explain it in any other way than that he sets things in motion by sheer force of will.'
All right. Now she had said it.
Sejer frowned. He had just started to like her, only to find out that she was a little flaky, wasn't the level- headed and intelligent woman he'd first thought. A close call!
'Go on,' he said.
She fixed her gaze on a statue outside, a naked girl on her knees who was staring out at the hospital grounds.
'I'm going to tell you about the first session we ever had, Errki and I. All of our patients are assigned to a therapist and also become part of a group, where they're given group therapy. It was time for his session. I was sitting in my office, waiting to see whether he would manage to be on time, after I had shown him where we would meet. And he arrived on the dot. I nodded at the sofa near the window, and he sat down, sprawled out and remained silent. I couldn't see his eyes. The room was quiet. There's something magic about that moment. The first session, the first words.'
She was speaking quietly and very slowly. Sejer could feel himself being drawn into her thoughts, almost as if he were right in the room with them.
''We have exactly one hour,' I began. 'And today you will decide how we spend it.' He didn't answer. I didn't try to break the silence; I'm not afraid of silence. It's common for them to say little or even nothing at all during the first hour. Or the second. He seemed comfortable and relaxed, as if he were resting. Not nervous or anxious. After a while I decided to talk about myself.'
'What did you say? Are you even allowed to talk about yourself?'
'Of course, within certain limits.'
Her voice changed, as if she were reciting a litany. 'I must be personable without being personal, involved without being invasive. Firm, without being sharp or authoritarian. Sympathetic, without being sentimental. Et cetera. I told Errki that what we were going to do, he and I, was find a language that was uniquely ours, that only he and I would understand. No others would be able to decipher it. By 'others' I meant the voices inside him that fling him around and make his life miserable. I said that we could find a way to communicate and that it would be our secret. A code. So if there was anything he wanted to tell me, he could put it into code. And I would be able to work it out provided I had a little time, and that cracking the code would be my problem.'
She paused to take a breath. 'But he didn't move, and the minutes passed, and I waited for a sign from him. I suppose I slipped into a sort of daze. His presence was somehow soothing. He sat there as if he owned the whole room. When finally he stood up, I jumped. He went to the door without looking at me. That's against the rules, so I stopped him. But he just turned around and pointed at his left wrist, although he wasn't wearing a watch. The hour was over. There was no clock on the wall, and yet he was right. Exactly 60 minutes had passed.'
'What did you do?' Sejer said.
She laughed softly. 'I tried a little trick. I told him there were five minutes left, but I said it with a smile. And then the first word passed his lips. The first word he ever said to me. 'Liar'.'
Sejer looked out of the cafeteria window at the green lawns. It occurred to him that it was late, that he needed to get back to Headquarters soon. He hadn't taken a phone call in all the time he'd been here. Maybe Errki and the robber had been found, as he sat here getting lost in psychiatry and some of its secrets. Or in her. In everything that might have been, a different future than the one he had imagined for himself.
'Afterwards,' she said, 'I made a note in my journal. One-nil for Errki.'
'How do you think Errki would react if he felt threatened?'
She looked at him and her expression turned anxious at the thought of what he might be going through right now. 'He would withdraw as much as possible. He would be on the defensive.'
'But what if he couldn't withdraw any further? What if he is repeatedly threatened or provoked? What would he do?'
'I tried to tell you earlier, but you didn't take me seriously. He would bite, to protect himself.'
'Bite? Where?'
'Wherever he can.'
Errki was asleep. Morgan stood in the doorway, looking at him. A jagged red scar stretched from Errki's throat to his navel. It had healed badly. Morgan pondered this for a moment, but couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation for what could have given him such an ugly scar. He stayed where he was and stared, although he had come in to wake Errki up. He had been sitting alone for a long time on the old sofa in the living room, staring vacantly into space, listening to the radio. There were no new details on the news. A hundred thousand kroner, they said. He had counted the money, and they were right.
Morgan stood motionless. There was something intimate about staring at a sleeping man. Staring at a sleeping girl would be quite different. Or so he imagined. Errki was breathing easily, his eyelids quivering, as if he were dreaming. His black jacket and T-shirt lay in a mess on the floor. Why should I wake him? Morgan thought. Why am I standing here like a lonely puppy, feeling like I need company? He can damn well stay where he is. He doesn't speak, and he's much too preoccupied with his own twisted insides to hear what I'm saying. But when he's asleep he looks like everybody else.
He wondered whether the craziness stayed with him when he slept, whether his dreams were crazy too. Or whether he had a hollow somewhere deep inside where everything was normal. A place that he refused to accept.
Suddenly he flinched. Without warning Errki opened his eyes. In a split second he was awake. He didn't stir beforehand, as people usually do as they wake up, twisting a little, grunting and groaning. He just opened his eyes. They were surprisingly big until they focused on Morgan, and then they narrowed.
'What did you do to your chest?' The words slipped out of Morgan's mouth. 'It looks like a botched hara- kiri.'
Errki didn't answer, because the two down in the cellar were scrambling to get into position. Sometimes they were impossibly sluggish.
'I need company,' Morgan declared. He thought he might as well be honest. 'It's getting late. Let's have a whisky.'
Errki got up slowly from the bed. Nothing happened. He glanced at Morgan's gun, pulled his T-shirt on over his head and followed him out to the living room. Morgan had rigged up the radio on the windowsill, with the antenna sticking out of the broken window. The temperature inside the old cabin was comfortable, but there was a warm haze over the woods, and the water far below was shimmering in the warm evening.
'I'm hungry,' Morgan said. 'So I'm going to have a whisky.'
He fished the bottle out of the bag and unscrewed the top. It was a litre bottle. Errki waited and watched, as usual looking up from downcast eyes and, as usual, it looked as if he were ruminating on something.
'Whisky is good for everything,' Morgan said as he continued to marvel at Errki's intense gaze. It was as if he knew something special, something crucial about life and death that no-one else could see. 'It's good for hunger and for thirst. For love troubles and for boredom. For despair and anxiety.'
He took a big gulp. His face rippled like rubber at the strong liquor. 'There's nothing as nice as a moderate drinking problem,' he said. 'Do you know what I mean by the word moderate?'
Errki did. Morgan wiped his mouth.
'I drink regularly and steadily. But never in the morning and never too much, and never when I'm going to be driving. I'm the one in control.'
He took another gulp. 'And if you think I'm going to drink myself silly so that you can escape, then you're mistaken.'
He held out the bottle. Errki looked at it with surprise. He didn't really care for alcohol, but he was feeling dull and empty inside, and if this was all they had, he didn't have to make a choice. It was the only thing available, this bottle of whisky. And he hadn't asked for it. It was being thrust upon him. He studied the label and turned the bottle around. Then he sniffed at the top.
'Come on, it's not poison.'
Errki put the bottle to his lips and took a swallow. The whisky ran down his throat, without making his eyes
