The Writing on the Wall

Fifty-two

THE TWO WOMEN walked towards the stairs leading down to the ground floor. Randi Furebø attempted to put her arm round her daughter’s shoulder, but Åsa shook her off with an irritable sideways glance as though it was all her mother’s fault.

Trond Furebø’s eyes lingered on them, and he did not look back at me until he heard the door downstairs close behind them.

The look he gave me was strangely distant, as if he stood at the end of a long dark corridor and could only just make me out at the other end.

When at last he spoke, it was so softly that I had to lean forward to catch everything, yet there was no doubting the intensity of his voice. ‘Oh my God, Veum, what a high price a man has to pay!’

‘For what?’ I said calmly.

‘For this whole accursed life! For trying to elbow a bit of breathing space in his life, to have butter on his bread for once.’

‘Has it been that hard for you?’

‘Hard? You don’t have the faintest bloody clue! But sit in judgement over others, you can do that all right!’

I shook my head slowly. ‘I’ve never – at least, hardly ever – sat in judgement over anyone. I can even accept prostitution as a phenomenon, provided they’re responsible grown-up girls. But I have no time at all for the pimps who make a packet out of – ha ha! – “protecting” them, and I’ve just as little time for people who buy young girls barely over the minimum age of consent and get them to do unspeakable things with them!’

‘I didn’t get them to – all I bought was pure clean sex, to make up for what I no longer got even the faintest whiff of here at home!’

‘Pure clean sex, as you call it. Can’t buy me love, is that it?’

‘Love!’ he said with contempt. ‘It’s something young girls read about in their magazines, see at the cinema or hear about on records. The reality’s quite different.’

‘The reality is your best friend’s father who pays to go to bed with you – is that how it’s supposed to be, according to you?’

He looked away. ‘You’ve misunderstood me there, Veum!’

‘Have I? Let’s get down to brass tacks, then, shall we? It was at the Pastel Hotel, wasn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘I – didn’t have much time, two hours at the most, but I’d reserved a room as I…’

‘Usually did?’

‘Not as I usually did! But like a few times before. She… Reception rang to say she was on her way up. When there was a knock at the door… it was just as much of a shock for both of us, but obviously, in a small city like this, it’s not all that unlikely that one day you’ll run into somebody you know in this game, is it? I mean do you know who’s behind all the contact notices you see in the papers? Eh?’

‘Yes, and then what happened?’

‘She… To begin with she wanted to go, but I pulled her in, closed the door and held her close… “Uncle!” she said… That’s what she’d called me from when she was little… I said: Forget who it is, just do what you usually do, and I’ll give you a bonus, you can have – anything you like!’

He scrutinised my face as though looking for some understanding. ‘You must realise, it was such a strange… It was as if…’ He glanced in the direction of the stairs leading down.

I helped him along: ‘As though it was your own daughter you…’

‘Yes! She said: “Let me go!” But I said: Do you want me to tell your mother and father? She stood there like a statue as I undressed her. I laid her down on the bed, threw off my own clothes, forced her to touch me, as I kissed and caressed her, before I…’ He pursed his lips. ‘… had intercourse. She…’

‘Yes?’

‘She lay there, weeping under me; it was – horrible.’

‘The two of you were… Somebody told me once that the Skagestøl family and the Furebøs were so close that it was as if you were father to their children and – vice versa. Seen in this light…’

‘Yes! That was just it. I admit it – it was an incredible turn-on. But it made me feel the sort of self-loathing I’ve never experienced before.’

‘And then…’

‘Then…’ The words were harder to get out now. ‘She just wept and wept, and it was as if, as if I needed to hide, to blot her face out…’

‘And this is what you did by…’

‘I grabbed a pillow, covered her face and – pressed… She resisted, but I thought: she’s going to blow the whistle, she’s going to tell somebody or other, Ma, Randi, Holger… I… So I pressed harder and harder until eventually she lay still… Do you understand?’

I felt a sharp pain in my chest, a sort of muscle spasm. ‘I understand what you’re saying, but I… Yes, psychologically, I can even understand why you did what you did… But to understand, to really understand it, Furebø, entails so much… You can’t expect me to. What you need for that is a priest, not a private investigator.’

He made an effort to pull himself together, sat up straight and looked around him as though relieved it was over with.

‘And afterwards… what did you do?’

He looked up at me surprised, as if he thought it was a silly question. ‘I rang down to the bar, explained the situation to Robert, told him there’d been – an accident and that obviously I was willing to pay any extra expenses the hotel might incur… He said there was absolutely no need, it was one of the drawbacks of that business… then I heard nothing more about it until I, well… You know the rest.’

‘And you’ve not heard from them since?’

He shook his head firmly. ‘Not a word…’ He looked shifty. ‘But I… I must confess I didn’t expect to get off scot-free there either. There’s a price to be paid for everything,’ he said with a cynical little smile as though, in spite of everything, it had actually been worth it.

I stood up. ‘Well… I suppose you’d better stay here till the police come,’ I looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You’ll find out what the punishment will be in due course.’

‘Punishment?’

‘The first thing they’ll do is take a blood sample.’

He paled. ‘What do you mean? A blood sample?’

‘Well…’ I didn’t elaborate. ‘Perhaps you ought to tell Åsa and your wife first?’

‘Tell them what, for God’s sake?’

‘Everything. As much as you can.’

He gave me a strained look. ‘You can… Can you ask them to come up…’

I nodded. Before leaving I took one last look at him. He filled up his glass with beer and sat down in the chair in front of the TV where the football match had long been in progress. But he didn’t turn up the sound, and it didn’t look as though he was all that interested in the result now. In any event, it would be a long time before he would enjoy any win on the pools.

I went downstairs and knocked on the door of the room where Åsa and her mother were sitting, Åsa on the sofa and her mother on one of the chairs, both looking dejected and not exchanging a word. From the radio a Saturday voice was discussing a book they would never read and were scarcely interested in anyway.

‘He’d like to talk to you now,’ I said, and they rose mechanically as though it was an appointment with a gynaecologist.

As she passed me, Åsa snapped: ‘It was all Sigrun’s fault!’

I stared at her. ‘Sigrun Søvik? The Guides leader? How do you mean? Because she – surprised the two of you?’

‘Did you know about it?’

Yes, she told me she caught the two of you in… Well…’ ‘Caught us! We weren’t doing anything wrong! We’re not like that, we just wanted, we were just examining one another, feeling what it was like when somebody else, where it felt good if somebody… Did she tell you everything? What happened afterwards as well?’

‘Afterwards? She said she reprimanded you and placed you each in separate tents.’

‘And was that it?’

‘Was there more?’

‘Oh yes! She told us straight that either she’d tell our parents or… Well, she’d have to punish us, she said, with a disgusting grin!’

I felt that strange stabbing sensation in my chest again. ‘And then…’

‘We had to go to her tent, first Torild and then me, and do the same to her as we’d done with – while she – as a punishment, right?’

Randi Furebø opened and closed her mouth like a fish. ‘What on earth, Åsa!’ She looked at me. ‘Can you credit that this sort of thing goes on!’

I kneaded the recalcitrant heart muscle with my knuckles. ‘So was this how you two learned to barter your bodies?’

She looked at me defiantly but said no more.

Randi Furebø tugged gently at her daughter’s blouse. ‘Åsa… I think we’d better…’ She glanced upstairs.

With a last look at Åsa I mumbled: ‘I’ll show myself out.’

Neither of them accompanied me to the door but stood watching me as if to make sure I really left and had no more surprises up my sleeve.

Once outside the door I ran straight into Helleve and Muus. Muus looked at me like thunder: as though about to yell Veeeeeeum! But when he remembered what day it was he thought better of it, raising his eyebrows and saying quite calmly: ‘Veum?’

And as calmly as I could manage, I said: ‘He’s confessed everything. As I’m sure he will to you too.’

They stood there looking at the house. ‘Furebø?’

I nodded. ‘Furebø.’ Then I turned to Helleve: ‘You couldn’t just move your car a bit, could you, so I can get out?’

At the top of Birkelundsbakken, Bergensdalen broadened out to its full width. It was the season for spring-cleaning. The city needed a clean in a caustic bath of white spring light. But the trouble with spring is that it throws open all the windows inside you, including those you’d rather leave shut forever.

Down in Mannsverk some young girls stood waiting for the bus in close, intimate little groups. I couldn’t help thinking: What were they up to? Where were they going? To a boyfriend in the same class, to their best friend’s father or to an old bloke in women’s underwear crawling about on all fours and asking them to -?

But life is like spring. It comes and goes. And suddenly it’s autumn, and you’re going to die. Did they give it a single thought as they stood there laughing? Did they?

One of them looked at my car and pointed. Another gave me two fingers, while a third stood with her hands in her jacket pockets and looked at me thoughtfully as I drove past as slowly as if I was on the way to somebody’s funeral, as slowly as if somebody or other had just died.

In Fløenbakken I turned down left. It wasn’t autumn. Not yet.