The Caller (8 page)

Johnny Beskow sneaked into the hallway.

Because it was important to be prepared, he stood there listening. Apparently, his mother was not at the stove. There was no smell of food, just the familiar stench of coats, dust and mould. She must be on the sofa, he thought, and looked at the clock. It was eleven in the morning, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to be drunk at this hour. Once he’d found her at seven in the morning, drinking vodka in big gulps while clinging to the armrest with her free hand. She’d done this for an hour before going off to lie down, under the duvet. In this manner she moved from the chair to the bed, to the sofa, and to the chair again. And to the grave, he thought, can’t you move to the grave? I’ll dig the hole. Then you can just roll over the edge. He slipped into the lounge to see. Yep, she was lying on the sofa under a blanket. So he shuffled off to his room and closed the door. He lifted Bleeding Heart from the cage and fell on the bed with the guinea pig at his neck. People believe what I tell them, he thought with satisfaction. I can call whoever I want and claim whatever I want, or demand whatever I want, and people do what I say. They are polite and friendly, and they are happy to help. It’s pure magic. The possibilities are endless. I can disrupt an entire community, it occurred to him, an entire city. All I have to do is pick up the phone or write a letter. I hold this power. He could feel the power in his head, the power rushing through his veins, and it made him warm and strong, even though he was, strictly speaking, a weakling. Or as they’d called him at school: the wimp from Askeland.

After a while he put the guinea pig back in the cage. The cage was filled with woodchips and cotton rags, some colourful plastic toys. He’d got the money to buy it from his grandfather, same as the moped – it had been a gift for his confirmation, which hadn’t amounted to anything. His mother couldn’t stay sober long enough to plan a party, and anyway there was no one to invite.

Hungry, he went to the kitchen. There was nothing on the hob, so he looked for milk in the fridge. Sat at the kitchen table and ate cereal while staring out the window. Because she was drunk, his mother wouldn’t stir until evening. Then she’d scuttle to the bathroom, drag a brush through her hair, wobble back to the lounge and suddenly see him sitting in front of the television. From that point until he went to bed, she would play her role as parent. She’d ask where he had been and what he had done. What he had eaten. Whether he was going to get a job, something to bring more money to the household. Then she would complain about her headache, say it had been a little worse today so she had needed to lie down. It’s actually a little better now, she would say. To justify that she’d been in a drunken stupor half the day.

He finished eating. He rinsed his plate and returned to the lounge, fell into a chair. His mother was flat on her back with a blanket under her chin; her skin seemed clammy, as if she had a fever; her eyelids had glided halfway up. I wish you were dead, he thought, I wish you would stop breathing right now. When you die I will clap my hands in joy, and in the middle of your funeral service I will sing and dance. And when you’re finally in the ground, I’ll visit you every night to piss on your grave.

He sent his thoughts to her in a steady, wicked stream. He liked to imagine they reached her somehow. That the hate he felt for her quietly broke her down, like a slow-working poison. He touched the army knife which hung on his belt, felt the warm metal in his hands. I will slice your eyeballs, he thought, and your eardrums. I’ll hoist you into a wheelbarrow and haul you to the woods so the foxes find you. And the badgers, and the cats.

He stood up and returned to the kitchen; he had something to take care of. Looked in the drawers and cupboards. After searching for a while, he found an old pizza box under the worktop, and a pair of scissors and a marker in a drawer. With these simple tools he shuffled back to his bedroom to make a sign.

Erik and Ellinor went to the police station together, on behalf of their mother, Gunilla. Erik Mørk was the elder of the two, already grey at the temples; his fair-haired sister was a good deal younger. You could tell there was a bond between them, a connection that had grown tight during their lives. And now that this awful thing had happened, they appeared as one furious entity. They had brought the local newspaper with their mother’s obituary.

Sejer read it.

‘She’s seventy,’ Erik Mørk said. ‘She just turned seventy, and she’s always been quite healthy. Now she’s very upset. You’ve got to find out what the hell is going on, right now, because this is offensive, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

He had worked himself up quite a bit.

‘I do agree,’ Sejer said. He reread Gunilla Mørk’s obituary, then looked hard at the two siblings. ‘If you think about her friends and acquaintances, or the rest of the family, is there anyone you would suspect? Someone who feels slighted and wants to be noticed?’

Ellinor shook her head decisively. ‘We don’t know anyone like that,’ she said. ‘Nor will you find any among her neighbours. Only decent people.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘In Kirkeby,’ Erik Mørk said. ‘At Konvalveien. She’s a widow, and she’s been alone for many years. She’s never been the nervous type, but at this point she’s tied in knots. She doesn’t know what to make of it, this thing that’s happened to her. I mean, what do they want?’

‘The only way to reassure her is to find the person responsible,’ Ellinor Mørk added, ‘so we can get an explanation of why they did this to her. Because that’s what she doesn’t understand. We don’t either. She keeps to herself, and she doesn’t draw attention to herself. She goes to the shop every day, works in her garden. That type of thing.’

‘Have you contacted the newspaper?’ Sejer asked. ‘The obituary department?’

‘No,’ Erik Mørk said. ‘I assumed you would do that.’

Sejer began to trace the edges of something unpleasant. A carefully designed plan, a soundless form of terror.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to her today. First I’ll stop by the newspaper. If I find anything, I’ll let you know.’

Erik Mørk put his finger on the obituary. ‘Have you ever heard of this happening before?’

‘No,’ Sejer said. ‘This is really a new and very serious kind of prank. I’ve never seen anything like it. What about the little poem?’ he asked. ‘Does it sound familiar?’

Ellinor Mørk rolled her eyes. ‘That poem is unbelievably ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Our mother has never been ill. This is insane. Our phone is ringing off the hook. People are so shocked when they read that she’s dead. When we tell them it’s just a prank, they’re even more confused. It’s what he wants. Assuming it’s a man. Do you think he wants us to be confused?’

‘What should we say to Mother?’ Erik asked. ‘Somehow we’ve got to calm her down.’

Sejer thought about it for a minute. ‘Tell her she was selected at random for a practical joke which has neither meaning nor purpose. Tell her it’s a game.’

‘So that’s what you believe it is? A game?’

‘Not necessarily. But that’s what you should tell your mother.’

He found Jacob Skarre.

He looked quizzically at his younger colleague. ‘If you saw your own obituary in the paper, how would you react?’

Skarre had already heard about the fake obituary. He opened his mouth to respond, but, because he needed to think it through, changed his mind and kept quiet. What would he have thought if he’d seen these words in the paper some morning while eating breakfast?
Our dear Jacob Skarre passed from us today, thirty-nine years old
. Or a variation, like this:
Our dear Jacob Skarre was suddenly taken from us today
. Or:
Jacob Skarre died today, after a long illness
.

‘I’d have reacted with horror, dread and bewilderment,’ he said. ‘I probably would have laughed hysterically for a while. Then I would have thought about everyone I know who also would’ve read the notice and thought it was true.’ He turned to the inspector. ‘I presume it’s the Wolverine that’s been on the prowl?’

‘Yes,’ Sejer agreed, ‘the Wolverine. The Beast from Bjerkås, you can be sure of that. Talk about originality.’

‘What do you think his goal is?’

‘To make things happen,’ Sejer said. ‘He’s probably inadequate in many ways, deprived of experience and companionship. Perhaps his motive is fairly modest, and it’s all about a need every human being shares. He just wants attention.’

When she showed them into her kitchen, Gunilla Mørk seemed embarrassed.

‘I don’t like to be a bother,’ she apologised. ‘But Erik and Ellinor wanted me to report it. It’s rather trivial when I think about what you normally have to deal with. It’s only a silly newspaper obituary. I’d like to laugh it off, but the laughter doesn’t get past my throat.’

She paced uncertainly. She didn’t know quite how she should behave, with two strange men in her kitchen.

‘I thought I had some good years ahead of me,’ she said, ‘but when I saw the obituary in the paper, my whole world shook. I’m no longer certain of anything. I suppose all security is false security,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘Or so I’ve often thought. Because anything can happen, and it can just as well be today, and to me. I understand that rather well. We are masters of repression, but now it’s as if I can’t really do that any more. I’ve lost something. That obituary,’ she sighed, ‘it’s like a bad omen.’

Finally she ceased her restless pacing of the kitchen floor.

Sejer and Skarre observed her pluck a few withered leaves from a plant on the table. Her hair was silver-grey and cut short, and she had tiny gold studs in her ears. She actually looked quite youthful.

‘We’ve talked to the obituary department,’ Sejer said. ‘Normally the obituaries are received by post from the funeral home, and are checked by several people. But in this case there was a lapse in the procedure. Due to the summer holidays, there are many inexperienced temps at the paper, and one of them made a mistake. Someone who was overeager.’

‘I see,’ Gunilla Mørk said. ‘I’ve now been in the paper twice in little more than a week. That’s quite a feat.’

‘What do you mean twice?’ Sejer asked.

She plucked more leaves from the pot plant and gathered them up.

‘I just turned seventy. Erik and Ellinor placed a nice announcement for me. I was very touched by the gesture.’

‘Do you still have it?’ Skarre asked.

She disappeared into the living room. Pawed through a basket and quickly returned with the paper. Skarre read the short birthday notice and nodded.

‘That was probably how he found you,’ he said. ‘He saw this notice, saw that you lived here in Kirkeby and saw your date of birth and your children’s names. He had everything he needed right here. This is good news, I have to say.’

‘Why?’ she said.

‘It means that you were selected totally at random,’ Skarre explained. ‘He’s not after you for any special reason. He just found you in the newspaper.’

‘Are you sure?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Because I jump every time the doorbell rings.’

‘Absolutely certain,’ Skarre said.

Chosen at random, she thought. Nothing personal – that was a relief. She returned to the plant one last time, removed a few more dry leaves.

‘There is misery in everyone’s life,’ she said, ‘and young people have to pass the time somehow. I suppose it’s as simple as that.’ Suddenly she looked at them in alarm. ‘I just thought of that baby out in Bjerketun. Is this connected in some way?’

‘We don’t know,’ Sejer said.

‘But it’s a little strange,’ she said, ‘the similarities. Perhaps some prankster has decided to frighten us all.’

‘We can’t draw those conclusions,’ Sejer said. ‘It’s too early.’

She opened the cupboard under the sink, then let the dry leaves fall into the rubbish bin. ‘I draw my own conclusions,’ she said. ‘It was an omen of death.’

‘Has anything else happened in the last few days that you can tell us about?’ Sejer asked. ‘Has anyone called? Has anyone knocked on your door? Does anything out of the ordinary come to mind?’

She thought about it then shrugged. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ she said. ‘Ellinor is here often. And a friend of mine visits twice a week. We have lunch together. From time to time a salesman stops by. Just today there was a young boy on my doorstep; he was out looking for a job. A Polish student, he said, who needed to make some money. But I was so upset about the obituary in the paper that I sent him away. I was quite bad-tempered. I regret it now, because he was probably a good person. He spoke very bad English,’ she added, ‘so he’d made an introduction for himself on an old pizza box.’

People had begun to give him nicknames.

Both among the editorial staff and among the general public he was called all sorts of audacious things, each name more inventive than the next. The beloved child has many names, Johnny Beskow thought, as he heard other people talking about him. He had finally made something of himself, and people were forced to acknowledge him. He was delighted at what he’d set in motion. I’ll play this game for a long time, he thought.

Just wait and see.

He rode around on his red Suzuki moped, and he studied people with the fascination of a researcher, as if they were exotic animals. They were strange. It was late summer, and people were out in their gardens. He saw small children on trampolines, women weeding flower beds, men in driveways washing cars. A man squatted down to paint his fence, a woman yanked clean clothes from the washing line. Johnny liked all that he saw. He liked this teeming life, the chalk-white clothes snapping in the wind, the smell of paint. He liked it, and he wanted to destroy it. Everyone lives on an edge, he thought, and I will push them over.

After he’d driven around the residential streets for a while, he set course for the shopping centre in Kirkeby. He parked and took the lift to the second floor, found his way to the toy shop. He wandered between the rows, picking up this and that toy and inspecting it. Then the boy in him came out for real: the simple pleasure in a fine toy, a neat material, a quirky function. He admired a red sports car. A set of plastic African animals, boxes of Lego and Playmobil. After he’d walked around for several minutes, he found what he’d been looking for – various types of masks. He picked them up one at a time and inspected them closely. A gorilla mask, a Donald Duck mask and a pig mask. The latex masks were soft and well made. He held the gorilla mask up to his face, peered through the narrow eye slits. A gorilla, he thought. That would make an impression on anyone. On another rack he found a selection of stuffed animals. Most were teddy bears, but he also found a pig and a bunny. He pulled the bunny down. It was made of white plush, and had a pink snout with long, fine whiskers – the kind of thing little girls would fall in love with and cuddle at night. He knew it would come in handy in some way or other. It’s important to think long-term, Johnny, he said to himself, just follow your instincts and buy the cute bunny. He headed to the till and paid out a considerable chunk of his savings. After he’d put the gorilla mask and the bunny under the seat of his moped, he rode towards Bjørnstad and his grandfather’s house. Just as he swung into Rolandsgata, the girl with the red plait turned up. She wasn’t sitting on the knoll this time, but on a blue bicycle, a Nakamura. She wore a Hauger School Band pullover. Well, he thought, that’s useful to know.