The Consorts of Death

4

Dr Marianne Storetvedt was a somewhat old-fashioned-looking beauty, around forty years old. Her hair fell in loose cascades over her shoulders. She had an attractive, narrow face with high cheekbones. Her sharp eyes were softened by the adjacent laughter lines. She was dressed simply, a bright twin set and a brown skirt with a pearl necklace.

Her office was at the far end of Strandkaien and looked over the docks, Rosenkrantz Tower and Haakon’s Hall or towards Skansen and Mount Floien, if she cast her gaze in that direction. I would not have minded an office there myself, had anyone offered me one.

The Asane-bound line of traffic in Bryggen had come to a standstill, as usual at this time of the day, and on the archaeological dig site after the 1955 fire, the new museum building on the slope down from St Mary’s Church was beginning to take shape.

Marianne Storetvedt was in the waiting room to greet us. She had immediate eye contact with Jan, who, after the statement he made while being lifted into the car, had been as silent as a trapeze artist. ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him, then laying a friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘We’re going to be good friends, you and I.’

He looked at her without saying a word, without any visible reaction.

She turned to Cecilie and me. ‘I think I’d prefer to speak with him on my own, but… do you have anything to tell me first?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If we could have a few words undisturbed.’

‘I’ll look after Jan in the meantime,’ Cecilie said. ‘We’ll find ourselves a magazine to look at, won’t we.’

She sat down with him on one of the upholstered benches in the waiting room and took a weekly from the shelf under the coffee table. I followed Marianne Storetvedt into her office.

The room was as simply kitted out as she was herself: a desk with a chair, a very comfortable leather armchair on the other side of the desk and a leather couch along one wall for those of her clients who preferred to be lying down during the consultation. On the walls hung a handful of beautiful, unpretentious landscapes — sea, mountain and forest — broken only by one of Nikolai Astrup’s pictures of Jolster, the well-known spring evening motif, where a man and a woman were on their knees working in a meadow, the apple tree in blossom and the moon reflecting off the lake beneath them.

We stood, and she looked at me with a little smile. ‘Well?’

‘Well, we don’t know much. He’d been at home with his father who was found dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. He was standing in the hall crying when his mother returned home. He didn’t say a word to us until…’

‘Until?’

‘Well… when we were getting in the car to drive here he said…’

‘Yes? Come on!’

‘“Mummy did it.”’

‘“Mummy did it?”’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you tell the police?’

‘No, we haven’t yet. She’s still at the hospital and… I suppose it’ll all come out at some point. Anyway…’

‘Is there anything else I should know about?’

‘I’ll have to get it checked out first, but I was wondering whether Jan could be… whether he might’ve been their foster child, and I’ve met him before.’ Briefly I told her what I could remember of the flat on the Rothaugen estate that July day three and a half years ago.

‘What’s the background of the foster parents? Do you know anything?’

‘No. We haven’t been told anything as yet. They’re called Skarnes. Svein and Vibecke. That’s all I’ve been told. But they live in a detached house in Wergelandsasen, so we’re not talking about a low-income family here.’

‘No one else? No brothers or sisters, I mean?’

‘No, not as far as I’ve been informed.’

‘OK, so let’s get cracking. I’ll see if I can get him to loosen up. But I don’t want to push him too much. If you and Cecilie wouldn’t mind waiting out there, then…’

We walked into the waiting room together. Outside the windows it was getting dark. The street lighting had come on and the car headlights in Bryggen resembled a torn necklace, the pearls falling off one by one as they headed for Asane. After a further, unsuccessful, attempt to establish contact with Jan, Marianne guided him into her office and closed the door behind her.

Cecilie and I sat outside. She was flicking through the same weekly magazine. It was hardly her taste. I had known her since the summer of 1970, and a periodical like Sirene would have been more up her street, workaday feminist that she was.

Some people would call her the classic social worker: short hair, metal oval-framed glasses, no make-up, white blouse under a bright little waistcoat I guessed had been manufactured in a Mediterranean country, dark brown, somewhat worn velvet trousers and short black winter boots. Her accent revealed that she came from south of Bergen, more Roldal than Odda. We were chums; we had a great relationship that had moved in two directions since Beate went for separation. On the one hand, we had become more open, on an almost personal level, and, on the other, a new distance had sprung up because her sisterly solidarity demanded that Beate should be seen to be right. But when Beate had complained that I spent too many nights away, on business, in fact it was Cecilie I had spent most of them with, and truly on business: on the streets looking for children and youths who had upped sticks.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

She looked up into my eyes, as though she could see down to the very bottom of them, and shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Hard to imagine that he’s making it up.’

‘The stuff about his mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do we know anything about — the parents?’

‘No. It all happened so quickly.’

‘Perhaps we should delve a little deeper?’

‘Really we should just hand him over to the Haukedalen centre, shouldn’t we.’

‘Yes, but…’

She gave a weak smile. ‘You always have to dig deeper into cases, don’t you, Varg.’

‘Well, that’s the way I am. A bit too nosy perhaps. Anyway…’

‘Yes?’

‘Mm, I’m frightened that I may have met him before.’

‘Met — Johnny boy?’

‘Yes.’ Once again I told the story about the hot July day in 1970.

After I had finished, she said: ‘Yes, we’ll definitely have to do some digging into this one. I agree with you.’

She flicked through the magazine without really reading. It was obvious that I had given her something to ponder. I walked round studying the pictures on the wall. They were old photographs of Bergen, most were of the area around Vagen, the bay, some of down from Murebryggen wharf, others of the market square. It was a town in black and white with busy people in motion, something the camera of the time had not always been able to capture, some of the figures were fuzzy at the edges, like apparitions. In the bay the forest of masts revealed how many boats there were. Down on the quay, delivery boys and porters passed by with sacks over their shoulders and barrels on their handcarts. Another town, another time, other problems.

Almost an hour passed before the office door opened again. Marianne Storetvedt carefully led Jan through the double doors into the waiting room. She shot us a look and gave a quick shake of her head. Then in a friendly tone, while patting him on the shoulder, she said: ‘Johnny boy doesn’t feel like talking to us today. That’s his right. I think what he needs most now is something to eat and perhaps a nice cup of hot chocolate.’

I nodded. ‘If I could just use your phone…’

She pointed to her office. ‘By all means.’

I went in, alone. The desk was nice and tidy, and there were no notes about what she might have got out of Jan. I leafed through my address book and dialled the Haukedalen Children’s Centre, an institution which was mainly for children at risk.

The manager himself answered the phone, a colleague of ours called Hans Haavik. I explained the predicament to him and said we were on our way. He promised to have a hot meal ready for us when we arrived.

I took the opportunity to search through Marianne’s telephone directory.

Skarnes, Svein was in the book, no mention of a profession. His wife was not listed. Above the surname I found something called Skarnes Import with General Manager Skarnes, Svein mentioned, giving the same private address and telephone number. The text did not detail what he imported.

I went out to join the others. Marianne Storetvedt and Cecilie were standing by one window speaking in hushed voices. Jan stood behind them with the same distant expression. When I came in, his eyes sought mine, and for a moment I had the impression he wanted to say something. I smiled encouragement and nodded, but not a sound emerged after all.

‘Are you hungry?’

He gave a slight nod of the head.

‘Shall we go in the car again?’

He nodded again, with a bit more energy this time.

‘I’ve been talking to someone called Hans. He’ll have a meal ready for when we arrive,’ I said, including the two women in the conversation.

Cecilie said: ‘Well, I could do with something to eat, too.’

Marianne Storetvedt said she would like to talk to Jan ‘when he was in the mood’, as she expressed it. We thanked her and took our leave, then went down to the car which I had parked in the quay area across the road from the building.

Not long afterwards we had joined the traffic queue to Asane as though unable to keep away, despite all our efforts. An anthropologist might have called it the eternal longing to migrate that all humanity has in its blood.

We were like a small family unit as we wended our way, and not that untypical: no one said a word. For myself, I had more than enough to ponder. Not least — and in vain this time round — Jan’s mother’s real name. If it was him, that is.