The Writing on the Wall

Thirty-seven

EVEN THE WEATHER GODS were out of sorts on the day I was to die. Intermittent hail showers came lashing in over the city, propelled by a gusting north-west wind, the hailstones drumming against the windowpanes, not unlike the Bergen Boys’ Brigade’s first spring parade.

Karin gave me a long warm kiss before I left. ‘Want me to come down with you?’

‘No. But you can keep an eye on me from the window till I’ve gone.’ As a sudden afterthought I added: ‘And make sure you look after yourself too. I’ll call when I get there.’

Then after a few minutes more I said that now I absolutely had to leave, and she reluctantly let go of me as though not quite sure she would ever see me again.

Once more there were tears in her eyes. I didn’t know whether I was pleased or not. I didn’t like giving others cause to weep.

I opened the main door downstairs cautiously. Not many people were up and about yet. A neighbour from one of the other blocks was on her way up towards Årstadveien, and a middle-aged lady was out walking her dog.

I went quickly out and walked over to the parking space, bending down a couple of times as though to check my shoelaces. When I got to the car I took care not to hang about in one place for too long. I quickly walked around it, brushing off the windows. The scattering of snow during the night at least had the advantage of making me fairly sure no one had tampered with the car, either around the locks or elsewhere since I’d parked it. There were no other footprints but mine around it. All I found was the Hardanger lace pattern of hail from the last shower.

I put the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door, nodded up at Karin and got in.

Having seen far too many American films, I looked round at the back seat to make sure it was empty. It was.

I knew that the critical point was what followed now. Most car bombs were connected to the ignition.

There was only one way to find out. With the door still open (as though that would have helped), I put the key in the ignition and turned on the engine. It started like a sailor’s widow at the very first touch.

As I turned out of the car park, I waved up at Karin again. She waved back, but not from the heart. It was as though I could see her worried look even down there in the car.

Up in Årstadveien I turned south towards Haukeland Hospital. I looked in the mirror. There was a steady trickle of cars over Årstadvollen. Up from Fløenbakken came a motorbike, which carefully positioned itself close to the pavement two or three cars behind me. I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

In Fridalen I turned down through Christiepark, glancing in the rear-view mirror. Two of the cars – and the motorbike – were behind.

At Inndalsveien I waited at a red light. The motorcyclist dutifully stopped, still two cars behind me, although there was more than enough room to pass.

I tried to gain some impression of the rider, but it was still too dark, and he was completely covered by a leather bodysuit and helmet with a black-tinted visor.

The driver behind me tooted irritably, and I shot off so fast at green that my car skidded on the slippery surface, although I quickly regained control. The motorcyclist had no problems.

We stuck to one another like Siamese twins all the way to Flesland Airport. The cars between us might change, but the distance between us always remained the same, two or three cars. But when I drove into the long-stay car park to dump the car off he had suddenly gone.

I parked the car and walked quickly to the terminal building, looking around all the while. It was as though I could still hear the faint vroom-vroom of the motorbike, but it must have been my imagination. I couldn’t see anything.

In the arrivals hall people hurried in all directions, intent upon their various business. I took the escalator up to departures on the first floor. Halfway up I had a perfect view of almost everything down on the ground floor, but I couldn’t see the black-clad motorcyclist anywhere.

Not long after I was on my way out to the plane. Two or three heads in front of me, I caught a glimpse of a tall lanky figure that seemed familiar. But it was only when he turned around at the top of the steps that I knew for certain it was him. Holger Skagestøl was on the same plane.

He found a seat, and I stopped beside him. ‘Mind if I sit here?’

He looked up and frowned. ‘Veum? What the hell? You’re not tailing me, I hope?’

‘Heavens no! I’m going to Stavanger on business.’

‘Well, in that case…’ But he stole a suspicious glance at me as I sat down as though he definitely didn’t feel quite at ease.

Most people feel a natural pang of anxiety when the doors close, you are asked to fasten your seatbelt, and the plane prepares for takeoff.

This time I felt only relief when the doors closed and I was sure that the man in the motorbike gear was not among the passengers; unless he had made a lightning change in the toilets, in which case he could be anyone. Including…

I looked at Holger Skagestøl.

No. I thought not.

Skagestøl’s facial muscles were just as tense as the last time I’d seen him. He was wearing a grey suit and had stowed a light-brown winter overcoat in the overhead luggage compartment.

‘On business?’ I asked cautiously.

He ran his hand over his forehead. ‘Yeah. Directors’ Conference of the National Newspaper Association.’

‘Several days?’

‘Till tomorrow. Of course, I could just have cancelled, given the circumstances, but in a way it might not be a bad idea to have something else to think about.’

‘Has a date been set for the funeral?’

‘No, the police… But it’ll probably be sometime next week. As soon as possible, I hope.’ As though to explain what he meant, he added: ‘I mean it won’t be over till then.’

The plane took off, and we sat there without speaking until it had stopped climbing and was on course, and the signal that we could unfasten our seat belts was flashing.

‘You will both be pleased the guilty party was arrested so quickly, of course.’

He shot a glance at me. ‘Yes, sure. He still hasn’t confessed.’

‘No, but they never do straight away. Only when they see the game’s up, then… And then you can’t stop them, as if there were some higher power they suddenly had to explain themselves to.’

‘There may well be too, for all we know.’

An air hostess came round with a carton of fruit juice and an open sandwich on a little polystyrene tray. ‘Would you like a paper?’ she asked with a smile.

I shook my head, but Holger Skagestøl said he would. ‘Both, please.’

After she had given them to him, he glanced quickly at the front pages, placed one of them in his lap and unfolded the other before opening it and leafing quickly through the first pages with a worried look. Halfway through, he suddenly put the paper aside, took the other one and went through the same procedure with it.

Looking sideways at me and turning so his whole body almost seemed as if it would keel over, he said: ‘For the first time in my life I understand what it feels like to be headline fodder, Veum.’

‘New experience, is it?’

‘Horrible! You see you’re just… I mean, even someone like me stuck right in the thick of it, whom you might think would have a bit of influence over what’s written, is impotent, no other word for it. Impotent: he repeated as though to make sure I’d understood.

I nodded.

‘Suddenly you understand that you’ve often gone too far yourself. You go through what others have complained to you about before, I mean, that no one listens to you, that your objections, your pleas for your private life to be protected… well, nobody listens, because you’ve suddenly become news.’ He grimaced as he said it.

Through a few openings here and there in the cloud cover beneath us, we caught a glimpse of a dark fjord and the windswept moorland in Sunnhordland. ‘Now I’m scared stiff when I go out every day to fetch the morning paper, my own paper, Veum. The Oslo papers are placed on my desk as soon as they’re delivered, and I have a knot in my stomach every single day from fear of what might be in them, what pictures they want to use. Just seeing your own daughter, a picture of your own daughter, serialised with its own logo at the top of the news pages! Jesus Christ!’

‘It’ll die down now that Hagavik’s been arrested. A case that’s been cleared up doesn’t have the same news value as an unsolved one.’

‘But he hasn’t confessed, Veum! That’s the devil of it! So long as there’s no confession, they’re free to speculate about everything imaginable, Satanism or worse.’

‘Worse?’

‘Yes!’ He lowered his voice and, after a pause, said: ‘We understand now, after the event, that Torild was mixed up in – all sorts. Drugs…’ He found it hard to get the word out: ‘P-prostitution!’ With a jerk of the head, like a bird catching an insect in flight, he added ‘But it was last autumn she went off the rails! After I lost control of her!’

‘Are you blaming your wife?’

‘I’m not blaming anybody! I’m just stating the facts… As recently as last Whitsuntide, when she was, she was – when we were down visiting her at a guide camp on Radøy…’

‘Yes, I heard about that. But your wife didn’t go.’

He looked at me in surprise. ‘What is it you’re referring to now?’

‘Your wife wasn’t with you when you two went to visit the girls. It was just you and Randi Furebø, had you forgotten?’

‘Forgotten?’ Again he ran his hand over his brow in that characteristic gesture of his. ‘No, but… so what?’

‘A few months later you and your wife separated.’

At last he seemed to get what I was driving at. ‘You mean there was supposedly a connection between, that… No, frankly, I hadn’t thought of that.’

He almost turned around in his seat, trying to convince me how wrong I was. ‘Listen, Veum. Firstly, Randi and Trond, Sidsel and I have been best friends for years, we’ve been on holidays together, we’ve shared dinners and breakfasts, been on school trips and goodness knows what else. Trond and I are mates; we share everything. If his car conks out, he borrows mine. If mine’s in for repairs, I can borrow his. But not our wives; we’ve always kept them to ourselves. Randi and I could have driven to the southern tip of Italy together, we could have slept in the car or in camping chalets together, but it would never even have occurred to me to go to bed with her!’

‘Really? She’s not that unattractive.’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about either! But she’s Trond’s wife, don’t you see? We’re mates!’

‘And your wife and Trond, do they have such high ideals too?’

‘Sidsel and Trond? If it’s that Whitsuntide trip you’re talking about, Sidsel was in poor shape, and anyway, she’s never been all that keen on driving, and Trond had gone hiking somewhere. I don’t remember exactly. Secondly, Veum, Sidsel and I split up after many years of wear and tear. There was no single event that triggered it off. It was just a gradual realisation, mainly on my part, that she and I had reached the end of the road, no mistake about it. We were way beyond the last warning sign, if you see what I mean. Proceed beyond this point at your own risk. From then on we were up the creek without a paddle. And thirdly, nothing of this has anything whatever to do with what happened to Torild!’

‘Apart from what you said yourself,’ I added, ‘that, because of this, of the new family situation, you no longer had any control over her.’

He threw up his hands. ‘And I stand by it. If I’d been at home, this wouldn’t have happened.’

I made no further comment on that particular point. To protect their own egos, everyone needed to come up with their own explanations. This was Holger Skagestøl’s version. His wife would have hers. My own experience told me that the truth lay somewhere in between.

I tried another tack. ‘So… Not that it’s any of my business actually, but who left whom?’

‘Exactly. Not that its any business of yours!’

After a few moments, he felt unable to leave it at that, all the same. He half turned towards me and demonstratively beat the left side of his breast. ‘A heart of stone, you see. There are far too many idiotic deserted men out there with visiting rights to their children once a week.’

‘Tell me about it!’

‘You won’t catch me in that brigade, Veum. I never look back. Never!’

‘“Never” is a strong word to use, Skagestøl. Too strong for most of us.’

He snorted, turned aside and looked out of the window.

The plane was making its approach to Stavanger’s Sola Airport now. As instructed, we fastened our seat belts, and the plane dipped down through the clouds. The sea lay beneath us, grey and surly, with the look of dishwater. The bathing beaches were deserted and slightly reminiscent of the bones of gigantic corpses picked clean.

Holger Skagestøl leafed idly through one of the papers, apparently irritated with himself for what he had said. We landed not long afterwards.

It might perhaps have been natural for us to share a taxi into town, since, despite everything, we had got to know one another a little. But neither of us made the necessary preliminaries, and eventually, he took a taxi in solitary splendour, while I took the airport bus into town.