In the Darkness by Karin Fossum Page A

seemed familiar. Bloody hell.’ He reached for a packet of nicotine gum on the table, stood it on end, gave it a little flick, and stood it up again. ‘How d’you find that out?’
    ‘Well, the two of you wrote out a purchase agreement, just like people do. Did you advertise in the paper?’
    ‘No, I drove around with a card in the window. Saved the money. It took a couple of days, and then he rang. He was a funny bloke. He’d been saving up since the year dot, and paid cash.’
    ‘Why did you want to sell it?’
    ‘I didn’t want to. I lost my job and couldn’t afford to keep it any longer.’
    ‘So now you haven’t got a car?’
    ‘Yes I have. I’ve got an Escort which I bought at a car auction, an old one. But it just sits there most of the time, I haven’t got the money for petrol while I’m on social security.’
    ‘Well, that’s fine.’ Sejer rose.
    ‘No, it’s not at all fine, if you ask me!’
    They both chuckled.
    ‘Do they work?’ Sejer asked, pointing at the packet of chewing gum.
    The younger man thought a bit: ‘Yeah, they do, but you get totally hooked on them. They’re expensive as well. And they taste disgusting, like chewing a fag.’
    Sejer left, crossed Mikkelsen from the top of the list and put him at the bottom instead. He cut across the street and felt the sun warming him gently through the leather of his jacket. This was the best time, when the anticipation of summer still lay some way in the future, a dream of the cabin on Sandøya, of sun and sea and salt water, the essence of all previous summers, the good holidays. Occasionally he felt a slight uneasiness, the bitter experience of summers that had been rainy and windy, there had been a number of those, too. But during sunny summers he found peace, he didn’t itch so much then.
    He jogged up the shallow steps and pushed open the door, nodded briefly to Mrs Brenningen in reception. She really was a good-looking woman, Mrs Brenningen, cheerful and friendly. Not that he chased women, perhaps he ought to, but that would have to wait. For the moment he contented himself with just looking at them.
    ‘Is it exciting?’ he enquired, nodding at the book she was reading in between busy periods.
    ‘Not too bad,’ she smiled. ‘Power, lust and intrigue.’
    ‘Sounds just like the police.’
    He chose the stairs, closed the door and sank down in the chair from Kinnarps, which he’d paid for out of his own pocket. Then he got up again, pulled Maja Durban’s folder from the file and sat reading. He gazed at the pictures of her, first the one taken while she was alive, a pretty, slightly rounded woman with a chubby face and black eyebrows. Small eyes. Rather close-cropped hair. It suited her well. An attractive woman favoured by fortune, the way she was smiling said a lot about who she was, a mischievous, teasing smile that brought small wrinkles to her cheeks. In the other photograph she was stretched out on a bed staring at the ceiling with eyes wide open. The face expressed neither fear nor astonishment. It expressed nothing whatsoever, it resembled a colourless mask.
    The folder also contained a number of photos of the flat. Its rooms were neat, pretty spaces full of beautiful things, feminine, but without frills or pastels, the furniture and carpets were in vivid colours, reds, greens, yellows, colours a strong woman would choose, he thought. Nothing bore any mark of what had happened, nothing had been broken or upset, it was as if everything had happened silently and unobtrusively. And totally unexpectedly. She had known him. Opened the door to him and removed her clothes herself. First they’d made love, and nothing indicated that it had occurred against her will. Then something had happened. A breakdown, a short-circuit. And a strong man could squeeze the life out of a small woman in mere seconds, he knew that, just a few kicks and it would be over. No one can hear your screams if you’ve got a muffler of duck down over