by Karin Fossum
‘I assume you have some photographs of him,’ he said. ‘From when he was a boy. And perhaps also as a teenager, before he went abroad. Is he like Walther?’
‘Yes, just like Walther. He has nothing from me. Not a line, not a hair.’
‘He’s an adult now,’ Sejer said. ‘And not very communicative, only sends cards with printed messages. So I’m guessing you don’t have any recent photographs of him?’
‘No,’ she had to admit. ‘I use my imagination.’
‘A long time has passed. Maybe he’s more like you than you realise. Would you like that to be the case?’
‘Let him be free of that,’ she said. ‘He is like Walther, full stop.’
‘You mean, be free of you?’
Ragna stared down into her lap, at her hands that were lying there. She did not want to talk about this. It was clear that she found the fact that her son had left her hard to bear, but she had accepted it. However, Sejer also felt that she knew the explanation. And she did not want to share it with him. Or, perhaps she believed it had nothing to do with the matter at hand, and that was why she was able to put a lid on that part of her life. But everything is connected to what’s happened in some way or other, he thought. Not many people would be capable of the crime she had committed. So every little detail was important.
‘Shall we change the subject?’ he asked.
‘Yes, please.’
He pushed the water jug across the table. He had noticed that she tended to forget to drink, and when her mouth was dry, it was harder to understand her. She took a long drink, then dried her lips. He saw that she had tiny freckles on the back of her hand, and thin fingers with no rings.
‘What if I were to ask you who your favourite person was, in all the world?’ he said in a friendly voice.
‘Daddy.’
‘But he’s dead.’
‘Do you think I’ve stopped loving him because of that?’
Her reply was instant, and he was annoyed by his own stupidity. Who did he love most in the world? Elise, of course, and she was no longer there either.
‘And your mother?’ he asked carefully. ‘Does she also hold a special place?’
‘She was always so focused on my father,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t available.’
‘And are you bitter about that?’
‘No, not really. I generally focused on Daddy too, he took up so much room. He was electric. Do you understand what I mean by electric?’
‘A lot of energy?’
‘He made the whole house light up. He heated every room. But he also short-circuited every now and then, and then everything was cold and dark.’
Sejer wrote some more notes.
‘In what way was he ill?’
She did not answer for a while, looked the other way.
‘Something to do with his immune system,’ she said. ‘He was very prone to infections. I was left to my own devices a lot of the time. Mummy was always busy, and she worked so hard. What about your parents? Are they still alive?’
‘You don’t want to talk about your parents any more?’
‘No, you can tell me something about your parents now.’
He wondered what he should say about them. They were both dead, but had been hard-working, decent old-fashioned people with robust morals. They had been strict and had always expected a lot of him. Not in terms of his career, but in terms of his behaviour. They had brought him up to be polite, as they felt that was one of the most important aspects of being educated, but was not something that everyone learned. He thought through all of this, but decided to tell her about something else.
‘My mother’s hobby was pottery,’ he said. ‘She liked to make small clay figures. When they were dry, she took them to a place in town and had them fired. They turned red, like terracotta. She never glazed them. She put them on the windowsill or on a shelf, as ornaments, and there they stood. Our house was full of her figures.’
‘Were they nice?’
‘They were crooked and bent, and pretty awful, to be honest,’ he said. ‘She had no talent whatsoever. But we said nothing, my father and I, because she got so much pleasure from making them and maybe even liked them herself. Or perhaps the feeling of the soft clay in her hands helped to clear her mind. A little self-deception is a human right, don’t you think?’
Ragna smiled and agreed.
‘Have you kept any of them?’
‘Only three. They’re on the windowsill in my kitchen.’
‘A mother, father and child,’ she whispered. ‘You’re an only child, like me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were they happy that you joined the police?’
Sejer’s smile was wider than usual. He looked first at Ragna, then down at the table.
‘My father was a reserved man who never said much. He gave a short nod when I told him, then he quickly disappeared into another room.’
‘Into another room?’ Ragna exclaimed. ‘Have you ever wondered what he did in the other room?’
‘I should imagine he went to the window, maybe even opened it. And that he stood there staring out at the garden. He probably wanted to cool down, as he was flushed with pride. Mother took every opportunity to tell people. Every guest who came to the house was met with the news: did I tell you that Konrad has joined the police?’
Ragna laughed as loudly as was possible for her. Her thin body shook.
‘And your mother made a special clay figure for you.’
‘She did. A big one.’
‘Now I feel I know them,’ she whispered.
‘And your parents,’ Sejer ventured, ‘were they proud of you?’
‘I think so,’ was her modest reply. ‘Of course they knew nothing about what would happen.’
Chapter 5
She had started to count her steps.
Down to the rubbish bin by the road was forty-eight steps. From the house over to Irfan’s shop, sixty-four; to the bus stop, one hundred and fifty-seven. Counting gave her a sense of control, this was her territory and she paced it out precisely. Often when she went to the bus stop in the morning, she was surprised that the number was always the same. Never one hundred and sixty-eight, or one hundred and forty-nine. She looked down at her feet in their small shoes, to think that her steps were so precise. And what would she do if the number did change? Because that would mean that her overview was slipping, that her body had been knocked out of its natural, measured rhythm, that life was no longer safe. That external powers were taking over. She was walking back from the bus stop, her bag over her shoulder. It was heavy. She had taken four packets of twisted, purple candles, a goat’s milk soap and some cheap shampoo from the shop. Her purchases were written down and deducted from her pay. She stopped some distance from the driveway, stood there and looked around. She saw a big removal van in front of the Teigens’ house, and several men pushing and carrying. Going in and out of the old house, which was more or less identical to her own. The Thai family would be moving in before Christmas, with their own tables and chairs, and, according to Olaf, a massage table. Sooner or later she would bump into them, perhaps in Irfan’s shop, and she would have to embarrass them, as was the case with most other people she met. She would whisper her name, and then give them her well-practised tight smile, and if she felt like it, tell them about how she came to lose her voice. It would take no more than a few meagre seconds, then it would be done. But it never ceased to upset her. The fact that something so minor could knock her off course in this way. The Teigens had taken down the living-room curtains, she noted, and the rooms that were now being emptied seemed unnaturally bright. She compared them with her own windows, which had a warmer, welcoming glow. My house, she thought, and started to walk again. My own house. She got to the drive and opened the mailbox. There was of course something there. In fact, she could not remember it ever being empty. She took out the newspaper first, then the plain envelope addressed to ‘RIEGEL’.
She looked quickly up and down Ki
rkelina, to check if anyone had seen her, but there was no one there. She glanced over the road to Irfan’s shop – there was still light in the windows. And there was only a faint light in Olaf’s windows, so perhaps they were out. And the Teigens on the other side of the road were in the middle of moving. A car drove past, and then another, and the gust lifted the hem of her coat. She looked at the back of the envelope. The rubbish bin with its heavy lid was beside her. She should just throw the letter in without reading it. She was above all this nonsense, the letter belonged with the eggshells and leftovers, the letter was rotten. And she would slam the lid shut with such force that the removal men would think she had fired a shot. Then she would march quickly up to the house, forty-eight steps, put the newspaper on the table and demonstrate her defiance by pulling a face at whoever was trying to invade her space. Supper would be made. She would rattle around with the pots and pans and slam the cupboard doors. She would stride around the house like a general. She would read the newspaper. She had more important things to do than be scared of some idiot who was probably just bored and alone. He definitely had no friends; he was not someone who had anything to give. No one wanted to listen to him or go anywhere near him.
But what if she did all that? If she threw away the letter unread, how would she then manage to calm down? Would she just sit in a chair all night and wonder what the new message said? Would she lie in the dark under the duvet, her imagination running wild? No, she would not. She needed to keep up with him, know what he was planning. She would open the envelope, read it quickly and then throw it in the fire. Even though part of her brain said that would be basically the same as letting him in. She might as well open the door so he could step inside. She tore open the envelope all the same. She was agitated and flushed, angry and scared all at once.
The piece of paper was the same as the last one, folded double, the letters just as big and straight.
‘IT’S NOT LONG NOW.’
She stood there without moving for a long time, deeply regretting that she had been foolish enough to read the message. She crushed it into a hard paper ball, so it would burn better. Then she trudged up to the house, let herself in. She threw the letter in the burner, lit a match, held it to the paper and closed the heavy door. Watched the flames through the glass. The fire devoured the paper ball with impressive speed. Wonderful, she thought. She had quite simply cremated him and all that he stood for. Nothing could annihilate like fire could. She put two big logs into the burner as though to make a statement, and stayed there on her knees until they started to burn too.
It was perhaps something she should report to the police, she thought later, when she had finally sunk down into her favourite armchair. But she had destroyed both letters, she realised, so she had nothing to show. And they were not likely to do anything anyway, it was autumn, and dark, and people were roaming the streets with all their issues and anger. Women were being beaten up and abused by their husbands, children were being neglected, the powers that be had enough on their plates. And this person had not laid a hand on her. And anyway, she told herself, I’ve never been the hysterical type. I’m not the sort of person to waste valuable resources on this kind of nonsense, it’s below me. She put the dishwasher on, and tried to settle down in front of the television, but was overcome with regret that she had burned the letters. There would be a letter number three, she was certain of that, and she would definitely keep that one. Number three, and four and five. And what then? Where would it end? Should she perhaps inform everyone close to her that some madman was after her? What if he was one of the people in her small circle? What did he actually want? Her fear, her life? Better instead to curl up in a corner, turn up the volume on the television, close the curtains and not let so much as a strip of light in.
She went out into the hall to check that she had locked the door and that the security chain was on, even though the chain itself was so thin it could easily be cut with pliers. Sometimes if the doorbell rang in the evening, she did not dare to answer. Depending on how late it was, and this had changed over the years. When she was younger, she would open the door until ten, but now she became anxious if it was after eight, certainly in the autumn, when it was dark. Anyone who came by car usually parked by the roadside and walked up to the house. It was not easy to gauge if there was enough room to turn in the driveway, especially in winter. And when it came to clearing the snow, she was useless, a shovel full of wet snow weighed too much for her. She had never owned a car, so she trampled a narrow path down to the road, and tried to clear around the rubbish bin and mailbox as best she could. Sometimes Olaf took pity on her and would take a few turns on his Honda snowblower. But so far, there had been no snow, just darkness, and the lonely street lamp at the end of her drive. Every time she passed it, she noted the wear and tear. Sooner or later it would come down, but not in her time, she hoped, even though she could see that it leaned more and more for each year that passed.
She stood by the window. There were Olaf and Dolly going for a walk in their high-viz jackets. She noticed that he glanced up at her house, and she appreciated that. It meant he thought about her, that she was part of his universe, just as he and Dolly were a part of hers. He continued on to the Teigens’ house where the removal men were still busy. Maybe he wanted to say goodbye and wish them well, which was something she had not even thought about, just as she would never contemplate going over to the house to welcome the new family when they moved in. But of course Olaf did, because he was nosy. Oh, I’m being mean now, she thought, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to know the neighbours, I’m just a coward. Arrogant and uninterested. She sat down again and thought about the empty rooms in the Teigens’ house. How cold it would be when everything had been loaded into the removal van, how dusty and faded. The walls full of holes and the ceiling lamps giving off a garish light – perhaps the glass covers were full of dead flies, her own were. She could not imagine anything as wretched as an empty house. The walls would have their secrets. Daylight would flood in through the bare windows and reveal all the wear and tear, all the footsteps across the floors, all the doors that had been opened and closed, sometimes with great force. Worn thresholds, discoloured bathroom porcelain that could no longer be bleached clean, the odd mirror on the wall stained brown by the years. If anything of beauty had existed between the walls, it would not be visible. Only the decay would be visible, the damage, the bad days. A bit like an old skeleton, Ragna thought, which had even more to tell about a life once lived than an empty house. Man or woman, young or old, ill or injured. Lifestyle, diet. I want to be buried when I die, like Mummy and Daddy. My skeleton will lie there with all its bumps and wounds. And in theory, it would be possible to dig up the skeleton and re-examine it. The bones would be the proof that she had once lived and she wanted there to be proof. The alternative, the burning heat, meant total annihilation.
I will never move, Ragna determined. She looked at everything around her, the pictures, the furniture and rugs, the cushions on the sofa, carefully plumped and positioned in the same way every day, and the cosy, folded blanket. The large photograph of her parents from a time when they were Hans and Signe and did not know what the future held. At the point the picture was taken, they knew nothing about Ragna, because she did not exist anywhere, she was just a possibility they had chosen to explore, and, she believed, had not regretted. Nor did they know anything about Rikard Josef at that point. She was filled with melancholy when she looked at the picture of her parents. It really was possible to be that happy for a few brief, innocent moments. She had looked after the house, and it had not fallen into the hands of strangers. She could see that it was tired, but it was old after all. Her parents had never redecorated, they did not have the means, and she had only replaced the furniture and a few other things. But it was just her, padding quietly around – no one else really came to the house. Only Gunnhild, who had popped by a couple of times when she was ill. That’s how small my world is, Ragna reflected. Some trave
l to the other side of the world to meet new people, others make new bonds by arranging parties where they make a lot of noise, laugh, raise their glasses and spill their secrets. These thoughts made her look down at her body. She had taken the baggy green shop coat off and hung it on the back of a chair, but she was still wearing the sweater that almost reached her knees. It was machine-knitted from synthetic wool and had gone bobbly after several washes, even though she had done it on a delicate cycle. She wondered what Rikard Josef had thought when he received the letter, in an unexpected move so long before Christmas. Did he see it as a plea for contact or an accusation? Would he give something himself as a result? What if Hotel Dormero was doing badly and he was forced to find another job, would he let her know? She assumed not. If he had had a knock, he might feel ashamed and keep her at a distance. In the way that she was ashamed of the knock she had taken. Someone had sentenced her to death.
‘IT’S NOT LONG NOW.’
She had thick red curtains in front of the bedroom window that went all the way to the floor. There were lead weights in the hem so that they would fall properly and look good. When she went to bed in the evening, she opened the window – be it summer or winter, she had to have fresh air. It made no difference if it was freezing cold. She liked to lie under the duvet and listen to the world outside, feel the cool air breezing in. Sometimes, in autumn, wild storms made the small cluster of trees round the back of the house into an attacker, as the wind hurled cones and branches at the wall. She often hoped for a storm. She liked it when nature showed its strength, because she found the thought that people were the only controlling force too alarming. If the sun wanted to burn out, if the ocean wanted to flood the land and drown everything there, down to the smallest beast, that was fine. She would bow to that, bow with humility. Her bed was right under the window. On occasion, she had even felt the rain on her face. Some mornings she found dry leaves on the floor that had blown into the room, and in winter, she had even woken to tiny snow drifts against the skirting. Then she would make a snowball, drop it into the toilet, and stand there watching it melt.