The Murder of Harriet Krohn (17 page)

“This is my old gym bag, isn’t it? Whatever have you got inside it?”

He makes no reply, trying to think clearly, but his brain is foggy. She opens the bag and peers into it.

“Jewelry?” she says in surprise.

He starts nodding vigorously, still searching for words, for some kind of explanation. But no words come. There’s only his thudding heart and the feeling of unreality, like in a film. She picks them up in turn, one by one. Harriet’s bracelet and rings, and the brooches and string of pearls. She places them on the table. Again she looks at him uncertainly, as if she’s suddenly been given a clue. It makes her face darker. Charlo twists his mouth into a stiff smile, his mind in an uproar.

“Yes, they were Grandma’s,” he says, and feels his head moving heavily up and down.

“But Grandma isn’t dead,” Julie says. She lifts the largest brooch, the cameo. Turns it this way and that in the light.

“Well, no. But she gave them to me. I got her old silverware, which I told you about, and which I sold. And these bits of jewelry.”

“But I’ve never seen them before,” she says probingly.

Charlo curses the physiological processes that are turning his cheeks red.

“They’re things she’s never worn,” he explains in a panic. “That’s why you’ve never seen them. So she gave them to me. As an advance on her estate. They’re not worth anything,” he adds quickly.

“But why have you got them in the chest?” she asks. “In my gym bag?” In his confusion, he shakes his head. He finds no explanation. He thinks he can hear the sound of cracking ice that he really has fallen through badly. The damage must be repaired, but he doesn’t know how.

“Well, you know,” he says, attempting a self-deprecatory laugh, “I’ve always been a scatterbrain.” His laughter seems to reverberate around the room.

She nods in agreement. But something has made her uneasy. He can see that quite plainly. He doesn’t know what to do about it, but he knows that he’s got to smooth it over and make her forget.

“Here,” he says, diving into the chest. His hand emerges clutching a tin. “This’ll be good for your boots. I’ll find you a cloth.”

She sits down on the floor with the boots, still silent. The jewelry is on display on the table. He can’t bring himself to touch it. He feels he’d like to talk the entire thing away, as he rummages in the cupboard for something she can use as a cloth. He finds an old pair of worn-out underpants and cuts them in half. Hands her the cotton material. She takes it hesitantly.

“It’s a long time since I went to the nursing home,” she says. “I feel bad about it. Perhaps I’ll go and visit her.”

“Don’t mention the jewelry,” he puts in quickly. “It’ll only make her really confused.”

“Will it?”

She dips the cloth in the polish.

“You know she can’t remember things from one minute to the next. What she’s said or done.”

She’s still taciturn. She polishes the boots until they shine, but there’s a troubled furrow between her eyes. Charlo tries to joke and laugh, without really succeeding. But she listens and responds. It’ll all be fine now. No solemnity, no suspicions, no deceit.

HE READS JULIE’S
needs and desires before she can give them voice. He’s always an instant ahead of her, watchful, ready. When she rides, he anticipates the precise moment when she begins to get too hot. Before she says anything, he runs out and takes her jacket. He notices when Crazy is tired or uncooperative, and then he’ll scamper out with a whip, so she can ginger him up a bit. Whenever she’s thirsty, he knows and brings her something to drink. He sits on a chair at the far end of the ring with the yellow rug across his knees, like some faithful, aged crone. But he does his own work first. He repairs and renews and paints. He mends broken panes and removes loads of horse muck with the tractor. He gets feed from the outbuilding and checks the water troughs and the lighting. He changes light bulbs and sets mousetraps. He sweeps the stable passages and clears the snow away from the yard in front of the ring. He spreads a broad path of gravel from the stables, so the horses won’t slip and break their legs.

Each day at three o’clock he’s waiting outside the school. Julie comes in all weather. She throws herself into her work and gets Crazy to master the difficult exercises. Coordinating the great, muscular body to obey her smallest instruction. Charlo puts up jumps for her and holds his breath as the horse canters toward them. His own body moves in sympathy, trying to will her over. The landing is thunderous, and Julie clings to the horse with her calves, jumping again and again. He’s enjoying these days, so he doesn’t look back. The fact that he experiences a few happy days fills him with a deep contentment.

It’s January and very cold. Julie rides in thermal overalls and Crazy’s large body can’t get properly warm. He’s stubborn and stiff. Julie is tired, so Charlo tries to slow her down.

“Put him back in his box,” he suggests. “Today we can just clean it out and leave things at that. And you can take a day off. It doesn’t matter if he stays in for one day.”

She shakes her head emphatically.

“That’s out of the question. Horses have to have exercise every single day,” she says categorically.

He praises and encourages, and comforts her when she complains. He makes up for all his sins. And she clings to him as she did when she was small. My daughter, he thinks, the lovely redhead, the veterinary surgeon.

It is on one of these icy January days that he suffers another strange episode. Frightening and incomprehensible. He’s helping Julie muck out. He throws himself into the task eagerly with the shavings fork and feels the muscles working in his arms. Now that he’s got going, he mucks out the box next door as well. And the one next to that, too. He works so hard that he makes the shavings fly. The wheelbarrow fills up and is heavy with horse muck. He wipes the sweat from his brow and his shirt feels cold down his back. He goes over and opens the hatch. Returns for the wheelbarrow, grips the handles, and begins wheeling it down the passage. Just then, one of his legs gives way and he pitches violently forward. His face is thrust into the damp droppings. The wheelbarrow tips over sideways, its contents spilling over his head. Confused, he lies there kicking with the acrid stench of muck in his nostrils. He wipes his face in bewilderment. The muck is everywhere: in his eyes and his mouth, and even down the back of his neck.

Desperately he attempts to gather his wits. Just then he hears Julie’s laughter. He’s never heard this laugh before. It cascades heartfelt and bright over his head, and he thinks how comic he must look, lying on the floor with the wheelbarrow over him. And Julie just can’t stop laughing. For his part, he’s dumb. Frantically he tries to stand up to right the wheelbarrow. Julie is unable to help him; she’s clutching a broom and laughing so much it echoes around the stable. At last her laughter subsides into silence. Just a few little gasps of mirth. She stops because he’s silent and struggling to get to his feet. She goes over to him, takes hold of the wheelbarrow with both hands, and turns it over.

“Oh, Dad,” she says.

There are still some traces of laughter in her voice, but also something else, a note of anxiety. Because he’s not laughing, too.

“What happened to you?” she asks, drying her tears.

Charlo has stood up again and is looking himself over, avoiding her eyes.

“Well,” he says uncertainly. “One leg went all weak. It’s odd.”

She titters again, goes up to him, and starts brushing his jacket. She’s kindly now, soothing.

“I’ll have to use the broom,” she says. “It’s stuck to your clothes, Dad. You’ll have to go home and take a shower. My God, what a sight you are! Why did you stumble? Was it slippery?”

He says nothing. The stench of dung fills his nose. Again he thinks there’s a flickering before his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. She uses the broom gently on his back and dries the last tears from her cheeks.

“Weak, how?” she asks, and now there’s more concern in her voice.

“Well, I’m not sure,” he says. “I probably just wasn’t concentrating. You know how scatterbrained I am.”

Deep down he knows there’s something wrong. Again he had that feeling of weakness in his joints. First they seemed to go into spasm, then to lose all power. There’s a deep throbbing in his breast, a rising disquiet that something’s wrong with him. It’s strange, he thinks. He’s never unwell. For as far back as he can remember, he’s never been ill. Not since childhood measles and that sort of thing. But nothing since then.

He walks out of the stable, pulls off his jacket, and shakes it as hard as he can. It does no good at all. As he stands outside in the cold and darkness looking down at his own body, fear comes creeping over him. Something is about to overtake him. A punishment because his sins are so great. He isn’t going to escape. He stands shivering beneath the stars. It was too good to last, he thinks. What Julie and I found. Dear Lord, don’t take it from me! Then he shakes his head in perplexity. Sighs and pulls himself together. He feels quite normal again, as if nothing has happened. No, really he’s as fit as a fiddle. The wheelbarrow was so heavy, and perhaps it had more weight on the right side. That made it impossible to control, that’s how it happened. Maybe he slipped on some ice in the passage. It is very cold. There are lots of explanations. He’s forced to go in again, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to say. The event has become so difficult to manage. Julie is grooming the horse. He shakes his head in resignation.

“I must be getting old,” he says, and makes for the sink. He turns on the tap and splashes ice-cold water in his face.

She demurs and works on with her currycomb, using long, powerful strokes. Crazy shines rubicund in the light and munches hay with imperturbable calm.

“Has it happened before?” she asks suddenly, watching him narrowly.

He doesn’t want to answer. But they’re together now and mustn’t have secrets—no more than necessary.

“Yes,” he admits. “A couple of times. But I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s probably just a bad habit, that I don’t look where I’m going.”

She puts down the currycomb and picks up the horse blanket, spreading it across the horse’s back.

“I think you ought to see the doctor,” she says.

He considers her suggestion. He never goes to the doctor, because he’s never ill. And what would he say? Sometimes I trip and fall? Surely everyone does that. But then there’s this flickering vision. Are the two things connected? Are there other things going on in his system that he doesn’t know about? Once again he peers down his body. The idea that it won’t do what he asks is an impossible one for him. The notion fills him with righteous anger; he feels the indignation burning his cheeks.

“Yes,” he replies, “I’ll call in the morning.” He nods as if to emphasize the seriousness of the thing.

They close the box door and walk toward the exit, switching off the ceiling light. Julie opens the door and Charlo feels the icy air creeping in everywhere. It cuts him like a knife. All the things that can attack human beings. Personally he feels that he really doesn’t want to know. He wants to live his life now, undisturbed by details. All the same, he phones the doctor the next day and makes an appointment.

Dr. Graff takes his blood pressure and says it’s excellent. Charlo sits on the edge of a chair in nothing but his underwear. He feels horribly naked. He, a grown man, coming to the doctor because he’s tripping over his own legs. It’s pathetic. The doctor works away eagerly on his keyboard, typing everything up in his notes. Whether he smokes and how much. If he sleeps well, if he eats well. If he’s allergic to anything, if there are hereditary conditions in his family. Things like that. Charlo answers dutifully and honestly.

“So you’re not sure whether you tripped over something or your knee gave way?”

“It might have been a patch of ice,” Charlo says, because that’s what he’s hoping. “And then there’s this flickering in front of my eyes. Maybe I need glasses. I’m at that sort of age.”

“We’ll do some blood tests,” the doctor says. His voice is reassuring and neutral. “So that we can exclude a number of things.”

Charlo nods and reaches for his shirt. He wonders what the doctor is trying to exclude, but he doesn’t dare inquire. He’s given a form and told to sit down and wait outside the nurse practitioner’s office. At the same time, a new appointment is made for him.

The nurse takes some blood. He watches the thin red stream and wonders what the blood will show. What it is he has too much or too little of. He wants to leave and go to the stables. He wants to pretend this isn’t happening. Then he shakes it off. The body isn’t a perfect organism; it goes wrong from time to time. It does with everybody. Once the nurse has finished helping herself liberally to his blood, he gets up from the chair. He straightens up and pulls down the sleeve of his shirt. He stands there broad-shouldered, holding his stomach in. Showing off his fine physique. She isn’t particularly interested.

Maybe he’s being poisoned by his own crime? He can keep order of a kind inside his head and try to put it behind him, but perhaps it’s seeping out into his system and debilitating him? Remorse, guilt, and panic distilled into some paralyzing substance that’s eating its way into his joints, muscles, and nerves? He tries to laugh this idea off. If he really is suffering from something, it must have been there right from the beginning, in his genes. Then he imagines that everything is coded and that time unleashes it all—all diseases, all catastrophes. Was his crime also contained in his genes? Was he born with a predisposition, or was it just circumstances that turned him into a murderer? The fact that he has no answers troubles him. He needs to work through his own guilt, to place it somewhere outside himself. Not with his mother or father, he thinks. Not with Inga Lill or Julie. Not within his own nature, because he’s not aggressive. He never flares up. Almost never. He doesn’t go off the rails when he drinks. He did fairly well at school and got up to the usual boyish pranks. Now he’s an honest man. He never parks illegally and he doesn’t cheat on his income tax. He informs Social Security each time Møller pays him. He takes care of Julie with gentleness, fatherliness, and self-sacrifice. But things went wrong once, in Harriet Krohn’s house. She shouldn’t have attacked him. She should have kept calm and let him do what he’d come to do in peace. She would have saved her own life, he thinks, and she’d be walking around now, sucking on candy in her ugly green dress.