Wolves at the Door

by Gunnar Staalesen

  Laila helped herself to a cake, too. We each took a sip of tea, which tasted of syrup, ginger and a spice I was unable to identify. We sat in silence until we had eaten a cake and taken a few more sips of tea.

  ‘Neither you, nor your brother, wanted your names to appear in the obituary when your father died.’

  ‘No. Knut rang me to tell me he’d died…’

  ‘And you agreed not to have your names published?’

  She spoke slowly and with long pauses between her sentences. ‘Yes. Why should we? Neither of us had good memories of him. It wasn’t just me who was abused. Knut was, too.’

  ‘What! He was abused, too?’

  She suddenly raised her head and seemed to straighten up. ‘And my best friend! She committed suicide. Later. When she was grown up. It was sick. Absolutely sick. If…’

  As she didn’t carry on, I said: ‘Yes? If…?’

  She almost seemed to get some colour in her face. ‘If these brutes only realised the consequences of their actions. We’re all victims. Knut. Me. Marthe.’

  ‘Marthe was your best friend?’

  ‘She caught the bus to Kleppestø, and then she walked back, to the middle of Askøy Bridge, and jumped off.’

  ‘Right.’

  She came to life now. ‘She’d been at home with us. There were probably no more than five or six of us. Playing with our dolls. Then he came in and asked if we’d like to play a different game. I said no. I didn’t want to because I knew what he wanted. But Marthe didn’t know, and she said yes. And I had to sit in the waiting room and wait.’

  ‘Waiting room?’

  ‘Yes, while she saw the doctor.’

  ‘Afterwards she came out looking stunned, and then it was my turn, even though I kept refusing. But I was spanked, on my bare bottom, and then you had to pretend nothing had happened while he did what he did.’ There were flashes of anger in her eyes now. ‘He was a pig, a horrible, revolting pig. Him dying was the least that should’ve happened. We should’ve tortured him to death, slowly.’

  Warily, I said: ‘Do you know how he died?’

  ‘Knut told me. He drowned. Pigs can’t swim, can they.’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know. But Marthe … she didn’t say anything at home?’

  ‘Don’t you understand? It had been our idea, he said. And he would tell everyone that. So we had to keep this secret. It was our fault, after all. He said this so many times that in the end we believed it. We agreed we wouldn’t tell anyone. Not Lise or Jorunn or any of the others in the class. No one. And then it just carried on.’

  ‘For both of you?’

  ‘Marthe stopped coming to ours after a while. But when I met her many years afterwards, in Nygårdsparken, we realised there was a reason for us to be there, for both of us. The same reason. But she … she was on much harder stuff than I was. Heroin. Amphetamines. I just took … pills. And spirits. Beer when I couldn’t afford spirits. And then one day she was gone. It was several weeks before we heard what had happened. Someone had seen her on the bridge.’

  ‘Tragic.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your mother; where was she while all this was going on?’

  ‘I don’t have a mother.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I don’t have a mother, I’m telling you. In court she said she didn’t notice anything and she didn’t believe a word I said. I’m not going to her funeral, either.’

  ‘But your brother’s managed well. He has a good job. And you managed well, too, for a long time.’

  ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘Well … I was only thinking aloud. Tell me something: how did you become a model?’

  She straightened up a little more. Now she was sitting upright on the sofa and looked me straight in the face, but she was unable to hide what she was thinking. In her look I saw the same contempt with which she viewed all men. And still it was difficult to recognise the beautiful woman from the studio photograph. There seemed to be something awry and distorted about her whole face as she said: ‘You’re stupid pigs, all of you!’

  ‘Not all of us, perhaps,’ I said softly.

  ‘Oh, yes, you are. But some of you haven’t revealed your true selves yet.’ She studied me defiantly. ‘I discovered at secondary school that I looked quite good. And then I didn’t let him have what he wanted. I slapped him and started to scream. And then I told … my mother.’

  ‘You told her what he’d done?’

  ‘Yes, but she was no longer my mother. She just said I shouldn’t tell anyone else. It would bring shame over us all. Shame! That’s all she was bothered about. And what about me? Nothing.’

  I could visualise the slightly confused elderly woman I had met in the high-rise in Brunestykket, but I couldn’t imagine her twenty to twenty-five years younger and the mother of a teenage girl who told her about things Laila’s father – her husband – had done.

  ‘I moved out as soon as I could. Got myself a bedsit. Got a job in an advertising agency. They were the ones who saw I was cut out to be … a model. First of all in ads, but also in fashion shows.’ There was a new gleam in her eyes and her lips moved as though they couldn’t resist a smile. ‘I had them round my little finger, all the old pigs sitting in the front row and grinning. The cocky photographers who thought they were world champions behind a camera, just because they spent an hour on the photo-shoot instead of five minutes. My colleagues at the agency, whether they were married or not, they tried it on anyway. But they never got this far, not a single bloody one of the bastards.’ She pointed to her groin and spread her legs. ‘Until I chose one myself. One who had to leave for an oil rig, so that I could be left in peace for those weeks at least. But, of course, he turned out to be a pig as well.’

  ‘Now you’re referring to Bjarne Bratteli, your husband, are you?’

  ‘My ex-husband! I never want to see him again. He’s been ringing at the door too, but he can burn in hell, like my father … and all the other pigs.’

  ‘But he said … He told me he came here because he was worried about you. He said he still loved you and that you’d got on well together.’

  ‘Hah! He’s lying, as you all do. I caught him, you know. Caught him red-handed.’

  ‘Oh, yes? How?’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know what his job is? He had to stop working on the rig and so he got a job at a kindergarten. And there the pig in him came to the fore.’

  ‘You don’t mean…?’

  ‘I caught him one evening at his computer. He didn’t close the photos quickly enough, so I saw what he was looking at. They were of young children, in all sorts of positions. And he’d probably taken some of the photos himself … at the kindergarten.’

  ‘But … but you reported him, I suppose?’

  ‘What good would that do? I’d seen how I’d been treated in court, hadn’t I. My father’s defence lawyer, a real slippery sod, he made out everything I said was just fantasy. I was the kind who dreamt things up and many years later presented them as facts. “Just remember what her mother said when she testified,” he said. My mother! I have no mother.’

  ‘To be frank, if you found this out about your husband and didn’t report it, then … that’s like your own mother shutting her eyes to what she’d seen.’

  She opened and closed her mouth. ‘Like my mother? I only know that there would’ve been another pig sitting on the other side of a desk, if I’d reported him. A police pig. A lawyer pig. A psychologist pig. I’ve seen through the lot of you. The whole damn pack of you.’

  It wouldn’t be long before she was foaming around her mouth. I let her calm down while I kept an eye on the kitchen door in case the Seventh Cavalry should reappear.

  ‘So that’s what made you snap?’

  She looked at me blankly, as though she had suddenly exhausted all her energy and anger. ‘Snap?’

  ‘Go on pills?’

  She released another little smile, the wry sort this time. ‘Pills? I’ve been taking them for y
ears. But I had to do it secretly. When I caught Bjarne red-handed I just went for it big time. I knocked back pills and booze. Actually I suppose it must’ve been an attempt to kill myself, the long way. Not jumping from Askøy Bridge and being done with it. Just like that. But destroying myself slowly and laboriously.’

  ‘You threatened your husband with a knife, he told me.’

  ‘I should’ve bloody skewered him. Like I should’ve drowned my father. And thrown my mother from the balcony.’

  ‘Thrown your mother from…?’

  ‘Yes! They should’ve got their punishment, the whole bloody lot of them. And the person who did away with them should receive a medal. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do, in a way. If you mean—’

  ‘No, you don’t! You’re a pig, too.’

  ‘Well … One last thing, Laila.’

  She eyed me suspiciously.

  ‘These people you owe money. The man I stopped harassing you in Sletten. Bjørn Hårkløv. I know him from the past. They’ll be back of course. You won’t get rid of them, however rarely you venture out. And the next time there’ll probably be no one around to help you, as I was.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Have you got any names of these people? Perhaps I can help you.’

  ‘How? By giving them money? Or by beating them up?’

  ‘I can set the police on them.’

  ‘Right. I’m sure that’ll help a lot. Just like it did with my father. They’ll be out on the streets again after a few months, a year, at the most. And surely you don’t think I’ll get much sympathy from the cops or anyone else? A druggie, an alky. But there’s one thing I’ll never be: a whore. That’s what they wanted. They wanted me to sell myself, then the debt would soon be paid off. When I refused they started using force. Talking about how the debt would grow from day to day. But no one will have me! Not one of you bloody pigs.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Laila.’

  ‘Don’t say anything at all. You can just sling your hook. I’ve said thank you.’ She tossed her head. ‘Don’t imagine you’re getting anything else as thanks.’ She raised her voice. ‘Fatima!’

  It took them two seconds to come through the kitchen door, both Fatima and Ghulam. ‘Yes?’ Ghulam said. ‘What is it?’

  She looked at him wearily. ‘He’s leaving. And I want to go home.’

  He bobbed his head slowly, as if to a little child. ‘He’s leaving. We’ll accompany you home. OK.’

  ‘Accompany?’ I queried.

  ‘Perhaps you don’t think she still needs protection?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Unfortunately. And you’ll provide it?’

  ‘It’s better than nothing.’

  And he was right of course. Anything was better than nothing. I should leave, yes. But he should take care. With what he had hanging between his legs, he was in the pig family, too. We weren’t free from taint, any of us.

  20

  I sat in my car for a while, made some notes, read through some of the old ones, put question marks in a couple of places and wondered who to visit to find answers.

  Before driving off I set up two meetings. My old social-services colleague Cathrine Leivestad could see me in her office in Strømgaten. Inspector Annemette Bergesen sounded a great deal more sceptical and she definitely didn’t want to talk to me at the police station. When I described the case I was working on and mentioned a couple of names she agreed to a brief chat at the café in the railway station at sixteen hundred hours, as she put it.

  I parked at the top of Bygarasjen, a multi-storey car park approximately halfway between the two meeting places. The time before I was due to see Cathrine I spent at her local public library. I sat down at a microfilm reader, found the Bergen newspapers from October and December 2003 and looked to see what had been written about the two fatalities. There wasn’t much. Both incidents were mentioned in short single-column articles, in Bergens Tidende and Bergens Avis. In both papers the headline of the one about Mikael Midtbø’s death was ‘Fall in Fyllingsdalen’. Per Haugen’s death was described as ‘Accidental Drowning in Frøviken’ in BT and ‘Man Found Drowned’ in BA. Here they had added an archive photo of Frøviken as an illustration. It was obvious that neither newspaper entertained a suspicion that this was anything other than what the police had concluded: a suicide and an accident.

  I still had a little time and located the same newspapers’ reports on the court cases against Midtbø and Haugen, which ran almost in parallel during January 2003, to see if there were any more details than those I had found on the net. BA had gone in for a fairly large spread about ‘the daughter’s testimony’ against her father in the Haugen case, but they also quoted the defence counsel’s comment that this was so long ago that legally it was time-barred and for that reason should be ignored at the trial. Since Haugen had been released from prison in July it was clear that the court had done exactly that. I noted down the name of his lawyer: Kristoffer Kleve.

  Cathrine Leivestad smiled amiably at me when I arrived at her office, a couple of minutes before the agreed time. ‘As punctual as always, Varg.’

  ‘I daren’t be anything else. I’ve learned that if I’m not, the person I’m meeting has seized their opportunity and done a runner.’

  ‘Not me though?’

  ‘No, not you.’

  We hugged and I sat down on the client’s chair, facing her across the desk. We had started in social services at about the same time. She had remained there for all these years. I had literally been shown the door after five. She had aged visibly over that time, and I didn’t doubt for a second that the same was true of me. She had kept her long hair, but today it was gathered at the nape of her neck, which emphasised her lean facial features. Whenever we met there was a kind of resigned exchange of looks: you again? And: the world hasn’t got any better since last we met. We swapped a couple of quick updates on how things were going. All fine on her side. Could be worse, on mine.

  She was as efficient as always and got straight to the point. ‘You asked me to check whether we had anything on a woman called Svanhild Olsvik.’ She peered over the top of the computer. In a neutral tone she said: ‘You know I can’t tell you anything, Varg.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’

  We sat looking at each other for a few seconds, as if to establish the principle. Then she flashed me a little smile. ‘However…’ she shifted her gaze back to the screen ‘…we have a note here. Some expressions of concern from neighbours where she lives … or lived. In Flaktveit. Two of my younger colleagues paid her a call at home and inspected her living conditions. But no decision was reached.’

  ‘Everything was in perfect order?’

  ‘Well … she has a daughter and the concerns were with reference to her. My colleagues’ notes say that she appeared quiet, shy and slightly withdrawn. But there was nothing to suggest any form of abuse. She went to school as normal, her diet seemed good; in short there were no obvious signs that we should step in.’

  ‘What were the expressions of concern?’

  She smiled ironically. ‘Frequent visits from a variety of men at night. But, as you know, men aren’t forbidden from visiting in a normal housing co-op. We conferred with the police, but they had nothing on her.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with them later. You know … as I told you on the phone … this is an investigation I’m undertaking on the back of a childabuse case I was myself dragged into about a year and a half ago. One of the other men, Mikael Midtbø, to all outward appearances, took his own life in December by jumping from the tenth floor of the block where he lived in Fyllingsdalen. Svanhild Olsvik had moved in with him and taken her daughter along. If you had a daughter, would you enter into a relationship with a man who’s been convicted of … if not abuse, then spreading explicit images of child abuse via the net?’

  ‘Hardly,’ she said drily. ‘And did she know about his background?’

  ‘He’s supposed to have been one of her regulars, I
was told.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Well … his ex-wife.’

  ‘And you know how much you can rely on that kind of evidence?’

  ‘At any rate, the court found in favour of her as the sole provider for their two children. He wasn’t even given visiting rights.’

  ‘Right.’ She nodded gravely. ‘That’s bound to cause trouble.’

  ‘Exactly. But this time it was him who came to grief. In the sense that he lost his life. Whether it was self-inflicted or not.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Have you got anything on him? Mikael Midtbø?’

  Again she smiled ironically as she tapped his name in. She read through what came up and typed. ‘Mm. Not much. Something about some girls in the neighbourhood. But that was after you…’ she looked up ‘…were arrested, all of you.’

  I refrained from commenting, and she carried on: ‘A neighbour, Carl Fredrik Stiansen, insisted that Midtbø should never be allowed to have any kind of contact with his own children or any others, and that was for perpetuity. We referred him to the police. But we made a note here, in case the matter should land back on our desk.’

  ‘You didn’t consider imposing any preventative measures?’

  ‘We got in touch with fru Midtbø. Haldis is her Christian name, but she said she didn’t need any help, and we didn’t take any further action.’

  She clicked on the screen and cast a glance at the clock on the wall behind me. I took the hint, thanked her for her help, gave her another hug and headed for my next meeting.

  At 15.55 I was waiting in the railway café, ready to talk to Annemette Bergesen at sixteen hundred hours. She arrived at 15.59 in her immediately recognisable energetic style, scanned the room, located me, nodded, confirmed I already had a cup of coffee in front of me, and went to the counter to get one for herself. She came over, set the cup down on the table and occupied the free chair opposite me. She was out of uniform and wearing a dark, calf-length winter coat and dark-blue jeans.

  ‘Veum,’ she stated.

  ‘Bergesen,’ I nodded back.