Wolves in the Dark

by Gunnar Staalesen

  Through Nygård Tunnel he moved into the lane for the town centre, and I did the same, at an appropriate distance. He drove over the limit and the distance increased. I kept to the prescribed sixty kph shown on the traffic signs. The quickest route through Bergen centre had obviously been designed by a drunk: great arcs so as not to fall into Lake Lungegård. Past Grieg Hall, he moved into the left lane again, to switch to the right after the intersection with Christies gate and into Vaskerelven.

  The closer we came to Nordnes, the more I had a nagging sense I knew where he was going. I was right. He drove to Klosteret and was lucky and found a spot to park there. I had to drive a fair way up Haugeveien before I found a gap, jumped out and ran down towards Klosteret, just in time to see him turn into Knøsesmuget. I loped after him, trying not to attract too much attention, reached the corner and tentatively poked my head round while he was waiting outside the door of the house where Maria Nystøl lived. The door opened, he forced it in and entered, but I couldn’t see who was inside. Then the door was slammed after him.

  Once again I stood dithering. What did Hårkløv want with Maria? A little bonus as well? Or something more brutal? Had they found out that I had been to her house – and if so, from whom?

  There was still some daylight and if I wanted to risk waiting until he had finished I would have to find somewhere else to stand – in a suitable basement entrance or by the corner to Søndre Munkelivsgate.

  I walked slowly down through the alleyway, keeping to the wall on her side, turning my face away as I passed her windows, but pricking up my ears, in case I could hear something from inside. But there was nothing.

  A weekday-afternoon atmosphere seemed to have settled over this area. People were making their way home from work; some just passed on their way, others let themselves into their houses, some had crying children, others heavy plastic bags from the nearest supermarket. Many registered my presence with suspicious looks, which made me feel even more uneasy.

  I chose to continue all the way down to the corner of Skottegaten. This was when I needed a cigarette, of course, so that I could light a reassuring fag and stand on the corner, forced to breathe in fresh air, as all the country’s smokers had been, gradually. But I had neither the habit nor the accessories and decided instead to keep looking impatiently at my watch as though waiting for someone.

  I felt a strong sense of unease in my body. I already knew that there was a link between Maria Nystøl, Bruno Karsten and Bjørn Hårkløv. For that reason I shouldn’t be surprised at Hårkløv’s appearance at her home. But did this visit have anything to do with my enquiries over the last few days, or was it something he did from time to time, as one of his regular chores?

  I looked at my watch impatiently. It was twenty minutes since he went in. How long should I wait before I made a move? I wasn’t sure how easy it was to get into the house from the back. If there was access it would be from the parallel street, Claus Frimanns gate, but the passages from the side were probably closed to non-residents.

  I checked my watch again. I gave them ten minutes. If he hadn’t appeared by then I would have to make a move.

  For the second time that day I was saved by the bell. The ten minutes were almost up when the door opened and Bjørn Hårkløv came rushing out of the house. He slammed the door behind him, then cast a glance – first up the alley, then down – and in doing so gave me time to sneak into Søndre Munkelivsgate, beneath the back gardens behind the Community Centre in Klosteret. I waited there long enough to be sure he hadn’t seen me. When I cautiously made my way back into Knøsesmuget, it was empty.

  Then I had another decision to make: Should I dart back and try to tail him again or should I see how Maria was? I was perhaps already too late for the former as my car was parked further away than his and I would risk being seen if I ran in that direction. The latter would perhaps turn out to be more useful.

  I walked up to her house and pressed my fingers against the door. I remembered how well she had locked up the previous time I was there. Now it was open. I had a nasty feeling all was not well. Not at all well.

  I stepped inside, closed the door and called her name: ‘Maria!’

  No-one answered.

  I went in further and called again: ‘Hello! Maria?’

  As I still didn’t get an answer I opened the door to the sitting-room, where we had been the evening before.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell!’

  She lay in a strangely painful position, squeezed between the table and the sofa, face down on the floor, her legs spread and a backside naked in what might have been an inviting pose had it not been for the dried blood between her thighs and the uncontrolled twitching of her body, as though she were dreaming. Beside her were big tufts of dark hair, a pair of torn cord trousers, a blouse and the underwear that had been ripped off her. From her came a smell of blood and sperm, and when I pushed the table away and leaned forward, she weakly raised her head and tried to look at me. ‘Not again, please,’ she mumbled before seeming to lose consciousness.

  I grabbed a blanket from the sofa and covered her, then shoved the table further away and gingerly drew her along the floor, where I laid her on her side and made sure her airways were free. Her face was in a terrible state. She had congealed blood under her nose and around her mouth and big swellings on one cheek and her chin.

  I patted her other cheek gently. ‘Maria! Can you hear me?’

  Her eyelids flickered and she opened her eyes. Her eyes roamed. When she spotted me she gave a start and burst out: ‘No! I’m not going to say anything! I won’t say…’ Again she closed her eyes.

  ‘Maria!’ I leaned over her. ‘It’s me. Varg. I didn’t do this.’

  ‘No, it was Bønni.’

  ‘I know. But why? Did he say why?’

  Her eyelids flickered again, and she seemed to be trying to raise herself with her forearms. ‘Not supposed to say anything. I’d said too much. Next time…’

  ‘Next time…?’

  ‘They’ll kill me, he said.’ She gasped for air and her whole body twitched. Then she burst into hysterical weeping. ‘Don’t say anything, Varg,’ she managed to force out between sobs. ‘Don’t say anything to the po … to the police!’

  I tried to console her by stroking her dishevelled hair. In many places I could feel swellings on the scalp and there were bald patches where tufts had been torn out. ‘You need help, Maria. We have to get you to A&E – or get someone here.’

  She opened her eyes wide and turned her face to me for the first time. ‘No, Varg! Don’t! They’ll report this to the p … to the po … You mustn’t! I can manage. I always manage. I’ve experienced worse. Don’t forget what I was.’ With a bitter expression she added: ‘What I am!’

  ‘But … he raped you. They can find his DNA. He’ll go to prison, Maria! For a long time.’

  She sobbed long and hard before answering. ‘He might do, yes. Maybe. But not Karsten. And he can send other thugs. He’s behind this. I don’t want to die! I want to live.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Don’t try and persuade me.’ At once she sat up, pulled the blanket around her and looked me in the eye. ‘I mean it, Varg. He beat me up. He raped me. But I’m not seriously injured. He didn’t break anything. I’m owed some holiday I can use until I…’ she raised a hand to her face ‘…look better. With make-up anyway.’

  ‘And he did this because someone had told them you’d spoken to me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And you hadn’t told them yourself?’

  Once again she opened her eyes wide. ‘Of course not!’

  I observed her. ‘Well, now you’ve received the punishment…’

  ‘W-what do you mean?’

  ‘You can tell me the rest.’

  ‘The rest?’

  ‘What you omitted to tell me last time. About the children.’

  She met my stare, at first with defiance, then a kind of shame; and in the end her eyes filled with tears. She gasped for b
reath and turned her head from side to side, as though I were holding her and she were trying to squirm out of my grip.

  ‘They blackmailed you, didn’t they. Because of what you told me last time, about your background in Germany.’

  A mask of grey despair descended over her face as she nodded, against her will, again as though I were holding her neck and twisting her head this way and that.

  ‘You filtered children out of the system. Those who were orphans or didn’t have anyone to look after them. This happens in dozens of Norwegian asylum centres every single year. We know that, but for some reason we can’t stop it. And why? Because children are not significant? Because children don’t write in the newspapers and scream when others are bad to them? Because children are used to doing what adults say? Otherwise they’re hit. Because, because, because?’

  She just stared at me, mute.

  ‘And you sent them to Bruno Karsten and his network, where they were passed on, I imagine, to the abusers who exist everywhere, from the top of society to the bottom, but all with the same aim: “Grab a helpless child and do with them as you like.”’ I seemed to hear a guitar solo and the psalm in my head: No-one in danger can be so safe as God’s little flock of children…

  The fury I felt inside must have been reflected on my face, because she pulled away from me with horror-stricken eyes. ‘Please, Varg! Please don’t do that!’

  ‘Just admit that this is what was going on!’

  She nodded, even more against her will this time. I barely understood what she was saying when she whispered it: ‘Yes, but I resisted as much as I could. They had to force me … every single time.’

  ‘Like this…?’ I pointed, first to her face, then to her lower body. ‘This?’

  She sighed. ‘N-no, not as bad. It was enough for them to mention … all the things they could do, how easily I would lose my job if they made a phone call to the right people.’ A shudder went through her. ‘Don’t you think I thought it was terrible? Don’t you think I felt for them, for the poor children? I took extra special care of them when they returned.’

  ‘What! They returned?’

  ‘Y-yes. Not all of them. Some disappeared for ever. But many came back.’

  A suspicion was aroused in me. ‘And were taken out again, several times, maybe?’

  She chewed her lips and looked away. ‘No.’

  ‘Look at me, Maria!’

  She slowly turned back. ‘Not several times.’

  ‘They didn’t come back several times?’

  ‘No. The next time they disappeared for good.’ She added quickly: ‘The few who were involved.’

  ‘Into the network? Into organised prostitution? To other countries?’

  She looked at me with despair in her eyes. ‘Maybe. Oh, I wish I could…’

  ‘Could what?’

  ‘Undo what was done!’

  I sat looking at her, gripped by a mixture of depression and fury, a feeling of total helplessness against systematised evil; an evil that befell the weakest of all – child refugees. But, and I didn’t want to forget this, also Norwegian children. Local children. Ruth Olsen’s daughter, for example. That made me go on. ‘You gave them foreign children, Maria. What do you know about Norwegian children in the same situation?’

  ‘The Norwegian children we have are only here for a short time, to relieve other centres. I’ve never … They’ve never taken these children. The controls are too stringent.’

  ‘That’s the only reason?’

  She opened her mouth to say something, but caught herself.

  ‘You took extra-special care of them when they came back, you said. Did they tell you what they’d experienced?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, never. Many of them were traumatised enough beforehand and … I think they’d already repressed it.’

  ‘And they certainly wouldn’t’ve got any better by being treated in that way by someone they trusted.’ I could feel the contempt I felt flowing from my mouth. ‘I damn well feel like beating you up myself, Maria!’

  She looked at me with a cowed expression. ‘Do it then! Just hit me! Beat me black and blue! It won’t change the reality.’

  I heaved a sigh. ‘No. I suppose it won’t.’ I cast an eye over the superficially cosy room where only the battered and bruised woman, the torn clothes and the scattered furniture told a different story. ‘You know I can go to the police with what you’ve told me, Maria. You know I only have to lift a phone and you’ve lost any work with children for ever and a day. And I’m bloody tempted to do that.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘But I’m not going to, for the moment. On one condition: I want names from you and I want them now.’

  She nodded distractedly, looking out of the window, as though fearing that Hårkløv, Karsten or someone else were standing outside and listening.

  ‘I’ve got Bønni. Bjørn Hårkløv, if you didn’t know. Bruno Karsten as well. The last time I was here you mentioned Ole Skarnes. But as your client. Was he also involved in this?’

  Her eyes were glassy, and her voice was strangely distant as she answered. ‘Yes. He had fantasies … They forced me to … I had to bring one of the girls back here. Once I had to meet him and he was supposed to be a Gestapo officer and we were … a mother and child fleeing. Only he could help us, but we had to … be at his service. Both of us. It was disgusting, Varg! I spewed like a drunk afterwards.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘They took her with them. I couldn’t … I wasn’t allowed to see her again.’

  ‘Who took her with them?’

  ‘Skarnes and Bønni.’

  ‘And she never returned?’

  ‘Never.’

  I had been to bed with this woman, but I knew from where I was sitting that I would never be able to do so again, if the opportunity arose. But in some way she was a victim, too. There were others who should be punished more severely and I swore to myself there and then that I wouldn’t rest until I had done everything in my power to achieve this.

  Before leaving I asked her once more if I shouldn’t ring for medical assistance. Again she refused, and I went on my way without any further attempts to provide care. She would have to be alone with her pain – external and internal. I had other people to see before the day was done.

  50

  Hårkløv’s car was long gone. My rental car was waiting contentedly for me without any greetings from a traffic warden.

  I took a risk and drove straight back to Fyllingsdalen. But there wasn’t a car where Hårkløv’s had stood earlier in the day. I had no idea where he might be. True, I did have his mobile number, but if I rang him he was hardly going to tell me where he was, and I would perhaps lose the element of surprise.

  I sat considering my next move. I took out my notepad and read through my last notes. I had underlined two details. One was the fact that Ruth Olsen’s elder daughter, Herdis, had been in one of the same photos as me, whatever that meant. The second was that the man whose name was being mentioned with ever greater frequency, Ole Skarnes, had been the accountant for Nicolai Clausen. And Clausen’s late wife, Åsne, had been a colleague of Ruth Olsen’s, with offices in the same building as Ole Skarnes. This was the thread I most wanted to unravel. Another went from Maria to Hårkløv and on to Karsten. And then there was the woman with oriental features and a blonde wig who kept appearing in my brain. Would it be possible to track her down, and if so, what did she have to tell me, assuming I could make her talk?

  The worst of the rush hour was over when I emerged from Nygård Tunnel again and got into the lane for the town centre. But this time I turned right in front of the library, passed the railway station and headed for Kalfaret and Clausen’s flat.

  The light shone in the kitchen this time as well and dimly from what had to be the sitting room. I recalled the unpleasant conclusion of the conversation on the previous occasion and felt less than cocky as I, cap over my forehead and lapels turned up, approached the house yet
again and rang the bell.

  Nicolai Clausen opened the door as before. He regarded me briefly from the doorway, dark bags under his eyes and apparently suffering from the latter stages of sleep deprivation.

  ‘There’s a new development, Clausen. May I come in?’

  He didn’t have the energy to attempt a protest, stumbled to one side and let me in. I closed the door and he walked ahead of me into the kitchen, as before. On the worktop there were two portions of a ready-made meal called Mother’s Meatballs, not as yet elevated to their impending state of magnificence but waiting to be put in the microwave and perhaps the homecoming of his son.

  Neither of us sat down.

  Clausen automatically turned to me. ‘What’s this about now?’

  ‘Let me get straight to the point: Ole Skarnes.’

  His eyes were lifeless. ‘Oh, yes?’ Then something appeared to rouse him into life. ‘You don’t mean … It wasn’t him who was…?’

  ‘Who was…?’

  ‘Åsne’s lover?’

  The thought hadn’t actually struck me, and I had to let it do a quick circuit around my brain before I answered. ‘I doubt it. It’s true he comes across as immoral, but he was her uncle after all, through marriage.’ He seemed to let that sink in. But made no comment.

  ‘He’s your accountant, I understand?’

  ‘Not any more. The family disowned him.’

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What about Ruth Olsen?’

  He still didn’t look interested. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘A colleague of yours – of Åsne’s, rather. Severin mentioned her yesterday when I was here.’

  ‘I didn’t know any of her colleagues.’

  ‘No?’

  He tried to stand erect to remind me of what he had once been. ‘I was much too busy with my own concerns.’

  ‘You never went to her workplace?’

  ‘No.’