She gave a hearty laugh. Her teeth were white and perfect, despite her age.
‘You’re hard on yourself, too,’ she said. ‘Don’t be. We’re only here for a short while. Tomorrow we’ll probably all be gone. I don’t mean literally, but we’re only a heartbeat away from eternity, and then we won’t be here any more, think of that. Yes, just think of it!’
She lowered her crocheting again.
‘We need to feel valued, that’s important. Think of that huge man from the Refugee Reception Centre who sits here sometimes, you must have seen him. He’s lost his sense of self-esteem because no one wants him. It’s all over then; I think about it often. Sometimes I’ve felt like saying a few friendly words to him, but he’s so big. If you know what I mean. It’s almost as if I don’t want him to notice me, I don’t dare arouse all that power. Did you know that he talks to himself?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘It might mean that he’s psychotic,’ Ebba said. ‘And you mustn’t take any chances with them. Or what do you think?’
Chapter 20
I went to work.
I was on the late shift and was on duty until eight. It was a quiet day on the ward, only the occasional moan from behind closed doors, like a distant lament. All this lamentation. I paced the corridors and thought of that policeman, Randers, and my imagination ran riot. It was as if Arnfinn’s murder had a peculiar, unholy energy, and now it clung to my whole being, like a special smell. That was probably why I saw nothing of the others. They can smell it, I thought, and they flee. Eventually I found Sali Singh in the kitchen. To my amazement he was sitting at the table eating. Not the stuff he’d made himself, but some kind of ready meal he must have heated in the microwave.
‘I didn’t know you went in for this sort of thing,’ I said, sitting down next to him.
He went on slurping. It looked like soup with bits of fish in it.
‘I am celebrating,’ he said. ‘This is a fine day.’
I put my elbows on the table.
‘What are you celebrating? Is it your birthday?’
He shook his ponderous head.
‘I won at the Øvrevoll races,’ he said. ‘140,000 kroner. Just this Sunday.’
I was dumbfounded.
‘At Øvrevoll? You bet on the horses?’
He pushed the bowl of fish soup away, and nodded.
‘Suddenly they all came in. And I have been betting for years, so it was about time. My heart has never pounded so hard,’ he said, laying a golden-brown hand on his chest. ‘Not even when I proposed to my wife.’
‘What are you going to do with the money?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘For now, I will keep it. In an account. And it can stay there just for show. But I shall greet it every day, I will ring the bank and ask after it. I will watch over it as if it was a holy cow, you do not know of what we Indians are capable.’
‘Where is everyone?’ I wanted to know. ‘Sister Anna and Dr Fischer?’
‘They are in with Barbro. She has been screaming all day.’ He cupped a hand behind his ear and listened. ‘Yes, she is screaming still,’ he added. ‘It is impossible for a person to scream like that, I feel that I want to go home almost. But when I am at home, I still hear her, in my thoughts. And she will lie screaming until she dies. Dr Fischer is in despair. He cannot do her medication, nothing seems to work. So now he has consulted a doctor at the National Hospital in Oslo.’
Sali leant across the table. There was a peculiar intensity in his brown eyes.
‘But the bitter truth, Riktor, is that not everyone can be helped. And I hope the gods will put me in the right category. I mean, when my turn comes.’
I glanced across the table at Sali, that plump, likeable man, dressed in something that resembled a pair of blue pyjamas. So he had a secret passion for the turf, who would have believed it? To be honest, I didn’t like it, the fact that I’d overlooked this trait in him. Because I like to think that I understand people, that I know who they are. The way I know Dr Fischer and understand his ambitions and his frustration when he can only help a bit, or not at all as in Barbro’s case. He could hardly know that the only things she was getting from me were Tic Tacs and vitamins.
After my conversation with Sali I went down to the mortuary. It was Løkka’s small chapel for the dead, with a bier, a little table and a candle. A lace tablecloth, a Bible and a cross high up on the wall, made of brass.
I was often drawn to this room in the basement. I liked being alone here in the dimly lit room, even when it was empty, as it was now. But often it was occupied, someone waiting to be collected by the undertaker, and I relished that special feeling of being in the company of the dead. To study the sunken eyes and the blue lips. The hands, which were soon covered with black marks, the mouth which slid open. On a few occasions I had, just for amusement’s sake, bent over the departed making horrible faces. Thumbs in my ears, tongue sticking out, purely because I couldn’t stop myself. Now, an idea came to me, an impulse, that had to be instantly obeyed. I got up and lay flat on the vacant bier. My hands clasped over my stomach, eyes closed. I breathed quietly, felt my chest rise and fall, felt the joy of being alive, in my forties, still relatively young. That I could still play a practical joke or two. But what if someone came in right now, I mused, came across me playing dead? The thought of the possible consequences sent me into raptures. Anna would hide her face in her hands, Dr Fischer would slump against the wall. I jumped down and went back to the ward, where a strange stillness reigned. Barbro had been given fentanyl; at last she’d stopped screaming.
There was something in the air.
It couldn’t be ignored. Something indefinable, an alien note, like the humming in a cable, a sudden vibration. And I thought of the people I worked with, and how their looks had assumed an evasive quality, lowering their eyes or turning them away, a special glint of suspicion. I’m highly sensitive to such things. I opened my hands and examined my palms, but I couldn’t see the murder, the evil intent, the fury I’d felt towards Arnfinn. I could see no guilt in the fine creases. My hands were quite clean, my heart beat softly, there was no remorse, only astonishment. At the way it had happened so quickly, at the way nothing could have stopped me from boiling over completely. With this new knowledge about myself, that I really was capable of murder, I trod the grey linoleum of the corridors. I was wearing shoes with soft soles, my footsteps were silent, only the slight swish of my white coat as I moved along. I walked with my hands in my pockets, playing with the keys, playing nervously, for everything that had happened had given me a new receptiveness. One of the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling was flickering, it was probably a sign. That I was headed for the darkness. A door hadn’t been properly closed; I noticed the small gap. On the floor, right in against the moulding, lay a pencil, as thin and sharp as a nail. I registered this as a lack of order that wasn’t normal on our ward, as if everything were about to fall apart. Anna came walking towards me, and I smiled agreeably. Once again, she put me in mind of a swan. She had the same proud carriage, the same cool purity as she sailed across the floor.
‘Barbro’s sleeping,’ she said.
I nodded. I was leaning against the wall with sagging shoulders. My posture has never been very good.
‘Can you sleep at night?’ she asked suddenly.
The question took me by surprise, and I gave a start.
‘Not always,’ I confessed. ‘I often think about something. Something that churns and runs all night long.’
She leant against the wall as well. Relaxed her shoulders, stole a little bit of rest, lifted a hand to her blonde hair.