The Writing on the Wall

by Gunnar Staalesen

  ‘Was he from Bergen?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe somewhere near, but I’m not certain. I mean somewhere like Kalandseidet, Arna, it was sort of – something wasn’t quite …’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Just now – half an hour ago.’

  ‘What did he say? Can you remember as near as possible?’

  ‘He … The phone rang, and I answered. A man’s voice asked: “Is that Karin Bjørge?” “Yes,” I said. “You’re an acquaintance of Varg Veum, aren’t you?” It gave me the shivers, Varg, I was sure something had happened! “Er, yes,” I managed to get out, “who am I speaking to?” “This is Nedre Nygård Undertakers,” he said. I nearly passed out, Varg!’

  ‘Nedre Nygård? There’s no such thing as Nedre Nygård Undertakers, that’s for sure.’

  ‘At any rate, that’s what he said. It could be Nygård Bros, of course …’

  ‘Nygård Bros?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Well …’ I motioned to her to go on.

  ‘And then he said: “We’ve been asked to ring round to all Veum’s friends and acquaintances and inform them that the funeral’s on Monday, at one p.m. at Hope Chapel in Møllendal.”’

  ‘Well, at least there’s hope then.’

  ‘Then the penny dropped that it was just, that it couldn’t be … So I asked, as calmly as I could, what his name was …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘But he just hung up. I stood there, holding the receiver. Completely numb. It was horrible, Varg! Can you tell me what’s going on?’

  I held her close as I whispered into her ear: ‘They’re just empty threats, Karin. Don’t think any more about it. Stuff like this just goes with – this line of work.’

  ‘Maybe you should look for another line of work, then?’

  ‘Look, I’ll tell you everything.’ I told her about the phone call with the organ music and the death notice I’d received in the post, and as I spoke, I felt anger rising in me, a need to find out who it was who was no longer content to threaten me personally, but also my immediate circle, and when I found out, the person behind it had better be in good shape because it was going to be a tough contest, to the bitter end.

  She looked at me wide-eyed. ‘Did it really say … did it give the date as well – in that – death notice?’

  I glanced at the clock. It was already twenty-five to twelve. ‘Tomorrow,’ I said gently. ‘It’s Wednesday after all. So, in that respect, a funeral on Monday’s quite appropriate.’

  ‘Don’t joke about something like this, Varg! Have you … Have you talked to the police?’

  ‘Yes. There’s not a lot they can do about it.’

  ‘But couldn’t you get a – somebody to keep any eye on you?’

  ‘I’m afraid they don’t rate the risk of something happening highly enough for that. The police themselves often receive threats of this sort. If they took everything like this seriously, they’d spend more time watching each other’s backs than keeping order on the streets.’

  ‘But what … Have you got anything special lined up for tomorrow?’

  ‘I have to go to Stavanger.’

  ‘To Stavanger!’

  ‘Did you manage to find out any of the things I asked you about?’

  ‘Yes, I – I’ve got it over here …’ She walked over to the wall unit and fetched a couple of pages. ‘I made some printouts. Here, look …’

  She sat down beside me, and I pored over the first page.

  ‘Look, here,’ she said. ‘Birger Bjelland’s mother, Kathrine Haugane –’

  ‘Haugane?’

  ‘Yes, that’s her name. Born in 1912. And look here: father unknown.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be …’

  ‘Now she’s in a nursing home. “Salvation”.’

  ‘Sounds just like Stavanger.’

  ‘Birger Bjelland himself was born in 1945. Then there’s clearly a sister, Laura Haugane Nielsen, born in 1948. Married to Ove Nielsen.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And here’s the other one you asked about …’

  ‘Yes, here’s The Knife. Harry Hopsland, born in 1940. Registered as having moved away in 1981. Moved back last year. Address: Nordre Skogveien. A son, Ole Hopsland, born in 1971. Mother – what does it say?’

  ‘Grete Pedersen, moved to Førde in 1978. They were never married. But his son still lives in Bergen.’

  ‘So I see. Did you find out where he works too?’

  ‘Yes, I … Digi-Data. A computing firm, obviously.’

  I scribbled everything down in my book before folding the pages up and stuffing them into my inside pocket. I put my arm round her and kissed her lightly on the mouth. ‘Now I have to go to Stavanger tomorrow. The plane could fall out of the sky, of course, but that’s a risk you take every time, so … In many ways, I think it’s safer outside Bergen than actually in it, that is, if we’re going to take this seriously at all, Karin.’

  ‘I certainly took it seriously when he rang.’

  ‘I’ve been out on a winter’s night alone before,’ I said to reassure her. But as I said it, I noticed that I wasn’t fully reassured myself. Someone had sowed frost in my heart, an ice rose in my breast.

  ♦

  I didn’t sleep much that night.

  If I was to take it seriously, what could I actually do?

  Was just one person behind it or more? Had it not been for the fact that the first telephone call had been before I started digging around in the Torild Skagestøl case in earnest, it would have been natural to suspect Birger Bjelland and his entourage. But it was most likely some nutcase who was doing this just to scare people without ever actually trying to carry out the threat in reality.

  But the fact that he’d phoned Karin worried me. It meant that he must have a fairly good knowledge of my private life, that he’d also probably tailed me – or us – and found out who she was. But it could also mean that he had the backup, if not of an organisation, then at least of some kind of network.

  Karin slept restlessly beside me, mumbled something or other in her sleep and threw out one of her arms.

  I reached down to the floor beside the bed, located my watch, lifted it up and pressed the button to illuminate the little screen: one thirty-five.

  OK. Let’s say I was in real danger. In that case, what in particular should I keep an eye out for?

  We were not in Sicily, my office was not on Chicago’s North Side, and even Soho had an exotic ring for a private investigator in an elongated country not far from the North Pole. In other words, it was not very likely that somebody had placed a car bomb under my Toyota before I set off for Flesland Airport at daybreak. Nor was there any real reason to fear there might be a marksman behind the bushes in the old school garden waiting to focus his telescopic sights on me as I unlocked the car door.

  The likeliest scenario was that someone would have a go at me directly with a small firearm or a knife. The very thought of it made me sit up so suddenly in bed that Karin reached her arm out for me and asked drowsily: ‘Is it morning?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said softly. ‘Go back to sleep. I just have to – get up for a second.’

  I got up, padded out of the bedroom, through the hall and into the living room.

  I stood at the window, gazing out.

  It was a strangely peaceful sight. Bergen at a quarter to two in the morning, scattered snowflakes in the air, the protective ring of black mountains with clusters of buildings here and there, the street lighting like the pattern on a gilded peacock’s feather in the darkness. Store Lungegårds Lake had the air of a black lagoon, a horseshoe of ice on its surface like the skin on milk; and in the tall, ugly towers in Vetlemanhattan all the offices were in darkness except one, from the top of which beamed forth the time and the temperature at that precise moment.

  There were not many cars out and about, and it was hardly likely that any of them were on their way to me.

  My breathing was calm and regular. In – out. In – out.
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  Slowly I felt the tension in my shoulders lessen. The painful knot in my stomach began to loosen and behind my eyelids sleep beckoned with its gentle elfin wings.

  I went back to bed and lay huddled up to Karin, my arms around her in a kind of tandem foetal position.

  I did not waken until the clock radio burst into life with a blaring fanfare from the newsroom, keen to share the latest disasters with us before we began another working day.

  Thirty-seven

  EVEN THE WEATHER GODS were out of sorts on the day I was to die. Intermittent hail showers came lashing in over the city, propelled by a gusting north-west wind, the hailstones drumming against the windowpanes, not unlike the Bergen Boys’ Brigade’s first spring parade.

  Karin gave me a long warm kiss before I left. ‘Want me to come down with you?’

  ‘No. But you can keep an eye on me from the window till I’ve gone.’ As a sudden afterthought I added: ‘And make sure you look after yourself too. I’ll call when I get there.’

  Then after a few minutes more I said that now I absolutely had to leave, and she reluctantly let go of me as though not quite sure she would ever see me again.

  Once more there were tears in her eyes. I didn’t know whether I was pleased or not. I didn’t like giving others cause to weep.

  I opened the main door downstairs cautiously. Not many people were up and about yet. A neighbour from one of the other blocks was on her way up towards Årstadveien, and a middle-aged lady was out walking her dog.

  I went quickly out and walked over to the parking space, bending down a couple of times as though to check my shoelaces. When I got to the car I took care not to hang about in one place for too long. I quickly walked around it, brushing off the windows. The scattering of snow during the night at least had the advantage of making me fairly sure no one had tampered with the car, either around the locks or elsewhere since I’d parked it. There were no other footprints but mine around it. All I found was the Hardanger lace pattern of hail from the last shower.

  I put the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door, nodded up at Karin and got in.

  Having seen far too many American films, I looked round at the back seat to make sure it was empty. It was.

  I knew that the critical point was what followed now. Most car bombs were connected to the ignition.

  There was only one way to find out. With the door still open (as though that would have helped), I put the key in the ignition and turned on the engine. It started like a sailor’s widow at the very first touch.

  As I turned out of the car park, I waved up at Karin again. She waved back, but not from the heart. It was as though I could see her worried look even down there in the car.

  Up in Årstadveien I turned south towards Haukeland Hospital. I looked in the mirror. There was a steady trickle of cars over Årstadvollen. Up from Fløenbakken came a motorbike, which carefully positioned itself close to the pavement two or three cars behind me. I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

  In Fridalen I turned down through Christiepark, glancing in the rear-view mirror. Two of the cars – and the motorbike – were behind.

  At Inndalsveien I waited at a red light. The motorcyclist dutifully stopped, still two cars behind me, although there was more than enough room to pass.

  I tried to gain some impression of the rider, but it was still too dark, and he was completely covered by a leather bodysuit and helmet with a black-tinted visor.

  The driver behind me tooted irritably, and I shot off so fast at green that my car skidded on the slippery surface, although I quickly regained control. The motorcyclist had no problems.

  We stuck to one another like Siamese twins all the way to Flesland Airport. The cars between us might change, but the distance between us always remained the same, two or three cars. But when I drove into the long-stay car park to dump the car off he had suddenly gone.

  I parked the car and walked quickly to the terminal building, looking around all the while. It was as though I could still hear the faint vroom-vroom of the motorbike, but it must have been my imagination. I couldn’t see anything.

  In the arrivals hall people hurried in all directions, intent upon their various business. I took the escalator up to departures on the first floor. Halfway up I had a perfect view of almost everything down on the ground floor, but I couldn’t see the black-clad motorcyclist anywhere.

  Not long after I was on my way out to the plane. Two or three heads in front of me, I caught a glimpse of a tall lanky figure that seemed familiar. But it was only when he turned around at the top of the steps that I knew for certain it was him. Holger Skagestøl was on the same plane.

  He found a seat, and I stopped beside him. ‘Mind if I sit here?’

  He looked up and frowned. ‘Veum? What the hell? You’re not tailing me, I hope?’

  ‘Heavens no! I’m going to Stavanger on business.’

  ‘Well, in that case …’ But he stole a suspicious glance at me as I sat down as though he definitely didn’t feel quite at ease.

  ♦

  Most people feel a natural pang of anxiety when the doors close, you are asked to fasten your seatbelt, and the plane prepares for takeoff.

  This time I felt only relief when the doors closed and I was sure that the man in the motorbike gear was not among the passengers; unless he had made a lightning change in the toilets, in which case he could be anyone. Including …

  I looked at Holger Skagestøl.

  No. I thought not.

  Skagestøl’s facial muscles were just as tense as the last time I’d seen him. He was wearing a grey suit and had stowed a light-brown winter overcoat in the overhead luggage compartment.

  ‘On business?’ I asked cautiously.

  He ran his hand over his forehead. ‘Yeah. Directors’ Conference of the National Newspaper Association.’

  ‘Several days?’

  ‘Till tomorrow. Of course, I could just have cancelled, given the circumstances, but in a way it might not be a bad idea to have something else to think about.’

  ‘Has a date been set for the funeral?’

  ‘No, the police … But it’ll probably be sometime next week. As soon as possible, I hope.’ As though to explain what he meant, he added: ‘I mean it won’t be over till then.’

  The plane took off, and we sat there without speaking until it had stopped climbing and was on course, and the signal that we could unfasten our seat belts was flashing.

  ‘You will both be pleased the guilty party was arrested so quickly, of course.’

  He shot a glance at me. ‘Yes, sure. He still hasn’t confessed.’

  ‘No, but they never do straight away. Only when they see the game’s up, then … And then you can’t stop them, as if there were some higher power they suddenly had to explain themselves to.’

  ‘There may well be too, for all we know.’

  An air hostess came round with a carton of fruit juice and an open sandwich on a little polystyrene tray. ‘Would you like a paper?’ she asked with a smile.

  I shook my head, but Holger Skagestøl said he would. ‘Both, please.’

  After she had given them to him, he glanced quickly at the front pages, placed one of them in his lap and unfolded the other before opening it and leafing quickly through the first pages with a worried look. Halfway through, he suddenly put the paper aside, took the other one and went through the same procedure with it.

  Looking sideways at me and turning so his whole body almost seemed as if it would keel over, he said: ‘For the first time in my life I understand what it feels like to be headline fodder, Veum.’

  ‘New experience, is it?’

  ‘Horrible! You see you’re just … I mean, even someone like me stuck right in the thick of it, whom you might think would have a bit of influence over what’s written, is impotent, no other word for it. Impotent: he repeated as though to make sure I’d understood.

  I nodded.

  ‘Suddenly you understand that
you’ve often gone too far yourself. You go through what others have complained to you about before, I mean, that no one listens to you, that your objections, your pleas for your private life to be protected … well, nobody listens, because you’ve suddenly become news.’ He grimaced as he said it.

  Through a few openings here and there in the cloud cover beneath us, we caught a glimpse of a dark fjord and the windswept moorland in Sunnhordland. ‘Now I’m scared stiff when I go out every day to fetch the morning paper, my own paper, Veum. The Oslo papers are placed on my desk as soon as they’re delivered, and I have a knot in my stomach every single day from fear of what might be in them, what pictures they want to use. Just seeing your own daughter, a picture of your own daughter, serialised with its own logo at the top of the news pages! Jesus Christ!’

  ‘It’ll die down now that Hagavik’s been arrested. A case that’s been cleared up doesn’t have the same news value as an unsolved one.’

  ‘But he hasn’t confessed, Veum! That’s the devil of it! So long as there’s no confession, they’re free to speculate about everything imaginable, Satanism or worse.’

  ‘Worse?’

  ‘Yes!’ He lowered his voice and, after a pause, said: ‘We understand now, after the event, that Torild was mixed up in – all sorts. Drugs …’ He found it hard to get the word out: ‘P-prostitution!’ With a jerk of the head, like a bird catching an insect in flight, he added ‘But it was last autumn she went off the rails! After I lost control of her!’

  ‘Are you blaming your wife?’

  ‘I’m not blaming anybody! I’m just stating the facts … As recently as last Whitsuntide, when she was, she was – when we were down visiting her at a guide camp on Radøy …’

  ‘Yes, I heard about that. But your wife didn’t go.’

  He looked at me in surprise. ‘What is it you’re referring to now?’

  ‘Your wife wasn’t with you when you two went to visit the girls. It was just you and Randi Furebø, had you forgotten?’

  ‘Forgotten?’ Again he ran his hand over his brow in that characteristic gesture of his. ‘No, but … so what?’

  ‘A few months later you and your wife separated.’