I Can See in the Dark (18 page)

She tried to settle herself again. But a deep furrow had appeared in her brow.

‘Maybe they’ve been to your house to ask about him,’ she reasoned, ‘not realising you’re in here; and the one hand doesn’t know what the other’s doing. That’s what it’s like in all government departments. It’s so strange when someone suddenly vanishes like that, don’t you think? But they’ll find him all right. One fine day. Even the man at the bottom of the lake was found eventually. Right tends to triumph in the end,’ she concluded.

I had no answer to that.

Ebba’s news had made me feel faint. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate already, what with the case pending, the wrongful case. My finger found a hole in the chair seat, bored its way in and pulled out a thread which I twiddled with almost frenetic fervour. While I tried to come to terms with the situation. While I did my best to regain control.

‘What about your case?’ Ebba asked. ‘Are you very worried about it?’

I assured her that I wasn’t. I pulled myself together and sat up, my voice was strong and steady.

‘I’m innocent, you know,’ I explained. ‘And there’s something about the truth. It gives one strength.’

I TOLD MARGARETH
about the hidden pattern I believed I’d found in my life, and she listened attentively. She nodded occasionally, and agreed. She also felt part of some larger plan, that her life was inching towards a particular end, an end that had been ordained for her alone.

‘I simply drift along,’ she said, ‘there’s no point in questioning everything. There are so many answers you never get. No, it’s just a case of girding yourself up and doing your duty. All this how and why, and what’s the real meaning behind everything, I’ve given up caring about that.’

Margareth and I were standing in the gleaming prison kitchen, frying enough meatballs to feed twenty. Margareth made the mixture and I moulded the small round balls in my hand and placed them in the browning butter. Immediately there was an angry hissing, and a delightful smell.

‘But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get away,’ I heard Margareth say. ‘We can leave the things that are familiar to us and find a new purpose. When we really have to. Start a new life in a different place. Don’t you think so, Riktor?’

She had spoken my name again, and my heart leapt. I stood with a meatball in my hand, the raw mixture was cold and sticky to the touch, and I had to struggle against a sudden urge to throw it across the room, watch it splatter on the opposite wall. And slide slowly down the white tiles towards the floor. These were the kind of whims that would flash through my head. But I kept calm. I was in the process of developing a degree of self-discipline I’d never mastered before. It was because of the routine and the narrow cell, there wasn’t any room to let fly, it was like being firmly contained inside a cylinder.

‘You’re probably right,’ I said, ‘it’s quite possible. But today I was talking to a young man who’s in jail for the eleventh time. He certainly hasn’t managed to get out of the rut. The eleventh time. That only means one thing. He’s lost.’

‘That’s a bit cruel,’ Margareth cut in.

‘No, I’m just being a realist,’ I said.

She wanted to know if I’d met the Russian. She described him as huge and awe-inspiring, completely bald and with a large tattoo on his forehead, which had originally depicted a scorpion, but over the years had stretched a bit at the edges, and now looked more like a great cockroach crawling across his brow. He was in for armed robbery, and he bullied the other prisoners to such an extent that the management was considering putting him in solitary.

‘I’ve met him in the exercise yard,’ I replied. ‘He asked me what I’d done to my teeth. Whether I’d filed them down on purpose, or if they’d just gone like that. So I told him they were the teeth I was born with. That’s the only contact I’ve had with the Russian.’

‘He’s been here before as well,’ said Margareth, ‘a couple of years ago. He’d robbed a jeweller’s shop with three others. Grind a bit more pepper over the meatballs, please. Well, go on man! The boys like them nice and hot.’

I went on and on grinding pepper over the meatballs. By now I’d become very used to these hours spent in Margareth’s company; every day I looked forward to them with pleasure. Margareth, dear Margareth. Those unassuming conversations, the calm and reserve of her personality, her ever downcast eyes. She was certainly no beauty, no Anna Otterlei, but I’d accustomed myself to the mascaraed eyes and the dry, red hair, which she often concealed beneath a frayed scarf. But all the time I was plagued by one great anxiety. I feared the day her assistant might be passed fit to work again. Then, presumably, I’d be banished from the kitchen and left to my own devices, alone in my cell. The mere thought of losing the treasure that I’d at long last discovered was enough to trouble me. And the fear suffused and disturbed me, especially at night. I would sleep fitfully and have nightmares about all that had happened, and that might happen in the future. I’d dream that Arnfinn had risen from his grave, toppled the rhododendron bush, and walked all the way to the prison to denounce me. He’d stand by my bed with a swarm of flies round his head and fat, yellow maggots crawling out of his mouth. I’d never seen such fat maggots. These anxiety attacks could also affect me during the day when I was working in the kitchen. They came from nowhere like bolts of lightning. I’d have to lean on the work surface and breathe calmly for a couple of minutes before continuing work. Margareth said nothing. She worked steadily on, as the smell of meatballs with onions and nutmeg filled the kitchen.

SOMEONE, I DON’T
know who, had slipped into Nelly Friis’ room. Had stood there staring at her for a few moments. Maybe sat on the chair by the bed, murderous hands in lap, thinking evil thoughts. Then this person had risen, pushed back the chair, pulled the pillow from under her head, grasped it firmly, bent over her and forced it against the thin face with all their strength. Presumably Nelly’s body had gone through some spasms, but she’d probably lost consciousness fairly quickly, debilitated as she was by age and ill health. Then there was silence in Nelly’s room. Only one person was left breathing hard after the crime. They’d replaced the pillow beneath her head and crept out. Perhaps this person was on the staff at Løkka. Or a relation, possibly; relatives came and went as they pleased, and we couldn’t always keep tabs on them. Of all the people who worked at that large institution, the police had singled me out. And I didn’t know why. I always made my moves with the greatest caution, and checked left and right before I entered a room. I pulled hair and pinched and scratched, but no one ever saw me do it. Even so, I’d noticed the atmosphere, the long, resentful looks, as if they knew something anyway. I couldn’t understand it.

My case was scheduled at last.

It was fixed for
10
November. And Margareth’s assistant had been diagnosed with bone cancer. Slowly but surely the cells of the disease were eating away at his bones, and in the end he would collapse like a house of cards. What happy news! I revelled in it like a small child. It secured my place in Margareth’s kitchen. I employed the four remaining weeks in preparing myself thoroughly, and I admitted to Margareth that I’d find it hard to leave her. That soon I’d be alone again in my own little kitchen, with no one to talk to.

‘Well, only if they find you not guilty,’ she said tersely.

I smiled self-confidently. I didn’t believe I would be sentenced for a crime I hadn’t committed, after all, we live in a country under the rule of law.

De Reuter organised some decent clothes for me. Nice grey trousers and a navy-blue blazer, a shirt and tie. I was respectability itself in this costume, although it was actually a size too large. Now I experienced the ticking passage of time in a new way, all those hours and minutes, for at last I had an objective. I was on the way to release. I practised many long speeches I intended to make to the court, delivering them in a firm and steady voice. But de Reuter told me in no uncertain terms that I must obey all the judge’s instructions. I promised to do as he said.

‘I promise,’ I would say, my right hand raised, ‘to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

The night before the case was due to be heard, I couldn’t sleep. Arnfinn was pressing in so close again, I could smell him. I rose from my bed several times and went to the window and peered out at the sanatorium, and saw that there were lights in several of the windows. I thought of the grave behind my house, and if, by now, wind and weather had levelled it. I imagined it had. I lay down again. I listened to the muffled sounds from outside, I thought of the Russian also lying on his bed, his great body and high forehead with its black cockroach. Perhaps the cockroach came alive at night. Perhaps it crawled around his head until dawn, and then returned to its usual place on his brow. Then my mind turned to Arnfinn’s daughter in Bangkok, the one who’d discovered he was missing. Then to my house at Jordahl, which stood empty. I tossed restlessly in bed. For a long time I lay against the wall with my knees drawn up, then turned on my back, before rolling on to my side once again. I drew the covers over me and huddled down, all the time mumbling to myself: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

FOR ONE MAD
moment I wondered if Margareth mightn’t be in court. Her red hair shining lustrously from the rows of blue chairs, a freckled hand raised in a wave. But the idea was idiotic. Margareth was in the kitchen busy with her work. She wasn’t concerned about me, or hoping for acquittal; she was indifferent to me and my fate. This thought depressed me, hope seeped away, and the judge and lay assessors loomed like a hydra-headed troll.

In the courtroom there was a large flat screen, about fifty inches wide. For some reason this screen disturbed me, and my eyes constantly turned towards it. I tried to think what it might be for but finally came to the conclusion that it must be part of the courtroom furniture. For cases where there was visual evidence. Now the preliminaries began. In a loud, clear voice I pleaded not guilty to the charge of aggravated murder. My eyes were fixed on the elderly judge.

‘The indictment is presumptuous, unfounded and extremely serious,’ de Reuter said. ‘My client knows nothing whatsoever about these allegations.’

I sat there staring at the black screen. No matter where I let my gaze wander, I was always aware of that dark rectangle on the periphery of my vision. It reminded me of something unpleasant. If I looked at it for too long, it seemed to be drawing me in, and I would get sucked into its matt blackness, as if into quicksand.

I remained cool and collected all the time, just as de Reuter had instructed. I sat silently listening to the counsel for the prosecution, looking the judges in the eyes and concentrating on making a good impression. Clandestinely, I watched a couple of journalists taking frequent notes, and an artist sketching. I watched his pencil work over the paper in rapid strokes.

‘I’ve known Riktor for a little over eleven years,’ Anna said when, after several hours of evidence from the pathologist and other experts, she entered the witness box.

‘He was trained at the National Hospital, and he applied for a job at Løkka in
1999
. I conducted the interview. I noticed even then, during the long conversation we had, that there was something a bit odd about him. Well, in a variety of ways. But there aren’t that many nurses who want to work in an environment like ours, and particularly not male nurses. So I couldn’t afford to be too critical. “Why are you keen to work with old people?” I asked, prompting him to justify his choice, to show he really wanted to work at Løkka. When he could have worked in an accident and emergency department or as a paramedic. With a lot more drama and excitement, the way men often prefer it. And I remember his answer. He said: “Because that’s the biggest challenge. That’s the greatest drama. People who have nothing but death left. And the things I’m able to give them could be the last things they’ll ever get. I like this challenge, this idea, because it makes me very significant. If you give me the job, that is.”

‘And I did. Because I thought he made such a good case. And I regret it to this day, my God, how I regret it. In all honesty, I don’t think Riktor is quite right in the head. But there are only a few of us who know about it. On the outside, when dealing with most people, I mean, he seems perfectly normal and he’s very articulate. But I know that he goes around torturing the patients, and he was especially bad with Nelly Friis. I’ve known about it for some time, and several of us on the ward got together to catch him red-handed.’

Anna paused. She gazed over at me and her look was full of accusation; it was unbearable. I tried to work out what she was driving at. I tried to think about the future, which I’d tentatively begun to plan for myself, something new and better, a new element in my life which could raise me out of the rut. And into the arms of Margareth, once and for all. Away from the shamefulness of my old life, away from the diesel engine that rumbled throughout the night, and the teeming, fly-like buzzing in my head that had plagued me for such a long time.

‘Nelly would sometimes start fretting when Riktor entered the room,’ Sister Anna said.

She stared in my direction once more. Recrimination in her eyes.

‘At first we couldn’t work out the reason. But gradually we began to have terrible doubts, one discovery in particular really filled us with fear. One day I found some tablets in the pan of Nelly’s toilet. And that was peculiar, because Nelly couldn’t move, she never left her bed. More and more of us began to share the suspicion that he was flushing medication down the toilet. And we decided to do something about it once and for all. And so we bought a video camera.’

I sat there open-mouthed with fear. There could be no doubt she’d said a video camera. I couldn’t take it in, I felt as if I was falling through the floor. The black screen loomed larger, and at last I understood its significance: they had visual evidence. At last I saw that the staff had laid a trap.