Soot, who was manning the telephone, looked up at him, wide-eyed.
"Are we going public with this?"
"No. We don't have any documentation. But there's a man in Elvestad waiting for her. They were married in India on August 4th. She was on her way to join him." He leaned forward to read the screen. "What have you got there?"
"A young woman," said Soot excitedly. "Just called. You've got to get over there. Linda Carling. Aged sixteen. Cycled past Hvitemoen on the 20th, just after 9 p.m. A red car was parked at the side of the road and a man and a woman were up to something in the meadow."
"Up to…?" Sejer said. He was instantly alert.
"She had a hard time finding the right words," Soot said. "Her impression was that they were about to have sex. They were running after each other, as though they were playing. Then they fell over in the grass. Later on she realised that she might have seen the victim and the killer, that they might have had sex first and he'd killed her afterwards. Neither of them saw her go by."
"There was no sexual intercourse," Sejer said brusquely. "Mind you, he might have tried it. What about the car?"
He was unaware that he had clenched his fists.
"A red car. And the red is interesting," Soot said. "Karlsen came in. A man in a red Volvo parked by the scene of the crime yesterday evening. Just sat there. They took his details, in case. He was acting strangely."
"What was his name?" Sejer said.
"Gunder Jomann."
The duty office fell silent. "That's the husband," Sejer explained. "And it's not likely to be him."
"How can we be so sure?"
"My guess is that he was at the Central Hospital. His sister's a patient there. I'll check that. Skarre, you go to Linda Carling. Worm all the information you can out of her. She saw the car!"
"Understood," Skarre said. "But isn't it a bit late?"
"We spare no-one in this case. Anything else?" He looked at Soot.
"Nothing of importance."
"Something's bothering me," Skarre said as he put on his leather jacket. "The murder weapon. What did he hit her with? There were no big stones in the grass there. Assuming he drove there and kept tools in the car then I can think of nothing that matches her injuries. What do people ordinarily keep in their cars?"
"A jack, perhaps?" Sejer said. "A tyre lever. Screwdrivers, stuff like that. Snorrason says something heavy. We have to search the area again. There's a lake on the other side of the road. Norevann. He could have ditched the murder weapon there. And the suitcase. Plus we have to find her brother."
"Brother?" Soot said.
"Her only relative, and Jomann's brother-in-law. We have to locate him as soon as possible."
"We're off," Skarre said eagerly.
Linda's need for attention knew no bounds. Being with people, being noticed all the time, was vital to her. When she was alone she was in the shade. But right now she was in the sunlight. A police officer was on his way! She sashayed around, looking for her hairbrush. Sprayed on her mother's Lagerfeld perfume. Then she ran outside and looked down the road. Still no car in sight. She opened a window to hear it the sooner and tidied the coffee table. The teenage magazine Girls was open at the centrefold with a portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio. She binned it. Kicked off her slippers and walked around in bare feet while thinking about what she was going to say. It was crucial that she kept a cool head and told it exactly as she had in fact seen it, not what she thought she had seen. But she did not remember a great deal and that annoyed her. She relived the bicycle ride in her mind and tried out some sentences to herself. What little she had to give him. They would send a man, of course, it never crossed her mind that it might be a woman police officer though she knew they existed. When finally she heard engine noise and tyres crunching the gravel, her heart leapt fiercely. She heard the doorbell, but lingered a while; she did not want to dash out like a kid. Then she worried that she might have made too much of an effort and ran into the bathroom to muss it a bit. When the door was at last opened, Skarre looked straight at a girl who was warm and breathless, with flushed cheeks and a cloud of hair framing her face. She smelt strongly of perfume.
"Linda Carling?" he said, smiling.
Something happened in Linda's head at that very second. Mesmerised, she gazed at the young officer. The porch light lit up Skarre's blond curls. His black leather jacket gleamed. His blue eyes struck her like lightning. She felt giddy. Suddenly she was important. She lost the power to speak and her body stiffened like a tightened bow in the open doorway.
Skarre looked at her with curiosity. This girl might have passed Hvitemoen at the moment the crime was committed. And yet, was she a reliable witness? He knew that women made better witnesses than men. She was young, her eyesight was probably good. Besides, it was still light at 9 p.m. She had gone by on her bike, not in a car. In a car you would be past in four or five seconds. He also knew that what she was about to tell him would in all likelihood be all that she remembered. If she remembered more details later there was every reason to be doubtful. People had this compulsive need to complete a picture. An internal harmony. What was now a series of fragments of an incident could turn into more, given time. And he detected her eagerness to be helpful. Skarre knew his witness psychology, he knew all the factors that affected someone's experience of what they actually saw. The relativity of impression. Age, gender, culture, mood. The way he would ask the questions. Besides, she seemed unfocused, fidgety and nervous. Her body was in constant motion, she gestured excessively and tossed her head. The heavy perfume wafted towards him.
"Are you on your own?"
"Yes," Linda said. "My mum is a long-distance lorry driver. She's hardly ever at home."
"Long distance? I'm impressed. Would you like a similar career?"
"You call that a career?" she laughed. "No, never ever."
She shook her head. Her white hair reminded Skarre of glass wool. They sat down in the living room.
"Where had you been?"
"With a friend. Karen Krantz. She lives out Randskog way."
"Is she a close friend?"
"We've known each other for ten years."
"You're in the same class?"
"I'm about to go to technical college to train as a hairdresser. Karen is going to sixth-form college. But apart from that we've always been in the same class."
"So what were you doing at Karen's?"
"We watched a video," said Linda, "Titanic."
"Ah," Skarre said. "With DiCaprio. That's a love story, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's a love story," said Linda, smiling. He noticed how her eyes sparkled.
"So, in other words, you were affected by the mood of that film when you left Karen?"
She shrugged flirtatiously. "You could say that. I was in a romantic mood."
That's why you believed they were playing, Skarre said to himself. You saw what you wanted to see, what your brain was expecting. A man running after a woman to make love.
"What were you thinking as you cycled along the road? Can you tell me that?"
"No." She hesitated. "My mind was very much on the film."
"Were any cars going in the opposite direction to you on your way home?"
"None," she said positively.
"As you approached Hvitemoen, what was the first thing you saw?"
"The car," she said. "First I saw the car. It was red and it wasn't parked straight. As if it had stopped suddenly…"
"Go on," Skarre said. "Talk freely, if you can. Forget that I'm sitting here listening."
Linda looked at him in amazement. That would be quite impossible.
"I looked around for the driver. It had to belong to someone. Then I saw two people in the meadow, in the wood practically. They were running. Away from me. I saw the man more clearly because he was closer to me and he blocked my view of her. He was wearing a white top. A white shirt. He was waving his arms about a lot. I thought he was trying to frighten her."