Medusa (28 page)

Another nod from the lad. He had shoulder-length black hair that looked dyed, and a ring through one eyebrow.

– What kind of music? Viken wanted to know.

The lad glanced up at him, with perhaps just a touch of contempt in his eyes.

– Rock, blues, metal, whatever.

– I play guitar too, the policeman revealed.

– Oh yeah? The lad appeared tolerably interested in this bit of information.

– What’s your name?

– Tom.

– Mind if I have a go on your guitar?

Tom hesitated for a few seconds before getting up. He was skinny and rangy, the same height as Viken, with a row of pimples studded across his forehead. He unhooked the strap and handed over the guitar. A Gibson Les Paul. More expensive than any guitar Viken had ever owned. His fingers glided reverently across the strings.

– Get this from your father?

– Birthday present, the lad confirmed. – Dad bought it in England.

Viken strummed a few chords. Even with such a tiny amplifier he could feel the power in the sleek instrument.

– Wish I had one of these, he sighed as he ran through some riffs. – Know this one?

He let his fingers go. Tom watched, his face expressionless.

– Good, he said when Viken had finished. – Heard it before.

– ‘Black Magic Woman’, Viken said enthusiastically.

– Santana, isn’t it?

– Santana nicked it from Fleetwood Mac. The guy who wrote it was called Peter Green. Best white blues guitarist ever. He had a Gibson exactly like yours. In the end he let his nails grow so long he couldn’t play any more.

– What did he do that for? Tom asked.

– He thought it might cure him of having to play the blues.

– Crazy.

Viken handed the guitar back.

– Your turn.

Tom hung the guitar round his neck, turned up the amp a few notches. Viken didn’t recognise the riff, but it was powerful; the lad could play, there was no doubt about it. Suddenly a hoarse, reedy sound emerged from his throat. Viken leaned in the doorway, surprised. The lad sat there with eyes closed, suddenly deep inside his own, vulnerable world, with no thought of the stranger standing there watching him.

When he was finished, Viken exclaimed: – That’s powerful stuff, Tom.

The boy could hear that he meant it and smiled quickly, then turned and put the guitar on its stand next to the bed.

– Do
you
play in a band? he asked, clearly to deflect his embarrassment.

– Long time ago now, said Viken.

– What was it called?

Viken grinned. – We called ourselves the Graveyard Dancers
.
Actually came quite close to getting a recording contract.

– Cool name, Tom nodded.

Viken took his chance.

– Why isn’t your father home?

Tom shrugged his shoulders. – He rang Ma yesterday. It has something to do with his brother.

– Your father’s brother?

– Yep, twin brother.

Viken was careful not to show too much interest.

– So your father has a twin brother. What’s his name?

– Brede.

– Are they completely identical?

– Dunno. Never met him.

At that moment Vibeke Glenne appeared.

– Are you in here?

Viken winked at Tom.

– Couldn’t pass up the chance to try that guitar. I’ve never played on anything as good. Get yourself a Peter Green album, hear what he gets out of a Gibson.

– Album? Tom echoed in surprise.

– Er, I’m sure you can download the tracks, the chief inspector hurriedly corrected himself.

– Your son tells me that Axel has a twin brother.

Vibeke Glenne refilled their coffee cups.

– There hasn’t been any contact for years. Brede is an alcoholic, or a junkie, or I don’t know what. Been in and out of institutions all his life.

– The lad says he’s never met him.

She stared off into space.

– Neither have I actually.

Viken looked at her in astonishment.

– In twenty-three years?

– They lost touch when they were in their teens. Brede wouldn’t see Axel any more. Jealousy and all the rest of it. Axel has managed to make something out of his life. Brede didn’t care about anything.

Viken sat thinking about this as Norbakk wrote something in his notebook.

– So you don’t actually know if they resemble each other?

– They’re identical. I’ve seen photos of them when they were children. It’s impossible to tell the difference between them.

– Can you show me some of those photographs?

– Childhood photographs? Now listen here, I’ve still not even been told why you …

She broke off, got up and went into the next room. Viken heard her opening drawers. She returned with three or four photo albums in her arms.

– Here. I’m sure you’ll understand if I say I’m not in the mood to sit here reminiscing with you.

– That’s perfectly all right.

The photographs were from the early days of colour film. The colours were dull and had acquired a yellowish patina. Days by the seaside, celebrations of National Day in May. A woman with blond hair gathered in a braid, and a much older man whom Viken seemed to recognise.

– Axel’s parents, I presume.

Vibeke Glenne leaned over the table.

– That’s right. He was twenty years older than her. Famous for being in the Resistance; later became a supreme court advocate.

– Torstein Glenne? exclaimed Viken, astonished that the connection hadn’t occurred to him earlier. – Is your husband Torstein Glenne’s son?

He composed himself and flipped on through the album, stopping at a page with a number of swimming scenes. Fjord, smooth sloping rocks.

– Where were these taken?

Vibeke Glenne cast a quick glance.

– At the cabin. The summer place down in Larkollen. We’ve still got it.

Viken’s eyes narrowed.

– Summer place? Does it have a basement?

– A creep-in basement. Why on earth do you want to know that?

Viken didn’t answer.

– How old is the cabin? he wanted to know.

Vibeke Glenne raised her chin, obviously a mannerism of hers when she was thinking about something.

– It’s been in the family for a long time. From when Torstein was a child, I should think. From about the twenties or thirties.

– Is this Axel or Brede?

Viken held the album up so she could see.

– Axel, she decided.

– Show me a picture of Brede.

She pointed lower down on the page.

– But they’re absolutely identical, Viken protested, – even got the same swimming trunks. How can you be sure?

– Axel told me who was who.

Viken flipped on. Father, mother and one of the twins.

– Are there no pictures of them together? he wondered.

– What do you mean?

Viken searched back through all three albums.

– Dozens of pictures of twin brothers, but not a single one of them both together.

Vibeke Glenne looked exasperated.

– And what’s supposed to be the significance of that?

Viken mulled it over.

– You tell me. Probably none. Who have you talked to about Brede?

– Talked to? Actually, no one other than Axel.

– Are you telling me that you have never heard his parents or other members of the family say anything else at all about this twin brother?

She said: – Brede was sent away from home when he was fifteen. According to Axel, it was impossible for him to go on living there. He was beyond control. It was something that was never talked about in the family. Brede was, and is, taboo. Axel said I wasn’t to mention him to other people.

– So the parents sent their fifteen-year-old son away and never wanted to see him again?

– Axel’s family are a
little
unusual, Vibeke Glenne confirmed. – Not exactly awash with love and affection. I’ve never known my mother-in-law, Astrid, to care in the slightest about anyone other than herself. Not even her grandchildren. And old Torstein was, of course, a god. Remote and severe.

After a short pause she added: – Axel never talks about it, but I have noticed that he is still preoccupied with his twin brother. When he called yesterday, he mumbled something about finding him. It’s almost certainly got something to do with what happened when Brede was sent away.

– And what did happen?

She leaned back in the chair, crossed one leg over the other. Norbakk stood up before she began to speak.

– Afraid I’ll have to use your toilet too. No, don’t get up, I can find my own way.

–
G
ET ANYTHING OUT
of your visit to the toilet? asked Viken once they were seated in the car again.

Norbakk swung the vehicle down towards the gate and out on to the road.

– Mostly just the usual stuff, he said. – I presume you don’t want the brand names of a lot of shampoos and hairsprays and skin creams.

– Could probably use a few tips, said Viken. – What about medicines?

– Paracetomol, ibuprofen, stuff like that. A couple of things I didn’t recognise; I’ll check them when we get back.

– Doctors want to stuff us full of chemicals for the slightest thing, Viken observed. – But when it comes to their own family, they shut up shop. You said
mostly
the usual stuff?

Norbakk accelerated out of the roundabout.

– Well, not all parents with a family of young kids have a pair of handcuffs hidden away at the back of the wardrobe in the bedroom.

– Handcuffs? And in the bedroom?

– I got mixed up with all the doors and by happenstance ended up in the wrong room.

– I didn’t hear that, Arve, Viken grinned. When the sergeant was still wet behind the ears, he was the one who had taught him the use of the word
happenstance
. It had served him well many times himself.

He sat there scratching his jaw.

– So Axel Glenne allegedly has a twin brother, he said after a while.

– Allegedly?

Viken started humming a melody. Even the most fervent Stones fan might have had difficulty in recognising ‘Under My Thumb’.

– I have very clear memories of a case we worked on when I was in Manchester. Chap who had been knocked down and stabbed, had his credit card and all his ID stolen. He didn’t know who the attacker was, but he was able to give a very detailed description of him.

He carried on humming, possibly the same song. Norbakk glanced over at him.

– Was the case solved?

– Indeed it was. The description fitted the victim himself so well that some bright spark thought of checking it out. And it matched.

– He’d stabbed himself and stolen his own ID?

– Exactly. But it was impossible to get him to see it. He’s still walking around believing he was attacked. If, that is, the shrinks haven’t managed to get his head sorted out. And now I’m going to reveal to you why I’m telling you this entertaining little tale. Imagine a man in his forties. He has a twin brother no one in his family has ever seen hide nor hair of.

– His brother hates him.

– All right. But there is not one damn picture of the two of them together.

– Chance is what rules almost everything that happens in the world.

Viken gestured with his arm.

– Don’t get me wrong, Arve. I’m not the type that takes the long way round. The simplest answers are always the best. But this business about the twin …

– Was he thrown out of the house? I didn’t hear the whole story.

Viken took a box of pills out of his pocket and tapped out a couple.

– Acid indigestion, he explained. – Bananas are just as good, but I can’t go around looking like a starving ape.

He found a bottle of dead fizzy water in the glove compartment.

– The Glenne family hardly sounds like the best family in the world to have grown up in. But everyone has some sort of cross to bear. You know about the father. One of the heroes in the Resistance, and after that, a big cheese in the supreme court for years. They still called him Colonel there, long after the war ended. And the mother, according to Vibeke Glenne, was an immature and self-centred upper-class woman. But there again, it’s by no means certain a daughter-in-law is the most objective person to provide that kind of description. The older Mrs Glenne apparently didn’t want children. And when she suddenly found herself with two, that was at least one too many. It was worse for the twin who was disciplined according to Old Testament principles. Naturally he grew up to be the terror of the neighbourhood. The good twin, Axel, always tried to defend him – this is still according to the younger Mrs Glenne – but the whole thing exploded the summer they turned fifteen.

He put the tablets in his mouth, swallowed them down with a swig of water, and made a face.

– Would have been better off using wiper fluid, he groaned.

– What happened that summer?

Viken started chewing on a salt pastille. He noted with satisfaction that his story about the twins had captured Norbakk’s full attention.

– Vibeke Glenne says that at one time old Torstein had a dog. Apparently he was more devoted to it and treated it better than his wife
or
his kids. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was true. I was fortunate enough to meet Colonel Glenne on several occasions before he retired. The rumours I had heard were by no means exaggerated: he was not the sort of man you messed about with, if I can put it like that.

He looked out across the fields, up to a copse under the bright evening sky.

– Quite nice out here, he mused.

– What about the dog?

Viken turned towards Norbakk.

– You want to hear the end of the tale? Short version, Brede got pissed off with the animal, almost certainly with good reason. He shot it with one of the colonel’s own guns. Axel pleaded for him, his wife says, but his pleas fell on deaf ears and the lad was packed off to what used to be called in those days an approved school. He never came back home.

They drove over the crest of a hill. On the other side, at the edge of the road, a number of floral bouquets were gathered, a few small lighted candles beside them.