He Who Fears The Wolf

by Karin Fossum

  He tried to change his tone, which was becoming a bit too lively. "Not much room for improvisation or imagination. A large part of the job involves searching for tiny little physical things, such as hair, prints, or traces of blood. Tracks from shoes or car tyres. But later comes the psychological part, and even though it never gets much space in our reports, it's still there. And of course that's the only thing about the job that's truly exciting. If there wasn't any room for that, I would have done something else."

  "And what about the people you haul in and lock up in cages?"

  He looked at her in dismay. "That's not exactly how we would describe it."

  Now she's trying to provoke me, he thought. Maybe she's so preoccupied with rebellion that she feels she doesn't have to comply with the normal rules of courtesy.

  "I would like to send them somewhere else," he said calmly.

  He was so fascinated by this woman, by her wide, fair face and her dark eyes with light rings around the pupils, that he was almost nervous about what he might say.

  "If there was any other place for them," he said. "But in spite of everything we've never got any further than . . . cages."

  "Do you care about them?" she asked. He had to look up to see what her expression was. She was teasing him again.

  "Yes, I do, although I don't have much time for them. Besides, I'm not a prison guard. But I know that the guards do care about them."

  "Ah, yes!" She shrugged. "I suppose we do have some of the most humane penitentiaries in the world."

  "Humane?" He couldn't keep the hardness out of his voice. "The prisoners dope themselves up. They escape by jumping out of windows, and break their legs or even their necks. They go crazy, rape each other, kill each other, and take their own lives. That's how humane it is!"

  He took a deep breath.

  "You really do care about them!" She smiled.

  "I said I did."

  "I had to be sure."

  They both fell silent, and once again he was astonished by this strange conversation. It was as if she lacked the usual respect for the authority he represented, which made people speak with deference or not at all.

  "Errki," he said at last. "Tell me about Errki."

  "Only if you're truly interested."

  "Of course I'm interested!"

  She went out into the corridor. "Let's go to the cafeteria and have a Coke. I'm thirsty."

  He found himself trotting after her, struggling to suppress the commotion in his head, or his chest, or his stomach, or wherever it was right now. He was no longer sure of anything.

  CHAPTER 10

  "Which way do you think he went?"

  "Through the woods."

  Dr Struel pointed a little to the left of the Beacon. "There's a small lake that we call the Well, but we've already looked there. If he went past it and continued on, he would come out on the main road where it passes under the motorway. And if he was seen in Finnemarka, that direction would make sense."

  A little while later they were sitting in the cafeteria, drinking Cokes. "Would it be possible for you to explain to an ordinary person what psychosis actually is?" Sejer asked her.

  "Are you an ordinary person?"

  There was something mocking about her tone of voice, and he wasn't quite sure whether the question was meant as a compliment or something else. In his confusion he started fiddling with the mobile phone attached to his belt.

  "In some ways it's impossible because it's so abstract," she said in a low voice. "But I think of it as a kind of hiding place. It's a matter of having all the normal defence mechanisms totally break down. Your soul is thrown wide open, so that anyone and everyone can step right in. Even the most innocent advance is experienced as a hostile attack. Errki has found himself a hiding place. He's trying to survive by creating a survival strategy, a sort of corrective force that very gradually takes over entirely and restricts his freedom and the possibility of making his own choices. Does this make any sense?"

  She took a sip of her Coke and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  "Does he want to escape it?"

  "Most likely he doesn't, and that's the problem. All forms of illness have their benefits, as we know, like having someone to pamper us when we're in bed with a fever. It's so nice."

  That's easy for you to say, he thought.

  "But how sick is Errki?"

  "He's got plenty of problems, but at least he's not in bed. He eats his food, and he takes his medicine. In other words, he's being cooperative."

  "And . . . schizophrenia? What is that?"

  "We call it that, in all our helplessness, because it's practical to have categories for things. It's when a psychosis has been going on for a while. Let's say several months."

  "Has Errki been sick for a long time?"

  "He's one of those people everyone has given up on. He wanders from place to place like damaged goods." She sighed heavily. "If he killed that woman, I'm afraid there's no hope for him. He won't get any more help. Not the kind of help that I want to give him."

  "But . . ." he looked at her as he raised his glass, "what do you know about the cause of Errki's illness?"

  "Not much. I have my theories."

  "Can you tell me about them?"

  "I've often wondered whether it has something to do with his mother's death."

  "According to the rumours, Errki killed her," Sejer said quickly. A bit too quickly.

  "Oh yes, I've heard that. He spread the rumour himself."

  "Why?"

  "Because he believes it's true."

  "And you don't?"

  "I choose to keep an open mind. We all deserve a chance," she said firmly.

  Yes, he thought. I deserve a chance too. But I probably wouldn't take it even if it fell into my lap. She's not wearing a ring, but that doesn't mean anything. In the past it was a definite sign, it was possible to separate out the ones who were available. The way he had with Elise. Long, smooth fingers and no ring . . . What on earth am I sitting here thinking about? Sejer wondered.

  "How did she die?" he asked.

  "She fell down the stairs."

  "He didn't push her?"

  "He was eight years old."

  "Eight-year-olds push and shove all the time. By accident, or when they're playing. Errki was home, wasn't he?"

  "He saw it happen."

  "Did anyone else?"

  "No."

  "What exactly do you know about it?"

  "Almost nothing. He was sitting on the steps when help arrived, and he may well have been sitting there for a long time, unable to move." She pulled a pack of Prince Lights out of her blouse pocket. "It happened so long ago."

  "One other thing. Officer Gurvin said something about him living in America for a while."

  "He lived in New York with his father and sister, for seven years. They came home to Norway at regular intervals, for Christmas, and so on."

  "And . . . is it true that he was in contact with a rather unusual person?"

  She suddenly smiled. "I haven't been able to check on that. I talked to his father, but he admits that he didn't keep very good tabs on what Errki did with his free time. He was more involved with his daughter. In contrast to Errki, she was good at everything, and socially accomplished. But you're thinking of the magician, aren't you?"

  "Maybe he put some strange ideas in his head."

  "I think he had plenty of those already. But I don't expect that it helped matters. The worst thing is . . ."

  She fell silent and stared at her Coke. Sejer could see that she was deciding whether to continue, or whether she might be overstepping a boundary.

  "The worst thing is," she repeated, "that sometimes I've wondered whether he really might have that ability. Whether he can see more than the rest of us, and even make things happen through deep concentration. I can't explain it in any other way than that he sets things in motion by sheer force of will."

  All right. Now she had said it.

  Sejer
frowned. He had just started to like her, only to find out that she was a little flaky, wasn't the level-headed and intelligent woman he'd first thought. A close call!

  "Go on," he said.

  She fixed her gaze on a statue outside, a naked girl on her knees who was staring out at the hospital grounds.

  "I'm going to tell you about the first session we ever had, Errki and I. All of our patients are assigned to a therapist and also become part of a group, where they're given group therapy. It was time for his session. I was sitting in my office, waiting to see whether he would manage to be on time, after I had shown him where we would meet. And he arrived on the dot. I nodded at the sofa near the window, and he sat down, sprawled out and remained silent. I couldn't see his eyes. The room was quiet. There's something magic about that moment. The first session, the first words."

  She was speaking quietly and very slowly. Sejer could feel himself being drawn into her thoughts, almost as if he were right in the room with them.

  "'We have exactly one hour,' I began. 'And today you will decide how we spend it.' He didn't answer. I didn't try to break the silence; I'm not afraid of silence. It's common for them to say little or even nothing at all during the first hour. Or the second. He seemed comfortable and relaxed, as if he were resting. Not nervous or anxious. After a while I decided to talk about myself."

  "What did you say? Are you even allowed to talk about yourself?"

  "Of course, within certain limits."

  Her voice changed, as if she were reciting a litany. "I must be personable without being personal, involved without being invasive. Firm, without being sharp or authoritarian. Sympathetic, without being sentimental. Et cetera. I told Errki that what we were going to do, he and I, was find a language that was uniquely ours, that only he and I would understand. No others would be able to decipher it. By 'others' I meant the voices inside him that fling him around and make his life miserable. I said that we could find a way to communicate and that it would be our secret. A code. So if there was anything he wanted to tell me, he could put it into code. And I would be able to work it out provided I had a little time, and that cracking the code would be my problem."

  She paused to take a breath. "But he didn't move, and the minutes passed, and I waited for a sign from him. I suppose I slipped into a sort of daze. His presence was somehow soothing. He sat there as if he owned the whole room. When finally he stood up, I jumped. He went to the door without looking at me. That's against the rules, so I stopped him. But he just turned around and pointed at his left wrist, although he wasn't wearing a watch. The hour was over. There was no clock on the wall, and yet he was right. Exactly 60 minutes had passed."

  "What did you do?" Sejer said.

  She laughed softly. "I tried a little trick. I told him there were five minutes left, but I said it with a smile. And then the first word passed his lips. The first word he ever said to me. 'Liar'."

  Sejer looked out of the cafeteria window at the green lawns. It occurred to him that it was late, that he needed to get back to Headquarters soon. He hadn't taken a phone call in all the time he'd been here. Maybe Errki and the robber had been found, as he sat here getting lost in psychiatry and some of its secrets. Or in her. In everything that might have been, a different future than the one he had imagined for himself.

  "Afterwards," she said, "I made a note in my journal. One–nil for Errki."

  "How do you think Errki would react if he felt threatened?"

  She looked at him and her expression turned anxious at the thought of what he might be going through right now. "He would withdraw as much as possible. He would be on the defensive."

  "But what if he couldn't withdraw any further? What if he is repeatedly threatened or provoked? What would he do?"

  "I tried to tell you earlier, but you didn't take me seriously. He would bite, to protect himself."

  "Bite? Where?"

  "Wherever he can."

  *

  Errki was asleep. Morgan stood in the doorway, looking at him. A jagged red scar stretched from Errki's throat to his navel. It had healed badly. Morgan pondered this for a moment, but couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation for what could have given him such an ugly scar. He stayed where he was and stared, although he had come in to wake Errki up. He had been sitting alone for a long time on the old sofa in the living room, staring vacantly into space, listening to the radio. There were no new details on the news. A hundred thousand kroner, they said. He had counted the money, and they were right.

  Morgan stood motionless. There was something intimate about staring at a sleeping man. Staring at a sleeping girl would be quite different. Or so he imagined. Errki was breathing easily, his eyelids quivering, as if he were dreaming. His black jacket and T-shirt lay in a mess on the floor. Why should I wake him? Morgan thought. Why am I standing here like a lonely puppy, feeling like I need company? He can damn well stay where he is. He doesn't speak, and he's much too preoccupied with his own twisted insides to hear what I'm saying. But when he's asleep he looks like everybody else.

  He wondered whether the craziness stayed with him when he slept, whether his dreams were crazy too. Or whether he had a hollow somewhere deep inside where everything was normal. A place that he refused to accept.

  Suddenly he flinched. Without warning Errki opened his eyes. In a split second he was awake. He didn't stir beforehand, as people usually do as they wake up, twisting a little, grunting and groaning. He just opened his eyes. They were surprisingly big until they focused on Morgan, and then they narrowed.

  "What did you do to your chest?" The words slipped out of Morgan's mouth. "It looks like a botched hara-kiri."

  Errki didn't answer, because the two down in the cellar were scrambling to get into position. Sometimes they were impossibly sluggish.

  "I need company," Morgan declared. He thought he might as well be honest. "It's getting late. Let's have a whisky."

  Errki got up slowly from the bed. Nothing happened. He glanced at Morgan's gun, pulled his T-shirt on over his head and followed him out to the living room. Morgan had rigged up the radio on the windowsill, with the antenna sticking out of the broken window. The temperature inside the old cabin was comfortable, but there was a warm haze over the woods, and the water far below was shimmering in the warm evening.

  "I'm hungry," Morgan said. "So I'm going to have a whisky."

  He fished the bottle out of the bag and unscrewed the top. It was a litre bottle. Errki waited and watched, as usual looking up from downcast eyes and, as usual, it looked as if he were ruminating on something.

  "Whisky is good for everything," Morgan said as he continued to marvel at Errki's intense gaze. It was as if he knew something special, something crucial about life and death that no-one else could see. "It's good for hunger and for thirst. For love troubles and for boredom. For despair and anxiety."

  He took a big gulp. His face rippled like rubber at the strong liquor. "There's nothing as nice as a moderate drinking problem," he said. "Do you know what I mean by the word moderate?"

  Errki did. Morgan wiped his mouth.

  "I drink regularly and steadily. But never in the morning and never too much, and never when I'm going to be driving. I'm the one in control."

  He took another gulp. "And if you think I'm going to drink myself silly so that you can escape, then you're mistaken."

  He held out the bottle. Errki looked at it with surprise. He didn't really care for alcohol, but he was feeling dull and empty inside, and if this was all they had, he didn't have to make a choice. It was the only thing available, this bottle of whisky. And he hadn't asked for it. It was being thrust upon him. He studied the label and turned the bottle around. Then he sniffed at the top.

  "Come on, it's not poison."

  Errki put the bottle to his lips and took a swallow. The whisky ran down his throat, without making his eyes smart. An unfamiliar warmth spread through his midriff. It started as a stinging sensation in his mouth, then sank downwards and f
illed his whole torso. Then he noticed the sweet taste, almost like caramel.

  "Good, huh?" Morgan smiled. "Where do you live? Do you have a flat?"

  Out by the lake, Errki thought. By the public park, in a beautiful setting and paid for by the county. One room plus a kitchen and bathroom. Upstairs lives the old man who paces back and forth at night; sometimes he weeps. I can hear him, but I don't pay any attention. If I gave him my hand and listened to him, I would give him hope, but there is no hope. Not for anyone.

  "Why does it have to be such a secret?" Morgan said, reaching for the bottle.

  "It smells bad there," Errki said in a low voice.

  Morgan jumped at the sound of his voice. "What smells bad? Your flat? I believe it. You smell too. Maybe it's time that you went out in the fresh air."

  "Raw meat smells bad. Especially in this heat."

  "What are you babbling about?"

  "It's on the counter. I eat it for breakfast every morning."

  His face was dead serious as he spoke. Morgan stared at him suspiciously.

  "Are you kidding me, or are you having hallucinations? You're just kidding, aren't you? I don't doubt that you're crazy, but I refuse to believe that you eat raw meat for breakfast."

  He felt a chill spreading slowly down his spine, in spite of the heat. What kind of person was this man, sitting right here in front of him?

  "Have some more whisky. Maybe you're having trouble because you didn't take your pills. If you ask me, whisky is better for you."

  He sat down on the floor and put the gun down next to him.

  "So tell me, when did you realise that you were starting to slip?"

  Errki gave him a long, sideways glance.

  "Was it like it says in books, that you got up one morning feeling terrible, went over to the mirror and saw to your horror that red worms were crawling out of your eyes?"

  He chuckled as he screwed the top back on the bottle.

  Errki shut his eyes. A faint drone was coming from the cellar, like a warning. "It wasn't worms," he said in his quiet, clear voice. "It was beetles. With shiny shells. They gleamed in the light from the window, black as oil."

  Morgan blinked in confusion. "You're kidding, right? It doesn't really happen that way. I assume," he said thoughtfully, "that it's important to work out why a person gets sick. That's the only reason I asked you. Maybe it's inherited? Was your mother crazy?