The Water's Edge - By Karin Fossum Page 0,26

jar of raspberry jam. He mixed some milk and jam in a old jam jar, and tightened the lid before shaking it. When it was well blended and the milk had turned pink, he drank it straight from the jar; it tasted good. For a while he leaned against the counter, feeling how the sweetened drink gave him strength.

He knew that the red shorts had to go. He had disposed of the trainers by dumping them in a clothes collection point in the town centre. If the police arrived, they were bound to turn over the house, he knew he would have to be prepared for that, but he could not bear to part with the red shorts. Resolutely he went into his bedroom to fetch the shorts. He rolled them into a tight sausage and hid them at the bottom of a box of cornflakes which he placed at the far end of the cupboard. He felt he had been very clever. They'll never think to look there, he thought. At night, he would get out the shorts and take them with him to bed. Because they would never turn up at night, he was convinced of that, the nights were his own, the few free ones he had left.

He went over to the window. He parted the curtains slightly and looked out at the farmhouse, at the red barn. A blue tractor was parked in the farmyard, where there was a maple tree with a large, lush crown. He had rented the cottage for years, it was over a hundred years old and in very bad condition. The bedroom walls were covered by slimy mould. He had heard that mould released a gas which could be toxic. Not that he cared about that, his life was not worth a great deal, he was certainly not clinging to it. The house did not have a bathroom either, just an old shower cubicle in a corner of the kitchen with a tatty, yellow shower curtain covered with mildew. Nevertheless the cottage had a certain appeal; it had a history and charm. Little, square windows with broad windowsills and thick beams in the ceiling. Hops grew around the entrance. The cottage was situated in a dip and the big, white-painted farmhouse towered at the top of the hill. The farmer lived there with his wife and four daughters. Every summer the girls would lie on the lawn in tiny bikinis, lined up like a row of golden fish fillets. He never even so much as looked at them. Adjacent to the farmhouse was another cottage where the farmer's mother lived; she was eighty-six.

Four Polish men would turn up to work in the fields every May and they would stay on until November. They were nodding acquaintances, but he never stopped to talk to them. They slept in the storehouse. Sometimes, in the evenings, he would hear laughter and voices coming from in there, in a language he did not understand but found exotic. One of them was good at playing the mouth organ and another had a distinctive laugh, which would roll across the farmyard from time to time. They were polite, friendly and hard-working people.

As he stood there staring out into the farmyard it suddenly occurred to him that pulling the curtain had been a stupid thing to do. He was not in the habit of doing that and it might arouse suspicion. He flung the fabric aside and the light flooded in. Whether he wanted to or not, he would have to start his car and go food shopping. His white car. The car they were looking for. And he would buy a newspaper, obviously, if he could muster the courage. How much did they know, what had they found, were they about to catch him, was it only a matter of days before they would break down his door? He remembered his anorak, he could never wear it again, he had to get rid of it. He hurried out into the hall to see what else was hanging on the coat stand. A coat with big pockets and an old leather jacket, its lining had practically been worn away and the leather had cracked on the elbows. In the pocket he found an ancient cinema ticket and the stick from an ice-cream.

He went back into the kitchen to have a shower, pulled aside the shower curtain, stepped inside and turned on the taps. While he showered he made