The Murder of Harriet Krohn by Karin Fossum Read Free Book Online Page B

lies on his back and breathes out into the darkness. Lies staring at the ceiling. Frightened of falling asleep, scared to lie awake. This is what it feels like, he thinks. Now I know what it feels like. I can live with this. I must live with it. My God, it’ll be tough. He turns over to face the wall and packs the duvet tightly around him. I’ve got to sleep now, he thinks. I’m so tired. Must move on to my next day of unemployment, move on to the rest of my life. All the time he’s listening in the dark. To make out if someone is at the door or if there are footsteps outside the window. However it’s the collision that troubles him, and his own crazed reaction. That sudden bang and the shock through his body revisit him all night long.
     
    Suddenly he’s washed roughly ashore.
    He feels the cool air on his face and he’s abruptly and inescapably awake. It’s like falling from a great height. The first thing he recalls is the accident. It hits him like a landslide, the thought of his own fury, and he moans as if in sudden pain. Remorselessly it all comes back to him, in glimpses and fragments. Her kitchen, the black cat. The actions and images parade before him in a line of rapid, fantastic tableaux. He lies quite still in bed while thoughts fly through his head. He wants to lie in the dark like this forever. He wants to expunge the preceding day.
    He moves his fingers carefully—the nice, whole fingers with their two gold rings. The day hasn’t begun yet, he thinks. It won’t begin until I open my eyes; I can switch the world on or off. He must gather his thoughts, introduce them one by one, sort through them. He knows he can’t do it. Before him lies a mental storm, a blitz of ghastly images. The ugly green dress, the smashed skull. Eventually he opens his eyes. A little light is seeping in from behind the curtains. He stares at the lamp on the ceiling and follows the wire with his eyes. It’s been routed along the wall and then down to the plug near the floor. He sees a little bit of a web in one corner and something dark that might be a spider.
    I’m Charles Olav Torp, he thinks. It’s so strange waking up in this heavy body. There are sounds outside, but the people making them know nothing. They think that today is a perfectly normal day. No one has noticed the trembling, but soon the ripples will expand and reach every respectable person. He conjures up a crowd in his mind’s eye, and at that moment they turn to look at him accusingly. He raises his right hand tentatively and holds it in front of his face. It’s hairy and has thick nails. My hand, he thinks, and turns it, splays out his fingers, studies all the mechanics. He thinks of the power in it, unleashed as soon as it gets a message from the brain. Strike her, now. Strike! Without a command, the hand would have hung limp at the end of his arm and remained a good and loving hand. But he stood in Harriet’s kitchen and gave his hand that command. No, it shot up of its own volition. He can’t remember having shaped the thought that he should strike her. Did he do that? His hand took on a life of its own and hit out without his wanting it to. His heavy, flaccid hand. Isn’t it the same hand he’s always had? Isn’t it larger than his left one? He raises his other hand to compare them. It is larger, because he’s right-handed; that’s quite normal.
    As he lies there staring at the spider, the minutes pass. He feels he’s behind the curve and that he should get up and start his day. Get up now, it’s over. Or is now the beginning? What awaits him in town? A continuous stream of people will observe him in the streets. What about the woman in the bakery where he usually buys his bread? Will she look at him with new eyes? He sits up slowly and places his feet on the floor. He’s become so conscious of his right arm, the one that raised the revolver, that he can’t ignore it. Is it really much heavier than the left? He rubs his fingers together.