Where Roses Never Die

by Staalesen, Gunnar

  It had been so easy. That was all there was to it.

  He drove carefully so that she wouldn’t tumble forward if he had to brake suddenly. On board the ferry he sat in the car and gave her chocolate, got out to pay the ticket collector and then got back in, happy that he hadn’t met anyone he knew. But who could that be? Who did he have anything to do with anymore on Askøy? And on a Saturday morning most people were going the other way, to Bergen; and those travelling this way were not Askøy residents but Bergensians on a day trip, maybe to do some fishing on the island of Herdla or out towards Hjeltefjorden.

  He drove ashore, unnoticed, and continued to Janevika, equally unnoticed, where he put the car straight into the garage and parked it for good. He had never used it again and a few years later he sold it for no great profit.

  During the trip Mette changed. At first she had been trusting and enthusiastic. When they arrived at the ferry she suddenly looked serious, as though she realised that now something was happening which she didn’t understand. But when he consoled her with more chocolate she relaxed again – for the time being. When they arrived her lips started trembling. ‘Where’s Mummy? I want my mummy!’

  At first he didn’t know what to say. Then he said: ‘Mummy’s gone away, Mette. Now you’re living with Uncle Jesper and … a new mummy. We’ll make sure the nasty boy won’t come and take you.’

  She looked up at him, puzzled. Then she started to cry. ‘Mummy! I want my mummy!’

  ‘Come here, Mette. In here, you’ll see. A nice lady’s waiting for you…’

  He lifted her up and carried her kicking into the house. Inside, Maria struggled to her feet and staggered around. ‘Maria,’ he said. ‘Here I am with a new Liv Grethe for you … Look!’

  He put the girl down on the floor in front of him. She stared at Maria. Then she threw herself round and clung to his leg. ‘I want my mummy, my mummy, my mummy!’

  Maria stood watching her, not understanding much more herself. ‘Liv Grethe, is it really you?’

  From that moment on they never called her anything but Liv Grethe. The first nights she cried herself to sleep, sobbing inconsolably, which changed into resigned sniffling. When they woke her in the morning she was startled, sat up in bed and looked round, disorientated, she had no idea where she was. But as the weeks went by she seemed to adapt to the situation. Gradually a kind of resigned calm fell over her, as though realising that her mum and dad and Håkon were gone forever, they had left her and would never come back. She began to forget them, there were longer and longer intervals between her asking after them, and in the end it was as though she had repressed her previous existence and had become … Liv Grethe.

  The house was isolated, hidden behind a tall hedge, and everyone knew Maria had brought her daughter with her from Østland. The bitterness of her marital break-up had meant Maria never sought contact with old friends, and from now on it was him or the mother who took care of the practical side, went shopping, that kind of thing. Later it was just him. No one reacted to the sounds of a child playing in the house. When, four years later, she started school, it was with Liv Grethe’s birth certificate as her ID, and no one looked at that more than once. He didn’t talk to Maria anymore about the past. He was never entirely sure if she had ever really understood that in fact she had a new daughter. But then he didn’t really understand women.

  The day he would never forget was the Thursday, barely two weeks after he had been up to Solstøvegen to collect her, when two police officers suddenly appeared on his doorstep on what they called a routine patrol. After a detailed discussion with him and conferring with the officers in charge of the investigation in Bergen they took him to Police HQ, where he was confronted by Inspector Dankert Muus, who wanted to talk about his many visits to Synnøve in Solstølvegen, and not only that, Muus also brought up old cases from Askøy. It all ended with him being in custody for twenty-four hours before the defence lawyer he had been allocated had him released, as there wasn’t a scrap of evidence against him; even the circumstantial evidence was thin. Later Maria was also summoned to an interview, although they got nothing sensible out of her, and he had given the defence lawyer photos of Liv Grethe, Maria and him, taken on her birthday the year before, the 17th September, as a kind of alibi for the same date the year afterwards. It was accepted because he never heard any more. Life continued as usual. The daily drama carried on. Except that one of the characters had been exchanged.

  He met my gaze again. ‘She became like a daughter to me, Veum. Maria was never the same again. Something had gone for ever inside her. It was me who took care of Liv Grethe, helped her with her homework, gave her advice and accompanied her to school and so on. And I was a decent father. I never did anything to her. I did nothing wrong!’

  ‘No? All you did was destroy a family, leave a mother, father and brother in total darkness, never knowing what had happened to their daughter and sister. All you did was steal a child.’

  The look he gave me was dark and unfathomable. He didn’t know what I was talking about. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

  45

  The Head of Department, Jakob E. Hamre himself, accompanied by Inspector Annemette Bergesen and two officers, arrived at the old house in Janevika to make the arrest and carry out the first interview. The two cars swung into the drive in front of the house, and I met them at the door.

  ‘Up with the larks for a Tuesday morning, Veum?’ Hamre said with his usual sarcasm.

  ‘Someone has to solve your cases for you.’

  His eyes narrowed visibly. ‘Spare me. We did what we could, but we hit a wall. I remember the case well, even though I was only a young officer at that time. Your stumbling over a solution almost twenty-five years later doesn’t mean we didn’t do what we could.’

  ‘Muus was actually on the track when he had the guilty party in custody, but his defence lawyer, whoever it was, was smarter.’

  His eyes went distant. ‘I don’t remember that. However … where are you holding the man?’

  ‘He’s waiting in here.’

  We went in, all of us. Jesper Janevik was where I had left him, with a somewhat bemused look on his face, as though he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about after so many years.

  ‘It provides an explanation for everything, though not the one we were all expecting,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll handle this,’ Hamre said, going over to Janevik, holding out one hand and introducing himself. ‘Let’s take this from the top,’ he said in as friendly a voice as he could muster.

  Through the window I saw Liv Grethe Heggvoll on her way down the path between the two houses. I quickly turned to Annemette Bergesen. ‘Could you come with me? Here’s…’

  For a moment I didn’t quite know what to call her, but Bergesen received an affirmative nod from Hamre, who said: ‘Yes, it’ll be good if we can speak undisturbed in here first.’

  With the female inspector I left the room. We met Liv Grethe Heggvoll before she quite reached the house. She looked with surprise from the two civilian cars to Annemette and finally to me. ‘Veum … What’s going on here?’

  Bergesen answered. ‘We’re the police. Who are you?’

  ‘The police!? I’m Liv Grethe Heggvoll. Is … Has anything happened to Uncle Jesper?’

  Bergesen looked into her eyes. ‘Nothing to … Nothing dramatic. Not to him.’

  Again Liv Grethe looked at me. ‘Would it be possible to have some kind of explanation? Veum?’

  ‘That’s not so easy. But … let me show you something.’

  I reached inside my jacket. Bergesen regarded me with suspicion as I pulled out the little envelope I’d had there since my second visit to Maja Misvær exactly a week ago. From the envelope I took the little photo of Mette, taken when she was two or three years old, and showed it to the woman in front of me.

  She leaned over and looked at it. An amazed expression filled her eyes. She looked at me again. ‘But that’s…’

  ‘Yes,’ I
said. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’

  ‘My goodness. I’ve never seen … Where did you get it from?’

  ‘Actually, this is rather a long story. Perhaps you and I and Inspector Bergesen can take a seat and go through this bit by bit. Shall we … go up there?’ I gazed at the road which she had come down. At the top of the slope we could glimpse the roof of the house where she had lived since September 1977. ‘But it might be advantageous if … well, the woman you believe is your mother is not present.’

  ‘The woman I believe…’ She was open-mouthed and Bergsen glowered at me.

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing, Veum?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The young woman turned and looked up at the house she had just left. ‘Let’s do that then, if…’

  Two hours later she was sitting in front of me, in floods of tears. Annemette Bergesen sat with her arms around her, but my impression was that she still hadn’t fully taken in what I had told her.

  At length I said: ‘There’s a lot left to explain, but … in fact I’ve got a job to do and I think it would do both of you good to meet.’

  Through her tears she said: ‘You mean…’ Her eyes drifted over to the closed door to the sitting room, where Maria Heggvoll was sitting on the sofa and watching morning TV. Then they came back to me. ‘My … mother?’

  Bergesen sent me a serious look. ‘Do you think this is right, Varg?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m sure. She’s waited long enough and…’ I looked back at the young woman. ‘Yes, it’s time.’

  ‘Let me confer with Hamre first.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll be here.’

  She left. When we were alone the young woman stared at me helplessly. ‘I just can’t understand it. I don’t get it. That someone could…’ She gazed out of the window towards the house where Jesper Janevik lived. ‘That something like this could happen.’

  I said dispassionately: ‘They were lucky. External circumstances – out here – helped them. But it’s not your everyday story, I can vouch for that.’

  ‘No…’

  She seemed more composed now, and we sat in silence, rapt by our own thoughts, until Annemette Bergesen appeared in the doorway.

  She nodded to me. ‘It’s fine. They’re in the process of getting a full confession. Hamre said it wouldn’t do any harm. Not to the case anyway.’

  The young woman burst out: ‘But what will happen to him? To Uncle Jesper, I mean.’

  ‘Too early to say,’ Bergesen said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘After all it’s a long time ago … what happened, I mean.’

  The young woman moved her head in thought.

  I looked at her. ‘I can drive you there.’

  Again that helpless look came in her eyes. ‘But first I have to…’ She gestured towards the closed door.

  I nodded. ‘Of course. But this isn’t goodbye. The woman in there … It’s too early to say how much she understood, so … don’t say anything either. Nothing … about all this.’

  Bergesen added: ‘Yes, that’s important. She’ll have to be interviewed as well.’

  ‘I see,’ the young woman said. She took out a handkerchief and a little mirror and removed the most visible signs that she had been crying.

  We followed her into the sitting room and kept in the background as she went to the woman on the sofa, leaned over to her and said: ‘I’m going for a little drive, Mummy…’ A half-stifled sob shook her chest. ‘But I’ll be back, don’t worry.’

  The elderly woman looked up at her, confused. ‘Worry? Why should I worry?’ The look she gave us suggested she didn’t recognise any of us.

  Then she shifted her attention to the TV screen as we went towards the door and left.

  46

  For what I assumed would be the last time for quite a while I parked my car in Solstølvegen. The young woman with short reddish hair and large blue eyes sat in the car beside me without evincing any indication of wishing to get out. Slowly she looked around, studied the houses on both sides of the road, shifted her gaze to the tree-clad slope opposite, considerably more built-up than it had been in 1977; then once again she ended up looking at me.

  I nodded towards the low gate in the wooden fence that screened the Solstølen Co-op from the outside world.

  She heaved a deep sigh. ‘I don’t recognise this place.’

  ‘No, but give it time.’

  We stayed sitting. I glanced at her. ‘Shall we…?’

  She hesitated. Then a shudder went through her. ‘Yes, we better had.’ She didn’t appear to be looking forward to this.

  I opened the door on my side. She didn’t move. I went round the car and opened the door for her. Only then did she swing her legs out and stand up. I closed the door behind her and locked the car with the remote.

  I walked ahead and opened the gate. The yard was quiet, as it usually was in the morning. No one was playing in the sandpit in front of Maja Misvær’s house. The young woman looked at it pensively and it was exactly then I saw the shadow of a memory in her eyes, a tiny glimpse of recognition.

  She stood looking around, from house to house, and when she turned back to me there were tears forming in her eyes. In a voice so low it was barely audible she said: ‘I’ve been here … I’ve seen this…’ She looked down at the sandpit, where there was still a little bucket, a spade and some play figures. ‘But I thought it was something I’d … dreamed. A place that didn’t exist in reality.’

  I motioned towards the house behind the sandpit. ‘Here it is.’

  She followed my gaze.

  ‘Shall I?’

  She gave a brief nod.

  Then I rang the bell and stepped aside, like a master of ceremonies introducing the evening’s main guest to an impatient audience.

  When Maja Misvær opened the door she looked at the young woman first, then at me, then back at the woman.

  ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet, Maja,’ I said, but I hadn’t needed to say anything. From a distance of twenty-five years, in a moment of inexplicable magic, they recognised each other.

  ‘Mette … is that you?’

  ‘Mummy…’

  They fell around each other’s necks crying, and even a fifty-nine-year-old private investigator, of the so-called hard-boiled variety, had to turn away, swallow the lump in his throat and quickly wipe away his tears before he moved back to the doorstep.

  I met Maja Misvær’s eyes and smiled in confirmation. Her rose wasn’t dead after all. Someone had just picked it. But she had been there all the time, in a place where roses never die.

  A few hours later I did as I had promised and drove Mette back to Askøy. Which she still called ‘home’ and where she had a lot of tidying up to do. I drove back to my flat, called Hamre and was told that this case would take its legal course, but the offender would initially be admitted to a psychiatric unit for surveillance – so that he wouldn’t harm himself, as Hamre phrased it.

  After the conversation with Hamre I sat staring into the air. Suddenly I felt empty. I had completed my assignment, I would be paid my fee, the month’s supply of food and drink was secure, but had I become a happier person? Had I brought the dead to life?

  The unopened bottle of aquavit was still on the kitchen table and behind it I saw the contours of an endless succession of blood relations, bottle after bottle. If I opened the first, the next stood at the ready, waiting, and then the next, and then the next … On the other hand … I could phone Sølvi Hegge and ask if she had anything planned for this evening. The choice was mine. The rest of my life was mine. All I had to do was choose.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  One of the fathers of Nordic Noir, Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen, Norway in 1947. He made his debut at the age of twenty-two with Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. He is the author of over twenty titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and sold over four million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum cri
me novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Espen Seim. Staalesen, who has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour), lives in Bergen with his wife. The next instalment in the Varg Veum series – No One Is So Safe in Danger – will be published by Orenda Books in 2017.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Don Bartlett lives with his family in a village in Norfolk. He completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000 and has since worked with a wide variety of Danish and Norwegian authors, including Jo Nesbø and Karl Ove Knausgaard. He has previously translated The Consorts of Death, Cold Hearts and We Shall Inherit the Wind in the Varg Veum series.

  Copyright

  Orenda Books

  16 Carson Road

  West Dulwich

  London SE21 8HU

  www.orendabooks.co.uk

  First published in Norwegian as Der hvor roser aldri dør in 2012

  This ebook edition published by Orenda Books in 2016

  Copyright © Gunnar Staalesen 2012

  English translation copyright © Don Bartlett 2016

  Map copyright © Augon Johnsen

  Photograph of Varg Veum statue supplied courtesy of Augon Johnsen

  Gunnar Staalesen has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–1–910633–10–6

  This publication of this translation has been made possible through the financial support of NORLA, Norwegian Literature Abroad.