"What did you think about that, Halvor? The fact that other boys were giving your girlfriend the once over?"
"First of all, I was used to it. Second, Annie let them know she wasn't interested."
"And yet she went off with someone. There's an exception here, Halvor."
"I realise that."
Halvor was tired. He closed his eyes. The scar at the corner of his mouth shone like a silver cord in the light from the lamp. "There was a lot about Annie that I didn't understand. Sometimes she'd get angry for no reason, or really irritated, and if I asked what was the matter, she'd get even worse and snap at me, saying that it's not always easy to understand everything in this world."
He gasped for breath.
"So you have a feeling that she knew something? That something was bothering her?"
"I don't know. I guess so. I told Annie a lot about myself. Almost everything. So she should have known that it wasn't dangerous to confide in someone."
"But your own confidences couldn't have been exactly earthshaking. Maybe hers were worse?"
Nothing could have been worse. Nothing in the world.
"Halvor?"
"There was something," he said in a low voice as he opened his eyes again, "that had locked Annie up tighter than a sealed drum."
CHAPTER 11
Something had locked Annie up tighter than a sealed drum.
The sentence was so delicately formulated that he realised he believed it. Or was it simply that he wanted to believe it? In any case ... there was the school bag, hidden. The strong feeling that Halvor was keeping something concealed. Sejer stared at the pavement ahead of him and arranged several ideas in his mind. Annie liked to baby-sit for other people's children. The boy she preferred to take care of was particularly difficult, and he had died. She would never have had children of her own, and she didn't have long to live. She had a boyfriend at whom she occasionally snapped; she broke off with him and then took him back. As if she didn't really know what she wanted. He could see no clear connections between this set of facts.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and headed across the car park, got into his car and carefully manoeuvred it out to the street. Then he drove to the next county, the community where Halvor had spent his childhood, or rather non-existent childhood. Back then the community police department was in an old villa, but now he found it located in a new shopping centre, squeezed in between a Rimi supermarket and the Inland Revenue office. He waited a short time in the reception area and was lost in thought when the community officer came into the room. A pale, freckled hand was extended. The man was in his late 40s, thin, with little pigmentation on his skin and scalp and barely concealed curiosity in his blue-green eyes. And entirely obliging. It wasn't every day that they were visited by a chief inspector from the city. Most of the time it felt as though the rest of the world had forgotten them.
"It's good of you to take the time," Sejer said, following the community officer down the corridor.
"You mentioned a homicide. Annie Holland?"
Sejer nodded.
"I've been following the case in the papers. And as you're here, I assume that you have someone in the spotlight whom you think I might know?"
He pointed to a chair.
"Well, yes, in a way. We do have someone in custody. He's just a boy, but what we found at his house gave us no choice but to arrest him."
"And you would have preferred to have a choice?"
"I don't think he did it." Sejer gave a little smile at his own words.
"I see. That happens sometimes."
The community officer's voice held no hint of irony. He folded his pale pink hands and waited.
"In December 1992 you had a suicide here in your district. Two brothers were subsequently sent to the Bjerkeli Children's Home, and the mother ended up in the psychiatric ward of the Central Hospital. I'm looking for information on Halvor Muntz, born 1976, the son of Torkel and Lilly Muntz."
The community officer recognised the name, and at once he looked anxious.
"You dealt with the case, didn't you?"
"Yes, unfortunately, I did. Along with a younger officer. Halvor, the older boy, called me at home. It happened at night. I remember the date, December 13, because my daughter had the role of Lucia at the school celebration that day. I didn't want to go