Karin Fossum - The Murder of Harriet Krohn

He rushes across to the phone and stands with the roll of notes in his hand as he dials Bjørnar Lind’s number. It’s late, but he can’t wait. He clutches the money tightly as he hears the ring tone in his ear. One ring, two rings. It seems to go on ringing for an eternity. But nobody answers. As frustrated as a child, he has to put down the phone without doing what he wanted. He places the money in the desk drawer. He goes into the kitchen and makes coffee. He pulls out a chair from the kitchen table, sits down, and drinks the coffee with sugar in it. She’s dead and it’s my fault. She’s still lying there. It’s night now, and no one knows what’s happened. He can’t sit still; he’s got a lot to do. He tries to move around slowly. It’s important to maintain his composure. But he has no composure. His thoughts are working faster than his body.

Later he stands at the utility sink and starts scrubbing the revolver with a nailbrush. Lightly bloodstained water runs down the drain. He fetches the rubber mat from the car and cleans it thoroughly. Finally he gets some bleach, squirting it directly from the bottle. He imagines this will remove all traces. His clothes must be thrown away, or perhaps he can burn them in the oven. He rushes around the house tidying and hides the silverware and jewelry somewhere he thinks is safe. He bags up the bloody clothes and stuffs them into a cupboard together with the revolver. He wants to go to bed, but he’s scared that he’s forgotten something. He tramps from room to room, from the living room to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the bathroom, a lost creature with aching eyes. He speaks severely to himself, attempts to take himself in hand. Nobody witnessed the collision. Nobody saw him go to the house. Nobody saw him leave it. Nobody except the cat with the yellow eyes.

At last, he goes to bed. He takes the money from the desk drawer and places it on his bedside table. If Lind’s thugs come in the middle of the night, he has only to wave the cash and save his skin. Soon he’ll be a man with no debts. He consoles himself with the thought, as he lies on his back and breathes out into the darkness. Lies staring at the ceiling. Frightened of falling asleep, scared to lie awake. This is what it feels like, he thinks. Now I know what it feels like. I can live with this. I must live with it. My God, it’ll be tough. He turns over to face the wall and packs the duvet tightly around him. I’ve got to sleep now, he thinks. I’m so tired. Must move on to my next day of unemployment, move on to the rest of my life. All the time he’s listening in the dark. To make out if someone is at the door or if there are footsteps outside the window. However it’s the collision that troubles him, and his own crazed reaction. That sudden bang and the shock through his body revisit him all night long.

Suddenly he’s washed roughly ashore.

He feels the cool air on his face and he’s abruptly and inescapably awake. It’s like falling from a great height. The first thing he recalls is the accident. It hits him like a landslide, the thought of his own fury, and he moans as if in sudden pain. Remorselessly it all comes back to him, in glimpses and fragments. Her kitchen, the black cat. The actions and images parade before him in a line of rapid, fantastic tableaux. He lies quite still in bed while thoughts fly through his head. He wants to lie in the dark like this forever. He wants to expunge the preceding day.

He moves his fingers carefully — the nice, whole fingers with their two gold rings. The day hasn’t begun yet, he thinks. It won’t begin until I open my eyes; I can switch the world on or off. He must gather his thoughts, introduce them one by one, sort through them. He knows he can’t do it. Before him lies a mental storm, a blitz of ghastly images. The ugly green dress, the smashed skull. Eventually he opens his eyes. A little light is seeping in from behind the curtains. He stares at the lamp on the ceiling and follows the wire with his eyes. It’s been routed along the wall and then down to the plug near the floor. He sees a little bit of a web in one corner and something dark that might be a spider.

I’m Charles Olav Torp, he thinks. It’s so strange waking up in this heavy body. There are sounds outside, but the people making them know nothing. They think that today is a perfectly normal day. No one has noticed the trembling, but soon the ripples will expand and reach every respectable person. He conjures up a crowd in his mind’s eye, and at that moment they turn to look at him accusingly. He raises his right hand tentatively and holds it in front of his face. It’s hairy and has thick nails. My hand, he thinks, and turns it, splays out his fingers, studies all the mechanics. He thinks of the power in it, unleashed as soon as it gets a message from the brain. Strike her, now. Strike! Without a command, the hand would have hung limp at the end of his arm and remained a good and loving hand. But he stood in Harriet’s kitchen and gave his hand that command. No, it shot up of its own volition. He can’t remember having shaped the thought that he should strike her. Did he do that? His hand took on a life of its own and hit out without his wanting it to. His heavy, flaccid hand. Isn’t it the same hand he’s always had? Isn’t it larger than his left one? He raises his other hand to compare them. It is larger, because he’s right-handed; that’s quite normal.

As he lies there staring at the spider, the minutes pass. He feels he’s behind the curve and that he should get up and start his day. Get up now, it’s over. Or is now the beginning? What awaits him in town? A continuous stream of people will observe him in the streets. What about the woman in the bakery where he usually buys his bread? Will she look at him with new eyes? He sits up slowly and places his feet on the floor. He’s become so conscious of his right arm, the one that raised the revolver, that he can’t ignore it. Is it really much heavier than the left? He rubs his fingers together. There’s a new and quite unbelievable sensitivity in his fingertips. He thinks he can feel the tiny grooves, the ones that form his fingerprint. He stands there with his heavy arm hanging, bent slightly forward, a bit limp. No, this is ridiculous, he thinks. Stop this nonsense.

He grasps the bundle of money on the bedside table and walks slowly across the room. It feels as if his arm is hanging like a club from his shoulder and even his gait has altered. His walk is lopsided and bowlegged like an ape’s. There is something the matter with his knees; they don’t feel right. He stops suddenly and shudders. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears like an angry drumming. He freezes in that attitude and draws breath. In the stillness, he hears a note increasing in volume. He covers his ears and is afraid that everything that’s going on inside his head may cause his skull to burst like some overripe fruit. He starts wondering if his brain might short-circuit if it has too much to do. Because she’s dead and he’s guilty. He thinks about all the electric impulses and imagines the sparks in his skull. Quite involuntarily, his knees give way, and he almost loses his balance. He saves himself in the nick of time, propping his body against the wall. He clutches the roll of notes. Turns toward the bed again and lets himself fall onto the sheets. Grabs despairingly for the duvet. Sleep now, must sleep, he thinks. Must get away from all this horror. She was so angry! He wasn’t prepared for her assault; he was naive. The first day is the worst, he thinks. The feeling will wear off, and it’ll become a habit. He hears the sound of his own breathing and imagines it’s coming from another man, a man lying next to him and breathing in his ear. The feeling is unpleasant, as if there’s someone else in the room. Someone who sees and listens and knows.