His gaze seemed fixed on something far away, and Sejer listened with both hands resting on his desk.
"We have more to talk about, Eddie," he said after a while. "But there's something you should know first."
"I don't know if I can stand to hear anything else."
"I can't keep it from you. Not with good conscience."
"What is it?"
"Can you remember if Annie ever complained of feeling pain?"
"No ... I can't. Except from the time before she got shock-absorbent trainers. Her feet used to hurt."
"Did she ever mention having abdominal pain."
Holland gave him an uneasy look.
"I never heard her say anything like that. You should ask Ada."
"I'm asking you because it's my understanding that you were the person closest to her."
"Yes. But those kinds of girl's things ... I never heard about anything like that."
"She had a tumour in her abdomen," Sejer said in a low voice.
"A tumour?"
"About as big as an egg. Malignant. It had spread to her liver."
Now Holland's whole body grew rigid.
"They must be mistaken," he said. "Nobody was healthier than Annie."
"She had a malignant tumour in her abdomen," Sejer repeated. "And in a short time she would have been very sick. There was a high chance that her illness would have led to death."
"Are you saying she would have died anyway?"
Holland's voice had an aggressive edge to it.
"That's what the pathologist says."
"Am I supposed to be happy that she didn't have to suffer?" he screamed, a drop of spit striking Sejer on the forehead. Holland hid his face in his hands. "No, no, I didn't mean that," he said, his voice choking, "but I don't understand what's happening. How could there be so many things I didn't know about?"
"Either she didn't know herself, or else she concealed the pain and purposely decided not to consult a doctor. There's no mention of it in her medical records."
"It probably doesn't say anything at all in them," Holland said. "There was never anything wrong with her. She had a couple of vaccinations over the years, but that was all."
"There's also one thing I want you to do," Sejer said. "I want you to talk to Ada and ask her to come down here to the station. We need to have her fingerprints."
Holland smiled wearily and leaned back in his chair. He hadn't slept much, and nothing seemed to be standing still any more. The chief inspector's face was flickering slightly, along with the curtain at the window, or maybe there was a draft, he wasn't quite sure.
"We found two fingerprints on Annie's belt buckle. One of them was Annie's. One of them might be your wife's. She told us that she often laid out Annie's clothes in the morning, so it might be her fingerprint on the buckle. If it's not hers, then it belongs to the killer. He undressed her. He must have touched the buckle."
At last Holland understood.
"Please ask your wife to come here as soon as possible. She should ask for Skarre."
"That eczema you have," Holland said suddenly, nodding at Sejer's hand. "I've heard that ash is supposed to help."
"Ash?"
"You smooth ash over the area. Ash is the purest substance that exists. It contains salts and minerals."
Sejer didn't reply. Holland's thoughts seemed to withdraw inward. Sejer left him in peace. It was so quiet in the room that they could almost feel Annie's presence.
CHAPTER 9
Halvor ate his pork sausage and boiled cabbage at the counter in the kitchen. Afterwards he cleaned up and put a blanket over his grandmother, who was dozing on the sofa. He went to his room, drew the curtains, and sat down in front of the monitor. This was how he spent most of his spare time now. He had tried out a lot of the music that he knew Annie liked, typing in titles and the names of musicians she had in her stack of CDs. Then movie titles, rather half-heartedly, because it wouldn't be like Annie to choose something like that. The task seemed insurmountable. She could have changed passwords several times, the way they did in the defence ministry to protect military secrets. They used passwords that changed automatically several times a second. He had read about it in a magazine from Ra Data. A password that kept changing was almost impossible to crack. He tried to remember when exactly he and Annie had created their own files and attached passwords to them. It was several months ago, sometime late in the autumn. He knew she