The Writing on the Wall (22 page)

Once out in the corridor, I stopped a nurse on her way past with a bedpan. ‘Excuse me but … I spoke to a nurse a little while ago, small, dark-haired …’

‘Trude Litlabø?’

‘Yes, I don’t know …’

‘Try at the office.’ She pointed towards an open door near the end of the corridor.

I went down and looked in.

Trude Litlabø stood up from her chair in front of a
computer
screen, as I knocked gently on the doorframe. It was a few seconds before she recognised me. ‘Oh, hello! How did it go with – Kathrine?’

‘Oh, not so bad. I had a nice chat with her daughter, at any rate. Is she always so yonderly, her mother, I mean?’

‘Unfortunately, yes. In her condition you might say she’s gone into a room someone’s lost the key to and is never going to find it again.’

‘But she does see something from the window now and then, doesn’t she?’

She gave me a look of surprise. ‘Yes, she does. Certain events are engraved on her memory.’

‘She said something about a boy called Roger. Remember him?’

‘Roger, Roger … You mean, the one who drowned?’

‘Drowned?’

‘Er, well, I’m not sure. It’s Einar you should have asked about that.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘Well, er …’ A shadow ran over her face. ‘He’s not all that easy to get hold of.’

‘Oh? Why not?’

‘He’s not – well. I mean … To be frank, he’s in a detox clinic for alcoholics, down in Jæren.

‘I’d really like to have had a word with him.’

She looked at me searchingly. ‘And why is that?’

‘I can’t say. But I think it could be quite important actually.’

After thinking about it for a few moments she made up her mind. ‘Oh, I suppose it can’t … If only it could make him feel, feel that he
means
something, then … Here you are …’

She wrote her brother’s name and address on a scrap of paper and pushed it over to me. Then she unlocked the door and let me out of the department, wishing me good luck. I thanked her, went down to reception and ordered a taxi to the railway station.

NOWHERE IN NORWAY
is the sky so heavy as over Jæren. Nowhere is there so much sea in it. On grey days, sky and sea form as one towards the horizon as though a piece of sky has been folded under the land. On sunny days the sea blows up, and before you know it, it’s raining.

That day a thin layer of frost lay on the horizon, a stroke from a feather quill that would remain there even in the darkness of night.

‘The stamp of February,’ muttered Einar Litlabø, nodding seawards.

‘How do you mean?’

‘That the sea’s never darker than at this time of year. As though the colour from all the winter nights had seeped down here, into a kind of melting pot. That’s why we have the heavy storms in late winter, so everything can be released before spring. Didn’t you know that?’

He had invited me to accompany him on a short walk along narrow tracks that lay in the most sheltered hollows in the
windswept
terrain and were marked out by sombre dry-stone walls, the timeless boundaries of Norwegian farmland, which were always a bone of contention with somebody or other: the source of hundreds of court cases relating to wills, thousands of
arguments
between neighbours. He appeared to welcome this break in the daily routine, and when I had told the duty doctor about the period I’d spent in Hjellestad some years before, they had allowed us outside the premises without a permit, in the belief that he was in good hands.

His resemblance to his sister lay mainly in the colour of his hair. Einar Litlabø had dark, shoulder-length hair with streaks of grey, as if life had passed him by all too fast, and he had never had time to go to the barber’s.

His face was thin with deep furrows running from his nostrils down both sides of his mouth. His brow looked permanently wrinkled, and the anxiety smouldering away in his eyes told me why he was here.

‘B-B-Birger? Do you want to talk about Birger? Why?’

‘Are you still in contact with him?’

‘With Birger? Oh no! Not for many years now. That was when we were little. Long before he left Stavanger.’

‘But you knew him well then, didn’t you? When you were both kids?’

‘Y-Y-Yes I did! We were best mates, Birger and me. Best mates.’

‘So you didn’t mind that the others called him Nazi bastard?’

‘Good God, Nazi bastard … Birger was fine though. Our lot came from gypsy stock, actually … Didn’t Trude tell you that? No, I suppose she didn’t. No.’

‘I only exchanged a few worth with her.’

‘That’s understandable. Gypsies who’ve settled down and Nazi bastards, they were much of a muchness.’

‘You were bullied – or
teased
, as they probably called it then – you and your sister?’

‘And all our other brothers and sisters too. There were six of us, no seven, but one of them died when she was little.’

I tried to broach the topic again. ‘Who was it who teased you then? Birger Bjelland and you?’

‘Well, he didn’t call himself Bjelland in those days, did he? It was Birger Haugane then … Yes and who do you think it was? All the good-looking, clever ones, all the ones who had both a mother and father and who were fair-haired, had proper teeth and lots of cash in their school bankbooks. In those days we hadn’t so much as five kroner in ours, see?’

‘But you gave as good as you got I suppose?’

‘Gave as good as we got? They went home with bloody noses and muddied clothes, every last one of them. But who was it got the blame, do you think? Them or us? Who was it that was
threatened
with being sent to reform school if we didn’t behave?’

‘There was one called Roger …’

He clammed up suddenly, glancing over the nearest dry-stone wall and out to sea. For a moment it was as though his eyes took on the colours of what they saw, a mixture of grey and white, with a black pulsating heart that was suddenly beating too fast.

‘Roger Hansen, wasn’t it?’

He stopped and pointed out to sea. ‘See that … the ship there? When I’m walking here, I often think that it’s on board a ship like that I should have been, one that sailed away and never came back. The only problem, though, is that the earth’s round, and if you sail far enough away, you always end up back where you started from anyway.’

I nodded in agreement before adding: ‘And that’s just what our lives are like too. We think time only moves in one direction. Yet it’s not just the senile who return to their childhood. Every one of us has to do that at some time in our life, Einar.’

He stood there, looking thoughtful, as if he was somewhere else, in a completely different time from the present.

‘He drowned, didn’t he?’ I said softly.

‘What …’ He swung round to face me. ‘Why have you come here, Veum? Who do you represent? What do you want?’

‘Do you have any children, Einar?’

‘Do I have any …’ His gaze began to wander again. He looked down as though in search of something for his eyes to settle on. ‘Two girls and a boy. Two marriages. I’m still in contact with the boy. I’m not allowed to see the girls. Not till I’m – completely …’

‘In that case, I’m going to tell you a thing or two about your childhood mate and the sort of business I think he’s behind in Bergen.’

I told him about the young girls at Jimmy’s and the sort of activities they were recruited for. Perhaps I laid it on a bit thick, especially considering how sure I was that Birger Bjelland was the moving force behind it all, but it struck home. As I told him bit by bit, his look gradually steadied, and his face somehow became even more lined and almost emaciated-looking. ‘It could have been one of your children, Einar; it could have been – mine.’

He turned his back to the sea and looked in over the land, as if there was more hope in the Norwegian bedrock. ‘I think we should turn back now.’

We set off again.

‘Who told you about – Roger?’

‘Kathrine Haugane.’

He looked at me quickly as though to see whether I was serious.

‘In her way.’ I tried to imitate her voice: ‘
Birger! Don’t do it! Roger! Oh no
…’

‘So she …’ He looked at me wide-eyed. ‘So she saw it too!’

‘Saw what, Einar?’

He hesitated for a few more moments. Then it came, slowly at first, as though he had to reconstruct it all, then quicker, bit by bit, as he got into his stride. ‘We were seven years old, in the first class at primary school. I called on Birger, to play with him. But there was nobody at home. So I walked down towards Mosvatnet Lake, we often used to play there. This was in January, and there was ice on the water. Suddenly, I saw the two of them, Roger and him, a long way out. Then suddenly something happened. I think they started to quarrel. In any case, Birger shoved Roger so hard that he – fell, like this, forwards, and then … Then the ice broke, and he fell through it.’

He swallowed heavily. But I didn’t give him a helping hand this time. This was a story he had to tell in his own way, for now. ‘I … Roger bobbed back up again, waving his arms, but Birger, he just turned his back on him and ran off. At first, I thought he was perhaps going to fetch one of those life-saving hooks that had been placed around the lake, but then … he just vanished, ran off home, I think. And so did Roger. Vanish, I mean. He didn’t come back up again.’ He averted his eyes from me with a look of someone asking for forgiveness. ‘We were so young, you see! It all happened so fast. One moment it had happened. The next moment all was calm again. Just a hole in the ice. As though nothing had …’

‘So you – didn’t say anything to anyone either?’

‘No, I … When the police started looking for him later that day, there were some other people who’d seen him on his way down to Mosvatnet Lake, and when the police found the hole in the ice … they soon found him. And not many questions were asked
afterwards
either. It was only a child, after all! Just an accident!’
Pensively
, he added: ‘But the fact that Mrs Haugane also … Why on earth do you think
she
didn’t do anything?’

I shrugged. ‘Who can tell, so many years after? She had first-hand experience of what it was like to be an outcast and hounded like a dog. Perhaps she recognised her own tormentors in those who tormented her son. Because Roger
was
one of those who used to tease him?’

‘One of the worst. No denying
that
.’

I glanced sideways at him. ‘And you’ve carried this around with you all these years?’

The pain in his face was clear to see. ‘Not just that …’

‘Not just that. Is there more? Involving Birger?’

‘It’s only a theory. But that’s how it is, isn’t it, the first time’s the worst?’

‘Do you mean that he, that – there were
others
?’

In the distance we could see the institution he was on his way back to, looking like a school building on top of the hill.

‘There was quite a bit about it in the papers when it happened, but there was never a
case
about it.’

‘Oh?’

‘It was the year he was doing military service. At Evjemoen. There was a soldier who was killed by a stray bullet, or whatever you call it, when the barrel gets blocked with snow so the whole rifle explodes.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, it’s just not something that happens every day. The chap who was killed was one of the same lot who used to tease him at school, look …’ He opened his left hand and showed an oblique scar on his palm. ‘I still have a scar from his sheath knife! And Birger was in the same section as him.’

‘You mean that it was
him
who blocked the barrel?’

He nodded. ‘Maybe.’

‘What was the soldier’s name?’

‘Ragn … Ragnar Hillevåg.’

‘And roughly when did this happen?’

‘You can find it in the paper, but – but I did my military service in 1964. I think it was the year after.’

‘But it’s only supposition, surely? It was never mentioned afterwards?’

‘Well, just that many years later, in a bar in town, I got talking to one of the others who’d been in the camp at the same time. And he said the atmosphere was very tense among all the recruits from Stavanger right through basic training school, and that was because Hillevåg was rubbing salt in old wounds.’

‘Not just with Birger, then?’

‘That’s right, but … it was only Birger who’d killed anybody! I mean and
I’d
seen it!’

We were back now. He looked in at the lights from the dayroom as though regretting our walk and was now solely intent on parking himself in front of the TV and forgetting everything.

‘You don’t have to carry that burden alone any more, Einar,’ I said comfortingly. ‘As you said yourself, you two were only kids. Kathrine Haugane should have known better. But what does one not do for one’s children?’

He nodded. ‘The children are the writing on the wall for us, Veum.’

I started. ‘The writing on … How do you mean? The writing on the wall means a signal, a
warning
.’

‘And that’s just what our children are. If they go off the rails, so do we. And I’m not saying it’s our fault, if things go wrong. It can just as easily be – ha! – society or the age or just something in their make-up, a tendency they’ve inherited from far back …’

‘The sins of the fathers?’

‘I don’t know. All I do know is that when things go wrong with those who are new to life then everything else goes to pot as well!
Weighed in the balance and found wanting
, eh, Veum? Weighed in the balance and found wanting, every last one of us.’

I CALLED VIDAR WAAGENES
from Sola Airport in Stavanger. He was in a meeting, but his secretary had a message for me:
Thursday
, twelve o’clock at police headquarters
.

While waiting for the first evening plane, I ate a lukewarm stew in the cafeteria, drank a cup of coffee and leafed through a
crumpled
copy of one of the morning papers, where yesterday’s news was equally lukewarm.

The day’s events had blotted out all thought of what date it was. But now, as I was about to head off homewards, it came back to me like a boomerang, so forcefully that even in the departure hall I started to look round for people I knew. But I saw no one.

The plane to Bergen was full. In the seat beside me sat a man in his thirties with rimless reading glasses and a briefcase. He looked as though he was planning to go through the whole year’s accounts in the bare half hour we were in the air and didn’t glance in my direction so much as once.

Nobody else set any alarm bells ringing either, and the only
turbulence
we experienced before Bergen’s Flesland Airport was the strong gust of wind on the port side just before we landed.

I was about halfway down the queue to leave the plane. Descending the stairs to the arrivals hall, I scoured the whole area while I still had a bird’s eye view of it. There was nobody to meet me, and nobody I thought I recognised either.

As I had nothing but hand luggage, I made quickly for the exit. And I was not the only one. Most of us were carrying little more than a briefcase.

Outside it was dark, with a biting wind, a good bit colder than in Stavanger. Quite a few people besides me had left their cars in the long-stay car park. In a way, it was reassuring to have company. But on the other hand … who were they all?

I found the car and gave it a quick once-over to check the locks and the windows. Then I opened the driver’s side door, took out the ice-scraper, scraped a thin layer of ice from the windscreen and got in, put the key in the ignition key and turned it.

The Corolla started like clockwork, just as it had done all the years I’d owned it.

I looked both ways before moving gently off.

Going down the airport road I kept a constant lookout behind. If there were any motorbikes on the road that evening, they were certainly nowhere near here, and if he’d transferred to a car, I had no idea which one it was.

The radio wasn’t properly tuned in, and I hit the search button. A local radio station issued a warning about icy roads in Bergen and the surrounding area and urged people to drive with caution and adapt their speed to the conditions. I did so immediately, to the great annoyance of the drivers behind. But then it was unlikely that any of them had received their own death notice in the post either.

Rather than opting for the motorway, I took the Nesttun exit and drove into town along Fanaveien. Between Nesttun and Paradis, I was stuck right behind a large, dark-blue van. Along the paths around Tveitevannet Lake people were already taking their evening constitutional, and I turned off up Hagerupsvei towards Landås.

It was a quarter to eight when I turned down Fløenbakken. I counted the traffic humps going downhill, looking both ways all the while. In the car park in front of Karin’s block there was just room for one more car, but it was a tight squeeze.

I had no idea where the juggernaut came from. I was just in the process of wriggling out of the car when it lumbered over the nearest traffic hump with a roar of its engine loud enough to put the wind up a bull elk. It swerved violently to the left before the brakes were slammed on with a screech that reverberated right through my bones. I glanced up at the driver’s seat. High up there behind the wheel, like a raised up
deus ex machina
, I glimpsed a shiny black motorbike helmet.

I closed the door in a desperate attempt to get out round the car. When he hit his target, my hand was still on the door handle.

There was a deafening bang, and a sort of shudder ran through me. As the car was catapulted forwards through the fence and up into the air, I still couldn’t grasp exactly what had happened. The car door was snatched away while my fingers were still clutching the handle, and I sailed in a large arc towards the prickly Berberis bushes that encircled the whole parking area. Instinctively, I tried to shield myself with the door, as though crash-landing a flying carpet. Bits of car rained down all around me.