Yours Until Death (22 page)

I dreamed. A Polish girl with short dark hair and big black eyes was sitting in my office and making faces. She had to leave in an hour but somehow we both knew we loved one another. Somehow we were soulmates who’d been brought together only to be separated. And I couldn’t understand one word she said.

‘Do you speak English?’ I said and she shook her head and smiled. ‘
Parlez-vous français
?’ No! she smiled. ‘
Sprechen Sie Deutsch
?’ No, no, no. No. She went on smiling and speaking Polish with its clear diphthongs and gutteral sounds.

And then I walked her to a big green tourist bus parked outside the Bristol Hotel. Somehow I’d written her a letter in Norwegian and I gave it to her. I realised she wanted my address and I found a crumpled slip of paper. She had a pencil but the point was broken off, so I scratched my name and address as well as I could on the paper. And we kissed. Her feline tongue entered my mouth, she looked around – and
disappeared
. Her lips were like a wet leaf falling from a tree in autumn. It touches your face – and is gone.

And when I woke up, I lay there wondering how I could get her letters translated. Wondered whether I knew anybody who knew Polish or whether I could get hold of a dictionary and spell my way through them myself.

I was lying in my shirt and trousers on top of the quilt. I’d taken off my jacket and shoes. Outside the window it was
light, but I didn’t know what time it was. I didn’t remember getting home. I had to think a while before I could remember my name. If anybody had asked me how old I was, I’d have said I was seventeen.

I lay there. I could hear muffled voices overhead, children’s voices out in the alley. The never-ending swish of the city’s traffic. From somewhere out on the fjord the wail of a ship. A distant jet trailed a veil of sound through the air.

I carefully turned my head towards the window so I could see the rooftops and sky. It was grey-white with a tinge of light brown. Like crêpe paper. My head felt like a rotten orange somebody had stepped on. I lifted my left arm and waved it before my eyes. My arm was leaden, my wristwatch didn’t move: the crystal was broken.

I raised my head and looked for the alarm clock. Things splintered and the room listed heavily. I sank back on to the bed and when I opened my eyes again, it was dark. The air was stale. Dim. Somebody was tiptoeing across the floor overhead. He turned off the TV and tiptoed further through life. It was evening in the world and little boys slept. Big boys lay in bed in their shirt and trousers with a head split like a tomato. And a stomach that was uncomfortably hollow.

I carefully sat up. Looked around. The room spun but didn’t shatter. I stood up and managed to stay up. Went over to the window and opened it. It banged against the wall. I leaned out cautiously. Cold clean night air washed over me: a mixture of chimney smoke, old exhaust and cold car engines. I rested my elbows on the windowsill and breathed. I breathed, therefore I was. But what time was it? What day?

I left the window open and looked at the clock. Nobody’d wound it. The hands were frozen at two forty-five. I went to
the phone. The only number I could think of was Beate’s. And her new husband’s. I dialled, listened to that distant ringing. It rang five times and then a woman answered. She sounded different. It couldn’t be …

‘Hello? Beate?’

‘Hello. Fru Wiik’s out. This is the babysitter.’

‘Oh hello. This is Fru Wiik’s husband.’

Silence.

‘I mean, Fru Wiik’s former husband.’

‘I see.’ She sounded as faraway and as inhuman as a robot.

‘Is Thomas – is my son there?’

‘He’s asleep.’

‘Oh. Excuse me, but could you tell me what time it is?’

The time? It’s ten-thirty.’ I could feel the cold seeping through the line.

‘What day is it?’

‘What day?’ A long pause. ‘Saturday.’

Another pause.

‘Saturday? Well. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

I hung up. ‘Happy Saturday, Varg,’ I said aloud. ‘Happy weekend.’

I went to the kitchen, cut three slices of three-day-old bread, spread them with butter, poured raspberry jam over them, on to the counter and the floor. Drank some milk. It tasted of old cardboard. Swallowed a double dose of the tablets I’d got from the pharmacy the night before. Keep out of reach of children, it said on the bottle. Then I fell into bed and into a dreamless sleep until late on Sunday.

It was a long Sunday. My body hurt, my face looked like a
prop in a bad thriller, and there was no way I could do
anything
constructive. I tried to keep moving. Back and forth across the living room. Walked for a while with the bottle of aquavit, mostly for company – I didn’t dare open it. It was going to be a busy Monday.

The phone rang at one o’clock. It was Beate and she was furious.

‘Varg? This is Beate. I’ll thank you not to call my babysitter when you’re drunk.’

‘But I …’

‘You really do mess things up for me! What you did when we were married can’t be helped, but I don’t know how we manage to live in the same town as you! And what do you suppose Thomas thinks of a father who’s a ridiculous private
investigator
? Who doesn’t think twice about phoning and bothering the babysitter with his drunken ravings? If it ever happens again, Varg, it’s not me you’ll be hearing from. It’ll be my lawyer.’ And she slammed down the phone.

‘Hello? Hello?’ I said to the dialling tone. Just so I’d have something to say.

I could have called back, tried to explain. But I know her when she’s furious. It would have taken too much energy. I was too tired.

I found a tin of meatballs in brown sauce in a kitchen
cupboard
and a slightly wrinkled green pepper in the refrigerator. Made a kind of stew. I couldn’t cope with boiling potatoes and settled for a couple of slices of stale bread. Poured a glass of red wine from a half-full bottle but only drank a sip. It gave me a headache that lasted long into the evening.

The hours withered slowly away. A fresh night took over the city, an old day was gone. I sat in front of the TV which flashed
squared blue pictures of cross-country skiers setting world records on a Russian alpine course. I thought about Joker. I thought harder about Joker than I’d thought about another person for a long time.

And I said to myself: next time, Joker. Next time. Next time, I’ll cut the cards. And next time, Joker, you won’t be so easy to shuffle.

I struggled back to bed about ten and slept like a rock until eleven o’clock on Monday.

Monday’s a strange day to wake up to. It’s a day to die for some. And that Monday there was a strange feeling of death in the air, as if the dark angel had spread his black wings over the city during the night and had chosen his victim …

I tried to call Paulus Smith but got no further than his
secretary
. She said he was in court.

‘Tell him I called,’ I said. ‘Tell him I still haven’t found
anything
that could help us. Not yet anyway. Tell him I’m on my way to talk to Wenche Andresen. Some new questions to ask her, OK?’

She said she’d pass on the message, so I thanked her, hung up and walked out into Monday.

It was one of those grey days with rain in the air. The sky held its breath as if it waited for the clouds to open and pour with the rain we all knew must fall sometime during the day. It was after twelve and it really was March. The light was brighter and the sun higher behind those clouds. Even though it was a grey day it was not February.

February’s a short-legged man somewhere in a forest. He’s got frost in his beard, his cap pulled down over his forehead and winter-pale eyes in his strong broad face. March is a woman. A woman who’s just woken up in the morning, who turns in bed to avoid the sun and who asks you in a sleepy voice if it’s already morning.

Yes, it was morning. It wasn’t just the light, it was also the temperature, the shine on the roofs, that cold wind from the north-west with the seeds of mild weather in it, a woman passing you on the pavement and loosening her scarf a little bit so you could see the shadow at the base of her throat …

This time I didn’t have to see Wenche Andresen in her cell. I was taken to a little room furnished with a wooden table, some chairs and a guard who sat in a chair by the door and acted as if she heard and saw nothing.

Wenche Andresen walked with short steps, as if she’d already adapted the length of her stride to the limited floor space she now lived in. There was something passive, a sudden apathy in the way she moved.

She smiled thinly at me when she came in and sat in the chair nearest the door. She’d changed in the last seventy-two hours. She’d spent four days and five nights inside four brick walls with a steel door and a square window with matt glass in it.

Days and nights in a cell are longer than those outside. They can feel like years and they leave the marks of years on you. Wenche Andresen looked as if she’d spent six years instead of a hundred hours inside these walls. Her skin was already paler, unhealthier than it had been. The grey shadows under her eyes weren’t caused by lack of sleep now but by an invisible fever, the same fever that dimmed those dull eyes with grey frost. She’d already lost the battle. Six years ago.

Her hands lay absurdly weakly on the table. I leaned over and squeezed them to try to bring them to life. But she didn’t react. She didn’t squeeze back, didn’t try to hold on. Her hands lay limp in mine.

‘How are you, Wenche?’ I said.

No answer. She looked at me and I could see something still glimmering deep in her eyes. ‘What – what happened?’ she said.

I let go of one of her hands and quickly touched my face. ‘You mean this?’

She nodded slowly.

‘A little – meeting with Joker and his gang. I’ve got a date with him later today. Whether he likes it or not.’

‘You’d better be – careful,’ she said and looked around her. As if to say I’d end up here if I didn’t watch myself.

‘I’ve got some more questions, Wenche,’ I said.

She looked at me as if she knew I’d go on talking, but there wasn’t any hope in her eyes. She wasn’t interested in my
questions. It made me suddenly wonder what her nights must be like, what kinds of dreams she must be having. They had to be exhausting. She’d changed so much since Friday.

‘Richard Ljosne,’ I said. ‘I’ve talked to him. We talked about last Tuesday, among other things. The Tuesday night you told me about.’

I held her gaze with mine. But there was no reaction. Nothing.

‘He didn’t tell me the same story you did,’ I continued. ‘His description of the evening was different from yours.’

Her look was that of a stuffed animal. A doll. She’d fallen into a Sleeping-Beauty trance. Maybe if I kissed her …

‘What really happened when you got home, Wenche?’

After a while she said dully, ‘Happened? Did something happen? I told you what happened.’

‘You did. But he tells it differently. He says … He says you slept together, Wenche. The two of you. You and he. You slept together, didn’t you?’

She drew her lifeless hands from mine and tucked them safely under the table’s edge. ‘Then he’s lying, Varg. And if you believe him, you aren’t my friend any more.’

It was the kind of thing she might have screamed, but instead she sounded as if we’d been married for twenty years and she was telling me we’d be having fish dumplings for dinner again.

‘I am your friend, Wenche! You know that. And I won’t believe him – not if you tell me otherwise. But why – why should he lie?’

She shrugged. ‘Men.’

She didn’t need to add anything. It was enough. It was a
sentence
from which there could be no appeal, a sentence which condemned an entire gender to death at dawn. There we’d
stand with blindfolded eyes and our dicks in our hands, we who transmitted death and deceit and lies from father to son, from generation to generation.

I wasn’t going to ask her again. There wasn’t any reason why she should lie. So I moved down the list. ‘Gunnar Våge?’ I said.

She reacted. Shut her eyes and vigorously shook her head. When she opened them again, her look was sharper. She was coming back to life. ‘Oh? What about Gunnar Våge?’ she said.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t understand … I can’t see what it’s got to – what bearing it could have on – this. I honestly didn’t think about him before, before you …’

‘You were together once.’

‘We were, but good God, Varg – it was so long ago. I don’t go around years later thinking about somebody I was with for a couple of months a long time ago.’

‘But he loved you, didn’t he?’

‘I – I don’t know about that,’ she said abruptly.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Maybe not. But didn’t you think it was funny that he suddenly turned up in your neighbourhood? In the next building?’

‘No. Why should I? You meet so many people again – just like that. You go to a party and suddenly you meet somebody you haven’t seen for ten years. You go to the cinema and there’s a girl you went to school with twenty years ago sitting in the row in front of you.’

‘But you met Gunnar Våge and talked to him?’

‘Met him? I ran into him several times. In the street. And we exchanged a few words. We hadn’t much in common – any more.’

‘But at one time …’

‘Gunnar and I? Yes. We had a good time together for two months one summer a long time ago. That was before I met Jonas. Yes. I met Jonas that very same autumn. If I hadn’t, who knows? But I did and that was it. I never looked at another man twice after that. It was only Jonas. That’s how love is, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what they say,’ I said. ‘So it was really Jonas who – meeting Jonas caused you to break up with Gunnar Våge? Back then?’

‘Yes. Maybe so. But it doesn’t mean.

‘What doesn’t it mean?’

‘You can’t believe – you don’t think …’

‘What can’t I believe? What don’t I think?’

‘Really! It’s too ridiculous. It was a hundred years ago, and it’s got nothing to do with – it can’t have anything to do with this.’

‘You don’t have to …’ I realised I was being too harsh. My voice was too loud. I tried again. ‘You don’t have to protect anybody else, Wenche. Let Gunnar Våge defend himself if he needs to. His mouth is more than big enough. You’re the one we have to clear. Right?’

‘Yes, but …’ The film of frost covered her eyes again. Her voice lost its colour. Became neutral. ‘It’s hopeless, Varg. I’ll be found guilty. I know it. They’re going to lock me up for the rest of my life, and I’ll never see Roar again. But maybe it’s just as well. I don’t care any more. Jonas is dead. And he had cheated on me before that. What’s out – what have I got to do – out there?’

I leaned across the table again. ‘You’ve got everything to do out there, Wenche! You’re young. Christ! You can start again. Meet a new man. We don’t love just one person in our lives.
We love a lot of people – our mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, husbands and wives, lovers. You’ll meet somebody new. If not this year, then next year. Maybe not today, but tomorrow. You can’t give up now. Understand?’

She was silent.

‘After – after Jonas left you and you knew Gunnar Våge was in the neighbourhood, didn’t you ever think of – starting up the friendship again? Could you – didn’t you ever think you could begin a new relationship with him? He was somebody you knew and had been happy with before.’

‘No, Varg. No. Never.’ She gulped and then her eyes
suddenly
filled with tears. There were tears in her voice when she said, ‘It’s just that …’ And her lips silently pronounced a dead man’s name.

I let her cry. She wept silently, with her back straight and without raising her hands to her face. Tears streamed from her eyes, ran shining down her cheeks, around her nostrils to her mouth and chin. I watched them as if they were spring’s very first ice-free brook, the beginning of a March thaw when the glaciers melt under the young sun and night prepares to
celebrate
the coming dawn.

And then her tears stopped. I found a clean handkerchief in a pocket, and leaned towards her. Wiped the tear-stains from her face until all that was left were those anxious inflamed circles under her eyes. ‘I’ll be back, Wenche,’ I said. ‘Just take it easy. It’s going to be OK. I’m sure of it.’

She nodded. Her lips were swollen.

There was a strange feeling in my stomach. I looked slowly from her lips to her eyes. I tried to burn away that film with my gaze, snap the passivity and detachment like a bow string, wake her from her Sleeping-Beauty trance. Without knowing
what I was doing, I leaned across the table. I could feel its edge in my stomach, see her face grow larger.

If she’d leaned towards me I’d have kissed her.

But she didn’t. She sat like a ramrod across from me, two thousand miles and another love away. So I leaned back again.

‘Well. That’s that,’ I said.

We stood up at the same time. There was nothing more to say.

‘Be careful, Varg,’ was all she said.

‘I will,’ was all I said.

The guard stood up too. I watched her take Wenche Andresen away to her cell. Wenche Andresen moved like a patient who’s just begun walking again after a long illness. The guard was a sturdy ward nurse leading her patient carefully back to bed.

And me? I was the wind. I blew past people and they hardly knew I’d gone by. I asked new questions and got new questions in return. Love’s like that, isn’t it? she’d asked.

I believed it. Love’s a lonely thing. It’s a stone you once found on a beach and carry around in the pocket of a pair of trousers you seldom wear. But it’s there, somewhere in the cupboard. And you know it. It’ll follow you all your life. From your birth to your death. Love’s as blind as a stone, as lonely as an empty beach. And you know it.

I left the police station as light-footed as a locomotive and as happy as somebody who’s just identified a body.