Requiem
Page 32
Lotte turned off the microphone and murmured quietly, “I’ve lost my sister many times before.”
Haraldsvang Café, Haugesund
Late Monday morning, October 20, 2014
A gentle breeze made the dry birch leaves rustle slightly by the playground in Haraldsvang. Otherwise, it was completely still. Not a single screaming child. No voices. No cars in the parking lot. The café at the end toward the water was dark and the blinds were lowered. No joggers on the paths around the open area. No one walking with a stroller. Nothing.
It was as if the whole world were holding its breath. In the summer, the place was crawling with teenagers on the diving platform and families with small children in peaceful play in the spot in front of the café. But today no one was to be seen.
That is, almost no one was to be seen. On a bench in the park, a man sat quietly observing the surroundings. The whole setting in the park was arranged for a re-creation of the opening scene in The Night Man by Jørn Lier Horst. With the exception of the man himself, the bench, and the fact that they were in a peaceful park in the forest in nice weather. Not on a busy shopping street in the middle of the city while fog placed its veil over the inconceivable.
The sound of the sirens increased in strength, and the blue lights shimmered among yellow autumn leaves in the forest.
Lotte Skeisvoll had thrown herself into one of the first cars. She wanted to be there. If she wasn’t there, Anne would have no one she knew around her. Lotte knew very well what it would lead to if everything went the way it was written, but the alternative was to let Anne stand there alone.
Lotte looked in panic out the window of the police car as they screeched into the lot by Haraldsvang Café. Time stopped as she raised her eyes and saw what Øystein Vindheim had managed to stage in the barely ten minutes he had on them. The cars came in a line behind them. The sirens were turned off. Doors opened, police threw themselves down into position, and commands flew through the air for a few seconds. Then suddenly it was as if the entire scenario turned into a tableau.
If it hadn’t been for the all-encompassing silence, everything would have been seemingly normal. The metal slides of the playground equipment glistened in the sun. The shells of car tires swung cautiously back and forth in the wind. One of the suspension chains was rusty and creaked every time the wind put the tire into motion. You could hear the water lapping the stones at the water’s edge. Everything was exactly the way he wanted it. Him alone on the bench. The police in position in front of him. Anne standing by his side.
Lotte opened the door of the police car in a continuous slow movement. She stood up. Clung to the doorframe so she wouldn’t fall. The policemen in the response team had lowered their weapons a few centimeters. All of them looked apprehensively over at her. She stroked a brown shock of her hair to the side. Noticed that she was hyperventilating. Her hands were shaking. Her legs struggled to support her. She whispered to her sister first.
“Anne…”
Her sister could not hear her. The words did not reach her. They were ten meters apart, but Lotte couldn’t reach her. She called to her sister. Louder and louder.
“Anne!… Anne!”
She did not answer. Anne stared vacantly over the parking lot.
From the treetops, a light rustling could be heard from the remnants of what had been fresh, green foliage a month earlier. A chilly breeze crept over the hills from the waters of Skeisvannet. Settled like a layer of ice over the people standing there. Everything that was normal and everyday was whisked away by this one thing in front of them. High over the man on the bench, Anne wobbled with her head fastened to a two-meter-long pole. Where had the rest of her body gone? Only the contented man sitting on the bench knew that. The Maestro.
Requiem: Manu propria
Why?…
For a week they’ve been asking me that question. There is no “why.” What, who, where, and how are good words. Words I can relate to. But “why”?…
I answer that it had to be done. They ask whether it was a compulsive act. No. I could have chosen not to. Could have gone quietly out of time with a two-column obituary on a back page in the local paper. Prayed to a God that doesn’t exist that someone would pick up the manuscript and let it have a life after me. That someone, against all odds, would see the words I have written, and give me a name postmortem. I could have done that. Lived my final days in the hope that someone would discover me, and see me. But I didn’t do that. I chose to turn the words into action. The interplay to music.
A game with mirrors. A Mass for the dead. A requiem. A swan song over ice-covered water. I don’t get how it’s so difficult to understand.
They shake their heads. Mumble to each other. Turn toward me again. Ask more “why” questions. I squirm on the stick-back chair. Don’t comprehend what the point is with this wordplay. Mozart wrote symphonies. No one asked him “why”!
“I wanted people to see this story. That it wouldn’t disappear with me.”
A moment later, I wonder whether I said that out loud, or if I just thought those sentences. There is no response from the two policemen, so I don’t know. I can’t keep track of how many times I’ve repeated myself in answer to their questions. I am an echo of myself. An echo in the white-plastered walls.
Why did you write that story? Because I wanted to. Because I’d lived a whole life of wandering among bookshelves and never found myself. Because I knew I could do it better. Because I had a story I wanted to share.
Why did you use real persons in a novel? Idiotic question. Everyone who knows anything about books knows that the characters must be genuine so the story will be believable. Genuine characters, genuine persons, genuine names. You don’t get closer to reality. As I said, it’s a game with mirrors. Using my friends and other known faces the way I see them. Letting them be themselves in a role. Let them live their life in my story. Or die … Someone always has to die.
The man from Oslo. Olav Scheldrup Hansen. The man that I had to write into the story along the way turns toward me. Tries to stare me down with tired eyes. Peeks down at his notes.
Asks the endless question again.
“Why did they have to die? Why did you choose these victims, and not others?”
It should be obvious. I didn’t choose them; they chose me. Like one of the judges in court, I was there when they were acquitted against my will, and I was there when they got their rightful judgment. A circle completed. I saw them on the witness stand, and heard all their little lies. It was there the seed was sown. That someone let them get their punishment nevertheless? That was the crime plot I’d waited for. The story of the genius who in his madness took out his revenge on those who avoided their punishment. “Maestro” was a shadow of me, written into a book. He came alive through me. When the Mass for the dead was to be performed, they had to die. That wasn’t my wish. It was just the way it was written in the notes. You can improvise over a composition, but the leading tone must be the same.
“You killed them because you had written in this novel that this would happen?”
Scheldrup Hansen again. Monotonous voice. Tired type. Finally a question I can answer. A precise, concise answer coming from me:
“Yes.”
The Kripos investigator shakes his head. Looks at his colleague and whispers something to her. She nods. This isn’t Lotte Skeisvoll. I haven’t seen her since the final note faded out in Haraldsvang a week ago. She is still one of the meaningless questions. Why just her? I answered them truthfully.
Why not?…
She was too good not to be used in a novel. Her little peculiarities that I had studied in the courtroom again and again. OCD, wasn’t that the abbreviation for this diagnosis? Small, meaningless compulsive actions that make the character different. Brilliant but insecure. Confident but afraid. Steady but unstable. I understood it as soon as I started on Maestro. It had to be Lotte. I tarry a little on the good memories from all the times I studied her predictable habits and rout
ines. Who else shops for milk, bread, sliced ham, and cheese every day at exactly 5:05 P.M.?
“Why this hatred toward Viljar Gudmundsson? I thought you were friends.”
The man from East Norway is clearly not through wondering yet.
They definitely have a hard time with that. Don’t they understand yet? I don’t hate Viljar. He’s my hero. He’s the one who plays the main role. My first violinist. My soloist. I love Viljar. That’s why I let him live. All heroes have their problems on the way toward the resolution; otherwise, it wouldn’t be exciting. Yes, I let him suffer for the weak job he did with Jonas, my delightful nephew. But I don’t hate him for that reason. It just gave me an excellent reason to get to tell Jonas’s story too. No one has written it down before. Not the actual, true story. The one Jonas and Fredric told me when I hid them in my house after what happened with Ine.
A mirror in a mirror. That’s the way it is.
Or … that’s the way I hope it will be as I sit alone at the library, listening for sirens that still seem to be waiting. Fantasize about how this scene will play out. I have written the last movement from Haraldsvang. I see before me that this is the way it must end. That I succeed, and that the story ends there. But I don’t know where the mirror captures and reality ends. Thus I see myself sitting in a chair in a week, where they ask me why, and I answer with my soundless thoughts. They are going to do that, aren’t they?
In any event, that is how it shall be, if it goes the way I’ve written. Then this will happen. Then the world will see me shine. Then the period will be set here. Anne dies. I will also die at last, but Maestro will live forever. Here at the library in Haugesund, in the center of the endless magic of the books, like a mirror in a mirror for all eternity.
October 29, 2014
Øystein Vindheim
About the Author
Geir Tangen was born in 1970 in Øystese, Norway. He runs Norway’s biggest crime-fiction book blog—Bokbloggeir.com, with over 170,000 readers—where he’s reviewed crime novels and thrillers since 2012. Geir holds a degree in political science and ICT, and has worked as a journalist and a freelance editor for several Norwegian publishers. He currently works as a secondary school teacher. Requiem is Geir Tangen’s debut novel, first self-published in January 2016. One month later, after a rave reception, one of Norway’s biggest and most prestigious publishers, Gyldendal, preempted the rights to Requiem and to Heartbreaker, the next book in the series. Tangen lives in Haugesund, Norway, with his wife and three children. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
MINOTAUR BOOKS
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press
REQUIEM. Copyright © 2016 by Geir Tangen. Translation copyright © 2018 by Paul Norlen. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photograph: man © Mark Owen/Arcangel
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-12406-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-12407-4 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250124074
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
First published in Norwegian by MATA Forlag in 2016
First U.S. Edition: July 2018
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1