Holy Terror (37 page)

‘They're out early,' Conor remarked.

The taxi driver nodded. ‘The summer is so short, we have to make the best of every hour.'

He turned off before he reached the Oslotunnel, the underpass that carries the El8 underneath the harbor area and the old town, and took them past the Radhus, Oslo's city hall, a huge russet building with two stolid square towers. Then he drove them through the busy, sunny streets to Kristian IV's Gate, where Conor had booked them two suites at the Bristol.

‘This is
extremely
grand,' said Eleanor, as the taxi driver helped them with their suitcases. They walked
into the lobby, all polished marble and gleaming glass and gilding, with fresh flowers everywhere.

‘We won't be staying here for long,' said Conor. ‘Apart from the fact that it's five hundred bucks a night, I want to try and find an apartment we can rent, someplace inconspicuous.'

‘That's a pity,' said Magda. ‘I could easily become accustomed to living in a place like this.'

Their suites were just as luxurious. Thick blue carpets, enormous beds, velvet drapery, complimentary baskets of fruit waiting for them. Conor opened the french windows in his living room and stepped out onto the balcony. The sun was bright, the wind was cool. He could see past the Domkirke with its eighteenth-century clocktower, the oldest in Norway, all the way to Bjorvika, the eastern harbor.

Magda and Eleanor went to their room to unpack; but it wasn't long before Eleanor came back. She sat on the end of the bed eating a fig while Conor hung his shirts in the closet.

‘Do you think it was a good idea, bringing Magda with us?'

‘I don't know. But my feeling is that she can help us.'

‘Do you really trust her?'

‘No, I don't. But I think her self-interest coincides with ours, and I think that's good enough.'

They could hear the echoing shuffle of hundreds of feet as tourists walked along Kristian IV's Gate below them; and the murmur of mass conversation. An occasional toot from the harbor, and the cries of seagulls. On the polished walnut bureau a vase of white lilies stood beneath a stem bearded
portrait of Harald Harfagre, the first king of Norway. Next to it, Conor's wallet, and a scattering of Norwegian loose change, kroner and öre.

‘Don't allow yourself to become cynical,' said Eleanor. ‘Cynicism can eat you away, like acid. I should know.'

She pressed her hand against her chest and winced. ‘Angina?' he asked her, and she nodded.

‘Did you bring your medication?'

She nodded. ‘Enough for a week. But I'm going to need a fresh prescription.'

‘Don't worry, I'll find you a doctor. We could be here a long time. I don't want anything happening to you.'

Eleanor stood up and held out her arms and Conor hugged her. ‘What am I doing here?' she asked him. ‘What are we all doing here?'

A seagull perched on the balcony railing, and stayed there, crying, and turning its head, and crying again.

‘I guess we're here to save some souls,' said Conor.

The following afternoon was even cooler, with a light southwesterly breeze blowing in from Oslofiord, and a watery sunshine that came and went, came and went, like the days passing in a dream.

Conor had spent the morning calling up letting agencies; and they had two apartments to look at – one in Torshov, overlooking the park, and another on Helgesens Gate, in Grunerlokka. Both were only a few minutes away from Dennis Evelyn Branch's address on Hammerfestgata. They had a
koldtbord
lunch at the Engebret Café on Bankplassen – a selection of dried, salted and smoked meats, as well as pickled herring and
fiskeboller
– fishballs in a béchamel sauce – and heaps of plain boiled potatoes sprinkled with dill.

‘I hope I'm going to be able to survive on this diet,' said Eleanor.

It's very good for your health,' Magda told her.

‘Unlike Dennis Evelyn Branch.'

They took the subway out to Carl Berners Plass. The train was quiet and brightly lit and almost
surrealistically clean. They were relentlessly stared at all the way by three unsmiling men with deepset eyes and troll-like beards and a young blond woman with round glasses and pigtails and sensible shoes. Conor had to admit that they probably made an unusual trio in a country like Norway. Magda, as usual, was dressed in black, with her hair swept up; and Eleanor was wearing Calvin Klein jeans and a stunningly expensive turquoise silk blouse from Yves St Laurent on Madison Avenue.

Conor had opted for a blue check shirt and sand-colored cords. ‘You look as if you're going off to cut down trees,' Eleanor had commented.

Hammerfestgata was a short street of gray, 1960s apartment blocks. Rows of lime trees lined the sidewalk, and a single man was walking a nondescript dog. As they approached number 17, the sun went in, giving them the feeling that they were walking into a black-and-white photograph.

They reached the apartment building and pushed their way into the entrance hall. The floor was polished marble composite and the walls were painted beige. There was scarcely any smell, only a hint of vinegar and cigarette smoke. Conor went over to the row of mailboxes and looked at the name-cards.

‘Rustad, Jensen, Schei,' said Eleanor. ‘It could be any one of these.'

‘Yes, but look. Here's the name of the letting agency. Ole Wergeland, on Sars Gate. We can have a word with them.'

They were about to leave when a middle-aged
woman came struggling up to the front door with an armful of shopping. Conor opened the door for her and caught one of her bags.

‘Here. We don't want pickled cucumbers all over the floor.'

‘Thank you,' she said, in the clear, barely accented English that most Norwegians could speak. ‘I always try to carry too much.'

As she went toward the elevator, Conor said, ‘Wait up a moment. Maybe you can help us. We're looking for an American who lives here. White hair, white face, kind of thin.'

The woman nodded. ‘Yes, there is one American, anyway. A man with white hair. He has different people coming and going. I can't keep track. Once, a man with a beard. I see them sometimes and we say hello, but that's all. I've never seen the woman.'

‘The woman? What woman?'

‘Just as I say, I've never seen her. But sometimes late at night I hear her talking.'

‘Must be a pretty loud talker.'

‘Well, I don't like to put my nose into anybody else's business. But, shouting.'

‘You don't ever hear what she's shouting about?'

The woman shook her head, giving Conor the impression that even if she did know, she was too discreet to tell him.

‘What number apartment do they live in?' he asked.

She pointed to a mailbox with the name
Udgaard
on it. ‘That was the name of the old man who lived in the apartment before the American. They never changed his name. He collected butterflies. He died.
It was very sad. Nobody came to the funeral.'

‘Thank you for that,' said Conor.

The woman looked wary. ‘There won't be any trouble, will there?'

Magda smiled at her. ‘You don't have to worry. All you have to do is think of what you bought today. Everything is fine. What are you cooking for supper?'

‘
Klippfisk
,' she said.

‘That's one of your favorites?'

‘
Ja
.'

Magda stepped forward and touched the woman's right temple. ‘You're going to enjoy yourself tonight. You're going to feel happy and relaxed, aren't you? You're going to cook a good meal and everybody is going to enjoy it.'

‘
Ja
.'

‘And

‘You're going to forget that you met us. You're going to forget that we asked you about the Americans. You're going to feel peaceful and calm

‘And very, very content.'

‘
Ja
.'

‘I'm going to wake you up now,' said Magda. ‘You won't know who we are. You won't remember what we said. You'll simply get into the elevator and go up to your apartment and start cooking supper. You'll wake up when I count to three. One, two, three.'

The woman stared at them. She hesitated, readjusting her shopping bags. Then she retreated into the elevator and pressed the button. Conor watched her as the doors closed, and he had never seen a woman look so perplexed in her life. He had
probably looked the same way, when Ramon had hypnotized him at Spurr's.

They left the building and walked along Langgata to Helgesens Gate. The sun brightened and faded, and then brightened again. Helgesens Gate was busy with traffic but the apartment block was only three years old, with a shiny entrance lobby, chrome-plated handrails on the stairs, and a tiled mural of an ocean liner surrounded by seagulls.

A tiny woman with hugely magnifying eyeglasses and a haircut like a silver mushroom showed them around the apartment. It was big and airy and immaculately clean, with white leather couches and glass-topped tables.

‘The owner is a professor and his wife,' the woman told them. ‘He is gone to Boston University in America. She is gone to Sudan, to look after the thin children.'

‘I like it,' said Magda, swirling around in the middle of the living room. ‘It has good
feng shut
.'

‘It has a bidet, too,' said the tiny woman, proudly.

At the weekend, they moved out of the Bristol to Helgesens Gate. They missed the luxury, but they had already formed an unusual but comfortable
ménage
. Eleanor was still suspicious of Magda but Magda seemed to accept her suspicion quite calmly. Every morning she brought Eleanor a cup of coffee in bed and every evening she poured her a glass of ice-cold
akvavit
from the freezer compartment because she said it was good for her heart.

She began to talk a little about her childhood in Romania and how she had emigrated to the US. She
had been taught simple hypnosis at the age of 13 by a friend of her father, an old man with no teeth who smelled of tobacco and liked to dandle her on his knee. He could remember Codreanu's Iron Guard in 1938 and how they had strangled anybody who opposed them. He had learned hypnosis himself from a traveling circus performer who called himself the Great Cantemir; and he had used hypnosis to save himself when he was threatened with garrotting by drunken soldiers.

‘Hypnosis is a great power,' she said. ‘A very great savior. When you don't have hope, it can give you hope. When you have no way to turn, it can show you a path. There is no mystery. Hypnosis opens up your mind, that's all, and shows you what strength you have; what bravery.'

They kept watch on Dennis Evelyn Branch's apartment block from a small café, the Baltazar, on the corner of Hammerfestgata and Trondheimsveien. Conor had bought a Norwegian mobile phone, so that they could keep in touch with each other during the long hours of their surveillance. On sunny days the café's proprietor put white plastic seats out on the sidewalk, with red-and-white striped umbrellas. He didn't seem to mind that Conor and Eleanor and Magda sat there all morning and most of the afternoon, drinking coffee and occasionally ordering
polser
hot dogs or
flatbrod
with salami and herring.

Nobody resembling Dennis Evelyn Branch entered or left the apartment all weekend. Conor was beginning to think that they might be wasting their time in Oslo. After all, they had no guarantee
that Dennis Evelyn Branch was here at all. But at 11:04 on Monday morning, a plain white Volvo panel van drew up outside the apartment building, and after a while two men came out of the front door. One of them was bearded, with a red T-shirt and jeans and a brown leather cap. The other wore a black sweater with a hood and black pants. Conor couldn't see his face but his head seemed unusually big and he was sure that he glimpsed a wisp of white hair.

‘That's our man,' said Conor. ‘I'm sure of it.'

They watched as the van driver and the man in the brown leather cap carried several large cardboard boxes into the apartment building. The man in the black hooded sweater didn't carry anything, although he looked inside one or two of the boxes as if he were checking their contents. After ten minutes the van drove away.

‘Well, I wonder what that was all about,' said Eleanor.

‘There's only one way to find out, and that's to go take a look.'

‘In that case we'll have to wait until they go out.'

‘Either that, or break in while they're asleep.'

‘You couldn't do that, could you?'

‘I used to be a cop, remember? I can still pick locks.'

But it was only a few minutes before the two men emerged from the apartment building again. They stood on the sidewalk as if they were waiting for somebody. Their faces were shadowed by the lime trees so it was still difficult for Conor to make a positive ID.

‘Maybe I should walk past, try to induce them.' Magda suggested.

‘Too risky. If that
is
Dennis Evelyn Branch, he probably has a pretty good idea of what you look like.'

In any event there wasn't time. A silver Lexus came around the corner, its tires softly squealing. It stopped right next to the two men and they both climbed in, the white-haired man sitting in the front passenger seat. The driver was a woman with long dark hair and orange Ray-Bans. She drove off quickly, and the car's tires squealed again as she turned into Langgata.

‘Three of them,' said Eleanor. ‘Maybe that means they've left their apartment empty.'

‘It's worth a try.'

They left their coffee and crossed the street. They entered the apartment building and checked the number for Udgaard: apartment 206. They took the elevator up to the second floor without saying a word.

Apartment 206 was down at the far end of the corridor, next to a window that looked out over the street. The apartment building was totally silent. No music, no televisions, no children playing. They padded along the heather-mixture carpet until they reached the door. Conor rang the bell.