‘If people buy chopped lungs,’ she admitted, ‘I notice. Because I just don’t understand why people want to eat lungs. They look so grey and disgusting. Like a fungus. So I stare a little longer at them.’
‘I don’t get it either,’ Skarre conceded. ‘Who buys chopped lungs?’
‘Old people,’ she said. ‘And I know who drinks, who comes here to buy beer. And I know all the players.’ She pointed at a rack of condoms by the counter, Profil and Nøkken. Ribbed, coloured and flavoured. ‘Then there’s the lady who buys painkillers every week. She must be in a lot of pain. Her hands shake terribly. I notice those kinds of things, and if anyone bought blood, I would have remembered. I didn’t even know we sell it. Goodness. It’s more than a litre.’
Suddenly she understood the connection to the baby at Bjerketun, and her face took on an expression of alarm. Skarre put his items in a bag, and noted her name tag.
‘You’ll ring then, Britt.’ He smiled.
She pulled his card from her uniform pocket and examined it more closely.
‘Definitely, Jacob.’ She smiled too. ‘I’ll call.’
Later, on the way home, Sejer stopped by his daughter’s house.
He parked his Rover by the kerb and walked up the steps, turned to make sure his parking was perfect, and put his finger on the doorbell.
Ingrid patted his cheek and pulled him inside. When he was sitting comfortably, she stood before him, arms crossed.
‘Guess what happened,’ she said dramatically. ‘Matteus pulled a muscle in his thigh.’
‘What?’ Sejer said, startled. ‘Is it serious? When? Did he fall?’
‘Yesterday,’ she said. ‘During rehearsal. Doing the splits.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s gone to get a massage. My nerves are truly frazzled because of that boy. It’s one thing after another. That’s how it is with ballet. Erik has told me that straight out — it’s unhealthy.’
Erik, her husband, was a doctor and knew about such things.
She sat opposite him and rested her hands on the table. Sejer put his hands on hers, like a lid. When she was a girl, they played a game in which her hands were tiny birds he kept caged so they couldn’t fly away. Then he let them go, and she shrieked in delight as he tried to catch them. Maybe she also remembered this, because she smiled at him across the table. She grew serious again.
‘There’s always something with that body of his,’ she said. ‘How it functions and performs. Its muscles, its flexibility and strength. Its weaknesses. That body’s a constant headache.’
Her fingers moved under his palms as she talked. It tickled him a little.
‘Not to mention all the supplements he needs, vitamins and minerals, to stay in top condition. Or all the things he can’t eat. Or drink. Or do. There’s a lot he can’t do.’
Sejer gave her hands a squeeze. ‘He plays that card when it suits him, Ingrid. You know how he is. We were at Roy’s recently. He gobbled down a big cheeseburger with chips and mayonnaise.’
She blinked, confused, and laughed nervously. ‘A cheeseburger? Really?’
Sejer nodded.
‘I see,’ Ingrid said. ‘During the week I do what he asks, making the meals he says he needs. And he eats junk food with you?’ She pouted like a child. ‘Well, what do you know. He’s a traitor — and so are you, by the way.’
‘It’s a grandfather’s privilege,’ Sejer smiled, ‘to be exempt from strict rules.’
‘Sometimes I wish he would fall and break his leg.’
Sejer opened his eyes wide.
‘Then he’d be forced to sit quietly and rest. For weeks.’
He shook his head. ‘You won’t get Matteus to sit still.’
She sighed, as mothers do when they worry over trifles.
‘Think about what you’ve done,’ Sejer reminded her. ‘You left Norway to go off to a civil war in a foreign country. You left comfort and convenience and everything that was safe behind. I don’t even know what you did down there, perhaps I don’t want to know. But you found Matteus and brought him home. He doesn’t care about comfort and convenience either. He subjects himself to relentless training, discomfort and pain. But he’s happy. Isn’t he happy, Ingrid?’
‘Have you seen his feet?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t ask to see them,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t wish that sight on anyone. People don’t know what ballet is. They just see dancers gliding around the stage, and it looks so easy. So pure and fine and beautiful. But there are injuries and constant hard work.’
‘Oh, Ingrid.’
She stood at the sink filling a water jug.
‘Are you afraid he won’t get the role in Swan Lake?’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’
‘That makes two of us,’ he said. ‘Come and sit now. Much of the world is at war. We can’t sit here and complain.’
She poured water for them. Then she smiled at herself and her concerns. ‘And you, Dad. How are you doing?’
He drank the water.
‘Be honest. Do you think about Mum?’
He set the glass on the table with a clink. ‘I don’t think about her that much,’ he admitted. ‘But she’s there all the time, like background noise. Images of things we did together when we were young. Memories of her dying. All the pain she went through. It’s a little like living by a waterfall,’ he said. ‘The years go by and I’m worn down by the continuous roar. Which I can never shut off. But it was the card I drew in this life.’
‘A home by the waterfall,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘And you? How often do you think of your mum? Be honest,’ he mimicked.
She pushed her chair back and stood up. She wore a purple knitted jacket. She had good posture like her mother. He made a new discovery: grey strands in her blonde hair. Instantly he felt sad. Ingrid, his daughter, his little girl, had grey hair.
‘I don’t think so much about Mum,’ Ingrid conceded. ‘I was so young.’
He didn’t respond.
‘From the moment she died I was focused on you. Where you were. How you were. I went around listening all the time, for your steps, your voice. Whether you were alive. Does that make sense?’
She looked at him and it seemed as if she ached for something more than the words she spoke. Then she sat down again. Planted her elbows on the table. ‘Do you know why I’m so afraid of death?’
He didn’t know where she was going with this, but he waited for her to continue.
‘We think we’re irreplaceable, but we’re not. New people replace us all the time. Many are better than us. Nicer than us. Stronger than us. Have you thought of that?’
‘You’re suggesting I should have remarried.’
‘Maybe.’ She smiled. ‘You settle for so little.’
He shook his head in protest. He didn’t think he lacked anything at all. When I come home I take a walk with Frank, he thought, then I sit in my chair at the window. I drink a whisky. I smoke a cigarette, slowly, savouring every last drag. Maybe play an album by Monica Zetterlund. Or Laila Dalseth. Then I go to bed and sleep well.
What more could a man ask for?
Ingrid nodded at the window. She grew serious again. ‘I was standing over there when you pulled up. I recognised your car, and I kept my eye on you the whole time. The whole time, Dad. Every single second.’
He nodded and smiled. But actually he was nervous at what he knew she would say.
‘When you got out of the car, I saw you lose your balance.’
He tried to find something to say, something to downplay it. ‘I have low blood pressure.’
‘Low blood pressure?’ She gave a little snort.
‘I’ve always had low blood pressure,’ he said. ‘When I sit in the car for a long time then get up too quickly —’
‘Sit in the car for a long time? Didn’t you drive here from the police station? It’s a three-minute trip.’