Karin Fossum - The Caller

‘Did you hear his voice? Did he say anything?’

‘No.’

‘I see you have a noticeboard near the entrance,’ he said. ‘Put a little note up. Say you’ve found a pair of gloves. In case he doesn’t realise he lost them here. When he shows up, you’ve got to work together. One of you goes to retrieve the gloves and dawdles as much as possible. The other leaves the shop and looks for his bike. We believe he rides a moped, or a small motorcycle. Jot down the registration number. And call me immediately.’

Britt and Ella Marit nodded.

‘The first time you saw him he was wearing a helmet,’ Skarre said. ‘What colour?’

‘Red,’ Ella Marit said. ‘With small golden wings on the sides. He’s a little poser, if you ask me.’

‘Let me say something important before I go,’ Skarre said. ‘A number of unfortunate things have happened here lately, in Bjerkås, in Sandberg, and out towards Kirkeby. But we just want to talk to him. We don’t know anything for certain. So don’t start any rumours that might harm him.’

Now it was Britt who spoke. ‘A lot of teenagers here in Bjerkås ride a moped. There’s such a bad bus connection into the city. They buzz around on the roads all the time, those under eighteen I mean. Everyone over eighteen, they drive cars. I’ll be bloody nervous when he turns up,’ she added. ‘If he’s suddenly standing at my till asking for the gloves.’

Ella Marit leaned heavily against the table. Her Spar uniform was tight, and revealed quite a bit of her plumpness. When she talked, it was with an accent which have might hailed from Finnmark. She had bright brown eyes and a few Sami characteristics, and on her left hand she wore a silver ring, a snake that wrapped around her finger.

‘God knows how it’ll be when they catch him,’ she said. ‘When people find out who he is. I think about that a lot. It’ll be pandemonium out here in Bjerkås.’

‘Exactly,’ Skarre smiled. ‘Pandemonium.’

It was the middle of September.

Falling from the sky was a rain so cool and fine that it resembled mist from a waterfall. The dampness lent a special sheen to everything, to the city’s roofs and facades, to the blue asphalt, to rubbish containers and to bike racks. After a while the sun broke through. Bushes and trees also had their own gleam, like something pure and renewed. Sejer walked the streets with Frank. Walking softly and effortlessly, he thought about his childhood. In his life he had been fortunate to have all the important things, including the most essential foundation: security. His mother had given him this. She had always, whenever something happened — an accident or an illness — immediately clutched him and assured him that everything would work out. It’ll be all right, she said that time he fell over the handlebars and broke his wrist. It’ll get better, she said when his dog died and he almost couldn’t bear it. It’ll get better, it’ll work out, I’m quite certain of it .

Words that were accompanied by her arm, which held him tightly, and by her warm, assured voice: she was an adult and she knew certain things. Security was part of his innermost core, a base, and his entire life rested on it.

But some kids didn’t have any of that. They had mothers who buried their faces in their hands to lament, Dear God, what will happen now? Lamenting led to angst, and angst led to the foundation vanishing beneath their feet. So they searched their entire lives for something to latch on to. The world was full of such kids who’d gone astray.

He continued slowly through the shiny streets, stopping now and then so Frank could sniff the gutter. He thought about the white house in Gamle Møllevej outside Roskilde, where he grew up. Hollyhocks climbed the wall, small white hens trotted around the garden. Being a little boy, playing between the trees in the garden, plucking sour currants from the bushes, eating them, and making sour faces with his friend Ole. Laughing at the tiniest things. Then, when the day was over, he would head back to his house without trepidation. Be welcomed like someone unique, someone loved, as if he, the little boy Konrad, was an event in and of himself, returned home finally after a long absence. But that’s not how it is for everyone, he thought. There are kids who open the door, afraid, who cower and sneak into their homes, kids who don’t know what to expect. Who flee again because what they see is unbearable. Like drunkenness. Words of abuse. Or violence. Or all of it together in one hellish, destructive cocktail. He thought again of his childhood friend Ole. He was just a guest in his mother’s house. No, you can’t be here now , she’d say, the weather’s so nice. No, not today, I’m cleaning. One of my friends is visiting. I have a migraine. You should be outside. Now, out you go! And Ole would leave. In rain and storm and cold. In the evening he would sneak back in, make himself a sandwich and tiptoe to his bed like a masterless dog. There was no violence in the house, no one drank. But no one loved him either. Sejer bent down and stroked Frank’s back. Some people claimed that you couldn’t blame parents for the misery that plagued their children. But he disagreed vehemently. You could blame mothers for a lot. The child was at the mercy of her moods, her anger and her doubt, her bitterness and her shortcomings. And they were at the mercy of their father’s despair, his absence and lack of attention.

Frank had stopped to sniff at a half-eaten bun. When he was done, he raised his leg and urinated on an old rusty gate. They continued through the city, the tall grey man and the small, wrinkled dog. Admittedly, I’m a little heavier in my steps, Sejer thought, than I was a few years ago. But I’m also older and wiser. At that moment a sudden, brief dizzy spell overcame him once more. The city and the back alleys sailed away in front of his eyes. To be on the safe side he moved closer to a house wall, leaned against it and closed his eyes. Stood and waited for the spell to pass. Frank stopped too. He looked up at his master with his black eyes. I wobbled a few steps to the left, Sejer thought. I always wobble to the left. Maybe this is an asymmetric symptom? No, cut it out, he thought, it’s probably just some calcified veins in my neck. Maybe I’m anaemic.

He began walking again.

His mobile rang in his pocket.

He recognised the number, and listened to Skarre’s account of the forgotten gloves. At the end of the conversation Skarre mentioned something else. ‘Helge Landmark’s health has taken a turn. He’s been admitted to the hospital, and he’s on a respirator.’

Sometimes Johnny Beskow dreamed that everyone was out to get him.

That the police had sent a throng of people that now chased him through the forest with German shepherds snapping at his heels. The night was black as pitch and they searched for him with torches. He saw cones of light dance between the trunks of trees, heard threats and shouts and dogs panting, but he was faster than they were, and craftier.

Like a weasel he slipped away.

He found a cave and hid inside, balled up against the wall listening. Lightning quick he clambered up a tree and looked down through the leaves at the crowd. Wading over a brook, he put them off the scent.

He still had this dream. Each time he woke with a feeling of satisfaction, because it wasn’t a nightmare — more like play, a game he always won.

They can’t even catch me in dreams.

Because I’m faster, he thought.

I’m Johnny Beskow, and I’m invincible.

The moped wouldn’t start. It just coughed a few times, and spluttered out. The tank was just about empty of petrol, and he had no money. So he walked. He had good legs and good trainers, and he didn’t want to be at home. As he walked, he remembered the gloves he’d lost, and it occurred to him that they might be at the shop in Lake Skarve. Perhaps he had taken them off and put them on the conveyor belt when he was paying, and then left them behind. It could’ve happened that way, and maybe they’d kept them. He decided he would go to the shop and ask, so he took the path down to the water. He walked fast. The heat filled his body from his feet upwards; it rose to his head, and he felt light and good. Before going in he strolled around by the lake for a while, watching the ducks and the neat rings they created in the water. When he crossed the car park and walked to the entrance, he hesitated a moment. Something rang in his head, a warning bell. He felt as though he was being watched. At the same time he caught sight through the window of a notice that said a pair of black-and-red gloves had been found.