The Writing on the Wall

Two

SHE WAS SITTING in the waiting room when I got back from the funeral.

It was one of those days in February of which there are far too many, even though it’s the shortest month. February is a parenthesis in the year. The tax return has been handed in, the tourist season hasn’t yet started, and there’s nothing going on. Damp frost lay oppressively over snow-clad Bergen, pressing down so heavily that you could only just walk upright under the force of the depression. Greyish-brown slush lay in the gutters, and the mountains surrounding the city were barely visible through a bank of fog so stubborn that it did not disperse even after gale warnings were forecast. Like the brass buttons on the waistcoat of an abandoned snowman, you could just make out the lights of the funicular railway running up the mountainside, and the street-lamps were lit even at midday.

The funeral hadn’t exactly been a floorshow either. No one had danced on the coffin of Lasse Wiik, even though, at some of the darkest hours in my life, I could have imagined myself doing just that. But rather too many years had passed since Beate and I had parted company for the death of her new husband to make any deep impression on me now. And he wasn’t all that new anyway. They’d been married since 1975, and she’d stuck it out a good deal longer with him than she had with me.

I stood right at the back of the queue of people offering their condolences after the burial. When I had given her a formal embrace and mumbled an apology, we stood there for a moment avoiding each other’s eyes. – At least it was quick, I said. – He’d been on sick leave for almost a year, she countered.

Her face was the same, yet perhaps a little more pointed around the chin than before, almost like a caricature. – What were you thinking of doing now? I asked. Her eyes glanced past me down towards the lake, Store Lungegårdsvann, and the jagged silhouette of the tower blocks at Nedre Nygård. The large motorway intersection, completed in 1989, looked like some kind of vast instrument inadvertently left behind by a giant dentist. – I’m not really sure, actually… maybe just go back home. – Home? You mean… to Stavanger? – Yes…

I sidled up to Thomas and Mari, standing on the edge of a group of people I didn’t know. – When are you two going back? I asked. – We’re catching the night train this evening. There’s a seminar I have to be at tomorrow, said Thomas. – Will the two of you have time to pop in for a minute before you leave? – His eyes flitted to his girlfriend. – That might be nice, actually. What are you going to do now? – I think there’s going to be a little get-together for the immediate family…

February is a miserable month, the light as feeble as the will to do anything. Lasse Wiik had certainly chosen the right port to put to sea from. Winter still lay like a film over the fjord. Spring was only a distant hint of a life he, as a heart patient, couldn’t fully participate in anyway. For a moment I almost envied him.

Then I’d formally taken leave of the mourners in their black clothes and strolled down to Møllendalsveien, where the car stood waiting for me, cold and chilly in keeping with the month. I drove into town, parked just around the corner from where I lived and walked down to the office. If I needed the car, it wouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to walk back up again, and given the way the traffic patterns had developed in town over the last few years, it was in any case the best place to start from if you were driving anywhere.

I bought a couple of newspapers and almost dropped them in shock at finding someone sitting in my waiting room. Most people contacted me by phone, and those who came when I was out of the office rarely chanced waiting. The only conclusion was that it was something urgent.

As I came in, she quickly put aside the glossy magazine from 1974 and stood up. Seeing the magazine made me think I should perhaps consider paying a visit to the nearest antique bookseller and taking the whole lot with me. It might at least pay for some magazines from the nineties instead.

‘Hello. The name’s Veum,’ I said, introducing myself. ‘Were you waiting for me?’

‘Well, I was hoping so. I mean, that you’d turn up.’ She looked at me enquiringly but with a certain remoteness in her eyes. ‘I’m Mrs Skagestøl.’

We shook hands, I opened the door to my office and ushered her inside. Her perfume smelled of lemons. She’d opted for a scent with an autumnal touch: a landscape you looked at from a distance in clear weather but never went walking in.

On entering my office she glanced quickly around. I motioned her towards the visitor’s chair, asking whether I should put the kettle on for a cup of coffee.

‘No thanks, that’s – not necessary.’

I walked around the desk, sat down, opened the top drawer and took out a notebook and something to write with. For a few seconds we sat there looking at each other like two political opponents in a face-to-face encounter on TV thirty seconds before going on air.

She was in her early forties, fair-haired and wearing a waist-length brown and beige sports jacket, newly washed faded jeans and black ankle boots. She had a russet-coloured bag over her shoulder. Her face was distinctive, with arched light eyebrows, high cheekbones and a mouth that had lost the easy smile it once had, judging by the lines around her eyes. She was wearing discreet make-up and a simple gold chain around her thin neck.

She plaited her fingers and stretched out her arms, palms towards me: a fairly clear sign that she had no real desire to begin.

I pushed the notepad aside as though to give her a bit more confidence. ‘I didn’t catch… your first name…’

‘Sidsel. With a “d”.’

‘And what can I do for you?’

Again her eyes had that hint of remoteness as she looked at me. ‘I… I never thought I’d find myself in a situation where I’d need to resort to the services of, er – somebody like yourself.’

‘Let’s call a spade a spade – you mean a private investigator.’ I placed my hand on the left side of my chest and leaned back with a little smile. ‘But in my heart of hearts I’m a sociologist.’

‘Really? Is that your background?’

I nodded.

‘I haven’t told my husband that I… In any case… we’re separated.’

‘I see.’

‘I don’t really think he would… Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Holger Skagestøl.’

‘The journalist?’

‘Yes, now he’s – on the editorial board.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes, I do know the name and who he is, but I don’t think I’ve ever met him.’

‘No, well…’ She opened her handbag and fumbled for something before glancing round enquiringly. ‘May I smoke?’

I opened the second drawer down and took out a little pottery ashtray Thomas had once made at school. ‘Of course.’

‘You don’t smoke yourself, then?’

‘No, I stick to the other vices.’

She gave a faint smile, put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it herself. ‘I don’t smoke much either. But…’

‘It wasn’t to tell me this that you came, though, was it?’

She glanced at me surprised. ‘No.’

Reassuringly, I nodded at her to continue.

‘We have three children. Torild’s sixteen, Vibeke fifteen and Stian’s ten.’

‘Mm. Is it about one of them perhaps?’

‘Yes. Torild. That’s with a “d”.’

‘A family tradition?’

She didn’t even attempt a smile. ‘Yes, you could say so.’

‘And what’s happened to her?’

She dragged nervously on her cigarette and exhaled as though intent on fumigating the room. ‘She’s disappeared. Hasn’t been home for – nearly a week!’

‘Oh?’

The fact that the cat was finally out of the bag also seemed to have loosened her tongue. ‘I couldn’t help noticing after we, well, after the separation, that she hasn’t been, well, content, so to speak, but it’s never, no, she has sometimes been a bit late home, but I’ve never waited up for her, till she came home, but last Thursday, I never went to bed at all, because she didn’t come home!’

‘Oh? Where was she?’

‘Well, you see I thought that, but she hadn’t been to school either, it turned out that she’d often been absent lately, without my knowledge. I… Obviously, I thought she was at a friend’s house, so I rang round, but she wasn’t at any of those places either, not at any of them, so I thought, well, she’ll come home when she’s hungry, then it was evening, then night, and she just didn’t come.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Well, that Friday she wasn’t supposed to be at school, in any case. It was an inset day. Then I called Holger.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Well, obviously he started to ask me the same questions, whether I’d called this person or that, and why I hadn’t let him know that she’d been in a bit of a strop, and that she might have a boyfriend…’

‘And might she?’

‘Have a boyfriend?’ She looked as though she scarcely knew what the word meant. ‘Not a steady boyfriend. Not that I know of. But now I see that, well, then there are the others to look after as well, and it’s not so easy, with all that happened with Holger and everything, it wasn’t my fault that things went wrong!’

‘No, I realise that.’

‘Oh, how do you mean?’

‘Well, I… But there is no boyfriend, is there?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Have you asked her girlfriends about it too? They often know more than-’

‘None of them has said anything at least!’

‘Has she ever had anything to do with… Well… Drugs, alcohol, the police?’

‘No, she…’ She glanced away momentarily. ‘Well, of course, actually, there have been times when she’s come home smelling of beer and it’s a long time since she started to smoke.’ She looked at her own cigarette with distaste; there was already only about half of it left.

‘But I really can’t say that she’s ever been, well, drunk…’

‘It doesn’t sound all that unusual, alas. She’s sixteen, you said?’

‘Yes, her birthday was in January.’

‘So she’s in Class 9?’

‘Yes. At Nattland School. We live in Furudalen, this side of Natland Mountain.’

‘I see.’ I had started taking notes.

She watched me write. ‘The form teacher’s name is Sandal. Helene Sandal.’

‘Got it. Any particularly close girlfriends?’

‘Well… Åsa.’

‘Mm?’

She glanced at my notebook. ‘Åsa Furebø. She and… her parents, they were friends of ours – of Holger and mine before… But it was Holger and Trond who were friends to begin with, so after… But I’ve met Randi in town, for a coffee, we talk to one another, she and I do, I mean.’

‘And where do they live?’

‘Down in… Birkelundsbakken. Not far from where the stave church was, before it was burnt down…’

‘But you’ve talked to her, have you? To Åsa?’

‘She was the first person I called.’

‘And she didn’t know anything either?’

‘No, she wasn’t at their place.’

‘But… Thursday, Friday… That’s nearly a week now.’

‘Yes, I… At first I thought, well, the weekend, she’ll surely come at the weekend, but then I thought, OK, school starts again on Monday, but…’

‘Look, to be frank, a girl who’s never been away like this before – or has she?’

‘Torild? Been away? No, not like this.’

‘Not – like this?’

‘No, she’s just come back late sometimes.’

‘How late?’

‘In the morning, but that’s been from parties and I, well, she was grounded the first time but the next time, I mean, you can’t lock young people in either, can you?’

‘No, I don’t suppose you can. Where had she been those times? Did the two of you talk about it?’

‘No, I mean, yes, at discos and things, in town, and now and then at parties.’

‘Recently – or before?’

‘Er… Over the last year, in any case.’

‘When she was still fifteen, in other words?’

‘Yes!’ There was a hint of irritation in her eyes now. ‘You see, Holger wasn’t often home till past midnight, that is, after he became responsible at work, as he so nicely put it, but who he was responsible for, search me, and in any case, I had the other two to think about, Vibeke’s a completely different sort, much more homely in a way, and Stian, well, he’s still little, and you just want to do the best you can for your children, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course we do.’

‘Do you – have…?’

‘Yes, a son. But he’s grown up now.’

‘And is he making out all right?’

‘Yes. He’s a student in Oslo.’

‘Do you think you might be able to find her?’

‘Er, I… But there’s one thing I must ask you about… You have been in contact with the police, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, we… I mean… I got, Holger called from the office, every day, to find out whether anything had happened, you know, the way people do.’

‘Yes, I understand, but – no proper investigation, then?’

‘No, in the circumstances, Holger thought she was bound to turn up.’

‘So you haven’t talked to them?’

‘To the police? – No.’

‘But if your husband didn’t want the police involved, how do you think he would react if I…’

‘But you don’t need to talk to him, do you?’

‘Perhaps not to begin with, but… I can’t guarantee it.’

‘Just so long as you find her… Between Holger and me things are – well, whatever. It’s not important.’

‘I’ll do my best, of course. After all, I do have a fair amount of training, especially in matters of this sort.’

She opened her handbag again. ‘How much will it…’

‘The bill? Er… Look, you haven’t said anything about yourself. Do you have a job?’

‘No, not any more. But I’m a kindergarten teacher by training, so I mean, I should know, shouldn’t!?’

‘About children, you mean?’

‘Mm.’ She nodded.

‘But you never do, do you? Children are like adults, just even less predictable, that’s all.’

She took out a chequebook. ‘How much shall I put?’

‘If it takes a few days, it’ll soon mount up to five or six thousand kroner.’

I noticed her eyes widen ever so slightly. ‘But look… Just put two thousand, as an advance. If we’re lucky, that may cover it.’

She started writing out the cheque, tore it off and pushed it across the table to me, accompanied by a cheque card. I looked at the photo. Her hair had been longer then, and her cheekbones not quite so pronounced. But I made no comment.

I gave the card back to her. ‘You don’t have a photo of her, do you?’

‘Yes, of course, I brought…’ She produced a page torn out of a newspaper and gave it to me with a slightly apologetic look. ‘It was Stian who sent it in.’

I looked at the page. It was one of those congratulations columns which most newspapers have had for the past few years now, where you send in a photo of the person to whom you want to wish many happy returns, often with couplets that would make even the humblest occasional poet seem like a literary genius.

In this case the text was fairly sober: Many Happy Returns on her Sixteenth Birthday to our big sister TORILD, from the little trolls Vibeke and Stian. The photo showed a stern-faced girl looking straight at the camera in a photo booth.

‘This is the most recent one we have,’ said Sidsel Skagestøl apologetically.

‘What colour is her hair?’

‘Fair. But darker than mine.’

‘And what’s she like, otherwise?’

‘She’s rather slim, but…’ She blushed slightly, ‘but quite shapely.’

After she’d gone, I remained sitting there for a while, looking at the little picture in the newspaper. There was no hint of shapely curves here, yet her look was confident enough, as if nobody was going to tell her how the pyramids were built, who Vasco da Gama was or the formula for ferrous sulphate.

I glanced out of the window. It was already getting dark. It struck me that February was a dangerous month to be wandering about alone, especially when you were barely sixteen and nobody was going to tell you what to do.

Just as I was on my way out of the door the telephone rang.

I went back to my desk, lifted the receiver and said: ‘Yes. Hello?’

There was no reply.

‘Hello? Veum speaking.’

Still no answer. But very faintly, almost like background interference, I could just make out… What was it? A sort of digital organ music?

‘Hello?’ I said again irritably.

And the tune… There was something familiar about it…

It was… ‘Abide With Me’… Like at a funeral.

‘Hello?’ I said, a bit more cautiously this time as though the call was coming direct from the chapel. ‘Is anyone there?’

But there was still no reply. Then the connection was cut off.