kitchen table had brass edges and corners, as though it was from an old ship.
They sat down around the table, and without asking them Johnas went over to the refrigerator and poured grape juice into wine glasses.
"How did it go with the puppies?" Skarre asked him.
"Hera will get to keep one of them, and the other two are already spoken for. So it's too late for you to change your mind. Now what can I do for you?" He smiled and took a sip.
Sejer knew that his friendliness would quickly evaporate.
"Just a few questions about Annie. I'm afraid we need to go over the same ground again and again." He wiped his mouth discreetly. "You picked her up at the roundabout - is that right?"
Sejer's choice of words, his intonation, and the tiniest hint of doubt about his previous statement sharpened Johnas's attention.
"That's what I said before, and that's exactly what I did."
"But she actually preferred to walk, didn't she?"
"Excuse me?"
"It took a little persuasion for you to get her into the car, is that correct?"
Johnas's eyes narrowed but he remained silent.
"She preferred to walk," Sejer said. "She declined your offer of a ride. Am I right?"
Johnas nodded suddenly and smiled. "She always did that; she was so unassuming. But I thought it was too far to walk to Horgen's Shop. It's quite a way."
"So you persuaded her?"
"No, no ..." He shook his head hard and shifted position in his chair. "I coaxed her a little. Some people have a tiresome habit of needing to be coaxed all the time."
"So it wasn't that she didn't want to get into your car?"
Johnas heard quite clearly the extra stress on the words "your car".
"That's the way Annie was. A little aloof, maybe. Who have you been talking to?"
"Several hundred people," Sejer said. "And one of them saw her get into your car after a long discussion. You're actually the last person to see her alive, and we've got to focus on that, don't you agree?"
Johnas smiled back, a conspiratorial smile, as if they were playing a game and he was more than willing to participate.
"I wasn't the last person," he said. "Whoever killed her was the last person."
"It's proving rather difficult to get hold of him," Sejer said with deliberate irony. "And we have nothing to corroborate that the man on the motorcycle was waiting for Annie. The only thing we have is you."
"I'm sorry? What are you getting at?"
"Well," Sejer said, throwing out his hands, "I'm trying to get to the bottom of this case. It's the nature of my job to doubt what people say."
"Are you accusing me of lying?"
"I'm afraid that's what I have to think," Sejer said. "I hope you'll forgive me. Why didn't she want to get in?"
Johnas was visibly uneasy. "Of course she wanted to get in!" He had shown the first sign of anger, and now controlled himself. "She got in and I drove her to Horgen's."
"No further than that?"
"No, as I told you, she got out at the shop. I thought she was going there to buy something. I didn't even drive up to the door; I stopped on the road, and let her out. And after that," he stood up to get a pack of cigarettes from the counter, "I never saw her again."
Sejer steered his interrogation on to a new track.
"You lost a child, Johnas. You know what it feels like. Have you talked to Eddie Holland about it?"
For a moment Johnas looked surprised. "No, no, he's such a private person, I didn't want to bother him. Besides, it's not an easy thing for me to talk about either."
"How long ago was it?"
"You've talked to Astrid, haven't you? Almost eight months. But it's not the sort of thing you forget or get over."
He slipped a cigarette out of the pack. Lit up and smoked in an almost feminine way. Merits, filtertipped.
"People often try to imagine what it's like." He stared at Sejer with weary eyes. "They do it with the best of intentions. Try to picture the empty bed and imagine themselves standing there and staring at it. And I did do that often. But the empty bed is only part of it. I got up every morning and went out to the bathroom, and there was his toothbrush under the mirror. The kind that changes colours when it gets warm. The rubber duck on the edge of the bath. His slippers under the bed. I caught myself setting too many places