The Indian Bride (30 page)

"You question it? Surely that's the same as having a problem with it."

Sejer looked at Skarre. "It's about charging up, isn't it? Training persistently for many years. With heavier and heavier weights. Sooner or later a need for release is created. But it never comes. Only heavier and heavier weights. It would drive me crazy."

"Mmm," Skarre smiled. "Crazy. And very strong."

Nineteen minutes later they pulled up in front of Gunwald's shop. He was unpacking boxes of breakfast cereal when he spotted them through the window. The sight of them made him weak in the knees. There was something ominous about the two men. A migraine started pricking at his temples.

"I'm sorry," he stammered. His words were barely audible. "I should have called you earlier. I'm just so confused. Einar
didn't do it, of course. Neither did Gøran. That's why I had doubts."

"Einar Sunde?"

"Yes." He bit his lip. "I recognized both him and his car. A green Ford Sierra."

"But it was late. Must have been almost dark."

"I saw it clearly. I'm certain of it. Unfortunately, I suppose I should say."

"How good is your eyesight?" Sejer indicated the thick lenses in the glasses.

"It's fine when I'm wearing these."

Sejer forced himself to be patient. "It would have been smarter if you'd told us this straightaway."

Gunwald wiped his brow.

"No one must know that I told you this," he whispered.

"I can't promise that," Sejer said. "I understand your anxiety. However, like it or not, you're an important witness."

"You get frowned on here if you say anything. Look at poor Linda Carling. No one talks to her now."

"If either Gøran or Einar or both of them have anything to do with this, don't you think people in this community would want them to get their just deserts?"

"Certainly. If it were them."

Sejer inhaled deeply and breathed slowly out. "We want to think the best of people we know. But we all know someone."

Gunwald nodded heavily. "So are you going over to bring him in?"

"He will have to give us a satisfactory explanation, won't he?"

"Jomann will have a heart attack. He buys his paper from Einar."

Skarre took a long look at Gunwald. "How old are you?" he asked gently.

"How old am I? I'm sixty-five."

"Will you be retiring soon?"

"Maybe," he said wearily. "But how else will I pass the time? It's just him and me." He pointed at the fat dog in the corner.

"The days will pass, anyway," Sejer said. "I appreciate what you've told us. Even if you did take your time." He bowed politely. "You'll be hearing from us."

Gunwald followed them with his eyes. He heard the car start and turn right in the direction of the café. Then he shuffled over to the dog.

"Perhaps it is time to call it a day," he said, stroking the dog's dark head. "Then we could sleep in every morning. And go for walks several times a day. You might lose some weight."

He stared out the window. Imagined Einar's face. A few more seconds before the shit hit the fan.

He walked to the front door and double-locked it. It was very quiet. It had actually been quite easy. "Come on," he said to the dog. "Come on, time we went home."

***

"Einar Emil Sunde?"

Einar squeezed a cloth between his hands.

"Yes?"

Two women were sitting there, each with a cup of coffee. They were staring openly. He had to support himself on the counter. Lillian was gone. Half the furniture was gone with her. The acoustics in the rooms were unfamiliar. Now the police stomping into the café. What would people say? Anger and fear came and went in the long face.

"You need to close up and come with us. There's something we want to talk to you about."

"And what might that be?" he said nervously. His voice failed him. Reduced to a mere squeak.

***

They drove in silence. The humiliation of having to ask the two women to leave had made him sweat.

"I'll come straight to the point," Sejer said. They were sitting in his office.

"In the late evening of September 1st you were seen at Norevann. At the tip of the point. You were seen there holding a suitcase. You threw the suitcase into the lake and drove away in your green station wagon. We retrieved the suitcase. It belonged to the deceased Poona Bai, who was murdered at Hvitemoen on August 20th."

Einar's head sank helplessly.

"We also know that she was with you, at your café. So the question, Sunde, is: Why were you in possession of Poona's suitcase?"

Einar underwent a terrible transformation. In a few minutes he was stripped bare, robbed of all dignity. It was not a pretty sight.

"I can explain it all," he whispered.

"I hope you can," Sejer said.

"That evening a woman came into my café. I already told you that." He hawked and coughed.

"Yes?"

"Just to make it absolutely clear ... What I'm telling you now is the truth. I should have said it before. That's my only crime!"

"I'm waiting," Sejer said.

"She sat for a while with her tea. In the corner by the jukebox. I didn't see her clearly and besides, I was busy with other things. But I did hear her cough a few times. There was no one else in the café then. Just the two of us."

Sejer nodded.

"Suddenly I heard a chair scraping and footsteps across the floor. Shortly afterward the door slammed. I was emptying the dishwasher so it took a while before I went to the table to fetch
the empty cup." He looked up. His eyes were flickering. "Then I saw the suitcase."

"She left it behind?"

"Yes. But the woman was gone. I stood for a while staring at it, thinking it seemed a bit odd, that you would forget something that big. She was really very upset. So I thought that perhaps she'd just gone outside to get some fresh air. That she'd be back in no time. She wasn't. So I took it and put it in the back room. There it stayed. Should I take it home with me or what? I assumed she would come back for it. It was at the café overnight. Then I put it in the cold storage room—it took up so much space."

"Go on," Sejer said.

"I remember hearing about the murder on the radio the next day, but I didn't hear all of it. Such as the woman being foreign. It took a long time before someone stopped by and told me that the victim might be Pakistani. Or Turkish. Eventually I thought it could be her. And her suitcase was in the cold storage room. I realized the seriousness, given that she'd actually been in my café and we'd been alone. You could say that's when I started feeling nervous. Besides, I couldn't be sure it was her. But she hadn't come back asking for her suitcase. So I was worried. And the thing is that as time passed it got worse. Finally I knew it all. That she was Jomann's wife whom he'd met in India. And here I was with all her belongings! I thought, well, they'll catch the murderer anyway, with or without the suitcase. It wasn't going to be crucial to that investigation. So I decided to get rid of it. Who saw me?" he burst out.

Sejer tried to digest the story, which he experienced as irritatingly plausible. For a long time he scrutinized Sunde's flushed face.

"Someone who wishes to remain anonymous."

"But it must be someone who knows me! I don't understand. It was quite dark. I didn't see a soul down there."

"Sunde," Sejer said, leaning forward, "I hope you realize the seriousness of this. If your story turns out to be true, you have withheld vital information in a murder investigation."

"If it's true?" Einar spat at him. "It's obviously true!"

"It's not obvious to us."

"Fucking wonderful! Now you know why I didn't call! I knew it would end up like this. You throw yourselves at every scrap you can get, just like I knew you would."

He spun around on his chair and turned his back on Sejer.

"Were you in touch with Gøran Seter during the day or the evening of the 20th?"

"We don't socialize. I'm nearly twice his age."

"But you shared something."

Bitterly Einar understood that he was referring to Lillian. "Not as far as I know," he said. "I've told you the truth. That's how it happened. I recognize now how stupid I've been, but I just didn't want to get involved."

"That's too late now," Sejer said. "You're very much involved. If you'd called straightaway, we could have eliminated you a long time ago. As it is, we have now to look into a number of things. Such as your car and your house."

"No, damn it, no!" he screamed.

"Damn it, yes, Sunde. And in the meantime you'll wait here."

"You don't mean overnight?"

"As long as it takes."

"Hell, no. I have kids and everything!"

"Then you'll have to tell them what you've just told me. The difference is that they'll forgive you. I won't."

He got up and left. Einar stayed sitting, in shock. Dear God, he thought. What have I done?

***

Four officers went to Einar Sunde's house. Skarre went straight to the bedroom. A large wardrobe contained linen and
towels. It was plain that some part of the contents had been taken; the wardrobe was only half full. He sorted through the piles of sheets and soon found what he was looking for. Green duvet covers with water lilies. Monet's lilies. Perhaps Gøran was telling the truth, perhaps he was here on the evening of the 20th. Or he remembered the design from some other evening, so it wouldn't be an alibi after all. But it was disturbing. They towed Einar's car away for forensic tests. They went over it with a fine-tooth comb without making a significant find. How could a walking, talking, educated human being be so indescribably stupid? Was it not evidence of supreme arrogance? Skarre thought of the beautiful nightgown, the underwear, and the toiletries bag that Poona had bought in Gunder's honor. He had thrown it all into the lake. What sort of man
was
Einar Sunde?

"The worst thing is that I believe him," Sejer said later at the office. Skarre opened a window. He sat on the windowsill, smoking.

"So you'll let him go?"

"Yes."

"Gøran is still our man?"

"I'm quite sure. But he has a strong survival instinct. His physical condition helps him."

"For my part, I don't trust Lillian Sunde," Skarre said, and told him about the green linen.

"Okay. So she has a set like that. He was there once and noticed it. I don't doubt that they were seeing each other. There are rumors that give it a certain credence. But he wasn't there
that
evening. When Ulla dumps him, he leaves in a fury. He calls Lillian and she rejects him, too. He still has the dumbbells in the car. Poona comes walking along the road alone. He stops and talks to her. Perhaps he offers to drive her to Jomann's house. Then he makes a pass at her and she gets frightened. His rage takes over. He never saw the suitcase. Now we know why. It was at the café. Then he kills her. He flees, panic-stricken, and changes
his clothes. He puts the clothes he's worn at the gym back on. Comes home at 11
P.M.
Tells his mother that he's been babysitting with Ulla. We know he hasn't been. The shape and weight of the dumbbells could have caused the injuries Poona sustained. The white powder is from the gym—we know of no other use for magnesium powder. He has no understanding of love. He has a woman or he hasn't. He's incapable of talking about his feelings. He is obsessed by sex and by having a woman he can show off to. He appears to be in a good mood, smiling and coping well in the circles he moves in, but I suspect that he is callous and very simple. Lacking in the ability to empathize with other people's feelings."

"You're saying he's a psychopath."

"That's your term, not mine, and by the way that's a concept I have never quite come to grips with."

"So you're going to go on wearing him down until you get a confession?"

"I'm trying to the best of my abilities to get him to a place where he understands that he has to make a confession. In order to move on."

"What if you don't get it? Do we have enough to go to court with as it stands?"

"Probably not. And that worries me."

"How is it possible to smash someone up the way the killer did without leaving any traces of himself?"

"It happens all the time."

"There are no traces of Poona in his car. Not a single fiber, not a single hair. Shouldn't we have found something?"

"She was wearing silk. It doesn't give off fibers like wool, for example. Her hair was tightly plaited."

"What did he do with the dumbbells?"

"I don't know. We found nothing on them. He has several sets. Perhaps he got rid of the ones he used to kill her. I want to talk to a number of people. Get hold of them and bring them in
as soon as possible: Ulla Mørk, Linda Carling, Ole Gunwald, Anders Kolding, Kalle Moe. And Lillian Sunde." He looked at Skarre. "Anything else? Has Sara called?"

"Yes. Kollberg is still lying pretty much flat."

***

The dog looked up at him with sorrowful eyes when he appeared in the living room. It made a halfhearted attempt to stand but gave up. Sejer remained standing, looking hopelessly at him. Sara came out of the kitchen.

"I suppose we have to force him a bit. As long as we keep feeding him, he won't make an effort."

Together they tried lifting Kollberg to a standing position. Sara at the front and Sejer at the back. His paws skidded. But they kept supporting him. He began to whimper and collapsed. They lifted him again and the same thing happened. He was trying to please them so that they would leave him alone, but they weren't going to. They lifted him again and again. Sara found a scrap of carpet to stop him sliding. That worked. The dog's body shook as more than one hundred pounds weighed down on its legs.

"He's supporting at least a fraction of his own weight," Sejer said brightly.

Sara wiped the sweat from her face. Her long bangs kept falling into her eyes and she began to laugh. "Come on, you fat lazy dog," she cried. Then they both laughed. Encouraged by all this good humor, Kollberg pushed himself off the ground and stood for a few seconds. Then they let go of him and he collapsed, barking cheerfully.

"Fucking brilliant!" Sara shouted. Sejer gave her a shocked look. "He's going to make it. We need more exercises for him to practice daily. We're not going to give up."