“I’ll say! He was really possessive about that car. Sometimes they’d even tease him about it at work.”
“But even so, on rare occasions, did he ever lend it to anyone? Do you ever remember him doing it? Even if it was only the once?”
She hesitated: “Yes, he did occasionally. But only very rarely. To one of his mates who he hung out with quite a lot, someone from the brewery. He hadn’t got a car himself.”
“D’you know his name?”
“Er, well I feel a bit funny about mentioning his name here,” she said, as if she sensed a danger she didn’t fully understand. “But he lent it to Peddik now and again. Peter Fredrik.”
“Ahron?”
“Yes.”
Sejer nodded slowly. He took another look at the wedding photo of Einarsson and noted his fair hair. “I’ll be back,” he said softly. “You’ll have to forgive me, but cases like these take a lot of time and there are still some things we need to clear up.”
Mrs. Einarsson nodded and showed him out. Jan Henry jumped up and came running toward him, keener now.
“That didn’t take long.”
“No,” Sejer said thoughtfully. “There’s a man I’ve got to find, and quickly too. Come over to the car with me.”
He opened the trunk and took out a carrier bag from Fina. “A mechanic’s suit. For you. I know it’s too large, but you’ll grow into it.”
“Wow!” His eyes were sparkling. “Loads of pockets! It’ll fit me soon, and I can turn it up.”
“That’s right.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I won’t be long.”
“No. I expect you’ve got lots to do.”
“Well, yes. But I’m also off duty sometimes. Perhaps we could take another drive sometime, if you want to?”
Jan Henry made no reply. He was staring down the road, to where the roar of a large motorbike had broken the silence. A BMW.
“There’s Peddik.”
Jan Henry gave him a lukewarm wave. Sejer turned and stared at the man in the black leather suit as he nosed in by the cycle stand, stopped, and took off his helmet. A man with longish fair hair and a small ponytail at his neck. Now he was opening the zip of his leathers so that an incipient beer belly came into view. In reality he wasn’t that unlike Einarsson. In poor light one might not be able to tell the difference.
Sejer stared at him until he began to squirm on the seat of the motorbike. Then he smiled, gave a brief nod, and went to his car.
34
“Where have you been?”
Karlsen was waiting in reception. He had been looking out for Sejer’s car for some time now, minutes were passing and no one had phoned with the glad tidings that little Ragnhild had come home long ago and was fit and well. She was still lost. Karlsen was stressed.
“With Jorun Einarsson.” Sejer was tense and excited, which was unusual. “Come on, I’ve got to talk to you.”
They nodded to Mrs. Brenningen and retreated down the corridor.
“We need to bring in a bloke for questioning,” Sejer said, “right away. Peter Fredrik Ahron. The only person in Einarsson’s circle who occasionally was allowed to borrow his Manta. Very occasionally. He works at the brewery, and now he’s chasing after Jorun. He’s been interviewed before, when Einarsson went missing. I’ve just met him outside the house in Rosenkrantzgate, and d’you know what? They look pretty similar. In poor light it would be hard to tell them apart. See what I mean?”
“Where is he now?”
“Still at the house, I hope. Album will have to wait, we’ve got people on that anyway. Take Skarre and bring him in right away, I’ll wait here.”
Karlsen nodded and turned to go. Then he stopped. “By the way, I’ve got a message for you from Eva’s solicitor.”
“Yes?”
“Larsgård’s dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“The taxi driver found him.”
“Does she know yet?”
“I’ve sent one of the girls in to her.”
Sejer shut his eyes and shook his head. He walked up the stairs, digesting the news as best he could, just now he hadn’t time to think more carefully about what it would mean for the remand prisoner on the fifth floor. He shut himself in his office, opened the window and let in some fresh air. Tidied the desk a bit. Went quickly to the sink and washed his hands, drank some water from a paper cup. Opened the file drawer and took out a cassette, it was 360 minutes long and contained Eva Magnus’s confession. He loaded it in the cassette player on the desk and began fast-forwarding it. He stopped it now and then, fast-forwarded a bit more, and found the episode he was searching for at last. He paused the tape and adjusted the volume. Then he settled down to wait, and his thoughts began to wander. Perhaps Ahron had made a run for it, he mused, in which case he might already be a long way off on that fast motorbike of his. But he hadn’t. He was sitting reading the newspaper on Jorun’s sofa, a pouch of tobacco at his side. She was in the middle of the room with an ironing board and a pile of freshly laundered clothes. She looked uncertainly at the two policemen and then at the man on the sofa, who contented himself with raising a single eyebrow, as if they were taking him in at a most inconvenient moment. He rose from the sofa with apparent resignation and followed them out. Jan Henry watched them as they walked to the car. He said nothing. It mattered little to him what they were going to do with Peddik.
“Your name is Peter Fredrik Ahron?”
“Yes.” He rolled a cigarette without asking permission.
“Born the seventh of March, 1956?”
“Why ask when you know all this?”
Sejer glanced up. “I’d advise you to tread carefully.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Now he was smiling disarmingly. “Certainly not. We don’t threaten here, we simply advise. Address?”
“Tollbugata 4. Born and raised in Tromsø, youngest of four, National Service: yes. I don’t mind helping you out, but the fact is I’ve said everything I have to say.”
“In that case we’ll go through it again.”
He wrote on, unperturbed, Ahron smoked furiously, but he kept control of himself. Kept control for the moment. He leaned across the desk with a resigned expression. “Give me one good reason why I should go around killing my best friend!”
Sejer dropped his pen and looked at him in astonishment. “My dear Mr. Ahron, is there anyone who thinks you did? That’s not why you’re here. Did you think that was the reason?” He studied him acutely and noticed how the germ of a suspicion grew in Ahron’s pale blue iris.
“It’s hardly surprising I thought that,” he said hesitantly, “the last time you turned up it was because of Egil.”
“Then you’re on the wrong track completely,” Sejer said. “This is about something quite different.”
Silence. The smoke from Ahron’s roll-up curled in thick white spirals toward the ceiling. Sejer waited.
“Well? So?”
“So what? What do you mean?”
Sejer folded his arms on the desktop and never relinquished Ahron’s eyes. “I mean, aren’t you going to ask what it’s about? As it isn’t about Einarsson?”
“I haven’t got the faintest idea what it’s about.”
“No, exactly. That’s why I thought you might want to ask. I would have done,” he said frankly, “if I’d been hauled in while I was buried in the sports pages. But perhaps you’re not the inquisitive type. So I’ll enlighten you a bit. Little by little at all events. Just one tiny question first: what’s your attitude to women, Mr. Ahron?”
“You’ll have to ask them that,” he said sullenly.