I raised the phone to my mouth. ‘Langeland’s coming.’
Langeland took the phone and said: ‘Jan Egil! What’s going on? … But why haven’t you contacted me? It’s at times like this you need a solicitor! … Yes … No … But what do you want with him? … In that case I’ll come, too. … Why not? … But, I’m already involved. I’m your solicitor, for Pete’s sake! I have been for all these years.’
I looked at Vibecke while Langeland was speaking. The answers we guessed he was getting from Jan Egil seemed to be reflected in her face, like rapidly changing cloud cover.
‘OK then! But I don’t like the sound of that! I repeat with the uttermost clarity: I do not like this. I don’t even bloody know if the man has a licence …’ He cast a sidelong glance at me, and I responded instantly with a nod: Oh, yes, that much I did have. He glowered in return. ‘OK, Jan Egil … I’ll put him on. Take care.’
I was given back my mobile and raised it to my ear. ‘Me again.’
He wasted no time. ‘D’you know where Ullevål Stadium is?’
‘Yes, more or less. I’ll find my way there, anyway.’
‘Across the street there’s a Mercedes showroom. Park in front and get out of the car. I’ll be there as soon as I’m sure you’re alone.’
‘When?’
‘Soon as poss.’
‘I’ll give you a call back.’
‘Just come, Varg. That’s the main thing.’ With that he rang off.
I looked at Langeland again. ‘Did he say anything else to you?’
‘Just that he had something very important to discuss with you personally. You heard me insisting I came along too, but he said …’ He threw his arms in the air, desperate. ‘He told me not to get involved. But I’m already involved, I said.’
‘Yes, we heard that.’
‘Does he know?’ Vibecke asked in a clear voice.
We both glanced in her direction. ‘Know what?’ Langeland said.
Her eyes widened a fraction. ‘That you’re his father!’
‘No! No one knew … until now.’
‘Except for Mette Olsen,’ I said. ‘And she died a year ago. Could she have told anyone?’ As neither of them answered, I went on: ‘Terje Hammersten, for example?’
He stiffened. ‘Not as far as I know. No one has ever confronted me with it before today.’
‘And your superior at that time, Bakke, did he get to hear of anything?’
He shook his head.
‘Well … then I’ll have to take my chances and meet him face to face.’ I felt my nerves jangle inside me as I spoke. ‘If I can borrow your car, that is.’
He threw up his arms. ‘I agreed to that. Goodness me! The boy is wanted by the police and here I am, knowingly letting …’
‘If so, it’s not the first time you’ve violated professional ethics, Langeland.’
‘Watch your mouth or I’ll withdraw my offer!’
‘Offer?’
He pursed his lips and stood up. ‘Come with me.’
I joined him. Vibecke remained sitting, still half in shock at all she had learned over her elegant teacups.
I tried to catch her eye. ‘Goodbye, fru Langeland. See you again perhaps.’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ Langeland mumbled.
She raised her head, but her eyes never reached any higher than my chest. ‘See … you.’
She was sitting by the large window like a little mermaid on the bank of the rest of her life, without the slightest confidence that she would ever be venturing out to sea again. She was stranded for good.
Langeland led me downstairs and asked me to wait in the hall while he went to his study to fetch the car key. From somewhere behind the wall panelling, tiny Lin scuttled out with my coat held in readiness, as if she had known for some time that I was leaving. Langeland returned, and we left the house together. He pressed a remote control and the broad garage door swung upwards.
There were two cars inside. One was a huge four-wheel drive, a Range Rover, the other a natty little Toyota Starlet.
‘You’ll have to take Vibecke’s,’ he growled, nodding to the tiny Starlet. ‘More your style, I would guess.’
‘I’ll be right at home,’ I said. ‘No problem. I’ll even be able to find the brake pedal.’
He didn’t smile, just pressed the key fob and the alarm was switched off. He opened the car door and peered in, as if to make sure there weren’t any personal effects left there. ‘I trust you will return it safe and sound, Veum.’
‘If that’s within my powers,’ I said, taking the key and sitting behind the wheel. After pushing the seat back a couple of notches I started the engine. The radio came on, a local station playing thump-thump-thump music. I turned down the volume and peered up at Langeland. ‘Then I’ll be saying “see you” to you, too.’
‘I wish it were avoidable, but we have to have the car back. Listen, Veum …’ He leaned forward, with a sudden insistent expression on his face. ‘Try to bring Jan Egil back with you. Whatever he’s done, it’s important that he and I talk.’
‘As solicitor and client or as …?’
‘Yes, yes! And I trust you’ll keep your mouth shut about the other business. If … when he finds out, I want it to be from me. Understood?’
‘Understood. Quickest way to Ullevål Stadium is down to the ring road, then head east, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘Good luck …’
‘Thank you.’
I put the car into gear and carefully manoeuvred my way out of the garage. He walked ahead and opened the gate. I raised my hand as I passed. Then I was on my way.
As I swung into Dr. Holms vei and down towards Besserud, I noticed a large black car with darkened windows parked a bit further up the road. The muscles in my midriff tautened instinctively, and my mouth went dry. But it was impossible to see if anyone was inside, and for as long as it was in my rear-view mirror, it didn’t move.
I adapted quickly to the car. It wasn’t very different from my Corolla, but I would have felt more like the king of the road if he had lent me his four-wheel drive. I kept glancing in the mirror at regular intervals. When I was almost in Slemdal I suddenly noticed a big black car barely a hundred metres behind me. At that distance it was difficult to tell if it was the same one, but the feeling in my stomach did not improve.
The black car followed me right down to the ring road. I lost sight of it in the traffic build-up behind me. It was impossible to see if it was still there. When I saw Ullevål Stadium rise before me, I took a right and pulled over. I sat waiting, totally composed. After thirty seconds a big, black car drove past heading east towards Tåsen without turning off the ring road.
I waited for a few more minutes, but it didn’t reappear. Reassured, I drove off again. After passing the stadium, I turned off towards a petrol station on the right and pulled into a large, at this moment, unused car park. I pulled up outside the Mercedes showroom, switched off the engine, opened the door and got out. A bit nervous, I strolled around the car without stopping in case someone had me in their sights. I was uneasy.
From the ring road I heard the sound of traffic, a regular pulsating rhythm. The lights from the town contaminated the evening sky with jaundice, and from high above me I heard the throb of a plane on its way to Fornebu.
I heard the sound of his footsteps on the tarmac. He came round the corner from the back of the showroom as if on a quick evening run out with the dog. But he didn’t have a dog, and he came straight towards me.
He was wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, and his body had grown since I last saw him. In Førde – and the last time in the courthouse in Bergen – he had still cut a gangling, immature figure, not unlike the man I now knew was his father. During his prison stay he had obviously killed lots of hours in the gym. He was bigger and bulkier and definitely looked more dangerous than he had before. Coming to a halt in front of me, he radiated an edgy, pent-up strength that, if released, could have trash
ed me in the space of a few short seconds.
Under the peak of his cap, he was staring at me through wide-open dark eyes. Without changing expression, he nodded towards the car. ‘Get in.’
I did as he said, leaned over and opened the door on the opposite side. He dropped in so heavily that for a moment it felt as if the whole car would tip over. ‘Drive,’ he said.
‘Where to? Shouldn’t we –?’
‘Just drive!’ he ordered roughly, and I didn’t feel it was the right time to object.
53
On the ring road, I tried again. ‘I have to know which direction we’re taking.’
‘We’re just going somewhere we can have some peace and quiet. I’ll tell you.’
I cast a sideways glance. ‘What is it exactly you want with me?’
‘You know what.’
‘No, I don’t! Wasn’t it enough with Hammersten?’
We passed a turn-off, but he just pointed ahead. ‘It wasn’t me who killed him!’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘He was dead when I found him.’
‘When you … but what did you want from him?’
‘I was shoppin’ in the street when I met him. I knew of course that he … he’d been married to my mother. My real mother.’
‘Yes, you met her again, I gather. She visited you at Ullersmo Prison?’
‘I recognised her soon as I saw her.’
‘You recognised her? But you were just three when you … were taken from her.’
‘Not that time, you idiot!’
I was suddenly ill at ease. ‘So when was it?’
‘It was when we were comin’ home from school in Angedalen. Silje and I. We walked past a woman walkin’ along the road, and I can still remember her gawping at us. At me most of all. Afterwards we had to laugh at her, and Silje said: Did you see the old biddie! She must be completely crazy, and then we laughed even more. And when she turned up at Ullersmo I recognised her at once. Not as my mother of course, but as the crazy woman from Angedalen. So, we had been laughing at my mother, my own real mother. I wonder if you can imagine how that felt! I could’ve cried, a grown man … and it was the likes of Hammersten who had turned her into what she was. I understood that from what she told me later.’
‘But what –?’
‘And then I knew what I’d been missin’ for all those years.’ His voice was trembling, as if it was hard for him to speak, harder than any bench presses. ‘The other so-called mothers’ve never loved me, not like her, who had to live without me for all that time. And who came after me, through the prison gates. But we had a few good hours anyway, at the end of her life.’
For a while we sat in total silence. The impression I was left with from what he had just said was so strong that I found it difficult to continue the conversation. It was Jan who resumed. ‘He said I should drop by to see ’im.’
‘Hammersten?’
‘Yeah. He had something to tell me, he said.’
‘Something to tell you?’
‘Something very important for me … and many others. He’d become a Christian, and now he wanted to clear things up. But when I went to see him that evening, he … was just lyin’ there. Unable to speak to anyone. Killed, and with such brutality that there was blood everywhere.’
‘But how did you get in?’
‘Door wasn’t locked.’
‘But if it wasn’t you who knocked the living daylights out of Hammersten …’
‘It wasn’t me, I told you!’
‘OK, Jan Egil. I believe you. But who was it then?’
‘He was just paid back for all the torment he had caused me.’
‘Hammersten?’
‘He killed my first foster father, in Bergen, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t taken out Kari and Klaus in Angedalen as well!’
‘Do you know that?’
‘Does anyone know anything at all? I’ve had to do time for it!’
‘Do you know that he killed your foster father in Bergen, I mean?’
He didn’t answer, just stared into the distance.
I went on: ‘But … at any rate it wasn’t your foster mother, and she has also paid a debt to society for a murder she didn’t commit.’
He took his eyes off the road and stared straight at me. ‘How do you know?’
‘I spoke to her earlier today. Do you know where she lives?’
‘No.’
‘But you know she lives in Oslo?’
‘I couldn’t care less where she lives! She was out of my life a long time ago.’
‘But you must be interested to hear what she had to say?’
‘Course! So what did she say?’
‘She said she arrived home that day in 1974 and it had already happened. You were standing in the hall, paralysed. Nothing else. She didn’t know anything else. She did think …’
‘What? Who did she take the blame for?’
‘For you, I guess.’
He blinked. ‘For my sake! I refuse to believe that.’
‘It wasn’t for Terje Hammersten’s sake anyway.’
‘How long was her stretch?’
‘You don’t know? Has no one told you …?’
‘No!’
‘She was out again by the time of the Angedalen murders.’
He was grinding his molars now; I could literally hear the scraping of worn fillings. ‘Right!’
‘And you still maintain it wasn’t you who … in Angedalen?’
‘That’s what I’ve been tellin’ you all these years! But none of you believed me.’
‘I believed you. But it was impossible to find good enough evidence to break down their case. Or any kind of evidence. If only you hadn’t picked up the murder weapon!’
‘I had to protect myself, didn’t I! I knew who would be blamed …’
I snatched a sideways glimpse. The way he was sitting and staring, big, heavy and well-built, he was still a replica of the defiant youth I had spoken to at the police station in Førde. But there was something new about him too, which had not been present before: the pent-up fury I had observed from the moment he came towards me in the car park by Ullevål Stadium.
I returned my attention to the traffic. And said: ‘There’s one thing I have to ask you, Jan Egil. Why are you so angry with me? I’ve always tried …’
He interrupted me, still speaking his dialect. ‘How can you ask! You and Cecilie’d been like a mother and father to me. The best time of my life was the six months with you. Why d’you think, when I was holed up in Trodalen, pursued by the sergeant and his men, that I asked for you to come to Sunnfjord? And do you remember what you promised me? I shouldn’t be afraid, you said. And I wouldn’t be cuffed, either. But the first thing the cops did when I got down to them was to launch themselves at me with handcuffs, and from then on I could hardly have a piss without them. You failed me, Varg, you and all the rest. But you pretended to be my friend. That’s why you were the biggest fraud of the lot!’
‘But … I’ve never thought you did it, Jan Egil, not for one moment!’
‘That right, eh?’ he almost bellowed. ‘So why am I sitting here, after ten years in Ullersmo? Can you tell me that, Varg? You who think you’re so clever.’
‘No, I can’t, Jan Egil. It’s a tragedy, a tragedy so great that I have no words for it.’
We were approaching Økern now. He pointed east. ‘Turn off here! In that direction.’
I did as he said. And looked in the rear-view mirror at the same time. The shock surged through me. Wasn’t that … two, three cars behind us … the same black car that had been following me down Dr. Holms vei?
I accelerated. All the cars behind us kept up, but none of them seemed to want to overtake.
‘Take the right at the next crossroads.’
I did as he said. The two nearest cars continued straight on, along Østre Aker vei. The black car turned off and took the same route as us.
‘I have a sneaking suspicion we’ve g
ot someone on our tail,’ I mumbled.
‘What?’ Jan Egil twisted round in his seat and reached for his inside pocket. ‘Shit!’
Then the black car was right behind us. We were heading for a large industrial area. On both sides of the road we saw warehouses, access ramps, containers and parked long-haul vehicles. On the ridge facing us we could make out the tall blocks of Tveita.
As we approached a roundabout the black car came alongside. With a bang it sent us slithering into the first exit. For a second or two my mind went back to Jens Langeland’s concern about what might happen to his car. But I wasn’t given any more time to pursue the thought. I had more than enough trouble steering the car.
The road we were on now was in much worse condition. There were great pot-holes in the tarmac. At the next roundabout I tried to drive right round, but those in the car behind guessed my intentions, swerved into the other carriageway and came to a screeching halt across the road, forcing me to skid down another exit.
Jan Egil was writhing like a snake beside me. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
The black car had sped after us and was bumper to boot now. I tried to see who was at the wheel, but it was too dark, and I had my task cut out keeping our car on an even keel.
Bump!
They drove into us again, this time from the rear, and with such force and precison that the lightweight Starlet lurched forward. Again I cursed Jens Langeland for not lending us the four-wheel drive.
‘Bloody hell!’ Jan made a sudden movement beside me, pulled a handgun from his inside pocket and pointed it at the rear window as if intending to shoot through it.
‘Jan Egil! Don’t …’
‘Just drive! Drive for all you’re bloody worth!’
Bump! Bump!
A clatter came from the back, as though something had been loosened. We lurched forward, hit the post of an open lattice gate, scraped alongside it and landed with a bang on the inside of the fence. I scanned round quickly. We were in a container depot; dark blue, grey and red containers. I swiftly changed down and shot forward, desperate to find a way out.
Suddenly the tarmac came to an end. Now we were on a gravel road, as bumpy as a switchback. Behind us the tyres of the black car screeched as it skidded after us.
The Consorts of Death Page 31