He blushed. ‘No, actually, I haven’t. You’ll have to find out yourself.’
‘Do you know what he does? When he’s not singing, I mean.’
‘He started out as a mechanic. When we played together he worked on cars. He could do up American models like no one else this side of the Langfjell mountains. Then he got it into his head that he should go into “advertising”, in inverted commas. Making badges and stencils, stickers for car windows and those funny signs people hang in their bars and you don’t laugh at until you’re so pissed you can barely read them. For a couple of years he recorded some promo videos, singing cover songs on them. Last I heard, he’d invested some money in a video shop.’
‘Rentals?’
‘Mhm. But I haven’t a clue where. You are a detective, aren’t you?’
I grinned. ‘Yes, Jakob, I am. Now, we detectives usually ask this … You haven’t got an up-to-date photo of her, have you?’
‘You remember her, Varg! You’ll easily recognise her.’
‘I haven’t seen her for … Besides it’s not for my own purposes. If I’m going to make discreet enquiries, I…’
‘OK, OK.’ He got up and left the kitchen. Soon afterwards he was back with an envelope containing some small colour snaps. ‘These from last summer are the most up-to-date. Here … I took this one on Mount Fløien in October. That’s the most recent. That’s more or less what she looks like today.’
He handed me the photo and I stared at him for a few long seconds, then concentrated on the photograph.
I hadn’t repressed it. I had just stopped thinking about it.
Nevertheless it came as a shock when I saw her in the small amateur photograph. As if I hadn’t known all along. That it was Jakob who had married Rebecca.
10
I found Johnny Solheim where you find most people. In the telephone directory. Like so many other ex-Nordnes residents he hadn’t moved out of sight of ‘home’. In his case, that meant he lived in a flat from the early fifties, on the mountainside above the old U-boat bunkers in Laksevåg. The building was split vertically with two flats on either side, and a basement flat below.
I found his name on the postbox by the garden gate. On my way up the gravel path leading to the entrance at the back of the building I glanced down at the immense concrete walls of the U-boat pens, which still gaped like hulking memorials of the Germanic race’s building skills. It was impossible to see them without thinking of the sixty children at Holen Folkeskole who were killed when the British bombers attacked the U-boat base in October 1944. Sixty children who never had the chance to grow up, sixty lives brought to an abrupt end with no more warning than the sudden wail of an air-raid siren.
On the other side of Pudde fjord, the part of the Nordnes peninsula that had been spared the war and the post-war rebuilding looked strangely uninhabited. From the culture house in Verftet and beyond, buildings were few and far between, and now, in December, the south-facing slope above the public sea-pool was deserted and the green bath-house buildings were abandoned, with hardly a pair of forgotten swimming trunks to be seen.
I reached a dark staircase and squinted at the nameplate on the nearest door. Hansen.
I went up the stairs to the right and came to the first floor.
Solheim was written in ornate letters on an oval, gilt metal plate with worn edges. It looked like something he had brought from home. And indeed he had – I remembered it.
The upper part of the door had small, frosted wire-mesh panes and through the glass I made out a flowery curtain. Everything behind it was dark.
I rang the bell. After a while I heard wary footsteps inside. Someone drew the curtain and tried to look out, at about the height of my midriff.
Then the door opened a fraction and a boy’s serious face peered up at me through the crack.
‘Hello,’ I said with a smile. ‘Is your father in?’
He shook his head. He had straight, fair hair with a fringe and delicate features that were not in the slightest bit reminiscent of his father.
‘Your mother then?’
He nodded, still as serious.
‘May I speak to her?’
He appeared to be giving that some thought. ‘I’ll ask.’ Then he closed the door.
I stood waiting, filled with unease.
The door opened again, a little wider this time. ‘Yes? What are you after?’
The woman facing me was dressed in an ochre blouse and tight blue jeans. She was quite thin, with slim arms and a bony face. Her hair had a lifeless blonde tone and there was also something lacklustre and untidy about it, as though it was a long time since she had been to the hairdresser’s. Her lips were painted a kind of blood red, and her face was so excessively made-up it was difficult not to stare.
She might well have been alluring at one time, but now the strain had taken its toll.
It was impossible not to notice the large dark patch on one cheek. She had camouflaged it as well as she could, but it was far from invisible.
‘Actually it was Johnny I wanted to talk to. The name’s Veum. Varg Veum.’
She eyed me sceptically. From between her legs appeared the head of a two-year-old and from inside the flat I heard angry shouts indicating a disagreement between the boy who had opened the door and at least one other child.
‘What do you want?’
I smiled as persuasively as I could. ‘As a matter of fact, we’re childhood friends.’
She was suspicious. ‘And?’
‘Well, I … Where can I find him, do you think?’
‘What’s the time?’
‘Two o’clock.’
‘Then he’s probably in the shop.’
‘The video-rental shop?’
She nodded.
‘Where’s that?’
‘Down in Kringsjåveien. Towards the town.’
‘What’s it called? The shop, that is.’
‘Ecstasy,’ she answered with a shudder.
‘Ecstasy Videos?’
‘Exactly.’
I took out a business card and gave it to her. ‘If I don’t manage to find him, could you ask him to contact me? My phone numbers are on there.’
She didn’t dignify my card with a glance, but nodded and took it with her, apparently pleased not to be exposed to my gaze any longer.
It was only then that I realised that she hadn’t told me her name. But perhaps that didn’t matter. She had borne her own business card on her cheek, as Johnny Solheim’s own mother had done so often thirty years earlier. The badges of violence.
11
I drove back to town.
Despite its lurid, vulgar name, Ecstasy Videos had a modest exterior. No one had bothered to remove the old, hand-painted letters from the window, which told us that here you used to be able to buy TOBACCO and NEWSPAPERS. Only the glass in the front door bore the seductive modern slogan: ACTION – SEX – CRIME. Above it was the company’s logo cut out in plastic and glued on. It was the white silhouette of a woman who was so naked that she lacked nipples and genitals. However, she did have a smoking revolver in one hand. An illuminated sign above announced: ECSTASY VIDEOS.
I opened the door and went in.
If the woman who was half draped, half slumped over the counter had ever experienced ecstasy it must have racked her body to such a degree that she was still ravaged by it. She was one of the tall, pale, plump types, adorned in pink from her hair to her heels. She had a big, pink blob of bubble gum in her mouth and that was precisely how she looked herself. As though she were made of bubble gum, rolled into a ball, extended here and there and then finally stuck to the counter while the owner was flirting elsewhere.
She barely opened her eyes when I entered. There were no other customers. For all I knew, I was the first of the day.
The back-room door was ajar and you would have needed an oxygen mask to venture inside. Clouds of smoke hung low over two pairs of headless bodies protruding from either side of the doorway.
‘I’m looking for an animal film for the whole family,’ I said to the woman to wake her up. So as not to give her a nervous breakdown, I added quickly: ‘Is Johnny in?’
She blinked. Behind her, in the doorway, appeared a head with a Sergeant Pepper moustache and a comb-over. I recognised him by the moustache. It was Stig Madsen, from the previous night.
Madsen said something to the other side of the door. The second headless body rose and Johnny Solheim filled the doorway with a deeply sceptical expression.
When he saw who it was, the scepticism changed to wonderment. ‘You, Varg? We don’t see each other for twenty years and then suddenly twice in two days.’ He opened his hands. ‘What can I offer you? Are you after a discount?’
‘Said he’d like an animal film. Something for the whole family,’ the woman explained.
Johnny ignored her. ‘He’s always been a wag.’ The look he sent me was jovial, but cold underneath. ‘Well?’
‘Had this shop long, Johnny?’
‘No. It’s Stig here who runs it. I’ve just invested in it. I help a bit on busy days.’
‘Like today?’
‘At the weekends and so on, yes. It’s early doors yet.’
‘No family entertainment then?’
‘Yes, of course. We’ve got…’ He glanced at the shelves. ‘Where is it then?’
‘The furthest rack. At the back. At the bottom against the wall,’ the woman behind the counter informed him. ‘I don’t think there are any animal films there though.’
‘No, we keep them in the backroom … and under the counter,’ Johnny said with a wink.
‘I went to your house first,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah. Did Bente send you here?’
‘If your wife’s called Bente, yes, she did. I assume it was her.’
‘And you were after?’
I hesitated. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk … alone?’
He looked around with a surly expression on his face. ‘You can see how much space we have. It’s so cramped we have to go onto the pavement when Bodil needs to change a tampon.’
Ha ha, the woman behind the counter mouthed.
‘It’s so tight in the back room that if we both want to smoke we have to put our cigarettes in the opposite sides of our mouths.’
‘Let’s go outside then,’ I said, nodding to the door. ‘Bit of fresh air never hurt anyone.’
‘Did you say fresh air?’ he mumbled, and indicated the exhaust fumes in Kringsjåveien.
‘At least it’s discreet,’ I said.
On the narrow pavement he turned up his jacket collar, stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and squinted at me mock-innocently. ‘Can’t wait to hear.’
‘About what?’
‘About what you want, Varg. I take it you haven’t come to offer me an honorary membership to Save the Children or the YMCA?’
‘Hardly. But you’ve heard of the Video Outlets’ Golden Tankard Award, have you?’
For a second or two he blinked, then he was back in Kringsjåveien. ‘Come on. Spit it out.’
I looked at him. ‘It’s about Rebecca.’
His jaw was about to hit the floor until he caught it. The surprise in his eyes was genuine. ‘Now don’t tell me she’s run off from him again. No wonder old Jakobsen looked so dejected yesterday.’
‘So it’s news to you?’
He sneered. ‘Yes, it was news to me. This time.’
I pretended I didn’t know what he meant. ‘This time?’
‘Yes?’ I knew he would take the bait. ‘You’re not telling me that Jakob didn’t tell you?’
I waited for him.
‘Why did you come here?’
I shrugged, without answering.
He came closer. ‘You know already, Varg, don’t you. The last time she ran off she was sick and tired of a jessie wearing a lace pinnie over his dick with a duster in his pocket. She needed a bull, and who else should she turn to but…?’ He patted his chest modestly. ‘Yours truly.’
‘You mean she … went with you?’
‘Is that so strange?’
‘Yes, in fact it is.’
‘Why? We already knew each other well. After all, Jakob and I were in the same band for the first ten years of their marriage.’
‘But the band had broken up long before you…’
‘Yep. The Harp pluckers gave up the ghost in seventy-five. Rebecca and I had our bit of fun seven or eight years later.’
‘When was that?’
‘In 1982, if my memory’s not playing tricks on me.’
A big, grey diesel bus drove past, creating a natural hiatus in the conversation. Filthy, brown slush splashed onto the pavement and rusty-red, black-specked exhaust fumes hung in the air like a begrimed bridal veil.
Johnny Solheim stepped closer. ‘I’ll tell you something in confidence, Varg. Actually we met by chance. On the Hurtigruten ferry. I was coming from Molde. She got on at Florø. I was alone in my cabin and invited her for a drink. Then two. Then three. She was quite merry and I could see she was ready for it. So I led her on a bit. The way I can.’ He smiled at me with what seemed like professional pride in his eyes. ‘She fell like a pear from a tree, Varg.’
I didn’t answer.
‘And she came back for more.’
I coughed. ‘After you’d returned home?’
He nodded knowingly. ‘You knew her quite well too, didn’t you?’ He sent me a triumphant look as if to tell me that he had got something we others had only dreamed about getting.
I said casually: ‘A bit. We lived in the same street when we were kids. And later … we were in the same class.’
A bit.
‘But then,’ he continued, ‘it was all over. She was gone as quickly as she’d appeared. We got tired of each other, simple as that – from one moment to the next and in the twinkling of an eye, both of us.’
‘Practical,’ I said. ‘And later … later you had the pleasure of telling Jakob everything.’
He looked at me sheepishly. ‘So he has told you? Yes, I…’ He cast around as though searching for something to cling to. ‘It was stupid of me, I admit it. But I was drunk and he was at his most … insufferable. All the old conflicts reared their ugly heads. Actually it was us who were so different. Him and me. Playing together for so many years was as ridiculous as Lennon and McCartney sticking together.’
‘Not that you’re making a comparison, I suppose?’
‘I just blurted it out.’ A spontaneous smirk glided across his face, or rather it slipped down a slide, as it were, and landed on its backside. ‘It was almost worth it. Seeing his mug when he realised I was telling the truth.’
‘And when did this happy event take place?’
‘A couple of years later. In eighty-three, eighty-four. I don’t remember exactly. We met at a pub in town, quite by chance. There were several other people there, too.’
‘And everyone had the satisfaction of hearing about his … humiliation?’
He shrugged his shoulders and gesticulated, as if to say that wasn’t his fault. They just happened to be there.
‘And how did he react?’
‘Jakob? His face fell a mile. He looked pissed off for the rest of the evening. But he didn’t stay long. He sneaked out – without saying goodbye – less than half an hour afterwards. Actually I hadn’t seen him since. Until yesterday.’
‘Nor Rebecca?’
‘No, Varg, no,’ he said, as though he were talking to a little child. ‘And which band are you playing in at the moment? The Deadly Intellectual Dwarfs?’
I shook my head. ‘The Friendless Bloodsuckers.’
For a moment we stood eyeballing each other. I felt as if I had ente
red a room of strangers and then, across the room, I’d caught sight of a familiar face: one of my worst childhood tormentors.
Johnny Solheim shot me a look and said: ‘You’re nothing but a hound dog and you ain’t no friend of mine.’ Then he went back to ecstasy.
‘So you know that story, too,’ I shouted after him before he had shut the door. Then, when he didn’t react, I mumbled to myself, ‘The one about Marlon Brando and James Dean and humiliation.’
*
I returned to the town centre. Heavy thunderclouds were building in the west. It was as though the weather gods were wrapping Bergen’s mountains in leaden-grey glass wool so they wouldn’t crumble when the deluges rolled in. People hurried home, their faces drained of energy and their arms laden with Christmas presents.
I went up to my office in Strandkaien. As I passed the café on the first floor the smell of salted ribs of mutton and mashed swedes with pepper wafted out and tickled my nostrils. I valiantly forced myself to carry on.
I opened the door to my waiting room. It was a long time since I had stopped leaving the door unlocked. I didn’t want to give my creditors the chance to sit down while they waited.
I had brought the post up with me. A Post Office brochure advised me to send my Christmas cards early. A reminder from Televerket asked me to pay the telephone bill even more promptly. I made a note on my pad: Don’t forget Christmas cards. In brackets I wrote: 2. Then I lifted the receiver and confirmed they hadn’t cut me off. Not yet.
I checked the answerphone. No messages. It didn’t even have so much as a Christmas carol to offer me.
I went to the window and looked out. The market traders were calling it a day, and all the passers-by below were looking up in fear, but not at me. It was the dark and menacing storm clouds they were keeping an eye on.
One sultry, grey June afternoon a quarter of a century ago there had been the same type of sky, then coruscating lightning had slashed open the bellies of the clouds and cascades of rain had washed into the town, pounded on rooftops and swept inside, onto windowsills wherever windows were open in the heat. I had been eighteen years old, the afternoon had been electric with sexuality and I was waiting for people to arrive. My mother had left for the country, there were bottles of beer cooling in the sink and one of the guests was Rebecca…
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