Karin Fossum - Bad Intentions

Ingerid gave her a triumphant look. ‘Jon’s friends, Axel and Reilly. They’re hiding something. In Jon’s diary it’s clear that something happened, something got out of control. Do you follow? Something is going on behind our backs.’

Yoo leaned forward in her armchair, listening.

‘What scares me the most,’ Ingerid said, ‘is that the police won’t be able to arrest them. Because it gets harder after such a long period of time and because they haven’t found any evidence, you know, as Kim was in the water for so long. But I can’t bear doing nothing, I have to do something. We can’t beat them up, but we can scare the living daylights out of them.’

Yoo Van Chau was thrilled to have found someone who felt the same way.

‘I’m thinking of inventing a lie,’ Ingerid said. ‘Give them a taste of their own medicine. I want to give them a wake-up call.’

‘A wake-up call?’

‘An anonymous letter,’ Ingerid said, ‘which will make them think that someone is on to them. That’s what they’re scared of, isn’t it, that someone suspects them? You do and I do, and I want them to know that.’

Yoo clenched her fists in her lap; her cheeks were flushed. ‘We’ll write a letter,’ she said, ‘but you need to write it. I make so many mistakes. Speaking Norwegian is no problem but writing it is difficult. I’ll get some paper.’

Yoo leapt up from her chair and went over to the chest of drawers where Kim’s photograph stood. Suddenly she waved her fist in the air. ‘We’ll get them,’ she said.

She opened one of the drawers and rummaged around. Then she returned with pen and paper. Ingerid took them.

‘It must be short,’ she said, ‘and to the point. It must be menacing.’

Yoo felt vengeance fill her heart, and it was true what they said: revenge was sweet. Ingerid started scribbling. She crossed her scrawl out and wrote something else. Yoo looked like a child expecting an exciting present. She perched on the edge of her armchair and craned her neck. Ingerid crossed her words out again, frowned and tore off the sheet. Eventually she frowned with determination and wrote without hesitation. Then she pushed the pad across the coffee table.

WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

WE ARE WATCHING YOU.

‘Where do we send it?’ Yoo asked.

‘To Reilly,’ Ingerid said. ‘Reilly is weaker.’

Afterwards Yoo retrieved an atlas from the bookcase.

She pointed as she explained to Ingerid, ‘Look, that’s China, Laos and Cambodia. Here’s the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. And this’, she said, ‘is Vietnam.’

The small country was reproduced in purple. North-west of Hanoi lay the town of Yen Bai. She drew a long line with the tip of her finger up to Norway.

‘We had to leave it all behind,’ she said, ‘when my husband got sick and died, and we were all alone.’

Then Ingerid pointed to Italy, which was reproduced in pink. She placed her finger on Naples.

‘Jon’s father lives here,’ she explained. ‘He left when Jon was a little boy. One day he just packed his bags and vanished. Then there was only Jon and me.’

Yoo put the atlas away.

‘Our sons are dead,’ Ingerid said, ‘but we’re not. I want to go outside in the wind. Do you have some stale bread so we can feed the ducks? Put on a warm coat.’

Yoo quickly went to the kitchen to fetch some bread. When they got outside they were hit by an icy blast.

‘As if grief weren’t bad enough,’ Ingerid said, ‘the gods have sent us a storm.’

They clung to each other as they walked. No one else had ventured out in the cold weather. It took them half an hour to walk to the pond. They found a bench by the water’s edge and Yoo took the bag of bread from her handbag. The ducks heard the rustling and zoomed in on them like small ships in a dense feather-clad fan formation. Their orange feet paddled energetically in the water.

‘It doesn’t matter if we get a bit chilly,’ Ingerid said. ‘We can warm up afterwards. How are you doing? Are your hands freezing?’

Yoo started tossing pieces of bread at the ducks. She found it amusing the way they all made a beeline for her. It seemed like devotion.

‘I’m going to come here every day,’ she vowed. ‘With stale bread.’

‘I would like to come with you,’ Ingerid said. ‘If you don’t mind.’ She gave the small woman a kind look.

‘Do you know what I often think?’ Ingerid said. ‘When something terrible happens, we talk about people getting over it. Is she over it? we say, as if the tragedy is an obstacle in someone’s path and we have to scale it. It’s not that straightforward. Grieving is something we have to live with,’ she said, ‘it’s a constant battle. And the enemy is the rest of our lives. All those nights. All those hours.’

She was reminded of something she had read in Jon’s diary. ‘He was so horribly ashamed,’ she explained. ‘He was so burdened by guilt and shame. He wrote as though he didn’t deserve to live.’

Ingerid looked down at the bread that Yoo was holding in her hand.

‘That crust of bread reminds me of something,’ she said. ‘A man was in a German prison camp during the war. He was subjected to so many awful things – abuse, torture, starvation and exposure. There were thirty men crammed into a freezing barrack, and the snow blew in under the door. Nevertheless he survived, and when the war ended he returned home. Though he now had plenty of food and warmth, he died shortly afterwards. He was haunted by a terrible memory. One night he had stolen a crust of bread from a sleeping man. It was this incident that killed him. He could not bear to eat.’

‘That’s very sad,’ Yoo said. She could visualise it all, an emaciated man in prison clothes stealing in the night. Crouching alone in the dark, furtively gnawing at the dry crust.

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Ingerid said. ‘But I also think that it says something positive about people. We need a sense of decency. Without it we cannot live a good life. And Jon had lost that sense of decency.’

Yoo looked down at what was left of the crust.

Ingerid took one of her hands and gave it a friendly squeeze.

‘Put your gloves back on,’ she ordered her. ‘You’re freezing. Look. They want more.’ She pointed to the ducks, which kept coming.

‘I think we’ve made friends for life,’ Yoo smiled.

Afterwards they headed towards Nattmål to warm up with a pot of tea.

‘Kim is never coming home again,’ Yoo said. ‘That means that no one will find me when I die. Not for a long time. Not many people come to my house,’ she explained.

‘That could happen to me too,’ Ingerid said. ‘I have an idea. Why don’t we call each other every evening?’

At that Yoo looped her arm though Ingerid’s, and they walked the last stretch close together.

‘What about us?’ she remembered when they were back inside. ‘Is sending that letter to Reilly an act of decency?’

Ingerid had her answer ready.

‘We forgive the poor wretch who stole the bread,’ she said. ‘He stole because he was in need. And so are we. Different rules apply.’

Axel Frimann was speechless when Reilly told him about the letter and his silence lasted for quite some time. Reilly pressed his mobile to his ear. He could clearly visualise Axel’s jaw muscles twitching as he reacted to the news.

‘Bloody hell,’ he heard.

And he repeated the oath with more emphasis.

‘Bloody hell.’

While he waited for Axel to continue, Reilly wandered around the flat in circles. The kitten chased him and clawed at his trouser leg.

‘Jon has exposed us,’ Axel said.

‘Never,’ Reilly said.