The Writing on the Wall

by Gunnar Staalesen

  A cackle of raucous laughter followed them out. The door slammed shut, and I heard the heavy bolt being shot on the outside.

  Suddenly the light was out of my eyes. Blinded, I took a few steps sideways. Somewhere near me I heard a sound.

  Forty-nine

  I BENT DOWN, kicked off my shoes and quickly made off in my stocking feet. Then I stopped and held my breath, meanwhile carefully massaging my eyes, trying to erase the image of two white discs from the retinas.

  I stood and listened.

  Where had the sound come from, and what had I actually heard?

  Did he have a torch like the others, which he was about to switch on? Or was he counting on having the upper hand for long enough to carry out the sentence, so that it would be all over before I could see properly again?

  Should I try and talk him out of it?

  But wouldn’t my voice betray where I was?

  I tried to remember how the place looked from my glimpse of it in the light from Birger Bjelland’s torch. Bjelland had been standing about there, and the stairs leading to the upper floors had been – ten to fifteen yards behind him.

  But had there been a stair rail? Or was it just a large open staircase?

  What was he planning to kill me with? A firearm? With the weapon from which he’d got his nickname? Or with his bare fists?

  Again I heard a faint sound, a movement in the darkness.

  Instinctively I moved away from the sound. I tried to steal away, but the faint crunch of the gravel on the concrete floor betrayed where I was.

  I opened my eyes wide and breathed as calmly as I could. Just as I felt I was starting to make out some shapes around me, it became darker. I heard the sound of heavy steps suddenly very close. Automatically I bobbed down and threw myself to one side.

  He swore to himself as he lurched past me. I scurried away on tiptoe towards where I thought the stairs were. One of my feet brushed against something hard and sharp – a nail? – pulling with it the object it was protruding from.

  I quickly bent down, seized something that felt like a piece of plank and ran my fingers over lumps of dried cement until I came to the nail. I set off again.

  ‘Veum!’ he yelled behind me. ‘You haven’t a chance, Veum!’ She’d been right. His accent was from somewhere just outside the city.

  I didn’t give him any extra chances either. I kept quiet.

  I’d reached the stairs now, my toes touching the first step. I moved my left hand, feeling for the wall.

  There …

  With the bottom of my arm against the wall, I followed the stair upwards to the first corner, then on towards the right until I came up against another wall, then right again.

  Down below I heard heavy steps on the stairs. ‘You’re not going to get away, you bastard! I’ve got you now!’

  I was on the first floor. From a window high up a faint glimmer of light fell into the great empty room. Just inside the doorway stood a large metal drum. I put my foot against it and pushed. With a colossal din it tipped over and rolled down into the room below.

  Under cover of the racket I carried on up.

  It had the desired effect. Confused, he stood in the doorway listening to the sound of the rolling drum.

  ‘Veum! Come on out! I can see you!’ he shouted.

  But I didn’t come out. Not for him. I was already on the second floor. And now I could see where I was.

  Here were the large broken windows, gaping nakedly out at the night. The sea air buffeted me through the long corridor leading into small individual rooms in what had probably once been the administrative wing of the factory.

  I walked down the corridor and stood looking round me.

  He must have changed tactics. Now I could no longer hear him.

  I walked to the end of the corridor, where an entire pane of frosted wire glass hid the view. Surely there must be some back stairs somewhere?

  Suddenly, there he was at the top of the stairs, a huge shadow in the dimness. I glimpsed something in one of his hands. In the other, there hung …

  He was breathing heavily

  … a bicycle chain?

  We stood there, staring at each other like two boxers each in our corner of a ring, kept apart by our mutual fear of one another.

  I felt utterly vulnerable as I stood there in my stockinged feet and with nothing to defend myself with but the pathetic bit of wood with the sharp nail in it.

  ‘It’s the end of the road, Veum.’

  ‘Literally. Can’t we say it ended in a draw? Then we can part and still remain good friends.’

  ‘When the fuck were we ever good friends?’

  ‘Well, you may be –’

  ‘All the years I was doing time, I looked forward to this moment, when you and me would meet again, in a dark room, with nothing else to do but settle old scores.’

  ‘I’ve none unsettled –’

  ‘But I have!’ He came a few steps closer.

  I clutched the plank tight. ‘So you were part of this plot too, were you, Knife?’

  ‘I haven’t been in any fucking plot! I came back to Bergen to live. But before I can really feel at ease in the place there’s something that has to be got rid of, a rat that has to be exterminated, and that is –’ He waved one hand at me so the bicycle chain rattled.

  I lifted the plank. ‘You shouldn’t believe what the old folks say. This town is more than big enough for the two of us.’

  ‘It’s too late for me, Veum.’

  ‘Yes, maybe it is. Pity your aim wasn’t better yesterday evening.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘And the same goes for your son! He’s going to be done for complicity!’

  ‘Nobody’s ever going to see the connection!’

  ‘Oh no? Muus knows about the threatening letter! And what’ll happen when they find your fingerprints in that truck you stole?’

  ‘Bjelland promised he’d give me an alibi. He …’

  ‘… is an expert in stuff like that from way back. Yeah, I know that, thanks.’

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, he lunged forward. He swung the bicycle chain in the air in front of me while holding his knife well out to the side, in the death position, raising the point upwards.

  I shielded myself with the plank. The bicycle chain got caught on it, and I gave a sharp tug to try and make him lose balance. With only partial success.

  I moved forward to try and get round him. He snatched the bicycle chain back, and now I lost my balance. The knife flashed, I grabbed onto the nearest doorway, held on – and was hurled sideways into the room.

  A cold blast of sea air hit me. With a shock I realised that the office had no end wall. I stopped and stood there swaying, overcome with sudden vertigo. Slowly I turned round.

  He was standing in the doorway, baring his teeth in something almost like a smile. ‘Now you’re in the trap!’

  I could see his face plainly now. He was wearing the same dark-blue knitted cap as the evening I’d recognised him in C Sundts Street. His features were just the same, as heavy as they had been in 1975, only tauter and more drawn, like a rubber mask discarded as a reject. His close-cropped hair looked completely white. His eyes had a feverish cast, as if he was on something, unless it was just a reflection of the mad existence he led.

  The room was like a long narrow cell. One step at a time he came towards me, holding his arms out from his body: knife in one hand, chain in the other.

  Now survival was all that counted.

  I lashed out with my foot at his groin but missed, kicking the inside of his thigh instead. But it was enough to make him lose his balance, and he fell, first against the wall then towards me. In desperation, I swung the plank at the hand holding the bicycle chain.

  The yell told me I’d struck home with the nail.

  As he tumbled past me, he jerked his arm back so hard that the plank slipped from my grasp.

  For a few absurd moments we stood there swaying, his face contorted with pain and the kn
ife jerking about in his uninjured hand. In the other, he still had the bicycle chain. The plank with the nail lay on the floor between us. For a moment I wondered whether I might be able to reach it.

  Then, almost in a reflex action, I took two quick steps forwards and gave him a sharp kick in the belly so that he fell backwards. Immediately I bitterly regretted it.

  He threw up his arms for a second or two, clutching desperately around him. Then down he plunged backwards through the gap in the wall.

  For the briefest of moments our eyes met, and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that that look would haunt me for the rest of my days.

  ‘Ve – !’ he managed to shout.

  Bewildered, I stuck out my hand, but too late.

  He was gone. His long-drawn-out scream was abruptly silenced.

  For a long time I simply stood there. Then slowly I walked up to the gap in the wall, held on tight, stuck my head out and peered down.

  He lay on his back on the quay in front of the factory, motionless.

  The wheel had turned full circle. The death notice had been accurate. Only the name was wrong.

  ♦

  I found my way back down to the bottom of the staircase, but it was some time before I came across my shoes. Afterwards, it took me barely ten minutes to get out through one of the broken windows on the first floor.

  I walked round the building and onto the quay. Harry Hopsland lay there with the back of his skull smashed and a mixture of blood and brains like a clumsily drawn halo round his head. His eyes were glazed and unfocused as though he was in the dock listening to the first of a long list of charges being read out to him. I had no need to hurry to call an ambulance. He had reached his destination.

  I wandered up as far as Helleveien before managing to flag down a taxi. The driver shot me a quick glance when I asked him to take me to the police station.

  In the police station I met an inspector by the name of Paulsen whom I’d met in passing once before. He was clean-shaven, with mousy-coloured hair and was not completely lacking in common humanity.

  When I told him about Harry Hopsland he immediately called for an ambulance and asked for a patrol car to be sent out. When I told him about Birger Bjelland it was the last straw. ‘I’ll have to ring Muus about this,’ he said.

  ‘Can I report back tomorrow, d’you think?’

  He gave me a worried look. ‘Need any help?’

  ‘No, but a good night’s sleep would be great.’ I wrote down a phone number on a notepad. ‘You’ll be able to reach me at this number here.’

  He nodded. ‘OK. I’m sure it’ll be fine. We know where to find you.’

  ‘Oh? I wish I could say the same.’

  Then I went off towards the phone number I’d given. I rang before letting myself in.

  Fifty

  ‘WE REALLY MUST STOP meeting like this,’ she said the next morning, leaning over to my side of the bed and running her fingers gently over the scratches on my face.

  I grimaced.

  ‘I mean it!’ she said. ‘One of these days I’m going to be called in to scrape you up off the ground in little pieces.’

  ‘So long as you don’t lose any of them,’ I said, trying it on.

  ‘That’s not funny!’

  I ran the tip of my tongue over my dry lips. ‘Shall we make some coffee?’

  ‘But there’s no point trying to talk any sense into you! You’re just like –’ She stopped herself, but I knew what she’d almost blurted out: just like Siren.

  ‘That – reporter who was murdered. You knew her very well, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not as well as this.’

  ‘Do you, do they know – who did it?’

  I looked aside. Did we know, actually?

  ‘If it turns out to be my fault that she … it’d be two deaths in one day I’d be responsible for.’ I looked up at her awkwardly. ‘I think I feel the burden of them on my shoulders already.’

  The light outside her windows was sharp and white. The temperature had suddenly risen ten degrees, yesterday evening’s layer of snow had melted, through the open bedroom windows the twitter of birds could be heard from the trees in the old school garden, and there was an unmistakable feeling of spring in the air. February was on the way out. March was just round the corner, full of expectation like a young girl on the way to her first date.

  Besides, it was Saturday; and we could linger as long as we liked over breakfast. We made bacon and eggs, sliced up some tomatoes and let them sizzle a little in the fat before putting them on our plates. We drank low-fat milk and coffee, ate slices of bread with honey and rosehip jelly, divided the Saturday paper in two and read it so slowly that it almost looked as though we were looking for something quite out of the ordinary; a code hidden in the text.

  Laila Mongstad had made the front page again, but this time without her by-line. They hadn’t even revealed her name. For the time being, the case was being linked to what they called a ‘break-in at the newspaper’s offices in the evening.’ It was still too early to establish whether it had been pure chance that it was a ‘journalist on the evening shift’ who was the killer’s victim, or whether the attack was aimed at that journalist personally.

  All I found on the other case was a little one-column announcement that ran:

  Man found dead in Sandviken

  A man in his fifties was found dead late yesterday evening, the victim of an accident on an industrial site in Sandviken. The deceased was already known to the police. The duty police officer, Inspector Arvid Paulsen, would not comment on the death other than to say that the usual investigations would be carried out.

  Karin pushed her part of the paper across the table to me saying: ‘There’s a death notice for that judge here.’

  ‘Oh?’

  I turned the paper and read:

  ‘Tora,’ I said almost to myself, ‘T for Tora.’

  She looked at me over the top of her coffee mug. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, just thinking aloud.’

  After breakfast I took a long warm shower while Karin was out buying more papers. In the Oslo tabloids the killing of Laila Mongstad was given full coverage, and she was named too. They had also dug up a ten-year-old photo of her from a Press Association directory. One paper carried a full interview with ‘a colleague on the evening shift’, Bjørn Brevik, who said a possible connection between the murder and the fact that Laila Mongstad had been working very hard for several months on exposés of what he referred to as ‘the Bergen underworld’ couldn’t be ruled out. The paper’s editor would not comment on the death at all, other than to say that he ‘found it shocking and highly regrettable’.

  The death in Sandviken was not mentioned in any of the papers.

  It was past one o’clock when there was a call from the police station. ‘Veum? Muus here. We’ve arrested Birger Bjelland. Do you think you could come down and make a full statement?’

  ‘Now? Right away?’

  ‘Any reason to postpone it?’

  I gave Karin an apologetic look, mumbling: ‘No, I suppose not.’

  Half an hour later I was down at the station, where Muus met me looking as though he’d been awarded the Royal Golden Order of Merit. In fact I couldn’t ever recall seeing him in such good spirits. ‘We’ve got him this time, Veum!’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  I accompanied him up to his office, where Atle Helleve sat reading a paper while waiting.

  ‘No Saturdays off for you either?’ I joked.

  With a sigh he folded the paper. ‘Far from the madding crowd on a day like this? Not likely!’

  ‘My goodness, a well-read policeman,’ I added.

  ‘We come in all shapes and sizes, you know.’

  Muus looked slightly lost for a moment. ‘Let’s not waste any time. Sit yourself down, Veum, and let’s go through all the details.’

  And that’s exactly what we did.

  Again I went over everything I’d dug up abou
t Birger Bjelland’s operation, the safe list, Jimmy’s and the Pastel Hotel, Dr Evensen and Bjelland’s other henchmen.

  This time I added what I’d unearthed in Stavanger, if only to colour in his background.

  Helleve was doing the note-taking. He wasn’t just well read but an ace on the keyboard too.

  When I got to the events of the previous day they really started to prick up their ears. The battle with The Knife brought out a hint of the old Muus again. He leaned forward, bared his teeth and said: ‘That sounds like what the legal people usually call “involuntary manslaughter”,’ Veum …’

  ‘It was self-defence,’ I said.

  ‘… not least considering the history you two have – between you, I mean.’

  ‘Well, if we’re going to consider their whole life story,’ Helleve started to say.

  Muus cut him off. ‘On the other hand … it would be one hell of a lot of paperwork.’ He glanced at the magic red circle on the wall calendar.

  I followed his eyes. Then I looked at the date on my digital watch: February 27th. ‘Well, I’ll be damned, Muus! Congratulations! Is this, can this really be, your last day?’

  He looked at me equivocally. ‘In principle, yes, Veum, but I’m afraid there’s going to be a certain amount of paperwork to do next week, on overtime, so to speak. So, in other words, I think we can say thanks for seeing The Knife out, but …’ He leaned slightly to one side and fixed me with his eyes. ‘… if ever I hear you’re mixed up in anything like this again, Veum, I’ll come back out of retirement even if I’m already on the other side, right?’

  I nodded, uncertain how grateful I should appear. ‘But … What about the murder of Laila Mongstad? Have you found out anything there?’

  ‘Nothing definite yet.’

  ‘What about the cause of death?’

  Muus let his eyes rest on me for a moment before deciding to reply. ‘A heavy blow to the back of the head that must have knocked her out. After that she was just strangled.’

  A shudder ran through me. Struck on the head – and strangled … The neck I had …