Bad Intentions

  ‘What are you scared of, Jon?’ she asked.

  I got terribly agitated because I felt she was putting pressure on me, so I pulled the doll and the seams came apart. But I also wanted to be a good patient and give as much of an accurate and truthful answer as I could.

  ‘Condemnation,’ I whispered.

  ‘Condemnation?’

  She rolled even closer and she did not take her eyes off me.

  ‘Who would condemn you?’ she asked.

  ‘People,’ I said.

  ‘People? All of them?’

  ‘Yes. All of them.’

  ‘Is your offence that great?’

  ‘Yes, it’s enormous.’

  ‘Do you know every single person on the planet, Jon? Or just a few?’

  ‘Just a few.’

  ‘I see. A few. And you think they would condemn you?’

  ‘Any decent person would,’ I said.

  ‘So you don’t think there are any compassionate, understanding or forgiving people? Have you thought about it?’

  ‘There aren’t many of them,’ I said. ‘You’ll condemn me too, you just don’t know it yet.’

  ‘You might be wrong,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not wrong. I might have been wrong on other occasions, most people have been. But this time I’m right.’

  That was our conversation. After the session I felt wretched. Compassion? Forgiveness? We’ll never get either of those. Not so long as we live.

  I am on the horns of a dilemma. If I continue to keep my mouth shut then I’m a coward. And if I talk, Axel and Reilly will hate me.

  CHAPTER 21

  ‘What have you done?’ Ingerid Moreno screamed.

  She was standing in the door glaring at Axel, and she was incandescent with rage.

  ‘Tell me what you did. Tell me now!’

  Her cheeks were flushed as though she had been running and indeed she had been. She had run from the car to the block of flats where he lived, she had run from the lift to his door. She entered the room and slammed the door behind her. Her hair was standing straight up.

  ‘Tell me what you did!’

  Axel retreated. As usual his hand cupped his jaw. He paled at the sight of Ingerid Moreno. His brain worked frantically to catch up with the situation. He had anticipated that she might turn up, but he had expected a supplicant woman, not a fury.

  ‘Answer me!’ she screamed. ‘I know that something happened, I’ve read Jon’s diary. You did something and you’re going to tell me what it was! And don’t you dare lie to me, Axel, or I’ll beat you senseless. And you can laugh at me, but you don’t know how strong I am, I’ll tear you to pieces if you don’t give me an answer!’

  Axel could not help but stare at her nails which were long and painted red. He forced his astonishment to the back of his mind, concentrated and finally regained the eloquence which always saved him.

  ‘Ingerid,’ he said gently. ‘Come inside, please. Don’t stand there screaming.’

  He walked towards her with open arms, but she stepped back. In response he turned, crossed the floor and straightened up a little so his broad shoulders would come into full view. That way she would see that he was big, strong and self-assured, that it was he who decided what the truth was.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said kindly.

  She perched on the edge of a chair. The red claws settled in her lap and she never once took her eyes off him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Axel said, ‘but I’ve got an infected wisdom tooth, so I’m not quite myself. Ingerid, dear. You’ve got to explain what all this is about because I don’t understand.’

  Ingerid Moreno continued to stare at him. She might attack me at any time, Axel thought, she has lost Jon, she has nothing more to lose. She might claw out my eyes and people would understand. Poor Ingerid, they would say, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’s mad with grief.

  ‘I’ve read his diary,’ she said. ‘He wrote in it every single day and it’s about you three. He writes that he has a guilty conscience, that the three of you did something dreadful, and if that was what killed him, then I have to know what it was!’

  ‘The three of us did something?’ he frowned.

  He breathed with forced calm. But the rest of him was ready to strike. What do I do if we’ve been found out? he thought. I’ll wring her neck. No, of course I won’t. Damn you, Jon, for putting your guilty conscience on paper for everyone to see.

  ‘He writes that we did something together?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The diary makes it quite clear. I didn’t bring it with me, Axel, but there’s no doubt. I knew Jon. He speaks as if a great sin was committed.’

  ‘A great sin? And he’s saying that Reilly and I were involved?’

  He gave her a look of compassion, as you would look at an errant child. He was also trying to ignore the infernal pain from the wisdom tooth, which constantly threatened to knock him off balance.

  ‘He doesn’t say that in so many words,’ she said, ‘but he was only ever with you. He had no other friends.’

  ‘He says we’ve done something dreadful, but he doesn’t say what?’ Axel whispered.

  Ingerid bit her lip. She was finding it hard to sit still, she ached all over.

  Axel had never seen her so agitated. Yet simultaneously he experienced a relief so tremendous that the agony from his tooth faded.

  ‘Jon was ill,’ he said softly.

  His voice took on a comforting tone which made her listen.

  ‘Do you hear, Ingerid? He was ill.’

  Ingerid broke free from his hypnotic voice and turned sharp again. ‘That diary was written in despair, not in madness. Don’t underestimate me,’ she snarled. ‘Don’t underestimate me because I’m a woman. Because I’m grieving. Because I’m older than you. Don’t you dare do that!’

  ‘You knew Jon,’ Axel said calmly. ‘You know what kind of conscience he had. He fretted about the slightest thing. Jon was a sensitive boy, his nerves forever fraying. I simply cannot imagine what could have tormented him to such an extent that he could not go on. There is nothing between us that can explain what happened. Perhaps he’s referring to some trivial incident, something Reilly and I have long since forgotten, but which Jon brooded over. Perhaps it grew in magnitude and overwhelmed him. I’m so very sorry, Ingerid, but I don’t understand a word of this.’

  Ingerid Moreno was close to tears. She looked at Axel’s face like a beggar. She had been so sure he had the answer.

  ‘Please remember one thing,’ Axel continued. ‘Some people have a tendency to blow their sins and faults completely out of proportion. Tiny errors of judgement turn into monsters which consume them. That’s probably what Jon did. It’s called paranoia.’

  Ingerid fought her tears. Axel’s composure was beginning to make her have doubts.

  ‘But there’s something there,’ she stuttered. ‘Page after page about remorse. Page after page of self-loathing. I was so sure you would be able to help me. I’ll go to Reilly now, I’ll ask him.’

  Axel gave her a compassionate look. ‘I think you should. Do what you have to, but I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. Jon didn’t do much wrong, I can assure you of that. Jon was sensitive and decent and upright. And though I know how hard it must be, you may have to accept that he could have been delusional.’

  Ingerid got up and went to the door. ‘Jon was nothing of the sort,’ she said, ‘I would have known about it. His doctor would have known. I’ll unravel this somehow and if you’re hiding something, I’ll never forgive you!’

  She started screaming again. She lost control, not that it was worth anything without Jon.

  ‘I’ve known you since you were a little boy,’ she shouted, ‘and I know your mother. I’ve put plasters on your knees, made you toast and orange squash. You’ve come to my house for years and I’ve always thought well of you. You were a brat, but you were Jon’s friend. And don’t you dare deceive me now, I won’t tolerate it!’

  She
slammed the door as she left. Axel grabbed his mobile and phoned Reilly.

  ‘Are you awake?’ he asked. ‘Are you lucid? Ingerid Moreno will be with you in ten minutes.’

  CHAPTER 22

  Yoo Van Chau was a small woman with round childlike cheeks. When she saw Sejer, she spun around and buried her face in her hands. Some coats hung on one wall and she disappeared between a jacket and an overcoat. Sejer noticed two things. She had black silky hair and wore tiny embroidered slippers on her feet.

  Having hidden behind the clothes for a while, she reappeared with an apologetic smile. He followed her into the living room and spotted a photo of Kim Van Chau straight away. It stood on a tall chest of drawers. A candle burned next to it. Kim was a handsome boy and he could not stop himself from thinking of the body they had dragged out of the water. It was not handsome, but Yoo Van Chau did not know that.

  She gestured towards a sofa. It was red with golden trim. She sunk into a chair. Sejer could not take his eyes off the embroidered slippers. He thought he could make out a motif of fire-breathing dragons.

  ‘I can make tea,’ Yoo Van Chau said.

  ‘Please don’t trouble yourself,’ Sejer said.

  Her hands settled in her lap and a stream of words poured out of her. She spoke good Norwegian with a charming accent, and her voice was that of a little girl.

  ‘They told me he was found close to the shore,’ she said. ‘That he’s been lying there a long time. It’s nine months now since he went missing. So I’m happy in a way. Because I had given up. I thought that all was lost and that my hands would be empty for ever.’

  ‘Do you have any other children?’ Sejer asked, hoping she would say yes. That any second now a teenage daughter would appear from one of the rooms and put her arms around her mother’s neck. Or a small child might crawl up into her lap. She seemed young.

  ‘Kim’s my only one,’ she explained. ‘We never had any more children, my husband died when he was only thirty-two. I couldn’t support us on my own. Kim was only eight years old when we moved to Norway. We come from Yen Bai. We decided on Norway because we have family here and they said it was a fine country.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ Sejer asked. ‘Is Norway a fine country?’

  ‘You want for nothing,’ she said simply.

  Sejer did not reply.

  ‘Kim didn’t have many friends,’ she went on. ‘And whenever he found someone to spend time with, they wanted to go out drinking. That’s what he said to me: if I want to hang out with them, I have to go drinking.’

  She stopped her flow of words.

  Sejer had listened in silence. To come all this way, he thought, from beautiful Vietnam, to the dark Norwegian winter with ice and snow and lose everything you have. And yet sit there calmly talking with your hands in your lap. Tiny porcelain hands. And fire-breathing dragons on your feet.

  ‘Isn’t it odd that some people end up without friends?’ she said. ‘After all, he wanted for nothing. He did well at school and you can see from the photo that he was good-looking, so it’s hard for me to understand. It’s very hard indeed.’

  ‘Tell me about the night he went missing,’ Sejer asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I will tell you. It was 19 December last year, in the early evening. He wanted to go into town. He wasn’t meeting anyone in particular, he just wanted to watch the world go by, he said, and I told him to dress up warm because it was freezing cold that day. And a seventeen-year-old boy should have some independence, I do know that, so I was happy that he wanted to go out and meet people even though I didn’t know who they were. He called out to me from the hall. That was the last time I heard his voice, I can still hear his very last words. I went to bed at midnight, but I didn’t go to sleep. I lay waiting for his key in the lock because it makes quite a loud noise, you can’t mistake it. I listened out for his voice and his footsteps, and I waited for the pipes in the bathroom to gurgle. The night has never been so full of sounds. I kept hearing things, and every time I sat up with a start. Kim’s coming, that’s definitely Kim. Wasn’t that the sound of a car starting in the road? They must have given him a lift home, after all he’s gone out with nice people. Because he’s a nice boy. That’s what I thought as I lay in my bed. After several hours dawn broke and then I was sure that something must have happened. I stood in the doorway and looked at his empty bed. I could hardly believe it. Then there was the business of trying to find out what had happened. When he was reported missing in the newspaper, the police received some calls. It turned out he had met some young people and gone to a party with them, and they’d all been questioned, but none of them had any idea what might have happened to him. Kim had done what they had done. He had been drinking and he wasn’t used to that. They made no bones about it. Kim was drunk. And I don’t know what happened, but he shouldn’t have been drinking because he can’t handle it.’

  ‘What do you think might have happened?’ Sejer asked.

  ‘For a long time I thought he might have fallen asleep in a ditch on his way home and frozen to death, but then I heard that he had been given a lift as far as the letterboxes and that’s when I started to have doubts. But the days passed and no one found him, and I knew that this was something completely different, something incomprehensible. I don’t understand why they found him in the water, perhaps he fell through the ice. But it was so cold last winter. The ice must have been thick, and what would he have been doing up at Glitter Lake?’

  She wiped tears from her cheek. ‘Are you sure you don’t want some tea?’ she asked again.

  ‘Please don’t trouble yourself,’ Sejer said.

  He regretted saying it immediately. Perhaps she would like to go to the kitchen and do something, boil water, fetch cups from the cupboard, do the things she normally did when she had visitors. And he had rejected her hospitality. For a while he wondered if he should ask for a cup anyway, but he was too slow.

  ‘Can you discover anything after such a long time?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to blame anyone, but if someone is responsible for what happened, then they must be punished for it. The police thought he might have killed himself because they soon found out that he was lonely, obviously. But Kim would never have done anything like that.’

  ‘The case will be reopened,’ Sejer said. ‘Now that we’ve found him, it will be easier to investigate. He didn’t drown, that much we do know, but the cause of his death is unknown. Was he in good health?’

  She nodded. ‘He was. He wasn’t on medication, or anything. He didn’t take drugs, I’m certain of it, and he didn’t smoke, either.’

  Again she started to weep softly. She straightened out an embroidered tablecloth and smiled apologetically for becoming emotional.

  ‘If you discover the truth, I’ll be happy,’ she said. ‘As it is now, I lie awake at night and imagine the very worst. What if they killed him? All the drunk young people at the party. What if they killed him?’

  ‘They didn’t,’ Sejer said. ‘The forensic examiner would have discovered that.’

  ‘Is it possible to drink so much that it kills you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Sejer said, ‘it is. And the forensic examiner has taken samples which will reveal whether he died from alcohol poisoning, but we don’t think that’s what happened.’

  ‘Can you tell when people lie?’ she asked.

  He contemplated this for couple of seconds. ‘Often, but not always.’

  ‘Will you be speaking to the people who were with him that night?’

  ‘I’ll be speaking to every single one of them.’

  Yoo Van Chau looked at him with piercing eyes.

  ‘You must study everyone you talk to very closely,’ she said. ‘You must listen to their voices and look into their eyes to see if they speak the truth.’

  ‘I’ll listen very carefully to everything they’ve got to say,’ Sejer said.

  ‘And you must watch their hands,’ she said. ‘Observe what they do with their hands, if they fl
ap.’

  ‘I’ll watch their hands,’ he promised.

  ‘Can you find out what happened?’ she said, and now her voice was urgent. ‘Will you know if anyone killed or tortured him? Can you find out why his heart stopped beating, his young, strong heart? There has to be a reason,’ she pressed on. ‘Nothing happens without a reason.’

  ‘You’re right about that,’ he said, ‘but you know, often several circumstances coincide.’

  ‘Then I want to know all about those circumstances,’ she said.

  ‘Can you find them out? Please,’ she added while she waited desperately for his reply. She looked small and lost in the big chair. Sejer did not want to promise her anything or give her any guarantees. He never did, he knew better than to do that. But suddenly he felt weak, and the forbidden words slipped out of him.

  ‘I’ll find out what happened,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  CHAPTER 23

  The party had been held in Skjæret on 19 December. Skjæret was a town on the coast, near Åkerøy, and Irene Selmer was listed as the owner of a small flat with a terrace that overlooked the water.

  They were walking to the car. Sejer confessed his brief moment of weakness when he was with Yoo Van Chau.

  ‘I promised her I would find out,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean promised?’ Skarre said.

  ‘That I would make sure she gets an explanation for it all. It was impossible to turn her down. She wears slippers embroidered with dragons,’ he explained.

  ‘But we can’t promise her anything,’ Skarre said, aghast. ‘You need to use a stock phrase. We’ll do everything in our power. That one is quite good. It makes an impression, don’t you think?’

  ‘If you had seen Yoo Van Chau, you would have made promises too,’ Sejer said.