by K. O. Dahl
'About what?'
She glanced over her shoulder. 'That Katrine was a sucker?'
'I was thinking of a different kind of sucker,' the policeman said without further explanation, glancing to the left as he passed a veranda door. There was a sun lounger on the terrace, an open newspaper on the lounger, a pile of newspapers across the floor and a half-eaten apple on a plate beside the newspapers.
She sat down where she had done the previous time, by the oval table with her legs tucked underneath her on the sofa. Gunnarstranda walked over to the window and looked out at the sun bed. 'Have I disturbed you?' he asked, taking hold of the pot with the bonsai tree on the window sill.
'I'm off sick,' she said.
'Anything serious?'
'Just exhaustion.'
'Has it anything to do with the murder - Katrine?'
'It's a contributory factor.'
'You were good… I mean… you were close, weren't you?'
'That's putting it mildly, yes.'
The policeman was still holding the pot as he turned to her. 'This tree's dying,' he stated.
'If you've got green fingers,' Sigrid Haugom sighed, 'perhaps you can save it for me.'
'A bonsai tree,' Gunnarstranda said, lifting the pot. 'A Japanese work of art. It can't have been cheap.'
'It was a present,' the woman on the sofa said. 'I never ask what presents cost.'
'I would guess it's more than a hundred years old,' the policeman surmised. 'Trees like this one can grow to be five hundred years old, I've heard. I've seen a few and this one seems to be very, very old.'
'We all have to die some time,' Sigrid Haugom said in a soft voice, breathing in deep. 'I apologize, but I can't get Katrine out of my head. I try, but I can't do it.'
'Imagine if this tree was really old,' Gunnarstranda said, humbled. 'Imagine it was two hundred years old. If so, it would have been tended by six, seven, maybe eight generations of gardeners.'
'Fantastic,' Sigrid said, uninterested.
The policeman shrank back. 'Seven generations of gardening knowledge,' he said bitterly. 'Two hundred years of care, right from the French Revolution until today, a plant which as a result of careful nursing has managed to outlive Montesquieu, Napoleon, George Washington, Wedel Jarlsberg, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Mussolini and Chairman Mao.' He put the plant back with a bang and said with emphasis: 'Until you were given it as a present and let it dry out on the window sill!'
Sigrid Haugom looked at him in silence with raised eyebrows.
'I saw the tree last time I was here,' the policeman said, crossing the floor and taking a seat opposite her on the sofa. 'It was the one thing in this house that didn't fit. The only unexpected artefact in this museum of lamps, signed by Louis Comfort Tiffany in person I have no doubt, of antiques, of Swiss bells, old tables and Italian designer sofas. The rug on the floor over there, from my knowledge of rugs, I would guess was woven by Kashmiri children. I noticed the cups you served the coffee in were made of Meissner china.' He pointed to the left. 'Even down to the charming hammer shaft you or your husband placed next to the stove as an adornment. But in this conglomerate mass of undefined taste and aspiring snobbery neither you nor your husband is capable of keeping an eye on what is happening on the window sill.'
'I suppose not,' Sigrid Haugom said gently, perplexed by the policeman's outburst. 'But then by a happy chance you have an eye for this kind of thing.'
'The sight of that poor tree in the dried-out pot told me all I needed to know about your character.'
'Oh yes?' Sigrid's voice had assumed a sharp edge of patrician arrogance.
'The sucker that has brought me here today grows in the garden of a nursing home. A sucker on an otherwise very attractive ornamental rose, a sucker that resembles a pale green spear planted in the ground in the middle of the lawn. Am I making myself clear?'
'Loud and clear,' Sigrid said with a dry voice, 'but I have no idea what you are talking about.'
Gunnarstranda smiled and stretched out his legs. He said, 'Isn't it the Chinese who have an expression for everything?'
'Bound to be.'
'The Chinese would, I assume, have said something like: Though your eyes may have rested on the rose sucker you were unable to see.'
'As I said, I have no idea what you're talking about.'
'I may not be that sure myself. The only thing I want is some answers to one question.'
'Then I think you should ask it,' Sigrid said with a sigh.
'On Friday, ten days or so ago, Katrine Bratterud called on a flat in Uranienborgveien,' Gunnarstranda said. 'The flat is owned by a pensioner called Stamnes. In his time this man worked for child welfare. Once he had been employed by Nedre Eiker council where he handled casework including, amongst other things, the relocation of children. The reason Katrine visited him was that Stamnes knew details about her own adoption case more than twenty years ago. Does that ring a bell, fru Haugom?'
'Hardly,' she said in a chilly tone.
'This Stamnes still felt constrained by professional vows of client confidentiality, but in the end yielded to Katrine's questioning. The likelihood that he would be able to help her was minimal. There were far too many relocations for that. However, he did remember her case. The reason he remembered hers in particular was that it was connected with the very tragic circumstances that necessitated adoption. The child's mother had been strangled by an unknown assailant and the child's father was an absent sailor who was neither married to the child's mother nor considered himself in a position to take care of the child. The little girl Was therefore referred and given up for adoption. Stamnes told Katrine this. He couldn't remember the name of her father, just the name of her mother because it was all over the newspapers for ages at the time: Helene Lockert.'
The policeman paused. In the silence that followed all that could be heard in the room was the ticking of the antique clock.
'Katrine was in a very special situation that night,' the policeman said in a low voice. 'She was on the trail of her past, of where she belonged, where she came from. She was on the trail of understanding why she and the world were not in harmony. And what do you do in a situation like that? What is the logical thing to do or, perhaps better: What does it feel right to do? Would you try to trace your father or your mother's family? I have no idea what Katrine wanted to do first, but I know she was doing something.
'Later that evening Katrine and Ole Eidesen met outside Saga cinema to see an action film. This was to Ole's taste, but he told us Katrine was noticeably distant and unapproachable all evening. The day after, she went to work. Still she hadn't said anything to Ole about her big news. Why not? I wondered. I don't know the answer, but I think it was because Katrine had a lot to think about, a flood of thoughts swirling through her brain. One of the thoughts that bothered her was that she had bought information about Stamnes off an ex-boyfriend. This man, Raymond Skau, claims Katrine owed him ten thousand kroner in cash for the information. She didn't have the money. She still owed him ten thousand kroner and the money should have been paid the day before. I don't know what concerned her most: her biological mother's tragic fate or the sum of money she didn't have. What we do know for certain is that at one o'clock Raymond Skau entered her workplace to demand payment. She said, quite truthfully, that she couldn't pay, which caused him to become violent and threaten her. He left the shop shortly afterwards. What we now know is that Katrine left at two o'clock and went back to her flat where Ole Eidesen was waiting for her. He has since told us she was still unapproachable and irritable. She wanted to be alone and spent hours in the bathroom. Until five or six in the afternoon. Then she rang around. She made several calls, here too.'
'That's no secret,' Sigrid said. 'I told you she rang, didn't I? She told me about this man who attacked her.'
'I remember,' Gunnarstranda said. 'But you didn't tell me about the whole conversation, did you?
Helene Lockert had been about to get married,' he continued, 'but she never g
ot that far. The man she was to marry is still alive. His name is Reidar Bueng and he lives in the nursing home with the garden where a rose-sucker has shot out of the ground. I met him there and we had a chat.'
Gunnarstranda coughed, once, and then again. He was hoping for a reaction to his long monologue, but was disappointed. Sigrid Haugom watched him with large eyes, but a gaze that was turned inwards.
'I've become acquainted with…' Gunnarstranda paused, searched for words and coughed again. 'By chance I know the assistant matron at this place,' he continued. 'What she told me on the phone today is my small question to you, fru Haugom.'
Sigrid Haugom sat on the sofa, silent and distant.
Gunnarstranda looked straight into her eyes. 'I am wondering about the following: Why did you spend a total of one hour with Bueng at this home the day after Katrine Bratterud was murdered?'
* * *
Chapter Forty-Three
The Messenger
He pursed his mouth and whistled as he bounced across Egertorget. He avoided two Japanese tourists; they were each holding a map and looking into the air… four little, three little, two little Indians. One little Indian boy.
It would be like visiting a sick patient. A quick, effective visit, the way doctors did in the old days. One little Indian boy. The arm with the attaché case swung to and fro. He followed the stream of people down Karl Johans gate. A thin man with a harrowed face and long, black hair hobbled towards him with a bent back. An angel in disguise, he thought, with a cold smile. To intercede.
He laughed aloud at the beggar's pestering for coins. What an angel! He ignored the remark the beggar shouted after him. He didn't hear the words. If there was one thing in this world that was of no consequence it was the junkie, he thought. The ones I loathe most are the down-and-outs.
One small fix! The kind of fix that makes down- and-outs like him spread their heavenly angel wings when he shoots up an overdose in his stupid, hedonistic desire for self-extinction.
He crossed Skippergata on red, and with his head held high walked straight across Fred Olsens gate to the station square. He ignored the hooting from the taxi that roared up behind him, then veered left and raced into the taxi rank. One man among many. Anonymous in the summer heat.
'You already know the answer, I assume,' Sigrid said. 'Otherwise you wouldn't have asked. In fact, I have thought about you a little, about the kind of person you are. You're the kind who tries to hide your real personality. You camouflage yourself and play the part of a fool with transparent vanity. The comb-over of yours that you arrange with such care, I suppose so that others, and particularly women, will feel sorry for you - nothing is as pitiful as transparent vanity. But I can see through your facade. You're an ordinary man, do you know that? No, you're not even that. You're an underdeveloped little pleb, a man riddled with complexes.
You come here and you already know the answer to your question. Yet you drag yourself up here just for the pleasure of asking the question, to enjoy the sound of the question in your own ears. You are a conceited little worm. Do you know that?'
Inspector Gunnarstranda did not say a word in the subsequent long silence. He looked deep into the eyes of the woman on the other side of the table. There was a moist gleam in his eyes. However, Sigrid's cheeks burned red with anger.
She was the first to place her feet on the floor and break the silent battle between them. 'You remind me of a little boy with his chemistry set,' she said. 'You're so damned pleased with yourself. The only thing that means anything to you is to triumph, to show me that you know. But shall I tell you a secret? The secret is that you know nothing. You don't have a clue. You haven't the slightest concept of what is important, of what anything means.'
The policeman, who had been sitting there the whole time, unmoved, didn't stir now, either. His moist eyes remained focused on hers until she looked away. 'You don't need to look at me like that. It's pathetic. You know nothing, nothing of any significance. Nothing!'
'Did you say that to Helene Lockert, too?' Gunnarstranda asked in a brittle voice.
Sigrid Haugom gave a contemptuous chuckle. 'I was waiting for that,' she said, twisting her mouth into an ugly sneer and mimicking him: Did you say that to… no, fancy that, I didn't.'
'There were no suitable words, I suppose?'
'How the hell can words help at such a time?'
'So you strangled her instead?'
'Save your breath, Gunnarstranda.'
'You strangled her,' the policeman repeated stubbornly.
'Yes, I did,' Sigrid admitted in a testy voice. 'Do you feel better now? Do you feel a perverse potency when you hear such an admission?'
'Katrine,' Gunnarstranda said in a hoarse voice. 'Did she see her mother being strangled?'
Sigrid fell silent. Her face, the part around her mouth, froze in a distorted, pensive grimace. The silence in the room was numbing. All of a sudden she stood up. 'I can't take this silence,' she said quickly and went over to the window where she clung on to the sill with one hand. She held the other to her temple. 'I have a headache. You'd better go. This headache will be the death of me.'
Gunnarstranda turned in his chair and observed her. 'Did she see you doing it?' he repeated in a low voice.
'I don't know,' she said. 'I just do not know.'
'Why did you never ask her?'
'How could I?' Sigrid put her other hand to her face. 'I mean it. I get headaches. I can't have visitors here when I have a migraine,' she sighed.
'You mean Katrine was killed before you managed to ask her what she knew?'
'Gunnarstranda. Will you, please, go now.'
The policeman rose to his feet, breathed in and reluctantly crossed the parquet floor. He stood behind her. The sun was roasting outside. The June sun that baked the intermittent rain into the ground, creating fertile conditions for growth. Everything green would grow skywards in June, become strong enough to master flowering, seed setting and ripening through the summer and autumn. Beside the sun lounger, the newspapers and sunglasses on the terrace lay the remains of an old flower bed in which wheat grass and goutweed had taken over and colonized the whole area with fearsome energy and vitality. A few poor overwintering wild pansies hung their pale heads in the wilderness. The life-giving sun penetrated the living-room window and cast a bright yellow rectangle across the wooden floor and a small corner on the rug where she was standing. The same sunlight created a faint image on the window pane. It was an almost colourless image of the room they were in, the tables, the chairs, the clock on the wall and two figures. Gunnarstranda concentrated on the contours of the woman in front of him in the glass. She was standing with her eyes shut tight. Her skin was stretched taut across her forehead and the fingers holding her head were like the white veins of translucent leaves.
'Why were you never questioned by the police regarding the murder of Helene Lockert?' he asked.
Sigrid gave a start. 'Are you still here? Didn't I ask you to go?'
'Why is your name not in the interview reports?' the policeman repeated after clearing his throat.
Sigrid stood on the same spot without moving.
'That must have been a shock,' Gunnarstranda said, stepping closer to her back. 'Meeting her daughter again after all these years. Perhaps it was fate. Have you wondered about that? Sometimes things do have a meaning.'
'What are you talking about?'
Gunnarstranda drew in his breath and tried to see if there were any changes in the face whose flat contrasts he could just make out in the reflection of the glass.
'My wife died of cancer a number of years ago,' he said with a cough. 'All her life she had had one single dream. I mean a real, a genuine dream.' He paused.
'Yes?' Sigrid said at length, either impatient or genuinely interested.
Gunnarstranda had to clear his throat again. 'Before she died she was given the chance to experience the dream. But she was not the one to make it happen. She couldn't, she was too ill. She didn't know the drea
m was reality until it happened.'
'I didn't dream about meeting Helene's daughter again.'
'But it happened,' the policeman said. 'Perhaps it was meant to happen.'
'If it was…' Sigrid spun round. 'Why should she be killed? Can you tell me that? Was that meant to be as well?'
'I don't know,' the policeman said, looking into her eyes. 'I have no idea. But the important thing is that you met, that you had the chance to love her.'
Sigrid looked away. 'You may be right,' she said. 'But that will never be enough.' She paused. 'I thought that, too,' she continued at last. 'Katrine… when I first saw her in Vinterhagen after all these years… it was as though Helene was standing there. I knew she had to be Helenas daughter from the very first moment.' Sigrid raised a faint, dreamy smile. 'The same wonderful blonde hair,' she whispered. 'Helene's mouth, her body, her voice. I instantly knew who she was, and I did wonder in fact if she and I were meant… But why should she be killed?'
Sigrid's facial expression was genuinely questioning.
'Why were you never interviewed for the murder of Helene?' the policeman repeated without the slightest intention of capitulating.
'I don't know,' she said, drained. 'Maybe Reidar never said anything about me.'
'Reidar Bueng? He mentioned your name. There must have been some other reason Kripos crossed you off their list.'
'I was in Scotland. In Edinburgh.'
'In Scotland?'
'Officially.'
Gunnarstranda smiled with curiosity. 'Tell me more,' he said.
'At last something you didn't know. I'm a qualified engineer, a chemical engineer.'
'I thought you were a qualified social worker.'
'That, too. But I took chemistry at university in Edinburgh after my school-leaving exams. Engineering courses were the thing at that time.
Unfortunately I didn't go into a job straight afterwards. When I was about to do so, after being a housewife for almost twenty years, my subject had changed and I hadn't kept up. So I tried a different job. One that was about giving, repairing. Will you promise to go if I tell you what happened'