Yours Until Death (28 page)

‘What have you done, Wenche? he said. But I couldn’t stand the way he looked at me, so I pulled the knife out and stabbed him again and again. And again. He started towards me, and then – he fell.’

She stared darkly into space. ‘He lay there. I walked by him. Went to the door. Went outside. I remember screaming for help. I don’t know what happened after that. I think I fainted. I remember how frozen I was when you – Varg was first, and then …’ Her voice trailed into silence.

We knew the rest.

‘It happens so fast,’ she said. ‘Ending a life. One, two, three: just like that. Gunnar’s and mine too.’

‘And Roar’s,’ I said.

‘And Roar’s,’ she said tiredly. As if he were a distant relative she’d once known long, long ago.

We sat there. After a while, Hamre turned off the tape recorder. It was dead quiet in the room.

Then Smith stood up. Heavily. ‘You did a great job for the defence, Veum,’ he said. Leaden sarcasm.

Hamre and I stood up at the same time. We looked down at Wenche Andresen. ‘Can I have a few minutes alone with her?’ I said. Hamre looked at me. Deadpan. ‘You can’t do any more damage than you already have.’ Then he nodded and left the room with Smith. The constable still sat by the door but I didn’t count her. She was part of the scenery.

I went to Wenche Andresen, leaned over the table, bracing myself on my fists. She looked up at me with the same eyes, the same mouth. But I’d never kiss her. I knew that now. I’d never kiss her again.

‘I’m sorry, Wenche,’ I said. ‘But I had to say it. I had to. I believed you the whole time. I was sure you were innocent, that you didn’t do it. But when I finally realised you lied to me, I had to say it. I hope you understand.’

She nodded silently.

‘I really liked meeting you. You and Roar. Those evenings – I … It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so good. If things had been different, who knows? Maybe we could have – found each other. Maybe we could have meant something to one another.’

She looked at me.

‘But it’s too late now, Wenche. Much too late.’

‘I’m sorry, Varg,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it to be this way.’

I studied her face for what I hoped was the last time: eyes, lips, the drawn skin, the anguished expression …

And I thought about Roar. About the father she’d already deprived him of. And about the mother she was about to deprive him of. What would happen to him? To her? To me? I wondered where we’d all be in five years. In ten. There were too many questions and only one life to answer them in. Just one life – and it’s over so quickly. You go around with it in your hand one minute. Somebody’s taken it away from you the next, and you’re lying on the pavement.

I straightened up. Heard myself saying, ‘I make a date with you. Put it down: at six o’clock in the evening, a thousand years from now …’

‘What are you talking about?’

I shrugged. ‘Just something I once read.

Then I turned and quickly left the room. Didn’t look back. Hamre was waiting. ‘Smith’s already left. I don’t think he could have stood the sight of you again this evening,’ he said. ‘I can understand how he feels.’

I looked at him and this time there was no escaping his irritation. ‘What do you really think you’ve accomplished in all this?’ he said.

‘There are accomplishments and accomplishments,’ I said.

‘The same murderer is still in custody. Nothing new there. It’s still the same solution I gave you last Friday. The only new development is that between then and now, a guy’s killed a kid.’

‘Maybe it is exactly the same solution,’ I said helplessly. ‘But there are always a lot of sides to the truth. I’ve talked to a lot of people since Friday so maybe the reality isn’t exactly what it used to be. Not when you get right down to it.’

‘Sometimes I think the only thing you’re good at is playing with words, Veum.’ Hamre sounded tired. ‘It’s the only thing you don’t always screw up anyway. I happen to care about the facts. And they tell me an ordinary guy’s turned into a
murderer
and a live kid’s turned into a dead body since all this started last Friday. The guy could have gone on living his not very successful or exciting life, and I’ll admit the kid’s future didn’t look very bright. But each of them had a life ahead of him, Veum. There were two chances there that something might have come along some day. You’ve deprived them of those two chances once and for all. Do you get the point? Do you know what I’m saying?’

I knew what he was saying.

Silently, we walked up the stairs and I went home.

I was at the police station the next day. I was questioned once more about what had happened the previous evening. Then I signed the statement and left without anybody cheering or throwing confetti.

I took my time walking down to the office. Then up the stairs. Through the door with its pane of pebbled glass. Over to the desk. I wrote my initials in the film of dust so everybody’d know it was my office even though I wasn’t always there.

I sat down. My head was empty and my heart was like stone. I could see Håkonshallen across the rooftops. Beyond it were the outlines of a mothballed oil-drilling platform out in
Skuteviken
. Each of them was a cenotaph marking an era with a span of about seven hundred years. I felt seven hundred years old myself now and then.

I looked in my notebook for a number I’d written down several days ago. When I found it I looked at it as if it were some kind of magic formula. Or a key to the future.

I dialled the number. Got through to the switchboard. ‘Is Solveig Manger there?’ I said.

GUNNAR STAALESEN
was born in Bergen, Norway in 1947. He made his debut at the age of twenty-two with
Seasons of
Innocence
and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. He is the author of over 20 titles, which have been
published
in 24 countries and sold over two million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Epsen Seim. Staalesen, who has twice won Norway’s top crime prize, the Golden Pistol, lives in Bergen with his wife.