The Water's Edge by Karin Fossum Read Free Book Online

don't need your permission to invite a friend round,' he said. 'I live here too, it's my house.'
It's my house. As if he let her live there out of the goodness of his heart. She did not reply, her throat swelled up. She finished the candelabra and got a candle from a kitchen drawer, then she found a match and lit it, inhaling the comforting smell of burnt sulphur. She stood for a while gazing at the restless flame.
'It's flickering,' she said. 'Look.'
Reinhardt looked up. 'Must be a draught somewhere.'
'There's no draught. Nothing is open.'
'Turn on the radio, please,' Reinhardt asked her. 'The news will be on soon. We need to find out if there have been any developments.'
She did as he had asked. A woman was reporting on the body found in Linde Forest.
'He was an only child,' Kristine whispered.
The thought saddened her. It meant that someone was left alone now, robbed of everything.
'A man wearing a blue anorak,' Reinhardt said, 'who was seen leaving in a pale car.' But we gave them so much more information. I mean, about how he was dressed. He was limping too, why didn't she say anything about that?'
Kristine shrugged. 'Well, he wasn't really limping,' she said. 'He just walked in an odd way. Perhaps we were mistaken, perhaps we can't rely on our memories. Besides,' she added, 'we disagreed about several things.'
'No,' he said firmly. 'We did not disagree and we are not mistaken. Nothing wrong up here,' he added, tapping his temple with his finger. He returned to his newspaper; that, too, was crammed with stories about Jonas August. Kristine let her head sink back against the headrest of her armchair, folded her hands in her lap and tried to relax. It was quiet until the doorbell rang in the hall. Reinhardt shot up from the sofa, Kristine remained in the armchair watching the flickering candle.
The guests entered the living room, smiling. Irmelin held a potted plant in her hands, a small begonia. Reinhardt disappeared into the basement and returned with a three-litre box of Chablis.
'Get the glasses, Kristine, would you?' he called out. Their guests sat down at the table, Irmelin, dark and slender, Kjell, sturdy with thinning hair. He started talking about his job; he was a chiropractor and the others listened. A teenage girl had thrown up all over his coat because she could not bear the sound of bones cracking. A colleague was involved in some awful case where a woman had been paralysed from the waist down following treatment.
'And what about you?' he said eventually. 'Any news?'
He might as well have shone a spotlight on Reinhardt.
'Well,' Reinhardt said, 'something very dramatic has happened since we last saw you. You've probably heard it on the news.'
'Dramatic?' Kjell was baffled.
'Jonas August Løwe,' Reinhardt explained. 'The boy whose body was found up in Linde Forest.'
Once the case was mentioned all four turned serious and it was a long time before anyone said anything.
'He was found by a couple out walking,' Reinhardt explained. 'A couple who go walking to Lake Linde every Sunday.'
Kjell shook his head in disbelief. 'You don't mean that you were the ones who found him?'
Reinhardt planted his elbows on the table. 'Yes, indeed we were,' he said. 'And we've been questioned.'
'Why did they want to question you?' Kjell asked.
'Because we saw a man up there and he was acting suspiciously, I'm certain of it. We passed him just by the barrier and now the police are looking for him. They say he is a witness, obviously, but that's what they always say. Personally, I thought he looked guilty as sin.'
'Perhaps he was just out for a walk, like you were,' Kjell suggested.
'But hardly anyone ever goes there,' Reinhardt objected. 'Besides, he looked very agitated.'
'So tell us more,' Irmelin begged.
'We had reached the lake,' he said, 'and were on our way back to the car. We were walking through the forest and there he was, lying on his stomach, face down. It wasn't difficult to see what had happened to him, if you know what I