Free The Drowned Boy by Karin Fossum Page B

perhaps her work alone. That’s my current theory. But it’s worth nothing without proof. To be honest, I hope that you don’t find anything that confirms my suspicions. But he was different, after all. Could that be a motive in itself?”
    “What you fear could well be hard to prove,” Snorrason said in a serious voice. “So far I’ve found nothing to support your assumptions. Sad but true. Of course, there are things we don’t pick up on, even if we’re both on the ball. And there are lots of unrecorded cases. A certain share of all accidents are disguised killings, and of course some people get away with it. But there’s no point in getting upset. We do as best we can, both you and I. And as this is a little boy, we have to be even more aware of our responsibility and keep our eyes peeled for any irregularities.”
    He put his glasses back on.
    “To drown a child on purpose and to stand there watching while he or she struggles in the water requires a degree of madness,” he said. “To be blunt, it requires a cold heart. So, what do you think in relation to the mother? She’s only nineteen. Is she capable of such brutality?”
    “Too early to say,” Sejer replied. “We’ve only spoken a couple of times.”
    Snorrason rolled his chair back to his desk to indicate that he had a lot to do.
    “I’ll contact you as soon as I hear from the lab,” he said.

13
    DID SHE STAND there and watch? Sejer thought miserably.
    Did she carry him down to the water while Nicolai was busy with some old bicycle? Did she walk through the grass and along the jetty, throw him into the water, and watch him flail and thrash around? Did she watch with dead eyes and an icy heart? I couldn’t even drown a rat, Sejer thought. It would repulse me. The fear, screams, cramps, and panic. Whether it was from a human or an animal, it was just as bad.
    He put on a Monica Zetterlund CD, found a pouch of tobacco in a kitchen drawer, and started to roll a fat cigarette. He only smoked one in the evening; he was a man of moderation. And he had to have a whiskey after all the day’s endeavors, a generous dram to warm his heart. Frank lay at his feet, his breathing shallow, his little pink tongue hanging out the corner of his mouth. Elise, he thought, and looked up at the wall where a photograph of her beamed down at him. The whiskey made him sentimental, and the nicotine gave him a head rush and made him slightly dizzy. Elise, can you see me now? Can you see that we’re doing OK, Frank and I? But you know, there are always difficult days in a person’s life, days that we can’t avoid. There is no life without resistance, no days without worry, no years without pain, no nights without loneliness. There is anguish, dark thoughts, and sparkling hope in every person’s life. And we switch between these all the time, he thought. Everyone is caught in a storm throughout his or her entire life. Carmen and Nicolai were in the middle of the storm. He took a drag on the cigarette and drew the smoke down into his lungs. He was still a bit fuzzy in the head, light and floaty, and outside himself. Dusk was falling outside, night was on the way, and he welcomed it like an old friend. He heard the rumble of thunder in the distance and it slowly rolled closer. I’m actually quite happy now, he mused, and took a sip of the warming whiskey. I’m certainly fairly content with life. If only my health doesn’t deteriorate, if only this dizziness doesn’t take over completely. Why should I get away with it? Not that I’ve ever really thought like that, we humans are exposed to so much. Every day someone is knocked off their feet, thrown brutally and mercilessly to the ground, and abandoned without hope. Sooner or later, fate will catch up with me. Hey you, fate will say, you’ve got away with it for too long; now it’s your turn. Time for you to get up and fight, because it’s now or never.
    Frank padded out into the kitchen to drink some water. Sejer