The Whisperer

Chapter 7

Sejer noticed that her face opened up whenever she spoke about Walther Eriksson, as though she thought of him as a burning flame and immediately tried to get closer, seeking warmth. She blushed easily, often about trivialities. But she was not embarrassed about Walther Eriksson. He must have given her something important, a validity, a worth.

‘Were you afraid you were going to die?’ he asked. ‘As you stood there under the street light and opened the mailbox?’

Her smile was forgiving.

‘All the fuss about death,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t understand people. Do you they really want to be here forever? Lots of people have died before us and they’re obviously okay. I’ve never heard of anyone complaining from the other side.’ She smiled ironically.

‘So the fear you felt, what was it?’

‘I was scared of losing control over my life. That I would never get it back again, that I would have to live as a prisoner or a refugee. I was used to living an orderly life where I made all the decisions, but now someone else was deciding. It didn’t help if I got home and there was nothing in the mailbox, the day didn’t get any better, he had a hold of me. I was constantly waiting, but I didn’t know what I was waiting for.’

‘And you imagined getting the third letter? Did you think about what he would write the next time?’

‘When he wrote that it wasn’t long until I was going to die, it somehow felt different and more serious than the first letter. He knew something about the future, he had plans. I got the feeling that he knew something about me, and I had no idea what it was.’

‘Did you have anything on your conscience?’

‘Not at first. But I did after a while. Because he was right. Someone had picked me out of the crowd and let me know that I had been seen. That I couldn’t hide any more.’

‘And that was what you always wanted?’ Sejer asked. ‘To hide?’

She did not answer straight away.

‘I just wanted to be left in peace.’

The red light was flashing on his phone again, and because Ragna had seen it as well, there was a pause. Whoever wanted to get hold of the inspector was silently interrupting, just as the silent message in Ragna’s mailbox had interrupted her life. She sat completely still on the chair. She did not appear too tired or intimidated, just very focused. There was something special about her, something he liked. A sincerity. She did not try to make herself any better than she was, nor was she defensive. She had never asked for much in life. Her son had left home as soon as he was able to look after himself. She did not blame him, she defended him instead.

‘What did you think he would write in the next letter?’ he asked again.

She shrugged.

‘That he would give me a date.’

‘A date for your death?’

‘That would be the logical next step, don’t you think?’

‘And what would you have done then? When the day arrived?’

‘Not a lot,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe stayed indoors, locked the door. But that’s what I do anyway. You’re asking about letter number three. I often imagined letter one hundred. I liked to think that by then the threats would have lost their power. I almost hoped it would happen, that the letters would pour in so I could start to laugh at them, think of them as rubbish and of him as a loud-mouthed coward. Two short messages and then silence would be harder to live with, harder to understand. I thought a lot of strange things. I often thought, if I’m going to die, I’m going to die, whether it’s today or thirty years from now. But I was unfocused and they started to notice at work.’

‘How did they notice? Tell me.’

‘I made mistakes with the pricing. There were too many zeros or too few. People came to the till and asked if the toastie machine really did cost only twenty kroner.’

‘Do you go online a lot?’

‘Sometimes. I read the odd article and watch videos on YouTube, and other stories about strange things that have happened. But never for long. Half an hour maybe, then I get bored.’

‘Facebook?’

‘No.’

‘Have you had any anonymous phone calls or threatening texts?’

‘Never.’

Sejer let the silence stretch out. He mused for some time on what whispering was normally a sign of — if you were not Ragna Riegel and a doctor had cut your vocal cord with a scalpel. Lots of people whispered when they were frightened. Or if they had a secret or when they gossiped about someone, or they didn’t want to disturb, say, a sleeping child, or if there was an enemy nearby and they were scared of being caught. Ragna always whispered. He had started to like it, he realised, her great stillness, her carefulness. Whispering meant that she weighed her words, did not just respond quickly, she had to make an effort to be understood. She tasted the words, planned them, formed them with her tongue and lips, used her facial muscles. He saw no self-pity there, no complaint, she would never scream at him over the table. If she wanted to make a noise she would have to start throwing the furniture. The unfortunate operation had given her a certain dignity.

He asked her if she had slept, and she had.

At first she had lain there, completely still, and listened to the cars outside the prison. There was quite a lot of traffic. She heard the trains as well, she said. They were not that far away. She told him that she had felt safe for the first time in ages, no one could reach her in the cell. So she slept better than she had for a long time. When she woke up, she was still filled with the same sense of security. The people guarding her were also protecting her; everything that was happening outside in the town seemed chaotic and unmanageable. She never heard the other inmates, no one screamed at night. No one opened her cell door to give her post.

‘Is there anything you need?’ Sejer asked. ‘Clothes, or anything else?’

‘You don’t like my coat?’ she teased. ‘It’s the Europris uniform.’

‘Don’t you take it off when you’re at home?’ he wanted to know.

‘I like it,’ she explained. ‘I like the big pockets. The overall is proof that I have a job and don’t live off social security. I have a disability, but I don’t let it stop me.’

‘What do you normally keep in your pockets?’

‘Have you answered all your phone calls?’ she interrupted.

There were no red lights flashing.

‘Yes.’

‘Were they about me?’

‘Some of them. Does that bother you?’

She shrugged.

Sejer looked at her over the table and thought that the time of first impressions was over. That moment when he saw her for the first time, those few seconds when his brain drew its quick conclusions. Thin and insignificant in an ugly shop coat. Her eyes and hair an indistinct colour. He had moved on, his impression had slowly changed. Her white skin and visible veins reminded him of a marble statue. Her eyebrows, thin and fine as whiskers, and also without colour. Her transparency, her femininity and vulnerability reminded him of a fairy-tale elf. Of course she had been beautiful when she was sixteen, he thought, and Walther Eriksson had seen it.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you normally keep in your pockets?’

She pulled a face. The inspector asked some odd questions, she thought, but guessed he had a plan, and she liked the fact that he often took detours.

‘The key to the staff toilet. And to the till. Lip balm. My mobile phone, so I can get hold of the others without having to hunt around. A Stanley knife to open all the boxes, and a packet of menthol sweets. Some rubber bands. Paper clips and tape. But the pockets are empty now. I like putting my hands in the pockets, it keeps them in place. Free hands are never a good thing. I don’t find it strange at all that people smoke.’

‘Would you like us to contact your son?’ he asked, out of the blue.

The question horrified her. She could barely answer, nor did she know whether she wanted them to or not. Her son, goodness, the way things stood, and everything he did not know. Her first response was to grip the armrests on the chair.

‘It’s not that easy to get hold of him,’ she whispered. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure what he’s up to.’

‘You can’t get hold of him?’

‘Not this autumn.’

‘What do you think might have happened, as you can’t get hold of him?’

‘We mothers have a lively imagination when it comes to what might have happened to our children,’ she whispered.

‘We fathers do too,’ Sejer replied. ‘Would you like me to make some enquiries? You won’t be able to hide what’s happened from him. But we will try to break it to him as gently as possible — that you’re here, that is. And we can tell him subsequently why you’re here, but that’s up to you.’

She loosened her grip on the armrests.

‘It would be better if Rikard Josef was allowed to get on with his life, without knowing,’ she said. ‘You know, ignorance is bliss.’

‘But what do you have to lose?’

‘The Christmas cards,’ she said. ‘The angels.’