Yours Until Death (25 page)

‘But lately … Oh Varg, it’s so heartbreaking. Lately, in these last few months I finally decided. It’s been a long painful process, but I really got to the point where I could choose between duty and love. We’re all selfish, aren’t we? We want to be happy, make a good life for ourselves. So what should we do?’

Her eyes were completely black now. ‘Jonas was ready for a divorce. So was I. Finally. And then this – this terrible thing
happens.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Nothing matters now. It’s no use. Jonas is dead. Reidar knows about us. He may leave me. Then I’ll be left without either of them. I’ll be alone with my memories of some happy adulterous years.’

‘I –’

‘But what’s adultery? Is it what you do when you’re with the only person you love? Or is it what you do with the person you’re married to and don’t love? Whenever Reidar and I slept together – I couldn’t help it, I really got angry with myself – I couldn’t help thinking about Jonas and how good it was when we … As a matter of fact, it got so I felt guilty when I was with Reidar. Because I felt I wasn’t being faithful to Jonas! Does that make any sense at all?’

‘It does,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, Jonas said just about the same thing when he told me about you.’

She shrugged her narrow shoulders despairingly and stared at me. Then she gave me an unusually mournful smile. It was the saddest smile I’d ever seen. It was the smile of a woman who stands by a grave and asks: Was that it? So short? Over so soon? It was the smile of a child who stands on a beach, looks at the sea and asks: Is this the ocean? All this emptiness? And it was an unusually beautiful smile.

She looked at the clock and she looked at me. ‘I think I’ve got to go. Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?’

I tried to think. No good.

‘As far as that goes,’ she said, ‘I haven’t let you get a word in. I’ve talked you to death. Have I – have I helped you?’

‘I don’t know. I doubt it. Not with finding out …’ I said. ‘But you – and Jonas – have taught me something I didn’t see clearly before, something I never could have completely understood on my own. Something about love.’

She nodded sadly and gave me a shadow of that
mournful
smile. ‘Well. Then maybe it isn’t – pointless.’ She tried to sound cheerful. ‘Some other time – some other time. You’ll have to tell me about you. Shall we go?’

I stood up. She buttoned her coat and we went outside. I carefully closed the door behind us, nodded to the woman who was beginning to clear our table.

We stood outside the tea-shop. A cold spring wind blew her hair away from her face and I saw it: open and vulnerable. ‘You forgot to tell – haven’t I seen you before somewhere?’

‘Last Tuesday,’ I said. ‘I came to the agency to talk to Jonas. I was waiting in Reception and you walked by.’

‘Oh yes. Now I remember. Well.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’d better say goodbye for now. I’m glad I could talk with you. It – I think it helped. Thank you.’

I held her hand firmly with both of mine. ‘Thank you, Solveig,’ I said. I could hear the tears in my voice. I memorised every feature of her face. In case I’d never see her again. In case this were the last day – for one of us.

Then it was over. I let go of her hand. She turned and walked toward Sandviken. She looked back and smiled at me over her shoulder. The green corduroy coat fluttered in the choppy wind. I watched until she’d disappeared. She didn’t turn around again.

It was strange standing there, staring after her. I couldn’t break loose. It was as if one part of me had left the rest on the pavement, as if I’d never be the same again. As if life – and everything else had suddenly taken on a new and disturbing meaning.

A lone raven flew past the Maria Church’s medieval double spires. It was as if a scrap of the blue-grey dusk had torn loose
and fluttered by. Like a random page from an old newspaper, a random day in an old life.

I drove to that development behind the Lyderhorn through what had once been Laksevåg.

It was dark now and you couldn’t tell if it were autumn, winter or spring. But I associate Laksevag with spring. We’d ridden our bikes through it when we were kids and it was always spring then. Those were the first long rides on our freshly oiled bikes, the first exciting trips we’d make before summer came and we had other things to do. The roads were still wet after months of sleet, snow and rain. We breathed the cold clear air of a late frost under a sun which hadn’t yet risen high enough to do more than cast its golden glow on our bare necks and close-cropped hair. And our fingers froze.

Since then I’ve always had a feeling of spring or a holiday whenever I’ve driven through Laksevåg. The post office makes me think of savings account books showing my hoarded holiday money. A café makes me think of those cafés I stopped at somewhere in southern Norway when I was on a bicycle tour. Cafés with their watery meat cakes, their soft drinks and the flies on the table tops and in the windows.

The closer I got to the old arena, the more my face hurt. It was as if there were new life in my old bruises, as if my body refused to visit that place again. Refused a new encounter with the ground, with brutal young fists and boots.

The big shopping centre still looked as if it were ready for take-off. I drove up to the four high-rises and parked in front of the second one. Stayed in the car and looked around. But I
couldn’t see anything. The shadows were faceless, the darkness empty of shapes. As far as I could tell.

I got out of the car. The air was cold and clear and I had a feeling there’d be frost again tonight. Little puddles would freeze and the elderly would slip and break their hips
tomorrow
morning. I looked up at Wenche Andresen’s flat.
Automatically
. It was dark. Night had already fallen there.

But that wasn’t where I was headed. I walked to the
high-rise
that housed the youth club. This time I didn’t follow the red arrows. I read the names on the letter boxes. Gunnar Våge. Twelfth floor.

I walked around the corner to the lift. Somewhere a giant took a deep breath and the lift was hauled up twelve flights.

Gunnar Våge’s flat was in the north wing, nearest the lift room. Nobody answered when I rang. I stood for a while by the railing and looked out. Except for the roof itself, I was as high up as you could get. The next logical stairway would be the Lyderhorn. The people below seemed tiny, and my car an abandoned toy. Nobody was near it. Nobody was opening the bonnet and tearing up the wiring. Nobody melted into the shadows around it. I rang Våge’s bell again. No answer.

So I took the lift back down and walked to the building where Joker lived. Took the lift this time too. Along with an unsociable man wearing a parka and horn-rimmed glasses. His face could have been that of a man-about-town when there were such things and when parkas belonged to pictures of arctic wastes.

I rang Hildur Pedersen’s bell. After the usual wait, she opened the door. She didn’t look especially thrilled to see me again. ‘I have nothing to say,’ she said before I could open my mouth. ‘Go away. You’ve already –’

‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ I said. ‘I want to talk to Johan.’

‘Why?’ she said.

‘Let’s just say we’ve got some unfinished business – it’s about some boots.’

‘Boots?’ She studied my face and I saw something like a smile flit across hers. ‘Has somebody been using you as a dance floor, Veum?’

‘They never went to dancing school, that’s for sure,’ I said. ‘They never asked me to dance. I’ve never been a wallflower before. And now they’ve used me to decorate the tarmac.’

‘I love listening to you, Veum. But not when I’m standing in a doorway and holding up 120 kilos. And I’m not in the mood to ask you in.’

‘As I said. It’s Johan I –’

‘He’s not at home.’

‘No?’

‘No. He’s out. God knows for how long.’

‘No idea where I could find him?’

She shrugged so the balcony rocked. ‘No idea.’

She started to close the door. All I could see was a pale strip of her face. ‘Bye,’ she said. Then she was gone and all that was left was the view. But it was the view from a lower altitude and it didn’t offer much. I walked slowly down the stairs.

I thought about my meeting with Solveig Manger. I listened to the echo of her voice, saw her hair. Thought of how it would be to lean forward and take in the scent of her hair, the warmth of her skin. Or sit somewhere in the twilight and fish silver from her deep dark eyes. Or just sit and look …

I tried to imagine Jonas Andresen – and her. I tried to imagine them in bed together. She. On her back. Naked with her legs spread and her hair streaming across the pillow. He.
With tousled hair, straggly moustache and his arm across her white breasts.

But it didn’t work. The only picture I could see was two people hand in hand, their breaths frosty in a winter-still park
somewhere
. Under trees like black clawing hands, hands that clutched at a pale grey sky with its promise of snow. The only thing I could see was two people with their arms around one another, their bodies close, on their way from nowhere to nowhere. And then. Suddenly he’s gone. And she’s walking alone.

But Wenche Andresen … I tried thinking about Wenche Andresen. But that didn’t work either. I saw Roar. I could imagine Roar. A sudden anxious thought struck me. As it will a father who’s away from home: how’s Roar doing in Øystese? Is he OK?

But Wenche Andresen …

Maybe Solveig Manger was the kind of woman you almost never meet but who can suddenly erase all the images of all the women you’ve ever met, loved, known. Maybe that was what happened to Jonas Andresen too.

Too?

I was down. I walked to the front of the building.

I felt as if I were close to some kind of breakthrough, some kind of solution. As if the talk with Solveig Manger had released something inside me, as if I really knew all the
characters
in the play for the first time. Jonas and Solveig who’d met ten years too late. Wenche, who vanished somewhere between. Roar, who couldn’t decide anything, but for whom things were decided, who was a child and like all children – innocent.

I still wasn’t sure what roles the others played in relation to those three adults and a child: Reidar Manger, Richard Ljosne, Gunnar Våge, Solfrid Brede, Hildur Pedersen – and Joker.

Joker. I had an account to settle with Joker. I felt I had to talk to Joker before I talked to anybody else.

I went back to the car and got my flashlight. Then I walked past the last high-rise, crossed over to the woods and went up to the hut where Joker and his gang hung out. Maybe they were all there. Sitting and waiting. Looking forward to another round with Willing Veum. Your handy-dandy punching bag.

Once again I stumbled through the darkness up to that rickety hut. The trees rustled weakly. Somebody started a motor cycle down below me. Then the sound faded.
Somewhere
a cat howled, tuning its fiddle for the night’s courting.

The hut stood silently among the trees. Seemingly deserted. That’s how it had looked the last time but Roar had been inside. And when we’d come out, the woods teemed with life. I made a wide circle around the hut. Made a few fast side-trips into the trees. Couldn’t see anybody. Then I aimed the flashlight at the trees, tree trunks, bushes. There were footprints in the mud around the hut, but not a soul in sight.

I went over to the wall with its splintered surfaces of
second-hand
laths and knobby fragments of cement. An iron strap jutted out. As I stood by the doorway the only thing I could hear was the blood hammering in my temples and ear drums. I cautiously pulled the curtain aside with my left hand. Not a sound. I looked around again. Then I shone the flashlight slowly through the doorway and aimed it across the
packed-dirt
floor and the dirty newspapers.

The light picked up something. A pair of boots. I quickly aimed the beam higher. Joker was sitting there. Waiting for me. With his back against the wall and his legs sprawled. His eyes stared at the doorway as if he’d been waiting a long time.

He sat and sneered at me. With two mouths. The lower
mouth was a gaping, wide-open gash across his throat. It was the ugliest sneer I had ever seen.

He had bled. The blood had run from one end of the gash in his throat in a neat trail down his neck and into his
bloodstained
shirt. It was like the blood running from a vampire’s mouth after its deadly bite. But the smile didn’t show a
vampire’s
teeth. It was a narrow-lipped, toothless smile. One carved by a knife.

One quick lethal cut, and one had been enough. He’d fallen against the wall and had slid down it. The heel of his boot had caught and rolled up one of the old newspapers as he’d sagged to the floor.

His upper mouth really smiled. A broad grin showed his little rat teeth and turned him into a travelling lay preacher. But he’d held his last prayer meeting, and was on his way to meet the last of all congregations. There’d be no more boats back, no more gangways leading to shore.

I stood there and shivered. And was suddenly aware of the forest at my back. It was as if the trees had tiptoed closer, like the Indians in Disney’s
Peter Pan
. I whirled around, spearing the darkness with my flashlight. Nothing. The forest hadn’t changed.

But that didn’t mean somebody wasn’t out there. Somebody could be out there in the darkness, somebody who’d just killed. He could be holding a knife the blood hadn’t had time to dry on.

Somebody who uses a knife once doesn’t mind using it
again. Especially if this isn’t the second time, but the third. Whoever might be standing out there in the darkness and watching me was probably the same person who’d also killed Jonas Andresen.

But Joker – why was Joker dead? Joker had been in the car park with me when Jonas Andresen had been killed. Had Joker seen something after I’d left him? Had he seen somebody running down the stairs on the other side of the building as I was on my way up? Had he seen something and tried a little blackmail? Had he made a date to meet the person he’d seen – and had the date turned deadly?

The questions kept coming as I searched the darkness under the trees, looked down towards the glittering high-rises.

But who was it?

With my back against the door lintel, which felt like a mere splinter against my spine, I shone the flashlight into the hut again. Searched the floor. No knife. Nothing but a body. A youngster who’d never grow up. A body that would be ashes in a week and a soul that had gone to wherever it is souls go.

There wasn’t anything more I could do here. I was neither a doctor nor a theologian. I left. Cautious and alert. The
darkness
enveloped me, the stars overhead blinking like distress signals in a black sea. I walked fast and I stopped abruptly.
Listened
. Nothing. No footsteps fading into silence behind me, no sounds that suddenly weren’t there.

I walked on constantly looking behind me. To the side. I kept to the middle of the path and as far from the trees as I could. Reaching the car park was like returning to civilisation. My fingers were locked around the flashlight and my muscles about to cramp.

There was a phone box on the pavement by some low leafless
bushes. Even a dwarf couldn’t have hidden there. I called the police station without looking at the dial and I didn’t turn my back on the door. After I’d delivered the evening’s happy news, I hung up fast, got out of the phone box and sheltered in its light until the first car arrived. I don’t think I moved until I saw Jakob E. Hamre walk towards me with a grim expression on his face.