by Karin Fossum
She whisked the eggs vigorously, hitting the glass bowl with a fury, then poured the mixture into the frying pan and watched it bubble. Instead of sitting at the kitchen table as she usually did, she went into the sitting room and sat down. When she had shovelled down the simple food, she moved to the computer and searched for international directory enquiries. Rikard Josef Riegel, Berlin. Not many people would have that name, not even in a major city. To her dismay, she immediately received the message Kein Treffer gefunden. She stared at the screen, perplexed. There was another message underneath: Riegel 35 hits. But not Rikard Josef. He may of course have moved away, to the hotel in Johannesburg, like in her daydream. She decided to try again with his address in Landsberger Allee and this time found his name straight away, as though nothing was wrong. She struggled to understand; either he lived there or he did not. But the letter had been returned. He must have moved very recently, in which case the new address might not be registered yet. Or the post office in Berlin had made a mistake, or directory enquiries had made a mistake. They did make mistakes now and then. The larger the city, the more mistakes. Perhaps she should send a new letter to the old address, just to be sure – it might be a one-off mistake. She started to search for a mobile telephone number. But did not find that either. He must have an ex-directory number, for reasons she knew nothing about. She sat there for a long time, thinking. Then she remembered the envelope on the kitchen table. She might as well get it over and done with. Maybe he had planned something and she needed to be prepared. I’m nothing more than a slave, she thought. She went into the kitchen, grabbed the envelope and tore it open.
‘I’M WATCHING YOU.’
Chapter 10
‘I tried to work out whether this threat was worse than the last one or not,’ Ragna explained. ‘And decided that it wasn’t.’
‘Why was it not worse?’
‘I had expected a date. That I would die next week. Or even that night, or the next morning. But instead, it was something else. I already knew that he was watching me, I had felt it since I got the first letter. That he was following my every step. I allowed myself a derisive smile. He was already starting to repeat himself, so I relaxed. Not when I was outside, then I kept my eyes peeled, but I was not as afraid any more when I opened the mailbox. Lots of people live with anxiety and distress. So I could live with a fool who was nothing more than a big mouth.’
‘Did you dream about catching him? With the mailbox open and a letter in his hand?’
‘Sometimes,’ she admitted.
‘What would you have said?’
‘The only thing I was prepared to offer was a simple question. Goodness, I would say, so you can actually reach the mailbox without standing on a stool?’
She smiled and looked pleased with herself.
‘Either way, I came to accept that I just had to live with it. Everyone has something. What is it that you have to live with?’
‘Oh, so many things,’ Sejer said. ‘Goes with the job. Everything we see and experience in the course of our work. I can’t just blink my eyes and it’s gone, certainly not the worst things.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Small children. When there’s nothing left of them after the adults are done. But we must be allowed to dwell on things, it’s a human right,’ he added. ‘I often do.’
He scribbled something on his notepad. Even if she leaned forward, she would not be able to read it. Maybe he was a smoker, maybe the pen was a kind of substitute for a cigarette.
‘We’ve found your son,’ he said suddenly, and looked up.
‘What?’
She sat there open-mouthed. She could not help it.
‘There’s a reason why your letters were returned. He had moved, some time ago.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He didn’t want to talk to us.’
‘But you said that you found him?’
A red light flashed on his telephone. He pushed the notepad to one side and looked at her earnestly, like a priest who comes to the door, Ragna thought, and steeled herself.
‘He’s inside. In a prison in Berlin. It’s called Plötzensee. I’ve only spoken to the prison management.’
Ragna lifted her eyes to look at the dog. Her cheeks were tingling, she knew the blood was draining from her face.
‘But why is he in prison?’ she stammered.
‘Embezzlement,’ Sejer replied.
‘Embezzlement? You mean money? When?’
‘When he was working at the hotel,’ Sejer said gently. ‘The Dormero. He worked there for several years as a receptionist.’
‘Director.’ She was swift to correct him.
‘No.’
‘Manager. General manager!’
‘He was never a manager. Nor a director. He was a receptionist. And he managed to access the hotel’s accounts. He’d been siphoning off funds for a long time when things started to get a bit uncomfortable, and he bolted. We’re talking millions by that stage. He eventually broke down and confessed. By then he was working elsewhere, on the other side of the city.’
‘Not the manager,’ Ragna whispered, close to tears. ‘Not the boss.’
‘No.’
‘Embezzlement?’
‘Yes.’
‘Several million?’
‘That’s what they said.’
She was so devastated that he found it hard to bear.
‘How did you find all this out?’
‘I’m a detective,’ he reminded her. ‘Your son has given us permission to tell you all this. So he does want the contact, don’t you think?’
She was not so sure. She could not gather her thoughts, did not know what to say.
‘That’s given you rather a lot to think about, hasn’t it?’ Sejer said. ‘But what is your first reaction?’
‘First? You make it sound like my thoughts are standing in an orderly queue and I can reel them off in the right order.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘So he knows that I’m here then?’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘Does he know why?’
‘We haven’t given him the details. We can’t do that without your permission. Your case is also under investigation. But will you allow me do that when it becomes possible?’
‘He’ll lose his mother then,’ she whispered. ‘And he’s never had a father. He needs to live for something when he’s in prison. He should be allowed to believe that everything’s fine and I’ll soon be back in Kirkelina. That it’s just something minor.’
‘But it’s not something minor, is it?’
She sat lost in her own thoughts.
‘But why?’ she suddenly asked. ‘Surely the wages at the Dormero were enough to live off. It’s a five-star hotel.’
‘We have no other details,’ he said. ‘He might have been in some kind of a fix. Gambling debt. Drugs. That kind of thing.’
‘No, never. Not Rikard. He was a very careful boy, his dream was to make something of himself. He wasn’t a manager? What will they think at work? I told them all he was the boss, I told my neighbour as well. How humiliating.’
Ragna dried a tear.
‘Oh, he must be so mortified,’ she said. ‘I know what he’s like. Could I perhaps get the address of the prison so I can send him a note?’
‘What would you write to him?’
‘That we’re not bad people, neither of us.’
‘You do realise you are subject to correspondence and visit control?’ Sejer reminded her. ‘I’m sure you know what that means.’
‘That you have to read everything,’ she replied. ‘Word for word. As if I care about that. I’m sitting here like an open book.’
After a long pause while she was lost in thought, Ragna wanted to talk about something else.
‘Do you know what Walther once said to me? Not that we really had time to say much to each other. But, you know, he was older than me and so much wiser.’
‘Tell me, what d
id he say?’ Sejer asked.
‘As I told you, we were in the park the day he took the nice photograph. The one that’s in the bottom drawer. He always had his big camera bag with him. And I’m no different from anyone else. I felt silly and unsure in front of the lens, and he noticed. The microscope, he said, is an amazing invention. Because it allows us to look inside our bodies, at everything that lives inside us. A huge, invisible world. And the telescope allows us to look out into the universe. We’re fine with the teeming life inside us, and the universe outside us, but we are not fine with what we see in the mirror.’
‘But he said this when he was behind a camera?’
She nodded.
‘The photograph I’m taking of you now, he said, is my image of you. My version. My experience. No one else can see you with exactly the same eyes. The photograph will be unique. No one can contest it. And it will always be there.’
‘What made you think of that now?’ Sejer asked.
‘I have my own image of Rikard Josef. It will never change, no matter what happens. Have you ever looked at the stars through a telescope?’
‘No, but I do look at the stars in wonder, like everyone else. I don’t mind not knowing about the stars, or that the universe has secrets. I focus on the secrets here on earth. They interest me more.’
‘And now you’re interested in mine?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘I had a dream earlier this autumn,’ she confessed, ‘right after the first letter. I was walking down a long mine shaft. It was dark and hot and dusty, it must have been a coal mine. I didn’t know how deep it was, but I could see it disappearing further and further into the mountain, and it was hard to breathe. Then I found one of those carts, you know the kind that run on tracks that they use to transport the coal? Well, I climbed in. And then suddenly it started to move. Within seconds it was going really fast, too fast for me to jump off, and I couldn’t see anything in the pitch-dark, and I didn’t know how far it was to the end, or how the runaway cart would eventually stop. If it would stop suddenly, or maybe just fall over a cliff edge and disappear into the dark, never to be found again.’
‘What happened when you reached the bottom?’ Sejer asked.
She smiled and blinked.
‘I’m still falling. And praying all the while that someone will find me and give me a decent funeral.’
She realised that she wanted to tell him another story. It was a memory she had carried for years, with wonder.
‘Memory is a funny thing. Why do we remember all the small things, and forget so many of the important things? Is it the same for you?’
‘Possibly,’ Sejer replied. ‘But our problem is not that we forget, but that we remember only too well. Our brains don’t always manage to select the best things.’
‘I once watched an old American film on television, a long time ago,’ she told him. ‘It was about a group of boys who must have been somewhere between eight and ten. It was summer and it was warm and they were wearing shorts. They were bored, in the way that boys can be. So they headed for the woods, without thinking, without a plan, and they wandered further and further away from their homes. And they were joking and jostling and bickering as boys do. I liked them,’ she remembered, ‘they were so full of mischief. They didn’t care, had no respect for authority, no humility.’
She looked at him to see if he was listening, and he was.
‘Eventually, one of them noticed that the sun was getting low in the sky, and they had been out in the woods all day. They decided to turn and go back the same way, but soon discovered they were completely lost. There was a big argument, far more serious than the usual joshing around. They all thought they knew best what to do. They discussed directions, but no longer knew which way led back, they had crossed so many paths, and the paths had forked, and there were no signs. They didn’t know how far they had come, they’d paid no attention to time, but now the clock had started to tick again. It would soon be dark. They had nothing with them, nothing to drink. After a lot of arguing that got them nowhere, they set off in an arbitrary direction. They eventually stopped talking. One of them broke off a big branch from a tree, which he thrashed around. They could not bear to look at each other, they just walked. None of them wanted to be the first to cry.’
She paused, wanting to remember every detail as well as she could.
‘Do you often cry?’ she asked, looking up at the inspector.
‘No. And you?’
‘Sometimes. Yes, I do, sometimes. Lots of people say that it’s important to cry, apparently it’s to do with the body’s chemistry. Hormones or enzymes, or something else – it’s supposed to be healthy and healing. But I don’t believe that at all.’
‘Neither do I,’ he said firmly.
She continued her story about the boys.
‘One of them suddenly made an important discovery,’ she whispered. ‘They’d come across a railway line. They were walking on a track, and if they followed the track it would lead them to somewhere where there were people. They could be themselves again, laughing and joking. They started to walk faster, they were determined and it was still light. Even though they didn’t know how far they had to walk before they found people, they were relaxed and had fun as they followed the railway line in the direction they thought was best. The boy with the stick began to sing,’ she remembered. ‘He whacked and hit the rails with all his might, and the others joined in the song, at the tops of their voices. But for all that, they were tired, as they had been walking all day. And then they came to a railway bridge.’
‘I was waiting for that,’ Sejer said.
‘One of those big, enclosed ones, you know, where the train runs through a steel construction that looks like a cage. The bridge crossed a gorge,’ she explained, ‘with a fierce river running along the bottom. The slopes down to the water were too steep for them to get onto the banks. And even if they did manage, they would never be able to cross the rapids. In other words, they had to cross the bridge. But the tracks disappeared around a bend on the other side, so they did not have a clear sight line. Another argument ensued. The boy with the stick had taken on the role as leader. He said that they had to keep walking. It would only take a few minutes and then they would be safe on the other side. One of the others stated the obvious, that if a train came thundering over when they were in the middle of the bridge, they were doomed. There wasn’t enough room on the sides of the tracks, and the river raged below. We won’t be that unlucky, the leader said adamantly. And so they ran. Halfway across the bridge, a train came hurtling towards them.’
Sejer was resting his chin in his hand, smiling broadly.
‘Why are you smiling?’ she wanted to know.
‘Because I’m enjoying this. What happened?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember? Did you not watch the end of the film?’
‘I must have done, it was so exciting. I was sitting on the edge of my chair, holding my breath. The last thing I remember is the whistle when the driver spotted the boys, and their small, terrified faces when they realised what was about to happen. And my memory has not stored the end of the story.’
Chapter 11
‘What about the luxury hotel then?’ Gunnhild asked. ‘How’s the director?’
Ragna jumped, because she was unprepared. Gunnhild had never asked so directly before, not like that, with beady eyes. Maybe she suspected something was up.
‘He was never actually the director,’ Ragna mumbled, and blushed furiously. ‘I misunderstood. I think he’s a manager. General manager.’
Gunnhild looked at her earnestly.
‘Well, he’s still the boss,’ she said.
Ragna nodded.
‘Yes, he’s the boss.’
There was a brief pause, but Ragna could tell that Gunnhild was after something.
‘Do celebrities ever stay there? At the hotel?’
Again, she had to stammer out an answer, a whis
pered lie. The humiliation – the fact that her letter had been returned, that she now did not even know where her son was – made her feel uncomfortable. Her cheeks were burning. She tried to extend time. But then the lie fell out of her mouth before she could stop it.
‘Angela Merkel,’ she whispered.
‘Has Merkel stayed there? With her bodyguards and all?’
Ragna looked the other way. She was in the middle of unpacking a box of small rubber animals, and tried to concentrate on what she was doing, but stopped with a black-and-white cow in her hand. When she squeezed it, it made an angry squeaking noise.
‘Ah, so that’s your answer, eh?’ Gunnhild laughed.
‘Yes, bodyguards and all,’ Ragna swiftly replied. ‘I don’t think she moves even one metre without them. Can you imagine what that must be like?’ she added. ‘To have someone there all the time?’
‘Did they sit outside her room at night? Do you think they had a gun?’
Ragna squeezed the rubber cow again. She managed to stop the conversation in her usual way, with a little nod. But she could not look her colleague in the eye. When she held the cow up to her nose, it smelt sweet, like chewing gum.
‘Why don’t we go there sometime?’ Gunnhild suggested eagerly. ‘We could have a long weekend in Berlin. From Thursday to Sunday. I’m sure Rikard can get us a room at a discount. Don’t you think he’d do that for us? He’s the general manager. I’ve never been to Berlin.’
Ragna felt winded.