All at once he strode over and hauled Soot out of his chair. His bag of goodies fell to the floor.
“I need a victim,” Sejer said. “Come here!” He pushed the officer over to the desk, took up position behind him, and grabbed the plastic ruler. “It could have happened something like this. This is Einarsson’s car,” he said, pushing the young policeman over onto the desktop. His chin just reached the far edge. “The bonnet is up, because they’re busy looking over the engine. The killer pushes the victim onto the engine and holds him down with his left arm while he stabs him fifteen times with his right. Fifteen times.” He wielded the ruler and prodded Soot’s bottom as he counted aloud: “One, two, three, four,” he moved his hand and stabbed him in the side, Soot squirmed a bit, as if he was ticklish, “five, six, seven — and then he stabs him in the nether regions...”
“No!” Soot leapt up in horror and crossed his legs.
Sejer stopped, gave his victim a small push and sent him back to his chair as he fought to suppress a smile.
“It’s a lot of times to strike with a knife. Fifteen stabs and a whole lot of blood. It must have spurted out everywhere, over the killer’s clothes, face, and hands, over the car and the ground. It’s a bugger that he moved the car.”
“At any rate, it must have been done in the heat of the moment,” Karlsen maintained. “It’s no normal execution. Must have been an argument.”
“Perhaps they couldn’t agree on a price,” quipped Skarre.
“People who decide to kill using a knife often get a nasty shock,” said Sejer. “It’s a lot harder than they think. But let’s assume it actually was premeditated, and at the opportune moment he pulls out his knife, for example just as Einarsson is standing with his back to him, bending over the engine.”
He narrowed his eyes as if conjuring up the scene. “The killer had to strike from behind, so he couldn’t easily get at what he wanted. It’s much harder to reach vital organs from behind. And maybe it took quite a number of stabs before Einarsson finally collapsed. It must have been a terrifying experience, he’s stabbing and stabbing, his victim goes on screaming, that makes him panic and he’s unable to stop. That’s what happens. In his imagination it’ll be one or two lunges. But how often has the killer been content with that in all the many knife murders we’ve dealt with? Off the top of my head I can recall one instance with seventeen stab wounds, and another with thirty-three.”
“But they knew each other, do we agree on that?”
“Knew and knew. They had some kind of relationship, yes.” Sejer seated himself and put the ruler away in the drawer. “Well, we’ll have to begin at the beginning again. We must find out who wanted to buy that car. Use the list from October and begin at the top. It might be one of his coworkers.”
“The same people?” Soot looked at him dubiously. “Are we going to ask the same questions all over again?”
“What do you mean?” Sejer raised an eyebrow.
“I mean that we ought to be finding new people. The answers will be the same as last time. I mean, nothing’s really changed.”
“Hasn’t it? Perhaps you’ve not been listening all that carefully, but we’ve actually found the victim now. Stuck like a pig. And you say nothing’s changed?”
He fought to hold back a note of arrogance. “I mean, we’re not going to get different answers because of that.”
“That,” said Sejer, holding back an even larger one, “remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”
Karlsen closed the file with a little snap.
Sejer replaced Einarsson’s folder in the filing cabinet. He filed it next to the Durban case, and thought that now they could keep each other company. Maja Durban and Egil Einarsson. Both were dead, but no one knew why. Then he leaned back in his chair and placed his long legs on the desk, patted his backside, and fished out his wallet. Jammed in between his driving and skydiving licenses he found the picture of his grandson, Matteus. He had just turned four, he could recognize most makes of cars, and had already had his first fight, which he’d lost grievously. It had been a bit of a surprise, that time he’d gone to Fornebu Airport to pick up his daughter Ingrid and son-in-law Erik, who’d been in Somalia for three years. She as a nurse, he as a Red Cross doctor. She’d been standing at the top of the aircraft steps, tanned golden all over and with her hair bleached by the sun. For one wild second it had been like seeing Elise, that first time they’d met. She carried the little boy on her arm. He was four months old at the time, chocolate brown, with crinkly hair and the darkest eyes he’d ever seen. The Somalis were a beautiful race, he thought. And he gazed at the photo for a while before replacing it. It was quiet in the trailers now, and in most of the large adjacent building. He pushed two fingers into his shirtsleeve and scratched his elbow. The skin flaked off. Underneath there was new, pink skin, which also flaked off. He pulled his jacket off the chair back and locked up, then he paid a lightning visit to Mrs. Brenningen at the reception desk. She put down her book immediately. In any case, she’d reached a promising love scene and wanted to save it for when she was under the bedclothes. They exchanged a few words, then he nodded briefly and headed for Rosenkrantzgate and Egil Einarsson’s widow.
4
He glanced quickly in the mirror and ran his fingers through his hair. Because it was short he didn’t alter its appearance at all. It was more an act of ritual than vanity.
Sejer took every opportunity to get out of the office. He drove rather slowly through the town center; he always drove slowly, his car was old and sluggish, a large blue Peugeot 604 which he’d never had any reason to change. In snowy conditions it was like driving a sledge. Soon he was passing colorful houses, each home to four families. They were on his right, pink, yellow, and green; the sun was shining on them now, making them glow invitingly. They’d been built in the fifties and possessed a certain patina that newer houses didn’t have. The trees were well grown, the gardens fertile, or at least they would be when the spring arrived. But it was still cold, spring was late in coming. They’d had dry weather for a long time, and blobs of dirty snow lay like rubbish in the gutters. His eyes searched for number 16 and recognized the well-maintained green house the moment he saw it. The entrance was a chaos of trikes, lorries, and plastic toys of all kinds, which the children had indiscriminately brought out from cellars and attics. Bare asphalt was always tempting after a long winter. He parked and rang the bell.
After a few moments she came to the door, with a thin little boy hanging on to her skirts.
“Mrs. Einarsson,” he said, bowing slightly, “may I come in?” Jorun Einarsson nodded vaguely and a touch unwillingly, but she hadn’t many people to talk to. He was standing quite close to her, and she caught the smell of him, a mixture of jacket leather and a discreet after-shave lotion.
“I don’t know any more than I did last autumn,” she said uncertainly. “Well, apart from the fact he’s dead. But I was expecting that, of course. I mean, the way the car looked...” She put an arm around the boy as if to protect them both.
“But now we’ve found him, Mrs. Einarsson. So things are a bit different, aren’t they?” He kept quiet and waited.
“It must have been some nutcase who wanted money.” She shook her head distractedly. “Well, his wallet had gone. You saw that his wallet had gone. Even though he had only a hundred kroner. But people kill just for loose change nowadays.”