by Karin Fossum
‘Oh, is that the time! He must be waiting for me.’
But no one came. It might be a tactic, she thought. They had decided they had been nice long enough now; it was time to demonstrate the gravity of the situation, what she had done, her appalling crime. She must not be allowed to believe they had forgotten it. They had noted it, discussed it and compared it with other crimes. They had given her a place in the district’s history. She would be talked about at dinner tables, like some particularly juicy titbit, in homes up and down the country, and discussed over a drink or two in the evening. But for now, she had to live with the uncertainty and wait in the most humane prison system in the world, which was her good fortune. She lay down on her bunk again, with her hands close by her sides, tense as a steel spring. She normally spent the afternoon going through her conversation with Sejer in detail, but now she had nothing to go through. He was busy with something else, someone else. After all, she was not the only one, there were lots of green doors along the corridor and all day long she heard locks firing open and closed like gunshots.
It was Adde who came with her lunch at one o’clock. He was one of the guards who said little, using his eyes instead. He put down the rather unappetising tray on her desk, studied her and then turned to leave. There was something wrong with one of his eyes, it was lifeless – it might even be glass – bigger than the other and brighter, but quite definitely blind.
‘Will they be coming to get me soon?’ she whispered.
He did not understand, and shook his head.
‘Who?’
His dead eye expressed nothing, but the other one honed in on her.
She went over to the desk, inspected the food. There was nothing to complain about – there could have been three adults in the cell and there would be enough for them all.
‘Well.’ She looked away, embarrassed. ‘The questioning. We’re not finished.’
The cell door was open. His hand was resting on the handle, his attention was actually on the corridor, in case anything should happen there. He was so calm, so secure, so strong. It obviously had not occurred to him that she could lose her mind. That she might come charging towards him with the metal fork in her hand and aim at his eye, his one good eye. She could gouge out his eye like a mussel from its shell. She could go for the pulsing artery on his neck. It bulged thick and blue under his skin, as veins and arteries often do in men who go to the gym a lot. He knew perfectly well what she was accused of, and yet he stood with his back to her, his shoulders relaxed. She took a few steps across the floor.
‘I haven’t explained myself,’ she whispered. ‘There’s more.’
He turned to her and smiled, but only with his mouth. His hair, black and cropped, lay on his head like velvet. She looked at her lunch. Slices of brown bread, cheese and salami. Small dishes of butter and marmalade, some slices of apple. Half an orange and a yogurt. A hard-boiled egg. Small sachets of salt and pepper, a serviette and a carton of juice. He left, and she sat down to eat, but did not eat much. She lay down on the bunk again to wait, closed her eyes and imagined she was lying between the tracks on an old railway bridge with her arms held tight to her body. That she could feel the vibration of the train approaching. The legal system would rattle over her, but she was lying as flat as she could. That way, she would save her life.
But Adde came back. He escorted her down the long corridors to the lift, and on to Sejer’s office. She hoped she would get an explanation. He had kept her waiting without letting her know why, for no reason, and now he had decided to talk to her all the same. The inspector’s calm, the fact that he was so solid and unshakeable, had started to irritate her. She had come to the conclusion that he had kept her waiting on purpose, that he had a plan. Humiliation. A confession. But she was humble. She had already confessed.
She took her time to sit down, scraped the chair on the floor, was not as quiet as usual. Sejer did not notice. He gave her time to settle, waited until he had her full attention.
‘Did you have any sense of time? From the event until Gunnhild let herself into the house and raised the alarm?’
Ah, so that was what he wanted, to talk about the event – then she could go along with him.
‘No sense of time,’ she whispered. ‘Not that time stood still. But it didn’t move either. It was just one second after another, and I lived every single one of them.’
‘So it could have been hours, but also days?’
‘Yes.’
‘An eternity perhaps?’
‘Yes, an eternity, or just a moment.’
‘And was it a relief that someone had finally come and taken charge?’
‘Yes, it was fine.’
‘Just fine?’
‘I knew that sooner or later someone would come. I was tired and I didn’t care.’
She wanted to ask him if the timing was important. Why he was so concerned about the details and what she had thought and felt. He was presumably following procedure, even though she was in no way denying what had actually happened. Still, he wanted every link in the chain, held each one up to the light, looked at it from all angles.
‘You phoned Europris on Monday morning,’ Sejer said, ‘to tell them you were ill. You spoke briefly to Gunnhild. Can you remember the conversation?’
‘I’ve already told you, I remember everything.’
She tapped her temple with her forefinger, to indicate that everything was stored in her head.
‘And did you go and lie down afterwards?’
‘I kept collapsing. On the chair, on the sofa, on the floor. I remember I was freezing.’
‘So Monday passed,’ Sejer continued, ‘and Tuesday. On Wednesday afternoon, Gunnhild rang to hear how you were, if you felt any better. If there was anything you needed. What you said made no sense and you seemed to be confused. Can you remember that conversation as well?’
‘Yes, I was confused, which is not so strange, really. I sat in my chair and it would not stay still, I had to hold on to the armrests.’
‘Can you remember what Gunnhild said?’
‘She wanted to come and see me. With some food, bits and bobs, medicine. I said it didn’t suit.’
‘But you must have wanted an end to the situation? Did you not want it resolved, for someone else to take over?’
‘Yes. But it would have to be someone bigger and stronger than Gunnhild. If you see what I mean.’
His telephone was flashing again, two lines this time. Ragna tried to ask herself what she had really wanted, but was distracted by the red lights. She was overwhelmed by the fact that he gave her the time she needed, but she was starting to feel tired. She reminded herself that she was finally safe, the inspector was not an enemy. And she had plenty of time, this would only go one way, she wanted for nothing and they fed her like a goose for Christmas. Trays of food in and out, with a few friendly words.
‘The situation was already resolved,’ she whispered.
‘Is that what you thought?’
He made a quick note, then looked up again. It struck her that he rarely blinked, his eyes were big and open. She looked at the white notepad with blue-ink scribbles. And realised that if he wrote a message on one of the sheets, tore it off and folded it double, the note would be the same size as the ones she had received in her mailbox.
‘Yes, that’s what I thought. It was resolved.’
‘You had solved the problem?’
She looked away and seemed to be sad.
‘I was at the end of the road. I wasn’t frightened of anything any more and I knew that I wouldn’t get any more messages.’
‘When you were brought in, you were in pretty bad shape,’ he said. ‘You were exhausted, dehydrated and confused. You hadn’t had anything to eat or drink.’
She looked at Frank over by the window, rested her eyes on him. It was just what a person needed to relax, to watch a sleeping dog and listen to the regular breathing. After a while, she found herself breathing in the same rhythm.
Sejer tore a sheet from the notepad. He glanced at the red flashing lights on his phone, put a hand to his short fringe, but not a hair moved.
She gingerly touched her own dry hair as though mirroring him. It crossed her mind that she would be grey, like the inspector, in the course of a few years. She would turn grey while she served her sentence. It would be more flattering than faded red, it would give her character. She had never had character. She had had her father, but he was dead. She had had a son, but he had left.
‘Do you think you’ll remember me?’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘When all this is over, and someone else is sitting in this chair.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘What will you remember, do you think? Tell me.’
She was like a child begging for sweeties.
‘Your voice,’ he said and smiled. ‘No one else I know expresses themselves the way you do. I’m not used to people in this room, or building for that matter, talking to me the way you do. There’s something special about you, Ragna. Of course I will remember you. For the rest of my life, no doubt.’
‘That’s what Walther said, as well,’ she whispered. ‘That’s why I let him carry me to the bed. Ugly girls don’t get many chances.’
Chapter 15
Gunnhild used a knife to cut the tape and open the lid of the thick, brown cardboard box. Inside were bags of Sloggi briefs, in packs of ten.
‘Do you remember the old Direct mail-order catalogues?’ she asked. ‘That used to come with the post?’
‘I remember them,’ Ragna whispered. ‘My mother and I used to sit on the sofa and look at them together. It wasn’t every exciting for a little girl, mostly kitchen equipment and things like that, but I liked looking at the pictures. And they had a lucky dip, do you remember that? The surprise package?’
Gunnhild did.
‘It cost four hundred and fifty kroner,’ Ragna remembered, ‘but the catalogues said it was worth nearly a thousand. I begged and begged for months to get a lucky dip. My mother told me it was probably just full of junk, the things they never managed to sell that took up space in the warehouse. But I got what I wanted in the end. And I’ve never been so disappointed in my life.’
‘What was in it?’ Gunnhild asked, and laughed.
‘Clothes hangers, a shoehorn, cotton reels. Different-coloured combs, pens, folders and rubber bands. One of those see-through rain ponchos. And a torch that shone in different colours. Red and green and yellow.’
‘I remember those torches,’ Gunnhild said.
‘There was also a necklace with several strings of plastic beads. I wore that necklace every day, I had to show my mother that it had been worth it. But the necklace soon broke, and I spent hours on my knees picking up beads.’
Ragna stared at the cardboard box.
‘Now we get surprise packages every day.’
Ragna put the packs of briefs in a trolley and went out into the shop. They already had a barcode on them. A man was standing further down the aisle, stretching up to look at something on the top shelf. She recognised the black suit and the slicked-back dark hair. From a distance, he looked thinner and smaller than last time, when he stood in front of her at the till. It was the Agent. With his black shoes and fastidious appearance, which had made her assume he worked for the Secret Service, or perhaps a funeral home. He pulled a shopping trolley on wheels behind him. He did not notice that she was staring at him, he was not sensitive to it, because he had no enemies, Ragna guessed, he had nothing to fear. There were people like that. It was not what he was looking for, so he moved on. His suit made him conspicuous. She passed him and carried on down the aisle, and then when she was some way from him, turned and looked at him again. He had an energy about him, a nervous edge, which she did not think was compatible with working as an undertaker. He was so quick, light on his feet, obviously on his way somewhere. Perhaps he was an estate agent after all, they often dressed like that. He eventually did take something from the shelves, a packet of four suet balls, the ones in green plastic netting. So he fed the birds, she liked that. She had the same kind outside her kitchen window. And it was winter, so people often remembered to do things like that. She stayed as close as she could to him, without making it obvious, and without knowing why. There were lots of other customers in the shop she could observe. But she liked following him up and down the aisles. Keeping him under surveillance.
When her shift was finished, she took some Sloggi briefs with her and asked Gunnhild to make a note. Audun got to her seat on the bus first and sat there tapping away on his mobile phone. After a while, he stopped and started to read a book. Maybe Lars had managed to convince him and he was studying to take the forklift truck licence.
She chose a seat five rows back on the right-hand side. She looked out at the shops and parks. A kindergarten with an old fishing boat outside in the playground jogged a memory. There had also been a boat at her son’s nursery that he liked to play in. Or perhaps it was more true to say that he felt protected in the small cabin. He had always been a child who liked to hide, to creep into confined spaces. Aboard the boat, he was at the helm. Suddenly she thought she saw his little face in the round cabin window, as pale and frightened as she was. After the kindergarten, the bus passed a football pitch and a shop that sold things for horses and dogs. Then lots of single-storey wooden houses, from the sixties, painted in pink and yellow and blue. She had seen everything before, day in and day out for years, because she always followed the same pattern. The pattern was imprinted like a map in her brain, and when she stuck to it, she felt safe.
She remembered the necklace again, the turquoise plastic beads, and the sound, the faint tinkle when her fingers played with the strings, the sound when the necklace broke, the beads rolling in every direction over the wooden floor. The shame she felt in relation to her mother, whom she had convinced to spend the money on junk, who never once said ‘I told you so’.
She crossed the road at the bus stop on Kirkelina and went to Irfan’s shop. Dolly was tied up outside, and she could see one of the Soi children in the aisle. She walked straight into Olaf. They exchanged a few words, then she picked up the things she needed from the shelves and put them in her basket. She asked Irfan if he had seen any vacancies for chefs recently, but he had not. She decided that she would tell him about her dream, when he came into her bedroom to get her brain. That she had seen him so clearly, with the bloody scalpel in his hand. But no sooner had she thought it than she was infuriated with herself. What would a man from his culture think about her confiding in him like that? ‘I dreamt about you last night.’ It was such an intimate thing to say, regardless of who it was. And to say it to the local shop owner was too much. She could have said it to Lars, though. Lars would have grinned happily and asked for the details. So she said nothing. When she had bought her things, she crossed the road again to her drive. Opened the mailbox, took out the newspaper, scanned the headlines. She saw there was something else lying on the bottom. Two letters. One was postmarked Berlin. The familiar blue stamp was the first thing she saw, ‘Not known at this address’. The card of a pony had been returned. On the other envelope, which did not have a stamp, it simply said ‘RIEGEL’. So Rikard Josef was not to be found. She could not understand it. Was Germany not a well-organised country, with perfectly functioning systems and structures? She trudged up tow
ards the house and slammed the door shut, pulled off her coat. She tore the anonymous envelope open in a fury. She had not been chosen at random, how could she have ever believed that?
With the letter in her hand, she crossed the room and stood by the window. She wondered if Irfan would see her, if he looked out right now, see her black silhouette. The message was short and concise, as usual.
‘NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU.’
She sometimes got up in the middle of the night and pulled the curtains to one side, stared over at the Sois’ house, and at the church spire and pale clock face further up the road. After a few restless turns around the floor, she would creep back down under the duvet, and make herself as small as possible. No one had seen her, no one knew what she was thinking. Often when she lay awake like this, she thought of Walther Eriksson. He had probably gone back to Stockholm, and she had not given him anything. But then, she had nothing to give. And even worse, a postman in Berlin had once again stood in Landsberger Allee with a card of a pony in his hand and not known what to do with it. There was no longer a mailbox with the name Riegel on it. But it was Christmas soon! His card would come as always, she was sure of that, and she would mention to Gunnhild, almost in passing, that the Christmas cards were flooding in. Got one from Berlin today. Goodness, my boy has so much to do!
She lay awake and listened to the dark. Stretched herself out as far as she could, then curled up like a prawn, tossed and turned. The night was no longer silent, she could hear the seven billion people who lived on this earth. They were breathing like an enormous beast, cackling and screaming and wailing. She remembered that she had once heard about a man who had stayed in a completely soundproofed room for twenty-four hours. He explained that it was like an immense pressure in his head that kept building and building, until it was impossible to think. Like being cast in concrete. Imagine that silence, Ragna tried, it must be like death. She looked at the alarm clock – ten past four. Not much left of the night, but not yet morning. She got up and went to the bathroom. The window was covered by a plastic blue curtain, which she pulled aside as well. There was a thin strip of grass at the back of the house – or rather, it was more weeds and heather, frozen and leached of colour. The woodpile was also below the window, under the green tarpaulin. She had a pee, and then went back to bed and curled up.
