Wolves at the Door

by Gunnar Staalesen

  ‘Veum. Knut Haugen, is he in?’

  She sent me a measured look. ‘Have you got an appointment?’

  ‘No, but I won’t be long.’

  ‘And this is about…?’

  I smiled disarmingly. ‘That’s a little too complicated to explain.’

  Her expression altered from measured to sceptical. ‘Then I think you should contact him in some other way. By email or something like that.’

  ‘It’s about his family.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think I’ll have to explain it to him personally.’

  She appeared to be thinking. Then she said: ‘Well, wait here and I’ll find out.’

  She disappeared down the corridor and I waited. Some ancient sea charts hung on the walls, which gave me an even stronger sense of being in a shipping office. Perhaps it had been one once and they had simply taken it over. There was a lot to suggest that growth in IT was greater than in shipping at the moment.

  She returned with a man I recognised from the photos I had seen on the net. He was around forty, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and tie, like an estate agent or a financial consultant. His hair was short, his face quite square, his body rounded, and when he came over to me I could confirm he was no more than 1.70 metres in height.

  Our eyes met. He regarded me in a way that betrayed no emotion. ‘What’s this about?’

  The woman still stood beside him. I gestured in her direction. ‘I don’t know if your colleague said?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I think we should discuss this in private.’

  His face, if possible, became even squarer, as though his jaw muscles were tensed to repel reality.

  The woman immediately excused herself. ‘Don’t let me stand in your way.’ She flashed a quick smile at Haugen, ignored me and disappeared into an office to the left of the entrance, closing the door behind her. However, it was made of glass and I saw her sit down behind a desk and signal with one quick glance that she knew how to talk straight if anything untoward happened out here.

  Knut Haugen narrowed his eyes and squinted ominously. ‘What was the name, did you say?’

  ‘Veum. Varg Veum. I’m a private investigator.’

  His lips seemed to turn inwards, making his mouth one thin, compressed line. Sound emerged only with difficulty. ‘Private investigator?’

  ‘I’m carrying out investigations regarding your father’s death.’

  The familiar refrain was repeated. ‘Investigations? On whose behalf, may I ask?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’

  ‘Then we have nothing to talk about.’

  I took a short cut. ‘No? You’d rather have the police on your doorstep, would you?’

  ‘The police!’ For a moment he seemed almost angry.

  ‘You know very well your father was investigated and even served time recently.’

  His eyes narrowed even further, if possible. He became more and more reminiscent of a stick drawing. Two horizontal lines at the top, one under his nose, square head, not a circle. His voice sounded compressed as well. ‘I haven’t had any contact with my father for many years.’

  ‘No. So I understand. Neither your name, nor your sister’s, was in the obituary.’

  ‘Keep my sister out of this!’

  ‘What—?’

  ‘She’s suffered enough as it is.’

  I flashed a look down the corridor behind him. ‘Why don’t we sit down and chat about this more comfortably?’

  ‘I have nothing to…’

  A man came from another office into the corridor. He walked in our direction, then turned into a side room through an open door, with a quick glance at us. Straight afterwards we heard the sound of a photocopier starting up.

  Haugen stopped talking. He looked sullenly at me. ‘Alright then. Fifteen minutes. Not a second more.’ He spun on his heel and set off for his office without beckoning me to follow.

  I did anyway. He walked ahead of me into his office, strode over to the desk and sat down, with his back to the magnificent view across Vågen to my office. If we got to know each other better, we could stand in our windows and wave to each other.

  He didn’t say I could sit down in one of the chairs facing him, but I took the liberty. I knew that, here, there was no time to lose.

  ‘Your father…’

  ‘As I told you outside, I haven’t had any contact with either of my parents in twenty years, since I left for the military.’

  ‘No contact at all? Not even with your mother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what was the reason for that?’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with you or anyone else.’

  ‘Haugen, the point is that I haven’t come to this meeting completely unprepared.’

  ‘We are not in a meeting.’

  I ignored his objection. ‘Your sister testified against your father in court.’

  ‘They forced her to.’

  ‘Forced? Who did?’

  He flung up his arms. ‘The police! The prosecution counsel. How the hell do I know?’

  ‘She testified anyway.’

  ‘It caused her even more harm.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s done a spell inside, you say? For what and for how long? He’s … he was already out on the bloody street again this summer.’

  ‘Your sister’s case was considered past the statute of limitations.’

  ‘Yes, right. The statute of limitations. A ruined life – can that ever be past the statute of limitations? I don’t doubt that his defence counsel had a few things to say. But he wasn’t the victim here.’

  ‘Neither was—’

  ‘There were many others. Real victims.’

  ‘And do you consider yourself one of them?’

  He jumped up from his chair. ‘Me? I wasn’t … I had nothing to do with them any longer.’

  ‘But before that? Before you moved out?’

  He turned to the side and looked across the bay. Out there was Statsraad Lehmkuhl, the stately three-masted barque, at the quay. Further out we could glimpse Skolten, the cruise-ship terminal, and the tip of Nordnes, the gateway to Vågen, one side fronted with old warehouses, the other with functionalist buildings from the 1920s.

  He seemed to be considering his answer. Then he turned to me again. ‘Both my sister and I moved out as soon as we were old enough. My father … Well, yes. And my mother must’ve been blind. We have no reason to thank them, either of us. Was there anything else?’

  ‘Do you know how your father died?’

  ‘I heard he’d drowned, but that didn’t cause me to have a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘The police. They rang me.’

  ‘And what did they say?’

  ‘Just that. He’d drowned. I don’t know if it was my mother or my uncle who’d told them we no longer had anything to do with them. They knew about my sister’s case. They asked me a few questions, but to me this all seemed to be a matter of form. They clearly didn’t have any suspicion that this was anything other than an accident.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  He quickly ran his tongue over his lips, pinched his mouth and stared stiffly at me. In the end, he said: ‘If someone smashed the guy over the head with a hard object and threw him into the sea, they should be given a reward.’ It struck me that he was repeating what Hans Storebø had said earlier in the day, if not word for word. It confirmed more or less what I had suspected: there was more than one person wanting to dance on Per Haugen’s grave rather than shed tears over his demise. If I had to draw up a list of suspects I was afraid it would be very long, much longer than I had the capacity to cover.

  He looked at his watch demonstratively and stood up. ‘And now our time’s up.’

  I realised I wasn’t going to get a great deal more out of him. Before leaving, I asked: ‘Your sister … What’s her surname?’

  ‘Keep
her out of this, I said.’

  We stood staring at each other. I didn’t budge an inch.

  Once again he flung up his arms. ‘Bratteli. Now just clear off, will you.’

  I followed his advice and cleared off. I waved to the woman in the secretarial office, but she didn’t wave back. I didn’t feel very popular either. About the same as Per Haugen, I thought. But for completely different reasons.

  12

  Back in the office, I booted up the computer and began a search for Laila Bratteli. All I found was an address and a mobile phone number. Apart from that, she was completely off the news radar, at least on the net and by name. When I looked for discussion of the court case in local newspapers I found her referred to twice, but only as ‘the grownup daughter of Per Haugen’ who had ‘made serious accusations against her father of abusing her sexually and from a very young age’.

  Her address was Adolph Bergs vei in Landås. I rang her phone number. She answered, but didn’t say anything. In the background I could hear what I thought was the sound of a radio and one of the extremely wearing advertising channels.

  ‘Hello? Laila Bratteli? Are you there?’

  Then the line went dead.

  I dialled the number again, but now she wouldn’t answer. The phone just rang and rang. There wasn’t even an answerphone message. Perhaps she only replied to voices she recognised. At any rate she didn’t want to talk to me.

  I could do what I usually did: take the cheeky approach – go and ring her doorbell. If nothing else, at least I would find out where she lived. There wasn’t a lot else to do before my trip to Frekhaug that evening.

  I nodded to the woman at the hotel reception desk I had to pass in order to leave the building or access my office after the recent renovation work. She smiled back cheerfully. I had no idea what they thought of me. Probably they took me for a hobgoblin, the kind that comes with a house and you never get rid of.

  I went to my car in Markeveien and drove to Landås. Once there I parked in Chicago. The old nickname from the 1950s and 1960s for the lower end of Adolph Bergs vei was still used, at least by people of my age. In earlier decades the clientele had been of the more motley variety, although the colour tended more towards grey. During my social-welfare years it wasn’t that uncommon for us to come out here after expressions of concern from neighbours or teachers. More often than not we sorted out the situation without too drastic an encroachment on their everyday life. Now my impression of the street was that the arrival of our new Norwegians was evident in a more colourful way than in most other places in town. Vibrant hijabs brightened up the street in a totally different way from the earlier residents’ headwear or lack of similar.

  The three blocks of flats differed architecturally from most of the others in Bergen. The flats each had two floors and there were entrances to them either from street level or via an external gallery on the second floor. A staircase at each end led up to the gallery. I found the right street number, but searched in vain for a Laila Bratteli on any of the lists of residents. Most of the names were foreign too. I walked from door to door reading the nameplates. On the second floor there was a door without any sign at all, only an empty holder where the name could be slid in. From the half-open window of the neighbouring flat issued the unmistakeable smell of oriental spices, and I felt my stomach rumble, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten anything since the biscuits at Tora Haugen’s earlier in the day.

  I stood in front of the anonymous door. I turned my head and placed my better ear against it, in the hope that I might recognise the radio noises I had heard on the phone before. Not a sound reached me.

  There was only one thing to do. I rang the doorbell, but I didn’t hear anything this time, either. It wouldn’t have surprised me if it had been disconnected. Laila Bratteli clearly did whatever she could to avoid confronting circumstances over which she had no control.

  While I was there I dialled her phone number. Again I put my ear to the door, but I couldn’t hear any ringing sounds inside. In the end I tapped on the door with my knuckles, tentatively at first, then I knocked harder and with increasing volume.

  This time I provoked a reaction, but not the one I had been expecting. The door of the next-door flat opened. A dark-skinned man with a black beard, glistening hair of the same hue, large metal-framed glasses, red shirt and dark-brown trousers appeared in the doorway. ‘Now you people just leave the poor woman in peace! If not, I’ll call the police.’ He spoke Norwegian with only a tiny suggestion of an accent.

  ‘I’ve never been here before. Have other people tried to talk to her?’

  ‘Tried? They’re here at all hours, but she refuses to open up. And we know who’s probably behind it. It’s her ex-husband. He never gives up.’

  ‘My name’s Veum. Varg Veum. I haven’t come here to bother her.’

  ‘Ghulam Mohammed,’ he said, with a slight bow of the head.

  ‘Do you have any contact with her? Laila Bratteli?’

  ‘Not me. But my wife, Fatima, does. The two of them talk. They have a cup of tea together now and then, at the mall. Not often, but a few times a month maybe.’

  ‘Is your wife in now?’

  ‘No, she’s in town, shopping.’

  ‘If I come back later today, or tomorrow, could I have a few words with your wife?’

  He eyed me sceptically. ‘I don’t know. I can ask her.’

  ‘Or could she help me to contact Laila?’

  ‘I’ll ask.’

  I produced one of my business cards. ‘This is my name, phone number and whatever else you might need to contact me. Tell me when it’s convenient for me to come back or give it to Laila Bratteli, and ask her to contact me directly if she wants.’

  He took the card, read everything on it and then looked up again. ‘Private investigator?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘First time I see that.’

  ‘OK. You mentioned her ex-husband…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know what his name is? Other than Bratteli?’

  He projected his lower lip and waggled it from side to side, as a sign that he was thinking. ‘Bjarne or Bjarte? One of the two, I think.’

  I nodded and made a mental note.

  ‘She hasn’t had an easy life,’ he said. ‘From what I’ve been told.’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to find out, but…’ I opened my palms. ‘You’ll be doing me a big favour if you – or your wife – can ask her to get in touch with me.’

  He nodded again. Holding the card demonstratively in the air, he withdrew into the doorway. ‘We will try. I have understood.’

  He closed the door quietly after him.

  I stood for a few moments staring at the door Laila Bratteli was hiding behind. Walking back to my car I heard the echo of a song from a radio play about Dickie Dick Dickens in my head: ‘Oh Chicago, my Chicago…’

  I turned and looked up at the windows I assumed belonged to Laila’s flat. There wasn’t a sign of life on either floor. The blinds were drawn and not one of them moved, in case she was peering between the slats. That gave me even more incentive to talk to her. Or to her husband, for that matter.

  13

  Once again I sat down at my computer.

  I still had an ambivalent attitude towards it. On the one hand, it had become an almost indispensable tool of my trade. It was unbelievable how much you could find out with it and if a search proved to be difficult there was, at best, help elsewhere. On the other, I had personal experience of how it could be abused by those with malicious intent. Since then I had been very careful about what emails I answered and what links I opened, unless I felt a hundred percent secure about the sender, and often not even then.

  But now I was back searching for another name. It wasn’t long before I had a hit with Bjarne Bratteli – his address and phone number, landline and mobile. Further searches revealed only a link to the tax lists for several years, 2002 the most recent. His income didn’t sugges
t that he had a particularly lucrative job, and I was unable to establish what it was.

  I tried the landline first. No one picked up. I rang the mobile number. He answered, but there was lots of background noise; it sounded like children playing, and clearly he found it difficult to hear what I was saying. At length we agreed I would call him later. Preferably after nine, but I said that unfortunately I was busy then.

  ‘What about tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m calling about your ex-wife. Laila.’

  He seemed to have moved away from the worst of the noise. ‘Oh, yes? Anything serious?’

  ‘No, no. I just can’t contact her.’

  ‘Yes, tell me about it. But why do you want to see me?’

  ‘To have a chat.’

  ‘How busy are you this evening?’

  ‘Hard to say.’

  ‘Anyway, you can call me any time until twelve. Midnight. Now I have to ring off.’ Before he did, I heard a child screaming in the background. Then everything went quiet.

  I made a note of where he lived, in Nye Sandviksvei. That meant I could possibly pay him a call after I had been to Frekhaug. Or, as he had himself suggested, the day afterwards.

  I continued searching. There was another name from among my coaccused a year and a half ago: Karl Slåtthaug. According to the police, he had moved to Tønsberg. I entered his name on the screen and searched.

  It appeared in various news stories. Most of them were several years old. Some I remembered from the last time I searched for his name. He had organised collections for street children, in Europe and South America. He had taken part in debates about child welfare and had written several newspaper articles on the same topic. In addition, he was very committed to environmental issues and was referred to as one of the leading lights behind an environment party that for unknown reasons never came into being.