The Water's Edge - By Karin Fossum Page 0,42

say that,' she said.

He nodded. 'A good reason for not having any, wouldn't you agree? If you have a kid and then lose it, the rest of your life's ruined.'

'We can't think like that,' she protested.

He washed down his bread with milk.

'That is precisely how we should be thinking,' he said. 'Every eventuality must be taken into consideration. We have a child and he gets sick. Or we have a child and he is knocked down by a car. We could have a disabled child, born without arms or legs perhaps. We might have a badly behaved child. And we are left with the guilt and the shame. Or,' he concluded, 'we might have a child that gets murdered.'

'But why should that happen?' she said, aghast.

'Sweetheart,' he said, 'it happens all the time, and we're at the centre of it. You're hopelessly naive, you never think that such a tragedy could hit us. Do you really think we're that special?'

She brushed some crumbs off the table. 'But we have to concentrate on living,' she argued. 'If we always thought like that, we would never do anything, and we would never achieve anything.'

'I think like that,' Reinhardt said, 'and I enjoy my life.'

A pause arose. Kristine added sugar to her coffee and Reinhardt buttered another slice of bread. He had very forceful hands with coarse hairs on the back. She looked out of the window: on the small patch of garden a crow leapt about eagerly. She kept watching it. It struck her that she had never looked properly at a crow. It's pretty, she thought, and perhaps it really was a bearer of bad tidings, there was something mysterious about it, something secretive. Suddenly it raised its head and looked at her through the window.

Reinhardt interrupted her train of thought.

'He's got nothing to lose now,' he said. 'He's crossed the line. It might cause him to lose control completely.'

'You're just guessing now,' she said. 'Perhaps they'll find the boy alive and well.'

She swallowed a mouthful of bread.

'You're just being naive again,' he declared.

'I can't bear the thought,' she said, 'that a grown man would do that to a child.'

'You've always been so sensitive,' he said, 'but that's what I like about you.'

He got up from the table. As he did so, he gave her a look she had never seen before.

'If you ever leave me, I'll beat you to within an inch of your life.'

She wanted to laugh, but was unable to. Why would he say something like that? Two more crows had joined the first one on the lawn, they had settled by the hedge. While she sat watching them another two arrived and soon a whole flock had gathered.

'Look,' she said, pointing at the birds.

Reinhardt spotted them.

'They're eating something,' he said. 'I'll pop out to check.'

He disappeared out into the hall. She heard the door slam. More crows came flying, each one landing by the hedge. There was a mass of black and grey colour, she could see how they sat there pecking away. And she was reminded of a Hitchcock film she had once seen, The Birds. Then she saw Reinhardt walk across the lawn. The crows scattered and took off. He bent down to have a look, placing his hands on his knees for support: there was something in the grass and he was studying it carefully. He returned, smiling broadly.

'You ready then?' he asked. 'Time to get going.'

She got up from the table.

'So what was it?' she asked.

'A rotting badger,' he said, 'a huge, fat one, well over a metre long.'

CHAPTER 24

He looked out of the window, resting his palms on the broad windowsill for support. The farmer's mother was walking across the yard. Fetching eggs, he guessed. She had her arm stuck through the handle of an old-fashioned metal basket. It upset the rhythm of her walk and made her look less mobile than she actually was. He noticed that she was terribly bowlegged. She was bent double from age as well as gravity. He thought that if she were to fall, she would break every bone in her body. He pulled back a little so that she would not see him standing in the window. I'm a quiet sort of man, he thought, I don't draw attention to myself, and if I happen to meet anyone, I'm polite and respectful.

The old woman disappeared in the direction of the henhouse and he shifted his gaze to the hilltop. A car was approaching. It stopped