A group of four people sit down at the next table. They are Americans and enthuse loudly over the view.
The two of them exchange glances. ‘Everyone can hear where they’re from,’ she says.
He grins. ‘Is it the same with me?’
Turid shakes her head, raises a hand to take a lock of hair from her eyes. The sleeve of her blouse opens and reveals the bracelet she is wearing.
Gerhard grips her hand and looks at the jewellery.
‘What is it?’
He lets go of her hand. ‘Your bracelet,’ he says. ‘I haven’t seen it for a long time.’
‘One of the few things I have of hers,’ Turid says. ‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘Was it a present from you? I’ve always thought you must’ve given it to her.’
She takes off the bracelet and shows him the engravings. He sits there for a long time, eyes downcast.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It was a present.’ He looks up. His eyes are moist.
‘Dear me,’ she says, drying a tear in her own eye. ‘Sorry, but I’m so sentimental. I cry at the least thing.’
Gerhard composes himself and says he is happy she has taken care of this keepsake.
She squeezes his hand and says she is happy he is here, with her. She has done a lot of thinking and imagining.
He says he has something to tell her. ‘First things first, though,’ he says, and asks her whether she showed the bracelet to Ester.
Turid nods.
He asks what Ester said.
Turid frees her hand and points a finger at the engraved symbols and says Ester asked if she knew what they meant.
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said I had no idea. I’d always thought of them as decoration, nothing symbolic.’
‘What did she say to that?’
Turid laughs. ‘You and Ester are so similar. You’re obsessed by the same things.’
They exchange glances. ‘She said nothing,’ Turid says. ‘She said she thought the bracelet was lovely. And of course it is.’ Turid smiles again. But she is serious when she sees his expression. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asks, slightly unsettled.
‘Moments like these are the most difficult,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have to say goodbye.’ Then, when he sees the sparkle in her eyes go out, he quickly adds, ‘For this time.’ He places his hand over hers and squeezes it. ‘I have to go to town before the bank closes.’
‘What do you mean by goodbye?’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow. But we should stay in touch and I’ll invite you over. The main thing is that we’ve met. You’re the most important thing that’s happened to me.’
They sit gazing into each other’s eyes.
‘I’ll go to the plane with you.’
He shakes his head.
‘I insist,’ she says.
‘I’m leaving very early,’ he says. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘I’ll drive you,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter how early it is.’
He makes an effort not to show his annoyance. Snatches a look at his watch and says: ‘Don’t think about it now.’
He raises a hand to attract the passing waiter’s attention and asks for the bill.
That is when Turid pushes the bracelet across the table. ‘Take it. Please.’
He looks at her in amazement.
‘This bracelet will be my guarantee,’ she says. ‘As long as you have this, I know you’ll come back.’
Oslo, November 1967
1
Gerhard opens the car door and gets out. Night has fallen over Oslo. It was evening the last time he left this city and then it was hidden under cover of darkness and mystery. Now it twinkles and shines with the thousands of lights in the Oslo basin and up Mt Ekeberg. He stands in contemplation like this for a long time, then turns to walk the few metres back to and around the car. There is a click as he opens the boot. The lid creaks. But it stays open when he lets go. He lifts out a small, red metal container. Closes the boot and takes the container.
The windows in the house are dark and have been for some time. Gerhard puts the key in the lock. It won’t turn. Gerhard smiles. Number Thirteen is observant. The lock has been changed. So Gerhard switches to plan B. He tosses the key onto the grass, slowly ambles round the house and into the garden. The street lamp casts a matt sheen over the lawn. His silhouette flits towards the house wall, merges into the shadow from the eaves. He draws the bayonet from the sling under his arm and inserts the blue steel blade in the crack between the frame and the veranda door. He leans on it with all his weight. A little click is all that he hears as the lock comes away. The door slides open. He goes in.
Inside, he listens. But Sverre can’t have heard anything because the house is as still as before. Gerhard closes the door. He removes his shoes. On stockinged feet he walks through the sitting room and into the hallway. He puts the container down. He pulls out the telephone cable.
He tiptoes soundlessly upstairs.
The ceiling light in the corridor is lit. He carries on. The door to Sverre’s room is ajar. He pushes it open. A sweet smell of sleep and stale air hits him. He notices that Sverre doesn’t have the nerve to leave the window open at night.
The room is in darkness, only a faint stripe of light steals in across the duvet and the man asleep in the bed. Sverre Fenstad smacks his lips in his sleep. Gerhard tiptoes into the room. He crouches down by the bed. On his haunches he sits staring at the sleeping man. Sverre’s breathing is rhythmical and calm.
Finally Gerhard gets up and slips out of the bedroom. Continues down the stairs as quietly as before.
He fetches his shoes and puts them on. Then he takes the red container. Opens the cellar door without making a sound. Goes down the steps and in through the door to the hobby room with the stuffed animals. He switches on the light. Opens the container and splashes the contents over the walls, on the carpet, on the stuffed animals.
He puts the empty can down on the floor.
To make a fire there are three prerequisites. The first is combustible material. The second is air. Gerhard opens all three windows in the cellar.
The third condition is a source of fire. He goes halfway up the stairs, flicks the silver lighter and throws it to the floor. The result is explosive. The blast wave bursts through the door and Gerhard has to sprint up the remaining steps so as not to catch fire himself. He leaves the cellar door open, runs into the sitting room and out through the veranda door. As soon as he opens it he hears the draught give the flames on the cellar stairs a surge of energy.
Outside the house, he stands watching. There is a red glow behind the windows. The curtains flutter through the open veranda door. As the smoke belches out, black and impenetrable, followed by fiery-red destruction, he turns and goes back to the car.
2
This evening Ester lies in bed unable to sleep. Because of a fly. As sleep steals upon her, so does the fly. It settles on her forehead. One touch of light fly-feet and she is awake in an instant. A fly in her flat in November? It must have crept into her hair when she visited the pathologist. She imagines the fly sitting quietly in her hair the whole long way home, then it extricated itself when she went to bed, and now it will torment the life out of her. She feels her eyelids going again. Then the light pressure of the fly’s feet as it lands on the tip of her nose. This is no good.
She gets out of bed, goes to the kitchen and takes the fly swat from a drawer. Goes back to the bedroom. She leaves the bedside table lamp on. Hides under the duvet with her hand gripped tightly around the handle of the fly swat. Waits. Keeps an eye on the light and waits for the fly to land on the lampshade so that she can kill it. But she doesn’t see it land on the shade. Nor she does feel her eyes closing. She only feels that something is different – even if it is an old dream. It is a reunion. An old nightmare that has sneaked out of an archive deep in the brain. Now it is back. Yet Ester is at her ease. She knows this dream, knows wh
at will happen when she crawls into the train carriage, knows she is asleep. She is equally calm when she hears running footsteps on the stairs. She knows the train doors will close before he reaches the bottom of the stairs, and she is right. The doors close. She sinks to the floor of the carriage and knows he won’t be able to get in. The man prowling around outside, the man banging on the window. That is when she feels there is something different, but she can’t see what it is. She is sitting with her back to the wall, hoping. That is when the glass smashes. It shatters with a piercing sound as his hand bursts through and opens the door. He comes in. He grows into a giant figure towering over her, and now there is only one escape possible. And that is to wake up.
She looks at the lamp on the bedside table, her heart pounding. He had smashed the glass. This warning sent a feeling of terror through her that she had not experienced for many years. She tells herself the war is over. Everything finished a long time ago. You are at home in your own flat. You haven’t been on active service for several years.
But there is something else.
There is a sound. The telephone. She looks at her watch. Sits up.
She swings her legs onto the floor and goes into the hallway.
‘Gerhard here.’
Ester places a hand on the wall. Leans against it. ‘I thought you’d left,’ she says. ‘They said you’d checked out.’
‘There are a few hours left before the plane goes.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to see you before I leave.’
‘Then you can come here.’
‘Let’s meet in town.’
She is silent.
‘I have regrets, Ester.’
‘What regrets?’
‘That I allowed myself to be tempted. That I couldn’t stop myself.’
‘What couldn’t you stop yourself doing?’
‘You told me your flat was empty. Do you remember? Your father had been arrested, your mother wasn’t there and you came to ours. I left you and Åse for Eckersbergs gate 10 that day. I broke in.’
Ester breathes through her mouth. The voice in her ear. This is like a radio play.
‘When Åse talked about you, she always said how rich you were. She said your father kept diamonds and other gemstones in a desk drawer.’
‘You took much more,’ she says.
He doesn’t protest.
‘Money. My father’s savings.’
He is quiet.
‘You took my mother’s jewellery.’
Still silence.
‘It was you who tipped off the Norwegian Sipo about the handover of the London News at Valkyrie plass,’ she says. ‘You weren’t content with robbing me. You also wanted me arrested.’
The voice that answers now is unaltered, as unaffected as before. ‘I was pretty surprised when you showed up at the camp in Sweden – you of all people. I had quite a shock when I saw you.’
‘You hid the loot. You hid it in other people’s graves,’ Ester says.
Silence.
‘You took a bit of a gamble. Old graves are destroyed.’
‘Not all of them,’ he says. ‘But then I didn’t plan to be away for half a lifetime. The rest took care of that. But you’re right. I was nervous. One grave has in fact gone.’
‘You come back after all these years, sneak out at night and collect the stolen goods to deposit them in bank boxes. What is it you actually regret?’
‘I want you to have it back.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true. That’s why I’m calling.’
‘Why do you want to give it back?’
‘For a long time I thought it didn’t matter. I thought that you and your family wouldn’t be allowed to keep anything anyway. The Germans would take everything. I took the things only because it was better they went to someone who needed them.’
Ester is speechless.
‘But it wasn’t right of me.’
‘Why have you changed your mind?’
‘We can’t plan our lives. You know that as well as I do. But something good has happened to me for once. Something I said goodbye to many years ago. I have my daughter back. For me this is a new chance, an opportunity to start again, and I want to grasp it with both hands. I know I can’t recompense you for what I did to you, but I’d like to do what I can.’
Ester falls quiet again.
‘Alvilde Munthe,’ he says.
She is still silent.
‘Meet me at Alvilde Munthe’s grave, now.’
‘We can meet tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow I won’t be here. My plane leaves at the crack of dawn.’
‘What do you think your daughter will say when she finds out you killed her mother?’
Silence again.
‘You let yourself in. You saw Erik and Åse in bed together. You went back out and waited until he’d gone. Then you went back. I’ve spoken to the pathologist who found the bracelet. He says you took your time. She put up quite a struggle and you had plenty of opportunities to let her live, long before she stopped breathing.’
‘I’ll wait for you there. By Alvilde Munthe’s grave. We can talk about this then.’
3
The wisest move would be to say no, she tells herself, to allow common sense to prevail. But the Ester who is getting ready to go outdoors is a practical thinker. She has to be able to move. So she chooses stretch pants and a jumper, trainers for her feet. Ties the laces. Double knots. Can’t take the risk of them coming undone. Thinks about his story of an early plane – it is probably a fabrication. On the other hand, is she willing to take the risk? Her stomach is knotted. She had thought she would never go there again. Never feel the knot, never avoid eye contact with her own reflection. And all of a sudden you are there again. Even though you don’t want to be. Not under any circumstances. But there you are, and there is little you can do about it now. This is how the world is. You can hide, you can move to an island, build a hut and wander on a beach for years, lonely. But when the past comes calling you are the same person.
She automatically goes into the closet behind the bedroom. Searches out the brown bag. Goes into the kitchen. Here she opens it. Inside there is a bandolier and a holster. She takes the revolver from her handbag. She ejects the cylinder; it rotates easily and soundlessly. She clicks it back into place. She straps on the holster. Stands in front of the mirror. Puts the revolver in the holster under her arm and tries on various jackets in front of the mirror.
There is a bulge every time. In the end she takes off the holster. She puts on a trench coat and slips the revolver into a pocket. It is half past two in the morning.
She stops on the way out of the door.
Turns and goes back, into the kitchen. Searches through the drawers. Finds what she is after in one of them. A candle and a box of matches. When she closes the front door twenty minutes have passed since Gerhard rang off.
His car is parked in Frimanns gate.
Early flight, yes, very likely. Ester drives past the car and parks a few blocks away. She imagines he is watching. He has seen the car lights and her car. He is waiting and has the advantage over her.
She gets out of the car and walks slowly along the fence to the cemetery. Stops. It is almost inaudible, the movement inside the fence. He is good.
She takes three steps. Stops.
The footsteps inside stop too.
The branches of the spruce hedge inside the fence move almost imperceptibly and are still.
The house walls along Ullevålsveien are dark. Only the street lamps with their round domes form an illuminated string of pearls over the pavement.
She walks on. Glimpses her own shadow on the pavement. Casts a glance over her shoulder. A car is driving towards her at a snail’s pace. It turns out to be a police patrol car. It stops. Ester stops too. The window of the VW beetle is lowered. She can’t see the officer inside, but she can hear his voice. ‘Everything alright?’
She nods. �
��Yes, everything’s fine. I’ve been to a party and want to walk home. I ate too much.’ She ventures a smile, but doubts he can see it.
The window glides back up. The car carries on. She watches it. As the car approaches the crossroads by Akerbakken, it puts on a blue light and accelerates. Then it is gone.
She peers into the dark cemetery. She can’t see him, but she knows he can see her. He is watching and waiting, she guesses, like a lion deep in its cave. She turns her back on the cemetery and crosses the street, undoing the lowest two buttons of her coat as she walks. As soon as she is hidden behind a house she breaks into a run, into Nordahl Bruns gate, bears left, out of sight from the man in the cemetery. Finding her rhythm and breathing evenly, she jogs gently but quickly round the block and runs back, up Akersveien and past the main entrance to the cemetery. Swings her legs over the wire fence and shelters behind a big tree. Not stirring until she has her breath back. Not a sound comes from the cemetery. A window closes somewhere behind and above her, and Gerhard must be annoyed now, at having missed her, she thinks. Either he will give up and leave or he will wait at the agreed spot – by Alvilde Munthe’s grave.
The sound of a car engine grows in volume. She sees the cones of light moving along the hedge and disappearing.
4
She moves from tree to tree alongside the fence. Her footsteps are soundless on the grass. Between the shadows a mist lingers, brushing the gravestones as though it owns them and wants to demonstrate this, she thinks. And again she presses forwards, slowly moving to the centre, away from Alvilde Munthe’s grave. She has targeted the rock behind the high buttress wall. She counts her footsteps and stops now and then to listen. If she doesn’t hear anything she goes on to the next tree towering against the black-and-grey sky. A shadow resembling a man emerges from the mist. She stops again. Doesn’t move a muscle. The shadow is static. She steps two paces closer. It isn’t a man. It is a bust on a plinth. She walks past the statue. Stops and looks back. The statue is no longer visible. She carries on, more slowly now. Gropes her way forwards in the darkness between the graves. There are sudden patches of light over the grass. She looks up. Dark clouds are drifting across the sky. Revealing the moon for brief instants. The blaze of light allows her to determine her direction. She slips a hand into her pocket. Her fingers find the handle of the revolver. She takes it out of her pocket. Releases the safety catch. Holds the gun in her right hand and lets it hang downwards. As soon as the darkness is impenetrable again she heads for the rock. She finds the path leading to the top. Now she doesn’t care if her shoes crunch on the gravel. Every time the moon shows itself and casts light over the ground she stands still. Then she is finally at the top. She takes out the candle she brought. Puts a finger in her mouth, lifts it in the air to determine the wind direction, but there isn’t a breath. Props the candle up with the help of two stones. Crouches and lights a match, looks away so as not to be blinded by the flash of light. The wick catches and she backs into a tree trunk. Watches the little flame taking hold as it is fed by the wax. Now to wait.
The Courier Page 32
