Where Roses Never Die

by Staalesen, Gunnar

‘Yes, he is, and as far as the accusations that were made about him are concerned, I can assure you they’re absolutely unfounded.’ Her face was red. ‘Uncle Jesper has been like a father to me. When my mother was left to … well, this is none of your business, but since … I’ll tell you.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I was born in Drammen, but when I was only a few months old, my father left us – for another woman – and since then we’ve never had anything to do with him. Mummy packed her things, took me, caught the train and travelled home. Here she had a total breakdown. At that time my grandmother was alive – she didn’t die until a couple of years later. I don’t remember her. But she and Uncle Jesper took care of us. And afterwards, when Grandma died and Mummy was recovering, he was the one who supported us. Helped us with everything of a practical nature. Helped me with my homework when Mummy … couldn’t. If I went swimming…’ She gestured towards the sea: ‘… he always came out and kept an eye on me. Sat on a rock watching. In short … I wouldn’t be sitting here if it hadn’t been for him. And these girls who hurled their accusations…’

  ‘Which girls?’

  ‘Some here on the island. They said he’d exposed himself. It never got to court, and later he kept himself to himself, at the children’s home, he had a job in town, but had trouble hanging on to that too, and now he’s on the dole, but he’s still like a father to me. We see him, if not every day, then several times a week, and we always have Sunday lunch together, the three of us.’

  ‘Just you three?’

  ‘Yes.’ She added: ‘And if you’re wondering if I’ve got a boyfriend, I had one, but it didn’t go very well, so right now I’m … alone.’

  I shrugged. ‘I am too, for that matter, so … as regards that … well.’

  She tossed her head and for a moment or two looked almost provocative. ‘Anything else you’d like to know?’

  ‘You talked about a sexual offence, but did you know … of course you were small when it happened … but did you know he was questioned by the police to do with another case? In 1977, to be precise.’

  ‘1977? I never heard anything.’

  ‘No one told you about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, people have clearly been very considerate.’

  ‘Can you stop beating about the bush?’

  ‘It’s called the Mette Case. A little girl went missing, from Nordås, one September day in 1977. Your uncle had visited a cousin close by – Synnøve Stangeland – several times.’

  ‘Right. We never see anything of them.’

  ‘No, she said that too.’

  ‘So how did it turn out? Nothing serious, obviously.’

  ‘No, the police let him go, and since then he’s never been in any trouble.’

  ‘No, of course not!’ She bared her palms. ‘There you go.’

  ‘But he lives nearby, I understand?’

  There was something measured about her look now. ‘He lives in his childhood home, yes. Down in Janevika. Where he and his mother grew up.’

  ‘Does he welcome visitors?’

  She shrugged. ‘No one ever asks. But if you were thinking of bringing up this topic I think it’s better you don’t bother.’

  ‘Out of consideration for whom?’

  ‘For him, naturally. He’s had enough on his plate, I think.’ She got up with a little grimace and held her back before continuing: ‘I think you should go, Herr… Veum, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked at her mother, who had been sipping at her coffee during the whole conversation, not reacting to anything, not even when her life was being discussed. Now she had put down her cup and was knitting again, in a way that suggested she was on automatic pilot. ‘Thank you for talking to me,’ I said, actually to both of them, but only Liv Grethe accompanied me to the door and she didn’t invite me back.

  I was used to that. I was an unbidden guest almost everywhere I went, and I was never asked to sign the visitors’ book. But I found my way down to Janevika without any further help.

  24

  The house stood on a slope down to a stony beach. It was a white construction, probably from the 1930s, perhaps even older. A narrow road led down to an empty garage to the west. Through the open door I glimpsed various garden tools: spades, rakes, hoes, lawnmowers and something resembling a shredder. The area around the house was in astonishingly good order and I noticed several flowerbeds decoratively framed with boulders from the beach below. Along the north-eastern façade of the house there was a large bed where last year’s rose bushes still hadn’t lost their leaves and gleamed yellow and green.

  I went up the steps to the door in the middle of one long side of the house. There wasn’t a bell here either and I resorted to the same method as at Liv Grethe Heggvoll and her mother’s: I knocked hard on the door.

  From inside I heard nothing until the door burst open and a tall, thin man was standing in the doorway. He was wearing dark-blue jeans, a red-and-black checked shirt hanging loose outside his trousers with a white vest visible at the neck. His dark hair was specked with silver, and short everywhere, down to the scalp. The way he chewed his lower lip gave you the impression his mouth was slightly askew. His eyes were dark and tense, as though he wasn’t expecting any good to come of this visit.

  ‘Jesper Janevik?’

  He nodded. ‘I know who you are. My … Liv Grethe rang to say you were on your way.’

  ‘Well … May I come in?’

  He didn’t move. I looked down. He had only thick socks on his feet, which perhaps explained the lack of sound before he opened the door.

  ‘I don’t think we have anything to talk about.’

  ‘Yes, we do, quite definitely. I’ve been commissioned to…’

  ‘I know what this is about. But I’ve got nothing to say about that case. I had nothing to do with it and … it’s much too long ago.’

  ‘Not long enough for some. For her mother above all.’

  Again he chewed his lip, as though he were taking an exam, I was the examiner and I had just asked a difficult question. ‘But why should I bother about that? I was dragged into this case as an innocent bystander. I’ve got nothing to say, I tell you.’

  ‘Yes, I hear what…’ I looked around. It wasn’t raining, but the sky was grey and white, and there was a touch of late winter in the air. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to let me in?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘Then we’d better have the conversation on the steps.’

  ‘I don’t want that either.’ He started to close the door.

  I jammed my foot in the door. ‘This is childish, Janevik. I assume you don’t want the police on your back again?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘With what justification, might I ask?’

  ‘You have to admit that not even being willing to answer questions twenty-five years on is suspicious.’

  He stared at me. He was standing in his house and was also close on ten centimetres taller than me. Towering over me. Yet there was something delicate and fragile about him which quelled any fears I might have had regarding a full-on physical confrontation.

  I lubricated my voice with social-worker oil. ‘Listen, Janevik. I completely understand that you have every right to feel aggrieved about your treatment in 1977. But you have to put yourself in the girl’s mother’s shoes too. You yourself … Liv Grethe told me how you supported her and her mother, your sister, when they came back here after the divorce.’

  He straightened up. ‘That was family. You take care of your family. I helped my father too when he fell ill, and Mum … in her last days. It goes without saying that I would support Maria and Liv Grethe.’

  ‘Then I’m sure you can understand how painful it must be to lose a child.’

  He nodded. ‘Of course I can. But I didn’t … All I did was visit my cousin Synnøve and her family at … their place. Often, when the children were outside playing, we sat on the doorstep watching them. Some of the other children came over, ate wa
ffles Synnøve gave them and chatted with us. There was never any … That was all there was to it.’

  ‘You’ve never been back?’

  ‘No, I’ve avoided the place like the … I’ve hardly been in Bergen since the early 1980s, unless there’s been a pressing reason.’

  ‘So what was the justification for involving you at that time?’

  ‘It was the police. They went through what they like to call “their records” and there they found my name, along with many others naturally, but some of the people at the co-op had got wind of my name, and had perhaps heard something, what do I know? Anyway, it came as a shock when I found the police at my door, and as if that wasn’t enough … I was taken to the police station and held in custody!’ He had a long, thin neck with a pronounced Adam’s apple, which was going up and down now as he swallowed hard. ‘I was kept there for twenty-four hours until I was released after their remand hearing. My solicitor said I could claim compensation, but I said no. I didn’t want any more fuss. I’d had more than enough!’

  ‘But why were you there in the first place? I mean – in the police records.’

  He pressed his mouth into a straight line. I could see his jaw muscles churning the answer, and his voice was barely audible when he spoke again. ‘Because some giggly girls on the island spread rumours about me!’

  ‘Rumours based on what?’

  He was torn between the desire to tell me to go to hell and the need to justify himself. Again he squeezed out the words. ‘Let – me – tell – you.’

  It had been a Saturday in October, in the late 1960s. He was seventeen and there had been a dance in Bergheim, near the famous coastal town of Florvåg. He and some pals had taken beer with them, which they necked down at the back of the hall, and later – when he got off the bus home – he needed a pee like never before. It felt as if his bladder was exploding and he staggered off the bus – he was also a bit unsteady on his legs – then unbuttoned his fly and pointed, just in time, the jet was like a fountain at the side of the road.

  While he stood there with his tackle in hand he heard girls sniggering behind him, and he vaguely remembered the three girls sitting at the back of the bus. They must have been at the dance too, but he had never felt at ease with girls and definitely not when there were lots of them. He couldn’t dance, and as for standing there moving to the music … no, he’d rather hang out with pals by the wall and generally he kept his mouth shut, being by nature the silent, introverted type.

  There the girls stood, like a three-headed troll, sniggering and shouting: ‘Let’s have a look! Oh, what a clever boy! You can piss all the way into town, you can, Jesper Janevik!’

  He stood there like a sculpture in Frogner Park, unable to stop himself, pee streaming out of him from an inexhaustible source, displayed in all his glory. ‘What a big boy! Show us some more, Jesper! Let’s have a look at ’im!’

  And at that moment a car arrived, picked him out in the headlights, brakes screaming as it skidded to a halt, and a policeman from the local station stepped out. ‘What’s going on here?!’

  The three-headed troll turned to the officer, a tall, good-looking guy with curly, blond hair and a charming smile for anything in a skirt, and they burst out, more or less in unison: ‘It’s Jesper Janevik! He was flashing us!’

  The officer glared at Jesper, who had finished at long last and was fumbling with his fly. ‘Is that right, girls? What do you say to that, Janevik?’

  As so often before, he seemed to clam up and couldn’t get a word out. He wriggled and squirmed as he felt a dull feeling of nausea rising from within, and before he knew what was going on he leaned forward and was sick, and once again liquid was streaming out of him, but this time from a more respectable orifice.

  ‘I couldn’t say anything, I couldn’t defend myself against these … accusations. The officer said fine, let’s all go home, but on Monday morning I had to present myself in his office and explain, which I did. Later the three girls were summoned too, and it never got as far as a … case. But the damage was done, in such an open society as it was here then. A few weeks later some boys beat me up because I was such a dirty pig, as they put it, and as they left me lying on the ground, bleeding from my nose and mouth, they shouted: Go to the cop shop and report us! They’ll be pleased to see you again, you can be sure of that.’

  I could see how it hurt him to tell me this, and I can’t deny that I felt sympathy for him. ‘And that was all there was to it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not entirely, judging by your expression.’

  ‘No … some years later there were … there had been some attempted rapes, over by Florvåg. There was never any talk of full rapes and the victims couldn’t give a real description of the attacker. But rumours started spreading that I was behind it and became so persistent that I was summoned to the police station once again – for a chat – as they used to say. But they had nothing on me this time, either, of course.’ He stared at me with big, serious eyes. ‘I wasn’t guilty. Yet again!’

  ‘No, I understand. And there’s nothing you can say about Mette Misvær?’

  He shook his head vehemently. ‘No, no, no! How many times do I have to tell you? Nothing!’

  I nodded. ‘Well … your niece gave you the best reference in existence, so you’re definitely held in high regard there.’

  For the first time I saw a shadow of a smile on his face. ‘Yes, Liv Grethe, she’s … the sunshine in my life. Watching her grow from childhood has been my sole joy.’

  ‘Your sister didn’t have it easy, I understand?’

  ‘No, the bastard she married, a guy from the Drammen area, they still have his name as a souvenir – Heggvoll,’ he almost spat it out, ‘jumped into another woman’s knickers while Maria was pregnant with Liv Grethe, and she’d hardly got out of the maternity clinic when he upped and left her. What else could she do but come back here? Dad was dead, but Mum and I took care of them, and after Mum died, I helped them. But it was Maria who bore the brunt. After all, I only helped.’

  ‘And the father has never shown his face since?’

  ‘Never! That was how much he cared. While I, and I’m only an uncle, have … as I said…’

  ‘So what’s your life like now, Janevik? Are you still plagued by gossip?’

  ‘No, it’s died down now. Lots of people have moved away. The three girls … well, one of them lives up on the estate here and has teenagers herself now, but she always looks away on the rare occasions our paths cross. I think she’s actually embarrassed by what she and her friends set in motion then. But … I have problems with my nerves, went to a psychologist for many years and eventually I was on disability benefit. Now I have a quiet, solitary life.’ He looked down to the sea. ‘Sometimes I take a boat out and do some fishing. Sometimes I go to Kleppestø – that’s the centre here now – do a bit of shopping, have a cup of coffee in one of the cafés. I’ve even ventured to Bergen, but … I live alone, as I always have done. This is my childhood home and I’ll die here when the time is ripe.’

  We stood reflecting on that. I had no more questions to ask. I hadn’t received any answers that I could build on, so in that regard the trip had been a waste of time. Another shot in the dark, from a darkened firing range, twenty-five years ago. It wasn’t even worth checking the target. I knew the answer anyway. I doubted I was close.

  However, I still couldn’t free myself from my main preoccupation. Somewhere out there in the gloom was someone who knew something, and I had no intention of giving in yet. There were still lots of people to talk to. There were still some side roads to go down, on the trail of what everyone feared to find out, which nobody knew as yet – except for one person, maybe two.

  With this in mind, I plodded back up to the main road, got into my car and drove back to Bergen. On Askøy Bridge I met the rush-hour traffic coming out. That is what happens when you have a bridge. You instantly become a suburb of the nearest big town, with the advantages and curses thi
s brings. Which tipped the balance depended on the island. I didn’t see much more than a line of white headlights in front of me, as regular as the drumstick beat of a seasoned drummer in Bergheim one Saturday night in the sixties, when The Stringers, The Harpers or some other Bergen band was playing at a dance for the kids out there, oblivious of what might happen on the country road as they were travelling home, late that same night.

  25

  As soon as I was back on the mainland I drove to a lay-by off to the right of the road. I took out my phone, rang Haakonsvern and asked to speak to Svein Stangeland. After a short wait he came to the phone. I said who I was and he grunted.

  ‘Let’s get straight to the point, Stangeland. I think we need to have another chat.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Why?’

  ‘It turns out you weren’t actually at your cabin on the day little Mette Misvær went missing.’

  I was met with a silence at the other end, so long I wondered if we were still connected. ‘Hello! Are you there?’

  ‘… Yes.’

  ‘Do you agree that we need to talk?’

  ‘Only if you insist.’

  ‘So let’s say I do. I’m not that far from Loddefjord now. Can I meet you at work?’

  ‘No,’ he said at once, so quickly that he felt he ought to explain. ‘After 9/11 it’s more difficult for outsiders to get in here than it is to steal a plane. I’ll come out. We can meet … at Vestkanten, the café on the first floor – in half an hour.’

  ‘OK.’

  He rang off without another word. I sat musing, then pulled back on to the main road and drove through the tunnel towards the roundabout that sent traffic in every direction of the compass, one of them to Loddefjord.

  Vestkanten was the name they had given to the renovated version of the mall that had once been called Loddefjord Market. It lay like a stranded chunk of concrete at the bottom of the valley and really didn’t invite passers-by to drop in, unless they were already going there for a reason. I drove into the rear and parked under a roof, the shortest possible distance to the entrance. In the mall, I found myself in a world the sun never reached, but there was eternal light from the ceiling, the walls and inside the packed shops. It was a place you could easily get lost in, but I found my way to the café on the first floor I hoped he had meant. I ordered a cup of coffee and a bun and sat down at an unoccupied table with a view of the concourse outside. I should at least catch sight of him when he appeared.