Free Murder of Halland by Pia Juul Page A

they did we’d…’
    ‘We’d what?’
    ‘Be the first ones to go. Inger! Let’s go tonight, you and me. What do you say?’
    ‘She’s not going!’ Lasse said.
    He was right. Inger wasn’t going. Moreover, she was mortified that I would even consider the idea. ‘Bess,’ she said. ‘Do you really think that would be appropriate?’
    Lasse looked displeased.
    ‘I won’t let on that I know you,’ I promised him. Smiling awkwardly, he got up from the table.
    ‘Plate!’ Inger barked. Lasse moved his plate to the counter, then turned to leave the room.
    ‘Dishwasher!’ she barked again. ‘And what about the glass?’ But he was gone. Her face contorted and she turned away. I felt like asking her if she loved him, asking why she would yell at a child because of a plate. But I hesitated, and then she was herself again, sitting down at the table and reaching for a book that lay open. ‘It’s one of those books for the loo,’ she said, ‘Victorian instructions for mourning. A widow was supposed to mourn her spouse for two or three years, a widower only three months. If you lost a child or a parent, you were supposed to mourn for a year. These rules may seem silly, but they make some kind of sense.’
    There was a loud knock on the door. Inger leapt to her feet.
    ‘Goodness, someone is ringing!’
    ‘No, they’re not! Isn’t it time you got the bell fixed?’
    ‘It’s a quote!’ she shouted from the hall. ‘Beckett!’
    While she spoke to the person at the door, I flicked through the loo book.
    ‘It was the lodger,’ she announced when she came back into the kitchen. ‘Asking after Brandt.’
    ‘When did you last see him? He didn’t come to the church yesterday.’ I wanted to talk about something else. ‘Do you know him, the lodger?’
    ‘No. I just know that he’s doing some work in the museum archives. Who was that girl yesterday? The one at the door.’
    ‘No one. What was that Beckett quote?’
    ‘The quote came from a play that my dad directed at his school. I was a child. I can’t have been very old. The play was new then. I went round repeating the words for years. I thought they were hilarious.’
    ‘Your dad put on Beckett at a school?’
    ‘He did! Or maybe it wasn’t Beckett. An absurd play, anyway. Bess, don’t they have any idea who shot Halland?’
    ‘They haven’t told me anything.’
    ‘Have you asked?’
    ‘Not really. Anyway, I’m off to the Pavilion.’
    ‘Bess, we’ve just buried Halland. You can’t go to the Pavilion.’
    ‘Don’t make me say that Halland would have wanted me to go.’
    ‘But there are reasons behind those mourning rules. They’re for your own good.’
    ‘Mourning…’ Should I tell her that I didn’t mourn for Halland? For ten years I mourned for Abby – someone I had killed and who was not even dead.
    ‘If you don’t want to come, I will go on my own,’ I said.

21
    The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams.
     
    Montaigne, ESSAYS
    In the beginning, before we started watching television every night, we read and talked. One evening, Halland told me about a hypnotist he had seen as a boy. The man made a group of teenagers think they were hens, but Halland didn’t believe they were truly hypnotized. He still thought the man was a hoaxer.
    I witnessed a similar performance by the same hypnotist , though he was older then. He convinced me, and I told Halland so. ‘Why?’ he asked. I had told the story so often that my reasoning had become an anecdote in its own right. But now that I wanted to tell the anecdote to Halland, the words stuck in my throat.
    I was afraid that the hypnotist’s power would reach out and grab me even though I sat at the back. I kept shaking my head and saying no to keep his voice and eyes away from me. Volunteers from the audience were invited onto the stage. Told to do stupid things, theyobeyed. When they were