A third important moment was when everything around us fell silent, the voices from the other rooms disappeared and we saw that we were alone. And, because it was predetermined that it would happen at this precise instant, I slowly leaned towards her. And because she had known me since we were small and we had almost been brother and sister, her face took on an expression of visible embarrassment as she turned it upwards and waited for me to reach it. And then I kissed her. At that moment, one stormy evening in June 1961, we kissed, and it…
I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling.
That was my mark. That was where I left my mark. Later many others left theirs on top and probably there were also some from before, but at that particular moment in time, that was my mark. Rebecca.
I closed my eyes again and could still smell her hair, her skin, which had the slightest hint of a perfume, and I could still feel the cool pressure of her lips in the softest kiss I would ever receive.
The images flickered on and we were standing by a front door in Landås. She was looking at the window to see if her father was waiting, meaning she would have to run, so the last kisses were all too fleeting. There was more flickering: I met her with some others – I stood with my hands in my pockets, watching where they went, and I never got back the piece of her soul I had once lost. ‘Promises are eternal’ her father’s congregation had sung while we were up in the gallery, but she had never made me any. I understood that then, even if it took me several years before I really assimilated it. Rebecca was never going to be mine. Not in that way.
I went to sea, and when I returned in the autumn of 1963 I met her and was told she was with Jakob and the conversation stalled. When I returned from Oslo in 1965, they were married.
But some moments are etched in your brain forever. And some kisses can never be erased. You always carry something with you. In all the ensuing years.
Rebecca.
Jakob had asked me to find her, and now Johnny Solheim was dead. Killed. She’d had a relationship with Johnny a few years before.
At once I knew it was inevitable. It would happen. I was going to meet her again, now, in one context or another. After so many years.
Then came the prison wardens’ fanfare. Keys jangled and the night’s drunken hordes invaded the cells and turned the remand suite into a carnival procession through the more colourful parts of hell.
I didn’t sleep much and early in the morning I was again brought before the dispensers of justice.
19
I cast my eyes around Vegard Vadheim’s office in surprise.
He smiled good-humouredly. ‘Had you been expecting to meet someone else?’
‘I thought … Muus.’
‘Weekend shift. It’s our case now. Mine and…’ he motioned towards the tall, fair-haired lady sitting at the edge of the desk in demure, brown culottes and a baggy blouse; ‘…Inspector Jensen’s.’
The woman grinned. She had a rather large nose, clear blue eyes, quite far apart, rosy cheeks and a kind of nervous energy. I inclined my head.
‘You do remember Eva Jensen, do you, Veum?’ Vadheim said.
‘I do,’ I answered. ‘I wonder if she remembers me.’
She smiled. ‘As if I could ever forget…’
On one occasion she had followed me … and indirectly saved my life. Another time she had watched me finish my first marathon more dead than alive. I wasn’t at all sure which of the two she remembered more fondly.
‘So you two are conducting the case,’ I said breezily. ‘Where does that leave me?’
‘Initially, in that chair,’ Vadheim said, indicating the free chair on the uncomfortable side of the desk.
Vegard Vadheim was himself a very good marathon runner, with times of 2.59 and better. Almost exactly thirty years earlier he had run the 10,000-metre final in Melbourne, finished fourth and was one of the few Norwegians at the Summer Olympics to gain any points that year. His hair was dark, but greying prematurely. His brown eyes betrayed an enduring melancholy: the mirror-image of two poetry collections he published almost as long ago as his Olympics performance. He wasn’t present in Rome. By then he had already conquered Parnassus, with a sensational literary debut in 1959, followed by an equally solid collection in 1961. Followed by silence. Vegard Vadheim was unlikely to become more than a footnote in Norwegian literature. However, in Bergen Kripos he was definitely one of the Four Greats.
Vegard Vadheim leaned across the desk. ‘I’m sorry you had to spend the night here, Veum. It had more to do with Dankert Muus’s nature, or should I say his view of you, than anything else.’
I nodded and threw my hands in the air to suggest that I hadn’t decided to engage some top lawyer to sue them. I preferred to stand on my own two feet. Besides, I had experienced worse, even in the police station.
‘So you found him? The deceased?’
I nodded. ‘Johnny Solheim.’
‘And you were … alone?’
I nodded again. ‘There wasn’t a soul to be seen. Although I did hear one.’ I told him about the footsteps.
‘You didn’t try to follow?’
‘When I heard them, I had no idea they were significant. I only realised when I found Johnny, and by then it was too late to give chase.’
‘And this place, the so-called Hot Spot. Did you go there on your own?’
‘No, no. I was there with an old classmate. Jakob Aasen. But he’d already left.’
‘And this Aasen, who is he? Apart from an ex-school friend.’
‘He’s respectable enough, I think. An organist for the church. Composer in his free-time. Ex-star of the Bergen rock world. You may’ve heard of them. The Harpers? Harpegjengen?’
‘Him, too?’
‘Yes. The same band as Johnny Solheim. Once.’
He scribbled. ‘Interesting. Very interesting. And what did you do … in the band, I mean? Carry the instruments?’
I smiled. ‘In fact I did a couple of times. By and large though I just knew them. Johnny was from the same street as me. We grew up together in the same part of town.’
‘Right.’ He made more notes. ‘So the next interesting question is: why did you contact Solheim on Saturday?’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘You did manage to contact him, didn’t you.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Why?’
‘It was … a sort of favour to a friend.’
‘Mhm. And how long was it since you’d spoken to him?’
‘The day before. At Steinen, the club. I was there with Jakob and we visited him in the dressing room. He was performing.’
‘OK. And on Saturday you realised you wanted to talk to him some more?’
‘No.’ I leaned forward as if to emphasise the confidentiality of this information. ‘The thing is that Jakob has a wife, Rebecca, who, incidentally, also grew up in Nordnes with us. A few years ago she had a brief fling with Johnny. Now she’s left the family home again and Jakob … Jakob was wondering if she might’ve taken up with Johnny again.’
Vadheim had stopped taking notes. ‘I seem to remember you generally turned down that sort of work, Veum.’
‘This wasn’t a job. As I said, it was a favour. Jakob had asked me to check out Johnny first, as a matter of form. Later he gave me some names of girlfriends I could contact … today.’ I looked at my watch as if to confirm it was Monday.
‘And what was the result? Was she at Johnny’s?’
‘No.’ I pointed to the papers in front of him. ‘As you can see, I only met Johnny’s wife. She sent me to the video shop he co-owned, and I asked him to his face. He said no. That’s all I know. He may’ve been lying.’
‘What’s this Rebecca like?’
I glanced up at Eva Jensen. ‘I don’t know her … anymore. I haven’t seen her since 1965.’
‘But back then…’
‘She was a very normal girl who did what most girls used to do.’
‘And that is…?’
I shrugged and smiled awkwardly.
Fell in love and moved on. Was there … and then wasn’t. ‘We were … pretty good friends, Jakob and I. In a way, she came between us. I’d almost forgotten them both when I met him on Friday, at a funeral.’
‘Who’d died?’
‘Jan Petter Olsen. Another classmate.’
‘Natural causes?’
‘Accident at work. He fell from some scaffolding. Is that natural enough? Surely you don’t think…?’
‘I don’t think anything at all, Veum. I collect facts. When I have enough, then I start thinking. Unless I already know.’
‘But you hadn’t actually forgotten them, had you?’ Eva Jensen interjected.
‘Who? Jakob and Rebecca?’ I could feel myself becoming embarrassed. ‘No, I hadn’t, of course. More like blocked them out of my mind, maybe.’
Vadheim and Jensen looked at me with interest. I was uncomfortable. This was getting too personal for me.
After a pause Vadheim said gently: ‘So you didn’t like hearing Rebecca Aasen was having an affair with Johnny either?’
Rebecca Aasen? For me she was Rebecca Holmefjord and would be for the rest of my life. ‘No, I suppose I didn’t.’ I hastened to add: ‘But I didn’t—’
He raised both hands in defence. ‘No, no, Veum, I wasn’t trying to suggest … This is just background information. I’m trying to form a mental image of the people involved in this case.’
I nodded. ‘OK. What else?’
He looked down. ‘When you arrived at this Hot Spot did you meet anyone who might’ve had some connection with what happened to Solheim?’
‘I think so. But first of all … do you know about this itinerant nightclub?’
He smirked. ‘We’re aware of the phenomenon, if I can put it like that. Strictly speaking, though, it comes under a different department.’
‘Fraud?’
‘Among other things. Well, who did you meet?’
‘The idea was that Johnny would join us there. But he didn’t. Now we know why. One of the musicians he played with, someone called Stig Madsen, who runs the video shop, was supposed to meet him there.’
‘Had they arranged that?’
‘Stig was expecting to meet him there at any rate. And he was … quite agitated that Johnny hadn’t shown up.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Did he say why?’
‘No.’
‘Can you imagine why?’
‘He seemed to be afraid Johnny had gone off with a young singer. A new local starlet who calls herself Bella. Her name’s Belinda Bruflåt. She appeared at Steinen as well; we met her on Friday, in her dressing room.’
‘Did you have the impression there was something going on between them?’
‘If you meet Belinda you’ll have the impression there’s something going on between you and her.’ I glanced at Eva Jensen.
Eva Jensen coughed, and Vadheim angled a look up at her. Then he continued: ‘In other words, yes. Presumably. And … she was also at this trendy Hot Spot?’
I nodded. ‘But she vanished.’
‘Vanished?’
‘Yes, or just left.’
‘Where? I mean, did she say anything?’
‘Not to me at any rate. She just hopped it.’
‘Perhaps we should have a word with her?’
‘Have fun, if you do. Take fru or frøken Jensen with you.’
‘Frøken,’ Eva Jensen riposted.
‘Anything else up your sleeve, Veum?’
‘His wife. That is, his second wife, Bente Solheim.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, we picked up on that one at the crime scene.’ He flicked through his notes. ‘She got home at three. Alone. In a taxi.’
‘But…’
‘We contacted the taxi driver. He said a man accompanied her to the taxi. She admitted that, but she claimed she didn’t know the man’s name. She said she’d met him by chance and they’d only walked around and chatted.’ He sent me an eloquent look.
‘The perfect alibi, in other words. If the police find this man … and if they weren’t in it together…’
‘Did you see who she was dancing with, Veum?’
‘Yes. And Jakob Aasen knows who he is. The husband of someone called Gro.’
‘The husband of someone called Gro?’ He made a note. ‘This is beginning to become quite a colourful tale.’
‘Indeed.’ I didn’t say any more.
Vegard Vadheim looked at me meditatively. He was holding a yellow pencil in one hand and raised it to his mouth and chewed it. ‘What were you planning to do now, Veum? Continue looking for Rebecca?’
‘If I do, I think I’d better talk to Jakob first. If he wants me to – and if it’s OK with you – there’s no reason for me not to continue looking for her.’
He nodded slowly. ‘We’d appreciate it if you’d tell us where she is when you find her.’
‘So I shouldn’t ask her to contact you?’
‘For the moment I think we’ll see how things pan out. I mean … How many years ago was it she had an affair with Solheim?’
‘I’m not sure. Four or five.’
‘That hardly warrants us summoning her to an interview – for now.’
‘Well,’ I shrugged.
We sat looking at each other for a moment like two chess-players who are unsure whose move it is.
Then I leaned forward. ‘Great. I’ll tell you if I find anything.’
‘You do that, Veum. You do that.’ He glanced up at Eva Jensen with an arched brow. ‘Anything you’ve omitted to mention, Veum – that I ought to know?’
I pretended to give his question some thought. ‘No, not that I can think of right now. Does this mean I can go?’
He extended a hand towards the door. ‘You’re a free man, Veum. Pay at reception as you leave.’
‘Only for what I took from the mini-bar, I assume?’
Eva Jensen laughed, a sudden trilled chuckle. We both looked at her. Then I stood up, waved and left.
The corridor was empty. Two rooms down, someone was tapping hesitantly on a typewriter, like a mouth full of bad teeth chomping on tough meat.
I hastened away so as not to run into Muus. On the stairs going down it struck me that actually there was something I had omitted to mention: the fact that of the four men who had constituted The Harpers rock band from 1958 to 1975 only one was still alive – Jakob Aasen.
The other three were dead and not one of them had died of old age.
20
On the terrace in front of the police station I stopped for a second and mused.
There were tiny specks of frost in the air: snow that hadn’t materialised yet. A large, yellow articulated bus fitted with the characteristic braces that trolley-buses used glided through Allehelgensgate like an oversized caterpillar. People passed the police station with eyes lowered as if frightened that they might be summoned inside.
I walked down to a branch of my bank in Korskirkealmenningen, inserted my card in the ATM and crossed my fingers I wouldn’t be leaving empty-handed. It worked. I stuffed the five apparently new hundred-krone notes in my wallet and hurried away before anyone could recognise me.
On the corner between Korskirkealmenningen and Hollendergaten three or four people were standing in silent prayer around a bottle of lager; I was unable to imagine anything colder than beer right now.
Then, with a stab to the heart, I recognised two of them – fossils from my prehistoric period. They had once been children in Nordnes, but fate had dealt them a harsher hand than me.
Kaggen noticed me at roughly the same moment, mumbled a few words to Lisbeth and hobbled towards me. Lisbeth followed him across the pavement, eyes lowered, but then stopped with an expression like that of a superannuated Egyptian priestess. Her dark hair now had unkempt stripes of grey, and she was no longer the sad beauty she had been in her best years.
‘Hi, Varg,’ Kaggen said in a gruff voice, hobbling up to me, grabbing me by the lapels and holding on as if he needed the support.
He was sti
ll no taller than one metre sixty, as though his growth had been stunted. Once he had been the fastest centre-forward in town and the most promising junior Nordnes Sports Club had ever had. He played in the first team as a sixteen-year-old and it was rumoured talent scouts from Brann FC had already been after him. In fact, his name was Karl Gerhard, but he was always called Kaggen.
He never got to play for Brann though and his sojourn with the Nordnes Sports Club first team was brief. He dribbled more in the pub than on the pitch, put on twelve kilos in the autumn season, sat on the bench for the first spring months and went to sea in June. There he didn’t even get into the ship’s team and returned home, blacklisted, three or four years later. Since then he had been walking in ever decreasing circles around the Inner Mission hostel in Hollendergaten.
Back on our street he had been a cheeky little devil, a couple of years younger than me, with quick legs and a mouth on him big enough to pick a fight with boys five years older than him. His mother had named him after a Swedish revue star she had heard on the radio when she was young, but there hadn’t been much glamour about the life she had given him.
Looking down into his unshaven, alcoholic face, his eyes bobbing like empty beer bottles in brackish water, I could barely glimpse anything of the boy he had once been.
‘Va-arg … ha’ you go’ a tenner for me? I’m so thirsty.’
Lisbeth kept her distance. Perhaps she still didn’t recognise me. I had last met her two or three years before, at the house of a dwarf they called Hercules Olsen; she hadn’t recognised me then, either. She had passed as a sensual spring dream through the lives of so many boys that it was too much to expect that she would remember us all. In those days she had been a precocious thirteen-year-old who had been known to bathe naked with another girl in Nordnes park one very hot summer..
Even then there had been a fatigue in her expression when she cast knowing, and slightly contemptuous, eyes at us. She’d had too many ‘uncles’ in her past. Later I had occasionally spotted her in town, surprisingly well-dressed, coiffured and elegantly made up, and I had thought to myself, not without some incredulity, that she was definitely thriving. But then she suddenly reappeared, twenty years later, ravaged after years of living away, with holes in her stockings, smudged lipstick, a small child with filthy trousers hanging from one hand and a face that was much too grey. Later Lisbeth became, fatefully, a firm fixture in the ever-changing circle around Kaggen. If any man had been willing to spend fifty kroner, they could have taken her to the nearest gateway and picked the last wizened berries from her bush, but she would have got no pleasure from it, and nor would they. So we left it at the semi-nervous, semi-familiar looks we exchanged while I found my last three ten-krone coins and gave them to Kaggen.
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