We Shall Inherit the Wind (4 page)

The main office of Mæland Real Estate AS was on the outskirts of the new industrial estate at Janaflaten, due south of Sotra Bridge. The estate was still being built, and the signposting left something to be desired. The massive, grey concrete building was divided between various companies, and an in-depth study of the information board in the empty collective vestibule was required to establish where the office was.

The staircase had corner windows from floor to ceiling and a magnificent view of the main road from the south, and the islands and sea beyond. The grey clouds from earlier in the day were being swept away by a strong northerly wind, and in the distance there was a clear line of blue sky, like a silken membrane on the horizon. It promised improved weather in the days to come. But you could never be completely sure. Behind the sky the clouds are always grey, as we say in our part of the country.

After a few abortive jaunts I finally found my way to the sign proclaiming in big letters that I had arrived at Mæland Real Estate AS. I opened the heavy, blue door to the offices, where I was met by a smiling young lady with large glasses, fair hair, a grey-flecked black jacket and white blouse. She was sitting at a minimalistic desk and looked as though she had spent the whole of her life waiting for me to come through the door.

‘I have an appointment with Kristoffer Mæland. The name’s Veum.’

She smiled brightly. ‘I have that down here,’ she said, nodding to the computer, which, along with the keyboard, filled the majority of her desk. ‘Kristoffer’s expecting you.’ From the use of the Christian name I inferred that this was a young, dynamic atmosphere.

‘Sorry,’ I said, putting on an apologetic face and consulting my watch. ‘I had some difficulty finding the way here.’

‘Everyone does,’ she said lightly and with a consoling smile. ‘It’ll all be sorted by spring.’

‘Not before?’

‘Well, everything comes to him who …’

‘… laughs longest.’

She seemed to find this droll and made a clucking sound, then showed me into the brightly lit corridor, to a glass cage with a view, containing a desk of much more generous proportions than her own and a suite of sofas where a young man was flicking through a file. When he saw us he put down the file, got up and nodded.

The secretary opened his door and said: ‘This is Varg Veum.’

‘Thank you very much,’ I said, passing her on my way in. She smelt of lily of the valley, which never failed to attract me, even though I knew how poisonous they were. Then she closed the door behind me and I greeted Kristoffer Mæland.

Since I had neither met his mother nor his father it was impossible to say whether he resembled either of them. He was roughly my height and had fair, curly hair cut close to the scalp. His face was broad, his smile measured, and his eyes were blue. His clothes were both practical and elegant: a dark jacket, blue jeans and a white shirt open at the neck.

He pointed to a chair and sat down opposite me, across a massive piece of glass. ‘Ranveig said I had to talk to you.’

‘Did you have to be persuaded?’

He sent me a chill look. ‘My father’s gone off for a few days. No reason to make a big drama out of this.’

‘Has it happened before?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t have a complete overview of what goes on in their marriage.’

‘But there is friction?’

‘No more than in any marriage, I assume.’

When he didn’t follow up, I said: ‘You don’t have a close relationship with Ranveig, do you.’

‘She’s not my mother. Let me put it like that.’

‘But there were disagreements between them?’  

He gesticulated. ‘Not as far as I know, as I said. Bit of door-slamming. That’s not unusual in most homes.’

‘But he didn’t say anything to you? About going away, I mean.’

‘No, no, he didn’t.’ After some reflection he added: ‘You have to understand: Dad’s considering pulling out of the company. And leaving everything to me.’

‘To you alone?’

‘Yes, and the other staff, of course.’

‘But what about your sister?’

‘Else? She has her shares and can keep them, but she’s still young and has never had any interest in what we do.’

‘What does she do?’

‘She’s a student.’ And then he added, ‘History of Art,’ in a tone that made it sound rather suspect.

‘So what’s the company’s main activity?’

‘Property and project management, basically. We’re not primarily after profit, but we try to add value and be forward-thinking.’

This was something he had learned off by heart. But I wasn’t there to buy anything, and the projects I had in mind were not of the value-adding and forward-thinking variety. Mine were more of the keeping-my-head-above-water kind.

‘That’s why you’re investing so heavily in wind power?’

He regarded me with respect. ‘So you’ve heard about it?’

‘Ranveig told me.’

‘Right. Yes. In co-operation with a company called Norcraft Power we’re planning a wind farm at the edge of Gulen, on an island called Brennøy.’

‘Yes, I’m aware of that. You’re going there to do a survey on Wednesday, I understand.’

‘Did she tell you that, too?’ He looked almost impressed.

‘No, we found a letter addressed to your father confirming the arrangement.’

‘Yes, he’s been involved in – how shall I put it? – the practical side of things: he knows Brennøy well, you see.’  

‘I see?’

‘Yes. My father’s mother is from Brennøy, and they used to spend their holidays with the family there. That was how he got to hear about the property. An old boy put it on the market – he died straight afterwards, in the late 80s – and Dad made an offer.’

‘And this survey with Norcraft Power, was he going to attend it on his own?’

‘No, the idea was that we would both … but …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I was thinking. He might just have gone out there in advance.’

‘Without telling you?’

‘No, that does sound strange.’

‘He’s not answering his mobile if he has. And Ranveig said you don’t have a house there.’

‘No, that’s right. But there’s always Naustvik.’

‘Which is …?’

‘Somewhere to stay. After the bridge was built to the island things have livened up, and for those keen on adventure holidays they’ve got the ocean straight ahead. German tourists are especially crazy for that. I know he’s spent the night there.’

‘Great. I’ll check that out. Have you any other ideas?’

‘Ideas about what?’

‘About where he might be.’

‘No, that’s …’

‘He’s probably got his laptop with him. You haven’t heard from him?’

‘Not since the weekend. My understanding was they’d had a row on Saturday. Anyway, even if he’s got his laptop with him he still needs a connection somewhere.’

‘Don’t you get worried if you don’t hear from him for a few days?’

He looked away. ‘Worried? We … Even though we work together we … We’re a bit of an unusual family, Veum. My sister and I, we lost our mother when we were children.’

‘Yes, so I’ve heard.’

‘Although Mum had her problems and there were difficult periods in
our lives, it was as if a wall had collapsed in our house. One of the load-bearing ones. And the way it happened … I don’t know …’ He looked at me and shook his head.

‘Yes, I know what happened.’

He nodded. ‘One day she was there. The next she was gone. We didn’t even have time to say goodbye. I was on a walking trip with a classmate and his parents. It came as such a shock when I was told. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘And your sister?’

‘She understood even less, of course. She was so small. Just four years old.’ He stared into the middle distance. Then he seemed to pull himself together, straighten up and carry on: ‘So when this … when Ranveig turned up, only a short time afterwards … we’ve never had any kind of relationship with her. Nothing real.’

‘A short time afterwards, you say. How short?’

‘I don’t remember. But that was how it felt.’

‘But Ranveig was also employed here, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes, she was. She had the job Elisabeth – you met her – has now.’ He nodded towards reception. ‘But then she stopped. She hasn’t worked here for as long as I’ve been involved.’

‘But she’s interested in the business, I understand.’

He shrugged. ‘If it’s making a profit, she’s making money from it.’

There was a silence. ‘So no other ideas apart from this Naustvik – on Brennøy?’

‘If he’s not at home or at the cabin, that’s where I would look first.’

‘You wouldn’t like to ring him?’

His face went a little pink. ‘No, I wouldn’t, Veum. If Dad’s decided to go underground for a few days then that’s his business. I don’t want to drag him out unless he wants to appear.’

‘Hm. Tell me now, you wouldn’t have a photo of him, would you?’

‘Yes. I’m sure I have one here somewhere.’ He got up and went over to a shelf, ran a finger down the pile and returned with a brochure in his hand. ‘We made this a couple of years ago, but he hasn’t changed much since.’  

‘Thank you very much.’ I took the brochure, opened it and found a photo, taken at a desk in front of a panoramic window. The countryside through it suggested it was a different office from the one we were in now. Mons Mæland was sitting at a desk with Kristoffer beside him, bent over a brochure, but both were looking up at the photographer and smiling as though someone coming in was a pleasant break from an otherwise busy day. Kristoffer hadn’t changed much since the day the picture was taken, either. Mæland had a long, rectangular face with a prominent jaw and blond, slightly greying hair, brushed back off his high forehead.

I looked up. ‘This was taken here? In your father’s office?’

He nodded.

‘Could I see it?’

He didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic, but did reluctantly get up. ‘Follow me.’

I walked out of the office after him and we continued down the corridor. He opened the door to an office which was identical to the one we had left, except that there was no sofa suite. I recognised the desk from the photograph. It was big and heavy and belonged to a far more classical office set-up than this. The surface was so shiny you could see your face in it, and there were no piles of paper waiting for Mons Mæland here.

I glanced around the room. The shelves were full of files, books and folders. On a separate table stood a desktop computer, switched off. On the glass wall opposite the desk a large photo was suspended from the ceiling by wire. It showed a windblown coastal landscape with the foaming surf breaking over the rocks and the waves towering like cliffs in the grey sea beyond.

‘That’s Brennøy,’ Kristoffer said from behind me.

‘Looks pretty windy.’

‘The perfect place for a wind farm, if you ask me.’

I turned to him. ‘But you father didn’t agree.’

‘Didn’t agree!’ His face was crimson. ‘He was one hundred per cent in favour at the planning stage.’  

‘So why did he change his mind?’

‘It was that bastard Ole who sank his claws into him. Ole Rørdal.’

‘Ole Rørdal? The conservationist?’

‘Please don’t call him that, whatever you do. A troublemaker, that’s what he is. A conservationist who says no to wind power? I mean to say – what rubbish!’

‘The technology is a little controversial, isn’t it?’

‘Not among sensible people!’

‘So you didn’t consider your father sensible, either?’

He lowered his voice. ‘Not as far as this matter is concerned. And Rørdal has roots there himself.’

‘On Brennøy?’

‘Yes. Or on Byrknesøy, next to it. He’s been against this project from day one. And don’t ask me why.’

‘I’ll have to ask him myself then, I suppose.’

‘Be my guest!’ Kristoffer said, with a resigned expression. ‘But that won’t stop us. I can guarantee you that.’

‘Your father threatening to pull out – was that connected with the family row?’

‘Partly, yes. But … He’s getting on now.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Fifty-five? He’s younger than me.’

‘So?’

‘Well, we’ve both got a few years left in us, I reckon.’

Kristoffer smiled wryly. ‘Our line of work may be a bit harder than yours, Veum. People get ground down. Dad has certainly shown signs of fatigue recently.’

‘I see. In what way?’

‘Well, as I said: shifting viewpoints, having difficulty making up his mind, general dissatisfaction … the way I see him anyway. Yes, it’s time he considered giving up.’

‘Could that be the reason he’s disappeared? That he’s simply sitting somewhere and reflecting on things?’

‘Let’s hope so.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to terminate this conversation here. I have other duties to attend to.’  

‘I understand. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘On Brennøy, for example.’

‘Well, time will tell. I’m hardly going to be visiting you.’

Then, in a sense, he did the opposite. He came towards me and accompanied me all the way out, as if to make sure I left the premises. Elisabeth had gone home, or wherever it is women like her go. At any rate, she was no longer there.

‘Good luck, Veum.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, although I had drawn something of a blank with him. But I had a new name on my pad: Ole Rørdal. And I had to ring Naustvik on Brennøy to enquire whether they had a room free for Tuesday night. And whether anyone had seen Mons Mæland over there.

How so many people who worked all day for the same admirable purpose – to create a better global environment – could end up in their own camp, beneath their own flag, with impassable territorial lines, often led by colourful figureheads, was one of life’s mysteries.

Bergen had Kurt Oddekalv, who in the early 90s broke away from Friends of the Earth Norway to found Green Warriors of Norway. With its central office in Oslo there was another environmental organisation called Bellona, which had an equally high-profile leader. Among the other stand-out protagonists in this struggle were Future-in-our-Hands, World Wide Fund Norway and Greenpeace Norway.

In the Bergen region, Ole Rørdal from Gulen had been a vociferous spokesman against wind power in recent years, a theme that had caused groups to splinter off from various movements. Arguments pro and contra were not exactly in short supply. Fears for the exposed coast, local plant and animal life, threatened bird species and the consequences for the countryside of building wind farms along the whole coastline from Lindsnes to the North Cape were issues that were emphasised time and time again. An interview Ole Rørdal gave to
Bergens Tidende
in June 1997 was often quoted from: ‘The day they decide to build a wind farm in the north of Oslo, on the island of Tjøme and along the Gjendineggen ridge is the day I will consider taking the discussion of wind farms seriously as well.’

No one had gone that far yet. Which was why, as far as I had heard, Ole Rørdal took such an entrenched position. His two-year-old organisation,
Naturvernere mot Vindkraft
, NmV, Conservationists against Wind Power, was still at the recruitment stage, and no other major figures had appeared on the scene, as yet. Nor were they necessary.

I rang Enquiries and was told NmV’s office was in Lille Øvregate, the town’s oldest street and a worthy conservation phenomenon in itself. Speaking to Rørdal was not such a simple matter.

I had barely introduced myself when an abrupt Bergen voice stopped me in my tracks. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Ole Rørdal?’

‘What’s this about, I said!’

‘I’m working for Mons Mæland’s family. For his wife.’

‘C’mon on! I’m very busy.’

‘He’s disappeared. I need to have a word with you.’

‘With me! Why?’

‘It’ll take too long over the phone. Can I come and see you?’

‘I haven’t …’

I interrupted him. ‘It won’t take long.’

He growled: ‘Well, well, alright. If you come in thirty to forty minutes, I’ll be ready for you.’ I heard someone speaking in the back-ground, but Rørdal interrupted him too and repeated in a louder voice: ‘In forty minutes!’ Then he rang off.

I found a parking spot in Øvre Korskirkeallmenning and strolled down to Kong Oscars gate, bought a paper and occupied a free table in one of the street’s newest cafés, a former grocery store, where they served coffee in big cups with great hunks of bread, in an atmosphere that was vaguely reminiscent of an Amsterdam coffee shop, but without the smell of dried grass and the rhythmically swaying heads of the town’s ruminating cows. Half an hour later I folded up the newspaper, found my way to Lille Øvregate and a white, eighteenth-century timber house with a hairdressing salon on the ground floor and NmV on the first.

I had no sooner walked through the front entrance when a door upstairs flew open with a crash. A compact, stocky little man burst out onto the landing, wearing something akin to a uniform: camouflage combat fatigues with a wide selection of pockets. He had close-cropped ginger hair and was yelling back in the direction of the room he had just left.  

‘I’m telling you, Ole. We do it on Wednesday. If not, you’ll only live to regret it! You know what I’m going to do. I won’t hesitate.’

He paused for a moment to listen to the grunted reply from inside. Then he slammed the door hard, turned on his heel and set off down the stairs at a speed that suggested it was almost closing time and all the exits were being locked.

I stepped aside to let him pass, but he stopped in front of me, glared and barked: ‘And who the hell are you?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Are you going up there?’ He jerked his head to indicate where he meant. His eyes glinted with suspicion. ‘Have you come from Norcraft?’

‘Eh? I’ve just come from Vågen Deli, along the street. Sorry, I didn’t catch … What was your name?’

Then the door upstairs opened, and a stout man came out onto the landing. I recognised him at once from photos in the papers. It was Ole Rørdal.

‘Veum? Come on up.’

The man standing before me said: ‘Veum?’

I grinned: ‘Varg Veum.’

He didn’t appear to believe me, but he wouldn’t have been the first. I left him with the surprised expression still on his face, and started up the stairs at a slightly more leisurely pace than he had come down. Before I reached the top, I heard the door downstairs slam with a resounding bang. Clearly grand exits were this man’s forte. His fragmented goodbyes crashed to the ground like shattering china.

For centuries, the complexion and diminutive stature of Vestlanders has fuelled rumours of a distant past when shipwrecked Spaniards swam ashore and found a local welcome committee waiting for them. In which they immediately implanted their seed. More recent research has concluded that there weren’t enough wrecks for them to have left such significant genetic traces. In fact, it was more likely that the tribes who settled here during the Migration Period (400–600
AD
) brought these features with them, after travelling from the south of
Europe through the Germanic forests and over the ice all the way to the country known as Nordvegen – the road north.

Ole Rørdal looked well equipped to withstand a similar migration himself. He was powerfully built, broad chested, and his gait betrayed the fact that he had spent a lot of time at sea since childhood. In a way it was as if someone had put his head on upside down. An impressive, black beard grew from his chin, but his head was shaved so closely that there was only a dark shadow of hair. If he had put a helmet on, he could have got a job as an extra in any Hollywood Viking movie. This impression was reinforced by a suede shirt, a brown leather waistcoat and grey-brown trousers with large, external pockets. He had black military boots on his feet, which left no room for doubt – he would be ready to fight his corner whenever and wherever the wind turbine issue was raised.

‘You’d better come in,’ he said, although he didn’t sound like he meant it.

I jerked my head in the direction I had come from. ‘And who was that powder keg?’

‘Stein Swineson,’ he said irritably, ‘Or Svenson, as he’s actually called. He’s our deputy leader.’

‘You didn’t seem to be quite on the same wavelength?’

He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘A disagreement about strategy. There’s a lot at stake. It’s important to choose the right … approach. But I don’t suppose that’s what you came here to discuss?’

‘No, I’m here to talk about Mons Mæland.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘No one knows yet. He’s disappeared.’

His mouth dropped, but he clearly didn’t have anything to say on the matter. I followed him into the room and looked around. This organisation was conspicuously disorganised; it was like stepping into a beehive. Big posters from international green agencies hung on the walls, some of them with stunning images of threatened rain forests, wild waterfalls and drifting icebergs. In one of them, a wind turbine loomed like a monstrous edifice above two intrepid cyclists – the Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza of our day. Rudimentary bookshelves heaved with stacks of paper, brochures, case files and various pieces of office equipment. An over-worked hard drive, printer, scanner, three computer monitors with freestanding keyboards and an old-fashioned fax machine whirred in what seemed to be the technology corner. A long, untreated wooden table stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by folding canvas chairs; it looked Norwegian and handmade, and definitely hadn’t come from any rain forest.

Ole Rørdal motioned towards a coffee machine using an unnecessarily wasteful amount of electricity on a little kitchen worktop. ‘Coffee, Veum? 100 percent organic.’

‘As long as there aren’t any coffee beetles in it.’

He looked offended, as idealists do whenever anyone cracks a joke, but he nodded, walked over to the counter, rinsed two fired-clay mugs – doubtless organic too – poured the coffee and came back to the table.

I sat on one of the chairs. It was rather rickety and not particularly comfortable. Mind you, the people here weren’t the type to sit around – the sooner you were out in the field the better. ‘While I was investigating a case, the row over the planned Brennøy wind farm blew up.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘I’m told you’re from around there.’

‘Not from Brennøy, if that’s what you mean. But I come from one of the neighbouring islands, Byrknesøy. You don’t get much closer to primal Norwegian terrain than that. Viking ships sailed past there once, on their way from Nidaros to Bergen or vice versa.’

‘And now you’ve got tankers instead.’

His face darkened. ‘And polluting tourist boats. The shipping authorities don’t seem to care much about the environment, when you see what they dump in our waters. Same goes for the utterly ridiculous plans they have for these so-called wind farms of theirs. Far away from people and livestock and with cables running through some of the most beautiful countryside in Norway. There’s not even that much of a benefit to the environment. No, I’ll say again what I’ve said all along: when they’re willing to set up turbines in Nordmarka, on Tjøme or the
plateau here in Bergen I’ll allow myself to be drawn into a debate about them.’

My voice cracked: ‘On the plateau?’

‘Yup,’ he said, with a provocative glare. ‘Are the mountains that much more important than the district of Gulen or the island of Smøla? And what do you think people in Ålesund would say if they set up a wind farm on Aksla?’

‘Well, but …’

‘We’re challenging God’s own creation. “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good,” as it says in the scriptures.’

I held up my palms in surrender. ‘OK, Rørdal …’

‘Call me Ole, everyone does.’

‘Ole. I didn’t come here to argue the toss about wind farms, one way or the other. This is about Mons Mæland …’

‘I know, but what I still don’t know is why you’re talking to me about it.’

‘I had a meeting with his son, Kristoffer. He said that you’d got him – his father, that is – to change his mind about the wind farm.’

He grinned. ‘You don’t say? Imagine that.’

‘It’s true, then?’

‘Well, we had a good long chat about it a while back, and I dare say our dear friend Mons Mæland had a lot to think about afterwards. I heard he went back to his company and tried to get them to change their plans. But it’s no secret that his proposal didn’t go down well. We know all about that.’

‘All?’

‘Yeah, well, things got a bit fraught in any case. You know their property company, Mæland Real Estate, is only one little cog in the machine?’

‘Oh yes? Who else is involved then?’

‘Too numerous to mention. The Norwegian state amongst others.’

‘People so influential that they might conceivably put pressure on … other interested parties?’  

His eyes narrowed. ‘What are you getting at now?’

‘I know, for example, that they’re working with a company called Norcraft Power, which will be responsible for the construction work.’

‘If there is any, yes.’

‘Are you expecting a visit from Norcraft?’

His eyes flashed. ‘Me …? Why do you ask?’

‘Stein Svenson asked me if I was from Norcraft when we were downstairs.’

‘That bloody Stein Swineson is a muppet! Would you spread rumours about everyone in the organisation just because we couldn’t agree on a strategy? I’ll make him eat his words.’ He paused. ‘My father’s a preacher,’ he said abruptly, as if that explained everything. ‘Lars Rørdal. Farmer and preacher. He’s delivered impassioned sermons against Mammon and the idol worship that is modern capitalism. “And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” And I subscribe to everything he says.’

‘So the rumours are unfounded?’

‘What rumours? It’s just something Svenson’s said without a thought in his head! Do you want me to spell it out for you?’

‘That won’t be necessary. But this is still, quite literally, tilting at windmills, isn’t it?’

‘Fighting for the environment?’

‘Yes.’

He turned and pointed at the poster of the two cyclists and the wind turbine. ‘That’s what it feels like sometimes. But on the other hand … should we just lie down and let ourselves be walked over?’ He brought a fist crashing down on the table. The two mugs jumped. ‘No, we’ll fight to the last drop of our blood. If necessary we’ll chain ourselves to the rocks out there and make Brennøy another Alta controversy – the Sámi didn’t just sit back and let them flood that village.’

‘But … even between environmentalists there are differences of opinion on this, aren’t there?’

A quiver ran through him as if he was trying to restrain himself. He
looked depressed for a moment. ‘To cut a long story short, Veum … some of the so-called environmental agencies have their headquarters in Oslo. Too close to the politicians and the money. I’ll say no more. Wind turbines in Nordmarka etc.’ He dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

‘You’ll be present for the survey on Wednesday, I hear.’

He smiled grimly. ‘We will. No doubt about that.’

‘But Mons Mæland might not make it.’

He grew serious. ‘If you’re … If Mons Mæland’s disappeared, I see two possible explanations.’ He took a deep breath and continued. ‘He’s either gone underground voluntarily, or someone’s offered him something he can’t refuse.’

‘His family have no idea what’s happened to him.’

‘Worst-case scenario …’

‘Yes?’

‘They’ve killed him.’

‘Seriously? Do you honestly think they’d go that far?’