Free Hell Fire by Karin Fossum

No, they’d manage themselves, they said. I watched them walk down across the fields; there was something quite sad about them.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by that? Sad in what way?”
    â€œI’m not really sure how to put it. Like they were two lonely souls in a big world. They came back again later and disappeared around to the car, only to reappear a few minutes later carrying a pizza box and a bag, which they took down to the trailer. Then I forgot about them and got on with other chores—there’s always plenty to do on a big farm like this.”
    He focused on a knot in the table; they could hear his breathing.
    â€œWhy did you go down to the trailer the next day?” Sejer asked. “You found them at 2 p.m. What were you doing down there?”
    â€œI just went to say hello. To ask how the night had been.”
    He told them that his wife had been busy baking all morning. An apple cake and an almond cake. The girls wanted the almond cake, and they decided to give the apple cake to the pair in the trailer. Emilie, aged ten, was allowed to put the thin slices of Pink Lady apples in the bottom of the tin like brickwork. Solveig rolled the dough into thin sausages that she then wove in a pattern on the cake and covered it with generous helpings of nib sugar and almonds. “So I took the apple cake and went down across the field,” Randen explained. “The door was open. I knocked on the wall and called out hello so they wouldn’t get a fright when I suddenly appeared in the doorway.
    â€œThis might sound a bit dramatic, but I don’t think my life will ever be the same.”
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    The four Poles were waiting outside the house and were all clearly affected by what had happened. Two of them had seen Simon outside the trailer, carrying his teddy bear. His mother had been standing in the doorway and waved to them as they passed, and they had touched their caps with their brown working hands and waved back. Beautiful weather, they had called, and she had smiled and nodded.
    â€œThink carefully now,” Sejer urged them. “Did you see anything that might be of importance? I mean, people or cars in the vicinity of the farm in the days beforehand?”
    They looked at each other. They had talked about this. The oldest of them, Woiciech, who was in fact a butcher back home in Poland, had seen an unknown car on the road up to the farm. It might have been following the Opel, but it had stopped some distance from the farm.
    â€œCan you describe the car?” Skarre said.
    â€œDefinitely not new,” Woiciech replied. “Red.”
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    Skarven Farm had been in the Randen family for four generations, and Robert Randen and his wife Solveig were used to working hard from morning to night. Their four daughters also had duties, and Randen hoped that the eldest girl, Johanne, would take over the farm in a few years’ time. The family was sitting around the table eating supper in silence. Eventually Solveig put down her fork and turned to her husband.
    â€œWhen can we get rid of the trailer?”
    â€œAs soon as the police give us permission.”
    â€œWill they wash it?” she asked.
    â€œI very much doubt it. That’s not the way it works. We should ask the boys in this evening; we need to talk.”
    The youngest daughter, Emilie, looked at her father. “Are we going to the funeral?”
    â€œNo, sweetheart,” Randen said. “We won’t be. We’re not family.”
    â€œBut they died here. In one of our fields.”
    â€œYes, Emilie. But we should leave the family in peace.”
    â€œWill they be in the same coffin?”
    â€œNo, sweetie, they’ll each get their own. One big, one small.”
    Ma, the cat, wandered in through the open door. She was a beautiful gray cat and well preened. She jumped up onto Emilie’s lap and curled up in a ball. Emilie’s mother wanted to push the cat down, but she stopped