Read Don't Look Back for Free Online Page B

nighttime."
    "Did you brush your teeth?" he asked, sitting down on the telephone bench.
    He could see before him the little mocha-colored face and pearl-white teeth.
    "Mama did it for me."
    "And you took your fluoride pill?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "And said your prayers?"
    "Mama says I don't have to."
    He chatted to his grandson for a long time, with the receiver pressed to his ear so he could hear all the little sighs and lilts in the lively voice. It was as pliant and soft as a willow flute in the spring. Finally he exchanged a few words with his daughter. He heard her resigned sigh when he told her about the body they had found, as if she disapproved of the way he had chosen to spend his life. She sighed in exactly the same way as Elise had done. He didn't mention her involvement in Somalia, wracked by civil war. He looked at the clock instead and thought that somewhere someone was sitting and doing exactly the same thing. Somewhere else someone was waiting, staring at the window and the telephone, someone who would wait in vain.

    Headquarters was a twenty-four-hour institution that served a district of five communities, inhabited by 115,000 citizens, some good, some bad. More than two hundred people were
employed in the entire courthouse and prison offices, and one hundred fifty of them worked at Police Headquarters. Of these, thirty were investigators, but since some staff members were always on leave or attending courses and seminars by order of the Minister of Justice, in practice there were never more than twenty people at work each day. That was too few. According to Holthemann, the public was no longer in focus—they were more or less outside the field of vision.

    Minor cases were solved by single investigators, while more difficult cases were assigned to larger teams. Between 14,000 and 15,000 cases poured in annually. In the daytime, the work might consist of dealing with applications from people who wanted to set up stands to sell things like silk flowers or figures made out of dough at the market, or who wanted to demonstrate against something, such as the new tunnel. The automated traffic cameras had to be reviewed. People would come in, simmering with indignation, to be confronted by undeniable images of themselves in the act of crossing double lines or running red lights. They would sit snorting in the waiting room, thirty or forty per day, with their wallets quaking in their jackets. Pelle Police Car, the community public relations vehicle, had to be manned, and it had to be admitted that the officers weren't exactly fighting over this important duty. Detainees had to be taken to hearings. The Headquarters staff came in with applications of their own, requests for leave that had to be dealt with, and the days were packed with meetings. On the fourth floor was the Legal and Prosecution Section, where five lawyers worked in close cooperation with the police. On the fifth and sixth floors was the county jail. On the roof was a yard where the prisoners could get a glimpse of the sky.
    The duty officer was the Headquarters representative to the outside world, and the job placed great demands on the flexibility and patience of that officer. Citizens were on the phone twenty-four hours a day, an almost endless barrage of
complaints: bicycles stolen, dogs lost, break-ins, claims of harassment. Excitable parents from the better residential areas would ring to complain about joyriding in the neighborhood. Occasionally only a gasping voice was heard, a pitiful attempt to report abuse or rape that expired in despair, leaving nothing but a dial tone on the line. Less frequent were calls reporting murder or missing persons. In the midst of this barrage Skarre sat, waiting. He knew that it would come, he could feel the tension mounting as the clock ticked and the hours rolled into evening and then night.

    It was almost midnight when Sejer's phone rang for the second time. He was dozing in his armchair with the newspaper on his