Free The Ravens by Vidar Sundstøl Page B

would. And lately that increasingly meant out to the vast, white space beyond the city. What was it really like out there? Because it was a real place, after all, and could be reached by snowmobile, for instance. Wasn’t that something that young men sometimes did? Drove out to a spot where they could no longer see land in any direction, and where no one could see them? Making themselves invisible to the world. But they could still see themselves and their snowmobiles. That was the difference. When Inga’s thoughts headed out there, she saw nothing but whiteness. She disappeared.
    Oscar looked at her from the photograph on the wall. That same handsome policeman smile all day long, yet it hadn’t always been that way. What was it about him? she wondered. She hadn’t thought about that in a very long time. When he was alive, especially when the boys were still small, she would sometimes lie awake, listening to her husband snoring, alone with everythingthat he never even noticed. What was it about him? she would then think. Now she had the same thought: What was it about Oscar? And suddenly she realized what it was. Oscar had understood so little about what went on—both between the two of them and with the boys. Not because he was unwilling or uninterested, but because he was just plain stupid. He simply didn’t get it. She had to laugh at this sudden insight. A bold and stupid cop—that was the man she’d fallen for! And she wondered what that said about her.
    “Oh, Oscar,” she whispered into the empty room.
    Her knitting lay on the little table next to her chair. She couldn’t remember setting it down, but she must have done so. There lay the green-and-white scarf she had started knitting for Chrissy. Should she ring for the staff and ask for a cup of tea? No, she didn’t want to be a nuisance. They had so much to do, not only here at Lakeview but also dropping off their children and picking them up again, cleaning house, and cooking meals. They had friends to visit and lives of their own, about which she knew only a tiny bit, a mere speck.
    She decided to reread the three postcards from Norway. This time she would read them even slower than before.

13
    LANCE DROVE SOUTH from Ely through the same kind of snow-covered, forested landscape where he’d spent the past two months. Yesterday’s events had shaken him, both the surprising encounter with Clayton Miller and, in particular, Chrissy’s story. Had a blood-spattered man holding a baseball bat actually stood on the side of the road outside Finland? If that was true, it had to have been Andy. But there was something surreal about the story, as if it had been taken from an episode of The Twilight Zone, just as Chrissy had said. Except for the fact that such a series of coincidences was even less believable. Was it really plausible that a couple of dopers would have made up a story about a bloodstained man with a baseball bat standing along the road on the very night that someone had his skull bashed in with a baseball bat only a short drive away?
    Something huge and dark opened inside Lance, filling him completely. For several seconds he felt like he consisted of nothing but this cold, dark void, like a starless night over the lake. Then he was back in the car, bewildered by what had just happened. He slowed down in case it occurred again, but the only thing he noticed now was that his heart was beating faster than normal. Could it have been a panic attack like the kind he’d suffered at night in Kenora? But no. On those occasions he hadn’t been able to take in enough oxygen, and each episode had centered on his breathing. This was different. As if his brain no longer wished tofunction and had simply switched off, taking a break, abandoning him to a rushing, dark nothingness. It was the thought of the bloodstained man at the side of the road that had unleashed this feeling. He had pictured the man as Andy. Seen Andy’s face after the murder. This scenario