The Writing on the Wall

Twenty-three

THE VIEW OVER THE GARAGES in Sporveien and the workshops in Mannsverk was the same as before: so much so that I couldn’t even tell if any of the buses had actually been moved.

I stood and waited after ringing the doorbell where Astrid Nikolaisen and her mother lived.

The curtains were drawn. And it was quite a time before there was a hint of movement in one of them, as if somebody was taking a careful peep.

Then there were muffled footsteps and the door was opened the tiniest crack.

Gerd Nikolaisen looked older than on my last visit. Now she seemed not far off forty. Her hair was untidier, as if she’d just got up, and she was also wearing nothing but a loose-fitting, dark-red dressing gown. The thick layer of make-up did not conceal a nasty swelling round one eye and on her lower lip on the other side, giving her whole face a tragic clown-like air.

She looked at me blankly. ‘What d’you want?’

‘Don’t you remember me? It’s Veum, I called on Thurs -’

‘Yes, I do. Astrid’s not home.’

She was about to close the door, and I leaned carefully forward. ‘Where is she then? At school?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Where then?’

She shrugged her shoulders with a jaded air. ‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘Have you read what happened to Torild?’

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

I glanced quickly both ways. ‘Listen… might I come in for a moment?’

She shrugged again before stepping aside. It made no difference to her. She apparently had nothing better to do.

I followed her through the dark hall and into the living room.

The room was spartan, dominated by chrome-plated tubular steel furniture with black, slightly grubby fabric cushions. In a corner stood a TV and on the floor below it a VCR, surrounded by a fair number of video cases. A rack contained a radio, a twin-deck cassette player and a gaping hole where the CD player should have been. The loose leads behind suggested it had once been there.

From the radio, a commercial station blasted its semi-hysterical ads out over the ether into Gerd Nikolaisen’s living room. She walked across and turned down the sound with a gesture of irritation. As she turned back to face me, she gathered her dressing gown more tightly about her waist, yet not so quickly that I didn’t glimpse her naked breasts.

I remained standing. ‘These girls… Have you any idea what sort of company they keep?’

She nodded towards one of the chairs to indicate that I should sit down and followed me, placing herself on the sofa on the other side of the low table. The tabletop was black Formica, with the same tubular steel frame as the rest of the furniture. ‘Have you any idea… what are you driving at exactly?’

‘I mean… do you know what sort of people they knock about with when they’re in town?’

She took a pack of cigarettes from the table, shook one out, stuck it in her mouth and looked around for something to light it with.

I picked up a barrel-shaped lighter, ignited it and held it towards her. Her thin fingers shook as she leaned forward with the cigarette between them, and I couldn’t help noticing how she’d gnawed the skin raw towards the bottom of the pink nail varnish.

‘Well, I… You can’t keep an eye on everything, especially as I’ve had to bring her up alone the whole time.’

She leaned back in the chair, crossed one leg over the other so that her dressing gown parted and inhaled the smoke so deeply that you’d have thought it might soon start seeping out between her legs. Then slowly it was exhaled the usual way. Through the bluish smoke I could just see her eyes. They were dark-brown, almost black, as though consisting of nothing but pupils.

‘But doesn’t it – scare you when stuff like this with Torild happens?’

There was a faint movement at the corner of her mouth. ‘Astrid can take care of herself. Better than I’ve ever taught her to.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Nothing.’

I sighed. ‘Tell me, shouldn’t Astrid actually have gone to Ulrik School?’

‘Well… she crossed swords with the teacher they had down there, so she was transferred to Nattland, that’s when she was about ten, in Class 5, I think.’

‘So that was when she met Torild and Åsa?’

‘Åsa?’

‘Åsa Furebø.’

‘Oh? Yes, it probably was.’

‘Wasn’t she in the Guides?’

‘In the Guides, Astrid?’ Her upper lip curled up in a crooked grin that revealed her slightly irregular teeth. Then her brow furrowed. ‘No, actually, she did try it for a couple of weeks.’ She leaned forward and flicked the ash into the already overflowing ashtray.

‘But when it came to buying the kit, the shirt and stuff, it was too expensive. Anyway, she wasn’t interested.’

‘So what was she interested in?’

She looked at me, baffled. ‘Well, er… What are girls interested in at that age? For a while she used to go up to the riding centre, but we hadn’t really… Then all she did was walk alongside while the others rode, lent a hand with mucking out the stable a bit then she packed that in as well.’

I sat waiting for her to continue.

‘Apart from that… pop music and films and larking about in the evening.’ With a slightly bitter look she explained: ‘She started going out very early with boys who were…’

‘Who were…?’

‘Well, a good bit older than her! I suppose that’s how she got into – the habit…’

‘Habit?’

‘Yes.’

Every time I asked a new question she looked at me as though I was utterly dense. Now she uncrossed and crossed her legs again, with the result that a bit more of her thigh showed. Yet there was nothing seductive in this shifting of position; it was more like an expression of utter disinterestedness. ‘Me and Astrid… we’re not like mother and daughter to each other, really, more like mates. That’s why she calls me Gerd. Remember, I was so young when I had her.’

‘How young?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘But you were saying about the habit?’

She looked at me blankly.

‘Oh yes. Well… since we’re practically the same age…’ She paused for a moment, as if waiting for me to protest, but I didn’t say anything. ‘It sometimes happened her boyfriends were my type too… and vice versa.’

‘Hm?’

Quickly she added: ‘Yes. I don’t mean we… you mustn’t think we swapped. But sometimes – situations arose which led to – jealousy, right?’

I put my hand up to my eye and nodded towards hers. ‘These marks you’ve got here… and here…’ I moved my hand to my lower lip. ‘Are they the result of such a – situation?’

She pursed her lips, and her eyes flashed. The hand holding the cigarette was shaking even more now, and before she said anything, she inhaled deeply through her nostrils.

The words slithered out of her mouth like creepy crawlies from under a stone. ‘I came home… yesterday… I’d just been down to hire a video and buy some fags… so they thought they could get in a quick one…’

I waited.

‘I didn’t ring the bell, just let myself in… then, of course, I heard the creaking from her bed right out here on…’ She nodded towards the front door. ‘She was starkers, and he’d just – pulled down his pants. But they were at it like rabbits… Just like rabbits!’

The only sound that could be heard as she breathed was the muffled, but nevertheless relentless, blare of commercials from the radio.

There were tears in her eyes. ‘You’d think they’d have had enough shame not to do it… here in my own flat… when I could come in any moment. But that’s just what he’s like, doesn’t give a shit! And as for her…’

‘What happened then?’ I asked quietly.

‘There was a hell of a row, obviously. I don’t mess about when my back’s up!’

‘No, I’m sure you -’

‘She got dressed like greased lightning, and I haven’t clapped eyes on her since. But him…’ A hurt look came into her eyes. ‘He just let fly, as though I was the one in the wrong… Here… And here… And look at this…’

Abruptly, she opened her dressing gown and pulled it down over her shoulders baring her top half. She had big blue bruises both around and between her breasts.

She looked down at herself. Her small breasts looked rather pathetic. ‘How can I help it if mine aren’t… if I don’t have big boobs like her? If it was lamb he was after, couldn’t he have taken himself off somewhere else?’

‘Who are we talking about, anyway?’

‘Who? Kenneth of course!’

‘What else is he called besides Kenneth?’

‘Kenneth Persen! Do you know him?’

‘No, but… I bumped into him just as I was leaving, the last time I was here.’

‘That’s right…’ She threw up her hand before pulling the dressing gown back round herself.

‘Do you think Astrid could be at his place?’

She looked bitter. ‘Well, good luck to her if she is, that’s what I say…’

‘Do you know where he lives?’

‘What for? Are you going to go and see him?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s Astrid I’d really like to have had a word with right now.’

‘He lives in a dump of a flat in Nedre Nygård. In Jonas Reins Street.’

‘Listen… Astrid and Torild… would it surprise you if I said that they were maybe involved in – prostitution?’

The last spark of life went out in her eyes. ‘No. Nothing can surprise me now… nothing. I think…’

I stood up.

She accompanied me out into the hall. She only managed to raise her eyes as far up as my chest as she said: ‘It did me good to talk to somebody.’

I took out my wallet and handed her one of the visiting cards that only gave my name and office phone number. ‘If you think of anything else, or need to talk to somebody, call this number. If I’m out, you can leave a message.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, looking as though she had to turn the word over in her mouth, unable as she was to remember when she’d used it last.

‘It’s the least I can do,’ I said and left.