Wolves at the Door

by Gunnar Staalesen

  Wolves at the Door

  GUNNAR STAALESEN

  Translated by Don Bartlett

  ‘For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.’

  (Revelations 22:15)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Copyright

  1

  I heard the car before I saw it.

  I had been on a little job for a married couple who lived in one of the new residential areas at the rear of Lagunen Shopping Centre. They had asked me to park discreetly when I visited them, and I was on my way back down to my Toyota when I heard a snarling engine just behind me.

  I had enough time to turn around. The vehicle was coming straight at me with no indication that it was going to veer away. For a second or two I was paralysed. Then I reacted instinctively and hurled myself to the side. The car was so close to me that I felt a rush of air as it passed.

  I fell into a pile of snow the JCB ploughs had left during the Yuletide break. Now it was the first Sunday in January and the weather was as cold as it had been since Christmas.

  What the…? I said to myself.

  My heart pounding, more shocked than frightened, I sat up in the snow and stared at the tail lights of the car racing down at the same breakneck speed. It was much too far away for me to read the registration plate, but in the evening gloom the car looked grey, and if I wasn’t much mistaken it was last year’s model of the VW Golf. I watched the tail lights go past the shopping centre and out to Fanavegen, where it took a right into Bergen and disappeared behind the hills there.

  I struggled to my feet and stepped onto the road. I looked up to make sure there were no more cars hurtling down at me and to see whether anyone was out walking who could confirm what had happened. But there was no one in the area between Lagunen and the petrol station before Fanavegen.

  Hadn’t the driver seen me or had he seen me all too well; in other words, had he intentionally tried to mow me down? Could it have anything to do with the case I had just solved? Hardly. It was so insignificant that the only people who might react to it would be the tax authorities, because my fee was so modest that there was virtually nothing left for them, even including VAT.

  On the way to my Corolla it struck me there might be another link and this worried me. I became even more worried than I had been when I first noticed the two deaths: one in October, the other two months later.

  I had made only a mental note of the first. After the second, I had a suspicion there was something fishy going on. In both obituaries the surviving families had used the words ‘died suddenly and unexpectedly’ and this is what set me thinking. ‘Suddenly and unexpectedly’ as in … murdered?

  But there had been no mention of it in the newspapers I had seen. I hadn’t met either of the two men, but their names – Per Haugen and Mikael Midtbø – had been seared into my memory.

  Soon it would be a year and a half since we had, for a few dramatic autumn months, shared a similar fate: all three of us had been accused of the same crime. This was a period of my life I had consciously tried to repress. Now it all came flooding back.

  When I reached my car, I unlocked the door, got behind the wheel and rewound the previous sixteen months, to the morning when I was woken by the police for what in the course of a few days would develop into the worst nightmare I had ever experienced, and I had been wide awake.

  2

  It had been an experience I would not have wished on my worst enemy.

  I was taken to the police station and charged with being in possession of what they now called ‘sexually explicit material’ on my computers: films, pictures and books featuring child abuse. And I wasn’t the only person to be charged. Three other men had been brought in for the same reason, and during a later interview I found out their names: Mikael Midtbø, Per Haugen and Karl Slåtthaug.

  I knew of course that I was innocent and that someone had planted this material on my computers, but that convinced neither the police nor the legal system. After the initial hearing I was held in remand while the case was investigated further. During another interview at the police station I seized an opportunity to escape, and then the nightmare began in earnest. In a race against time I did what I could to get to the bottom of the case, in which the main issue was this: who hated me with such an intensity that they had hacked my computer and planted this material? I found the answer in a summer house in the village of Søre Øyane, Os Municipality, in a confrontation with four other individuals, all involved in the case in various ways.

  However, one of them got away. Later that evening I was standing by a diving tower facing Bjørna fjord, searching in vain for a man who had slipped into the sea after being outed as one of the ringleaders in the case. Wave after wave of breakers crashed on the shore, the wind howled around my ears, but no one reappeared from the foaming waters. He had been swallowed up.

  I managed to get off the slippery, sea-soaked rocks. Back on dry land I rang two people: first Sølvi, to say everything was in the process of resolving itself, then my lawyer, Vidar Waagenes, so he could help prevent those words from coming back to haunt me.

  It hadn’t been so easy. When I returned to the summer house I was arrested by armed police, unceremoniously handcuffed, led to a vehicle and delivered post haste to Bergen Police Station. The only information I managed to pass on was that they should start a search for a man in Bjørna fjord. I didn’t find out until later whether that had been done. The orders from the operational commander, an officer I had never seen before, to the policemen taking me to the car had been short and sweet: This man has escaped remand before. Don’t let him out of your sight for a second.

  They didn’t either, until they handed me over on the third floor of the police station, where the department head, Jakob E. Hamre, received me with a thick layer of repugnance daubed across his already-pale face. I made an attempt to clarify the situation for him, but he interrupted me with a raised hand: ‘I think we’ll wait until Waagenes is here, Veum, before we say anything.’

  Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Waagenes arrived and I was able to start explaining. In addition to Hamre, Inspector Bjarne Solheim took part in the interview. He glared at me sourly, and I could well understand why. It was fairly clear that he had been blamed for allowing me to abscond a few days earlier.

  The interview was recorded. Solheim sat writing on his laptop and both Hamre and Waagenes took notes. Initially, they let me talk more or less without interruption as I tried to summarise a case that had its roots in the past.

  We talked until late in the night. After a few hours a report came back to Hamre to say that the search for a man in Bjør
na fjord had been unsuccessful, but they would continue looking as soon as there was daylight. ‘The most important element of your proof is there,’ Hamre had commented, but Waagenes protested at once: ‘Not at all! Varg’s furnished you with so much information that as soon as you’ve examined all the other detainees’ computers and mobile phones there should be more than enough evidence for his statement.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. We’ll have to rely on the experts here.’

  ‘You’ve arrested the other three, I take it?’ I asked, and Hamre nodded in a measured way.

  ‘They’re being interviewed, but we’re unlikely to get through all the material tonight. You’d better prepare yourself to stay here longer until we feel we have a clear overview.’

  ‘I object!’ Waagenes exclaimed. ‘You’ve both known Veum for many years…’

  ‘Indeed,’ Hamre mumbled with an eloquent sigh.

  ‘It’s utterly inconceivable that Varg would’ve downloaded sexually explicit material with his background as a child-welfare officer and a private investigator.’

  ‘Don’t forget the incriminating photos,’ Hamre said.

  ‘Which Varg has explained.’

  ‘Exactly. He has explained. Quod erat demonstrandum, as we Latinists like to say.’

  ‘Yes. And Mother Nille is a rock – Ludvig Holberg told us all we need to know about Latinists,’ Waagenes commented drily.

  But Hamre won the tug of war in the end. I was still formally charged and had to spend further days and nights on remand, interrupted only by more tedious interviews.

  On the third day I was summoned to yet another interview, where the police lawyer Beate Bauge, Hamre and Waagenes were present. Bauge was as erect and disgruntled as she had been for all the hearings. The look she sent me before she started speaking told me her hand had been forced. However, the conclusion was clear. Preliminary examinations of the other detainees’ computers had led to them taking the following decision: the charge against me had been withdrawn. After a short, dramatic pause she added: ‘For the time being.’ And she stressed that if any evidence to the contrary appeared I would have to expect to be brought in for further questioning.

  It was as if snow was falling quietly inside me. I didn’t erupt in whoops of joy and I didn’t burst into tears. However, I did feel a huge amount of relief that they had at long last taken me at my word and that the other computers had corroborated what I had told them.

  ‘And the other arrestees?’ I asked warily.

  ‘They’ll stay on remand until they’re indicted.’

  ‘And Sigurd Svensbø? Has he been found?’

  Bauge looked at Hamre, who shook his head.

  ‘No. But our experience of missing persons at sea is that it can be a very long time before bodies wash ashore, if ever.’

  ‘If ifs and ands were pots and pans there’d be no need for tinkers,’ Bauge said with the same disgruntled expression she wore earlier, and there were no further comments.

  I left the police station in the company of Vidar Waagenes. On the doorstep outside we exchanged glances. It was as though I still hadn’t realised I was free, that I could do whatever I wanted – whether that was to go home, down to my office, visit Sølvi or catch the next plane to wherever in the world. In the end, Waagenes and I went for an early lunch at Holbergstuen, as of old.

  But that was almost a year and a half ago. Now something had happened that had brought the case back to life. The first thing I did when I got into my office on Monday morning was ring Hamre, albeit with extreme reluctance.

  3

  Since the events of that autumn I’d worked on one big case, and an incidental consequence of it still lay in the bottom drawer of my desk, in an unopened envelope postmarked the Public Health Institute. I had sat weighing this in my hand many times without taking the decision to open it. In it I imagined was the result of the tests I had requested the DNA registry office perform: I’d sent a few strands of long-deceased saxophonist Leif Pedersen’s hair and one of mine. If the tests proved to be positive, I had a new father. If not, I would have to assume that the likewise deceased tram conductor, Anders Veum, was still my biological father. For some reason I had a strong aversion to opening the letter. After all, I had grown up with the tram conductor. He was my father figure, inasmuch as I had one. The saxophonist had come out of left field, holding his instrument, for which I had a special affection, although I never knew why.

  Besides, I had quite a different problem now. Hamre hadn’t exactly been delighted to hear from me. And his mood didn’t improve when I told him why I wanted to talk to him and what the case was about. But he cleared the decks for a meeting in his office half an hour later. ‘Half an hour? That’s quick.’ ‘That’s when I have some time, Veum.’ ‘The sooner, the better,’ I answered, and twenty minutes later I was on my way.

  There were still remnants of the snow that fell before Christmas on the edge of the pavements. The mountainsides around the town were a painting in black and white. I had celebrated Christmas Eve with Sølvi and Helene at their place in Saudalskleivane. On New Year’s Eve Sølvi had invited some friends round. I had been as discreet as possible and remained in the background, but raised my glass of champagne at midnight with the other guests. The turn of the year had never been high on the list of occasions I wanted to celebrate. I had spent most of them in solitary majesty, except for my loyal companions – a bottle of aquavit and the rain.

  I only moved back to Telthussmuget when the New Year weekend, and what had reminded me of a good old-fashioned Christmas holiday, was over. It was definitely over when on a Sunday in January I just managed to avoid being mown down by a car that had undoubtedly had me in its sights. Even now, walking to the police station the day after, I looked twice both ways when I crossed the road, Torgallmenningen first, then Domkirkegaten.

  Hamre sent Solheim down to reception to collect me. He still didn’t appear to have forgiven me. I noticed that he had assumed a new style. His once very untidy hair was shaven down to a classical crew cut, like a subordinate officer in the sixties, when I myself was doing my national service. As he was hardly likely to have planned a military career, I took this as a clear sign that he envisaged himself climbing up the hierarchy of Bergen Police Station, where the length of your hair was perhaps still a factor.

  Hamre, on the other hand, was the same as always, only even paler, like an overexposed photograph in which the white dominated. The sole feature to break this sameness was the grey of his tailored suit. There had always been a classical elegance about Hamre, whom I had known in our usual ping-pong way since the late seventies. Basic arithmetic told me that he must have been getting on for pensionable age in the police, which the tired expression on his face reinforced.

  He received me with a kind of resignation, pointing to the free chair on the visitor’s side of his desk. ‘Take a seat. Can we offer you anything? A cup of coffee? The force’s finest, lukewarm since seven o’clock this morning.’

  ‘No, thank you. I sleep badly enough as it is.’

  ‘Now, don’t say I didn’t offer you a cup, Veum.’

  Solheim sat down on the third chair in the room, at the side of the desk, on which he placed his laptop. He raised his gaze and looked at me, as laconic as a court reporter at the start of a long hearing.

  ‘What did you say on the phone? You want to report someone? What for?’

  ‘Someone tried to run me over last night, behind Lagunen.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Can you give us any details?’

  I told him the little I knew. It wasn’t much.

  He motioned to Solheim to take notes, which he did with poorly concealed irony. ‘A VW Golf, probably grey, last year’s model, no registration number. Did you catch all of that, Bjarne?’

  Solheim nodded.

  ‘Any suspicions about who it could’ve been?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He turned the words over in his mind. ‘Not yet. Hmmm. But it was my understanding that you were wo
rried about the deaths of two of your co-accused in the big child porn case in 2002.’

  ‘The charges against me were dropped.’

  ‘Yes, of course. We remember. Under a cloud of doubt. The star witness from Bjørna fjord still hasn’t appeared, as far as I’ve been able to establish.’

  ‘No, but … Do we want to go through all of this again?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he said, quickly. ‘That was just an icebreaker, to get us in the right mood. How long have we known each other, Veum?’

  ‘I was thinking the same myself. Our paths first crossed during a case in 1978. So, in my head that makes it about a quarter of a century ago.’

  ‘In mine, too. Twenty-six years ago to be absolutely accurate. And do you know what?’

  ‘It feels as though it were yesterday?’

  He pointed to a calendar of the neutral variety on the wall. ‘Can you see the red circle around the thirtieth of January?’

  I followed the direction indicated by his index finger. ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a Friday by the way. And it’ll be my last day in the police force.’

  ‘I had an idea something like that was coming.’

  ‘And let me put it this way, as civilly as possible. The less I see of you this month, the better. In the future, in ten to fifteen years, we can have a glass of beer together in a suitable watering hole and chat about the good old days, but right now … No, thank you. In this building your name’s synonymous with trouble, but of course you know that yourself. You just don’t care.’

  Solheim was following our conversation with what looked suspiciously like an amused glint in his eyes. Hamre concluded his monologue. ‘So let’s get down to brass tacks and finish this as fast as we can. You wish to make an official complaint about an unknown person, or unknown persons, who, according to you, at ten o’clock last night tried to run you over, at such and such an address in Fana, the Bergen district in question.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you catch that, Bjarne?’