Wolves at the Door

by Gunnar Staalesen

  Luckily – I had to concede on my own behalf – no names were mentioned when he, I, Mikael Midtbø and Per Haugen were in the same boat for a few weeks in September 2002, so there were no articles associated with him. The most recent one, however, caused a chill to run down my spine. Five months ago, in August, there was an article in Tønsbergs Blad, showing him with a broad smile on his face standing alongside a woman flanked by another man. What made me react was the headline:

  ‘PRIVATE CHILD REFUGEE CENTRE ESTABLISHED IN TØNSBERG’.

  The centre was obviously situated in a rural setting, judging by the background in the picture. An initiative calling itself BiT, Barnemottaket i Tønsberg – child reception centre in Tønsberg – had, so the article ran, financed and organised a centre for orphaned refugee children. Here they would do the best they could to integrate the children into the local milieu and into society in general. Physical activity, schooling and culture were the priorities. The director of the centre was … Karl Slåtthaug.

  I felt an immediate urge to grab the telephone next to me. Didn’t they know what they were doing in Tønsberg? Didn’t they conduct background checks on the staff they employed? And who was behind this private initiative?

  I jotted down the names of the two other people in the photo: Anne Kristine Kaldnes and Pål Vassbotn. She was fair-haired and looked like a classic social worker, with round glasses, a light-coloured shirt, denim jeans and a purple scarf hanging loosely around her neck. He looked like an estate agent, a young man in a dark suit, white shirt and tie. The way I interpreted the photo, the distribution of roles was clear: from right to left, sponsor, idealist and director. There were no children visible, but the article also said the first would be coming at the end of the month, in other words, August.

  On the newspaper’s website, I searched for the word ‘Barnemottaket’, but there were no more hits. I entered the two other names. Anne Kristine Kaldnes came up as a member of an organising committee for the Women’s Day in Tønsberg in 1999 and as a speaker on the theme of refugee children somewhere else. There was a photo of Pål Vassbotn as a new customer support officer at Nøtterø Savings Bank and a short bio that said little more than that he had the right professional background and had studied at the BI Business School in Oslo.

  Tønsberg was a town of which I had only peripheral knowledge. Of course I knew that Slottsfjellet Tower was the town’s emblem and that the historical connection between Bergen and Tønsberg had been important, not least during Håkon Håkonsson’s reign, when his daughter, Kristina of Tunsberg, was a central figure. I had been there a couple of times, but only in transit and even that had been quite a number of years ago.

  The only person I knew in Tønsberg was a lawyer I had been in touch with now and then. I had carried out some investigations for him in Bergen. The last time was around a year ago – in connection with a case about a medicine spiked with red saffron. I searched my mobile for his telephone number.

  He answered after three or four rings. ‘F-f-oyn.’ It was him. I remembered now. He had an occasional stammer.

  ‘Veum here.’

  ‘The Bergen Veum?’

  ‘Yes. Happy New Year.’

  ‘Thanks. S-same to you.’ After a slight pause he continued: ‘How can I help you? I assume you’re not ringing to wish me a h-h-happy New Year.’

  ‘You’re absolutely correct. I’m working on a case with a possible lead in Tønsberg.’

  ‘I see. Anything interesting?’

  ‘Does the name Karl Slåtthaug mean anything to you?’

  ‘N–oo. Can’t say it does.’

  ‘What about Anne Kristine Kaldnes?’

  He hesitated. ‘Kaldnes … I think I’ve met someone with that name. A child-welfare case a few years ago.’

  ‘Sounds like the right person.’

  ‘A feminist virago. Could that be her?’

  ‘Depends on your definition, but from the photo I found on the Tønsberg Blad webpage, she’s probably a feminist.’

  ‘Social worker is my guess.’ He was chuckling.

  ‘Don’t laugh at social workers. I was one myself.’

  ‘Well, well. Is this a child-welfare case as well?’

  ‘Not necessarily. I have another name. Pål Vassbotn.’

  ‘Don’t know him.’

  ‘Employed by Nøtterø Savings Bank.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean a thing to me.’

  ‘And then there’s another institution. BiT they call themselves. Barnemottaket in Tønsberg.’

  ‘Yes, I know about them. But not much. They’re out by Olsrød.’

  ‘Karl Slåtthaug’s the director. The other two are both involved in the project, in one way or another. You haven’t heard anything about the business? Does it do what it’s supposed to do? No – what shall I say? – rumours circulating in town?’

  ‘Now you’re whetting my curiosity, Veum. Rumours about what?’

  ‘Karl Slåtthaug’s from Bergen and he has a very bad CV. Let me put it like that.’

  ‘Worse than yours?’ Again the low chuckle.

  ‘Much worse. To be frank, I’m quite shocked that anyone there would employ him. At any rate, they can’t have asked the police for a record check.’

  ‘That type of institution should have done so, really.’

  ‘Yes, indeed they should.’

  ‘Listen, Veum, I’ll put my ear to the ground, see if anyone’s heard anything, but I doubt they have. Otherwise it would’ve reached my ears. Sometimes I walk past there when I’m out with the dog in the evening. I’ll keep my eye on the place and make some enquiries about this … Slåtthaug, was that the name?’

  ‘Yes. Karl.’

  I could hear him making notes and then we rang off. I was happy with this. Foyn was a man I could trust. If there was anything to find out, I was confident he would do it.

  So there was little else I could do other than get some food down me before leaving for Frekhaug. The day had been a lot busier than I had imagined. And it wasn’t over yet. Frekhaug is a village situated by a fjord and as the old folks say: where there’s life, there’s hope.

  14

  If you have lived for long enough in one place, over the years you have been almost everywhere in the town and its environs. Usually I had only seen Frekhaug from a distance as I passed over Nordhordland Bridge. My sole remaining memory of the area was the time before Nordhordland Bridge and the one between Flatøy and Holsnøy were built. Frekhaug was connected to the mainland by the Salhus ferry. I had once spent a rainy June night in my car because I had missed the last ferry across the fjord, a classic situation for most Vestlanders in fact, before the highway authorities began to build bridges to even the smallest skerry off the coast.

  The bridges that appeared in the 1990s had in reality turned Frekhaug into a suburb of Bergen, which was reflected in the building style. The small homesteads were replaced by terraced and detached houses in a variety of price brackets. With the help of a road map I found my way to where Haldis Midtbø lived: a terraced house in the area between the centre of Frekhaug and the old ferry quay.

  I was there as close to nine as it was possible to be. I could see a woman I assumed was her at the window, watching me park by a sign saying Guests. When I got out of the car she moved away from the window and stood in the doorway as I approached the house. ‘The children are in bed,’ she said in a low voice, stepping aside to allow me in.

  I entered a cosy hallway where a staircase led up to the floor above. She drew my attention to a clothes stand. I removed my winter jacket, which she took and hung up. Then she nodded towards the stairs and motioned for me to follow her up. ‘Their bedroom is downstairs,’ she said in a slightly more normal voice when we were at the top. Along a bright corridor with a number of doors, several of them ajar, we came into the sitting room. It had large windows overlooking the fjord, with the ferry quay on the opposite side and the floodlit church and town of Salhus shining at us in the darkness.

  Haldis M
idtbø was a thin woman. Her reddish hair was knotted into a ponytail and she was wearing a dark-blue jumper and light-brown cord trousers. She had dark bags under her eyes, pale skin and a slightly nervous disposition. The tired expression in her eyes suggested a lack of sleep or that this was the end of a long day.

  The furniture in the room was simple and practical; the pictures on the walls were decent prints and lithographs, most with easily recognisable coastal-landscape motifs. A shelving unit and a TV screen vied for attention along one wall, where a door led to the south-facing garden. Outside I saw some sparse bushes and a pile of snow.

  ‘My husband’ll be back later. He’s been held up by a meeting.’

  ‘That’s fine. It’s you I want to talk to anyway.’

  Her eyes wandered. ‘Yes, but as I told you on the phone yesterday, I’ve put everything to do with what Mikael did behind me. I can’t bear to think about it. What he did to our own children! To the neighbour’s! But for the fact that I have a good job here, we’d have gone miles and miles away and never returned.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a primary-school teacher. I’m with children every single day. Just the thought of what some of them might’ve been subjected to by those responsible for them! It’s absolutely disgusting.’

  ‘And what was your husband charged with? I mean … the precise terms?’

  ‘What he was charged with? It came out at the trial that he was involved with some kind of network sending pictures of naked children all over the world.’ She inhaled deeply and a low sob emerged before she could continue. ‘He’d taken photos of our children while they were in the bathtub here, or in the sea in Spain, and what was worse – while they were sleeping.’

  ‘Did you see these pictures?’

  ‘I was questioned, too. Can you imagine? A primary-school teacher. I could’ve been suspected too, of being connected with that!’ Tears sprang from her eyes and she had to swallow hard before she could go on. ‘Yes, I did see some of the pictures. He’d been in their room while they were asleep, pulled off their pyjamas and taken photos. And not only of them. I recognised two of Anne’s friends, girls. They were seven or eight years old then. One of the fathers was furious. He came to our door brandishing a wooden bat, and if Mikael hadn’t already been in remand, God knows what would’ve happened to him.’

  ‘I see. What’s his name?’ I asked as casually as possible.

  But she was in her stride now. ‘Stiansen. They live here, they’re our next-door neighbours.’ She gesticulated towards the window and outside. Then she seemed to catch herself. In a whisper she added: ‘And I completely understood him.’

  ‘You were quite forthright when I talked to you yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, well … I apologise, but … I get so mad whenever I think about what…’ She flashed a weary smile. ‘My tongue runs away with me.’

  ‘And you never suspected this was going on before?’

  She blushed. ‘Not at all! Do you think I would’ve let this sort of thing go on?’

  ‘No, I was only … It’s always surprising that such terrible things can happen within the four walls of a home without the perpetrator’s partner realising.’

  ‘Yes; for me it came like a bolt out of the blue. I had no idea until the police were at our door early one morning, even before we’d left for school, the children and I. And then they took him with them. Mikael, that is.’

  ‘He was at home? What was his job?’

  ‘He was a car salesman, but at that time he was unemployed.’

  ‘And how did the children react?’

  ‘They were as shocked as I was. Anne started howling. Klaus sat shaking, pale as a sheet.’

  ‘I suppose you … I suppose the police asked if you’d suspected any more had happened than just taking photos?’

  ‘What could I say? I didn’t have a clue what was going on!’

  ‘No, of course. Tell me – what happened afterwards? You got divorced, I understand?’

  She eyed me coldly. ‘As soon as I realised the gravity of the case I filed for a legal separation. We were divorced in the autumn.’

  ‘But you’ve kept your old surname?’

  ‘For practical reasons initially.’

  ‘And I understand you have a new man now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As she didn’t elaborate, I continued: ‘And the children. Did you reach some agreement over them?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Are you crazy? Surely you don’t think I would leave them with him. Not for so much as a second! I denied him access and my solicitor supported me. There was quite a row of course, but the last thing I told Mikael was: sue me then!’

  ‘You met?’

  ‘We had a meeting with our solicitors present, yes.’

  ‘Did anything else happen?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t sue me before he died.’

  ‘No…’

  She sent me an accusatory glare. ‘But I had no doubt I’d win the case, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘He had a new partner as well.’

  ‘New? He’d known her long before this blew up.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘She’s nothing but a tart. She had a flat in Flaktveit in Åsane, where she lived with her daughter. Retrospectively, I’ve heard there was a long line of men at her door, at all hours of the day and night, and all types. Mikael was one of them. Her poor daughter. God knows what she’s been through!’

  ‘Your husband was one of them? How…?’

  ‘My ex-husband! A colleague of mine lived nearby. She saw him several times.’

  ‘And she told you?’

  ‘Not until afterwards, when all this other stuff came up. She hadn’t said anything, she said, to spare me.’ She grimaced to show me what she thought about being spared.

  ‘When was the last time you saw your … late ex-husband?’

  ‘At the meeting, in September. With our solicitors present.’

  ‘You didn’t meet him later?’

  ‘He used to ring me and give me an earful. In the end I stopped picking up when I saw his number. Then he tried ringing with her phone. I fell for it once. Then there was peace.’

  ‘And in December he died.’

  She nodded. I could almost see how she was struggling to suppress a smile. It crept into her eyes anyway.

  A door slammed on the floor below.

  ‘Here he comes; Magne.’

  After a little while we heard footsteps on the stairs. A rather short man came in, grey, from his short, thinning hair to the plain, workaday suit. There was something pale and faded about his face too, as though it had been hung out to dry for too long. The grey shirt with the round white collar gave away his profession. He was a priest.

  15

  The atmosphere turned awkward, as if I was a secret lover on a visit and he had caught us unawares.

  He crossed the sitting-room floor, which seemed very large all of a sudden as I stood up. We shook hands. He had a handshake as firm as a jellyfish. His eyes were a pale light blue. It was as if he were in a badly exposed black-and-white film. ‘Magne Molstad,’ he said with a faint touch of Sunnmøre dialect in his intonation, an exiled Ålesunder for all I knew, a very last remnant of the ash from the town fire of 1904.

  ‘Varg Veum,’ I said, and not even he could refrain from smiling at my name.

  ‘Actually we’ve finished,’ Haldis Midtbø said. She had stood up, too.

  ‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘I suppose I ought to congratulate you. You’re as good as newly-weds, aren’t you?’

  Magne Molstad wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulders and gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘In November. It’s changed the life of someone who was becoming an old bachelor.’

  ‘But you’ve known each other a while?’

  ‘Some people probably thought it happened too fast, but … I’m a priest in Lindås and we met each other in a professional context. I’ve visited the school where she works many times. I he
ld the Christmas church service there this year, for example.’

  ‘The priest in Lindås? Does that mean to say you’re in Lindås Church?’

  ‘No, we’re peripatetic, so I cover several churches as part of my job.’

  ‘Are you sometimes in Fyllingsdalen?’

  He opened his mouth and stood like this for a few seconds, like a fish taken from an aquarium to be shown to others. ‘What? Fyllingsdalen? Why?’

  Haldis looked at me suspiciously, but she didn’t seem to understand what I was driving at, either.

  ‘Well, according to his partner, Mikael Midtbø, your wife’s late husband – ex-husband – was expecting a visit from a priest the day he died.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘You can’t trust her,’ Haldis said vehemently. ‘She’s lying. She never says a word of truth.’

  ‘A pastor, she said.’

  ‘Well, that’s a rather old-fashioned term. We don’t use it any more. Pastor Molstad, ho, ho, ho.’ A dry chuckle escaped his lips.

  ‘So it wasn’t you?’

  ‘To tell the truth, I’ve never met him. We didn’t move in the same circles.’

  Haldis seemed to move even closer to him and stared at him with a form of gratitude in her eyes.

  ‘You never met Mikael Midtbø?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear what he said? He never met him and I’ve put that part of my life behind me forever.’ Haldis appeared almost exultant. ‘And even more now he’s dead.’

  ‘But your children. Don’t they miss their father?’

  ‘A father who committed such abuse? What do you think?’

  ‘Both the police and you say the only thing that’s certain is that he took these photos and passed them on. That’s serious enough, of course, but I’d still maintain that physical abuse is even more serious, which is also reflected in the sentences meted out.’ She opened her mouth to answer, but I was quicker. ‘Were your children ever questioned?’

  Tears flowed from her eyes, and I watched Molstad tighten his arm around her shoulders. ‘Yes and no. A policewoman came here and spoke to them, but she was very careful in her choice of words, she said.’