The Consorts of Death

53

On the ring road, I tried again. ‘I have to know which direction we’re taking.’

‘We’re just going somewhere we can have some peace and quiet. I’ll tell you.’

I cast a sideways glance. ‘What is it exactly you want with me?’

‘You know what.’

‘No, I don’t! Wasn’t it enough with Hammersten?’

We passed a turn-off, but he just pointed ahead. ‘It wasn’t me who killed him!’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘He was dead when I found him.’

‘When you… but what did you want from him?’

‘I was shoppin’ in the street when I met him. I knew of course that he… he’d been married to my mother. My real mother.’

‘Yes, you met her again, I gather. She visited you at Ullersmo Prison?’

‘I recognised her soon as I saw her.’

‘You recognised her? But you were just three when you… were taken from her.’

‘Not that time, you idiot!’

I was suddenly ill at ease. ‘So when was it?’

‘It was when we were comin’ home from school in Angedalen. Silje and I. We walked past a woman walkin’ along the road, and I can still remember her gawping at us. At me most of all. Afterwards we had to laugh at her, and Silje said: Did you see the old biddie! She must be completely crazy, and then we laughed even more. And when she turned up at Ullersmo I recognised her at once. Not as my mother of course, but as the crazy woman from Angedalen. So, we had been laughing at my mother, my own real mother. I wonder if you can imagine how that felt! I could’ve cried, a grown man… and it was the likes of Hammersten who had turned her into what she was. I understood that from what she told me later.’

‘But what — ?’

‘And then I knew what I’d been missin’ for all those years.’ His voice was trembling, as if it was hard for him to speak, harder than any bench presses. ‘The other so-called mothers’ve never loved me, not like her, who had to live without me for all that time. And who came after me, through the prison gates. But we had a few good hours anyway, at the end of her life.’

For a while we sat in total silence. The impression I was left with from what he had just said was so strong that I found it difficult to continue the conversation. It was Jan who resumed. ‘He said I should drop by to see ’im.’

‘Hammersten?’

‘Yeah. He had something to tell me, he said.’

‘Something to tell you?’

‘Something very important for me… and many others. He’d become a Christian, and now he wanted to clear things up. But when I went to see him that evening, he… was just lyin’ there. Unable to speak to anyone. Killed, and with such brutality that there was blood everywhere.’

‘But how did you get in?’

‘Door wasn’t locked.’

‘But if it wasn’t you who knocked the living daylights out of Hammersten…’

‘It wasn’t me, I told you!’

‘OK, Jan Egil. I believe you. But who was it then?’

‘He was just paid back for all the torment he had caused me.’

‘Hammersten?’

‘He killed my first foster father, in Bergen, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t taken out Kari and Klaus in Angedalen as well!’

‘Do you know that?’

‘Does anyone know anything at all? I’ve had to do time for it!’

‘Do you know that he killed your foster father in Bergen, I mean?’

He didn’t answer, just stared into the distance.

I went on: ‘But… at any rate it wasn’t your foster mother, and she has also paid a debt to society for a murder she didn’t commit.’

He took his eyes off the road and stared straight at me. ‘How do you know?’

‘I spoke to her earlier today. Do you know where she lives?’

‘No.’

‘But you know she lives in Oslo?’

‘I couldn’t care less where she lives! She was out of my life a long time ago.’

‘But you must be interested to hear what she had to say?’

‘Course! So what did she say?’

‘She said she arrived home that day in 1974 and it had already happened. You were standing in the hall, paralysed. Nothing else. She didn’t know anything else. She did think…’

‘What? Who did she take the blame for?’

‘For you, I guess.’

He blinked. ‘For my sake! I refuse to believe that.’

‘It wasn’t for Terje Hammersten’s sake anyway.’

‘How long was her stretch?’

‘You don’t know? Has no one told you…?’

‘No!’

‘She was out again by the time of the Angedalen murders.’

He was grinding his molars now; I could literally hear the scraping of worn fillings. ‘Right!’

‘And you still maintain it wasn’t you who… in Angedalen?’

‘That’s what I’ve been tellin’ you all these years! But none of you believed me.’

‘I believed you. But it was impossible to find good enough evidence to break down their case. Or any kind of evidence. If only you hadn’t picked up the murder weapon!’

‘I had to protect myself, didn’t I! I knew who would be blamed…’

I snatched a sideways glimpse. The way he was sitting and staring, big, heavy and well-built, he was still a replica of the defiant youth I had spoken to at the police station in Forde. But there was something new about him too, which had not been present before: the pent-up fury I had observed from the moment he came towards me in the car park by Ulleval Stadium.

I returned my attention to the traffic. And said: ‘There’s one thing I have to ask you, Jan Egil. Why are you so angry with me? I’ve always tried…’

He interrupted me, still speaking his dialect. ‘How can you ask! You and Cecilie’d been like a mother and father to me. The best time of my life was the six months with you. Why d’you think, when I was holed up in Trodalen, pursued by the sergeant and his men, that I asked for you to come to Sunnfjord? And do you remember what you promised me? I shouldn’t be afraid, you said. And I wouldn’t be cuffed, either. But the first thing the cops did when I got down to them was to launch themselves at me with handcuffs, and from then on I could hardly have a piss without them. You failed me, Varg, you and all the rest. But you pretended to be my friend. That’s why you were the biggest fraud of the lot!’

‘But… I’ve never thought you did it, Jan Egil, not for one moment!’

‘That right, eh?’ he almost bellowed. ‘So why am I sitting here, after ten years in Ullersmo? Can you tell me that, Varg? You who think you’re so clever.’

‘No, I can’t, Jan Egil. It’s a tragedy, a tragedy so great that I have no words for it.’

We were approaching Okern now. He pointed east. ‘Turn off here! In that direction.’

I did as he said. And looked in the rear-view mirror at the same time. The shock surged through me. Wasn’t that… two, three cars behind us… the same black car that had been following me down Dr. Holms vei?

I accelerated. All the cars behind us kept up, but none of them seemed to want to overtake.

‘Take the right at the next crossroads.’

I did as he said. The two nearest cars continued straight on, along Ostre Aker vei. The black car turned off and took the same route as us.

‘I have a sneaking suspicion we’ve got someone on our tail,’ I mumbled.

‘What?’ Jan Egil twisted round in his seat and reached for his inside pocket. ‘Shit!’

Then the black car was right behind us. We were heading for a large industrial area. On both sides of the road we saw warehouses, access ramps, containers and parked long-haul vehicles. On the ridge facing us we could make out the tall blocks of Tveita.

As we approached a roundabout the black car came alongside. With a bang it sent us slithering into the first exit. For a second or two my mind went back to Jens Langeland’s concern about what might happen to his car. But I wasn’t given any more time to pursue the thought. I had more than enough trouble steering the car.

The road we were on now was in much worse condition. There were great pot-holes in the tarmac. At the next roundabout I tried to drive right round, but those in the car behind guessed my intentions, swerved into the other carriageway and came to a screeching halt across the road, forcing me to skid down another exit.

Jan Egil was writhing like a snake beside me. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

The black car had sped after us and was bumper to boot now. I tried to see who was at the wheel, but it was too dark, and I had my task cut out keeping our car on an even keel.

Bump!

They drove into us again, this time from the rear, and with such force and precison that the lightweight Starlet lurched forward. Again I cursed Jens Langeland for not lending us the four-wheel drive.

‘Bloody hell!’ Jan made a sudden movement beside me, pulled a handgun from his inside pocket and pointed it at the rear window as if intending to shoot through it.

‘Jan Egil! Don’t…’

‘Just drive! Drive for all you’re bloody worth!’

Bump! Bump!

A clatter came from the back, as though something had been loosened. We lurched forward, hit the post of an open lattice gate, scraped alongside it and landed with a bang on the inside of the fence. I scanned round quickly. We were in a container depot; dark blue, grey and red containers. I swiftly changed down and shot forward, desperate to find a way out.

Suddenly the tarmac came to an end. Now we were on a gravel road, as bumpy as a switchback. Behind us the tyres of the black car screeched as it skidded after us.

‘What the fuck are you doin’? You’ve driven us straight into a trap!’

‘You wanted to go to a nice quiet place, didn’t you,’ I snarled back.

I looked around, swung the wheel, tried to reverse. Once again the large, black car rammed us, this time from the side, shoving us even further into the corner we were finding ourselves ensnared in. I changed gear and accelerated in an attempt to by-pass them, but they followed us as if stuck to our side and pushed us deeper and deeper into the gap between five or six large containers, with a huge loading ramp in the middle and a barbed wire fence at the end. The bonnet of the Starlet got jammed up against one of the steel supports of the ramp. For an instant all the warning lights on the dashboard flashed, then they went out, the engine died and all we could hear was the faint but insistent hiss of a punctured tyre.

Jan Egil smashed open the door on his side and ducked his head, still holding the blue-grey pistol in his hand. Then, bent double, he got out, with his eyes on the car behind.

I peered into the cock-eyed side mirror. The black car had positioned itself like a barrier between us and the rest of the world. Around us lay the district of Groruddalen, dotted with glittering lights, as distant as the stars in the sky above us. White smoke drifted from a tall chimney, giving off an acrid smell, as if from burning waste. The only light to reach us came down from two tall pylons, filtered by the darkness. The two men who got out of the car behind — with the same caution and wariness as Jan Egil — were barely visible, no more than two large, dark silhouettes. But the matt gleam from their hands spoke its own unambiguous language. They were not coming to the party with empty hands, either.

One of them called out: ‘Out of the car, both of you!’

Since Jan Egil was already outside I calculated that it must have been me he was referring to. I heaved a heavy sigh and felt a sense of inevitability in my stomach. Then I pushed the battered door to its full extent, swung myself out, placed my feet on the gravel and slowly exited the car, copying Jan Egil’s example by holding the door in front of me like a shield.

‘Freeze!’ shouted the man. He turned to the other who already had a mobile phone to his ear and was talking.

‘What the hell do you want from us?’ I shouted.

‘Shut up!’

‘Who are you phoning?’

‘Shut up, I said!’ answered the man, brandishing with menace a considerably larger weapon than Jan Egil’s. From this distance it didn’t look very inviting, a machine gun of the variety that sold like hotcakes in the organised section of the criminal community, in tiger-town Oslo and elsewhere.

They said something we couldn’t hear. I turned my head to Jan Egil. ‘Any idea who they are?’

‘Not the cops, that’s for sure.’

‘No, I’d worked that one out, too.’

He wasn’t letting the two armed men out of his sight. Standing there — with his top-heavy body, weapon in hand, cap down over his forehead, the little hair I could see shaved tight to the skull — he reminded me of a bully boy, a threat to everything in the vicinity, me included. Anger and pent-up violence radiated off him, and it was not difficult to recognise the disproportionately muscle-bound frame and the vacant look as belonging to someone who had overdosed on anabolic steroids for much too long.

Inside me, I still carried the image of the small, tearful boy on the Rothaugen estate that hot July day of 1970 when Elsa Dragesund and I had gone to pick him up, and it struck me: had we done this to him? Was this the result of twenty-five years of public service commitment, trying to make him a different and better person, or at least trying to secure him a place in society that both he and we could tolerate? Was this the best we could achieve, the sum of our success?

‘What the hell are you mixed up in, Johnny boy?’

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘Sorry, but… is it me or you they’re after?’

Suddenly one of the men by the black car shouted. ‘Didn’t we tell you to keep your mouths shut over there?’

I swivelled round. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you? Are you feeling left out? You’re warmly invited to take part in the conversation, if you like!’

He hoisted the gun to his face and pointed it at me. ‘Shut up, I said!’

‘Shut your mouth yourself!’ Jan Egil snapped. ‘I’ve got you in my sights! Move one centimetre this way and you’re a dead man!’

For a moment the whole picture seemed to freeze. I prepared myself for the worst, then the situation suddenly changed. We heard the sound of a car before we saw it. Round the bend from the gate it came, a large black Mercedes which soon slowed down when the driver caught sight of us. As quietly as a panther, it drew up at an angle beside the two armed men and the other black car.

The door slid open, and in the gleam from the tall pylons I glimpsed a silhouette as he got out. He was a tall, powerful man, and even before the light from the distant headlamp hit his face, I knew who it was. Now I could see the pattern that I should have seen eleven years ago.