Fallen Angels

by Gunnar Staalesen

  Eva Jensen looked at him. ‘At once?’

  ‘This minute. And you, Veum…’

  ‘I’m going to Lindås to talk to Ruth Solheim. But…’ I looked at my watch. ‘Not until tomorrow.’

  ‘And do you have any other meetings?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Who with, if I might ask?’

  ‘What if I visited Reb … fru … Jakob Aasen’s wife, who’s just left him and if I probed, in my own way, to see how much she actually knew about what happened?’

  Vadheim flicked through the documents in front of him. ‘Jakob Aasen’s wife. What was her name again? Rebecca?’

  I nodded, slowly. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Her name’s Rebecca.’

  34

  I was back in Fosswinckelsgate. Before I pressed the bell downstairs, it struck me that it was exactly a week to Christmas Eve. Somewhere in town a Santa Claus orchestra was playing carols with frozen fingers on cold brass instruments: a crazy, somewhat distant sound, like a mini-orchestra playing in a snow globe.

  December had been dethroned. Behind the masks the Santa Clauses wore greedy smiles and shopkeepers stood with their hands at the ready in the cash till. And there was still a week to go until the church bells rang in Christmas, when even those of a very excitable nature would instantly be affected by the calm, the sudden solemnity, a glimpse of the sacred and the smell of pork ribs from the kitchen.

  I rolled up my thoughts and stuffed them in my inside pocket. For a later time. Then I pressed the bell.

  Helga Bøe came on the intercom with a voice like a rock-crusher. ‘And you would be?’

  ‘Veum from the other day. Is Rebecca in?’

  ‘No. She’s just left.’

  ‘And how long ago is just?’

  ‘This long,’ Helga said and rang off.

  I stood staring at the intercom, wondering how I could most effectively destroy it when the door opened and two people came out.

  Both gave a start when they saw me, as if they had been caught in the act. Berge Brevik looked at me with an apparent attack of acute migraine. ‘Oh, hello … Veum, isn’t it?’ he mumbled in his confusion.

  Rebecca shook her head and tilted it while her mouth wore the pout that revealed she wasn’t entirely sure what to say. ‘Varg?’

  I quickly looked from one to the other and opted for her. ‘I … there was just something I wanted to talk to you about, Rebecca.’

  She pulled up the sleeve of her light-brown suede coat to check her watch. ‘I have to catch a bus, Varg. There’s a parents’ meeting at school.’

  ‘It won’t take long. I can drive you.’

  ‘Drive me?’

  ‘Yes. I have got a licence.’

  Brege Brevik coughed. ‘Well, I have to be going. See you another time.’ He glanced at me and mumbled as he left: ‘I just popped by.’

  We stood watching him as though we were at a cocktail party and he had suddenly left us in a hugely embarrassing situation.

  ‘I think I’d prefer to catch the bus, Varg.’

  I shrugged. ‘Well, then let me accompany you to the bus at least.’

  She shrugged and set off with an expression on her face that said it was a free country; I could walk where I liked.

  ‘Where are you going to catch it?’ I said as I drew level with her.

  ‘At the bus station.’

  We waited for the lights in Strømgaten.

  ‘I didn’t want to meet you again, Rebecca, under these circumstances.’

  ‘No?’ She sent me an airy gaze as though she didn’t understand why I would wish to meet her again at all.

  The lights turned green and we crossed.

  ‘Berge Brevik … Was he here to … mediate?’

  ‘Excuse me, but that’s none of your business, Varg.’

  ‘No, no, of course it isn’t.’

  On the left-hand side of the street Grieg Hall rose and faced south: rusty-brown lattice work, tall, narrow panes of glass and a wall incorporating a vinmonopol outlet and a bank branch. At the crossroads with Lars Hilles gate we had to stop and wait again.

  ‘What about the events of 1975? Are they my business?’

  She stared ahead stiffly; there was something unnatural about her face. ‘1975?’

  ‘Yes. The sixteenth of October. You know what happened, don’t you.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘The reason for The Harpers breaking up. Their swan song. What would you call it? The banquet of the fallen angels?’

  The pedestrian lights changed to green and she began to walk. ‘Fallen ang— … I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Varg.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘There was a kind of get-together at Johnny’s place. Everyone was there, plus Jan Petter Olsen, Johnny’s daughters Ruth and Sissel…’

  ‘They were just children, at that time.’

  ‘Exactly. But what happened that night, Rebecca? What happened?’

  ‘How should I know? I wasn’t there!’

  ‘No, you weren’t, but listen to what happened after this … get-together. A marriage hit the buffers, instantly. Johnny’s and Anita’s. The relationship between Arild Hjellestad and Halldis Heggøy broke up…’

  ‘Halldis Heggøy,’ she repeated softly, the way you speak a name you had almost forgotten.

  ‘Your marriage to Jakob developed serious cracks in the years afterwards…’

  ‘And what do you know about that?’

  ‘I…’

  We had reached the last set of lights. In front of us was the old bus station, which was like one big building site. Behind the scaffolding you could make out the new station rising two storeys above the old one, an extension of the airport they had built there and called a multi-storey car park. To get to the buses you had to pass through a corridor of steel poles, hopefully strong enough to protect you from a landslide of cement and steel beams from above.

  When we saw the green man, Rebecca stepped onto the zebra crossing.

  I followed her. ‘Forget all that though. There’s a point that is more important, Rebecca. Of the five men who were present in Johnny’s house that night only one is still alive. And that’s Jakob. The other four are dead.’

  She came to an abrupt halt on the pavement. She was looking straight into my eyes now, as though I were telling her something she hadn’t thought about before. Her nostrils narrowed and paled, and her face seemed to shrink for a moment, as if with pain. ‘They … are,’ she enunciated slowly.

  ‘And you still know nothing about the events of that night? Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing, Varg.’

  We stood eyeing each other for a moment. A welding torch on the building site hissed, and high above us, atop a cone of light, a big crane swung from west to east, dangling a gigantic steel beam from a hook.

  ‘Berge Brevik. What did he want, Rebecca?’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with you, Varg. I’ve already told you.’

  ‘These other women. Did you have any contact with them, later?’

  She started to walk again, into the illuminated, blue-steel corridor. Our hollow footsteps echoed against the walls, like the whe-eep of wet flycatchers. ‘Which women?’

  ‘Anita Solheim and her daughters. Halldis Heggøy. Were there any others?’

  She shook her head. ‘We didn’t have anything to do with each other – before the break-up.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We had nothing in common. Unlike the boys. They had their music.’

  She stopped in front of the entrance to a bus bay. A cold gust of wind tousled our hair and we automatically turned up our collars.

  She looked at me with an indefinable expression in her eyes, as though I had walked her home for the first time and we still didn’t know if we should kiss.

  Then she shrugged, turned, and walked up the steps to the boarding platforms.

  I watched her go.

  Halfway up she stopped and turned back to
me. ‘Varg.’

  Our eyes met, the way they had done when we were alone in the room all of a sudden and no more than eighteen years old. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ She made a gesture with her hand, carried on up and was gone.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ I said to the empty staircase, reached inside my coat pocket, unfolded my thoughts again and followed them like a street map back to Fosswinckelsgate to retrieve my car.

  35

  I got into the car, still deeply immersed in thought. The air was cold and damp. A layer of white frost flowers had settled on the windscreen, which I had to get out and scrape off, the way a petulant chimpanzee pulls up tulips from a flower bed in a zoo. When I started the engine the radio was playing ‘You Always Hurt the One You Love’. I switched off the radio, released the clutch and shot off more abruptly than was good for the car.

  There was one name on my list for the day. It was Belinda Bruflåt. The last I had seen of her was when she left me on the dance floor like some schoolboy, and I didn’t know if I had the strength of character to meet the wall head-on again today.

  Perhaps once was enough.

  Perhaps I should ring Karin Bjørge, invite myself to tea and hope for a reprise of the previous day’s kiss.

  Perhaps I should contact Laila Mongstad, ask if I might accompany her to the rehab collective in Lindås, perhaps blag my way to a glass of red wine and a hope that our six-year foreplay would find its natural conclusion in bed.

  If I didn’t drive to C. Sundts gate, rent myself a street girl and let emotions be emotions and physical needs be physical needs.

  I decided on Belinda Bruflåt, after all. I stopped by a telephone box, used the directory as a guide and found out where she lived.

  Before leaving the telephone box I called Laila. She was the only person I knew who responded with total enthusiasm whenever I called. It never ceased to amaze me.

  I explained the situation to her and we agreed to go together to Lindås early the next day.

  ‘This is not a nuisance, is it?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no, no,’ she said. But she didn’t invite me to a glass of red wine and the conclusion was as open as ever.

  We said goodbye and I was on the road again.

  Belinda Bruflåt lived in Åsane and the way there was one long building site. From the early seventies the traffic queues had been a standing joke in Bergen. Now tunnels with two lanes in each direction were promised, to put an end to the congestion and move the joke to other parts of town. But that was years away and had it not been so late in the evening it would have taken me considerably longer to arrive.

  Going to Åsane felt like passing a border. Whenever I reached the top of Åsaveien and gazed across Midtbygda I imagined that actually I ought to be speaking Swedish. This was where EPA and IKEA traded and the built-up area looked like a suburb of Gothenburg.

  In Åsane Mr and Mrs Average Norwegian had found their home. Here, the average Gallup poll percentage voted for the right-wing Progress Party and they had the regional average proportion of immigrants. They played fourth Division football, organised public running events and dog displays, and dressed according to the relevant year’s H&M catalogue. Åsane was a comforting place to live.

  Belinda Bruflåt had an address in a terraced block of flats in Flaktveit with a view of the town’s ugliest industrial area and a lake stocked with exiled trout, abandoned for years.

  After parking the car and locking it, I had the sudden feeling that I was being observed.

  I pocketed the car key and slowly turned around.

  A handful of young people of both sexes were standing around by some steps, the boys with their hands in their pockets, the girls pulling bubble gum out of their mouths and then chewing it again. None of them was looking in my direction though.

  I couldn’t see anyone else. It was quite a large car park, but I didn’t notice anyone sitting in a car for no apparent purpose. But some of the cars were partially hidden behind others and I had often used the trick of sliding down in the front seat myself.

  In the tower blocks around the car park there were many dark windows where hundreds of people could have been watching if they were at all interested.

  As if to signal that I knew someone was there I made a not completely random tour of the parked cars, bent down and at regular intervals peered into some, but I didn’t find anyone hiding.

  Then I strolled with an assumed nonchalance towards the block where Belinda Bruflåt was supposed to live.

  I had a tingling sensation in my neck the whole way.

  It wouldn’t go away.

  I went into the entrance of the terrace block. B. Bruflåt it said on one of the post boxes.

  I took the staircase, found her name on the second floor and rang the bell. Out of habit I checked my watch. It was a quarter to nine.

  The door opened. At first I barely recognised her. Her hair was flat and unkempt, her face grey without make-up, and she was wearing ordinary, worn jeans and a grey-and-white cardigan, buttoned to the top. She seemed chubbier than on the stage and looked closer to thirty than twenty.

  However, it appeared she recognised me because she went salmon-pink and tried to close the door.

  I quickly shoved the tip of my shoe in the doorway and said: ‘You were just going out, you said. I could still be there waiting.’

  With a contemptuous flash in her eye, she said: ‘I don’t sell in doorways.’

  ‘But on the stage you give everything?’

  She nodded. ‘So if you’re looking for a trick you’ve come to the wrong place, pal,’ she said in English. She was fluent in both Lindås dialects.

  ‘Was that what Johnny was after too?’

  ‘I…’ She gasped.

  ‘May I come in?’ I interrupted.

  ‘No.’

  I looked around, glanced up the stairs and said in a loud voice: ‘Was Johnny after a trick too?’

  ‘I’ll call the police.’

  ‘You do that,’ I said, walking past her into the hall. ‘I’ll dial the number for you.’

  She followed me, but without closing the front door after her.

  ‘I only want to talk to you. About Johnny’s death.’

  Her face had gone ashen. ‘You’d better … We’d better…’ She went to the door and slammed it shut.

  There was an embarrassing silence. We were standing in a much too large hall-cum-dining room, with a wardrobe for coats to the left and a dining table with chairs to the right. Through a glass door was another room, with modernist furniture in synthetic leather and chrome metal. A TV screen was tuned to Sky and playing a music video. On the walls hung posters she had bought from IKEA, mass-produced prints of skerryscapes with a green sea and an ochre sky. All that was missing was Ulf Lundell coming in from the kitchen and singing his latest Swedish hit.

  I nodded towards the sitting-room. ‘Should we…?’

  She looked at me, in a buttoned-up, reserved manner, which made me wonder once again whether this was Belinda or her twin sister I had in front of me. ‘We can stay here. What’s this about?’

  I shifted my weight from one foot to another. ‘As I said … Johnny Solheim’s death.’

  ‘I’ve already made a statement to the police. Who are you actually?’

  ‘My name’s Varg Veum. Johnny and I grew up together.’

  ‘Yes, you look his age. I have nothing to say.’

  ‘But you’d arranged to meet him on Saturday?’

  She demonstratively pursed her lips.

  ‘That was why you went missing, mid-dance. And that’s why he didn’t show up.’

  She opened her mouth a centimetre. Then she closed it again.

  ‘Or did you meet him? In the street?’

  Silence. The MC on Sky was talking like an ice-hockey reporter at a world-cup final with two minutes to go and Russia one goal in front.

  I tightened the screw. ‘With a knife in your hand.’

  She looked desperate. ‘No,
I didn’t meet him. I disappeared to avoid meeting him. He thought he … He was beginning to imagine things.’

  ‘What? The same as all the rest of us in the auditorium?’

  ‘That’s show time,’ she said as though she were talking to a toddler. ‘It’s a role I play.’

  ‘Bags of experience, it seems.’

  ‘It seems!’ she repeated, mockingly. ‘What you see on stage is not me. This here is me. A very ordinary girl from Lindås.’

  ‘Not quite so ordinary. I mean – when we met you in the dressing room and the day after at the Hot Spot … it didn’t exactly seem as if you…’

  ‘It was still just play-acting. In between two performances plus a couple of hours afterwards. You can’t just flick your fingers and switch from one personality to another…’

  ‘Like Danny Kaye in The Court Jester?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Forget it. But in the middle of what you call play-acting, you definitely turned Johnny on.’

  She put on a sparkling but hermetic smile: ‘I’m not stupid, am I. I understand what I do to men and it makes me … I like to see them dangling there, helpless. As randy as baboons in glass cages, while I’m on the outside and … revealing myself!’

  ‘That can’t be without its dangers.’

  ‘It’s never been dangerous for me.’

  ‘It definitely sounds like a dysfunctional form of sexuality.’

  ‘So maybe I come from a dysfunctional background?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Maybe I promised myself once that no one will have me until I want it. Until I’m legally married.’

  ‘And why? Nowadays?’

  ‘Listen to me. I come from … I grew up in the darkest chapel milieu you can imagine.’

  ‘That must be dark.’

  ‘But still I remember my childhood as light. I had lots of brothers and sisters and we had a good time. But all the childbirths took their toll on my mother, so much so that when she became pregnant yet again her doctor recommended an abortion. Otherwise her life could’ve been in danger. But Pappa was against it. Killing a foetus was a sin, he said, the same as taking out a subscription for eternal damnation. So she didn’t … and…’ Her voice faded and stopped.