“Fingerprints?” Her fingers curled at the thought of it. Perhaps they’d been in her house while she was up in the mountains, perhaps they’d picked the lock and tiptoed about with those small brushes they used.
“Who did you phone, Eva?”
“No one! But I did consider — phoning Jostein,” she lied.
“Jostein Magnus?”
“Yes, my ex. Emma’s father.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“Well, I simply changed my mind. He walked out on me, I didn’t want to ask him for anything. I got dressed and left. I told Maja that what she was doing could be dangerous, but she only smiled. Maja never listened to anyone.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this the first time I came?”
“I was embarrassed. I really did consider becoming a prostitute, and I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone knowing it.”
“I’ve never, ever, in all my life looked down on women who are prostitutes,” he said simply.
He rose from the sofa as if he were satisfied. She couldn’t believe her eyes.
He stood for a short while out on the steps, gazing at the drive, looking at the car and at Emma’s bike, which was propped against the house. Then his stare moved further out, down the street to the other houses, as if trying to form an opinion about the area she lived in, what sort of person she was to live just here, in this neighborhood, in this house.
“Did you get the impression that Ms. Durban had a lot of money?”
The question came suddenly.
“Oh yes. All her things were expensive. She ate in restaurants and that sort of thing.”
“We’re wondering if she might have had a tidy sum stashed away somewhere,” he said, “and that someone might have known about it.” His gaze struck her like a laser beam right between the eyes and she blinked in terror. “Her husband arrived by plane from France yesterday, we’re hoping he can tell us something when we get him in for questioning.”
“What?” She steadied herself on the door frame.
“Ms. Durban’s husband,” Sejer repeated. “You look frightened.”
“I didn’t know she had one,” she said lamely.
“No? Didn’t she say?” He frowned. “That’s a bit strange, her not saying anything, if you were old friends?”
If, she thought. If we really were old friends. If I’m telling the truth. She could go on talking till the cows came home, he obviously wouldn’t believe her.
“Nothing more to add, Mrs. Magnus?”
Eva shook her head. She was petrified. The man who’d arrived at the cabin could have been Maja’s husband. Searching for his inheritance. Perhaps, perhaps one day he’d turn up on her doorstep. Maybe during the night when she was asleep. Maja could have told him that they’d met. If she’d had time. She might have phoned. International call to France. Sejer went down the four wrought-iron steps and halted on the gravel.
“You should put an ankle like that in hot water. Make sure you wrap a bandage around it.”
Then he left.
28
The money had to be moved out of the house. As the big Peugeot slowly disappeared, she pushed the door shut with a bang and rushed down to the cellar. Her foot was feeling numb again. She prized the lid off the tin with a knife and emptied the packets onto the concrete floor; then she sat and began tearing the foil off them. They were bound with rubber bands. She realized quite quickly that there was a system to the bundles. All the thousand-kroner notes were together, and the hundreds, it was easy to count them. The floor was very cold and she lost sensation in her bottom. On and on she counted, keeping a mental tally of each, laying it aside, and counting the next. Her heart thumped ever louder. Where could she hide such a huge sum? A safe-deposit box was too risky, she had the feeling that they’d be watching her now, watching her every move, Sejer and his people. And Maja’s husband.
Maja was married. Why hadn’t she said so? Had she felt that a husband, a companion for life, was an impediment? Or was he more a kind of business partner to share the running of the hotel? Or just a bloke she didn’t want to acknowledge? The last seemed the most likely.
The paint tin was a wonderful hiding place really, but she had to keep it somewhere else, somewhere no one would think of looking and where she could easily help herself to more when she needed it. At her father’s, of course, in his cellar, along with all the old junk he’d accumulated over the years. Eva’s childhood bed. The apples which lay rotting in the old potato bin. The defective washing machine. She lost count and had to begin again. Her hands were sweating and this made it easy to separate the crisp notes from one another, soon she had half a million in one big heap and there was masses more. Maja’s husband. Maybe he was a really shady character — if Maja had been a prostitute, what might he be? A drug dealer or something similar. Perhaps neither of them had any moral sense. Have I got any? she thought suddenly, she was getting close to a million now and she was making inroads into the money. This, she thought, probably represents a good deal of the housekeeping money of hundreds of housewives in this town, money that should have been used for nappies and tins of food. It was an odd thought.
She was on the hundred-kroner notes now, and it took longer. She thought the five hundreds were the nicest-looking, the color and the pattern, beautiful blue bills. One point six, her fingers were icy, she was counting fifties. If he’d got her registration number, it would only take minutes for him to find her address, if he phoned the Vehicle Registration Office, if he’d even noticed the car; if he’d had some imagination he’d probably have looked at it and considered the possibility, been surprised that it was standing there unlocked. Up in the mountains, not far from the cabin. But he hadn’t had the imagination to search in the earth closet. One point seven million. And a few fifties. Maja had been close to her goal. One point seven million kroner. Pieces of foil lay glinting in the light from the bare bulb in the ceiling. She put the money in the tin again and went up the stairs, the swelling in her foot seemed to have eased, perhaps because of the cellar’s coldness. Her dark hair hung like frozen twigs down her neck. She put the tin in the utility room and went back to the bathroom, took a quick hot shower, and got dressed.
The millionaire in the mirror was tenser now. She had to get hold of a tarpaulin for the car in case he was sniffing around. Or she could buy a new car. An Audi perhaps? Not one of the biggest ones, perhaps even secondhand. Suddenly she realized it was impossible. She could only buy bread and milk as before. Even Omar would begin to speculate if her shopping basket grew larger. She limped out and fetched the tin. This would have to do. And anyway, they could move. She got some aluminum foil from a kitchen drawer, wrapped the bundles up neatly, and laid them in the tin, all except one. On this she stuck a piece of masking tape, pondered a second and wrote “Bacon” on it. Then she put it in the freezer. No point in running out right away. The sixty thousand in the little tin had been considerably depleted. She put on her coat and went out. But first she examined her mailbox, which had entirely escaped her mind. A green envelope lay in it, from the Arts Council. She gave a smile of surprise. Her grant had come.
“You’ve started going out at night,” smiled her father, “that’s a good sign.”
“How so?”
“I kept ringing you yesterday, right through till eleven o’clock.”
“Oh yes, I was out.”
“Have you found someone to keep you warm at last?” he asked expectantly.
I was just about freezing to death, she thought, I was sitting waist-high in excrement half the night.