The Consorts of Death (6 page)

The women were not much more presentable. All three were in that slightly diffuse age-range between twenty-five and forty. The one with most years of service, in drunkenness terms, had fiery red hair with an extended grey patch from the roots upwards. Another’s hair was so black she could have been a gypsy, but the colour had come from a bottle and her dialect from the coastal region around Bergen. The third was Mette Olsen.

She was half-sitting, half-slumped over the table. Her gaze came from deep inside her narrow, thin face and she had become ten years older in the three years that had passed since I last saw her. She had light streaks in her hair, although they made little difference, and the make-up she had applied ten or fifteen hours earlier had now turned to black smudges around her eyes and a red stripe from one corner of her mouth like a frozen sneer. Her blouse had come undone at the front and in the opening I could see a dirty, grey bra stained light brown from coffee or beer.

One hand was holding a kitchen tumbler full of what looked like neat alcohol, for it was hardly water. Slowly her eyes focused on me. ‘Waddywan?’ she asked in slurred dialect.

I asked myself the same question, but it was neither the
appropriate
place nor the time. ‘I don’t know if you can remember me.’

She studied me without a spark of recognition. ‘Where from?’

‘I was at your house a few years ago. From social services.’

Instantly the room seemed to change character. Even the music took a break and stopped and the needle rasped its way to the end. Several of the competing monologues died away. The Danish ferry veered round in a huge U-turn and everyone’s attention came with it. ‘Social services! He’s from social services,’ I heard pass from head to head. One of the men stood up and began to roll up his sleeves. Another pulled him back down. ‘Hang on. We’ll deal with him afterwards …’

Mette Olsen looked at me, her eyes swimming. Her lips
trembled
. ‘From social services? There are no kids here!’ A shiver went through her body. ‘You yourself saw to that …’

Steely, hostile looks struck me from all sides.

‘Well … this is about – your son.’

‘Johnny boy?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s up with him?’ For a moment a sudden fear flared up inside her. ‘He hasn’t …?’

‘No, no. Is there somewhere we could talk, alone?’

She blinked, trying to get me in focus. ‘I dunno.’ She slowly turned her head. ‘In there maybe.’ She was looking at a half-open door.

One of the men called out: ‘Yep, take him to the bedroom, Mette, then there may be more children for social services to take care of!’

Rowdy laughter filled the room.

Mette Olsen stood up and tottered on unsteady legs round the table. ‘Don’t listen to them. Come with me, you.’

She grabbed the underside of my arm, more for support than anything else, and led me with a solemn countenance into the bedroom, where the unmade bed and all the clothes scattered to the winds made its first indelible impression. I left the door behind us ajar so as not to feed any unwanted reactions. Behind us the volume of voices resumed and someone put on another record, although they may just have returned the stylus to the first track.

Inside the bedroom, she let go of my arm and flopped down on the edge of the bed. The look she sent me was of
indeterminate
character, on the frontier between fear and loathing. ‘Wozzup with Johnny boy?’

I adopted a serious expression. ‘When did you see him last, Mette?’

Tears filled her eyes. Large, red flushes appeared on the side of her neck. ‘You ask me when I saw him last? You were the one who took him from me! I’ve never seen him since – since the day you came to my house …’

‘Not at all?’

‘Never!’

‘But you know he was placed in a foster home?’

She closed her eyes as if thinking. Her face quivered. ‘I know, yes. Some snooty sods who couldn’t have kids of their own. Foster home! Right. They stole him from me! That’s what they did. Stole him! Terje said I should sue them, but that was no help, and Jens advised me not to. He said it would be my ruin. As if I had
anything
left to ruin …’

‘Jens?’

‘Jens Langeland! The solicitor. I’d had him before …’

‘Langeland?’

‘Yes. The first time I was charged with … but that’s a long time ago now. I was pretending to be a hippie and played with the bad boys. But he was so young then, straight out of school. Just a
stripling
. Well, mm …’ She blinked again.

‘So you haven’t had any contact with Jan or the foster parents since 1970?’

‘That is … I should’ve had visiting rights. I was s’posed to visit him at the weekend, and if I’d recovered I’d’ve been able to take him home. But he was in the foster home for such a long time and … well … I didn’t recover. Things went downhill! I was so bad I couldn’t even visit him. It wouldn’t’ve done him any good, they said. Jens had me admitted – to Hjellestad for rehab. But what help was that? We had dope smuggled in there, too. Dealers were in the forest outside our windows throwing ropes up to us. We tied them to the window catches and then we hauled up the goods. We just had to promise on our word of honour that … well, you know, when we got out again … If not, we’d’ve been beaten up. And I must say they kept precise records. I was on my back being screwed by anything that moved for six months without getting much more than pocket money. Then I had to keep going for even longer to earn what I needed every day. I’m tellin’ you, I didn’t even have time to think about him … about Johnny boy, I mean.’

From the next room came a familiar siren. ‘Meeeette!’ But it wasn’t the doorman this time. It was Terje Hammersten.

‘She’s in there, Terje,’ a voice said.

‘They’re screwing!’ It was one of the women, who burst into hysterical laughter afterwards.

‘What?! I’ll bloody …’

The bedroom door opened with a bang. Hammersten stood in the doorway, and he did not look well pleased. He was ready for trouble, and I was not left in any doubt that I was the trouble, and this time there was no escape.

One of the first things you learn in social services is to blather your way out of even the trickiest predicaments. Often children are present and they must be spared head-to-head confrontations between parents and other adults.

But this time there were no children around, and Terje did not let me get a word in before he went for me.

‘Tryin’ it on with my girl, are you?’ He rushed towards me at great speed with one fist raised. I jumped back, careered around the bed and started to speak. But he wasn’t listening. He leapt up onto the bed, the base gave way with a crack, and Mette tumbled forward screaming. He staggered in my direction and this time he got close. The first punch hit me in the shoulder and I felt as if I had been struck by a sledgehammer; when I saw the left hand swinging towards me I levered myself off the wall and hurled myself in the opposite direction.

‘Hammersten!’ I yelled. ‘You’re impeding a civil servant in the performance of his duty!’

That stalled him for a moment. Like a heavyweight boxer he stood with both fists raised, half on tiptoes. ‘D’you know who I am?’

‘I know who you are, and I’ve met you before. I’m from social services, and if you hit me one more time, you will be reported and end up in clink again. If you stop now, I’ll forget …’

He scowled at me, unconvinced. ‘Then you won’t report me?’

‘No. You have my word on it.’

‘I could crush you with these hands. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Don’t be too sure. I can take quite a bit of punishment, if I have to.’

For a second he gauged me with his eyes. My hands hung down by my sides, ready for action if he launched another attack. But I seemed to have taken the edge off his fury.

He looked down at Mette, who was sitting on the floor beside the bed, while she stared vacantly up at us both. ‘What d’you reckon, Mette? Did he touch you?’

She slowly shook her head. ‘We were just – talking. He had some news, about Johnny boy.’

‘Some news? What?’

‘We didn’t get that far.’

‘There was no news,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to find out if you had seen him recently.’

‘And that’s what you were asking her? I call that harassment!’ Again the fury in him rose. ‘You were the one who took ’im from her.’

‘You think this would be the right surroundings for him to grow up in, do you.’

‘You …!’ He took two steps forward and raised his fists again.

I held up both my hands, palms outwards.

‘Hammersten! Remember what we agreed!’

‘Terje! Don’t …’ whimpered Mette from behind him. ‘I can’t take any more. I’ve lost him for ever. I know I have …’ She slowly dissolved into tears.

Hammersten took another step closer. ‘D’you know what I’m gonna do? Tomorrow I’m gonna go with her to her solicitor, Langeland, if you know who that is, and ask him to complain to the local council about you, whoever you bloody are and whatever your bloody name is!’

‘Veum is my name, and I can save you the bother. I’m going to have a chat with Langeland myself, I reckon.’

‘What about?’

‘It’s none of your … It’s absolutely no concern of yours.’

He glowered at me while obviously fighting with himself. One moment he was going to knock me senseless, the next he was shaking like a leaf, angst-ridden and dying for a drink.

‘Veum …’ It was Mette mumbling my name.

‘Yes?’ We both turned towards her.

‘When you meet Jan, could you say hello from me and …’ She began to sob. ‘I still love him! I miss him so much! Oh, Jan my boy … my Jan … Johnn …’ Her words were smothered by sobs.

‘I promise you, Mette. I’ll say hello from you.’

Terje Hammersten gave me a look of contempt. I turned on my heel and left the wretched bedroom with the two dysfunctional individuals.

In the sitting room hardly anyone noticed me pass through. Outside on the landing the neighbour had gone. I was glad. On returning to my office, I phoned Paul Finckel, the journalist, an old classmate from Nordnes.

‘Hi Paul … guy called Terje Hammersten. Does that name ring any bells?’

‘Loads! Have they let him loose again?’

‘What was he in for?’

‘GBH. If I were you, I’d keep well away from him, if I could.’

‘Thanks for the advice. Got any more info?’

‘Cost you a beer.’

‘So long as it isn’t too many.’

‘I said one, didn’t I. I’d better bring you some photocopies, so you know who you’re dealing with.’

‘Is he dangerous?’

‘Dangerous doesn’t begin to cover it.’

‘But he hasn’t killed anyone?’

‘Not officially at least.’

‘Not … What do you mean?’

‘We can discuss this over a beer …’

‘Usual place?’

‘Usual place.’

The clientele of Børs Café varied according to the time of the day. In the morning, the majority were ageing alkies, seamen on home leave and pensioned-off harbour sweats. In the evening, you could meet anyone from petty criminals to Business School students with a penchant for field studies. At lunchtimes, when Paul and I met on this occasion, most customers were single men who valued the cooking at Børs over their own culinary skills. There had never been many women. Those that dropped in, however, became the centre of enthusiastic attention. No one took any notice of Paul and me raising our midday glasses of foaming beer.

Paul looked at me inquisitorially. ‘What’s going on, Varg? Have you started playing detective or what?’

‘No, no. It’s just this case we’ve been drawn into. We have to take care of a little boy. The mother kind of lives with Terje
Hammersten
, and that’s why I was interested in his background.’

‘My God. Living together? Poor woman.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s only one thing you can say about the guy. He hits like a hammer and he’s hard as stone.’

‘So I gather. When we got involved with these people three or four years ago, he was being taken in on some GBH charge.’

‘That sounds about right. He has a dangerous temper, as I said.’

‘But you were suggesting that …’

‘Yes?’

‘On the phone. Off the record, you said.’

‘Yes, it’s the kind of rumour we newspaper people have to grapple with all the time, you know. We’re never sure how much faith we can put in it. It was all to do with the great alcohol smuggling affair in Sunnfjord a year ago. I suppose it must have been early 1973. A boat was boarded by customs officials in one of the inlets between Verlandet and Atløy. Full to the gunnels with foreign goods ready for national distribution, so to speak, further down the fjord. A few days later one of the gang was found beaten to death with a baseball bat or something equally hard. Rumour has it that he was the snitch and that Hammersten was summoned from Bergen to deal with the matter. Pure Chicago, as I’m sure you appreciate.’

‘Why didn’t they do the job themselves, the people behind it?’

‘I suppose they were in prison already, most of them. A message must have been passed out via alternative channels. Pretty clear message, let’s put it like that. Blood had to be shed. But the odd thing was …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, the person who was killed …’ Paul tossed his notebook onto the table and opened it. ‘A certain Ansgår Tveiten … was his brother-in-law.’

‘Hammersten’s brother-in-law?’

‘Yep. Married to his sister, Trude.’

‘Uhuh. And what did she have to say to that?’

He grinned. ‘Nothing about that in the story. But he was never arrested for the crime.’

‘I’ll have to ask him face to face then, next time I bump into him.’

‘You do that and in the meantime I’ll order the flowers for your funeral.’

‘Does he belong to any other gangs in town, this Hammersten?’

Paul took a quick scan around. ‘You see the guys in the corner over there? Sort of semi-organised thieves. In Birger Bjelland’s network, the new Mr Big, a fence from Stavanger. The buzz is he’s building up quite an organisation, and Hammersten fits in there somewhere, I would guess.’