Yours Until Death (20 page)

He looked as if I’d caught him with his hand in the biscuit tin. I looked more closely and I knew I was right. I was surer of it every second. He had once been in Wenche Andresen’s life. He was still in her photograph album. And here he was … a few hundred metres from where her husband, or ex-husband, had been brutally murdered. Not that there had to be a
connection
. Needn’t be significant. But it was a little suspicious that he hadn’t mentioned knowing her.

‘So what?’ he said. His voice was reedy now and without a trace of sarcasm. ‘What difference does it make who I once knew a long time ago?’

‘Everything makes a difference when people die. That way. You loved her. Right? Didn’t you follow her everywhere she went? Didn’t you move here when she did? I’ve heard of rejected lovers who have moved to a lot worse places than this just to be close to their sweethearts.’

‘Piss off, Veum!’ he said. ‘I dislike you so much that – that …’ He took a few clumsy steps towards me.

‘That you’d consider sticking a switchblade into my belly? Is that what you generally do with people you don’t like, Våge?’

His face turned red. Hardened. ‘Be glad there aren’t any witnesses, Veum. Otherwise you’d be eating your words in some damned courtroom. I dislike you because you’re always jumping to conclusions. Because you’re always accusing people of motives they don’t have or never have had …’

‘That sounds like somebody I know,’ I said. ‘Somebody I’ve just met.’

‘It wasn’t that way, Veum. Yes. I knew Wenche – once. We spent the end of a summer together. August. September. That’s all. I …’ He shrugged. ‘I thought maybe there might be more. She – she was different from most other women I’d – had
dealings
with. Maybe not an intellectual. But more open. Open to new experiences. She was warm, good, and yes – a woman. A woman you could love more than you did other women. But she … It didn’t mean all that much to her – I mean, I didn’t. So we split up, after … Well. That was that. There never has been more to it. We went our own ways. And when I accidentally ran into her here, found out that she lived here, too – it was totally and completely –’

‘What year was this?’

His face was unusually empty of emotion. As if it were a desiccated sponge at the bottom of a blackboard in a locked classroom at the end of a long dry summer holiday. ‘It was – it must have been – 1966. No. ’67. Eleven years ago. That’s an eternity by now, Veum.’

Eleven years ago. He was right. By now it was an eternity. I’d been in Social Work School in Stavanger in August and September of 1967. I’d just met Beate and we went for long walks along Solastranden. And we felt as if we could walk and walk around Jæren if we had to. Hand in hand with a cold wind blowing in from the sea and a blood-red sun at our backs. 1967. An eternity ago. So many eternities ago …

‘But you never could forget her,’ I said. ‘You said she was special. We’re like that. We men. We’re always falling in love with somebody we go on loving for the rest of our lives. But we do our best not to meet her again. Because by then she’s
dyed her hair and her breasts have sagged, and she’s got a spare tyre. She’s older – just as we are. And no dream lasts for ever. All dreams are basically illusions. It’s just that some of us have greater problems accepting that reality than others.’

‘Well, I accepted that reality, Veum. More to the point – I never had those dreams. Not for long anyway. When I met Wenche again, it was … completely ordinary. Like meeting an old school friend you liked once. Had something in common with once. But not any more. That time’s past. So I talked to Wenche just as I’d talk to any old friend. And that’s all there was to it.’

‘So that’s all there was to it? Didn’t you meet her often?’

‘I didn’t meet her, Veum. I ran into her now and then.’

‘And her husband?’

‘I never met him. I’ve no idea what he looked like.’

‘You realise I can ask Wenche about this?’

‘So ask! Ask until your lungs burst, Veum. She can only tell the truth.’

But truth’s a dangerous word. You never know when it’s going to swell on your tongue and get too big. Gunnar Våge looked as if he knew it because his face looked as if he’d just unexpectedly bitten on something strange and he could taste it.

‘Where were you on Wednesday afternoon, Våge?’ I said.

‘I think the police should ask me that, Veum. It’s none of your business,’ he said.

‘No, maybe not. You’ll be hearing from them, Våge. Good luck.’ I turned toward the door.

But I knew he’d stop me before I got too far. I saw it in his face, and I knew he was someone who had to get it all off his chest once he’d started.

‘If you must know, Veum,’ he yelled after me, ‘I was home. Alone. On the twelfth floor. But not in Wenche’s building. In an adjoining one. It’s not an impressive alibi, but I’d like to take a shot at the person who can say he saw me outside my flat that afternoon.’

‘Where?’ I said.

‘Where what?’ he said.

‘Where would you like to take a shot at him?’ I said. ‘Between the eyes? Or in the belly?’

He had it coming. He’d said he didn’t like me. And I’m someone who wants to be liked. I’m someone who’ll beg
everybody
he meets to like him.

I left Gunnar Våge in the doorway of his office, where he’d be getting ready for tonight’s youth club meeting. And I hurried through the hall and up into that healing grey light. World War III hadn’t started. The cars were where they had been, and people rushed by. Lights were going on in the high-rises. They looked like glittering ladders to a heaven we’d never reach.

I looked at the Lyderhorn. As usual the old demon lay there and watched. Always ready, always on duty. Maybe I should take Ljosne’s advice. Run up and kick the mountain in its beacon and see if it complained.

There’s a lot you can do if you’ve got the time. So many mountains you can climb up. And just as many you can climb down. Because if life had taught me anything, it had taught me you can’t ever stay on the summit. You always climb back down. You have to. God knows why. And God knows what you expect to find there on the summit. Because whatever it is, you never do.

I was hungry but I hadn’t the stomach for a three-course meal in town, so I drove to the nearest hot-dog stand. It’s the most unhealthy food you can imagine. Bits of meat and guts mixed with air, and seasoned with cost-accounting and served with mustard, ketchup and onions because it has to taste of
something
. And if you’re thirsty you can buy coloured sugar water or automatically brewed coffee that also tastes and looks dirty.

This hot-dog stand was located in one of the Inferno’s voids, beside a pocket of traffic connected to a parking place, and fifty metres away from a petrol station on a stretch of road so wide and so desolate that nobody had wanted to build alongside it.

I parked in the company of ten or twelve shiny new
motorcycles
in the season’s latest colours: red, yellow and dark
blue-green
. Old-fashioned black motorbikes were out. These weren’t very large. They reminded you of overgrown mopeds and seemed suitable transportation for this decade’s youngsters.

And the decade’s representatives were outside the hot-dog stand, happily divided into the two sexes. Their fists held bottles of cola and their eyes were wary when I got stiffly out of the car and walked towards them.

Somebody said something I didn’t catch.

Laughter. In unison.

‘Where’d you get that car? The Historical Museum?’

More laughter. Cackles from a coven of witches.

I smiled. They were of a different calibre than Joker’s gang.
These kids were merely verbal. Their faces told you so. They were at the age when anybody over twenty’s funny, and
whenever
more than two are gathered together, there’s always got to be a wise guy. I’d been one of them once. No motorcycle, but just the same.

And I knew where they went when they got home. They went off by themselves and sat in front of their mirrors and studied their pimples with the same intensity others gave to the problem of the world’s resources. Or else they looked dizzily between their legs and wondered what they ought to do with it and whether a buyer might not come along pretty soon.

It’s an unhappy merciless age, an age of confusion, one you never quite get over – because all your ages leave their scars in your soul. I’ve never wanted to be that age again. There have been times I’ve wished I were seven again, but I’ve never missed being seventeen.

I walked over to the counter. Two girls in their twenties held the fort behind it. I ordered four hot dogs with ketchup and was optimistic enough to ask for orange juice. Settled for a bottle of soda instead.

‘Out on the town, uncle?’ suggested one of the group.

I smiled and started on the first hot dog. ‘Out to shorten my life by a few hours,’ I said. ‘Do you know how much fat there is in a hot dog like this?’ I asked a boy who didn’t look as if he knew what fat was. He smiled foolishly.

The others overheard my question. It was against the rules to talk to anybody over thirty, so they quickly went somewhere else, leaving the hot dogs and the two girls to me.

They stood so close together they looked like Siamese twins. Not out of affection but because the hot-dog stand was so small. They wore indigo smocks decorated with an assortment
of grease, ketchup and mustard stains. Both were pretty heavy. Cheaply dyed hair. It wouldn’t be long before they looked like Hildur Pedersen.

It didn’t look as if we had anything in common, so I hurried through my meal, finished the soda and drove back to the
concrete
giants. Before I took the plunge, I stood by the car and looked at them.

Four of them – and how many people? Two or three hundred in each high-rise. About a thousand all told. A thousand people stacked up.

In stacks of drawers with names on them and which they pop out of like mechanical dolls. Mechanical dolls who go to sleep, who get up, eat, get into their toy cars, drive to work and drive back at four o’clock. They eat, sleep, read the paper, watch TV and sleep again. Other mechanical dolls sleep, get up, eat, take care of the kids, do the laundry, babysit, cook, eat, sleep, wash the dishes, read the paper, watch TV and sleep. Others too young to have learned what they should do and so do all the wrong things play, cry, check out one another’s genitals in the entrances to dark cellars, play football and fight. And eat and sleep.

Some of the mechanical dolls sleep with each other. Most of them once a week, preferably on a Saturday after a bottle of wine and with the lights off. Some sleep with each other once a month and think that’s too often. A few sleep with each other every day. But then – suddenly one of the dolls goes off the rails and sleeps with the wrong doll. And then if you stab him with a knife you see blood. And then you ask yourself if they aren’t mechanical dolls just the same.

Maybe all of them hide their secrets, like Jonas Andresen. Their dreams. Like Jonas Andresen. But not many of them turn
their dreams and their secrets into realities as Jonas Andresen did. Only a very very few of them die because of it.

Four high-rises. Gunnar Våge lived in one of them. Solfrid Brede lived in the middle one, and so did Wenche Andresen – away for the moment. Joker lived with his mother, Hildur Pedersen, in the third tower. And that’s where I was headed.

It had begun to get dark. A grey-blue afternoon darkness that would quickly melt into blue-black and then into pure black. Black starless darkness with a thin drift of rain in the air.

The flat door opened before I rang the bell, and Joker looked as surprised as I did when we stood face to face.

I remembered that reedy voice. On Wednesday. When he’d asked what was going on. But his voice wasn’t reedy now. ‘I warned you, Harry. Remember what I told you?’

‘My memory’s terrible,’ I said. ‘Must be my age.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I told you to keep away from my mother. Leave her alone.’

‘Relax, Johan,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to hurt –’

‘I’m not Johan,’ he said abruptly. ‘Not to you, Harry. You belong with – the others.’

‘Are you so sure?’ I said.

He didn’t answer.

‘And Gunnar Våge,’ I said. ‘He belongs with you. He’s on the right side. Is that it?’

‘He’s honest, anyway. Real.’

‘But what’s the right side, and what’s the wrong one?’

‘Some people are with us. And then there’s people like you. And you’re against us.’ He was almost formal.

‘You remind me of somebody,’ I said. ‘In a book I must have read once.’

He tried to get by me.

‘Just listen a minute,’ I said. ‘I’ve got … in a lot of ways I’ve got the same background as Gunnar Våge. I think I know how you feel. I know you’re looking for something to hold on to. But a switchblade isn’t enough. You’ll just end up cutting yourself. And terrorising little boys isn’t anything to build a future on, Johan.’

‘I told you not to call me –’

‘OK. What? Billy the Kid?’

‘I’m only saying – I’m warning you. Leave my mother alone. Or else.’

I could hear Hildur Pedersen’s rough voice inside the flat. ‘Who are you talking to, Johan?’

He stared hard at me. ‘Nobody – Mum.’

‘You call me Nobody, I’ll call you Special. And we can go on stage. As “Nobody Special”. Sounds good.’

No. It didn’t sound good. ‘Get lost, Veum,’ he said.

‘Relax, Johan,’ I said. ‘I want to ask your mother just one question. No more, no less. And nobody’s going to stop me.’

He raised a slim pale forefinger and he reminded me more than ever of a priest. ‘I’m warning you, Veum. For the last time.’

I shoved the forefinger and its owner aside, walked into the flat and closed the door firmly behind me. He kicked it hard. And then I heard him hurrying along the balcony.

‘Johan?’ That hoarse voice was coming from the living room.

‘Veum,’ I said.

She was lying on the sofa. Her multi-coloured hair stuck out in all directions and she was having problems finding me in the dusk. None of the lamps were on but there were a lot of bottles you could make into lamps if you were handy. They were empty. All you had to do was to get started.

She lay on her side, her head on the arm of the sofa, one fat white arm acting as a pillow. When I came in she tried to get an elbow under her and rest her head in her hand. But she couldn’t co-ordinate. She smiled sheepishly at me. ‘Hello, Veum,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the last time.’ Her speech was slurred.

‘Been swimming?’ I said.

Her gaze elbowed its way through the forest of bottles. ‘Swimming?’ she said.

I sat in a chair on the other side of the coffee table. She
gestured
toward it. ‘Help yourself, as they say.’ Then she laughed.

‘They’re empty,’ I said.

She looked sad. ‘All of them?’

‘All of them.’

She smiled. Problem solved. She bent her free hand behind her and dug among the cushions. Came up with an unopened bottle of vodka.

‘He who seeketh, findeth,’ she said. Her practised fingers opened the bottle and she did a quick taste test before she handed it across the table to me.

I set it down in front of me. It would be a handy hostage if she didn’t feel like talking.

‘Aren’t you thirsty?’ She looked disbelieving. As if it were impossible not to be constantly thirsty.

‘Not right now,’ I said. ‘I’m still driving.’

‘What the hell do you want?’ Her smile was broad. ‘I don’t think you’ve stopped by for a little number.’ And she waved both hands like an overweight seal waving its flippers. And then she spread her arms in a standing invitation.

‘I was wondering,’ I said.

‘Well?’

‘The last time – when you told me about Johan’s father, I don’t think you were completely honest.’

She looked cross-eyed. ‘No?’ she said, as if she really didn’t remember whether we’d ever discussed the matter.

‘No. Not completely. For example, you said Johan’s father sent money every month and maybe he did. But you didn’t say he visited regularly.’

‘Well, I …’ It’s not easy to lie when you’re sprawled on a sofa and you’re full of undigested vodka. ‘I … I meant – it’s none of your business.’

‘No. Maybe not. But then again, maybe it is. So he comes here? How often? Once a month?’

She nodded and shrugged at the same time.

‘Every other month?’

She nodded. Crookedly.

‘And maybe Johan sees him? Because it’s Johan he comes to see, isn’t it? To see how he is?’

She nodded again.

‘But Johan thinks he’s just one of your usual – boyfriends? You’ve let him see his father again and again all these years – but you’ve never had the guts to tell him that that was his father?’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It wasn’t –’

‘It wasn’t his business? His own father wasn’t his business?’

‘It wasn’t his own father – not after he dumped me that way. He – he could have left his wife. He didn’t have to dump this on me. It wasn’t the way I told you it was the last time you were here, Veum. It wasn’t the way I’ve told it to everybody who’s ever asked.’

She managed to sit up. Hands on her knees and that large head bobbing like a toy between her shoulders.

‘I’ll tell you about it. You’re a good guy, so I’ll tell you the truth about … It wasn’t just a pick-up at the Starlight
Ballroom
. It was – it was the only real love affair I’ve ever had. The only one I can still remember. And it’s alive. It’s the only one that still wakes me up at night because I’ve been dreaming about him.

‘And I loved him, Veum. And he – he never told me he was married. He wasn’t wearing a ring when I met him and we … And I believed every word he said right up until – until I got pregnant with Johan. And then he came clean. Told me he was married and that his wife was also pregnant, and that we …

‘He said he’d help me, but he couldn’t marry me. And I loved him. I loved him so much I couldn’t say no. To anything. So I let him buy his freedom, if that’s the right word. I let him buy me this flat and the one I lived in before this. I let him pay for raising Johan. Schools. Like that. And I even let him visit. See his son. And he’s come here since Johan was six months old.’

‘And you two let Johan grow up like this? Without
answering
the most important question of his life, without giving him the stability a father gives a kid? Or can give.’

‘It was – well, he wanted it that way. He didn’t want to risk Johan’s suddenly showing up at his door when he was older and causing – problems.’

‘And you went along with that?’

‘I told you! I loved him!’ Her voice was wild with feeling. Then it died into a whimper. ‘I still love him.’

I didn’t say anything. I felt so out of it sitting there in that room as the twilight grew steadily darker. The empty bottles shone a little and, on the other side of the coffee table, a woman weighing one hundred and twenty kilos was confiding her life’s best-kept secrets to me.

Her voice was softer now. ‘But where he was concerned? It was just fun-and-games. He – when he came to see us those first years, he and I still, he still wanted … I was younger. Better looking. Not so – heavy. But it’s been years now since he’s so much as kissed me. It’s almost like – a normal marriage now. It’s been over for him for years. If there ever was anything really there. But it’ll never be finished for me until I am.
Finished
.’ She searched for me in the darkness. ‘Love’s a funny thing, isn’t it, Veum? I mean, that it seldom manages to hit the same two people at the same time?’

I nodded. She was right. If these past days had taught me anything at all, it was that. That love’s a lousy marksman and seldom hits two bullseyes in a row.

‘Too many marriages are garbage,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I’ve been spared that anyway. I haven’t had to live with half-truths, half a love or half … half everything.’

Another thing I’d learned from all this. People who have got to live alone always have a good excuse or some kind of
rationalisation
. It’s the only way they manage to survive.

I found the thread again. ‘And you weren’t being entirely honest when you said he was a sailor, were you? Not entirely.’

‘No. You’re right.’