The Whisperer

by Karin Fossum

  She went into the bathroom and put the packet of sleeping pills on the shelf under the mirror. Apodorm. Dormero. There was a connection. If only it was night, then she would crawl into a cave where no one could find her. The doorbell was broken. She had chemical protection and a snarling dog.

  She closed the red curtains and turned off the light. When she was lying under the duvet and had swallowedtwo pills instead of the one recommended on the packet, she wondered about Rikard Josef and what could have happened. When the chemicals lulled her to sleep, she dreamt about him. It started with a strange dragging sound across the floor. She could not understand what it was, could not imagine what kind of creature would move like that. She wanted to sit up and have a look, but once again had problems moving – her arms were heavy, as were her legs and head. She could feel a band tightening around her forehead, a ring of steel. But eventually she managed to haul herself up halfway and rested on her elbow. She saw her son on the floor, tried to whisper his name, but nothing came out. He edged closer awkwardly. He had lost a leg, and was holding himself up with crutches, the kind they had during the war. They were made of wood, with thick cushions under his arms. He was moving his mouth as well, but she heard nothing, and she realised that he had the same affliction as her. He did not have a voice. So he had nothing to say to her, and she could not ask where he had gone. Then he dissolved into the dark. But she heard his crutches all night long. They thumped on the floor like two sticks. She heard the one foot he still had, the heavy tread of a hard boot; she heard his effort, his struggle, his exhaustion, his breathing. He was restless like her. When she woke after a long night, she was heavy and exhausted, just as Naper had said she would be. She felt unsteady and shaken, as though she had been knocked over. The band across her forehead was still there, and still quite tight. She remembered the dream. She was certain that something terrible had happened to her son, and she could not help him. She threw the duvet to one side and got out of bed, was scared she might tumble, used the bedside table to support herself, and then the wall. She hoped that her stalker had come to the door, and had left again when the doorbell made no sound. The pressure across her forehead persisted. But when it finally eased, she felt rested.

  Chapter 19

  ‘Daddy always went to bed first,’ Ragna explained, ‘and early, as a rule. In summer he would go to bed when it was still light, without even closing the curtains. If the sun wanted to shine on him, he took it as a sign. He would be showered in gold, he believed, and if he could then gather enough sun energy, he would also be able to shine on others. The lights in the bedroom were always on, in both summer and winter. The ceiling light, the reading light above the bed and the lamp on the bedside table. It has a red shade, like a toadstool. I still have it. Daddy always lay next to the wall. My mother would go to bed a couple of hours later and always wore an eye mask. The bulb in the ceiling light was sixty watts, the one in the reading light, and the one in the toadstool were both twenty-five. Like an interrogation room.’

  She smiled at the inspector.

  ‘Daddy would often lie and knock on the wall,’ she whispered, ‘with his knuckles. As though he were sending secret messages to the room next door, which was my room, and later Rikard’s room. My bed was next to the wall, which was no more than cardboard between us. In the evenings I lay awake and listened, there was something he wanted to tell me, and he obviously thought I could understand his secret code. That only he and I understood. He would knock lightly with long pauses in between, or he would knock hard and fast in a set rhythm, or without any rhythm at all. Sometimes he found a pattern that he would repeat over and over. And even though I understood nothing, Daddy’s tapping on the wall was an important sign. It meant that I was part of a pact, one of the chosen few. We had our own language. Daddy was trying to teach me the language, that was what we were doing every night. As time passed, I started to know some of the signals that he repeated and was able to answer back. Some were very short, others consisted of several phrases. But every time I learned a pattern, he found another. I spent a lot of time awake, befuddled by all the knocking and what it might mean. I so wanted Daddy and me to have our own special language that no one else understood. Sometimes when I was bored at school, I would sit tapping gently on the desk to see if anyone reacted. If someone else knew the special code, if someone would look up and send me a nod of acknowledgement, a sign that he belonged to the secret pact. You know what a lively imagination children can have. But no one did.’

  ‘And you never found an explanation? You never understood any of the signals?’ Sejer asked.

  ‘Yes, there were a few I understood,’ she whispered. ‘Every evening when we had been lying there tapping for a long time, he always finished with a short signal. Four sharp knocks. Then a pause, then five more. GOOD NIGHT. You see?’

  ‘Do you still knock on the wall?’

  ‘I knock on the cell wall before I go to sleep. An old habit. Like when people who have said an evening prayer all their life suddenly lose their faith and decide to stop. Then they can’t sleep. My knocking is a message to myself that it’s night.’

  The inspector looked at her for a long time.

  ‘What about his immune system?’

  She started, and seemed somehow to regret sharing these secret signals with him.

  ‘Yes, it was the infections that killed him,’ she responded swiftly. ‘Just think what it must be like to carry all those aggressive microbes around in your body all the time, it would drive you mad.’

  ‘Are you saying that he was mad?’ Sejer asked.

  ‘I’ve never known anyone as wise as my father.’

  He could see that her thoughts were elsewhere, beyond the office, beyond the city and time, seeking something that was no longer there, something she could not return to but remembered vividly.

  ‘Daddy was just skin and bones in the end,’ she said. ‘He weighed no more than fifty kilos. Any fluid he had in his body gathered in his feet. Elephant feet, he used to say. He would press his thumb against his skin, and it would leave deep depressions that lasted for ages. He could have put marbles in them.’

  Sejer had a clear image of the sick man.

  ‘At his funeral, when it was all over,’ she continued, ‘when everyone had said what they wanted to say and we had dried our tears, I went and stood beside the coffin. I had to move one of the big wreaths. And in the silence of the church, I tapped our secret signal on the top of the coffin, wishing him good night.’

  ‘What do you think people made of that?’ Sejer said with a smile.

  ‘No one dared ask.’

  Her story about her father and the knocking made a deep impression on him. The ill man who slept with the light on. Who let the sun fill him with energy in the hope that it would benefit others. He was moved, because Ragna had shared this with him, without embarrassment, but what she had said about her father had also set him on a new track that he chose to keep to himself for the moment. He did not want her to withdraw or censor what she told him. Until now she had not tried to cover up anything. He did not think she was avoiding something, holding something back or exaggerating. If some of the information was lacking, it was because she had forgotten it or she had remembered it wrong, in which case he would find out later. It was more usual for the accused to embellish their stories. Some liked to be in the limelight, and they flourished with the attention they were given during questioning. Some liked to play, others avoided eye contact, they kept things back and lied. They blamed their genes or the support systems that had failed them, they had never got what they needed, had never been understood. They had a brutal father or a cold mother. They were misunderstood souls. And often it was true. But in front of him sat Ragna Riegel. Every now and then, he remembered in a blaze the crime she had committed, and every time, the thought horrified him. Her whispering voice followed him to sleep some nights.

  When he was alone in the office, he sometimes studied the photographs from the crime scene
. In some ways, they did not compute with what was happening in his office. The aerial views of Kirkelina, the driveway with the mailbox and rubbish bins. The gravel up to the house, the front door with the picture of an aggressive dog. The small living room with its sparse furniture, television and Jøtul wood burner. And what they found in Ragna’s kitchen – he would never be able to delete it from his memory.

  ‘If I was to ring the prison in Berlin,’ he said, ‘and Rikard Josef was willing to come to the phone, would you talk to him?’

  Ragna put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘But I don’t have a voice,’ she gasped, distraught. ‘Speaking on the phone isn’t easy. You’ll have to tell him what’s happened first. About the operation and everything. So that he’s prepared.’

  ‘Of course I’ll do that.’

  She had tensed up and shifted position.

  ‘Tell him that I don’t expect anything, no explanation or apology or anything like that. He doesn’t have to beg for forgiveness. He’s never done me wrong. If you got him on the phone, so I could just hear his voice again, I would be eternally grateful.’

  ‘He might say no,’ Sejer said.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll say no,’ Ragna replied.

  She did not ask when he had thought of ringing. Or when his shift was over. So now she just had to wait, alone in her cell. She checked her watch every few minutes and saw time slipping away, that it was not on her side. Slowly she processed what might actually happen. Her son’s voice on the other end of the line, after so many years. It scared her. What if she was confronted with bitterness and accusations, what would keep her alive then? How would she manage to get through what she was now facing? She prepared a few short sentences, friendly and neutral, that would not offend him, in case they only had this one conversation. If they had a conversation at all. What was the point of her sitting here preparing when he would probably say no when asked? Maybe one of the guards, say Adde with the dead eye, would open the door with a bang and give her the short message that her son had declined. So that would be that. No new line of communication, no link between him and her. She regretted it all. The hope she had built up, which would only open the wound again if it was lost. She would lose him for a second time. But what if the inspector suddenly came in with a cordless phone in his hand, and said that he had to be present when they spoke and that she should keep it short? What if a miracle happened? She lay on the bunk and waited, with her hands cupped under her head, her eyes wandering over the ceiling, along the walls. Listening to what was going on out in the corridor with the same intensity as a hunted hare. What are you doing right now, Rikard? Has someone official come to tell you that your old mother is in prison, and that she is on the telephone begging for contact? But that she now has a handicap that will make conversation very difficult? But I’m not that old, Ragna thought, I’m only forty-six. I’ve never asked for anything. But what’s happened to us now means we belong together. That’s all I want to say.

  Had Sejer forgotten her? She checked the time again. It was passing so quickly, his shift would soon be over. Had he forgotten his promise? Had he got caught up with other things? It was taking so long. Of course, there were things in his life she knew nothing about. Perhaps someone else had committed a crime that was far worse than hers, a crime that would take up all his time. And involve far more interesting and exciting interviews than the ones he had with her – the investigation, press conferences, meetings. Every now and then, she dozed off. But she still listened intently, with an aching heart, for footsteps. After only a few days locked in the eight-square-metre cell, she had become adept at visualising what was going on outside. The corridor, the control room, the staffroom, the toilets, the kitchen and exercise yard. And beyond that, the street, where she could no longer walk, and would not do so for many years to come. Everyone talked about the importance of fresh air, but she was perfectly fine with the air she breathed in her cell. The exercise yard, the light and movement, it was a change to be fair, and of course she had gone for some walks, but there was a limit to how much she could get out of it, walking in big circles underneath barbed wire, under the gaze of the security camera, the guards, the tower, under the pale sky. She eventually fell asleep again, and had a dream. The same thumping sound of the crutches on the floor, the dragging foot. Her son loomed up at the end of her bed to show her that he had lost a leg. She pulled herself up and stared down at the foot he still had, the one in the brown boot. She noticed that the laces were not tied and she immediately wanted to help him. But when she reached out to him, he slowly slipped away, his eyes trained on her, as though he wanted to say ‘look how damaged I am’.

  ‘Ragna,’ she heard, ‘Ragna!’

  There was someone standing by her bed with a cordless phone. A guard who she had not seen before had come into the cell without her hearing, which was unusual.

  ‘Berlin,’ he said. ‘We’ll give you a few minutes.’

  She sat up so suddenly that she felt dizzy. The cordless telephone was surprisingly heavy; she was breathing like a frightened animal and knew that her son would hear it all the way to Berlin.

  At first there was some crackling on the line, perhaps it was tapped, but she did not give a damn. She had enough to cope with trying to regulate her breathing and stop her heart from running wild.

  ‘Mutti?’ she heard. ‘Mutti. Wie geht’s?’

  Oh, that voice! It was Rikard’s voice, coming out of the receiver like a warm embrace, but it was much deeper than she remembered, much wiser and warmer. The last time they had spoken he was an angry boy, impatient to get out into the world. Now he was a twenty-nine-year-old grown man, tall, she imagined, with muscles, who had experienced both the good and the bad. And as the breathless seconds passed she realised that he was like Walther now. It was the same voice, deep, considered and friendly, there was something reassuring and inviting about it. Her grip tightened around the phone, she pressed it closer to her ear so he would be nearer. She remembered the day he was born, how she had held him, with the same feeling she had now. She would never let him go.

  ‘Alles ist gut,’ she whispered. ‘Alles ist gut.’

  She was immediately overcome with embarrassment at her choice of words and lack of voice. Then, quietly and cautiously: ‘Do you have everything you need?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he assured. ‘Christmas soon. I have friends here, you know. So, we’re in the same boat, you could say.’

  Yes, he was in a boat. He had always liked to play in the old fishing boat at nursery. That was why he used that image, she guessed. He had felt safe in that boat. A hiding place from where he could watch the world through a porthole. He sounded happy. Content, at least, not broken or lost or humiliated. She was filled with a tingling joy. It rose from her feet to her cheeks, warming her, and she glanced in desperation over at the guard who would tear the phone from her hands in only a few minutes. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning slightly forwards, eager as a young girl.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Many of us are in that same boat, Rikard. I wrote to you. To Landsberger Allee. Everything was sent back.’

  Her son said nothing for a long time. Perhaps he felt ashamed after all, perhaps he was fumbling to find an explanation. She would not pressure him.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you,’ he said. ‘Can you try again?’

  The line crackled, it irritated her, this was the world’s most important conversation between a mother and her son.

  ‘My letter,’ she whispered. ‘It was sent back.’

  Another pause, and then a deep sigh.

  ‘I don’t have that flat any more.’

  No, she knew that. That he had lost everything, his job, his position, his home. And the respect of others.

  She did not want to cry, but could not help sniffling.

  ‘Kann ich etwas tun?’ he asked, all of a sudden.

  She was pulled back in time to the pedestrian precinct and Ladies Choice and the Englishman William who had as
ked exactly the same. How strange it was that everything was connected, there was a meaning to everything. He was definitely like Walther, he had the same warmth, the same intelligent sensitivity and care that she had fallen for, that had made her feel safe.

  ‘Write to me!’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be here for a long time.’ She said each word with as much force as she could. Used everything the speech therapist had taught her, every muscle, every breath. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, I can hear you. I will write to you,’ he promised.

  ‘Write whatever you want,’ she whispered back. ‘You don’t need to explain yourself.’

  ‘Du auch nicht,’ he said.

  Her throat tightened and her eyes welled up, and she was glad no one could see her. The officer who had been standing over by the window, coughed. She continued to clutch the telephone, to press it to her ear, which was now burning.

  ‘They will read everything, you know,’ she whispered.

  ‘That’s the way it is,’ her son replied.

  The golden moment was over.

  ‘They’re saying I have to go. I’ll write!’

  His last words. She wanted to thank him with all her heart. But she was so close to crying that she could not get the words out. All she managed to give him in parting was a little sob. Then she nodded several times, as she normally did when she wanted to finish a conversation. She nodded even though he could not see her. Then the line was cut.

  ‘He promised to write!’ she whispered, and beamed at the officer. She was reluctant to give the telephone back, as if he was still in there, lived there, and was now being carried away by unknown hands. But the air was full of glitter. A shower of golden glitter, like the stuff she remembered from her childhood that you could buy in long plastic tubes, that she loved to put on her drawings and home-made cards, and Christmas decorations, and sometimes even in her hair.