by Geir Tangen
It was pitch dark, and leaden rain clouds raced to get the best seats over the city. Ranveig glanced up to assure herself that the rain wouldn’t start for a while yet. She was not eager to stand there soaking wet, interviewing the hoi polloi in the middle of the night.
As she rounded the bend on foot on her way toward Skåredalen School, she suddenly realized that something didn’t add up. Not a single car was visible anywhere close to the driveway to Vikshåland’s house up on the hill. There was no one there. No ambulances, no journalists, no spectators. She sighed when she realized that this was a wasted trip. Even so, she continued walking the two hundred meters up to the little house he had inherited from his parents. The house looked abandoned. All the windows were dark, and mail was starting to pile up in the green box. If the tip was true, it must mean that the death had occurred on Salhusveien, after all.
She took out her cell phone and called Øveraas.
“Øveraas, Haugesund News.”
“Ranveig here. Listen, I’m up at Tømmerdalen now, and there’s not a soul here. No souls who’ve left their body either, as far as I can see,” she added dryly.
“No? That’s strange, because there’s no one on Salhusveien. I checked up on that after I talked with you.”
“Looks like someone wanted to play games with us tonight.”
Ranveig lost her patience. If she hadn’t been tired a few hours ago, she was now. She just wanted to go home and crawl under the covers. Preferably before the neighbors came home from the bar and hosted an after-party.
Øveraas started talking again. “Listen, Ranveig … I think you can pack up. Doesn’t seem like there’s as much to this as it appeared. Sorry, but…”
She ended the call with the editor and put the cell phone in her bag again. The wooden house from the early seventies loomed over her like a silent witness. She felt exhausted and alone out here. Even though it was only fifty meters to the nearest house, and the twisted little gravel road leading up from the school was all that separated Tømmerdalen from urban life.
The gravel crunched under her shoes as she took the first steps away from the property of the exhibitionistic author. She herself had not minced words in her descriptions of him. “Narcissist,” “agitator,” and “ruthless fortune hunter” were all insults she had pulled out of her hat when she reviewed his latest book, From Hotel Caesar to Skippergata. A mishmash of loose assertions about named cultural personalities’ dealings with representatives of organized crime, involvement in prostitution, drug use, and paid junkets. The book strayed as far from ethical norms of journalism as you could, but the protagonist hid behind the idea that the novel was a mixture of fiction and reality. Which was which, he refused to clarify. For that matter, Ranveig didn’t think this was the worst thing about the novel, but the compulsion Vikshåland had to reflect himself and his stunted values in anything and everything was nothing less than nauseating.
She tossed her head as she left the property, as if to remove any particles of Vikshåland’s personality that had settled like imaginary dandruff on her shoulders. There were not many people she was capable of hating, but that man brought out the worst in her. He was the personification of the egotistical, navel-gazing society that Norway was in the process of becoming.
As she turned one last time toward the house, she saw it. Not only saw, but heard too. A slight flash of light from the back side of the house, and the unmistakable sound of a stone that thumped against a wall. She stopped and crouched down behind a bush. There was someone behind the house. The flash of light had been from a Mag-Lite, and the last time she checked, only one species in the animal kingdom had mastered the use of such a tool. In other words, this was not a cat or a passing deer. She was less certain whether the person in question was aware that she was on the other side. A few seconds later, the light flashed again. Two times now, and the width of the beam revealed that the person had moved closer to the east corner of the house.
Ranveig sat quiet as a mouse, but could feel her heart pounding under her blouse. The fear that rushed through her body was a primitive instinct. The same instinct that in its time had made the human race the most viable of all animal species: fight or flight. For millennia it had made humans in danger fight enemies or run for their lives. Ranveig had no plans to do either. She wanted to see who was lurking behind Vikshåland’s house. There was a good chance it was another overeager journalist. Other media might have picked up the tip too.
When she heard the sound of shattering glass a moment later, she was no longer so certain. Plenty of journalists were willing to intrude far into the private sphere of celebrities, but breaking and entering was a bit too much. She had barely completed the train of thought before she saw the beam of the Mag-Lite create a reflection down in the cellar of the house. The unknown person must be on his way in. Ranveig got up carefully from her hiding place and ventured toward the corner of the house. She moved the way she had seen soldiers do in movies, bent over with cautious, quiet steps.
Up at the corner of the house, she caught her breath for a few seconds before she peeked around the corner. All the alarm bells in her body reacted at the same time when she looked right into two eyes and a smiling mouth. She had expected that the man was in the cellar. He wasn’t. He was standing barely an arm’s length from her, waiting. A scream of terror was on its way up her throat, but it was efficiently smothered by a heavy and precise blow to the skull. In a fraction of a second, all her sensory impressions disappeared, and the pain from the blow could barely reach the nerve center in the brain before she was unconscious.
When Ranveig came to half an hour later, she understood that she had made a major blunder. The man who had struck her down had probably been waiting for her the whole time.
Why is he doing this? Has he gone completely crazy?
She recognized him the moment she stuck her head around the corner. The experience was surreal. This man should not be here. The astonishment was perhaps the main reason she didn’t manage to react before the blow came.
Ranveig was furious.
I’ll be damned if he’ll break me, she thought before she realized that she was tethered tightly to a beam that made it physically impossible for her to put up resistance against anything whatsoever. Her head, hands, and feet were all tied with zip ties so that he could actually do whatever he wanted with her. Her mouth was covered with duct tape. She tried to scream, but all that came out were desperate howling sounds. The thought of what he might come up with made her nauseated. The fear came when she realized the connection.
Panic started to spread, and the anger and resistance she had felt a few seconds ago were replaced by new fear. She wanted to wipe away the tears that welled up at the corners of her eyes, but couldn’t move a muscle. As her vision gradually became more and more blurry, she saw the familiar male figure come walking toward her. He had discovered that she was conscious. His smile was unmistakable.…
Media House Haugesund News
Friday morning, October 17, 2014
The morning coffee and cigarette were a motivation in themselves to get out of bed and go to work. Viljar enjoyed every second of the routine in the parking lot outside the newspaper building. He often went a little early to be quite sure to be alone out there. This morning ritual was so ingrained in him that he even missed it on weekends and vacations. Compensated then, of course, with corresponding doses of poison at home, but it didn’t have the same calming effect. Viljar knew that he was the type who would never be able to quit smoking. He nodded in recognition at COPD patients who dragged their oxygen equipment coughing with them out in the “smoking garage” at Haugesund Hospital. Thought that he was just like that.
He let his thoughts wander back to the day before. In a casual attempt to find out what business Henrik Thomsen had with Hans Indbjo, he’d followed them in his car like a scruffy detective from a 1970s American TV series. Paranoid perhaps, he thought, but something didn’t add up. Those two idiots well deserved each
other’s company, but from what he knew, they weren’t on speaking terms otherwise.
Viljar had kept a discreet distance from the pair, but at the same time close enough that he could observe what they were up to. They stopped twice on the drive. Both times, Hans Indbjo stayed in the car while Henrik Thomsen waddled out of the tin can. The first stop was at the Shell station at Avaldsnes just on the other side of the Karmøy bridge. Then Thomsen had talked for a long time with a blond-haired girl in her early twenties. The second time, they stopped in Skåredalen. There Thomsen had given a ten-year-old a cell phone. Viljar could obviously not see it from far off, but guessed as much when he passed the kid a few minutes later and saw that he was coaxing a SIM card into a smartphone.
Viljar followed Thomsen home that afternoon. To the left on Strandgata right after Torgbakken, the man finally disappeared into an old wooden house. The doorplate showed that this was where Thomsen lived. Hans Indbjo had driven on. When Viljar passed the house on his way back from a soccer match at the Football Pub, Thomas was sitting in the same position inside the curtains, staring at a TV screen.
Viljar crushed out the second cigarette of the day in the saucer he’d brought with him, emptied the last drops of lukewarm coffee on the asphalt, sighed contentedly at the numbing sensation of nicotine in his veins, and added extra insurance with a stick of nicotine gum before wending his way to the other journalists in the cafeteria. It was buzzing in there as always first thing in the morning, but today it stopped when they caught sight of the nicotine wreck in the fluttering topcoat coming in from the light drizzle. Today’s newspaper edition had left its mark. Viljar smiled to himself. This was if possible the greatest recognition a journalist could get in today’s media world: his colleagues’ envy and contempt.
Viljar went out and sat down at his workstation. Checked that no one had been in his computer since last time, and at the same time fished out the cell phone he’d forgotten on the desk the afternoon before. Seven unanswered calls. Five from Ranveig at various times during the afternoon and evening, and two from Øveraas quite late. Viljar guessed at what it was the boss wanted with him when it was almost midnight.
Over by Ingress, he could hear the editorial staff gathering for the morning meeting. Viljar stretched, took off his topcoat, and decided to meet the rest of the editorial team with a smile. He had a front-page feature today after all, and with that he could allow himself to bask in the glory for once. It had been ages since the last time.
Once again the murmur and talk stopped when they caught sight of him, but this time a smirking Johan Øveraas broke the silence by giving him the credit he actually deserved.
“See, here we have the hero of the day in the flesh. All of Norway is clicking on our website, and the servers can barely keep up with it. So far, VG, Dagbladet, TV 2, and NRK have all linked their stories to your article. We have to call that a scoop.”
Øveraas rocked from side to side like an unbalanced bowling pin, and Viljar could actually take in only half of the boasting. The comic effect of Johan Øveraas’s physical capers when he got excited distracted from what he had on his mind.
Viljar noticed that Ranveig’s seat was empty. She was always one of the first to get to work. Viljar showed the editor-in-chief with a silent gesture that Ranveig was missing at the table as he was about to start. Øveraas looked over at the empty seat and wrinkled his eyebrows a little, as if there were something unpleasant he had to remove from his sight. He cleared his throat, but was interrupted by Viljar, who did not have the patience to wait on Øveraas’s empty talk.
“Shouldn’t Ranveig be here today, Johan?”
The editor nodded affirmatively and answered a little hesitantly, “Well … Yes, she should be, but…”
“But?”
Johan Øveraas sighed a little dejectedly before he explained the situation. “She may have overslept. She was out on a late assignment last night and probably didn’t get too many hours of shut-eye.”
“Overslept? Has Ranveig ever overslept in the years she’s worked here? So what case was she covering last night?”
“She was supposed to cover the death of Stein Vikshåland.”
The whole editorial team turned their heads toward the editor. The news landed like a bomb. Øveraas realized his blunder and raised both palms in front of him before he continued.
“Sorry, folks. Alleged death. Vikshåland is alive and in the best of health. Unfortunately, some will no doubt maintain. But last night the news desk received two phone tips that Vikshåland had been found dead in his own home. Ranveig drove out to check if there was any truth in that, which there wasn’t. She called me from Tømmerdalen around midnight, and it was dark and abandoned there then. It was the same on Salhusveien.”
Viljar felt a shiver down his spine. There was something here that didn’t add up. He tossed out a new question. “Why Ranveig? She doesn’t cover news, and she didn’t have a shift yesterday.”
Viljar could see Johan Øveraas arch his back. He was about to get irritated now. Never liked it when anyone questioned his decisions.
“Do you know what?… It is and remains my decision and my responsibility, okay? First, the night-shift reporter was out on another assignment; second, I tried to call you without getting an answer; and third, Henrik Thomsen was in Stavanger to cover a concert. I had no one else to use, Gudmundsson. Is that answer good enough for you?”
Viljar was about to say something, but let it go. He simply got up and left.
“And where the hell do you think you’re going?” Johan Øveraas called at Viljar’s back.
Viljar stopped, turned around, and looked at the editor with an indulgent expression. “I can guarantee you one thing, and that is that Ranveig hasn’t overslept. Since she’s not here, I actually intend to go out and search. She would have called in if she was sick.”
Johan opened his mouth to say something, but was at a loss for an answer and gave up. He sent Viljar off with a hand gesture that indicated that he was excused. Johan Øveraas had his human side, if he just thought about it.
Haugesund
Friday morning, October 17, 2014
Viljar was certain that something was amiss. Øveraas had avoided contacting Henrik Thomsen because he was in Stavanger last evening. As Øveraas said that, he’d shown them a feature from the culture pages with a review of yesterday’s performance in the concert hall. A review Thomsen obviously had written without having been present himself.
Viljar was not the least bit surprised when a few minutes later with his own eyes he could see that Ranveig’s car was gone from its regular parking space outside her building. As expected, no one answered when he rang the doorbell either. He tried for the fourth time this morning to call Ranveig’s cell phone, but still with no answer. Based on a brief conversation they’d had the day before, he’d understood that she would be alone at home until the next day. Husband and child were with the parents-in-law in Grinde.
Viljar used the directory assistance app and found the cell phone number for Ranveig’s husband. Hesitated calling for a long time, but knew he had to do it. She might have decided to drive to Grinde after the failed nocturnal assignment, but it wasn’t very likely. When Rolf finally answered in a tired voice, Viljar chose the cowardly approach.
“Hi, did I wake you up, Rolf? Ranveig’s cell phone must be on silent. Do you mind waking her up, I need to ask her something.”
Viljar had a very guilty conscience about what he was doing, but he couldn’t bear the thought of consoling a worried husband. He would rather take the heat later.
“Uh … Listen, Ranveig’s at work. We’re in Grinde, so I haven’t seen her since yesterday. You’ll get ahold of her if you call the office.”
“Okay, sorry to bother you.”
Viljar sounded nonchalant, but now felt worry raging inside him. Ranveig was gone, and neither work nor family had heard anything from her. He backed the car out on the street again and set a northeast course toward Tømmerdalen
. Called Øveraas to hear if she had come to work, which she hadn’t.
The air was stifling as a few minutes later he drove onto the little side road toward Skåredalen School by the entrance to Tømmerdalen. He parked in the lot outside the school. Quickly noted that Ranveig’s car wasn’t to be seen here either. Nonetheless, he chose to go up to the house to check a little around the Stein Vikshåland property.
The old house loomed dark and silent over him as he rang the doorbell. He could hear the echo from the doorbell inside in the hall. Not a sign of life. Not a movement. Everything was still. He put his head against the door to listen. Not so much as a creak in a floorboard. The house appeared to be unoccupied, and probably had been for several weeks. The mail carrier had clearly given up the fight, and the mailbox was overflowing with newspapers. Viljar looked at them. The oldest issue was over a week old. He turned toward the house again.
You were here last night, Ranveig. But where have you gone?… Viljar let the question hang in the air, turned around, and trudged down to the car again while he called Ranveig’s number for the fifth time. Right there, in the gravel on the walk away from the house, time stopped.
The time it took from when he heard the sound until he actually interpreted what the sound meant was less than a second. For Viljar, that one second seemed like ten. Everything was in slow motion. He actually stopped and turned around in a single movement. With the phone clamped to his ear, he ran in long strides toward the place the sound came from. He knew Ranveig’s ringtone as well as his own. The digital tones to “Angie” by the Rolling Stones were unmistakable.
Viljar grabbed the phone that was lying in the grass by the corner of the house. At the same time, he pressed the Off button on his own phone. “Angie” stopped its melodious journey in mid-refrain. Viljar looked around him. There was no doubt that something had happened to Ranveig, and it had happened here.