Nemesis(140)

'But the authorities would soon discover the mistake, wouldn't they?'





'Hah!' Simon threw out his arms. 'For you a gypsy is a gypsy. If he's in prison for something he didn't do, he's sure to have been guilty of something else.'





'Who rang in?'





'They never found out, but Maria vanished the same night. They never saw her again. The police drove Raskol to Třyen in the middle of the night and Stefan was dragged kicking and swearing out of the caravan. Anna was two years old and lay in bed screaming for her mummy and there was no one, no man and no woman, who could stop her howling. Until Raskol went in and lifted her up.'





They stared at the entrance to the bank. Harry glanced at his watch. Only a couple of minutes until it closed. 'What happened then?'





'When Stefan had served his sentence, he immediately left the country. I talked to him on the phone now and then. He travelled a lot.'





'And Anna?'





'She grew up in the caravan, you know. Raskol sent her to school. She had gadjo friends. Gadjo habits. She didn't want to live like us; she wanted to do what her friends did–make her own decisions, earn her own money and have her own place to live. Since she inherited her grandmother's flat and moved into Sorgenfrigata, we haven't had anything to do with her. She…well, she chose to move. The only person she had any contact with was Raskol.'





'Do you think she knew he was her father?'





Simon shrugged. 'As far as I know, no one said anything, but I'm sure she knew.'





They sat in silence.





'This is where it happened,' Simon said.





'Just before closing time,' Harry said. 'Like now.'





'He wouldn't have shot Lřnn if he hadn't been forced to,' Simon said. 'But he does what he has to do. He's a warrior, you know.'





'No giggling concubines.'





'What?'





'Nothing. Where is Stefan, Simon?'





'I don't know.'





Harry waited. They watched a bank employee lock the door from the inside. Harry continued to wait.





'The last time I talked to him, he was ringing from a town in Sweden,' Simon said. 'Gothenburg. That's all I can help you with.'





'It's not me you're helping.'





'I know,' Simon sighed. 'I know.'





* * *





Harry found the yellow house in Vetlandsveien. The lights on both floors were lit. He parked, got out and stood looking at the metro station. That was where they had met on the first dark autumn evenings to go apple scrumping. Sigge, Tore, Kristian, Torkild, Řystein and Harry. That was the fixed team line-up. They had cycled to Nordstrand because the apples were bigger there and the chances of anyone knowing your father smaller. Sigge had climbed over the fence first and Řystein had kept lookout. Harry had been the tallest and could reach the biggest apples. One evening, however, they hadn't felt like cycling so far and they had gone scrumping in their local neighbourhood.





Harry looked across at the garden on the other side of the road.





They had already filled their pockets when he had discovered the face staring down at them from the illuminated window on the first floor. Without saying a word. It was Kebab.





Harry opened the gate and went up to the door. JŘRGEN AND KRISTIN LŘNN was painted on the porcelain sign over the two bells. Harry rang the top one.





Beate didn't answer until he had pressed twice.





She asked if he wanted tea, but he shook his head and she went into the kitchen while he kicked off his boots in the hallway.





'Why's your father's name still on the sign?' he asked when she came into the sitting room with a cup. 'So that strangers will think a man lives in the house?'





She shrugged and settled into a deep armchair. 'We've never got round to doing anything about it. His name has probably been there so long we don't see it any more.'





'Mm.' Harry pressed his palms together. 'That's basically what I wanted to talk about.'





'The door sign?'





'No. Dysosmia. Not being able to smell bodies.'





'What do you mean?'





'I was standing in the hall yesterday looking at the first e-mail I'd received from Anna's murderer. It was the same as with your door sign. The senses registered it, but not the brain. That's what dysosmia is. The printout had been hanging there for so long I had stopped seeing it, just like the photo of Sis and me. When it was stolen, I only noticed something was different, but not what it was. Do you know why?'





Beate shook her head.





'Because nothing had happened to me which would make me see things differently. I saw only what I assumed to be there. Something happened yesterday, though. Ali said he had seen a woman's back by the cellar door. It suddenly struck me that all the time I had assumed Anna's murderer was a man, without realising it. Whenever you make the mistake of imagining what you think you're looking for, you don't see the other things you find. That made me see the e-mail with new eyes.'