The Consorts of Death

6

February was dark and this year there wasn’t much snow. It wasn’t cold, either. It had been an unseasonably warm winter, and in January the fohn winds had swept through the town for such long periods that man and beast had smelt spring in the air long before it was due. No one would have been surprised if the first migratory birds had arrived a month or two early.

Wergelandsasen was an almost noise-free zone this evening. All you could hear was the distant hum of cars down in Storetveitvegen, a cat meowing furiously in a garden and an aeroplane passing overhead towards Flesland airport.

Behind the hedges, the houses were lit and peaceful. I pulled in, got out of the car and carefully put the car door to, without closing it. I stood taking stock of the area.

The street was narrow and surrounded by withered brown hedges, most of them neat and tidy. A few cars were parked down one side. I bent forward to see if anyone was sitting in them, but there was no one.

I closed the car door quietly and moved forward. There wasn’t a hedge around the brown house but large dark green rhododendron bushes, the biggest of them at least twenty years old. I paused by the gate. The police had cordoned off the house with red and white plastic tape, a measure which did not prevent anyone from entering if they wished. I looked towards the house. It had a dark, closed air. An outside lamp was on. That was all.

A car door further down the street was slammed. I stared after it. Two men were coming towards me. Neither of them wearing a uniform, but they didn’t need to. I recognised them by their gait, and when they were close up I recognised Ellingsen and Boe. Ellingsen because he had married an ex-girlfriend of mine; Boe I had seen at the police station.

‘Something we can help you with?’ asked Boe, the older of the two, weasel-faced, lean and wiry.

‘I know him,’ said Ellingsen, a bit chubbier, dark-haired with visible bristles.

‘Hello, Elling,’ I said. ‘Everything alright at home?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘You know him, did you say?’ Boe asked.

‘Just by repute.’

‘His wife,’ I began.

‘They were in the same class at school,’ he added with alacrity.

I gave a thin smile as though I knew something he would have preferred not to know.

‘And what the hell are you doing here at this time of night?’ Boe pressed.

I studied him. ‘The fact is I was here earlier in the day on business. Social services, if you’re curious. I just felt like — seeing how things were up here, during the evening.’

Ellingsen expelled air through his nose and Boe sent me a suspicious glare. ‘Seeing how things were?’

I opened my mouth to answer as a car turned into the narrow street. When the driver became aware of our presence he switched off full beam. For a second, time stood still. Then the two policemen began to walk towards the new arrival, a BMW of the sporty variety as far as I could see, as muscular as it was lowbrow and in an unbelievably indecorous colour, the closest relative to which was orange. Before they had closed in, the driver had opened the door and got out. He was slim, wore a short jacket and was only visible as a silhouette in the distance.

I followed Ellingsen and Boe.

‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ asked the man with natural authority in his voice.

‘We should ask you the same,’ Boe said, showing his police ID.

‘My name is Langeland and I’m the family’s solicitor.’

‘Which family?’

‘Skarnes. Who did you think?’

Ellingsen looked sheepish. ‘Well, we had to ask, didn’t we.’

‘Not necessarily.’

The two policemen introduced themselves. Langeland looked at me. ‘And this is?’

Ellingsen and Boe turned round in astonishment, as if they had never seen me before.

‘Veum,’ I said. ‘Social services.’

‘Are you responsible for looking after Jan?’

‘He’s in safe hands.’

‘That’s good to hear. Where?’

‘I don’t know if I can divulge that information.’

‘As I said to the policemen here… I’m the family’s solicitor. You can tell me everything.’

‘I’ve learnt that you should say as little as possible to solicitors.’

Boe gave a crooked grin. ‘Perhaps you should take Veum with you for a ride in your car, Langeland. Make him an offer he cannot refuse.’

‘You’ve seen the film, too, have you?’ I said.

‘What is in fact the problem?’ Langeland said.

‘What’s what problem?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Perhaps I should ask you that question. Are you expecting to find your client in?’

He sent me a chill look. ‘My client?’

‘Vibecke Skarnes. You’re the family ’s solicitor, didn’t you say?’

‘Yes, I am… Isn’t she in hospital?’

‘In which case wouldn’t it make more sense if you were visiting her there — rather than here?’

Both policemen focused their attention on Langeland as if they shared my view of the matter.

He glowered at us. ‘I came here to see what the situation was. I hadn’t received a report back on what had happened before this evening.’ With a sidelong glance at the policeman, he added, ‘I was working on a case in Kinsarvik, but I understand there is nothing else to be done here.’

‘Never say never,’ I said.

‘And that is supposed to mean?’

I turned to Boe again. ‘I don’t know how much I’m allowed to disclose. To be on the safe side, I’ll leave an assessment of that to our friends here.’

Boe took stock of Langeland. Then he said succinctly: ‘It turns out fru Skarnes has disappeared.’

‘What! Disappeared?’

‘Yes.’

‘From the hospital.’

No one said a word. Boe just nodded in silence.

For a moment, Langeland stood mesmerised. ‘Well, I never!’ He turned to me again. ‘Do you know anything about this?’

‘No more than has already been said.’

An apparently dumbfounded solicitor was such a rare sight that I was distracted for a moment. Then he had himself under control again.

‘Well, I’ll have to go up there myself and find out what could have happened.’ He looked from me back to the policemen. ‘And you?’

Boe gazed at him from under weary eyelids. ‘We’ve been assigned to surveillance duties outside the house. In case she turns up. Veum’s going home to bed.’

I winked at Ellingsen. ‘Yes, if Elling’s here then…’

His face instantly went scarlet. ‘Veum! I’ve warned you!’

‘You have indeed. But has that scared me off? Not yet.’

‘One day I’m going to hit you so hard you’ll…’

‘We’ll be in the papers?’ I looked at the other two. ‘Now I have witnesses anyway. Will you take the case, Langeland?’

‘Alright, alright,’ Boe said, with impatience. ‘Since neither of you has any official reason to be here, I suggest you leave — now!’

‘Fine,’ I said, looking at the dark garden around the house.

‘I’m going to the hospital,’ Langeland said.

I followed him to his car, which stood next to mine, an appropriate demonstration of the difference between our respective monthly salaries. The Mini blushed to its rust stains and pointedly looked away when I came to a stop beside it.

Before getting into his polished chariot, Langeland turned to me once more. ‘Why won’t you say where Jan is?’

‘I certainly will, Langeland. It’s no big deal. He’s staying at the Haukedalen Children’s Centre.’

‘With Hans Haavik?’

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘We’re old friends. From university.’

‘Well, in that case you’ll know where he is. But before you go, Langeland…’

‘Yes?’

‘Is there a possibility that Vibecke and Svein Skarnes are not Jan’s biological parents?’

He sent me a hostile glare. ‘Where have you got that from?’

‘Did you catch my line of work? I think I’ve met Jan before, when he was two or three years old. And in a very different home.’

He averted his eyes, looked across the car roof at the two policemen. ‘Well… I can’t see any reason to deny that. But Vibecke and Svein had adopted him. They have full parental rights.’ After some reflection he added: ‘Well, Vibecke, anyway.’

‘Does Jan know, do you think?’

‘That he’s adopted? I doubt it. You’ll have to ask Vibecke about that. Why do you ask?’

‘Well, I… it was just a thought.’

‘OK… I’m off then.’

After a final nod he got into his car, closed the door, started up and reversed out of the side street, so quietly that you could hardly hear the sound of the tyres on the tarmac. I stood watching him before I got into my own car, ill at ease.

Mummy did it, he had said. Which mummy? I wondered.