Scarred (18 page)

Henning loves autumn. In the summer only the copper beeches and the bright yellow rapeseed fields stand out from all the lush shades of green. But in the autumn nearly every tree and bush changes colour. It’s as if the year has matured. And yes, the colour palette warns of darker times, and yes, there is something sad about the dying plants and withering leaves. But even so Henning has always welcomed it.

Nora could never understand why halfway through Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Henning would sit there with tears in his eyes and yet expect her to believe that the saltwater was a sign that he was enjoying himself.

Now autumn rushes past outside the car window. The fields lie shorn and dormant, like a memorial to bright, warm summer evenings.

Henning remembers that the drive to Stavern used to take two and a half hours, but that was going from Kløfta. It was also in a different car, in another age. They would pack the small, blue VW Beetle to the rafters and, had they been spotted today, the police would have pulled them over for careless driving. Just being back on the same road – or almost the same road because motorways have been built since – reminds Henning how he used to be squashed on the backseat, barely able to reach out to undo the small latch that opened a window to get rid of the cigarette smoke in the car.

His mobile rings when he is almost halfway there. It is the
123news
national news editor. He is tempted to ignore the call, but capitulates in the end.

‘Hello, Heidi.’

‘Where are you?’

As usual, his boss skips the small talk.

‘I’m in the car.’

‘A woman has been found murdered in a flat in Bislett. I want you to go there straightaway.’

‘Sorry, but that’s going to be difficult. I’m on my way to—’

Henning stops himself; he doesn’t want to reveal his destination.

‘On your way to where?’

‘I’ve almost got to Tønsberg.’

‘What on earth are you doing in Tønsberg?’

‘There’s just something I need to check.’

Heidi sighs heavily into the telephone.

‘So when do you think you’ll be back?’

‘Don’t know. Later tonight, hopefully.’

Another sigh.

‘Okay.’

She hangs up without saying goodbye.

For the next hour Henning concentrates on the road. All he has to do is remember to turn off at the crazy golf course at Anvikstranda Camping, which they were allowed to visit once every summer, and he’ll be there. It’s a trip down memory lane.

He remembers too small hands trying to grip too big golf clubs. He remembers the bumpy road, which hasn’t grown less bumpy over the years, how they practically had to drive off-road to make way for any cars coming towards them. But he doesn’t need those memories now.

Past the grove a large grassy area opens out. This is where they used to play football in the summer. Where they tried to fly kites. Where they would practise cartwheels, throw Frisbees and forget to eat because they were having so much fun. And on the horizon lies the sea, big, blue and beautiful.

Henning drives past the rubbish bins and continues until the road stops at the end of Donavall Camping with rows of trailers with picket fences, decking and locked plastic crates containing garden furniture. Everything is exactly as he remembers it.

The parking space allocated to their cabin appears a short distance ahead of him. But there is no car in sight. Trine isn’t there. No one is.

So he was wrong after all.

A little further along the gravel track he spots tyre tracks. Fresh. As if a car, or two, drove halfway into the space before turning around again.

Whenever Henning’s family went to the cabin, they would park as near the footpath as they could to unload the car. Then there would be the strenuous hike through the forest laden down with rucksacks, bags and food shopping. Trine and Henning were always made to carry something, even when they were little, and they would walk through the trees whose viper-like roots snaked down towards the footpath where they were. And every time there was a noise in the thicket, they would jump a mile, spooked as only children can be.

But it was also an incredibly beautiful landscape where the trees grew close, vines wound their way around them and white anemones, almost luminous in the spring, covered the forest floor like a duvet. And the view when they reached the top of the hill, when the sea opened out before them, and they could see ships draw white trails in their wake on the mirrored, blue surface of the Skagerrak.

He remembers everything now.

And seeing that he has driven all this way, he decides he might as well go down to the shore. Henning loves the sea. He has always loved throwing stones at the rocks to see if he could hit them. He loved snorkelling, looking for flounders on the seabed, the way the seaweed and bull rushes wafted around him in slow motion when he went swimming.

Henning parks the car and walks down the footpath where everything has changed, while at the same time nothing has. He still looks out for vipers, just in case. And the feeling when he reaches the top of the hill and the sea spreads out in front of him hasn’t changed, either. It’s as if something in him lets go. He stops and looks across the water; the distant sky has acquired a pink evening glow, which in a few places is reflected in the almost motionless surface of the sea.

He remembers how they used to play on the pebble beach, him and Trine, how they would pick bog whortleberries and crowberries that looked like blueberries and which Trine insisted on calling blueberries for years. Trine would always boss him around, like the know-it-all she was. This is how he remembers her, even though she is eighteen months younger than him, her constantly wagging finger and a tone of voice that would frighten most people into doing what she told them. This extended to when the family played cards. She learned new games and strategies very quickly. Their mother, however, never played to win; she always let her children beat her. And Trine hated that.

Henning inhales the sea air deep into his lungs before he starts walking down towards the row of blue cabins. He remembers the mound where he used to go to pee because the cabin only had an outside toilet and no power on earth could make him step inside the tiny cubicle that was riddled with flies, spiders and cobwebs. And he remembers the seagulls they fed with prawn shells and fish waste. Cormorants, oystercatchers and swans that always caused a stir whenever they flapped past. The eider ducks.

Tvistein Lighthouse stands just as staunchly on the horizon as it always did. On clear summer evenings they could see all the way out to the island of Jomfruland. If he tries really hard, he is sure that he can conjure up the smell of his father’s cigar smoke, the smell of holiday. And nowhere in the world do the stars twinkle more brightly.

Henning comes to a standstill when he sees that the door to the cabin is open. At first he thinks there must have been a break-in; he has read countless newspaper articles over the years about cabins closed down for the winter that have had uninvited, light-fingered guests, but his initial concern soon gives way to profound relief when he notices a plate and a glass in the sink outside.

So he was right after all.

Trine hasn’t scattered breadcrumbs for the wagtails with which they always used to share their breakfast, but the washing-up bowl is still there. Square and made from faded red plastic. And he sees the old gulley in the hillside that their father dug to divert rainwater away from their cabin. Their mother always took great care to weed around it. He can’t imagine that anyone has done any weeding here for years.

Their plot is relatively inaccessible from the surrounding footpaths so people rarely walked straight past their front door – even in the summer. It meant that they hardly ever had to lock the cabin, a tradition Henning notes to his satisfaction that Trine has upheld.

He enters the cabin tentatively.

‘Trine?’

It feels strange to say her name out loud and there is no response. The cabin is silent. But he sees a laptop on the table. Clothing thrown over the dark blue sofa. The curtains are still the same blue and white ones, in case anyone should forget that they are by the seaside. He looks across the juniper bushes that cover the hillside in front of the cabin; the thicket below. The irregularities in the terrain. And he remembers the cream buns they used to eat, radio plays on Saturdays, the television that never worked.

He remembers everything.

He leaves the cabin and walks up to the small mound and it feels as if the whole world is spread out in front of him. All he has to do is reach out his hand to touch it. And the wind, he hadn’t noticed it until now. Or the smell from Firsbukta, either – a smell he hated when he was little – of seaweed and rubbish that the sea has washed up and which has been rotting in the sun.

He wonders if that’s what makes him take a step back to stop himself from falling over. How can all this have been buried inside him, all these lovely memories that are now coming back to him? He closes his eyes and lets them in. He stands like this for a long time.

Then he walks back inside the cabin and sits down at the table where Trine’s laptop is open. He bumps into a table leg, and as he does so he causes the screen to wake up. A detailed city map appears. Blue, yellow, white and beige colours dotted across the page. A slightly thicker line runs through the streets along some water. He is about to read the street names when a shadow flits across the window. His gaze darts to the door frame where his sister is staring at him with frightened eyes.

‘Henning? What the hell are you doing here?’

Trine is wearing muddy walking boots and a green, white and red anorak. A baseball cap covers her hair.

All he can do is stare at her. She has their mother’s features around her mouth and her eyes; nothing about her has changed except that she has aged a little. She is Trine, his sister. To whom he hasn’t spoken for God knows how many years.

‘Hi,’ he says at last.

Two men, whom Henning presumes to be Trine’s bodyguards, appear either side of her. He can see that they are about to rush inside, but Trine stops them with a gesture and mutters – with her face turned away from him – that it’s only her brother.

Then she turns to him again. And he doesn’t know how to interpret the look in her eyes. Whether it’s anger, fear or something else. But there is definitely something. Hostility, possibly.

‘Have you come here to gloat?’ she asks.

‘Gloat? No. I’m here to—’

Henning stops and thinks about it.

‘I came because I was worried about you.’

Trine starts to laugh.

‘A lot of people are worried about you, Trine. No one has been able to contact you for thirty-six hours.’

‘So you decided to come here? To find out if this was where I was hiding?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s just like you,’ she mutters to herself. Henning is about to ask her what she means by that remark, but Trine interrupts him.

‘So what’s the deal now? Were you hoping to interview me?’

‘The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.’

‘So why—’

Trine swallows the rest of the sentence. Henning looks at her for a long time before he says: ‘I’ve come to see if I can help you.’

‘I don’t need your help,’ she pouts.

Henning continues to look at her, at her fingers which fidget, at fingernails which haven’t been left alone for one minute. If he knows anything about her at all, she has been biting them right down to the quick. When she was little she used to get told off about it all the time.

She still refuses to look at him. If he hadn’t known better, he would almost have believed that she was scared of him.

‘I didn’t see your car in the car park,’ he says. It’s both a question and a statement.

‘No, you don’t think I’m that stupid, do you? I parked elsewhere. And I didn’t come in my own car, either.’

Trine turns her head slightly and, for a brief moment, Henning makes eye contact with her, enough to see his mother in them. The same anger. The same contempt. As if she finds it loathsome even to be in the same room as him.

‘Neither did I. But then again I don’t have a car of my own,’ he says, trying to laugh. Trine is not even close to being mollified.

‘Have you been out for a walk?’

Trine glances at her watch, then she shifts her gaze towards the sea.

‘Did you find the blue dots?’

Henning smiles at the memory, how they used to compete to be the first to spot the blue dots placed along the coastal path for guidance. At that time they cared little about nature, the point of the game was winning. And Trine always wanted to win. Always.

‘How far did you walk?’ he asks. Trine turns to him again.

‘To Stavern,’ she says in a low voice.

‘Stavern?’ Henning exclaims. ‘You walked all the way there? And back again?’

She nods, but only just.

‘That must be miles.’

Trine automatically checks her watch.

‘12.21 kilometres,’ she says. ‘Each way.’

‘So you’ve walked—’

Her impatience gets the better of her and she sighs.

‘What do you want, Henning?’

He looks at her. Some of her hair, wet and dark, has come loose under her baseball cap. The wind takes hold of it and blows it in front of her eyes.

‘Please can we just talk, Trine?’

‘No.’

The reply is firm.

‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

Henning searches her eyes for an explanation, but finds only hostility. Again, she looks out at the sea before she steps inside the cabin. And that’s when she notices that her laptop is on.

‘Have you been snooping on my computer?’

‘No, I—’

Trine marches up to the table and slams shut the laptop.

‘Get out,’ she demands.

Henning is about to protest, but he sees that it will serve no purpose.

‘Get out,’ she orders him again.

Henning gets up and holds up his palms. He starts to walk, but stops and turns around; he looks at her windswept, ruddy cheeks. He tries to think of something to say, but the right words refuse to come.

‘Please, just let the world know that you’re still alive,’ he says. ‘People are worried about you.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘No, I mean it, Trine.’

Trine laughs again.

‘Yes, I guess you all feel really bad now.’

Henning still can’t think of anything to say.

‘You’ve seen for yourself that I’m alive,’ she says, pointing to the door. ‘Now you can go home.’

‘But—’

‘Please, Henning. Just go.’

Suddenly he can see the hurt in her eyes; it’s only for a second or two, but it’s long enough for him to notice. Trine walks back to the doorway and stands facing the sea with her back to him. Henning watches her for a few seconds before he does as she asks. He walks around the cabin and past his father’s overgrown gulley. Once he gets to the top of the mound he stops and turns around again. He looks across the roof of the cabin and out at the sea, now just as black as the approaching night. He hears seagulls screech, sees a ship in the distance, tiny against the endless background. And he thinks that the big, open sea contains as many questions as answers.