In the Darkness Read Online Free PDF

breath at last.
    ‘You can’t remember if any of his mates ever expressed a wish to own the car?’
    ‘Well, yes, I’m sure they did. But he wouldn’t sell. Didn’t even like lending it.’
    ‘And you don’t remember phone calls in the days before he disappeared that might have been about the car?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What was he like that evening when he left?’
    ‘I’ve told you already. Just like normal. He got home from work at three-thirty. He was on early shift. Then he had a pizza Mexicana, and coffee, and lay in the garage all evening.’
    ‘Lay?’
    ‘Under the car. And tinkered. He was fixated with that car. Afterwards he washed it. I was busy in the house and didn’t give it a thought until he came in right in the middle of
Casino
and said he was off out to show the car to someone.’
    ‘No name?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Nothing about where they were going to meet?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘And you didn’t ask why he wanted to sell it?’
    She touched her hair and shook her head. ‘I didn’t get involved with the car. I haven’t even got a driving licence. It didn’t matter to me what car we had, so long as we had one. And he didn’t say he was going to sell it, either, just that he was going to show it to someone. And that wasn’t necessarily the murderer. He could have met someone, or given someone a lift, or whatever, I don’t know. This town is full of loonies, it’s because of all this heroin, I don’t know why you lot can’t put a stop to it. Think of Jan Henry who’ll have to grow up here, he’s not exactly got a strong character, he’s like his dad for that.’
    ‘A strong character,’ said Sejer smiling, ‘is something one develops over time. Perhaps we should allow him a few more years yet. But we advertised for that prospective purchaser in the newspapers and on television,’ he reminded her, ‘and no one came forward. No one dared. Either your husband lied when he left home that evening, perhaps he was off to do something quite different – or that purchaser was the actual killer.’
    ‘Lied?’ She gave him an offended stare. ‘If you think he had dirty secrets, you’re wrong. He wasn’t that sort. And there was no one after him either, women didn’t find him that attractive, if you must know. If he said he was going to show the car to someone, that’s the truth.’
    She said this in a forthright manner that convinced him. He thought a bit, saw the boy come sneaking in and seat himself gingerly on the floor behind his mother. He gave him a surreptitious wink.
    ‘If you think further back, was there anything that was out of the ordinary in any way? Let’s say from six months before he disappeared up to the time his car was found on the dump – can you recall an episode or a period when he wasn’t quite himself, or he was worried or something like that? I mean, anything at all? Telephone calls? Letters? Maybe days he got home later than normal from work, or didn’t sleep well?’
    Jorun Einarsson munched the other sugar lump, and he saw how her thoughts were travelling back. She cocked her head slightly over some memory or other, discarded it and mused on. Einarsson junior breathed noiselessly, like most little pitchers he had big ears.
    ‘There was some trouble at the pub one evening. I suppose there is most of the time, and anyway it wasn’t anything serious, but someone had got completely legless, so the landlord rang the police to have him taken away. It was one of Egil’s mates, from the brewery. Egil followed them and pleaded with them to let him out. He promised to drive him home and get him to bed. And obviously that’s what they did. That night he didn’t get home till half past three in the morning and I remember that he overslept the following day.’
    ‘Yes? Did you learn what had happened?’
    ‘No. Only that he’d been completely pissed. Not Egil, but the other man. Egil had the car, he was on the early shift. Anyway, I didn’t ask, that sort of thing