Карин Фоссум - The Whisperer

She decided to go for a walk along Kirkelina. This was not something she normally did, but she had had the window closed all night and needed some air. She hoped that Olaf might be out with Dolly. When she got to the bottom of the steps, she was seized by uncertainty. How many steps would it be down to the road today? Could she walk without counting? Her whole system relied on her measuring the distance down to the mailbox, thus defining her own space and exactly how big it was. She was not able to break the pattern. She took a few hesitant steps. The damned counting in her mind started immediately, and after ten steps, she took four back. Then she walked forward for eight and back for five, then thirteen forward and three back. When she had completely lost count, she started to walk faster, it was only a few metres down to the road. She had outmanoeuvred her own system. Triumphant, she turned round. The footprints looked like a horde of people had been playing in her driveway.

She set off towards the church, with her hands deep in the pockets of her coat. She met no one. Every now and then a car drove past, but they were also going slower than normal, it was Sunday, after all, there was no need to rush. The cold air on her cheeks felt good, but was the right cheek not extra cold? Had the hole not healed as she had hoped, it felt like the chill was in her bones. She stamped her feet hard on the ground, to make her presence known. Of course it cut to the bone, she had no fat on her body, and the wind was coming from the right, blowing the bitter cold from the river that ran through town, all the way up to Kirkelina. A taxi came driving towards her, the light on the roof was on, perhaps it was Irfan. The shop would be closed today, and he might want to earn some Sunday fares. But it was not Irfan, she discovered. The driver looked at her directly as he passed, possibly in the hope she would wave him down. She carried on. Huddled over as she was freezing now, but she liked it, liked walking briskly up the road without meeting anyone. After some time, she lifted her head and looked around. To think that she had walked this far, time had stood still, no ticking either inside her or out.

Later, she sat at the kitchen table and drank some hot tea from a large cup with two handles. The window here was dirty as well, covered in a grey film. It would not be easy to wash them while it was cold. She could not remember them being like that the day before, but that’s often the way with things that happen slowly, she reflected, like the division of cells in the body, never the same as before. Was anything happening in there at all, she wondered, or were her organs in fact in the process of shutting down? One machine at a time, until the whole biochemical factory lay cold and deserted? She leaned closer to the window and spotted a mark that she could not work out at first, until she noticed a small feather quivering in the wind. A bird must have crashed into the window, perhaps it was lying dead in the snow below. She stood up, opened the window and looked down. But she could not see a dead bird. Either it had been eaten by a cat or it had just got a terrible fright and flown away. She closed the dirty window, went over to the computer and sat staring at the screen as it sprang to life.

On YouTube, she found ‘The Jumper’, but a thought struck her before she pressed play. The young man who jumped from the building, hit the asphalt, then got up and left the frame was remarkably familiar. She had seen him before, no, not just seen him, she felt that she knew him, or had known him once a long time ago, because there were some strings in her that resonated every time she looked him in the eye. It was of course a ridiculous thought, the video was not even Norwegian, and she did not know any young men, apart from Audun. And he certainly did not look anything like Audun. The video only lasted a minute. But those sixty seconds always seemed to stretch on for much longer. There he was, on the roof of the building, only a few steps from the edge. He was slim and dressed in dark clothes. A black jacket that sat neatly on his hips, but was not buttoned. He stood there for a long time without moving, preparing himself for the great fall, then he stepped out to the edge. Not a sound to be heard. No music, no traffic from the street below, no shouts or screams. That was perhaps why the images made such an impact, because of the silence; everything had stopped, everyone was holding their breath, just as she was holding her breath. Then he spread out his arms so he looked like a cross, or a figurehead. And in fact, he did not jump at all, he fell forwards into a swoop, as elegant as a swallow. His jacket swung open and fluttered around him so he looked like a flying squirrel. The noise of the body hitting the ground was the first sound on the video. He immediately started to bleed from his ears and mouth, and the person with the handheld camera stormed across the street to get a close-up of him, she could hear his footsteps and shallow breathing. Time started again. Ragna took a deep breath and waited. Any second now he would slowly move one hand and lift his head, muster his strength and manage to pull his body up until he was standing, then he would start to walk, staring straight at the camera, at her, Ragna Riegel, with that inscrutable expression. Only this time it did not happen. He stayed on the ground, and the pool of blood expanded and grew, as though the lifeless body was emptying itself of fluid. He did not move so much as a finger. The seconds ticked by and she waited, touched the screen with her finger, poked him. A minute passed, and another, had the computer frozen? She knocked it a couple of times to jolt it into action, but nothing happened. Four point seven million people had watched this video and now it was over. The screen went black. But still she waited, she knew that it automatically went back to the beginning, it would play again and again, on a loop, until she decided to watch something else. But the screen remained black. Even though the blue light was still flashing to show that the computer was on, she could not find ‘The Jumper’ again. It was just another trick, they had fooled her once more. She could not believe anything any more, everything was fixed, everything was a trick. Everything that happened outside the windows, everything that happened inside. She lifted her hand and studied it carefully, imagined the blood flowing through the tiny veins that coloured the tips of her fingers pink, imagined the cells that were constantly renewing themselves to make her fingers sensitive. Divide, for God’s sake, divide! she thought. She came abruptly to herself when someone knocked hard on the door.

The relationship and atmosphere between them had changed, but Ragna could not put her finger on when exactly it had happened. Even Frank, who was lying by the window, was on his guard. He had pricked up his ears when she came into the room and was full of expectation when she went over to say hello. She looked at Sejer with a more critical eye, saw every wrinkle and line in his serious face. She thought he was less sympathetic and spotted something new in his slate-grey eyes, a doubt that had not been there before, a different attitude. She said nothing. She sat as she always did during these interviews, like a schoolgirl, with her hands on her lap.

But now the silence unsettled her, which was also something new.

‘Is there a letter from Berlin?’ she asked.

Sejer did not answer immediately. She could not understand why he was so reserved, which she found disconcerting. Three seconds passed, and then twenty.

‘Yes, there is,’ he replied reluctantly.

‘Have you read it?’

‘Yes, we have.’

‘But I can’t yet?’

‘You’ll get it soon.’