Yours Until Death (16 page)

It had begun to rain. A cold late-winter’s rain with the promise of snow in it. I bought three local papers and holed up with a cup of coffee in a second-floor café nearby. The previous day’s newspapers were on a shelf. And I did something I’d almost forgotten how to do. I read them. Or scanned them.

There wasn’t much in yesterday’s papers. ‘Mysterious death’ in one. ‘Man found dead’ in another, and ‘Stabbing drama in high-rise’ in the third. The articles were about the same. The police had already taken a person into custody for further questioning.

I turned quickly to today’s papers. The case had attracted more attention. There was more background material. The papers had sent their photographers. They’d interviewed some of the residents, people who’d heard ‘something’.

In one paper, a man, whose picture and full name had been published, told how he’d been sitting on his sofa watching the news six months ago when another man in another high-rise had suddenly shot a hole through his living-room window with a small-bore rifle.

The article didn’t connect this episode to the murder, but the man’s picture was in the paper anyway. And in his little world of three rooms and a kitchen he was now a hero.

From the coverage, it looked as if the press wasn’t
especially
interested in this murder. Not since the killer was
probably
already in custody. The police were still searching for
eyewitnesses, and the inquiry was still in full swing, but Officer Jakob E. Hamre of the Criminal Division predicted he’d be finished with the investigation any time now.

I pushed the papers away. Looked around.

Four foreigners sat at a corner table, drinking tea, eating cake and playing cards. They looked as if they lived there. A ruddy-faced woman in a blue hat was at the table by mine. She stared suspiciously at me over the edge of her paper.
Unwavering
gaze. Piercing eyes.

At another table, a boozed-up eighteen-year-old was
chatting
up two teenage girls whose dialect told you they came from somewhere in Sogn. Their heads were together, and they were blushing and giggling. Looking around.

I could hear the constant tonal music you hear in all such cafés. The noises of the cash register, the coffee-maker’s
gurgling
, the clinking of coffee cups against saucers, the scrape of knives, forks and spoons against plates. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke and seasoned with the smell of cooking.

Then I spotted him.

He was five or six tables away and didn’t seem to see me. He stared off into space the way people do when they’ve seen something they wish they hadn’t.

He held his coffee cup in front of his face as if he were trying to hide behind it. A tall loose-jointed man who looked like a kid. It pleased me to see he was beginning to go grey and that he was as pale now as he had been the whole time I’d known him – or had run into him. But he wasn’t my brother-in-law. His name was Lars Wiik. He was a university lecturer and the husband of a woman named Beate. I’d once been married to her. He was Thomas’s new father.

I kept on looking at him and he couldn’t help but look in
my direction before he left. When he suddenly ‘discovered’ me, he smiled like a freshly caught fish, stood up and came over.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘I had an hour’s break. Couldn’t correct another paper. Needed a cup of coffee – a newspaper.’

‘How’s … Thomas?’

‘Fine. He’s in pre-school now, you know. Starts primary school in the autumn.’

‘I know. I still keep in touch. A little bit.’

‘Oh, hell! I didn’t mean. But … there’s no reason to be … I mean, we don’t have to go on being resentful. It was all a long time ago.’

‘Everything gets to be a long time ago – after a while.’ It made me feel better. This would be a long time ago in a few years. The pictures of Jonas Andresen would fade just as all pictures fade after a while.

‘I’ve got to be going. Have to get back by eleven.’

‘Right. Say hello to both of them from me.’

‘Will do. Take care.’ He smiled and went away. A tall,
loose-jointed
guy who’d turned out to be a better husband and father than I’d been. I lifted my cup in a silent toast to him and
followed
him out a few minutes later.

Female prisoners aren’t held in the Bergen county jail. They keep them in the cellar of the police station on the same floor as the drunks.

I met Paulus Smith outside the station. He was exactly on time.

We waited in the duty room for a female officer to take us to the cells. Smith’s was a familiar face and he didn’t have to prove who he was. I was with him and that was good enough
for them. Anyway, they knew my face, too. This wasn’t my first visit and it wouldn’t be my last.

She wasn’t in a drunk tank, but it looked like one. It was an oblong, narrow room. A little window of reinforced safety glass high up on one wall. A bunk. A sanitary pail in one corner. A washbasin in another corner with a little towel hanging
alongside
it and sitting on it a bit of soap wrapped in pink paper. Like an idyllic good-morning gift from a grateful lover. A
slat-back
chair stood beside the basin. There was a little shelf on the wall. You could write on it, or lean on it, or beat your head on it. Depending on your mood.

Wenche Andresen was standing in the corner under the window when we came in. Her hair was dishevelled and her face as pale grey as the walls. In some strange way it was as if her lips and eyes had absorbed their colour.

She’d changed her clothes. Black trousers, a white polo-neck and a grey cardigan. She’d aged several years in the forty hours since I’d last seen her.

She looked at me. At Paulus Smith. At the officer. And didn’t say a word until the officer had closed the door behind her with a telling glance at all of us.

Then Wenche looked at me. ‘Varg …’

‘Hello, Wenche,’ I said.

I was standing just inside that heavy steel door and very much aware of the little white-haired man beside me. He wouldn’t miss anything.

From the opposite side of the room she said, ‘How’s …?’

‘Roar’s fine. He said to tell you he loves you and that you shouldn’t be afraid, and he’ll be glad when he can see you again.’

‘But – you didn’t tell him what I – what they say I …’

‘Of course not. I drove him to your sister’s. They send their best. They believe you. There’s nobody who thinks you –’

‘Nobody!’ She looked reproachfully at Paulus Smith. ‘You should hear them. I feel – oh dear God, Varg – I feel as if they’re all against me. As if they’ve already decided I killed Jonas. As if I could have! I loved him.’ She shook her head but she didn’t cry. She’d cried herself out. ‘It’s enough to drive you crazy.’

‘I – we don’t think you … We’ve come to help you, Wenche. We –’

Paulus Smith broke in. ‘Let’s look at this realistically, Fru Andresen. I’ll tell you right now it doesn’t look promising on paper. But Veum thinks that he can – he thinks he’ll be able to uncover facts that’ll change the picture. Maybe he won’t be able to find out just who did murder your husband, but he’ll be able to prove it wasn’t you. It’s up to the police to find the murderer. We – Veum and I – are concerned only with you. Do you understand?’

She nodded.

‘But this means you also have to come clean,’ he went on. ‘It means you have to be absolutely honest, lay all your cards on the table. Tell us the whole truth about what happened the day before yesterday.’

‘But I’ve already told you the truth!’ she burst out.

He stared silently at her. Gaze not moving an inch.

She looked down and then at me. ‘I have told the truth, Varg.’

‘Of course you have,’ I said. ‘We know that. But the last time was right after it happened. I’d like you to tell us the whole thing again. As you remember it now.’

‘Do I have to? Again? Will it ever be over?’

‘I’m afraid, no matter where you go, it’ll be a long time
before it’s over, Wenche,’ I said. ‘Probably never. But it’ll fade into the background. In time. But if we – if I – can help you, then you’ve got to tell me about it again. Slowly and calmly.’

‘Can I sit down?’

I moved the chair. She looked up at us. ‘Does anyone have a cigarette?’

I looked at Smith who found a pack in an inside pocket. ‘For clients,’ he said. ‘I don’t smoke myself. Smoking’s for kids or the terminal.’

He lit her cigarette. ‘As I said,’ she began, ‘I’d come home and was going to make dinner.’

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get it all straight. Anybody know you’d come home? Meet anybody you know? Did you speak to anyone?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Absolutely nobody?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Not one soul you’ve ever known?’

‘No. I really can’t remember if I saw anybody at all, Varg. I mean, of course I saw somebody. You’re always passing
somebody
on the pavement. But what I mean is – I don’t know the people on my floor. So how could I know all the others?’

‘No. Well …’

‘Shall I go on?’ she said.

‘Try.’

‘Well. When I decided to make the pudding I had to go down to the cellar for a jar of jam. And when I came back –’

‘Wait. You said you walked down?’

She nodded.

‘And you met no one?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘And it takes a while to walk down. And longer to walk back up.’

She nodded eagerly. ‘Exactly. That’s what I mean. I was away – I’m sure I was away for about ten minutes.’

‘Did you time it?’ Paulus Smith said.

She looked at him. Puzzled. ‘No. But I think it must have been that long because I spent some time looking for the jam. There was only the one strawberry left. Otherwise there was only raspberry and redcurrant.’

‘Ten minutes,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And that’s when it must have happened.’

‘That’s when. Ten minutes …’ I repeated the times as if they were a coded message I still hadn’t deciphered.

‘And when I came back, I saw the door was ajar and I thought Roar! The gang! And then I ran.’

‘You didn’t look down towards the front of the building? You didn’t see me?’

‘You? Were you there then?’

‘I was. I thought you realised I was down there talking to Joker when – the whole thing happened. As a matter of fact, I’m on the police’s witness list.’

‘That’s right,’ she said tonelessly. ‘You said so the other day. Then – so many things happened. And when I came in, Jonas was lying there on the floor bleeding and bleeding.’

‘Was he already dead when you …?’ I looked hard at her.

She nodded violently. ‘Unconscious, anyway. Oh yes. He must have been dead. He couldn’t see me. He just stared at the wall. He didn’t say anything. Saliva was running out of the corner of his mouth. And the knife was sticking in him like – like I don’t know what.’ She looked as if she were about to break down.

‘And then what did you do?’

‘I … Yes. That must have been when I ran out on the balcony and screamed. And then I went back in …’

‘And the knife?’

‘The knife? I pulled the knife out. I thought it would help. It was …’

I could hear Paulus Smith sigh. But he didn’t say anything.

‘And the jam jar?’ I said.

‘The jam jar? I must have dropped it. In the confusion. I really don’t remember everything. The shock …’

‘Can you remember where you dropped it? On the floor maybe?’

‘Yes – I believe so. And then it broke.’ She nodded slowly.

‘Try to remember. You didn’t drop it – it didn’t hit his head when you dropped it?’

‘His head? Do you mean when he was lying there?’ She looked totally confused.

‘I suppose you realise these are leading questions, Veum,’ Paulus Smith said. ‘They’d never be allowed in court.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got to know. And I have to try to help her remember.’

‘But I can’t, Varg!’ she said. ‘I can’t. It’s as if – oh dear God! Maybe they’re right. All the others. Maybe I killed him. And I just – I just don’t remember it.’

She looked so confused and helpless that I wanted to take her in my arms and whisper, ‘No, my darling. No. You didn’t do it.’ But I didn’t. I was the interrogator.

‘Don’t be silly, Wenche,’ I said. ‘You know as well as I do that you didn’t kill him.’

She hunched in the chair with her face towards the wall. Then she turned and stared up at me from under her eyebrows.
Like an insecure child who’s been scolded. ‘Yes. I know that, Varg,’ she almost whispered.

Nobody said anything for a while. We were both looking at her. I could see Smith hadn’t taken his eyes off her for a second. Now and then he shook his head as if it were
hopeless
. Like a surgeon who hasn’t the heart to tell a young cancer patient there isn’t a chance. That night’s coming all too soon.

Then I said, ‘Richard Ljosne …’

She looked up at me again. ‘What about him?’

‘You were with him last Tuesday morning. What’s your
relationship
with him?’

She turned red. ‘My relationship? What are you talking about? He’s my boss. No more, no less.’

I studied her. Her eyes looked at my shirt, at the top button, at my neck. But they were like hot-air balloons with too much ballast aboard. They couldn’t float up to my eyes.

‘You’ve got to remember that we’re here to help you, Wenche,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t get angry if we ask you stupid questions. If we don’t ask them, the police probably will. Later on. And I’m not sure
they’ll
apologise when they do.’

She swallowed. Nodded. ‘I’m sorry …’

Her voice was barely audible and she had that same childlike expression on her face.

‘Why was he at your house that morning?’ I said.

She looked away again. ‘He’s – he’s in the navy. And
occasionally
he does me some favours.’

‘Favours?’

‘Yes.’ She looked at me as if she expected me to catch on. I was just about to when she added, ‘It’s not that … You know I’m not … I don’t depend on alcohol. But I like having a little
drink or a glass of wine in the evenings. When I’m sitting alone. You know?’