Yours Until Death (8 page)

But she was still holed up in there if the booze hadn’t washed her away, hadn’t washed her up on a faraway beach where you’d never find her. Hildur Pedersen from Bergen.

For some reason I thought of 1946. 1946. That was sort of the beginning for all of us. The war was over but the city was still paralysed. It wasn’t until the fifties that it rose out of the ashes, set square high-rises on its crooked spine and let the past fall into ruins.

The America-bound boats gave up sailing and they built Flesland Airport. The Laksevåg ferry was shut down and they built a bridge over Puddefjord. They dug holes through the mountains and built housing developments where there’d been farms and forests and marshlands.

But that hadn’t begun in 1946. It was still like the thirties then. Those who were already grown up during the war spat on their fists and started again. The old died away like the old houses they’d lived in. And there was no end to the possibilities for us who were still young.

Hildur Pedersen had been in full bloom in 1946. A beautiful young woman. Maybe a little overdeveloped but not
excessively
so. A beautiful young woman with full breasts and hips, swinging gaily down and along the alley with milk bottles in a brown net bag and a smile for everybody.

Joker hadn’t been born yet, and Varg Veum … He was a four-year-old with a mother who hadn’t got cancer yet and a father who still was a conductor on the trolley to Minde.

But that trolley was also shut down and the father turned to dust like so many before him. But he was my father and I can still see him when I close my eyes. Small and sinewy, with the marks of the village still on him, the village he’d left when he was two and had come by boat to the city. When I close my eyes, I can still see the fierce harsh smile he always saved for those good rare times when he and I were alone and my mother hadn’t yet got cancer.

When Johan Pedersen closes his eyes he can’t see anything. He hasn’t got a joker in his pack, no father who suddenly pops up between the jack and queen with his conductor’s bag over his shoulder and his cap a little askew. Nobody who ever said, ‘Hello! Anybody at home?’

1946. Four digits that contain a long-dead past, streets that are gone, houses that have fallen down, houses that have been demolished, people long since dead and dug up again, ships that have stopped sailing and trolleys that have been scrapped. 1946 – and the beginning of all of this.

‘Where were you in 1946?’ I said to Hildur Pedersen.

‘In 1946? Why do you want to know? Are you nuts? Who the hell remembers where he was in 1946? I can’t remember where the hell I was the day before yesterday. You ask too many questions, Veum. Can’t you just shut up for a while?’

I nodded. I could shut up for a while.

Just the same, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to sit there and drink straight vodka with Hildur Pedersen. Silently. Until my legs melted and I’d have to drag myself by the arms to the door, out along the balcony and down all those steps to the car.

I didn’t want to leave. But I finally did. When Hildur
Pedersen
began to nod, I quietly stood up, took the glass out of her big fist and set it carefully by the bottle – in the middle of the table. Screwed the cap on tight. There were still a few drops left, something to wake up to. If and when she woke.

Then I went slowly out of her life. For a while.

I ran into Gunnar Våge again. Outside the building. He grabbed my shoulder. ‘Now where have you been, Veum?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘I told you to keep away from – Johan. Leave them alone, Veum. Him and his mother. Don’t make things worse. You don’t know what you’re getting into out here. You can ruin more than you –’

‘What can I get into out here? What can I ruin that isn’t already ruined?’

‘You don’t understand anything. You’re as cold as, as …’

‘As?’

‘Keep out of this, Veum. Stay the hell away.’

I stared into that distorted face. ‘And where were you in 1946, Våge?’

Then I walked past him, got in the car and drove off without looking back. They didn’t like me out there. For some reason or other they did not like me.

I let myself into the office. Turned on the light. Even though the sun was high over Løustakken somewhere behind that grey cloud cover, it was dreary out. Like the lights in a cinema before the show begins. Maybe the sun was about to go out. Maybe we’d wake up tomorrow in eternal darkness, in an eternal starry night, and there’d be a journey to ice and death and everlasting plains of frost.

The office was like a gallery in a museum. One nobody visited but where I was the guard for some reason. I sat behind the desk and opened the third drawer. The office bottle, round and lukewarm, was in there on the far left. I took it out and read the entire label as if for the first time. Water of life. The blood of the lonely. The comfort of tired wolves.

I unscrewed the cap and stuck the bottle in my mouth. The clear strong aquavit rinsed away the insipid aftertaste of Hildur Pedersen’s vodka.

I wondered what I should do. Whether I had anything to do. Thought about the people I’d met these last several days. Roar. Wenche Andresen. Joker and his gang. Gunnar Våge and Hildur Pedersen. Wenche Andresen again – and the man in the naval uniform. Richard Ljosne. And Roar …

I thought of Thomas. Maybe I should call him, find out how he was, ask him if he ever happened to think of his father. I could call and ask if he wanted to come down to the office and keep me company. I could read to him. As I once
had – the one evening I’d had off. The first chapter of
Winnie the Pooh
. His mother had had to read the rest. And all the other books. I’d begun to think of her as ‘his mother’ now. That at least was a step forward. Not Beate any more but ‘the mother’.

But then I realised that he probably wasn’t home yet and that he was too old for
Winnie the Pooh
. He was seven, and the last time I’d called he hadn’t had time to talk. He was on his way to a football game with ‘Lasse’, his new father.

I lifted the receiver and listened to the dialling tone, listened to the ghosts of long-dead conversations, to the skeletons of women’s soft voices, to the heavy tramp of men’s. All of them gone now. All of them dead.

When I hung up, the phone rang.

I let it ring five times before I picked up the receiver. It was a great sound and I could certainly wait another half-minute before I talked to one of my creditors.

After the fifth ring I said in my business voice, ‘Veum speaking.’

‘Oh, Varg, I was afraid you wouldn’t be in. This is Wenche. Wenche Andresen.’

It was Wenche. Wenche Andresen. Her clear voice sounded like distant bells over the line, and the phone’s black jaw gaped wider as it began smiling. The corners of its mouth turned up a little anyway. I smiled back. ‘Oh, hello.’ I could hear the hopeful tone in my voice. ‘How are you?’

‘Better. Not too bad. I’m calling from the office. I just wanted to … Thanks for the other evening, by the way. It was – nice. I haven’t had such a nice time – for quite a while.’

‘I haven’t either.’ If she’d enjoyed herself with me, it didn’t say much for her social life, but I couldn’t tell her that.

‘I wondered in fact if you could do me a favour. I mean, I insist on paying.’

‘It’s no big deal. What is it you want me … Is there
something
I can –’

‘As an investigator you do all kinds of jobs, don’t you?’

‘There are all kinds and all kinds.’ Some things I didn’t do and there were a lot of things nobody asked me to.

‘I just wondered if you could look up Jonas for me. My husband. The man I was married to.’

It sounded like the kind of assignment I didn’t take. ‘What am I supposed to do with him?’ Steer him into a back street and beat him up? Hit him over the head with an empty bottle? Tie him backwards on an old horse and chase him out of town? If I could find an old horse?

‘Just talk to him. I can’t cope with it. I’ll just start
complaining
and making a scene and I can’t stand any more scenes. I don’t want to see him again, Varg. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Well …’

‘It’s the money, you know.’

‘What money?’

‘Not the monthly payments. He’s almost always on time. He has been late a couple of times and I’ve had to get an advance at the office or borrow. And when Jonas does send me money, I’ve had to pay back what I borrowed and then there isn’t any more. And Roar wears out his clothes. They all do at his age and if his bike had been stolen, too … They’re always wanting something, right?’

‘Seems so. That’s what it says in the papers. In the ads.’

‘But it’s not about the payments. It’s the insurance money.’

‘What insurance money?’

‘We had a joint life-insurance policy. And when we separated
we agreed to cash it in. It’s not a lot, but … Jonas was going to take care of it and then we’d split the proceeds. But I haven’t seen any of it yet and I really need the money.’

‘Maybe I could lend you some,’ I lied.

‘I know that, Varg.’ She knew more about it than I did. ‘Thank you. But I’m tired of borrowing. I won’t borrow again – from friends, acquaintances or anybody.’

I wondered for a second whether I fitted into the category of friends or acquaintances or anybody. ‘I suppose I could do it. Talk to him.’

‘Oh, could you, Varg? Thank you so much. I’ll pay. How much do you charge?’

How much do I charge? Oh, I’m a cheap whore, my love. I don’t charge much. A kiss on the cheek and maybe one on the mouth, a sidelong look from under that fringe of hair, a forefinger run along my mouth where the stubble becomes lips and the other way around. I don’t charge much. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I can do it in my lunch hour.’

‘But I don’t want you to lose anything because of this.’

No? No! ‘We’ll talk about that some other time.’ Over a glass of wine by candlelight, darling, in the light of the
glass-clear
moon, under the stars’ silver rain, on a sailing ship to China. Some other time, my love.

‘Well. Do you know where Jonas works? Did I tell you?’

‘Wasn’t it some ad agency?’

‘Yes. It’s called Pallas and they have offices out in Dreggen, in the same building as the State Liquor Shop.’

‘I know where it is. They know me there. We’re on a
first-name
basis.’

‘I …’ she began. I was afraid she was going to back out so I quickly changed the subject.

‘It’s settled,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to him and we’ll see how it goes. I’ll give you a report.’ I jumped at that idea. ‘Maybe I could drop by tonight?’

She was silent. ‘Couldn’t you phone instead? As a matter of fact, I can’t tonight.’

No? The moon turned muddy, the stars’ silver rain to tinsel and the sailing ship to China had already run aground. ‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘You’ll hear from me. Take care.’

After I hung up I remembered I hadn’t sent my best to Roar. But I didn’t call back. I’d remember it the next time.

The office bottle still stood on the desk. But it didn’t tempt me any longer. In fact, it looked disgusting with its gaudy torn label. I screwed the cap on tight and slung it roughly back in the drawer.

I looked around me. There was a heavy unpleasant feeling in my stomach. ‘Of all the dusty damn holes …’ I said aloud. Just to be sure I heard it.

Then I got myself together and left without turning off the light. Maybe it would make things cosier when I came back. As if someone were at home.

If I ever came back. You never know. A fast car – and a pedestrian crossing in Dreggen. You’re never safe. Especially on a pedestrian crossing. That’s where you’re really a sitting duck.

I walked through the fish market and along Bryggen’s
quayside
. It was too early in the season for tourists. The nameless live fish swam in their tanks. The fish sellers swung their big red fists to keep warm and the housewives went suspiciously from stall to stall as if they didn’t believe the fish lying there were real.

Out on Bryggen a red truck snapped up one cargo pallet after another and spat them through the open green doors of a marine warehouse. Reminded me of a rat building up a hoard.

The usual drunk stood on a corner and held up a wall, with a bottle in his inside pocket and a bilious look at the passers-by. He was inevitable. In a certain way, he was also a tourist attraction, a part of the atmosphere, necessary in the city’s pattern. Except it was always the tourist season as far as he was concerned.

The Pallas Advertising Agency was in the new red-brick building by the new Bryggen Museum. Almost everything you needed to survive lay within a few square metres: a liquor shop, a museum for the cultured, a church for the pious, a dentist’s office, a park with benches – and an ad agency.

You could spend your whole life out here. There was a bank around the corner and a hotel. A post office. An old cemetery and a bingo hall. They’d catered for all life’s needs. You could post a letter, send money orders, play bingo. The new Dreggen was a miniature Bergen, a pocket-sized Norway with all the conveniences built in.

The first thing you notice when you enter an ad agency is that you see only young employees. You rarely see anybody over forty because they’ve become obsolete, or are drained of ideas, or can’t keep up any longer. Maybe an older grey-haired boss sits in one of the inner offices but that’s because he just happens to be a major stockholder and nobody dares ask him to leave. But that’s the only reason he’s there and he isn’t much use to himself or anybody else.

In Reception sits a young woman who’s always pretty. If she’s not, it means she’s too clever to be the receptionist, and she smiles at you. That is, she’ll smile at you if you’re under forty and you look as if you’re there on business and haven’t come to borrow money. But it’s seldom a real smile. It’s mechanical. Beautiful maybe – but mechanical. And it doesn’t last long. It’s gone before you’ve turned completely away.

All ad agencies try to look as if theirs is a ‘young, dynamic milieu’ and there are always people in trendy clothes rushing from one office to another. They wear the latest fashion in glasses and they always have a wisecrack for one of the girls who are plugged into earphones and play electric typewriters.

The men wear coloured shirts and wide striped ties; those at the creative end of things have long hair and beards and they wear jeans so you’ll know they’ve been to the Arts and Crafts Institute even though they still haven’t made their final artistic breakthrough. But its coming. Or not. When they’ve designed ads and brochures for five or six years, they cut their hair, shave and make their breakthrough by buying this year’s car and a house in Natland Terrace.

The Pallas Advertising Agency’s young dynamic milieu was in vivid red, green and brown. Green floor, red walls and brown ceiling. You entered a long narrow hall with long narrow
people in it. The walls were hung with old beer posters from the days when it was legal to advertise beer.

The woman in Reception wore a black Afro, a kind of
greenish
white tunic and large gold-rimmed glasses with grey-tinted lenses. But there were no grey tints in her smile.

‘My name’s Veum,’ I said. ‘I’d like to talk to Jonas Andresen. Is he in?’

She looked at a lighted board and nodded. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ Behind the grey shadows her eyes were as blue as the sky behind today’s clouds.

‘Do I need one?’

The smile became a little strained. ‘Are you a client?’

‘In a way.’

Now the smile flashed off. ‘I’ll see,’ she said coldly. She dialled a number and spoke softly into the receiver so I wouldn’t hear what she called me. She looked up. ‘Andresen wants to know what it’s about.’

‘Say it’s personal and say it’s important.’

She said that, listened a few seconds and hung up. ‘He’ll be out in a minute.’

She forgot I was there and turned back to whatever she’d been doing with a dictaphone or a typewriter. Answered the phone several times a minute with the same gracious voice. ‘Pallas. May I help you?’

I stood and waited. Nobody asked me to sit down which was lucky. The chairs looked as if you couldn’t get out of them.

Farther down the hall a young man in light brown trousers and striped shirt was slowly showing out an older grey-haired gentleman in a tailor-made suit, in just the way you show important clients out of an ad agency when you’re finished with them.

A young woman came through a door. She had a large green folder under one arm. She walked straight towards me. A little thing with small breasts, wide hips and a pretty face. Clear brown eyes and a well-shaped chin.

But the first thing you noticed was her hair. It shone. It was brown but more than just brown. It had a glint of red and it wasn’t the colour you buy for twenty kroner a pint and pour on your hair when you wash it. It was the kind of red that you find in the secret quiet corners and the trees in the forest inside you. But at the same time, it wasn’t an obvious red. You’d never say she was a redhead. Her hair was brown. That red glint was simply there, like the soul somewhere in her body, like the woodwind in her symphony orchestra.

She was dressed according to the agency’s colour scheme: a dark red blouse and a green corduroy skirt. She smiled at me as she walked by. The laugh lines told me she wasn’t so young. Around thirty. But it was an unusually warm and beautiful smile. It came from the same place as that red glint in her hair and that had to be a good place. I’d have liked to spend my holidays and the rest of my life there.

That did it. One smile as she passed and I was so dizzy I didn’t know where to look.

I said to myself: you haven’t been in love in a long time, Varg. All too long. And I thought of Wenche Andresen and tried to hear her voice. But for some reason I couldn’t. Or imagine her face.

That little thing delivered the big green folder to Reception, said something and walked back through the hall. Her hair floated. Freshly washed. Loose. And it floated with her down that too-short hallway. Then she went in through the same door she’d come out of. And she was gone.

That’s how people come into your life. And that’s how they go out of it. Here and gone in a couple of minutes.

A man came towards me out of another door. His walk wasn’t totally dynamic. Maybe it was too late in the day or maybe he’d worked there too long.

He was well dressed. A grey-green suit nipped in at the waist. A waistcoat. Turn-ups on the trousers. He had dark blond hair and new glasses. An attractive little Wild West moustache. The kind that droops sadly at the corners of the mouth, but I
recognised
him from his pictures. Jonas Andresen.

So he wasn’t telling me anything new when he said, ‘I’m Andresen. Do you want to talk to me?’

We shook hands. ‘I do. My name’s Veum.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I’m here on your wife’s behalf. I’m a kind of lawyer.’

He lowered his voice. ‘Step into my office.’

He turned and I followed him down the hall.

It was a small office with a view of the Maria Church’s twin towers and Mount Fløien. I could look straight up and see the roof of the house I lived in. It was enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Jonas Andresen’s big black desk was covered with neat stacks of papers, publications and sketches for ads. The ‘In’ basket was considerably fuller than the ‘Out’. Alongside the baskets sat a hollowed-out plastic skull, sawn off above the ears, and it held pens and pencils in the firm’s colours: red and green. A single dark red rose, long since brown at the edges, stood in a plastic vase. The green ashtray was full. If it had been emptied that morning, he was a heavy smoker.

There were posters on the walls and four enlarged pictures of a younger Roar, and there was a bulletin board covered with newspaper ads, pages torn from weeklies, photographs, calling
cards, memos for future assignments and other assorted junk.

Jonas Andresen sat behind his desk and waved me to a
comfortable
chair opposite him. He offered me a cigarette and when I refused lit his own. It was a long white cigarette. His hand shook.

He looked questioning. ‘Well?’

‘Your wife asked me … It’s about some money you’ve
promised
her – from a life-insurance policy. She has problems.
Economic
ones.’

His eyes were clear and blue through the colourless lenses. Large aviator glasses with light brown rims. He exhaled through tightly pressed lips.

‘Let’s get a couple of things straight first. You said you were a kind of lawyer. Are you my wife’s lawyer or aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not.’

He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Are you her
friend
?’

‘I can assure you …’ I said.

He raised his hands and talked, the cigarette bobbing in his mouth. ‘Take it easy. I don’t see anything wrong with that. On the contrary. I’d be very happy if Wenche’d found herself – a friend. Someone new.’

‘Well, I’m not it. Not that way. As a matter of fact, I’m a private investigator.’

His face tightened.

‘Your son Roar contacted me. He wanted me to recover his stolen bike.’

‘Roar? He hired a private investigator to find his bike? That boy!’ He laughed. Resigned.

‘The next day I had to find Roar.’

He wasn’t laughing now. ‘What do you mean?’

I told him briefly about Joker and the gang, and about how
I’d found Roar bound and gagged. But I didn’t tell him how I’d had to fight my way out of the woods with Roar in tow. And I didn’t tell him I’d kissed his former wife.

He turned steadily paler and his voice was depressed when he finally said, ‘Terrible. Those bastards. I ought …’

‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I already have. But that’s how I met your wife. And then she hired me to talk to you. About this money. She didn’t feel she could do it herself.’ Jonas Andresen took a deep drag. ‘I’d rather not discuss it here. Could we meet
somewhere
– say, in half an hour?’

I looked at my watch as if I had a busy schedule.

‘Is it a problem?’ he said.

‘No. I can manage. Where?’ Generous me.

‘Bryggestuen?’

‘Bryggestuen is fine. Maybe we could have dinner there. I will anyway.’

He shrugged. ‘Let’s say in half an hour.’ Then he stood up and gave me to understand he had other things to do in the next thirty minutes besides sit and shrug his shoulders. He’d smoke at least three cigarettes and the slow death which waits for us the day we’re born would creep up on him half an hour sooner.

He showed me to the door. The woman with the Afro tried a cautious smile as if she weren’t sure I wouldn’t be a client some day. And as I wasn’t yet forty, she had a little smile for me regardless.

‘Meet me next Tuesday behind the library,’ I said, winked at her, and left.