The Consorts of Death (3 page)

I gazed at the vacant, apathetic look on his face and tried to summon up the photograph of the tiny boy on the Rothaugen estate from three or four years ago. But my first impression had been too hazy. I remembered the awkward atmosphere in the small flat, the loudmouth who had burst in, the mother’s
despairing
eyes; and I remembered the tiny boy in his cot. But his face … it still had not taken shape; had hardly done that now.

I crouched down beside the sofa where they were sitting, to be on the same level as him. I put one hand on his knee and said: ‘Would you like to come in my car, Johnny boy?’

For the first time a glint appeared in his eyes. But he said nothing.

‘Then we can go have a chat with a nice lady.’

He didn’t answer.

I took his hand. It was limp, lifeless, and he didn’t respond. ‘Come on!’

Cecilie rose to her feet, carefully took him under the arms and warily lifted him onto the floor. He stood upright, and as I led him to the door he offered no resistance. He tentatively placed his feet in front of him as if he were setting out across a frozen pond, unsure it would bear his weight.

Then we were brought to a halt, all of us. Inspector Muus filled the doorway. Behind him I glimpsed Tora Persen. The tall policeman stared down at the boy in a surly manner. ‘Has he started talking?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well,’ he growled. ‘And where had you been thinking of taking him?’

‘First of all to a psychologist we use, then to an emergency shelter organisation in Åsane.’

He nodded. ‘Just let us know its whereabouts. I suppose it’s not impossible that some of us might have to interview him.’

‘Interview!’ exclaimed Cecilie.

‘He’s the only witness,’ Muus said, sending her a measured glare.

‘I’ll keep you posted,’ I said. ‘But now we have to think about Jan. Could we pass?’

‘Less haste, young man. What name did you say?’

‘Veum. But I didn’t say.’

‘Veum. I’ll make a note of it,’ he said with a faint smile from the corner of his mouth. ‘We could have an amusing time together, we two could.’

‘But not today. Can we go now?’

He nodded and stepped aside. Cecilie and I led Jan into the hallway and headed briskly for the door. From the corner of my eye I saw Muus turn quickly and return to the cellar staircase while Tora Persen remained in the hallway, looking as abandoned as a passing headlight on an ice-bound road.

Outside on the steps I took Jan in my arms and carried him the last part of the way. He didn’t object; I might just as well have been carrying a sack of potatoes. By the car I said to Cecilie: ‘I think you’ll have to sit at the back with him.’

She nodded. I sat Jan down and pushed the right-hand seat forward so that they could get in. Cecilie clambered in and eased herself into the seat behind the driver. I lifted Jan up and she held out her hands to take him. Suddenly he turned his head round and looked me straight in the eye for the first time. ‘Mummy did it,’ he said.

Dr Marianne Storetvedt was a somewhat old-fashioned-looking beauty, around forty years old. Her hair fell in loose cascades over her shoulders. She had an attractive, narrow face with high
cheekbones
. Her sharp eyes were softened by the adjacent laughter lines. She was dressed simply, a bright twin set and a brown skirt with a pearl necklace.

Her office was at the far end of Strandkaien and looked over the docks, Rosenkrantz Tower and Haakon’s Hall or towards Skansen and Mount Fløien, if she cast her gaze in that direction. I would not have minded an office there myself, had anyone offered me one.

The Åsane-bound line of traffic in Bryggen had come to a standstill, as usual at this time of the day, and on the
archaeological
dig site after the 1955 fire, the new museum building on the slope down from St Mary’s Church was beginning to take shape.

Marianne Storetvedt was in the waiting room to greet us. She had immediate eye contact with Jan, who, after the statement he made while being lifted into the car, had been as silent as a trapeze artist. ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him, then laying a friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘We’re going to be good friends, you and I.’

He looked at her without saying a word, without any visible reaction.

She turned to Cecilie and me. ‘I think I’d prefer to speak with him on my own, but … do you have anything to tell me first?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If we could have a few words undisturbed.’

‘I’ll look after Jan in the meantime,’ Cecilie said. ‘We’ll find
ourselves
a magazine to look at, won’t we.’

She sat down with him on one of the upholstered benches in the waiting room and took a weekly from the shelf under the coffee table. I followed Marianne Storetvedt into her office.

The room was as simply kitted out as she was herself: a desk with a chair, a very comfortable leather armchair on the other side of the desk and a leather couch along one wall for those of her clients who preferred to be lying down during the
consultation
. On the walls hung a handful of beautiful, unpretentious landscapes – sea, mountain and forest – broken only by one of Nikolai Astrup’s pictures of Jølster, the well-known spring evening motif, where a man and a woman were on their knees working in a meadow, the apple tree in blossom and the moon reflecting off the lake beneath them.

We stood, and she looked at me with a little smile. ‘Well?’

‘Well, we don’t know much. He’d been at home with his father who was found dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. He was standing in the hall crying when his mother returned home. He didn’t say a word to us until …’

‘Until?’

‘Well … when we were getting in the car to drive here he said …’

‘Yes? Come on!’

‘“Mummy did it.”’

‘“Mummy did it?”’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you tell the police?’

‘No, we haven’t yet. She’s still at the hospital and … I suppose it’ll all come out at some point. Anyway …’

‘Is there anything else I should know about?’

‘I’ll have to get it checked out first, but I was wondering whether Jan could be … whether he might’ve been their foster child, and I’ve met him before.’ Briefly I told her what I could remember of the flat on the Rothaugen estate that July day three and a half years ago.

‘What’s the background of the foster parents? Do you know anything?’

‘No. We haven’t been told anything as yet. They’re called Skarnes. Svein and Vibecke. That’s all I’ve been told. But they live in a detached house in Wergelandsåsen, so we’re not talking about a low-income family here.’

‘No one else? No brothers or sisters, I mean?’

‘No, not as far as I’ve been informed.’

‘OK, so let’s get cracking. I’ll see if I can get him to loosen up. But I don’t want to push him too much. If you and Cecilie wouldn’t mind waiting out there, then …’

We walked into the waiting room together. Outside the windows it was getting dark. The street lighting had come on and the car headlights in Bryggen resembled a torn necklace, the pearls falling off one by one as they headed for Åsane. After a further,
unsuccessful
, attempt to establish contact with Jan, Marianne guided him into her office and closed the door behind her.

Cecilie and I sat outside. She was flicking through the same weekly magazine. It was hardly her taste. I had known her since the summer of 1970, and a periodical like
Sirene
would have been more up her street, workaday feminist that she was.

Some people would call her the classic social worker: short hair, metal oval-framed glasses, no make-up, white blouse under a bright little waistcoat I guessed had been manufactured in a Mediterranean country, dark brown, somewhat worn velvet
trousers
and short black winter boots. Her accent revealed that she came from south of Bergen, more Røldal than Odda. We were chums; we had a great relationship that had moved in two
directions
since Beate went for separation. On the one hand, we had become more open, on an almost personal level, and, on the other, a new distance had sprung up because her sisterly solidarity demanded that Beate should be seen to be right. But when Beate had complained that I spent too many nights away, on business, in fact it was Cecilie I had spent most of them with, and truly on business: on the streets looking for children and youths who had upped sticks.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

She looked up into my eyes, as though she could see down to the very bottom of them, and shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Hard to imagine that he’s making it up.’

‘The stuff about his mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do we know anything about – the parents?’

‘No. It all happened so quickly.’

‘Perhaps we should delve a little deeper?’

‘Really we should just hand him over to the Haukedalen centre, shouldn’t we.’

‘Yes, but …’

She gave a weak smile. ‘You always have to dig deeper into cases, don’t you, Varg.’

‘Well, that’s the way I am. A bit too nosy perhaps. Anyway …’

‘Yes?’

‘Mm, I’m frightened that I may have met him before.’

‘Met – Johnny boy?’

‘Yes.’ Once again I told the story about the hot July day in 1970.

After I had finished, she said: ‘Yes, we’ll definitely have to do some digging into this one. I agree with you.’

She flicked through the magazine without really reading. It was obvious that I had given her something to ponder. I walked round studying the pictures on the wall. They were old photographs of Bergen, most were of the area around Vågen, the bay, some of down from Murebryggen wharf, others of the market square. It was a town in black and white with busy people in motion,
something
the camera of the time had not always been able to capture, some of the figures were fuzzy at the edges, like apparitions. In the bay the forest of masts revealed how many boats there were. Down on the quay, delivery boys and porters passed by with sacks over their shoulders and barrels on their handcarts. Another town, another time, other problems.

Almost an hour passed before the office door opened again. Marianne Storetvedt carefully led Jan through the double doors into the waiting room. She shot us a look and gave a quick shake of her head. Then in a friendly tone, while patting him on the shoulder, she said: ‘Johnny boy doesn’t feel like talking to us today. That’s his right. I think what he needs most now is something to eat and perhaps a nice cup of hot chocolate.’

I nodded. ‘If I could just use your phone …’

She pointed to her office. ‘By all means.’

I went in, alone. The desk was nice and tidy, and there were no notes about what she might have got out of Jan. I leafed through my address book and dialled the Haukedalen Children’s Centre, an institution which was mainly for children at risk.

The manager himself answered the phone, a colleague of ours called Hans Haavik. I explained the predicament to him and said we were on our way. He promised to have a hot meal ready for us when we arrived.

I took the opportunity to search through Marianne’s telephone directory.

Skarnes, Svein was in the book, no mention of a profession. His wife was not listed. Above the surname I found something called Skarnes Import with General Manager Skarnes, Svein mentioned, giving the same private address and telephone number. The text did not detail what he imported.

I went out to join the others. Marianne Storetvedt and Cecilie were standing by one window speaking in hushed voices. Jan stood behind them with the same distant expression. When I came in, his eyes sought mine, and for a moment I had the impression he wanted to say something. I smiled encouragement and nodded, but not a sound emerged after all.

‘Are you hungry?’

He gave a slight nod of the head.

‘Shall we go in the car again?’

He nodded again, with a bit more energy this time.

‘I’ve been talking to someone called Hans. He’ll have a meal ready for when we arrive,’ I said, including the two women in the conversation.

Cecilie said: ‘Well, I could do with something to eat, too.’

Marianne Storetvedt said she would like to talk to Jan ‘when he was in the mood’, as she expressed it. We thanked her and took our leave, then went down to the car which I had parked in the quay area across the road from the building.

Not long afterwards we had joined the traffic queue to Åsane as though unable to keep away, despite all our efforts. An
anthropologist
might have called it the eternal longing to migrate that all humanity has in its blood.

We were like a small family unit as we wended our way, and not that untypical: no one said a word. For myself, I had more than enough to ponder. Not least – and in vain this time round – Jan’s mother’s real name. If it was him, that is.

Haukedalen Children’s Centre lay discreetly set back from Hesthaugvegen on the ridge leading to Myrdalskogen and
Geitanuken
, one of the mountains screening the central parts of Åsane from the sea. The area, originally considered countryside, had been included in the town at the local council merger of 1972. At this time it was the setting for huge building projects, from rows of detached houses to tall blocks, schools and shopping centres. Road extensions had not managed to keep pace with
developments
, and the proposal for an urban railway that had been put to the council had been rejected by the majority as economically irresponsible. They had decided to build motorways instead. Until these plans were realised we all sat in jams, if we were intending to go in that direction. It wasn’t until we reached the top of Åsavegen, by the turn-off to Tertnes, that the traffic began to flow without any further delays, and by the time we were in Haukedalen, Hans Haavik had had plenty of time to prepare the meal.

Hans Haavik was a big man, around one-metre-ninety tall, as broad as a barn door, in his mid-thirties, with a good-natured temperament that inspired trust in all those who, for a variety of reasons, sought shelter beneath his wing. Cecilie’s need for food was met. He had set the table for us all in the refectory, a bright room with large, vivaciously decorated wood panels against the grey concrete walls behind. On the way in we had passed two
thirteen
- or fourteen-year-old boys standing and kicking a ball to each other in the car park by the entrance. From the lounge we could hear the characteristic sounds of an ice hockey game with the puck whizzing between the one-dimensional mini-players like a bullet.