Fallen Angels

by Gunnar Staalesen

  I said gently: ‘She…’

  She nodded: ‘…died.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘He took it hard, needless to say.’

  ‘Started drinking?’

  ‘Imagine that … No, no he didn’t. He was convinced that everything was God’s will and never raised a fist to the heavens in protest. But … he was never the same again. I can’t remember seeing him smile from that day on. But I promised myself then … well.’

  There was a silence between us. I understood her better now. She came from a dark landscape and you can have serious problems when you finally come into the light. She came from a region where sexuality was the game whose rules you never learned and therefore it was all the more likely that she would fall foul of them in later life. She didn’t know her own strength or the weakness of others. Such conflicts had often ended in death before too, but if this were the case here, what had happened to Johnny was an isolated incident and had nothing to do with Harry Kløve or Arild Hjellstad. But what about the pictures of angels?

  ‘So you’re quite bitter about your father?’

  ‘Bitter?’ She let the word hang in the air as though she wanted to choose a different one.

  ‘A bitterness that in a way has developed to include all men?’

  ‘You might say that,’ she smiled brutally. ‘I like to see you all dangling there, squirming on the hook. And then I let you go, but you’re mortally wounded.’

  ‘But some come back for more perhaps?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Johnny Solheim.’

  She snorted. ‘I hardly knew him. I’d only met him a few times. But I meet so many men. He’d started imagining things.’

  ‘Yes, so you said. And I can see why. I myself might’ve started imagining things. But on Saturday night you saw nothing of him after your little guest appearance on the dance floor…’

  Now she appeared embarrassed. ‘I still had the show in my head. I didn’t mean to … But who I am after a performance and for as long as I’m in the public eye is a persona. Normally I’m…’

  ‘Quite different. I’m beginning to understand. It sounds like a stressful life. Like trying to maintain a conversation while someone in the room keeps turning the light on and off. I can imagine that from time to time it gets you into difficult situations, ones you can’t quite control.’

  She shrugged. ‘Not so many, when it comes down to it. Most people understand a knee in the right place. Feel free to try.’

  ‘No, thank you. I think I’ll pass. But this other woman you also are. Would she be strong enough to commit murder?’

  ‘You don’t mean…?’

  ‘She wouldn’t send pictures of angels to people she doesn’t like, would she?’

  ‘Angels? What on earth are you prattling on about?’

  Her surprise seemed genuine, but which of the two personalities I was actually talking to, I wasn’t sure. The other one might not have been so surprised.

  So I thanked her for her time, gave her a wide berth and went out in case she felt the moment was ripe for a demonstration. The door was slammed shut and the light in the whitewashed stairwell blinded me like a camera flash. I had got halfway down the stairs when my subconscious whispered something into my ear.

  Hadn’t I heard a sound … a scraping noise, like a shoe? Was someone lying in wait?

  I stopped and listened.

  Silence … and a presence.

  I leaned over the balustrade and looked upwards. A floor above, I could see five fingers on the banister.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  No one answered, but the five fingers vanished as though I had burned them.

  36

  I kept close to the wall and tried to look up. All I could hear was the sound of shoes moving over concrete.

  I opened my mouth to shout again, but changed my mind. Instead, in two or three long strides, so as to surprise whoever was there, I took the rest of the steps up to the landing where the stairs curved.

  As I rounded the bend I heard the click of a light switch. Darkness fell like a guillotine and I stumbled over the lowest step, hit my knees and calves on the step above and lunged in vain for the railing.

  Then the person above came down towards me. I was on my way up when an off-target kick hit me between my heart and my armpit, paralysing my left shoulder and making me groan with pain. A slightly more accurate punch lit a shower of sparks in the darkness around me; it had struck my chin. Then the sparks died, darkness was total and I lay slumped on the floor, my head facing downwards against the concrete wall and one foot caught between the bars of the balustrade.

  I hung there like a shipwrecked seaman caught in the ropes of a sinking ship. Blood pounded through my veins with the force of a monsoon and waves rose in my midriff, making me feel as old as the sea, weakened by the tides. I was at low ebb, on a beach where all the filth was revealed after the water had retreated. I was flotsam.

  Then I slowly drifted up into the light, blinded by pain. I freed my foot from the railings, drew my knees beneath me, carefully bent my back and pulled my head out of the quicksand it was stuck in. I felt like an ostrich that had put its head in a Kenwood mixer. I found the wall and followed it down, the same way I had come up.

  I couldn’t find the bell beside the door to Belinda Bruflåt’s flat. I banged hard on the door instead.

  She fastened the security chain before opening the door a fraction and peering out at me. ‘What the…?’

  I tried to move my left arm, but it just hung there. I tried to say something, but my chin was cemented into a position I didn’t have the strength to change. The only sensible solution was to faint.

  *

  I came to lying on the floor of her flat. She was washing my face with a wet hand towel and I discovered to my surprise that I could lift my left arm – not without pain though – to touch my chin, which felt looser than it had.

  ‘How do you feel?’ she asked with a concerned look.

  ‘Like I’ve been butchered in bright daylight and woken up in the arms of Maria Magdalena.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Someone doesn’t like me visiting you. I assume that with your show and then your withdrawn private life – excuse me for being so personal – you have a long queue of rejected suitors out there.’ I motioned towards the door. ‘Perhaps this was someone who wanted to jump that queue.’

  She shook her head as if to say she couldn’t believe that.

  ‘Unless you know more about this case than you’re letting on and someone wanted to warn you … through me.’

  ‘What case? Johnny Solheim?’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘I told you I don’t—’

  ‘Yes, but my memory’s so bad.’ I put my hand to my face. ‘Someone must’ve done something to my head since I last saw you.’

  She sat looking at me. ‘Should I ring for a taxi? You can’t stay here.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you expecting someone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who are you actually, Belinda Bruflåt?’

  ‘A very ordinary girl from Lindås who plays…’ She searched for the right words.

  ‘A dangerous game?’

  ‘A role she hasn’t learned all the script for. Here. I’ll help you.’

  She passed me her hand and I stood up. My face was wet, my shoulder, chest and chin ached and the monsoon in my blood had risen to my head and become a typhoon.

  ‘Shall I ring for a taxi?’

  I made a dismissive gesture. ‘I’ll drive my own car. Just point me to the town and…’

  She looked at me with concern.

  I looked back. I tried to see Bella Bruflåt in her, but it was impossible. We had reached the point in the script where she didn’t know her lines. Or she did, but was putting on an act.

  She stood by the door until she was sure I had got to the front entrance and left safely.

&n
bsp; Outside the block I drew the cold winter air into my lungs and scanned the scene carefully before I made my way into open terrain. The parked cars were like carnivores ready to pounce and I walked past with trepidation, all my senses on high alert.

  But none of them leaped at my throat. Their headlights didn’t blink as I walked by.

  I found my Toyota, checked there was no one in the back, settled into the front seat, gripped the wheel and whispered: ‘Find the way, my sweet angel.’

  Then I let it fly me home without pressing a pedal in protest.

  37

  The following day the sky was like a sheet someone had hung out to dry the night before, it was so rigid it could have stood up without any help.

  My left arm had a life of its own and my chin felt like something I had bought at a closing-down sale.

  It was the telephone that had woken me. ‘Hello,’ I answered, in two different keys. Where did that voice come from?

  ‘Veum?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘This is Berge Brevik. We met briefly the other day.’ We had indeed.

  ‘And as recently as yesterday,’ I said.

  ‘That’s exactly why I’m … Could we meet?’

  ‘I’ve got something on this morning which…’

  ‘What about this afternoon or this evening?’

  ‘It sounds urgent.’

  ‘Yes, Veum, it is.’ As if he was telling me that doomsday was approaching and he had all the details. But I had a feeling there were much more secular reasons for his call.

  ‘Let’s meet in my office at six.’

  ‘On Strandkaien? I just rang there.’

  ‘So you’ve already spoken to my secretary?’

  ‘No, I…’

  ‘Naturally, I mean my answer-machine.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Right, Veum. I’ll be there.’

  ‘See you.’

  ‘See you, Veum. Goodbye.’

  I put down the receiver, completed my morning rituals, made a few tentative movements with my left arm, brewed myself a cup of coffee and sat musing over the motley selection of people I had met over the last few days, all with their own secrets.

  Anita Solheim and her two daughters: Ruth, whom I still hadn’t met, and Sissel, who was attending a confirmation class – with Berge Brevik.

  Bente Solheim with the bruising on her cheek and pictures of angels in the post.

  Old Ingeborg Kløve with the sudden memory of similar angels – and Halldis Heggøy who had turned her back on them and placed her faith in other powers.

  Rebecca – and Berge Brevik.

  Jakob – and Berge Brevik.

  The ghosts of Arild Hjellstad and Harry Kløve, prematurely departed, but perhaps not without good reason.

  The mysterious Belinda Bruflåt, torn between a stage act and the chapel.

  Stig Madsen – another kind of ghost.

  And then the recently deceased: Jan Petter Olsen, who in a way had brought us all together, and Johnny Solheim, who had been driving us apart again.

  Shadows from the stage seemed to fall on all of them.

  On that stage stood The Harpers, figures without facial features, silhouettes representing seventeen years of gigs: on the drums, Arild Hjellstad; on the bass guitar, Harry Kløve; on guitar and, later, the organ, Jakob Aasen; on guitar and vocals, Johnny Solheim. Give them a big hand, folks. Give them a big hand…

  And then they began to play … then they began to play …

  *

  They were still playing in the recesses of my mind as I parked by the newspaper offices, looked at my watch, and then she was there, Laila Mongstad, with her big smile, all teeth, her gold-rimmed glasses glinting in the December sun, wearing a short, light-brown leather jacket and shiny, faded jeans, youthfully tight over her ample hips, a camera hanging casually and suggestively between her sweater-clad breasts and a discreet scent of pine needles and forest floor on her neck. She jumped in the car, gave me a quick hug and said: ‘This is brilliant, Varg. You and I going the same way…’

  I shrugged. ‘At least you know where it is. So I don’t have to drive around blindly.’

  ‘You were going to talk to one of the patients, did you say?’

  ‘If she’s there.’

  ‘What’s her name? Maybe I…’

  ‘Solheim. Ruth Solheim. Twenty-four years old.’

  She racked her brain. ‘No, I can’t say…’ Then she smiled again. ‘But we’re going to have a wonderful trip, Varg. In this light…’

  She was right. We did have a wonderful trip.

  Through Åsane the rime frost lay like a veil over the grass beside the road, and the shimmering blue-and-white sky was as transparent as it can be before the snow comes and leaves its ornamental frozen stars on the clear ice.

  Laila Mongstad belonged to those blessed individuals who seldom run out of conversation topics and who can fill a silence with benign serenity. We chatted like old friends and never mentioned the first time we met, as though this might have inevitable consequences, as though it would automatically lead to the relationship changing character and taking us to one of two places: straight to bed or to different ferry terminals.

  The one we were coming to now, between Steinestø and Knarvik, was the most used in Norway and probably one of the shortest. This is where the bulk of the northbound traffic came, bound for destinations such as Stryn and Otta, Ålesund and Molde, Trondheim and Namsos. Ferries the size of mountains, with the same capacity as cross-channel ferries, transported you across the fjord in fifteen minutes, and you barely had time to climb to the top deck and enjoy the view for five minutes before you had to find your way back down to the fume-ridden car deck.

  Waiting at ferry terminals is the fate of Vestlanders. No sojourns have left deeper marks in their souls than precisely this. On a wind-blown quay – where there is a hot-dog stall, which is closed, a telephone box where the cable has been yanked out and where the summer ferry timetable is displayed in winter (and vice versa) – lives are shaped. Here, they are on their way out into the world, from home, or on their way home, to weddings or funerals. Here, they accompany their sweethearts to final farewells; here, love-rivals sit in big cars, waiting to take over. Here, they set down their cases and rucksacks, their cardboard boxes of books and photographs, on their way to a new life in university towns. Here, they come ashore half drunk after two weeks on the North Sea; here, they come home from military service and teacher-training college; here, women arrive with children in their arms and the elderly arrive with walking sticks for their rheumatism after a visit to an urban medical centre. Here, paths through life criss-cross, unnoticed, more or less. Here, maps are drawn of new paths while old ones are hastily erased. And everyone is waiting for the ferry, which is always somewhere in the fjord. Waiting for a ferry is the Vestlander’s lot in life.

  But at Steinestø waiting time was at a minimum and when we arrived, one Thursday morning in December, the ferry was already there and yawned us into its jaws, together with twenty other vehicles, so few that we almost felt embarrassed that it was crossing the fjord just for our sake.

  We got out of the car and went up on deck. It was like crossing the fjord on top of an iceberg. To the south Mount Veten and Mount Håstefjell towered up behind the old BMW concern in Hordvikneset. To the west lay the islands of Holsnøy and Askøy, to the east the dark, sheer rock faces on Osterøy and to the north the flat, gentle countryside across Lindås before the mountains in Masfjorden stood like a murky barrier to the light and sun. The peaks were laced with white and shimmered like haloes in the intense morning light. The air itself was a promise of good days, scratched with a needle into lead plates, ready to be made into prints.

  I looked at Laila Mongstad. She had turned up the collar of her coat against the wind off the sea and her face was adorned with red patches where the frost had bitten the hardest. I put my arm around her shoulders and said: ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘A bit,’ she said, resting her head in the
crook of my arm for a moment. She had exotic, dark-brown eyes with large pupils and great warmth. I looked at her mouth and remembered how as children our tongues got stuck when we licked metal in winter. Perhaps that was why I didn’t kiss her.

  Then the moment was past and she straightened her head again, shifted her gaze to the horizon and said: ‘We seem to be … above the countryside. Don’t you feel that?’

  I nodded. ‘But now we have to go back down and drive through it. Otherwise we’ll be going back to where we came from.’

  We got into the car as the ferry moored with a surprisingly little bump. The crew directed us up and out to where a queue of vehicles going in the opposite direction was waiting. We crawled up the first hill by Knarvik and headed north by Isdalstø, first through an autumn-brown escarpment of rotund tree trunks, then along a road winding between small, jagged outcrops of rock until we were out onto the wide, open plains of the Lindås peninsula, past little lakes, through scattered copses, past churches and deserted farms towards the as-yet invisible pillar of flame waiting for us further north.

  ‘In a way, you’re going home,’ I said.

  ‘To Mongstad, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s where my ex-husband came from,’ she said curtly, stressing the ex. Then she placed a hand on my arm. ‘We turn off here. At the next crossing turn right.’

  I nodded and changed down. A narrow road took us between crooked pine trees. After a couple of kilometres the tarmac changed to gravel and the intervals between farms increased.

  ‘We almost have to go down to the sea,’ she said. ‘You can see the house from a distance. It’s big and white … and there’s an old red outbuilding.’

  Then we were there. The two buildings stood on a small plateau facing Fens fjord, which lay still and dark like a massive oil slick. Some deserted islands lay like abandoned observatories in the dark water and on the other side, in Masfjorden, the mountain mass towered into the air, steep and inhospitable.