Карин Фоссум - The Whisperer

‘When you read the messages,’ Sejer said, ‘did you imagine a voice? One that you’d never heard.’

She pulled at her sweater, which was a little too short.

‘I imagined and thought lots of things. Maybe he didn’t want to use his voice, because then I might recognise him, if he was someone I’d known in the past. There was a reason why he didn’t threaten me by phone. I fantasised that maybe he didn’t have a voice at all, and that was why he had chosen me. That he was bitter about his handicap and was therefore spitting his venom at someone like himself.’

Sejer quickly wrote something down, just a single word, she thought, which made her curious. The letter from Berlin had given her a boost, she felt more courageous, and this made her lean forward, as though she had new rights.

‘What did you write?’ she asked.

‘Just a reminder.’

‘But what?’ she insisted. ‘Tell me. You sit there writing notes day after day, and I have no idea what.’

‘You wouldn’t understand it anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s a way of thinking, an association technique that helps me remember what we’ve talked about.’

‘Tell me,’ she said again.

He gave in and pushed the notepad over the table towards her, let her read the one word: resin.

‘Resin?’ She pulled a face. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘I told you. It’s just a prompt to help me remember. There are lots of different techniques you can use.’

‘So you do it to help you remember the interview.’

He nodded.

‘But resin?’ She looked puzzled. ‘How can the word resin make you remember anything we’ve talked about?’

Sejer pushed the notebook and pen to one side.

‘We were talking about feeling valuable,’ he said. ‘And how other people see us. Which made me think about all the valuable things that have not been discovered yet. Which then reminded me of a story from 1905 in Pretoria.’

Ragna liked listening to his deep voice. He was telling a story and it made her feel like a child again.

‘A miner was out doing the rounds one evening. He had a lantern with him, and decided to go and explore a cave. There he discovered a big, dirty, greyish-yellow lump on the rock face. It was not like anything else he’d seen on his daily rounds, and he thought it might be resin. And as resin can be used for quite a few things, he tried to cut it out, but it was far too hard, so he had to use a pickaxe to dislodge it. It turned out to be a 3,000-carat diamond.’

Ragna’s eyes popped out of her head. ‘Three thousand carat?’

‘Or six hundred grams, if that’s easier for you to understand.’

‘Diamonds look like resin?’

‘When they’re not cut, yes.’

‘He must have had a good eye,’ she said.

‘It was cut up and divided. The biggest stone is now part of Queen Elizabeth’s Crown jewels.’

‘Ah, well,’ Ragna sighed. ‘I’m certainly no uncut diamond. And you won’t need a pickaxe to discover me.’

‘True, you’re opening up of your own accord. But the story says a lot about how random life can sometimes be. And shows that hiding in a cave is not always the answer. But sometimes being curious is worth it.’

Dear Rikard Josef ,

To think that you’ve written to me! A proper letter, and a long letter at that. After all these years of cards with printed messages. You have no idea how much it means to me. I could fill a thousand pages describing how I feel right now, because when I write, I don’t need a voice, and I can be bold and strong. And you will hear me, loud and clear. Finally, I have some new pictures of you in my mind. And these images are made all the more vivid by your voice, which is much deeper now, and your breathing, which I heard on the phone so clearly, as though you were in the room with me, as though I could reach out my hand and touch your face. I no longer carry you in my arms or push you around in a pram, but you are so close to me now. And I can see from your letter that you are a mature man. When you talk about the priest and Peter and Helmut, you do it with such respect. I can see that I managed to teach you the important things in life, that people should be allowed to live in peace and be who they are. I may not have managed other things so well .

You have lived a long life since we last saw each other, and I have too. You say that you wanted to be something, that you studied while you worked night shifts, that you wanted to make me happy and proud. So you exaggerated and told me you were a manager at the Dormero. And I was happy and I was proud, and I told everyone at work, and Olaf, my neighbour, and the man in the shop over the road. But don’t let’s dwell on that now. I would have been just as proud if you were still a bellboy in a red uniform. And I can’t tell you how happy I am now! Even though you, like me, have gone off the rails. But what does embezzlement mean anyway? Your only crime is that you fiddled some numbers, and as a result, people feel bitter and betrayed. They felt you had let them down, but you have not hurt anyone, no one lies sleepless at night because of you. And nor should you, or I, for that matter. You will do your time, and people will forget your crime. But I will be in prison for the rest of my life, until my heart beats for the last time. What I have done is so terrible that people will talk about it for generations .

So, I told everyone that you were the director of the hotel. Lars and Gunnhild at work, and anyone else who wanted to listen. You know how everyone talks about their children, about how clever they are and where they work and what they study and how much they earn. I wanted to boast about you, show you in a good light. In my world, you are still the boss and you still shine brilliantly. You must never believe anything else .

I was not driving ‘at monkey speed’. I can’t drive at all, you know that, I have never had my hands on the wheel. I take the bus to work every day and always sit on the third seat to the left, by the window. And apart from that, I don’t have much to do with other people. You know what I’m like. And what I have done is so much worse than driving ‘at monkey speed’. I will tell you more when I have mustered the courage. But please don’t sit there in prison in Berlin and worry about me, somehow I will cope .

Everyone here looks after me well, especially the inspector. He makes no grand gestures, and when we sit together and talk, his big, heavy hands are always still, never twitchy. I have not met any of the other inmates, and that suits me fine, I think so much better when I am alone, and I have plenty to think about. I’m sure you do too. Or have you done all your thinking and are now focused on serving your sentence, so you can hold your head high again? How do you get on with the prison staff, do you like them? Are they friendly? Do they treat you with respect? The officers here are very correct, they never overstep any boundaries, and they are never facetious or patronising. When they are in my cell, they are friendly and give me all their attention, but I know that as soon as they are out the door, they forget me. They blow me out like a match, because they are going into the next cell, and there are quite a few of us. But there is one exception, and his name is Adde, and he has a blind eye, or what we call a glass eye, even though it is probably made from plastic or acrylic, I have no idea. I often sit looking at that eye, the one that doesn’t look back. I think his glass eye is more beautiful than his real eye, it is bigger, and the colour is clearer. There are even tiny, thin red vessels in the white, which were presumably painted on by hand. Sometimes I play with the idea that it is that eye that sees me and the other that is blind .