Karin Fossum - The Caller

Well, what do you know, Johnny Beskow thought.

After giving it some thought, he went outside and hid the box under the seat of his Suzuki. The rat poison could be useful, and he liked having something up his sleeve. Then he went back to his grandfather. Henry was asleep in the chair. Johnny sat on the footstool and waited patiently for him to wake up, which he did some twenty minutes later.

‘Would you like me to make you a Thermos of coffee?’

‘Please. You can put a little sugar in it, but don’t screw the cap on too tight — you know how it is.’

Johnny went to the kitchen and prepared everything. Boiled the kettle, poured the water through a coffee filter, added some spoonfuls of sugar. Got a mug from the cupboard, the one his grandfather always drank from: a blue cup with handles on each side. He set it on the table, then went to the window. He said, ‘Who’s the girl with the red hair?’

Henry cleared his throat and coughed. Dust had lodged in his oesophagus. ‘It’s Meiner’s youngest, I think. Her name is Else. They live in the yellow house down the road. You see the old cars in the front yard? They’ve been there for fifteen years. Meiner has probably meant to fix them and sell them on, but he never has.’

‘She’s not nice, that girl,’ Johnny said with his mouth to the window. His breath created a small patch of condensation on the glass and with his finger he drew a skull.

‘Do you mean Else? Actually, she is nice. She’s like a little guard dog. She watches everyone who drives into Rolandsgata. Finds out what they’re doing here. Then she’ll bark at them when they drive off. Let me tell you: if someone comes to my house with bad intentions, Else Meiner will warn me instantly. She has eyes like a falcon, and screams like a magpie.’

Johnny sat back down on the footstool.

Henry was silent for a long time.

‘I’m sorry I’m so old,’ he said finally with a heavy sigh. ‘I’m sorry I’m so slow and useless and don’t understand anything. It won’t get any better, either.’

‘Stop talking like that,’ Johnny said sternly.

‘I’m not afraid of dying.’

‘I know.’

‘Are you afraid of going to sleep? It’s no worse than that. We lie down, we sail away.’

He lifted a crooked hand and pushed tufts of hair from his forehead. His lips were narrow and colourless, as if life was leaking slowly from his body and taking with it colour and glow.

‘You won’t die for a long time,’ Johnny said confidently.

The very thought anguished him, because he liked the old man, and he had nowhere else to go. No one waited for him; no one needed him to do anything. Henry was nodding off again. Johnny clutched one of his grandfather’s arthritic hands.

‘Grandpa,’ he whispered, ‘would you like me to open a window before I go? It’s so hot in here. You’ll be sluggish.’

The old man opened one eye. ‘Wasps might get in.’

‘Do you have rats in the cellar?’

‘Not any more. Mai took care of them.’

Johnny released Henry’s hand. He rose and smoothed the blanket. ‘Grandpa, when did my mother start drinking?’

‘Just before you were born. It wasn’t so easy, you understand. Bad things happened.’

‘She won’t talk about my father,’ Johnny complained. ‘I don’t know anything about him.’

‘Let it go,’ Henry said, turning his face away and closing his eyes. ‘It’s not always best to know the truth. Trust me.’

Lily Sundelin pushed Margrete in the pram, and Karsten walked quietly beside them. She held on to the pram, and he held on to her arm; they couldn’t get any closer to each other. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was burning the backs of their heads. Margrete wore a dress with red-and-white stripes, and looked like a little lollipop.

They left the Bjerketun housing estate and walked to the main road. Stopped as a car sped past.

‘Do you know what occurred to me today?’ Lily said. ‘Right when I got up? It hit me like a bolt of lightning.’

‘What?’ He squeezed her arm.

‘Her smock,’ she said. ‘It was gone. The pink smock.’ She leaned forward and patted Margrete’s cheek.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. For some reason he took the smock with him. Don’t you think that’s a bit twisted? I mean, who steals a smock? I don’t understand it.’

Karsten didn’t have an answer. She saw him purse his lips. The incident had changed him, and while she partly liked the change, this sudden rage frightened her. His voice was coarse now; she noticed it whenever he answered the telephone. He was always on guard, always on the offensive, in case something should happen. She had never seen this side of him, and she wanted him to let it go; they had to go on with their lives. Yet she was also touched, because he’d risen up and tried to protect them. He had never been so big and broad as now, his voice never so gruff.

‘Do you think he’s keeping an eye on us?’ she asked.

Karsten looked around the road, and at the houses. ‘No, don’t be silly. It’s possible he thinks about us, proud of what he’s done. Maybe he’s planning new attacks. Move on to the shoulder, Lily, a car’s coming. Christ, the way he drives.’

They stood still as the car sped past.

‘Schillinger,’ Karsten said.

‘Who?’

‘Bjørn Schillinger. You know, the man with the huskies. He lives on Sagatoppen. Did you see his car, the Land Cruiser? When we trade in our Honda, we’ll exchange it for a Land Cruiser.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s bigger and more powerful, tougher. Eight cylinders. Two hundred and eighty-six horsepower. How far do you want to walk? It’s really hot, and Margrete is as red as a boiled lobster.’

Lily considered. The child was sleeping, and she herself had good shoes.

‘We’ll walk to Saga,’ she said. ‘We’ll turn round on the bridge.’

They reached the bridge twenty minutes later.

Just then a bus whizzed by, and they had to move closer to the railing. Lily’s dress fanned around her legs. Because of the rushing water, she held on tightly to the pram, a reflex. She bent over the railing and stared down. The water was rust-brown, with yellow foam. On a shelf of rock she saw the remains of a bonfire; an empty beer can clacked against the rock wall. Karsten put an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into his broad chest.

‘There’s a lot of power down there,’ he said. ‘Listen. It hums like a motor. In the old days, people got by with the sun and the water. Now we’re destroying the earth.’

‘Is that why you want a Land Cruiser?’ Lily teased.

He grunted something unintelligible in response, and Lily grew serious again. She noticed that his chest heaved and sank, and she had a strange feeling. After what had happened, she was vulnerable in a new way. She couldn’t get over it, couldn’t forget what had been done to her Margrete. Something horrible had spotted them, had pointed at them with a quivering finger, and shattered everything. It had something to do with the light, perhaps even with the rhythm of life; everything was out of sync. She looked at the round, smooth rocks at the bottom of the river. Then she saw something that looked like a tyre.

She squeezed Karsten’s arm. ‘Is that a tricycle?’ she said, distraught.

Karsten strained to see. He saw something red. A handlebar of some kind. A tyre. Black rubber. ‘The tyre is too big for that.’

‘A pram?’ she said anxiously. ‘Good God. Is it a pram, Karsten?’

Karsten Sundelin leaned over the railing. The thing in the water was something he’d seen many times before, but he didn’t know how it had ended up in the river. Look at that,’ he said. ‘It’s a Zimmer frame.’