‘Not entirely, no,’ the female voice answered.
‘Then he’s been out drink-driving again and forgotten it. Ring Bamse’s. I bet it’s parked outside the pub. Eighteen-wheeler with Sigdal Kitchens on the side. Over and out.’
He replaced the radio, and I thought the atmosphere had noticeably lightened, so I took advantage of the opportunity.
‘I’ve worked out that someone has been murdered, but am I allowed to ask what this has to do with me?’
The question was met with silence, but I could see by Sunded’s pose that he was thinking. Then he turned towards the back seat and his eyes bored into me. ‘Fine, we might as well get this over with right away. We know you did it, herr Kjikerud, and there is no way of you wriggling out of it. You see, we have a body and a crime scene and evidence that ties you to both.’
I ought to have been shocked, horrified. I ought to have felt my heart skip a beat or sink or whatever it does when you hear a jubilant policeman tell you they have proof that will send you to prison for life. But I felt none of this. For I didn’t hear a jubilant policeman, I heard Inbau, Reid and Buckley. First step. Direct confrontation. Or, to paraphrase the manuaclass="underline" The detective should at the outset of the interrogation make it abundantly clear that the police know everything. Say ‘we’ and ‘the police’, never ‘I’. And ‘know’, not ‘believe’. Distort the interviewee’s self-image, address low-status persons with ‘herr’ and high-status persons by their first name.
‘And between you and me,’ Sunded continued, lowering his voice in a way that was clearly meant to signal confidentiality, ‘from what I hear, Sindre Aa was no loss. If you hadn’t used the rope on the old sourpuss, someone else hopefully would have.’
I stifled a yawn. Step two. Sympathise with the suspect by normalising the act.
When I didn’t answer Sunded went on. ‘The good news is that with a quick confession I could reduce your sentence.’
Oh my goodness, the Explicit Promise! It was a ploy Inbau, Reid and Buckley absolutely forbade, a legal trap that only the most desperate detective would use. This man really did want to get back home from Hedmark in a hurry.
‘So why did you do it, Kjikerud?’
I looked through the side window. Fields. Farms. Fields. Farms. Fields. Stream. Fields. Wonderfully sleep-inducing.
‘Well, Kjikerud?’ I heard Sunded’s fingers drumming on the overnight bag.
‘You’re lying,’ I said.
The drumming stopped. ‘Repeat.’
‘You’re lying, Sunded. I have no idea who Sindre Aa is, and you’ve got nothing on me.’
Sunded gave a brief lawnmower laugh. ‘Haven’t I? So tell me where you’ve been for the last twenty-four hours. Would you be so kind, Kjikerud?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘If you tell me what this case is all about.’
‘Smack ’im!’ Pimples spat. ‘Endride, smack-’
‘Shut up,’ Sunded said calmly, turning to me. ‘And why should we tell you, Kjikerud?’
‘Because then perhaps I’ll talk to you. If not, I’ll keep my mouth shut until my solicitor comes. From Oslo.’ I saw Sunded’s mouth tighten, and I upped the ante: ‘Sometime tomorrow if we’re lucky…’
Sunded angled his head and studied me as if I were an insect he was considering whether to add to his collection or just crush.
‘Fine, Kjikerud. It all started when the person sitting next to you received a phone call about a tractor abandoned in the middle of the road. They found the tractor and a flock of crows which had met for lunch on the rear loader. They had already made short work of the soft bits of a dog. The tractor belonged to Sindre Aa, but naturally he didn’t respond when we rang, so one of us popped over and found him in the rocking chair where you had put him. We found a Mercedes in the barn with a knackered engine and number plates that we traced to you, Kjikerud. At length Elverum police station made a connection between the dead dog and a routine report from the hospital about a semi-conscious man covered in muck who had been admitted with a nasty dog bite. They rang, and the duty nurse told us that the man had been unconscious, but in his pocket they had found a credit card bearing the name Ove Kjikerud. And hey presto – here we are.’
I nodded. So I knew how they had found me. But how on earth had Greve managed it? The question had been churning around in my admittedly dopey brain without yielding a result. Could Greve have contacts inside the local police as well? Someone who had made sure Greve could get to the hospital before the police? Wrong! They had just strolled into the room and saved me. Wrong! Sunded had done that, the uninitiated outsider, the Kripos man from Oslo. I could feel a headache coming on as the next thought announced its arrivaclass="underline" Suppose things were as I feared, what sort of protection would I have then in a remand cell? Suddenly the Monsen twins’ synchronised breathing did not feel so reassuring. Nothing was reassuring. I felt as though there was no one in this world I could trust any more. No one. Apart from perhaps one person. The outsider with the overnight bag. I would have to lay my cards on the table, tell Sunded everything, ensure he took me to a different police station. Elverum was corrupt, no doubt about that, probably there was more than one undercover schemer in this car.
The radio crackled again. ‘Patrol car zero one, come in.’
Pimples grabbed the radio. ‘Yes, Lise?’
‘There’s no truck outside Bamse’s. Over.’
Telling Sunded everything would of course involve revealing that I was an art thief. And how would I convince them that I had shot Ove in self-defence, indeed, almost by accident? A man who was so doped up by Greve’s potion that he must have been cross-eyed.
‘Get a grip, Lise. Ask around. No one can hide an eighteen-metre-long vehicle in this district, OK?’
The voice that answered sounded miffed. ‘Karlsen says you usually find his truck for him, since you’re a policeman and his brother-in-law. Over.’
‘I bloody well do not! You can forget that one, Lise.’
‘He says it’s not much to ask. You got the least ugly of his sisters.’
I was being shaken by the Monsen twins’ laughter.
‘Tell the idiot that we’ve got proper police work to do today for once,’ Pimples snarled. ‘Over and out.’
I really had no idea how to play this game. It was just a question of time before my true identity would be revealed. Should I tell them straight away or was it a card I could keep up my sleeve for later?
‘Now it’s your turn, Kjikerud,’ Sunded said. ‘I’ve done a bit of checking up on you. You’re an old acquaintance of ours. And according to our documents you’re unmarried. So what did the doctor mean when he said he would look after your wife? Diana, wasn’t it?’
That card went up in smoke. I sighed and looked through the side window. Wasteland, cultivated land. No oncoming traffic, no houses, just a cloud of dust from a tractor or a car on the distant horizon.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. I had to think more clearly. More clearly. Had to see the whole chessboard.
‘What was your relationship with Sindre Aa, Kjikerud?’
Being addressed by this alien name was beginning to wear me down. I was about to reply when I realised that I had been wrong. Again. The police really did think I was Ove Kjikerud! That was the name they had been given of the person admitted to hospital. But if they had passed the same message on to Greve, why had Greve visited this Kjikerud at the hospital? He had never heard of any Kjikerud; no one in the whole world knew that Kjikerud had anything to do with me – Roger Brown! It simply didn’t make sense. He must have found me via a different channel.
I saw the cloud of dust on the road approaching.
‘Did you hear my question, Kjikerud?’
First of all Greve had found me in the cabin. Then at the hospital. Even though I didn’t have the mobile on me. Greve didn’t have any contacts, either in Telenor or in the police. So how was that possible?