“What do you mean by that? Sad in what way?”
“I’m not really sure how to put it. Like they were two lonely souls in a big world. They came back again later and disappeared around to the car, only to reappear a few minutes later carrying a pizza box and a bag, which they took down to the trailer. Then I forgot about them and got on with other chores — there’s always plenty to do on a big farm like this.”
He focused on a knot in the table; they could hear his breathing.
“Why did you go down to the trailer the next day?” Sejer asked. “You found them at 2 p.m. What were you doing down there?”
“I just went to say hello. To ask how the night had been.”
He told them that his wife had been busy baking all morning. An apple cake and an almond cake. The girls wanted the almond cake, and they decided to give the apple cake to the pair in the trailer. Emilie, aged ten, was allowed to put the thin slices of Pink Lady apples in the bottom of the tin like brickwork. Solveig rolled the dough into thin sausages that she then wove in a pattern on the cake and covered it with generous helpings of nib sugar and almonds. “So I took the apple cake and went down across the field,” Randen explained. “The door was open. I knocked on the wall and called out hello so they wouldn’t get a fright when I suddenly appeared in the doorway.
“This might sound a bit dramatic, but I don’t think my life will ever be the same.”
The four Poles were waiting outside the house and were all clearly affected by what had happened. Two of them had seen Simon outside the trailer, carrying his teddy bear. His mother had been standing in the doorway and waved to them as they passed, and they had touched their caps with their brown working hands and waved back. Beautiful weather, they had called, and she had smiled and nodded.
“Think carefully now,” Sejer urged them. “Did you see anything that might be of importance? I mean, people or cars in the vicinity of the farm in the days beforehand?”
They looked at each other. They had talked about this. The oldest of them, Woiciech, who was in fact a butcher back home in Poland, had seen an unknown car on the road up to the farm. It might have been following the Opel, but it had stopped some distance from the farm.
“Can you describe the car?” Skarre said.
“Definitely not new,” Woiciech replied. “Red.”
Skarven Farm had been in the Randen family for four generations, and Robert Randen and his wife Solveig were used to working hard from morning to night. Their four daughters also had duties, and Randen hoped that the eldest girl, Johanne, would take over the farm in a few years’ time. The family was sitting around the table eating supper in silence. Eventually Solveig put down her fork and turned to her husband.
“When can we get rid of the trailer?”
“As soon as the police give us permission.”
“Will they wash it?” she asked.
“I very much doubt it. That’s not the way it works. We should ask the boys in this evening; we need to talk.”
The youngest daughter, Emilie, looked at her father. “Are we going to the funeral?”
“No, sweetheart,” Randen said. “We won’t be. We’re not family.”
“But they died here. In one of our fields.”
“Yes, Emilie. But we should leave the family in peace.”
“Will they be in the same coffin?”
“No, sweetie, they’ll each get their own. One big, one small.”
Ma, the cat, wandered in through the open door. She was a beautiful gray cat and well preened. She jumped up onto Emilie’s lap and curled up in a ball. Emilie’s mother wanted to push the cat down, but she stopped herself. Everything was topsy-turvy on Skarven Farm. Nothing was as it should be, and she felt it might never be again.
The girls cleared the table and put everything in the dishwasher. Then they pushed all the chairs back in under the table. Randen lay down on the sofa in the living room and the cat came running over and jumped up onto his chest. The cat was heavy and made it harder to breathe, but he let the animal lie there. He felt Ma’s warmth through his shirt and it calmed his nerves. Randen was a levelheaded man, but now his thoughts were racing. Because whoever had used that knife in the trailer was alive somewhere. He lived, he breathed, he ate, he slept. He talked and interacted with people who knew nothing, who smiled and laughed. While he waited for his pursuers. And in no way regretted what he had done.
I hope it will rain before too long, Randen thought. The farm needs rain. Perhaps we should go to the funeral. They did die here after all, on our property, in our field.
9
December 2004
Mass had a full-length mirror in her bedroom, and she was standing there now, twisting and turning in front of it, with a dissatisfied look on her face. Everything had started to droop: her jowls, her breasts, her stomach, a great roll over the top of her pants like rising white dough. As she stood there, looking at her reflection, she felt a dull pain at the base of her spine. There, you see, she said to herself, that’ll be all the cleaning I did yesterday, getting ready for Christmas. She had carried the heavy rugs out onto the snow and cleaned the floors. She had washed everywhere in every room; she was thorough. Eddie was no good at cleaning. All he could do was clear the snow. But the pain in her back — well, she wasn’t actually stiff; it was more of a pulsing ache. The pain came in waves, running up and down her spine. She had never felt anything like it before. She turned her back to the mirror as if to look for an explanation. But there was nothing to see, of course. And as she stared into the glass, the pain disappeared just as suddenly as it had come. She pulled a brush through her thick hair, got dressed, and went out into the living room. Eddie was sitting at the computer, as usual. She stood and studied his broad back. She often wondered about her grown son. He had never been given a diagnosis so had fallen between all the checkpoints in the system. She had managed to fight her way to a small allowance for him, after many visits to the doctor who knew him well. And she had sent endless forms to the welfare office and the employment office. What will happen to him when I’m no longer here? she fretted. Even though he did have some skills, he was still helpless and so dependent on her. It was exhausting. He clung to her, nagged her, was on her constantly. But he was all she had, so she accepted it without complaint, because he also brought her a lot of joy.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she sat down and reached for the newspaper.
“On the Internet,” he said, without turning around. “Google.”
“What are you looking for? Seems to me that you’re always sitting there.”
Eddie’s fat fingers bounced on the keyboard. He muttered quietly at regular intervals. Mass was now very curious. She put down the newspaper, got up, and went over to him.
“What have you found?”
Eddie read: “ ‘The authorities in Ohio are now planning to try the new method using only one injection, after the execution of one felon took a full two hours, as they had great difficulties finding a vein. The usual method comprises three injections: the prisoner is first injected with a dose of barbiturate, then something to paralyze the muscles, and finally, an injection to stop the heart.’ ”