any motive you may have had, or whether you’re capable of killing someone and all that. We go into that later on. In the first instance we look at who was in the vicinity, who, in purely physical terms, had the opportunity to commit this murder. Then we look at alibi. And lastly,” he said, nodding, “we consider motive. And in this case the fact is that you were there just a short time before she died. But let me make it quite clear at once — we’re certain that Ms. Durban’s murderer was a man.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I mean, wasn’t it one of her clients?”
“Is that what you believe?”
“Well, I — wasn’t it though? That was what the papers said!”
He nodded and leaned forward. He smells nice, she thought, like Dad when he was younger.
“Tell me what happened.”
She sat down again, made a terrific effort, and approached the truth in tiny increments. She ought to tell him now, what had happened, that evening on the footstool. And he’d ask why on earth she hadn’t confessed all this at once. It was because, she thought, she was a fickle person, someone lacking discipline and character, undependable, cowardly, with questionable morals, who didn’t stand up for an old friend who’d meant so much, but who’d then taken her money instead, she could hardly believe it was true, it was unbearable.
“We haven’t got much money, me and Emma,” she mumbled. “It’s always been like that, ever since Jostein went away. I told Maja about it. She wanted me to solve the problem her way. I was to borrow the spare room. We were at Hannah’s and we were drunk. I began to consider her proposition, I was so tired and I couldn’t take any more sleepless nights, threats in the mail, and disconnected phones. So we arranged that I’d return — and try it. She would help. Show me the ropes.”
“Yes?”
“I was slightly pissed when I arrived, I couldn’t face being sober, because then the decision would sort of become concrete, I came as arranged, and I’d decided...”
She stopped, because just then it had actually dawned on her, in all its horror. She was a potential prostitute. And now he knew it too.
“But then I couldn’t go through with it. Maja gave me a Coke and I sobered up as I was sitting there, and my courage evaporated. I thought they might take Emma away if it got out. It made me ill, I ran away from the whole thing. But before that she explained certain things to me.”
“Explained what?”
“Well, how things worked.”
“Did she show you the knife?”
Eva held back for a moment. “She did show me the knife. She said it was to engender fear and respect. I was lying on the bed. That was when I got frightened,” Eva said quickly. “That was when I decided to pull out. I don’t know how you managed to find all this out, I don’t understand anything.”
“The knife obviously wasn’t much help?” he said doubtfully.
“No, she...” Eva stopped dead.
“What were you about to say?”
“She probably wasn’t tough enough.”
“Your fingerprints were all over the apartment,” he went on. “Even,” he said slowly, “on the phone. Who did you phone?”