glow from a single lamp, maybe the one on the desk.
He looked down the road and saw a police car by the letterboxes. There was the young officer with the curly hair. Probably going to the Holland house to give them the latest news. He didn't look particularly sombre; he walked with a light step, his face turned up to the sky, a slender, trim figure with lots of curls, surely on the borderline of what departmental regulations allowed. Suddenly he turned left and entered his own front yard. Fritzner frowned. Automatically he looked across the street to see if the visit had been noticed by anyone in the other houses. It had been. Isaksen was in his yard, raking leaves.
Skarre said hello and then went over to the window, just as Fritzner had done.
"You're looking down at Annie's bedroom," he said.
"Yes, I am."
Fritzner continued. "Actually, I'm a dirty old man, so I stood here often, gaping and drooling, hoping to catch a little peek. But she wasn't exactly the exhibitionist type. She would draw the curtains before she took off her jumper. I could see her silhouette, at least if she turned on the overhead light and there weren't too many folds in the curtains. Not a bad sight."
He had to smile when he saw Skarre's expression.
"If you want me to be honest," he said, "and I'm sure you do, I've never had any desire to get married. But I still would have liked to have one or two children to leave behind. And preferably with Annie. She was the kind of woman you wanted to impregnate, if you know what I mean."
Skarre still said nothing. He stood there, chewing on a sesame seed that had been stuck between two molars for a long while and had finally freed itself.
"Tall and slender, broad shoulders, long legs. Quick-witted. Beautiful as a wood nymph from Finnskogen. In other words, plenty of premium genes."
"She was only a teenager."
"They get older, you know. Although Annie won't."
"Frankly," he said, "I'm pushing 50 and I've got the same imagination as any other man. And I'm single. But as a bachelor I should have certain privileges, don't you think? There's no one out in the kitchen spluttering at me if I look at the ladies. If you lived here, right across the street from Annie, you would have cast an eye at her house now and then. That's not a crime, is it?"
"No, I don't believe it is."
Skarre studied the dinghy and the half-finished beer on the gunwale. He took his time, wondering whether it might be big enough to ...
"Have you discovered anything?" Fritzner said.
"Of course. We have the silent witnesses. You know, the thousands of little things all around. Everyone leaves something behind."
Skarre watched Fritzner as he spoke. The man was standing with one hand in his pocket, and through the trouser material he could see the clenched fist.
"I see. By the way, did you know we have a crazy man here in the village?"
"Excuse me?"
"A guy with brain damage who lives with his father up on Kolleveien. Apparently he's very interested in girls."
"Raymond L氓ke. Yes, we know about him. But he doesn't have brain damage."
"He doesn't?"
"He has one too many chromosomes."
"Seems more like he has too few of something, if you ask me."
Skarre took another look at the Holland house, and at the window with the drawn curtains.
"Why do you think a snake would crawl into a sleeping bag?"
Fritzner opened his eyes wide. "Jesus, the things you know. I've asked myself the same thing. I'd actually forgotten about that; it was quite a little drama, I'll tell you. But it would make a perfect place to hibernate, wouldn't it? One of those bags from Ajungilak, with feather down and all that. I was sitting here in the dinghy with a whisky when that boyfriend of hers rang the bell. I guess they saw my light on. Annie was standing in a corner of her living room, white as a sheet. Normally she was pretty tough, but not that time. She was really frightened."
"How did you catch it?" asked Skarre with curiosity.
"My dear, it was nothing. I used my bucket. First I poked a hole in the bottom of it with an awl, about the size of a ten-ore coin. Then I crept inside the tent. It wasn't in the sleeping bag by then; it had crawled into a corner and coiled up. It was a big one. I slammed the bucket down over