The Writing on the Wall

by Gunnar Staalesen

  For a moment we sat in silence. Then she nodded in the direction of the dish. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I took one with a brown goat’s cheese and beetroot topping. ‘You haven’t heard anything from her, I take it?’

  ‘No, I haven’t … And you? Have you – managed to have a word with anyone?’

  I nodded. ‘Åsa and her parents and Helene Sandal.’

  ‘And … has anyone said anything?’

  ‘So far I’ve more questions than answers.’

  ‘Such as …’

  ‘That list we talked about last time, of her friends. Have you made one?’

  She looked past me, towards one of the shelves in the wall unit, where there was a collection of family photos. ‘No, I … When I started going through the list of her class, it dawned on me that – I didn’t know. If it had been a few years ago, at primary school, I could have given you five or six names straight away. When she was in the Guides. And a few more besides. But now … It suddenly occurred to me how little I knew her, in that way. I mean – who she spent her time with. Actually, I don’t know of anyone apart from Åsa.’

  ‘What about a girl called Astrid Nikolaisen?’ I asked, taking a bite of the open sandwich.

  ‘… Astrid Nikolaisen … Er … For me she’s nothing but a name. She’s never been here. I know she’s one of Torild’s friends from her class, I mean, since she started in Class 7 when she was twelve, but … I don’t think there’s any more I can tell you.’

  I swallowed my food. ‘Do you have her address, by any chance?’

  She glanced at the wall unit. ‘Yes, I think it’s in the class list … But why …?’

  ‘Listen, Sidsel … Is it all right if I call you by your first name?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Helene Sandal suggested that Torild may sometimes have looked as if she was on drugs …’

  She reached out for her coffee cup then changed her mind. ‘Oh, that … It was never … We never got to the bottom of that.’

  ‘But she called the two of you in to a meeting.’

  ‘Yes. But only I went.’

  ‘Your husband …’

  She pursed her lips slightly. ‘Holger was busy. It was in the evening anyway, and he was usually working late.’

  ‘But it didn’t lead to anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you speak to Torild about it afterwards?’

  ‘Of course! But she consistently denied it. She said it was just something Miss Sandal had dreamed up because she didn’t like her. Or because she wasn’t satisfied with her schoolwork. I couldn’t …’ She looked at me with her large blue eyes. ‘I couldn’t force an answer out of her, could I?’

  ‘Did she call you again later?’

  ‘Yes, she did, and we got the same lecture as before, with the same results.’

  ‘Didn’t all this make you suspicious?’

  ‘Suspicious? I was anxious, obviously! After all, you had … You obviously know what it’s like yourself. Waiting up at night wondering whether she’ll come home or not, where she is, who she’s with. Thinking the worst, as we always do in such circumstances … I can’t count the times I’ve seen her in my mind’s eye, bleeding, beaten up, victim of a rape or a car crash.’

  ‘And when she does finally get back, you’re so pleased nothing’s happened that you forgive her for being late, that she smells of beer and cigarettes, and that you’ve no idea where she’s been. Because when you ask, she just replies … “Here and there’.”

  ‘Different places, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. A party. Disco. Hamburger joint.’

  ‘No pattern?’

  ‘No. And you think of her when she was little, how happy you were when she was born – she was the first, after all! – the clothes you got for her, the first shoes, the gold lacquer ones over there on the shelf …’

  I glanced over at them. They were no larger than a doll’s.

  ‘All these photos – I must have at least twenty albums altogether, Veum! The first day at nursery school, then at primary school, always happy and smiling, but then … Her confirmation last year, when she insisted on a civil ceremony, and Holger was so cross he hardly spoke to her for six months. You can almost see it in the picture we took. The flash of defiance in her face. Triumphant defiance.’

  She stood up, walked over to the bookshelves, picked up the photograph and stood there for a moment looking at it, before she brought it over to me. As I examined it, she fetched two more and sat down beside me.

  ‘Look at this’, she said, holding one of them up. It showed a girl three or four years old, with blonde, slightly curly hair and a little summer dress with flowers on it, taken on a bench in a park somewhere with her small legs sticking straight out in the air and such a happy smile that you could almost hear her gurgling with laughter. ‘That’s how she was then. And here …’

  In the next picture she was older, about ten or eleven, wearing a Guides uniform, looking slightly more self-conscious perhaps, her hair a touch darker, but with just as big a smile.

  ‘But then …’ She pointed at the photograph I had in my hands. It showed a serious-looking young woman, with short scruffy hair, with no hint of a smile around her sullen lips and a darkness in her eyes that had not been present in the other photographs.

  The three stages of childhood, like in a painting by Edvard Munch. And in the last one, she was already almost an adult.

  I helped myself to another sandwich. ‘I think I asked you this yesterday, but … She hasn’t had any boyfriends yet, has she?’

  She blushed slightly as though the word awakened unpleasant memories. ‘She’s never had … I don’t know, do they still call it a steady date?’

  ‘Goodness knows. But at least you and I speak the same language.’

  ‘I suppose she must have had her crushes like everyone else – but she’s never mentioned them here at home.’

  ‘Didn’t she confide in her mother?’

  A hint of coldness flashed in her eyes. ‘No, fancy that – she didn’t.’

  ‘So we can’t come up with any names, can we?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Did I understand correctly, on my visit to Åsa’s house, that they’d been in the Guides together?’

  ‘Yes they were, right from Brownies up to Class 7 or 8. Then they both suddenly packed it in.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘No. They just said they were fed up of it. That they’d grown out of it.’

  ‘Maybe I could talk to one of the Guides leaders from that time?’

  ‘I can’t imagine it has anything to do with – with all that!’

  ‘No … probably not. But is there a name you could give me?’

  ‘Of one of the Guide leaders? Er … The one we had most to do with in the last years was called … what was it now? Yes, I’ve got it! Sigrun Søvik.’

  I noted down the name. ‘And Astrid Nikolaisen’s address – do you have that?’

  She nodded, stood up, went across to the wall unit again and pulled out a drawer. She leafed through a pile of papers before taking out a photocopy and bringing it over to me. ‘This should be this year’s.’

  I looked at the class list, running my eyes quickly down the names until I got to Astrid Nikolaisen. I glanced up. ‘I couldn’t keep it for a bit, could I? In case any other names turn up?’

  ‘Do you expect them to?’ she asked anxiously, as if she’d suddenly started to wonder whether I was keeping anything back from her.

  ‘It’s just so I don’t have to bother you each time I –’

  ‘You’re not bothering me! I’m paying for it, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes, if it comes to that … But …’ I held the list up, repeating the question with my eyes.

  ‘Of course you can keep it! – I’ve got last year’s anyway. There aren’t many changes.’

  I drained my cup of coffee. ‘Anything else I should know?’

  She shot a glance at m
e. ‘Like what, for example?’

  ‘Oh, I … How long have you and your husband been separated?’

  ‘Since August. It was during the summer holidays that things finally fell apart.’

  ‘Classic.’

  ‘Not how you think. We made the mistake of never going on holiday together. There was a lot of trouble down at the paper, as you’ll no doubt remember, blank pages and things, so he couldn’t go anywhere before school started again. And by that time we were already … Then eventually he took a week in London, or wherever it was, on his own, and when he got back home …’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Things like this don’t happen overnight anyway. They build up like a thunderstorm.’

  ‘And Torild was out at sea, in an open boat?’

  She looked at me perplexed. ‘What?’

  ‘What I mean is … how did she take it? Did she react in any particular way?’

  She gazed wistfully ahead. ‘No, I … Well, as I said yesterday, I suppose she did become a bit more distant. It was as though she’d opted out from what was left of family life. She went out more in the evenings, never brought anyone home and … would come home late herself.’

  ‘The other children … did they react in the same way?’

  ‘No, that was it.’ She shifted her gaze to the window and looked out.

  When she looked at me again, you could see the fear in her eyes. She held her clenched fist against her breast. ‘Of course, you do ask yourself, when things like this happen: is it my, or our, fault? Where did we go wrong? But the others have had just the same upbringing! Stian, well he’s only ten, so I mean … He’s completely dependent on his mummy and daddy. As for Vibeke, she’s managing fine – she’s registered the situation and is doing just as well at school as ever. So what can the reason be?’

  I threw up my hands. ‘Genes. Environment, and here I’m not necessarily thinking of the home environment. People who became her friends. The teachers. There’s an incredible number of possible influences. So the guilt can very seldom be laid at any one door. There are always several different factors at work.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose there are.’

  ‘And what about your husband, have you spoken to him today?’

  ‘Yes, I speak to him every day now about all this.’

  ‘Have you told him about me?’

  ‘No, yes … He’s started to say that we … That the police should be involved.’

  ‘I can quite understand that.’

  ‘But you said yourself –’

  ‘Let me put it like this. The police have something I don’t have – a whole apparatus. In other words, they can put out a general call over their entire network, to the other Scandinavian countries as well, with a cover I could never even begin to approach. On the other hand … Before it’s been established that something serious has happened, the police will seldom have time to conduct the sort of detailed investigation I’m engaged in now.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘I would absolutely advise you to get the police to investigate her disappearance but let me carry on with what I’m already doing. That is, unless you two want to save yourselves the expense.’

  ‘The money’s no problem,’ she said quickly. ‘What’s important is to find her and that … she’s all right.’

  ‘I ought to speak to your husband himself at some point.’

  ‘If he has time,’ she said somewhat tartly. ‘Anyway, I think I can almost guarantee you’re wasting your time. There’s nothing he can tell you about Torild that I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Isn’t there? But there could be something you’ve – overlooked – that he might think of …’

  ‘Hm,’ she said in a tone that indicated she didn’t have much faith in that.

  I stood up with a final look at The Three Stages of Torild still on the table in front of us. ‘Well … in that case, I’d better …’

  How mysterious people were. Could we ever get to know another person – properly? Or would they always keep something or other hidden from us, something we ourselves had perhaps known once but had gradually forgotten over the years?

  She came with me to the door. ‘You’ll ring as soon as you – have any news, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Down at the lights that control the traffic in the narrowest part of Sædalsveien, I waited at red. It struck me that certain situations in life are just like this too. You sit waiting at red, and when the light eventually changes to green, an articulated truck squeezing through on amber slams straight into you without giving you the faintest chance of avoiding it.

  When the light changed to green it was with the greatest caution that I drove around the first blind bend.

  Six

  THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE in Mannsverk have never liked hearing the district called by its original name of Toadsmarsh. But at the end of the fifties, when we were in competition with some boys from that district over a couple of girls from Fridalen, we never called them anything but toads, which unleashed such a backlash that we very soon had to leave the Fridalen girls to their own devices and turn back to the more central parts of town, where it was us who were cocks of the walk.

  Astrid Nikolaisen lived in the thirteen-storey block of flats that serves as the landmark for the whole district. The thoroughfare running beneath it became a veritable wind tunnel when the wind blew from that direction.

  I found her surname on one of the letter boxes beside the entrance to the lifts but had to search floor by floor along the external walkway to find the right apartment. In addition to the two lifts, there was a staircase at every corner of the building, and I zigzagged my way up to the sixth floor, where I found the same name on a door and rang the bell.

  The woman who opened the door looked younger than I’d expected. Despite the heavy make-up, she didn’t look much older than her early thirties. She was wearing tight-fitting slacks and a striped, brightly coloured woollen sweater that seemed long enough to serve as a sort of miniskirt. Her hair was so dark and neat that it almost looked like a wig. ‘Yes?’ she said and clamped her dark red lips together in a kind of turkey-mouth.

  ‘Veum. I’m from … It is Mrs Nikolaisen, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can drop the Mrs. But my name is Nikolaisen, yes.’

  ‘Is Astrid Nikolaisen at home?’

  She sized me up. I added: ‘Perhaps she’s your sister?’

  In spite of the layer of make-up, I noticed she was blushing. ‘Yes, no, she’s my daughter. Just a second, I’ll see if she’s home.’

  She closed the door and I stood outside waiting. From here I could see straight down into the depot of the Bergen Tram Company. The rather random collection of workshops and tower blocks didn’t exactly make Mannsverk a showcase for fifties town planners if they could put up with something like this.

  The door behind me opened again.

  It was the same woman. ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Actually, it’s about a friend of hers, Torild Skagestøl, who’s been missing from home for nearly a week.’

  ‘And what’s Astrid got to do with that?’

  ‘Nothing, probably. I just wanted to ask her a few things about – Torild. Who she was with and things like that.’

  She still looked a bit suspicious. ‘Are you from the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Child Welfare? Social Security?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I’m here on behalf of the family.’

  ‘She’s just got up … But OK then. Come on in.’

  As I followed her in, I stole a glance at the clock. It was eleven-forty. Did that make Astrid Nikolaisen a member of social group B or C?

  The hall was papered with red lilies on a violet background. Through an open door an advert blared loudly from a local radio station.

  She knocked on a door. ‘It’s Gerd. Can we come in?’

  I could just make out a muffled ‘yes’ through the door. The woman opened it and stood aside to let me in. As I passed h
er I caught the scent of perfume: heavy, like lily of the valley kept far too long in an airless room.

  The girl inside was just zipping up the front of her tight jeans, not without some difficulty, the whiteness of her plump midriff emphasised by the black bra, which was all she’d had time to put on. The look she gave me was brazen and provocative, and her slightly heavy face was a puffier version of her mother’s, except that it was even more heavily made up, if with slightly blurred features since it was all too obviously the mask she’d been wearing yesterday.

  ‘Astrid! Put something on!’ said her mother over my shoulder.

  I turned to face her. ‘I can wait out here …’

  ‘No need. Put your sweater on!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, bossy britches!’ said her daughter. ‘I’m sure he’s seen a bra before!’

  I waited for a few seconds before turning around again. Now she’d pulled on a maroon sweater and was just straightening her dark, slightly red-tinted hair. ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘To talk about Torild Skagestøl,’ I said.

  ‘Go on in.’ The mother pushed me gently into the room. ‘Tell him all you know, Astrid. I’m tidying up in the sitting room if you need me.’

  Then she left us.

  I glanced round. It was quite a small room, furnished with an unmade bed and a cross between a chest of drawers and make-up table in white. There were two beanbags on the floor. By the bed stood an old-fashioned Windsor chair and on the floor beneath the window lay an untidy pile of comics and pop and fashion mags and a handful of pulp fiction. Various items of clothing were strewn about the room as though she’d been looking for something, but I knew from experience that this state of untidiness was very often just how teenagers marked their territory.

  She turned her streaky face towards me with a slightly too cynical look for her age. ‘What’s up with Torild?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’

  She sat down on the corner of the bed and nodded in the direction of the two leather beanbags. ‘Park yourself there.’

  ‘I think I’d rather stand, actually,’ I said leaning against the doorframe.