wondered if he would start looking for something else once the case had been solved or whether he would become his old self again. She did not want that either, she liked neither the new nor the old version of Reinhardt. And again she felt ashamed, as she always did. She felt the days had become so unreal, she felt the harvest sunlight was too harsh, the night air too raw, the wind too sharp. She thought Reinhardt was behaving strangely. She took out a packet of ox liver from the fridge and started trimming the dark pieces with a knife. Reinhardt came over to stand next to her and he patted her cheek affectionately.
'Now what's that serious face all about, wifey?' he joked.
She continued cutting without answering. The liver oozed blood, the chopping board grew wet and slippery.
'You're gripped by this too,' he claimed, 'but for some reason you won't admit it. You have your reasons, I suppose.'
She continued to stay silent.
'Everyone's talking about it,' he pressed on. 'People are interested in these things, of course they are.'
'But talking isn't enough for you,' she said. 'You wallow in it.'
'I cut interesting articles out of newspapers,' he said. 'Now don't exaggerate.'
Again she refused to reply.
Suddenly he changed the subject. 'Shall I tell you a secret?' he said. 'I've always hated liver.'
At this she looked up quickly. 'But you eat it. You always have.'
'Yes,' he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. 'Because you put it in a casserole. With onion, mushrooms and bacon. That makes even liver appetising.'
She kept working, her fingers moving swiftly. She hated him being so close to her, and it confused her when his moods changed so rapidly.
'Where do you think he lives, Kristine?' Reinhardt asked as he buried his face in her neck. 'I think he lives somewhere isolated. I can't imagine him right in the middle of some huge residential estate. Or perhaps he's got an old, ramshackle house his mother left him, something in the forest. Or an old, crumbling cottage.'
'We don't know the first thing about where he lives,' she said in an exasperated voice.
'No, I'm just speculating. That's what the police are doing when they have nothing else to go on. They know a lot about people who eat small children.'
'Eat them?' she shuddered.
'It's just an expression,' he smiled. 'Now, don't go getting all serious. But one thing's certain: Jonas August is becoming a celebrity. There's been plenty of interest from foreign papers, and he is unique in Norwegian crime history. They always take girls, you know. Women and girlfriends. Or ex-girlfriends. This is different. You don't understand,' he said abruptly. 'You don't understand how exceptional this is.'
Kristine cut the liver into thin strips.
'Yes,' she sighed, 'this is exceptional. It makes me dizzy,' she admitted.
'And we're a part of it,' he said.
'We're not.'
'You don't want to be,' he corrected her. 'That's a different matter. You just want to move on, you want to forget about it. You're a true woman, you shy away from confrontation.'
'Yes,' she said. 'I want to move on. You're utterly wrong. There is nothing we can do, Reinhardt, let the police deal with it, please!'
'Like I thought,' he said. 'You don't appreciate how serious this is. But you and I can identify him, we can place him at the crime scene, or a few metres away from it at any rate. Don't you understand how important we are? The police need us. Think about it: we can put him away for twenty-one years!'
He was becoming melodramatic, the pitch of his voice was rising. She turned on the cooker and put butter in the frying pan.
'I can barely recall what he looked like,' she said.
Reinhardt's jaw dropped. 'How can you say that? You were so sure back then. About his clothes and everything? Hans Christian Andersen, that's what you said, wasn't it? Hans Christian Andersen, of all things.'
'Yes,' she said reluctantly, 'but I'm not so sure any more, about any of it.'
Reinhardt folded his arms across his chest. 'But I am. I'm sure. And there's nothing wrong with my eyesight.'
The butter was browning, she added the liver; the smell spread through the kitchen.
'There must have been something wrong with his parents,' Reinhardt said distantly.
She glanced at him across her shoulder.
'Why?'
'Since he turned into a pervert.'
'We can't be sure of that, can we?' she said. 'We don't know if it had anything to do with his parents.'
'People don't get damaged for no reason,' he said.
She added seasoning, inhaled the