The Indian Bride (15 page)

"This murder in Elvestad—have you heard about it?"

"Yes." He looked at Sejer guiltily.

"Did you ever wonder that it could be the woman you drove from Gardermoen?"

"Not really," Kolding said. "I mean, not straightaway. I drive all kinds of people. Lots of foreigners."

"Tell me everything you remember about this woman and the drive," Sejer said. "Don't leave anything out." He made himself comfortable in the chair. "If you saw a hedgehog cross the road as you drove into Elvestad, you'll tell me."

Kolding chuckled. He relaxed a little and took hold of the money changer again. He stayed in his seat, fiddling with it while he was thinking. This business with the Indian woman had haunted him all the way into his dreams. He didn't tell Sejer that.

"She came walking toward the car with a heavy brown suitcase. Almost unwillingly. She kept looking back, as though she didn't want to leave. I took the suitcase and wanted to put it in the trunk, but she said no. She was very confused. Kept looking at the clock. Looking over her shoulder toward the airport entrance. So I waited patiently. Besides, I was tired. As far as I was concerned, I could've had a little snooze. I opened the door, but she didn't want to get in. I asked her in English if she was expecting someone and she nodded. For a while she stood there holding the car door. Then she wanted the trunk opened. I opened it and she fiddled with the suitcase. There was a brown folder fastened to the outside, a kind of document case. She unfastened it and got in at last. She sat on the edge of the seat, gazing out the window. Stared toward the entrance to the arrivals hall, stared down along the taxi stand, and kept looking at the clock. I was pretty confused myself. Did she want a cab or not?"

Kolding needed a break. Sejer poured him a glass of Farris mineral water and handed it to him. Kolding drank it and put the glass down on Sejer's blotting pad, next to the Panama Canal.

"Then I turned to her and asked her where she was going. She unzipped the brown folder and took out a scrap of paper with an address. An address in Elvestad. 'That's a long way,' I said. 'Expensive, too. Takes about an hour and a half.' She nodded and pulled out some bank notes to show that she had the money. 'I don't know my way around out there,' I said, 'so we'll have to ask around.' She looked lost. I studied her in the side-view mirror; her eyes were full of despair. She was still rummaging around in her bag as though she was looking for something. For a while she sat there, studying the remains of her plane ticket as though there might be something wrong with it. She
didn't want to talk. I tried a few times, but her answers were brief, in reasonable English. I remember her long plait. It fell down over her shoulder and reached to her lap. She had a red band in it and I remember that it had tiny gold threads in it."

You're quite a find, Sejer thought. If only it had been you riding past Hvitemoen on your bike!

Kolding coughed into his hands, breathed in through his nose, and continued. "There are houses dotted all over the area and not all of them are numbered. A few miles outside the center of Elvestad, I finally found Blindveien. She looked so relieved. I went up the gravel drive and felt just as relieved as she did. She smiled for the first time, and I remember thinking that it was a shame about her teeth. You see, they really stuck out. But apart from that she was pretty. I mean, when she closed her mouth. I got out of the car and so did she. I wanted to lift the suitcase out, but she gestured that I should wait. Then she rang the doorbell. No one there. She rang and she rang. I shuffled around the drive, waiting. She got more and more upset. She looked as if she was going to cry. 'Are they expecting you?' I asked her. 'Yes,' she said. 'Something must have happened. Something is wrong.'

"She got back into the car. Didn't say a word. I didn't know what she wanted to do, so I waited, too. And the meter was running; we were into big numbers now. 'Isn't there someone you can call?' I asked her, but she shook her head. Then she asked me to drive her back. When we got to the village center she asked me to stop. By the café. She said she'd wait in there. I lifted the suitcase out of the car and she gave me the money. The fare came to more than 1,400 kroner. She looked totally worn out. The last thing I saw was her dragging her heavy suitcase up the steps. I drove across the road to fill up with gas. There's a Shell station there. And then I drove back into town. I couldn't get her out of my mind. I thought about how far she'd come and then she'd ended up in front of a locked door. Someone must
have played a nasty trick on her. It was really cruel," Kolding said. He put the money changer down and looked at Sejer.

"No, she wasn't tricked. The man who was supposed to meet her at the airport was prevented from doing so. She never knew why. But if she'd known, she would have forgiven him."

Kolding looked at him, wondering what that could mean.

"On the way from Elvestad to the house, did you notice anything? People along the road? Parked cars?"

Kolding had not seen anything. Traffic had been light. To further questions he said that he had been a cab driver for two years, was married, and was the father of a three-month-old screaming child. In addition he confirmed the approximate timings.

"When you filled up the car," Sejer said, "who was behind the register at the gas station?"

"A young woman. Blond."

"Did you buy anything else?"

Kolding looked at him, surprised. "Bought anything? You mean from the kiosk?"

"Anything."

"Well, as a matter of fact, I did buy a battery for my car," he said after a while.

Sejer considered this for a moment. "You bought a battery for your car at the Elvestad gas station?"

"Yes. It was a special offer. You won't get a car battery that cheap in town," Kolding said.

"And this battery, where is it now?"

"In the car, of course. My own car, I mean."

Sejer imagined a car battery, how heavy it might be. With hard, clean surfaces. If you smashed it against a human head it would do considerable damage. The thought made him look carefully at Kolding's face. He imagined Poona sitting in his car.

"What else did you do at the gas station?"

"Nothing much. I had a Coke while I was there. Looked at the CD rack. Leafed through a newspaper."

"So you spent quite a while in there?"

"Only a few minutes, really."

"You didn't see the Indian woman leave the cafe?"

"No, no."

"And afterward, where did you go?"

"Back to town. No return fare to be had in Elvestad. Had no choice but to drive back on my own."

"Your cab, what make is it?"

"Mercedes. A black one."

***

"How many people live in New Delhi?"

They were in the cafeteria. Sejer prodded his food.

"Millions, I guess," Skarre said. "And we don't know his first name."

Sejer did not like the idea that Poona Bai had a brother who was unaware of what had happened. He removed the garnish from his sandwich. They ate in silence.

"Time's passing," he said eventually.

"Indeed," Skarre said. "It tends to."

"A guilty person spends his time wisely. He creates an alibi. Gets rid of the evidence."

"Such as the suitcase," Skarre said, between mouthfuls.

"And the clothes he wore. His shoes. If he has sustained any injuries as a result of the struggle, then they heal. Tell me about Einar Sunde."

Skarre pondered. "Sullen. Uncooperative. Doesn't see any need to be in the limelight."

"Or scared," Sejer said.

"Could be. But he was alone in his café when the murder took place. He'd hardly have locked the door, gone out and killed Poona, and then come back in to flip hamburgers."

"We've only got his word for it that he was alone." Sejer wiped his mouth with the napkin. "This is turning into the kind
of case where people are terrified to talk," he said. "Everything will be used against them later on. But I've been thinking about this young woman, Linda. That she did in fact ride past them. Without seeing anything other than a white shirt."

"It happens."

"There must be a way of making her remember."

"You can't remember what you didn't actually see," Skarre objected. "The visual impressions might have been plentiful, but if the brain didn't interpret them, then she'll never be able to recall them."

"Is there anything you don't know!"

"Basic witness psychology," Skarre said.

"Really! We didn't have that in my day."

"Surely you were taught psychology?"

"One lecture. Two hours. That was all."

"During your entire training?"

"I've had to work things out for myself."

Skarre looked at his boss in disbelief.

"I'm sorry to have to say it," he said, "but I'm not sure just how serious she is. She's too eager."

"If psychologists can get people to recall past lives, all the way back to the Stone Age, they should be able to revive Linda's memory of two people in a meadow four days ago."

"You're just not taking this seriously," Skarre said.

"I know."

He focused on the case again. "I've got an hour to spare now. I'll go to Hvitemoen. I'll take Kollberg—he needs some fresh air."

They put their trays back. Sejer went to the parking lot. As he approached his car he noticed it was bouncing violently. The heavy Leonberger sprang out. Not as agile as he used to be, Sejer thought, but then he wasn't a young dog anymore.

He brushed copper-red dog hair from his pants. Allowed the dog to relieve itself in the bushes. Then Sejer drove to Elvestad. At Hvitemoen he parked in the place where Linda had seen the red car parked. It was marked with two orange cones. He let the dog loose again and started walking toward the bend from where Linda had come riding. He turned his head and looked back. He could now observe his own car from a considerable distance. The sun gleamed on the paintwork and made it shine like silver although it was in fact blue. He walked briskly down the road with the dog beside him. A few paces on, he turned and looked over to the meadow where they had found the woman. A man or a woman would probably be visible from the waist up, given the distance and the long grass. He looked at his car again. What was he actually seeing? That the car was big and wide and had metallic paintwork. At a glance it could pass for silver or gray. A car reckoned to be red might turn out to be brown. Or orange. He felt depressed, stopped by the roadside, and looked down at the grass to make sure it was dry before he sat down. The dog sat next to him. It looked at him expectantly. Started sniffing his pockets. Sejer fished out a dog biscuit and told Kollberg to shake hands. His paw was large and heavy. The dog wolfed down the biscuit.

"Don't be greedy," he said gently.

Kollberg barked.

"No. I haven't got any more. You don't look all that well," he said pensively. He raised the dog's head and gazed into its black eyes. "I'm not in especially good shape myself. Because of what has happened." He looked out over the meadow again. At the black wall of spruces that partly hid Gunwald's house. There was a flash of light from the window. How had he dared? It struck him that none of this was planned. A man had happened to come across a woman. She had been hitchhiking, perhaps, or been walking along the road when he had driven past. Then, being an exotic-looking woman, she had aroused something in him. And he had stopped thinking rationally, had not taken into account that it was still more or less broad daylight and that
anyone could come by. Like the Linda girl on her bike. How could a man develop such rage against someone he probably didn't even know? Though they couldn't be sure of that. Unless it was the case that she was a substitute for some other woman. Or all women. An aggrieved man who had not gotten his way, a big rejected kid. A man with great strength or having an extreme weapon, he still didn't know what it could be. What did he keep in the red car? Sejer sensed that this was part of the answer. The weapon would tell them something about who he was. Had Linda really seen the two of them? It had to be them, the timings were right. The plane had landed at 6
P.M.
She had gotten into Kolding's cab by 6:40. They'd reached Jomann's house at 8:00 and Einar's Café by 8:15. Sunde had said that she left the café around 8:30. Alone, out on the road. She'd met someone there. Had she walked along the road with the heavy suitcase? Anders Kolding had said it was big and that she had to practically drag it up the steps into the café. A man had driven by. He imagined a red car and the driver spotting the dark woman. How utterly helpless and irresistible she must have seemed. A delicate woman in pretty clothes. Where was she heading? Back to Jomann's house presumably—it lay in that direction. Was she proposing to wait on the doorstep? If she had not been stopped on the road, she'd actually have met Jomann. He was back at his house by 9:30. But she never arrived. After the immense journey from India, she had died one thousand yards from his house. He imagined the man stopping and talking to her. Perhaps he pointed at the suitcase and asked where she was going.

I can give you a lift. I'm going that way anyway.
So he took the suitcase and put it in his trunk. Opened the door for her. She felt safe; she was in Gunder's home country, safe little Norway. They drove away. He asked what she was doing at Gunder's. Perhaps she said that he was her husband. Sejer stopped and zoomed in on that image, but then it slipped out of reach because he could not imagine what had triggered the rage and the
attack. The car drove away from him. Disappeared behind the bend. The dog nudged him with its nose.

"In a place like this," Sejer said aloud and studied the woods and the meadow and Gunwald's house. "In a place like this people will protect one another. That's how it always is. If they've seen something they don't understand, they wouldn't dare to say so. They think,
I must be mistaken. I grew up with him, we've worked together. And anyway, he's my cousin. Or neighbor. Or brother. We went to school together. So I won't say anything—it must be a mistake.
Human beings are like that. And that's a good thing, isn't it, Kollberg?" He looked at the dog. "We're not talking about evil here, but the good in people that stops them from saying what they know."