Karin Fossum - The Murder of Harriet Krohn

“What happened to you?” she asks, drying her tears.

Charlo has stood up again and is looking himself over, avoiding her eyes.

“Well,” he says uncertainly. “One leg went all weak. It’s odd.”

She titters again, goes up to him, and starts brushing his jacket. She’s kindly now, soothing.

“I’ll have to use the broom,” she says. “It’s stuck to your clothes, Dad. You’ll have to go home and take a shower. My God, what a sight you are! Why did you stumble? Was it slippery?”

He says nothing. The stench of dung fills his nose. Again he thinks there’s a flickering before his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. She uses the broom gently on his back and dries the last tears from her cheeks.

“Weak, how?” she asks, and now there’s more concern in her voice.

“Well, I’m not sure,” he says. “I probably just wasn’t concentrating. You know how scatterbrained I am.”

Deep down he knows there’s something wrong. Again he had that feeling of weakness in his joints. First they seemed to go into spasm, then to lose all power. There’s a deep throbbing in his breast, a rising disquiet that something’s wrong with him. It’s strange, he thinks. He’s never unwell. For as far back as he can remember, he’s never been ill. Not since childhood measles and that sort of thing. But nothing since then.

He walks out of the stable, pulls off his jacket, and shakes it as hard as he can. It does no good at all. As he stands outside in the cold and darkness looking down at his own body, fear comes creeping over him. Something is about to overtake him. A punishment because his sins are so great. He isn’t going to escape. He stands shivering beneath the stars. It was too good to last, he thinks. What Julie and I found. Dear Lord, don’t take it from me! Then he shakes his head in perplexity. Sighs and pulls himself together. He feels quite normal again, as if nothing has happened. No, really he’s as fit as a fiddle. The wheelbarrow was so heavy, and perhaps it had more weight on the right side. That made it impossible to control, that’s how it happened. Maybe he slipped on some ice in the passage. It is very cold. There are lots of explanations. He’s forced to go in again, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to say. The event has become so difficult to manage. Julie is grooming the horse. He shakes his head in resignation.

“I must be getting old,” he says, and makes for the sink. He turns on the tap and splashes ice-cold water in his face.

She demurs and works on with her currycomb, using long, powerful strokes. Crazy shines rubicund in the light and munches hay with imperturbable calm.

“Has it happened before?” she asks suddenly, watching him narrowly.

He doesn’t want to answer. But they’re together now and mustn’t have secrets — no more than necessary.

“Yes,” he admits. “A couple of times. But I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s probably just a bad habit, that I don’t look where I’m going.”

She puts down the currycomb and picks up the horse blanket, spreading it across the horse’s back.

“I think you ought to see the doctor,” she says.

He considers her suggestion. He never goes to the doctor, because he’s never ill. And what would he say? Sometimes I trip and fall? Surely everyone does that. But then there’s this flickering vision. Are the two things connected? Are there other things going on in his system that he doesn’t know about? Once again he peers down his body. The idea that it won’t do what he asks is an impossible one for him. The notion fills him with righteous anger; he feels the indignation burning his cheeks.

“Yes,” he replies, “I’ll call in the morning.” He nods as if to emphasize the seriousness of the thing.

They close the box door and walk toward the exit, switching off the ceiling light. Julie opens the door and Charlo feels the icy air creeping in everywhere. It cuts him like a knife. All the things that can attack human beings. Personally he feels that he really doesn’t want to know. He wants to live his life now, undisturbed by details. All the same, he phones the doctor the next day and makes an appointment.

Dr. Graff takes his blood pressure and says it’s excellent. Charlo sits on the edge of a chair in nothing but his underwear. He feels horribly naked. He, a grown man, coming to the doctor because he’s tripping over his own legs. It’s pathetic. The doctor works away eagerly on his keyboard, typing everything up in his notes. Whether he smokes and how much. If he sleeps well, if he eats well. If he’s allergic to anything, if there are hereditary conditions in his family. Things like that. Charlo answers dutifully and honestly.

“So you’re not sure whether you tripped over something or your knee gave way?”

“It might have been a patch of ice,” Charlo says, because that’s what he’s hoping. “And then there’s this flickering in front of my eyes. Maybe I need glasses. I’m at that sort of age.”

“We’ll do some blood tests,” the doctor says. His voice is reassuring and neutral. “So that we can exclude a number of things.”

Charlo nods and reaches for his shirt. He wonders what the doctor is trying to exclude, but he doesn’t dare inquire. He’s given a form and told to sit down and wait outside the nurse practitioner’s office. At the same time, a new appointment is made for him.

The nurse takes some blood. He watches the thin red stream and wonders what the blood will show. What it is he has too much or too little of. He wants to leave and go to the stables. He wants to pretend this isn’t happening. Then he shakes it off. The body isn’t a perfect organism; it goes wrong from time to time. It does with everybody. Once the nurse has finished helping herself liberally to his blood, he gets up from the chair. He straightens up and pulls down the sleeve of his shirt. He stands there broad-shouldered, holding his stomach in. Showing off his fine physique. She isn’t particularly interested.

Maybe he’s being poisoned by his own crime? He can keep order of a kind inside his head and try to put it behind him, but perhaps it’s seeping out into his system and debilitating him? Remorse, guilt, and panic distilled into some paralyzing substance that’s eating its way into his joints, muscles, and nerves? He tries to laugh this idea off. If he really is suffering from something, it must have been there right from the beginning, in his genes. Then he imagines that everything is coded and that time unleashes it all — all diseases, all catastrophes. Was his crime also contained in his genes? Was he born with a predisposition, or was it just circumstances that turned him into a murderer? The fact that he has no answers troubles him. He needs to work through his own guilt, to place it somewhere outside himself. Not with his mother or father, he thinks. Not with Inga Lill or Julie. Not within his own nature, because he’s not aggressive. He never flares up. Almost never. He doesn’t go off the rails when he drinks. He did fairly well at school and got up to the usual boyish pranks. Now he’s an honest man. He never parks illegally and he doesn’t cheat on his income tax. He informs Social Security each time Møller pays him. He takes care of Julie with gentleness, fatherliness, and self-sacrifice. But things went wrong once, in Harriet Krohn’s house. She shouldn’t have attacked him. She should have kept calm and let him do what he’d come to do in peace. She would have saved her own life, he thinks, and she’d be walking around now, sucking on candy in her ugly green dress.

The days pass slowly as he waits for the results of his blood tests.

He looks at the calendar and counts down, alternating between hope and anxiety. He wants to get the date behind him, to move on. There mustn’t be any problems. Julie must be happy, and he must be there for her as long as she needs him. The day arrives. It’s dull and wet, and he’s toyed with the notion that sunshine would be a good omen. There’s no sunshine, only a keen wind that whips through the streets and blows his thinning hair around. His appointment is at three o’clock. Julie says, “Then I’ll come, too. I can leave school a bit early, and we can go to the doctor together.” Charlo is both touched and concerned because if there’s bad news awaiting him, he won’t be able to conceal it. She must be spared any worry. But he’s really so fit. He can’t believe that he’s got anything the matter with him. Then he checks himself. Of course something can be the matter with him; it happens to everybody. It’s only a question of time. Is it going to happen now, he wonders. Has my time come? That wind is particularly sharp: a warning, icy blast that presages danger.