Wolves in the Dark

by Gunnar Staalesen

  ‘Never at any socials? Such as … Christmas parties, work outings, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Only occasionally. I wasn’t interested.’

  No, there were two things that had interested him: earning as much money as possible and going out with escorts abroad. A new idea occurred to me: perhaps not only abroad? ‘Bruno Karsten. Do you know him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bruno Karsten, German … let’s call him a businessman, shall we. He has a stable of the kind of girl you used to like going out with. Yes, here in Bergen.’

  There was another glint of the old personality in his eyes. ‘I never did anything like that here! You have to understand that.’

  ‘Well. Once you’ve acquired certain habits…’

  ‘Nothing like that happened here, and I’ve never heard the name you mentioned.’

  ‘Not even in a business context?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This Ruth Olsen has a daughter called Herdis. I suppose you haven’t met her, either?’

  He heaved a sigh. ‘Severin never brings anyone home, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Actually I’m not. She’s too young for that.’ I tilted my head towards the two meals. ‘He’s not home yet?’

  ‘No, but I’m expecting him.’

  ‘Let me give you a prompt, Clausen. And I’d like to ask you to think carefully before you answer.’

  ‘Alright.’ He gave me an enquiring look.

  ‘This is the prompt.’ I raised my voice and stressed every syllable clearly. Child por-no-gra-phy.’

  This time I got a spontaneous reaction. His jaw dropped and he gawped for several long seconds before he could close his mouth. His face went grey and he swayed in front of me. Then he groped along the worktop behind him until he found a chair and slumped down. With an expression on his face as if I had walloped him in the stomach, he looked up at me. In a low whisper he said: ‘Have you found that out?’

  I nodded, keeping a close watch on him.

  ‘Åsne found out…’

  ‘That you…?’

  ‘Me?’ He seemed puzzled. ‘She was waiting up for me one night when I came back home. Severin was out, at the cinema or something. She grabbed me as soon as I entered.’ He formed two claws with his hands. ‘“Come here,” she said. “Come and see what you’ve done…” And then she dragged me into Severin’s room and started up his computer. Well, don’t ask me how she’d found his password, but she had, and after a few taps on the keyboard she opened some webpages – some pictures – well, I was left flabbergasted. I could barely believe it was true.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I…’ His eyes searched around the room. ‘I suppose I’m a man with some experience. Mind you, Veum, with mature women who knew what they were doing. I could never have … This was children, right down to … kindergarten age! And Severin was looking at this in the evening while we thought he was doing school work, other things, but not … nothing like this!’

  His despair seemed genuine; I had to give him that.

  ‘Then she turned to me and the tongue-lashing began. “Can you see now what you’ve done? This is your genes! He got this from you!” And she attacked me, physically. She clenched her fists and pummelled me. I had to grab her wrists and hold her still. It was desperate, but she wouldn’t calm down. “I’ll never forgive you,” she said. “Never! Not for as long as I live!” The following day she took her own life.’

  ‘The following day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you think … You reckon that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back – her finding this … material … on her son’s computer?’

  ‘I have no idea. But it must’ve reinforced … what she was already feeling.’ He added bitterly: ‘So perhaps I’m not the only one to blame in this matter.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Who? Severin?’

  ‘Yes. You must’ve confronted him with it, I suppose?’

  He looked away. ‘…No. I’ve never said a word to him.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Perhaps she was right. He had it from me. Another character flaw. Then … why should I make life harder for him? It was bad enough as it was. I preferred to carry the burden myself.’

  ‘But … does he still have this material on his computer?’

  He shrugged. ‘I have no idea. Probably.’

  ‘Doesn’t that worry you? As a father, I mean.’

  He had sunk back into his basic posture – a mixture of resignation and total apathy. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to him.’

  ‘No! This was meant for … your ears only. I was … You took me by surprise. I don’t know how you found out.’

  ‘Computers are never safe, Clausen. Åsne found the password. Others can get in.’

  ‘But … please don’t say it was me … that I told you. Don’t say I knew! Don’t make him believe it was his fault that she…’

  ‘We don’t know that, do we.’

  ‘No. It was still mostly mine though.’

  ‘I mean … do we know she took her own life, Clausen?’

  He eyed me in puzzlement. ‘Do we know?’

  ‘What actually happened that day?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Severin came home from school and found his mother dead. She was hanging from a beam in the ceiling, he said, but he lifted her down before anyone else came. As such, we have only his word for it that that was how it happened.’

  He moved his lips silently before he could find the right words. ‘You don’t mean … Severin…?’ However, he was unable to complete the sentence.

  ‘Let’s imagine he came back from school. His mother confronted him with what she’d found on his computer, and the confrontation turned so nasty that he … resorted to violence against his mother.’

  ‘But … all the signs are that she’d hanged herself.’

  ‘All? Who took the responsibility to organise an investigation? Your father-in-law, Kåre Kronstad? Dr Hermansen? The police didn’t even come to the crime scene, if we can call it that. I’d call that side of the matter a scandal. You didn’t even let them investigate your wife’s death, Clausen!’

  ‘I … I didn’t realise.’

  ‘Didn’t realise? Let me ask you one more thing: Where were you that day? How come Severin couldn’t contact you on the phone?’

  His eyes went walkabout. ‘I … don’t remember. At a meeting, I imagine.’

  ‘Don’t remember! You find out your wife’s dead and you don’t even remember where you were when you found out?’

  ‘I do remember when I found out. Alice, my secretary, said he’d been trying to contact me; Severin, that is.’

  ‘And she couldn’t contact you, either? Where were you actually? On your way from home after killing her?’

  Once again his jaw dropped. Now it took him even more time to pull himself together, but he didn’t quite manage to close his mouth. He stared at me as though he no longer knew who I was. ‘Killed her? What are you talking about?’

  ‘You say you had a confrontation because of what she found on Severin’s computer. If that confrontation spilled over into what she’d found out about you and your activities abroad, perhaps that was enough for things to turn nasty and end in … a fatal outcome.’

  Still he appeared curiously unengaged, as though what I was accusing him of somehow didn’t concern him personally. And perhaps it didn’t. For the present it was impossible to say anything certain, and the credit for that undoubtedly went to his influential father-in-law.

  ‘Kåre Kronstad. What’s your relationship with him like, Clausen?’

  He didn’t need long to answer that. ‘We don’t talk any more.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have put himself out to protect you, would he?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Hardly.’

  ‘Would he have protected Severin, do you think, if he thought it was him who … had laid hands on his own m
other?’

  ‘Laid hands on?’

  ‘Killed her, then!’

  He stared into space. ‘Kåre Kronstad idolised his daughter. I don’t think he would’ve forgiven anyone if he’d heard anything of that kind.’

  ‘Sure?’

  He hesitated once again. ‘You can never be sure with … my father-in-law. But…’ He shrugged his shoulders and didn’t complete this reasoning either.

  I couldn’t help but feel a sort of sympathy for him. Nicolai S. Clausen hadn’t got off scot-free. He had been punished by fate; life had struck him a blow, and he was so changed from the man I had met around two years ago he was scarcely recognisable.

  I looked at my watch. ‘When are you expecting him home?’

  ‘Severin? Any moment.’

  ‘I need to have a few words with him as well.’

  ‘Not here.’

  ‘OK. I’ll wait outside.’

  He shrugged and glanced at the door.

  ‘Bon appetit,’ I said, angling my head at Mother’s Meatballs. He stared at the two portions without responding. I found my own way out.

  51

  Night had begun to fall when I got back into the car. I kept an eye on the road – in both directions; but Severin came from Kalvedalsveien this time too. With the same laziness as most of the pupils of his generation, he had probably caught the bus for two stops to avoid walking up the hill to Kalfarveien.

  When he was level with the car I opened the door and stepped onto the narrow pavement, right in front of him. He gave a start, but when he saw who it was, he recovered and adopted the same aggressive attitude as on the previous day.

  ‘You again? What do you bloody want now?’

  ‘To talk to you.’

  ‘We’ve got nothing to talk about.’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About what’s on your computer.’

  ‘What’s…’ He came to a halt. Then he flushed a deep red – so red that the pimples became almost invisible. ‘Have you hacked my computer?’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Who then?’ His eyes strayed to the house. ‘It wasn’t…?’

  ‘You know yourself how vulnerable a computer is. There’s always a back door for a trained hacker.’

  ‘And that’s you?’

  ‘It could be someone I know.’

  He chewed on that, still red-faced, but now perhaps with unease as much as annoyance. ‘And what did you find there?’

  ‘I think you know. And you’re over the age of criminal responsibility, so when the police get to hear of this…’

  ‘The police? My computer’s none of their fucking business!’

  ‘Oh, no? Are you following the news at the moment? Several people have been arrested for the illegal distribution and possession of … yes, you know what it’s about. Child pornography.’

  His face crumpled and he gasped for breath. ‘You’ll have to prove it was me who downloaded it!’

  ‘Of course. Because someone else could have done it, couldn’t they.’

  He sneered. ‘Every idiot knows that. With the right know-how you can download all the shit in the world onto someone’s computer, especially if there’s some muppet clicking on every link that appears on the screen.’

  It struck me that, if nothing else, we had an actual defence witness here for Vidar Waagenes; someone who could confirm our theory. I instantly modified my tone. ‘Do you think someone could’ve hacked your computer too?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered sullenly, but not quite as convincingly as I would have liked. ‘If there’s anything on it, that is.’

  ‘You surfers … I suppose you have lots of contacts on the Net?’

  ‘Of course. You meet more interesting people than … here, for example.’ To emphasise this he pointed at me first, then circled round to take in the whole neighbourhood.

  ‘So you might also discover a network that offers you that kind of image, for example.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘A face that you recognise can even appear on such webpages. There are enough young girls who bitterly regret sending private photos to a boyfriend who then becomes an ex with plenty of ammo for revenge.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that,’ he said, still as sullen.

  ‘Did you ever meet the daughters of your mother’s colleague, Ruth Olsen?’

  His eyes flitted about. ‘Yes, a couple of times.’

  ‘You never saw either of them on these webpages?’

  ‘Eh! Herdis? Or … I can’t remember the name of the other one.’

  ‘Herdis, yes.’

  Now his face had gone purple again, and he scanned the surroundings as though wondering if he would be able to do a runner. I straightened up to make it clear that, if he did, I would do everything in my power to stop him.

  ‘But she’s just a little girl!’ His nostrils quivered and I could read him like an open book. There was one good old-fashioned axiom: Nothing was better than someone you knew turning up in contexts such as these. The taste of forbidden fruit was even more powerful in such cases. ‘I haven’t been on any webpages like that, I’m telling you.’

  ‘But Herdis mentioned you at once when I broached the subject.’

  He met my gaze, as defiant as only a teenager can be.

  ‘How do you think your mother would’ve reacted if she’d found out?’

  ‘My mother! She never saw it! It was just … something I happened to see. While I was surfing.’ Immediately he realised that he had given himself away. I watched his face close. He pursed his lips tight as if he would never open them again.

  ‘Exactly. Something you happened to see while you were surfing. What if your mother or your father found out? What if your mother recognised Herdis on your computer? What if she confronted you with this?’

  ‘Confronted? She never said…’

  ‘The day you came from school, for example. The day you say you found her dead.’

  He blanched. ‘The day I … I say … she was dead?’ Slowly, he took in what I was insinuating. Then his face cracked and there was a massive explosion. Tears streamed from his eyes and he barked at me. ‘She was hanging from the beam! I lifted her down to help her. But it was too late! She was dead! It wasn’t me who … She was dead when I arrived! She was!’

  I watched him. The reaction seemed genuine, as genuine as you could expect from such a young person.

  ‘But it’s not certain it was suicide, Severin. Someone else could’ve hung her from the beam after killing her.’

  He stared at me with big, tear-filled eyes. ‘What? Someone else? … Who?’ Instinctively his gaze strayed to the house I had just left, as though he was being drawn there by the same thoughts I’d had myself less than half an hour ago. ‘You don’t mean…?’

  ‘I don’t mean anything, Severin. Now I think you should go home, have something to eat with your father and forget this. If you have any information at all, I suggest you go to the police.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Yes, I assume you still have this material on your computer?’

  He looked away without answering.

  ‘Then you should be aware that, if the police track you down, it would be to your great cost.’

  He just gaped at me. Then he peeled away, as if expecting me to hold him back. But I had no such intentions. I stepped aside to show that he could go home to Mother’s Meatballs, however wretched they might be.

  I got back in the car and sat watching him until he had let himself in. In the rear-view mirror I saw a patrol car racing up Kalvedalsveien with wailing sirens and blue lights. To be on the safe side, I waited a few more minutes, then started up and continued on my far more laborious patrol to where it was I was going.

  52

  Madonna met me in the hallway. She subjected me to a critical examination, as if to say: ‘What sort of time do you call this? How long do I have to wait?’ Nevertheless she came over and stroked her fur against my trouser leg, as
though wanting to tell me something.

  I followed her into the kitchen, replenished her dish and water bowl, and she rubbed my hand in gratitude before I had a chance to take it away. With a satisfied purr from somewhere inside her slim, muscular body, she swooped on the dish, and I stood up, put the packet of cat food on the worktop and observed her for a while. In many ways it seemed to be a perfect life, so long as someone came to fill her dish for her. I almost envied her.

  I went into the sitting room and logged onto the computer. While I was waiting for it to start up I thought about the photos Sølvi had received in the post. I took out the one she had left behind, and there was no doubt: This was the same child I had seen in Ruth Olsen’s office. This was a clue I couldn’t let pass. On the other hand, this was one of the shots where it wasn’t clear that it was me in the picture unless you knew.

  I put the photo on the table in front of me, placed my fingertips against my temples, hoping this would open some hatches into my memory, and I concentrated as hard as I could. Surely there had to be a scrap of recall after being in such a pose? Or had I experienced it as so humiliating and so distant from me that my brain’s own defence mechanisms had cut in and brought the iron curtain down for good between me and what had happened?

  God knows how many times I had gone over the dark years in my attempts to pinpoint the most likely course of events, but this time, once more I was brought to a halt by the woman with the oriental features and the blonde wig. Somewhere in Bergen she had served me a green drink that must have had a substantial dose of an anaesthetic in it, because the next thing I remembered was waking up in a hotel room where I was afterwards told that I had been brought during the night by a friend whose name no-one had made a note of. I thought I had seen the same woman in The Tower when I went there with Karl Slåtthaug; and later, on one of the walls there, I had found the telephone number of a woman who spoke Norwegian with a foreign accent and also offered Thai massage in what she called ‘cosy surroundings’. The room where she worked was a few blocks away from Hans Hauges gate, so I decided to try there before doing anything else.

  The screen had gone black again, so I pressed a key. I looked for the address of Ruth Olsen. She lived in Breistølen, as high up the mountainside as you can get from Sandviken, a dream for people who swore by panoramic views, but a nightmare for drivers in the fire service. But could I risk visiting her? What if I met her daughter and she recognised me? The very thought of it made my insides shrivel. There had to be a better solution.