The Whisperer

Chapter 22

His wife Elise had often commented on his eyes, she said that only small children had eyes like that. Life’s ups and downs, the big dramas, were recorded as spots and flecks on your eyes, and the gradual leaching of colour as you got older. But even though he was close to retirement age, and he had seen some of the most terrible things you could see in life, his irises were still as clear as ever, untainted by illness, fear and the ravages of time.

He looked at Ragna.

‘Someone had come into your house,’ he said. ‘He had stood and watched you while you slept, and left another threat on your bedside table to demonstrate how close he could come if he wanted, and that you had no chance of escape. How did you feel when you got home again, after you’d been to the police to report it?’

For the first time, Ragna was not wearing the Europris shop coat, she had thrown it off like a dry snakeskin, and thus changed colour. Underneath she had on a black sweater with a slight rib and buttons at the neck, which made her look even paler. But it was a very definite change for the better, she was like a new woman. He noticed the shine in her eyes; she had read the letter from her son.

‘My mind was blank,’ she remembered. ‘Nothing in the house had been touched. He didn’t want to steal anything. He wasn’t looking for valuables. He was looking for me.’

He gave her a kind smile.

‘And you are not valuable?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she whispered.

Sejer was pensive, and then scribbled something down.

‘But you are,’ she swiftly carried on. ‘You represent something valuable.’

‘I agree,’ he said calmly.

‘How can you be so sure?’ she asked.

‘Because the people around me tell me that I am. My family. My colleagues. It’s hard to feel valuable when you’re alone in a cave.’

She looked at him with something that resembled defiance.

‘I went to work,’ she told him. ‘I was with people every day. Customers and colleagues.’

He made another note.

‘But did you show yourself to them?’

‘There’s nothing to show,’ she said, sounding tired. ‘No beauty. No wisdom. No experience.’

‘Or,’ Sejer suggested, ‘are you just mean?’

She was so astonished by his question that she did not reply immediately.

‘I’m not mean,’ she mumbled eventually. ‘I don’t have anything to give.’

‘But you want to write back to your son?’ he said.

‘Oh yes,’ was her prompt response. ‘I’m going to answer. I’m going to write a thousand pages.’

‘So you do have something to show? Something to give a selected few?’

She grinned sheepishly, and was happier again.

‘Yes, a selected few. But that’s allowed, isn’t it? How did you get him to ring?’ she asked. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘The voice is a powerful tool,’ Sejer said. ‘And you’ve lost yours. I used mine for all it’s worth.’

‘And no one dares say no to you?’

‘Oh, they do, believe me.’

‘You’re always so friendly. Have you ever been nasty to anyone?’

‘All the time. Being nasty goes with the job.’

‘Tell me more,’ she said.

‘If you only knew how often I have to get people in for questioning in connection with a murder. How many times I’ve had to sit at this table and look a person in the eye, knowing that he or she is probably innocent, but I still have to ask all the questions. Where were you? What were you doing that night? And if I don’t find anything, I strike them from the list, obviously. But they still have to endure that for the rest of their lives — that they’ve been questioned in connection with a murder. And will be judged for it. I think that’s nasty.’

Neither of them said anything for some time, but they did smile at each other. Frank was the third living being in the room, and, somehow, he balanced them. The silence was not uncomfortable, however long it lasted, because they could hear him breathing, and the odd grunt and growl, which meant he was dreaming.

‘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.’