The Water's Edge - By Karin Fossum Page 0,8

which he had swaggered into the car showroom, like a bowlegged sailor. She hated this side to his personality, that he always had to show off, and her loathing grew with every passing year. Then she tried looking at it from a different point of view, a positive angle because he was her husband and she wanted to be generous. He was a faithful and hard-working man with well-built shoulders and coarse, sandy hair. His face was broad and strong, his thighs were muscular and rock hard. When she walked down the street with him, sometimes other women would turn to check him out. Her being so petite and him being so much taller than her had once appealed to her, she felt sheltered like a child. He was her protector; he was the one who dealt with things. Sometimes, out of the blue, he would turn into a big kid, lift her high in the air and be loving. Then she warmed to him again, became happy almost and once more she would put up with him. So it oscillated inside her and this duality was a source of immense confusion to her.

Finally he put away his mobile. He sat down and sighed deeply.

'Well,' he said, 'at least we'll have something to talk about now.'

'All we did was find a little boy,' she said quietly.

She did not look him in the eye, she was talking to her lap.

'But it's not a straightforward case,' Reinhardt said, 'of murder. I mean, first he did something else to him, well, I can't even say it out loud, and afterwards he killed him.'

'We don't know how he died,' she objected.

'Kristine,' he said in an exasperated voice. 'Don't tell me you haven't worked out what's happened here? Come on, what do you take me for?'

Reinhardt had found himself in an extraordinary situation. He had been the first person to arrive at a crime scene. Furthermore, he had observed a man at a distance of only a few metres, a man who was leaving. He regarded himself as significant and important. Kristine could please herself, but there was no way she was going to tell him how to handle the situation. Again he got up from the sofa and wandered around restlessly. The woman behind the counter trailed him with her eyes.

Finally, Sejer and Skarre arrived at reception, the door groaning shut behind them. Reinhardt and Kristine followed them noiselessly down the corridors on the green carpet. Kristine kept rewinding time, the images returned in fragments. She saw the man in the blue anorak, she recalled his car door slamming and his engine revving, grit and gravel spouting from underneath the tyres. What had she thought, what had she felt? That they had disturbed him? I can't tell them that, she thought, that's subjective. They're looking for accurate, factual observations, I can't speculate. Sejer and Skarre remained silent, but they walked as if they belonged together, as if they were a couple, she thought, as if they had grown accustomed to each other. There was trust between them.

They reached Sejer's office. Kristine entered, cradling her red coat. In the midst of this anonymous glass, stone and concrete building was a large, bright office with colourful curtains. She noticed individual details: a stately chair with a tall back, a lamp with a yellow shade and underneath it, a clumsy figure made from salt dough. The ravages of time had caused the figure to grow mouldy, but there was no doubt that it represented a police officer in a blue uniform. On the desk was a laminated desk pad with a map of the world; a pen covered Italy and the coastline of Tunisia. There were photographs on the walls. A man, who looked like Sejer, with a dog. A dark-skinned teenage boy. On a table there were some plants, there was a cupboard, and several red ring binders on a shelf. Criminal cases, she thought, human tragedies. Death and despair. The boy they had found would probably get his own space on the shelf. He would become one of the red binders.

'Do you know who he is?' she whispered. 'The boy, I mean?'

'We think so,' Sejer said.

She folded her hands in her lap. She looked like a shy schoolgirl waiting for permission to speak.

'You saw a man by the barrier,' Sejer said. 'We need a description, because we want to talk to him. What can you tell us about the clothes he wore, his appearance, his