Карин Фоссум - The Whisperer

She rang the police on her landline. A female officer answered. She was polite, but not particularly interested or helpful.

‘Duty officer. How can I help?’

Ragna tried as hard as she could to make herself understood.

‘There’s a man watching my house,’ she whispered. ‘He’s standing down by the road staring up at the house and he’s been there for a long time.’

Silence. Perhaps the officer was writing it all down, or maybe she was rolling her eyes to a colleague.

‘So he’s not in your house?’

‘No,’ Ragna whispered.

‘He’s standing down by the road?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, why are you whispering then? It makes it very hard to hear what you’re saying? Could you speak normally, please?’

There. She heard the first hint of irritation because she was not like everyone else.

She swallowed and tried to explain, managed to stammer that she did not have a voice because of an injury. Again, there was silence on the other end.

‘So he’s hurt you?’

‘No!’

Another silence. Ragna could feel the pressure in her head; her throat tightened.

‘He’s been standing there for over an hour,’ she whispered. ‘He hasn’t moved, he just stands there staring.’

‘I’m sorry, can you repeat that?’

‘He’s been standing there for over an hour!’

‘What’s your address?’

‘Kirkelina 7. Riegel.’

‘And you don’t know who he is? You don’t know him?’

‘He’s sent me some letters.’

‘I see.’

A pause.

‘So you’re drawing your own conclusions here. You’ve received some letters, and now there’s a man standing outside looking at your house. Are you sure it’s the same person?’

‘I think so.’

‘You think?’

The officer did not say anything for a long time, but Ragna could hear some mumbling, as though she was conferring with someone else. The mumbling lasted for some time, and then she was back.

‘Is there a bus stop or something like that on the road?’

‘No, that’s further down.’

‘And you’re sure that he’s looking at your house? He’s not standing with his back to you? It’s dark, after all.’

‘His face is pale,’ Ragna said. ‘He’s standing under a street light at the end of my drive. He wants me to see him.’

‘Is he doing anything other than standing there?’

‘No.’

‘Have you recently broken up from a relationship?’

It was Ragna’s turn to be silent. But then she realised what the officer was thinking.

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘No ex-husband or ex-partner?’

She thought about Walther, who had suddenly popped up after all these years, but then dismissed the idea.

‘No,’ she said firmly.

The officer asked her for more information about the letters. It dawned on her that she thought of Ragna as disabled, as people always treated her in that special way. No doubt they got lots of calls from confused and sick people, who shouted and screamed and made a fuss. The switchboard was probably constantly flashing red with incoming calls.

‘But he’s done nothing to you?’

‘He’s just standing there.’

‘He hasn’t shouted or threatened you?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’m afraid there’s not a lot we can do,’ the officer explained. ‘Not unless he’s on your property. And as you said that he’s down on the road, I’m afraid he has every right to stand there, unless he threatens you.’

Ragna was really running into problems now. It was getting harder for her to express herself clearly. She desperately wanted to slam the phone down, but decided to try once more.

‘How long do I have to wait then?’ she whispered in desperation. ‘What if he stands there all night?’

‘Sorry, can you say that again?’

‘What if he stands there all night?’

‘That’s not very likely,’ the officer said. ‘We don’t have any cars available in your area at the moment, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to try your best to ignore him. It’s cold out there,’ she added. ‘He’ll be freezing soon enough, but that’s his problem.’

Ragna guessed that the officer was smiling. At herself and the elegant way in which she dealt with the public, the kind of smile she used when she wanted to end a conversation. The officer was of course very good at discerning what was serious and what was nonsense. People’s constant need for attention. Old ladies were the worst.

‘But the letters,’ Ragna whispered in desperation. ‘They must mean something. I’ve had three of them. He’s threatening me!’

‘In that case,’ the officer said, ‘you should bring them here so we can have a look.’

Ragna threw the receiver down. She could not bear having to admit that she had burnt them.

She stomped to the bathroom, without even glancing at the window, and started to run a bath. As she could not scream, she had to find other ways to make a noise. She sprinkled a handful of peach-coloured bath salts into the water, which were supposed to have a ‘relaxing and revitalising’ effect. Not that she believed it, but she had nothing else, not even a drop of red wine. There was good pressure in the old pipes and the water gushed out of the taps, so the bath was quickly full of cascades of calming foam. She took off her clothes and left them lying on the floor like an abandoned nest. The foam meant that she did not need to look at her own skinny body in the water, and she lay there without moving, and with her eyes closed. Breathed slowly and evenly. She had understood how important it was to breathe properly. She had even heard that some people went on courses to learn the art, and that the right breathing could remedy all kinds of ills, including anxiety and stress. She decided to lie there until the water had lost most of its warmth. The man would be gone by then. Tired and blue with cold, he would finally have slunk off. Slowly she started to relax and both she and the room smelt good. She had heard that you could get high from bath salts, and that it is a powerful and destructive rush, which surprised her. Bath salts were available everywhere, even young children could get hold of them, and old ladies were given them for Christmas. The warm water had made her so heavy and relaxed that she felt quite dizzy when she stood up and got out. She was smooth and pink like a salmon. The mirror had steamed up so she could only see herself as a shadow. I’ve always been unclear, she thought, that’s nothing new. Before she left the bathroom, she opened the window to let out the steam. She went straight back to the living room. The man had gone. He really had gone! She peered up and down the road, no one was standing under the street lamp staring. She thought that he might have moved on to the next house to terrorise them, Olaf or the Sois, or someone else. And the officer she had spoken to would still be on duty, answering the phone. There would be red flashing lights on the switchboard all night, and the next day, and she was just one little red light that they could turn off whenever they liked. One of seven billion. One of the complainers.

She felt hot as a poker straight out of the fire and her clothes were sticking to her. She checked again to see that the man had gone, leaned against the window that immediately steamed up, so she drew a smiley face. Turned on her computer and searched for ‘The Jumper’ on YouTube. She never got tired of watching the weightless dive from the tall building all the way down to the ground. Never tired of the resurrection, when he stood up and walked towards the camera. His eyes, black, inscrutable, that said so much. You hadn’t expected this, had you? A spark of triumph. Or perhaps, his eyes were challenging her, as though he wanted to tell her something or get her to do something, as though he had seen her, Ragna Riegel from Kirkelina 7. She went to the window again, the man was not there. Irfan’s shop was still dark. She cautiously went out and round to the back of the house to get some wood from the pile under the bathroom window, pulled the tarpaulin into place. The November air was sharp and cold, but she was still warm from the bath. Her blood vessels that had been opened contracted with such speed that her cheeks prickled. She was no longer heavy and slow, she was sharp and alert. She went back in and put the wood on the fire, sat on her knees in front of the glass door until it was burning well. Turned down the volume on the television and sat there staring at the flames. The door had beautiful cast-iron latticework, so she watched the flames through several small, arched spaces, a bit like a stained-glass window in a church. Why do flames have such a powerful effect on people, almost hypnotic? They were enough, she needed nothing else. And by the sea, one needs nothing apart from the waves that roll in and break on the shore. It must be something to do with endless repetitiveness, the dancing flames, the swell of the waves, the sense of something that has always been and always will be. The eternal. She found that she wanted to meditate, but did not know how. Was it not a case of closing out the world and focusing on a small space, for example the blue at the centre of a flame, which she had heard was actually cold? If she chose one of the small windows in the door, and only looked at the flames through that one alone, everything around her, the room, the house, the street, would disappear and her tormented soul would find peace. But she found no peace.