In the Darkness Read Free Page B

spent most of his spare time in his garage, tinkering with his beloved car, or with his mates at a pub on the south side. The pub was called the King’s Arms. Einarsson was either a poor sod who’d been the victim of some desperado wanting money – heroin had taken a firm grip, seeing the potential in this cold, windswept town – or he had a secret. Perhaps he was in debt.
    Sejer peered down at the report and rubbed his neck. It always impressed him the way criminal pathologists managed to pull together a semi-rotten mass of skin and hair, bones and muscles, and turn it into a complete human being with age and weight and physical attributes, condition, previous complaints and operations, dental hygiene and hereditary disposition.
    ‘Remnants of cheese, meat, paprika and onion in the stomach,’ he said aloud. ‘Sounds like pizza.’
    ‘Can they be sure after six months?’
    ‘Yes, of course. When the fish haven’t eaten it all. That sometimes happens.’
    The man called Sejer was made of solid stuff. He was in his forty-ninth year, his forearms were already reasonably tanned, he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves and the blood vessels and sinews were conspicuous beneath the skin, making them look like seasoned wood. His face was well defined and a little sharp, his shoulders straight and broad, his good overall colour gave the impression of something that was well used, but which would also endure. His hair was spiky and steel-coloured, almost metallic and very short. His eyes were large and clear, their irises the colour of wet slate. That was how his wife Elise had once described them years before. He’d found her description charming.
    Karlsen was ten years his junior and slight by comparison. At first glance he could give the impression of being a dandy, without solidity or weight, he had a waxed moustache and a high, impressively bouffant head of hair. The youngest and sprightliest of them, Gøran Soot, was struggling to open a bag of jelly babies without making too much of a rustling noise. Soot had thick, wavy hair, a compact, muscular body and a fresh complexion. Taken on its own, each part of his body was a feast for the eye, but all together they were rather too much of a good thing. He, however, was unaware of this interesting fact. Seated by the door was Chief Inspector Holthemann, taciturn and grey, and behind him a female officer with close-cropped fair hair. At the window, with one arm propped on the sill, sat Jakob Skarre.
    ‘How are things with Mrs Einarsson?’ Sejer asked. He cared about people, knew that she had a young son.
    Karlsen shook his head. ‘She seemed a bit bewildered. She asked if this meant she’d get the life insurance money at last, and then broke down in despair because the first thing she’d thought about was the cash.’
    ‘Why hasn’t she had anything?’
    ‘We had no body.’
    ‘I’ll take that up with the appropriate person,’ said Sejer. ‘What have they been living on these past six months?’
    ‘Social security.’
    Sejer shook his head and flipped through the report. Soot stuffed a green jelly baby into his mouth, only its legs protruded.
    ‘The car,’ Sejer went on, ‘was found at the municipal dump. We rooted through the rubbish for days. In fact he was killed in a completely different location, possibly by the river. Then the killer got into the car and drove it to the rubbish tip. It’s extraordinary if Einarsson really has been in the water for six months and hasn’t turned up until now. That’s quite some time the murderer has been clinging to the hope that he would never surface again. Well, now he’s had a reality check. I imagine it’ll be quite a hard one, too.’
    ‘Did he get caught up on something?’ Karlsen wondered out loud.
    ‘Don’t know. It’s a bit strange, that, the riverbed is pure gravel, it’s not long since it was dredged. He may have been swept in towards the bank and got caught up on something there. His appearance was