No Echo

by Anne Holt

  She raised her glass in a toast.

  “And ta-da, Entré is all yours!”

  A group of Japanese men in gray suits entered the restaurant, all wearing small name badges on their chests. The waiter, two heads higher than his guests, ushered them to a table immediately behind Vilde’s back. She lowered her voice.

  “Or else we can sell Entré at once. That would produce a good chunk for each of us.” She smiled broadly and poured out more water. The ice cubes had almost completely melted.

  Claudio could not sell Entré. He knew it was too late to start all over again. He would soon be fifty, and had lost everything he owned once too often. It had almost finished him off. Nevertheless he had got up again, fought on, and in the end got cracking on a venture that amounted to something. Entré was his goal, and the only thing he wanted.

  Claudio Gagliostro had literally been born and brought up in the restaurant trade. He had come into the world on the kitchen floor in his uncle’s restaurant in Milan. Both his parents had died before he was two, paradoxically enough of food poisoning. They had eaten tainted mussels in a dive in Venice during their extremely delayed honeymoon, and little Claudio had continued to live with his mother’s brother. His uncle had gone bankrupt when the boy was fourteen, and since then Claudio had fended for himself. With varying fortunes, admittedly, and with the benefit of a morality that was the result of his upbringing as the ugliest boy in the street. But he had benefited from something that none of the others had: his annual trip to Norway. His mother’s mother, who originally came from Holmestrand, had left her Italian husband and therefore also her children after years of ill treatment, three years before the Second World War. Her grandson was her pride and joy, even though she had been required to give up her battle for parental rights after a brief, expensive fight through the courts. His uncle had been magnanimous enough to send Claudio to Norway for the summer holidays, even though for his part he had never forgiven Claudio’s mother for leaving him as a child. The boy knew how to make good use of his summer language. Even as an eight-year-old he had stood in the Piazza del Duomo, picking out Norwegian tourists through a combination of intuition and a sharp ear. He was remarkably patient. Days could go by between victims. The little dark-haired boy with the peculiar head, who amazingly enough spoke perfect Norwegian, was the most expensive tour guide in Milan. Neither did he turn down the opportunity to rob his clients, though they never reported him.

  Claudio Gagliostro could not lose Entré.

  “I must have the money by Christmas,” Vilde said. “You don’t have many days left.”

  When she raised her eyes and looked at him, she shuddered.

  “You’ll get your money,” he said contemptuously. “Brede’s dead. That he made the mistake of marrying you is not going to destroy me. Let that lawyer of yours set up an arrangement. I’ll call you.”

  When he stood up again, this time actually to leave, he was calmer.

  “You’ll get your money,” he said curtly. “Even though it doesn’t belong to you.”

  46

  The apartment made her think of an explosion in a bordello. Hanne was placidly resigned about the description being so apt, at least to some extent. Despite her embargo on making a mess anywhere other than the kitchen, Hairy Mary had obviously made herself at home and taken the law into her own hands. Clothes and possessions were scattered across the floor and furnishings, and the washing machine was making noises that indicated something was seriously wrong. Soap was oozing out along the seals. A river of white foam ran between the glass on the drum and the shower. Hanne put her nose closer to it and shut her eyes in despair when she caught sight of the bottle of Zalo washing-up liquid, upset and empty on the tumble drier.

  Her cold was worse. She could not muster the energy to tidy. Instead she contributed to the chaos by clearing out a cupboard in search of an old tracksuit. There had to be something on TV. Something that would send her to sleep. The doorbell rang.

  “Bloody hell!”

  Hanne had repeatedly badgered Hairy Mary about the key. She hauled herself up from the settee and shuffled out to the hallway. Without asking who it was, she pressed the button on the intercom and left the front door open slightly. She hurried back to the settee, since she was halfway through a cheesy crime-drama on TV.

  The noises from the hallway were unfamiliar. Someone was making a real effort to be quiet. It couldn’t be Hairy Mary; she sounded like a traveling children’s orchestra, complete with pots and pans. Hanne sat up, aware of a stab of anxiety as she yelled: “Hello? Who is it?”

  No one answered.

  She was out in the hallway in one bound.

  The woman in front of her, wearing an ankle-length suede coat and bright-red gloves, looked worried. When she saw Hanne, she held out her hand.

  “I found you,” she said softly.

  There was an explosion in the bathroom. It sounded as if the washing machine had blown up.

  47

  His headache had returned. Billy T. wandered around the apartment with a gurgling, contented daughter in his arms and an old-fashioned oatmeal poultice around his head. Shrieking, Jenny snatched at the topknot, tearing a hole in the plastic bag he had painstakingly wrapped in a dish towel, as he tried to wriggle away. The little girl happily slurped the oatmeal on her fingers.

  “Dada,” Jenny said.

  “Dada, my ass,” Billy T. said in an unctuous tone, grabbing the phone that had been ringing for ages.

  “Yes!”

  Jenny daubed oatmeal on the receiver. He tried to make her sit on the settee, but she howled and tugged at his arm.

  “Ma-ma,” Jenny screamed, spitting out gray puke.

  “Just a minute,” Billy T. groaned, hoping that the caller was patient. “Mummy’s not here, silly-billy. Come here.”

  Finally he distracted her with a rag doll.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  “Hi there. This is Dr. Felice here. You’ve obviously got your hands full.”

  “It’s just my daughter wanting to join the conversation. She’s nine months old, so I don’t suppose there’s any breach of confidentiality if she hears what you say.”

  Øystein Felice did not laugh.

  “I don’t know if this is even important.”

  He hesitated for so long, Billy T. thought the call had been disconnected.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, I’m still here. I just want to tell you something that came to me since your visit. Something that’s not mentioned in those papers I gave you. As I said, I’m not sure whether it’s important, but I—”

  “Just a tiny second.”

  Billy T. tore off his compress and touched his cheek. Jenny had given up on the rag doll and was wriggling down from the settee. She lost her balance and fell to the floor and pulled the poultice bag down with her in the fall. She was lying with her bare bottom in the cold porridge, her face turning a dark shade of red. Billy T. held his breath, waiting for the scream. It took him two minutes to calm her down, and she did not produce a smile until he had ripped the paper off a licorice stick that the boys had left behind. Tone-Marit would kill him.

  “At last,” he said glumly to Dr. Felice. “I’m sorry.”

  “Quite all right. That’s what I have to put up with nearly all day long.”

  “What was it about, did you say?”

  “A communication came from Ullevål Hospital a number of years ago. That had to do with Brede Ziegler, I mean. It might have been in ’93 or ’94. I thought it pretty strange at the time, since strictly speaking it wasn’t procedure to send it to me. It had to do with a preliminary investigation about donation.”

  “Eh?”

  “Now and again people get enquiries about whether they are willing to participate in organ donation. Or bone marrow, for that matter. Never before in my experience has the application come through me. However, one or two of my regular patients have had questions in that regard.”

  “But why—”
r />   “I was a bit surprised, as I said, and made contact with Ziegler immediately. He was angry, and it …”

  Jenny had gobbled down the top of the licorice stick. She had only two teeth as yet: twin pearls twinkling white in all the black gunge. Like a beaver with an underbite, she was grinding her way effectively down the stick of candy, babbling and grinning all the while.

  “Yes,” Billy T. said.

  “It was a bit odd. That he was so furious, I mean. People usually take such requests extremely seriously. In fact it can be a question of saving another person’s life.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Only something along the lines of there must be some misunderstanding, and I should turn down the whole business. That was all.”

  Billy T. put Jenny down on the floor, letting her crawl to her heart’s content, closed his eyes, and made up his mind to clean the whole apartment later.

  “I don’t think I entirely understand,” he said into the receiver. “It’s good of you to phone about this, of course, but what you’re saying doesn’t really tell me anything more than we already know. Ziegler was a fucking egotistical bag of shit, pardon my French!”

  “That may be. I don’t have an opinion on that.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t mean anything other than that such requests almost always come on behalf of a relative. A close relative. Since Ziegler did not have any siblings and, despite everything, was on speaking terms with his mother, it might mean—”

  “Jenny!”

  The licorice stick could be used as a crayon. The living-room wall was white. He shouted so loudly that he terrified her, and a puddle of pee flowed slowly out from under the bare bottom.

  “But what does it mean, then!”

  “It’s not my task to be a detective. My … unqualified impression, you might say … is that Brede Ziegler may have a child.”

  “Child?”

  “Yes, a child. But I don’t know, of course.”

  Billy T. did not say anything, and there was also silence at the other end of the line.

  “Thanks,” Billy T. said finally, giving a slow whistle. “Vilde.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said the man had been sterilized. Despite being about to marry a young fertile woman.”

  “Yes, but I don’t quite comprehend what that—”

  “You don’t need to, either. Thanks very much for phoning. I’ll call you again. Fairly soon.”

  He put the phone down on the living-room table and picked up his daughter. She was wet and smelled of pee, licorice, and stale porridge. When he threw her up in the air and caught her again, she shrieked with delight.

  “Dada,” Jenny said.

  “Dada will be gone from now until Christmas, sure as shooting,” Billy T. said, deciding not to phone Hanne.

  48

  “Daddy! Catch me!”

  The boy, about six years old, was swinging by the knees from a branch not really strong enough to bear his weight. He sank slowly to the ground. A man of medium height in a red anorak and no-longer-fashionable glasses took hold of the boy and swung him over his shoulder. A toddler in a green snowsuit clung to the man’s leg, desperate to be carried too. On the asphalt path ten meters away a woman stood holding an empty pushchair while talking on a cellphone.

  The Akerselva river, sparse in winter, ran under the Bentsebrua bridge, drawing with it an unpleasant gray mist that spread over the level expanse below Sagene church. The area was almost deserted. The time was just past eleven on Sunday morning, December 19, and Hanne came to a sudden halt.

  “Shit!” she muttered under her breath.

  “What?”

  It had seemed a good idea to take a taxi to the lake at Maridalsvannet and walk all the way along the river down to Vaterland. It would take about an hour at a brisk pace, and then they could eat lunch in town. Put the night at a distance, Hanne thought. At least the final part of it.

  When Nefis had come back from the bathroom around four o’clock in the morning and had reported in a matter-of-fact tone that there was an old woman sitting on the toilet behind an unlocked door, shooting up, Hanne began to cry. Then she roared. Hairy Mary sat, eyes glazed, her hands over her ears, smiling blissfully.

  When Hanne had taken Hairy Mary in for an unspecified period, she had reckoned on her stealing from her. Oddly enough, nothing had disappeared. Hairy Mary took great liberties as far as borrowing was concerned, but she returned everything. The most important thing for Hanne, all the same, was that Hairy Mary appreciated the seriousness of the embargo against drugs in the apartment.

  “I’m a police officer. You mustn’t keep or use anything here inside this building. Okay?”

  Hairy Mary had nodded, crossed her heart, and mumbled all sorts of holy oaths when the rule was repeated at regular intervals in the first three days. Of course she did not keep her word. Hanne had not discovered this until that night. Hairy Mary held her ears. Everything would have gone fine, if only that Turkish baggage hadn’t had different toilet habits from Hanne – and how in hell was Hairy Mary supposed to know that!

  Nefis had taken it well. She smiled wanly, accepting Hanne’s stuttered explanation of Hairy Mary’s presence in the household with no more than a resigned rubbing of her eyes.

  Hanne, however, threw Hairy Mary out with the few belongings she possessed. Admittedly she did not confiscate the key, but the temporary expulsion was at least some kind of marker. Afterwards she turned the house inside-out searching for illegal substances. There were two user doses, wrapped in plastic, inside the cistern, and behind the bookcase in the guest bedroom she found four sterile needles. She flushed the heroin down the toilet and rinsed it with bleach. The needles were locked inside the medicine cabinet. After that, Nefis and Hanne ate an exceptionally early breakfast.

  A walk would blow away the cobwebs.

  “Shit!” Hanne repeated.

  It was impossible to avoid the family of four: Håkon Sand, Karen Borg, and their children. Hanne spotted them before they caught sight of her. She fleetingly considered pulling Nefis down to the river, desperately using her eyes to search for something down there that might prompt a sudden swerve across the muddy grass. She spotted nothing except a pair of sleeping mallards.

  “Hi,” Håkon said dully.

  It looked as though he wanted to give Hanne a hug. He took an almost imperceptible step forward as he raised his arm, but stiffened. His glasses steamed up from the bridge of his nose all the way over the large lenses. His eyes disappeared, and he turned his face to Karen.

  “It’s been a long time,” Karen said obstinately as she installed a protesting Liv in the pushchair.

  Hans Wilhelm hid behind his father.

  “Hi, Hans Wilhelm! How big you’ve grown. Do you recognize me?”

  Hanne crouched down, mostly as a means of escape. The boy stared shyly at the ground and made no sign of being keen to talk to her. She straightened up again and used her hand to indicate Nefis.

  “This is Nefis. A … an acquaintance of mine from Istanbul. She has … never been in Norway before.”

  Håkon and Karen nodded formally at the woman in the suede coat, red gloves, and clumsy mountain boots that were far too big for her.

  “We really have to get a move on,” Karen said, trying to walk past them on the path. “Bye.”

  Hanne did not budge. She smiled at Liv, who returned a broad smile as she thrust a dirty spade into her mouth.

  These were people who had once been very close. Håkon was so different from Billy T., more sincere, more direct in his affection, and far less competitive than their swaggering friend. More forgiving. She missed him. It struck her when she saw him standing, bewildered, clutching his son’s mitten, in a shabby, idiotic anorak, jeans that were slightly too short with baggy knees, steamed-up glasses and traces of a receding hairline: she really yearned for him. Not the way it was with Billy T.. A reconciliation between them, as she wished and intended, woul
d have to include an acknowledgment on his part that he too bore some responsibility for what had happened. In Cecilie’s bed, with Cecilie in hospital, dying; they had committed an offence against her, and Hanne barely remembered anything except scrubbing her skin until it bled in the shower afterwards.

  Hanne had done an injustice to everyone in her circle, and she was well aware of that. No one would let her forget it, either, it seemed. With Håkon it was different. She could sit down with him one evening and explain it all. Not apologize – just tell him how everything had been, why she had had to do as she did, what had driven her, forced her. He would nod and maybe adjust his glasses. Håkon would make a fresh pot of coffee and quaff it with an unhealthy amount of sugar. She would touch him, hold him, tell him that she dreamed about him, often. She would see him smile, and everything would be the way it had been before.

  “Excuse me,” Karen said sharply. “I want to pass.”

  Karen belonged to Cecilie. More to Cecilie than to Hanne, and Hanne stepped aside without taking her eyes off Håkon. As he passed, she saw his eyes through the dull lenses of his glasses. He gave an almost invisible shrug and made a tentative sign with his thumb to his ear and his little finger to his mouth – a telephone, inconspicuous; Hanne was not even sure she could believe her eyes.

  “Some friends!” Nefis murmured. “Who are they?”

  When Nefis had turned up yesterday evening, the apartment had become Italian. The chaos surrounding them had become Latin and eccentric. The slices of bread with Jarlsberg cheese and liver pâté had turned into delicacies. The wine from a cardboard box tasted sunny and exclusive. From then on, until the episode with Hairy Mary, the night was a reliving of Verona, but closer now, as it should be: at home, in Oslo, among Hanne’s belongings and in her world.

  Now she did not know whether she had the strength.

  Her feet were glued to the asphalt, and her shoulders ached. She turned toward the little family who were disappearing in the direction of Bentsebrua bridge, would soon be out of sight, and saw fragments of her own dismal story.