Don't Look Back (9 page)

They rang the Hollands' bell. A girl opened the door. She was obviously Annie's sister; they were alike, and yet they were different. Her hair was just as blond as Annie's, but it was darker at the roots. Her eyes were outlined with mascara, and were trapped inside, very pale blue and uncertain. She wasn't big and tall like Annie, or sporty and muscular. She was wearing lavender stretch pants with stitched seams and a white blouse that was unbuttoned halfway down.

"Sølvi?" Sejer said.

She nodded and offered him a limp hand, then led the way inside and at once sought refuge next to her mother. Mrs. Holland was sitting in the same corner of the sofa as before. Her face had changed somewhat over the course of a few hours; her expression was no longer so painfully desperate, but she looked somber and strained and a good deal older. The father was not in evidence. Sejer tried to study Sølvi without staring. Her features and figure differed from her sister's; she didn't have Annie's wide cheekbones or firm chin or big gray eyes. Weaker and a little plump, he thought.

After half an hour of conversation it became clear that the two sisters hadn't been especially close. Each had led her own life. Sølvi had a cleaning job at a beauty parlor, had never been interested in other people's children, and had never played sports. Sejer thought that in all likelihood she had been preoccupied with herself, and with her appearance. Even now, as she sat on the sofa with her mother, in the aftermath of her sister's death, she had arranged her body in an attractive pose, out of habit. One knee was drawn up, her head was tilted slightly, her hands were clasped around her leg. Several gaudy rings glittered on her fingers. Her nails were long and red. A soft body without edges, without definition, as if she lacked a skeleton or muscles and was merely skin stretched over a lump of modeling clay, pink. Sølvi was a good deal older than Annie, but her face had a naive look to it. Her mother had assumed a protec
tive posture and patted Sølvi's arm steadily, as if she had to be comforted, or maybe admonished; Sejer couldn't decide which. The sisters were in fact very different. Annie's face in the photo was more mature. She peered at the camera with a wary expression, as if she didn't like being photographed but had nevertheless conceded to authority, perhaps simply out of good manners. Sølvi was posing more or less all of the time. She looks more like her mother, he thought, while Annie takes after her father.

"Do you know whether Annie had made any new friends recently? Met any new people? Did she talk about anything like that?"

"She wasn't interested in meeting people." Sølvi smoothed her blouse.

"Do you know whether she kept a diary?"

"Oh, no, not Annie. She wasn't like that. She was different from other girls, more like a boy. Didn't even use any make-up. Hated getting dressed up. She wore Halvor's medallion, but only because he pestered her about it. In fact, it got in the way when she went running."

Her voice was bright and sweet, as if she were a little girl and not six years older than Annie. Please be nice to me, her voice pleaded gently, you can see how small and fragile I am.

"Do you know her friends?"

"They're younger than me, but I know who they are."

She played with her rings and hesitated for a moment, as if she was trying to make sense of this new situation she found herself in.

"Who do you think knew her best?"

"She spent time with Anette, but only when they had something specific to do. Not just to talk, I don't think."

"You live a little out of the way here," he said. "Do you think she would ever hitchhike?"

"Never. Neither would I," she said. "But we can often catch
a ride when we walk along the road. We know just about everybody."

Just about, he thought.

"Do you think she seemed unhappy about anything?"

"Not unhappy. But she wasn't exactly jumping with joy either. She wasn't interested in much. I mean, girls' things. Just school and running."

"And Halvor, perhaps?"

"I'm not really sure. She seemed a little indifferent about Halvor too. Couldn't ever make up her mind."

Sejer saw an image in his mind's eye of a girl turned slightly away with a skeptical look on her face, a girl who did as she pleased, who went her own way, and who had kept all of them at a distance. Why?

"Your mother says she used to be livelier," he said. "Do you agree?"

"Oh, yes. She used to be more talkative."

Sejer cleared his throat. "This change," he said, "did it happen suddenly, do you think? Or did it happen gradually, over a long period of time?"

"No" The two of them glanced at each other. "We're not quite sure. She just became different."

"Can you say anything about when it happened, Sølvi?"

She shrugged. "Last year sometime. She broke up with Halvor, and right after that she stopped playing ball. Plus she was growing so tall. She grew out of all her clothes and got so quiet."

"Do you mean angry or sullen?"

"No. Just quiet. Disappointed, in a way."

Disappointed.

Sejer nodded. He looked at Sølvi. Her stretch pants were dazzling, the color of lilacs from his childhood.

"Do you know whether Annie and Halvor had a sexual relationship?"

She turned bright red. "I'm not sure. You'll have to ask Halvor."

"I will."

"The sister," Sejer said, when they were back in the car, "is the kind of girl who often ends up a victim. Of a man with bad intentions, I mean. She's so preoccupied with herself and her appearance that she wouldn't notice the danger signals. Sølvi. Not Annie. Annie was reserved and sporty. Didn't care about making an impression on anyone. She didn't hitchhike and wasn't interested in meeting new people. If she got into someone's car, it would have been somebody she knew."

Skarre looked at him. "That's what we keep saying."

"I know."

"You have a daughter who's been through puberty," he said inquisitively. "So what was it like?"

"Oh," Sejer said, looking out the window. "It was mostly Elise who handled that type of thing. But I do remember it. Puberty is a really rough time. She was a sunbeam until she turned thirteen, then she began to snarl. She snarled until she was fourteen, then she began to bark. And then it wore off."

It wore off, and he remembered when she turned fifteen and became a young woman, and he didn't know how to talk to her. It must have been like that for Holland too. When your child is no longer a child, and you have to find a new language. Difficult.

"So it took a year or two? Before it was over?"

"Yes," he said thoughtfully, "I suppose it did."

"You seem to be focusing on this change in her."

"Something must have happened. I have to find out what it was. Who she was, who killed her and why. It's time we paid a visit to Halvor Muntz. No doubt he's been waiting for us. How do you think he feels?"

"No idea. Can I smoke in the car?"

"No. By the way, your hair is looking a little shaggy, don't you think?"

"I guess so, now that you mention it. Here, have a mint."

They each stared out at the road. Skarre fiddled with a lock of hair at the back of his neck and stretched it out full-length. When he let go, it curled up as swiftly as a worm on a hot plate.

She thought there was something familiar about him. That's why she'd scooted her chair closer and stuck her wrinkled face all the way up to the television. The light of the screen fell on her so that he could see the whiskers on her chin, which were still growing. They should have been shaved off, he thought, but he wasn't sure how to mention it to her.

"It's Johann Olav Koss!" she shrieked. "He's drinking milk."

"Hmm."

"Good heavens, how handsome that boy is. I wonder if he knows it? He's just like a sculpture, he really is. A living sculpture!"

Koss wiped off his milk mustache and smiled, showing his white teeth.

"Oh, just look at the teeth that boy has! Teeth as white as chalk! It's because he drinks milk. You should too, you should drink more milk. But he probably had a school dentist. We didn't."

She tucked the tartan blanket around her lap. "We couldn't afford to have our teeth fixed, just had to get them pulled out as they rotted away, one by one, but today all of you have school dentists and milk and vitamins and healthy diets and toothpaste and fluoride, and all kinds of things."

She sighed heavily. "Let me tell you, I sat and cried in class,
yes I did. Not because I didn't know my lessons, but because I was so hungry. Of course you're handsome, all of you young people today. I envy you! Do you hear what I'm saying, Halvor? I envy you!"

"Yes, Grandmother."

His hands shook as he pulled photos out of a yellow Kodak envelope. A slender young man with narrow shoulders, he didn't look much like the skater in the TV commercial. He had a small mouth, like a girl's, and one corner was stretched taut—when he smiled, which happened rarely, it refused to turn upward. Close up, it was possible to see the scar from the stitches; it extended from the right side of his mouth to his temple. His hair was brown, cut soft and short, and his sideburns were sparse. From a distance he was often taken for a fifteen-year-old, and for a long time he'd had to show his ID at the cinema. He never made a fuss about it though; he was no troublemaker.

Slowly he shuffled through the pictures, which he had looked at countless times before. But now they had acquired a new dimension. Now he was searching them for signs of what was to happen later on, things that he hadn't known when he'd taken them. Annie with a wooden mallet, pounding in a tent peg with great force. Annie on the end of the diving board, erect as a pillar in her black bathing suit. Annie asleep in the green sleeping bag. Annie on her bike, her face hidden by her blond hair. A picture of him as he struggled with the Primus stove. One of both of them, taken by the people in the next tent. He had to nag her to get her to agree. She couldn't stand being photographed.

"Halvor!" cried his grandmother from the window. "There's a police car outside!"

"Yes," he said in a low voice.

"Why are they coming here?" She looked at him, suddenly anxious. "What do they want?"

"It's because of Annie."

"What's wrong with Annie?"

"She's dead."

"What did you say?"

Frightened, she stumbled back to her chair and leaned on the armrest.

"She's dead. They're coming here to interrogate me. I knew they would come. I've been waiting for them."

"Why are you saying that Annie's dead?"

"Because she
is
dead!" he shouted. "She died yesterday! Her father called me."

"Yes, but why?"

"How should I know! I don't know why. All I know is that she's dead!"

He hid his face in his hands. His grandmother collapsed like a sack of flour into her chair, looking even paler than usual. Things had been so peaceful for such a long time. But it couldn't last, of course it couldn't.

Someone knocked loudly on the door. Halvor gave a start, shoved the photos under the tablecloth, and went to open the door. There were two of them. They stood on the porch for a moment and looked at him. It wasn't hard to guess what they were thinking.

"Are you Halvor Muntz?"

"Yes."

"We've come to ask you some questions. Do you know why?"

"Her father called last night." Halvor nodded over and over.

Sejer caught sight of the old woman in the chair and said hello to her. "Is she a relative of yours?"

"Yes."

"Is there somewhere we can talk in private?"

"My room's the only place."

"Well, if it's all right with you..."

Halvor led the way out of the living room, through a cramped little kitchen, and into his bedroom. This must be an old house, Sejer thought; they don't make houses with this floor plan any more. The two men cleared a place to sit on a sagging sofa, Muntz sat down on his bed. An old-fashioned room with green painted paneling and wide windowsills.

"Is she your grandmother? The woman in the living room?"

"Yes, my father's mother."

"And your parents?"

"They're divorced."

"Is that why you live here?"

"I was allowed to choose where I wanted to live."

The words sounded terse and clacking, like pebbles falling.

Sejer looked around, searching for pictures of Annie, and found a small one in a gold frame on the bedside table. Next to it stood an alarm clock and a statue of the Madonna and child, perhaps a souvenir from the Mediterranean. A single poster hung on the wall, presumably a rock singer, with the words "Meat Loaf" printed across the picture. A stereo and CD player. A wardrobe, a pair of sneakers, not as good as Annie's. A motorcycle helmet hung from the doorknob of the wardrobe. The bed had not been made. Beside the window stood a narrow desk with a computer. Next to it was a box containing diskettes. Sejer could see the one on top: Chess for Beginners. From the window he looked out on the courtyard, and he could see their Volvo parked in front of the shed, an empty doghouse, and a motorcycle covered with plastic.

"You ride a motorcycle?" he began.

"When it's running. It doesn't always start. I have to get it fixed, but I don't have the money right now."

He fidgeted with the collar of his shirt.

"Do you have a job?"

"At the ice cream factory. Been there two years."

The ice cream factory, Sejer thought. For two years. So he must have left at the end of middle school and gone to work. Might not be such a bad idea after all; he was getting work experience. It was clear that he wasn't athletic—a little too thin, a little too pale. Annie was much fitter in comparison, training diligently and working hard at school, while this young man packed ice cream and lived with his grandmother. Sejer didn't think it added up. But this was an arrogant thought, and he pushed it aside.

"I'm going to have to ask you about various things. Is that all right with you?"

"Yes."

"Let's start with this: When did you last see Annie?"

"On Friday. We went to the movies, the 7:00
P.M.
show."