Karin Fossum - He Who Fears The Wolf

"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.