It was. I found the handle, yanked the door open and tumbled out. Expecting to fall head first down a steep concrete stairway. No stairway. A big black opening. Stars. A veil of fresh wet mist smelling of dew. I’d fallen through a doorway on to the flat slippery tar-paper roof. I took two steps forward, but my legs gave way and I fell flat. I could see Gunnar Våge coming towards me. Still holding the crowbar. His skull gleamed, his curly fringe was tousled, his face was like a clenched fist which would never relax again. He didn’t remind me of the idealistic youth leader I’d met before. The only thing he reminded me of was death. The worst death of all. My own.
Everything stopped for a few seconds. I looked around. The roof was fiat except for the lift shed and some ventilators. A fifty-centimetre-high concrete wall edged the entire roof. It was high enough so you couldn’t roll over the edge and down to the ground below. But it wasn’t so high that you couldn’t stumble over it or be shoved.
Gunnar Våge was showing the effects of the fight. He walked stiffly towards me and he gripped the crowbar as if it were the only thing he owned in the world. It was. And right now it was also the most important thing in the world. That crowbar could be the extra point that decided between him and me, between the first and second division, between life and death.
I struggled to my knees and managed to stand up. Shook my head. ‘I don’t get it,’ I groaned. ‘I don’t get it. What are you trying to do? What’s the idea?’
‘No idea. Action.’ He sneered at me. ‘You touch zero, the point where everything’s dead. Where nothing around you moves. Then there’s only one thing left to do – and that’s act.’
‘And the idealist becomes a fascist – just like that?’ I was lisping.
He didn’t answer. Almost like a karate fighter, he took two steps forward, planted his feet, gripped the crowbar with both hands and swung.
I could still move, but that deadly crowbar hit my right shoulder once more. And it felt as if my shoulder had been torn off again, as if my whole body would split in two. It felt like a stroke. I had just one chance of surviving. Use my dirtiest tricks.
I ducked and kicked at his belly. Blindly struck at the hand which held the crowbar. I hit the side of his wrist. His arm swung up, his hand opened in pain, and the crowbar arced up into the air, bounced against the wall and silently disappeared into the darkness. If anybody was walking his dog down there he could come home with a skewered sausage. Or a flag-pole in his head.
He punched me in the ear. I heard a brass band playing a march backwards. And then we clinched. In the drifting mist with the stars and the Lyderhorn the only spectators, we danced a strange duet. Like two old pugs, the oldest boxers in the retirement home’s back yard. We pounded one another’s backs with exhausted fists, tried for half-nelsons, tried to gouge out one another’s eyes with blunt fingers. One two cha cha cha. One two cha cha cha.
We broke away from one another like two disappointed lovers. We swung at the empty air and staggered backward. I fell down. He staggered toward me. I lay there. He kicked dully at me.
His eyes were glassy and empty, carved from dirty marble and painted with enamel. There was something feverish about him. Manic. Obsessed. The corner of his mouth was bleeding, he had a bad abrasion on his forehead, one arm hung limp at his side. He was breathing heavily, and he looked more and more like a ghost. But I knew I didn’t look much better myself. And I was down while he still could stand up. Two old sparring partners on Christmas Eve. Just before the knock-out!
‘But why, Våge, why?’ I gasped.
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you kill them?’
He flamed with rage. ‘That little worm? He tried to blackmail me!’
Then his voice sank almost to a whisper. ‘He asked me to meet him up there. Said he knew about Wenche and me. Had seen me – visit her. Said he knew why I’d killed – her husband. He – that little jerk he threatened me. I told him, OK. I’ll meet you up there. But I’m coming alone, and I don’t have any money with me. He wanted money, you know.’ He stared at me almost pleadingly.
The mist was about to turn to rain.
‘So I met him. He wanted money but I didn’t have any. And I wasn’t about to pay him one red penny. He – he pulled a knife on me. Threatened me. I’m the one – I was the one who helped him, defended him. Protected him. I really wanted to help him, Veum. And he pulled a knife on me.
We fought for it. He – lost. I mean – that wasn’t the idea, but it turned heavy. Happened so fast. Suddenly he was lying there. Dead. Then I knew what had happened.’ He lifted his face to the rain. ‘It was self-defence.’
I spat out the words as if they were cracked apple seeds. ‘Self-defence? So it was self-defence when you also killed Jonas Andresen?’
‘Jonas Andresen?’ He stared at me.
‘Jonas Andresen! Man, don’t you read the papers? Don’t you know the names of the people you kill?’
‘Haven’t you caught on yet? I loved her! I’ve loved her for eleven years, Veum. After those two months in 1967 there wasn’t anybody else. Do you think I’d want anything bad to happen to her? You think I could – I could hurt her? You don’t know anything about love, Veum. Not if you think that. What you call love are graffiti on a wall, pictures in a book. What I wanted was to run my hand through her hair. Kiss her. Make love to her. I could never kill anybody she loved. And she was crazy about him. That’s what was so hopeless. She was as crazy about him as I was about her.’
‘So you figured if you – got rid of him, then …’
He walked over and planted his foot in my face. I took it like the obliging soul I am. The back of my head slammed against the roof and my face felt like newly laid asphalt when careless boys suddenly step in it. I bit my tongue and tasted a mouthful of warm thick blood.
‘Hell no!’ he snarled. ‘I didn’t kill him.’ He raised his head and howled like a wolf at an invisible moon. ‘All of you hear this? I did not kill Jonas Andresen!’
He bent down and grabbed my jacket. Hauled me up with his last bit of strength and smashed me in the face. I hung in his fists. He fell forward and dragged me down with him. We lay about a metre from the wall.
He got to his knees and began dragging me towards the edge. ‘But by all the gods,’ I heard him mumble, ‘I’m going to kill Varg Veum if it’s the last thing I do.’
I tried kidding. ‘That it will be,’ I said.
Clenched my teeth and stood up. Now I was the one standing and he was on his knees. He looked up at me with eyes which were both pleading and full of hatred. ‘Eleven years, Veum,’ he whined. ‘Eleven years of nothing. No love, no happiness. Just hate and suspicion. And terrible terrible boredom. And then a dream. I tracked her here. Took this job to be near her. Just to be where she was. Let life sail by on the horizon like an America-bound ship. But I had to be the rowing boat slowly reaching the coast where she lived. Do you understand?’
‘I don’t understand a thing,’ I said.
It was raining harder. We were soaked. The rain washed the blood off us. We were a couple of dishevelled exhausted kids at the end of a dangerous game on the brink of a long drop.
He lunged, got a grip on my neck and forced me toward the edge. I gave ground, felt the depths behind me, the pull of the vacuum. So I rabbit-punched him as hard as I could. He sagged against me and I fell backwards.
The edge of the wall dug into my spine. For a couple of seconds I swayed over and back … Then I scrambled panic-stricken back on to the roof.
He stood up. Rose up like the phoenix from the ashes. I knocked him down. He was glassy-eyed.
He got up. Stood there shaking his head. But he’d been about to throw me overboard. So I knocked him down again.
And then I called it quits.
Fresh blood trickled from his mouth as I dragged him towards the doorway and the security of the lift shed. He was babbling as I towed him. ‘I didn’t kill Jonas Andresen, Veum … I didn’t kill him …’ Tears ran from his eyes
and mixed with the blood and rain.
When I hauled him over the threshold he howled as if we were crossing the threshold to Hades: ‘You’ll burn in hell for this, Veum! You’ll burn!’
‘Tell it to the police,’ I heard myself say. ‘They’re hell’s doormen.’
51
Jakob E. Hamre was pretty quiet in the car on the way back to Bergen. He turned once and looked at me. ‘Do you know what we’d have done to you if you hadn’t had Våge with you?’ he said abruptly.
I didn’t ask. And he didn’t tell me. He was saving it.
When we got to the station Hamre spoke to one of the other officers. ‘Get hold of Paulus Smith. Ask him to come as soon as possible.’ Then he spoke to me. ‘You wait here until Smith arrives. We’re going to visit your friend. You’d best come too. Otherwise you won’t sleep tonight. Right?’
Without waiting for an answer, he disappeared into the lift. I stood in the hall. Not having a Christmas tree, they’d planted a uniformed constable in one corner. He stood and stared fixedly into space and waited for somebody to start arranging presents around his feet. He had about nine months’ wait.
Outside, people with blank faces drove around in cars with the headlights on or sat in rows in oblong yellow buses and stared through the shining windowpanes the way strangers’ faces look at you out of photograph albums.
Paulus Smith arrived by cab twenty minutes later. He came towards me, a pleased expression on his face, took my hand in both of his and said, ‘A brilliant job, Veum. I hear you’ve found us a murderer.’
‘He found me,’ I said. ‘And I’m afraid he also found himself another victim first.’
‘What?’ he said. Shaken.
I told him what had happened while we waited for Jakob E. Hamre to reappear. The more I talked, the more disturbed Smith looked. I’d just about finished my story when the lift door opened and Hamre stepped out.
‘Good evening, Smith,’ he said formally. ‘She’s in the visiting room. They’re waiting for us.’
We walked silently to the cellar, down that stairway which separates the sheep from the goats. There were five of us in that bare little room. Two women and three men.
Wenche Andresen sat alone on the long side of the table, Paulus Smith and Jakob E. Hamre on the short. I sat at the corner between them. The constable perched on a chair by the door. A tape recorder waited in front of Hamre.
Wenche Andresen seemed even tenser now than she had ever been; her face was more drawn, the feverish shine in her eyes seemed even brighter. She folded her hands on the table. You could see the muscles twitching and how she tried to relax them. She finally twined them together as if they were two exhausted wrestlers.
Paulus Smith looked as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of a cocktail party. His skin glowed under its tan and there was a twinkle in his eyes as if he hadn’t recovered from the last good story he’d heard. His chalk-white hair gave him a look of purity, nobility and infallibility. Perfect for a lawyer.
Jakob E. Hamre reminded me of a cabinet minister, of a man holding all the cards and ready to take part in a TV debate which would spellbind thousands of people across the country. Self-confident. Safe.
The constable looked like a rejected chapter in a bad novel. Her hair was bound tight at her neck and she had a face that shouldn’t have been so bare. She looked straight ahead of her through the whole seance and didn’t blink once.
I didn’t look especially good myself. When I’d shaken hands with Wenche Andresen she’d said, ‘Every time I see you, somebody’s done something to your face, Varg.’ And she had looked at me searchingly, as if to reassure herself that it really was me underneath it all.
After everyone had sat down, there was a tense silence around the table. It was expectant, strained. As if we all waited for someone to break the silence with a scream or stand up suddenly and turn cartwheels or do something equally unexpected and crazy. But nobody did anything but wait for Jakob E. Hamre to start things off.
Little by little we all looked at him. Paulus Smith with pleased anticipation, Wenche Andresen with tension and anxiety, I with a feeling of dull misery.
Then Jakob E. Hamre stretched out his slim, long-fingered hand and started the tape recorder. In a low monotone he recorded the place, the date, the time, and who was present. Then he paused. Looked directly at Wenche Andresen. ‘We have just arrested Gunnar Våge,’ he said.
We all watched her. We saw that short sentence sink in, and reflect in her eyes. Which became enormous. Her mouth became a circle. Then there was a long drawn-out gasp. She anxiously searched our faces, one after the other, as if she were looking for some kind of explanation, comfort. One or the other. But we were three men and we didn’t respond. We merely watched the tears silently begin as she took in what Hamre had told her.
‘Gunnar?’ she said.
There was a pause.
‘Did he …’
‘He killed Johan Pedersen,’ Hamre said.
She looked at him. Baffled. ‘Who?’
‘Joker,’ I said. ‘This evening.’
She shook her head. ‘He killed Joker – this evening? But – but Jonas? Why should he …? I can’t see that –’
Hamre interrupted. ‘How well did you know Gunnar Våge, Fru Andresen?’ His voice was firm but pleasant. He was as polite as usual, but you could see a trace of impatience, a little restlessness under that smooth surface.
‘I –’ she began. Then she bit her lip and blushed. She looked as guilty as we all do when we blush.
I stared at her, but she wouldn’t look at me.
‘I’ve known him a long time,’ she said reluctantly.
‘For how long?’
‘We were together – I think it must have been in – in 1967. Just for a month or so before I met Jonas …’ Her mouth pronounced his name as if she wanted to hang on to it, keep it for ever.
‘And later on?’ Hamre said.
‘Later on?’ She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘We – I met him again, out there. I met him in the street one day. Around noon. He spoke to me. Don’t you recognise me, Wenche? he said. And I had to take a good look at him. He was bald, but I recognised him. Obviously.’ She stopped and stared at her intertwined fingers.
‘And then?’ Hamre said.
She looked up at him. They might as well have been alone in the room. Paulus Smith, the constable and I had become part of a stage set. We were the audience at the drama she and Hamre starred in. Their glances met, clashed, sprang apart.
‘You resumed the relationship?’ Hamre said.
‘We resumed the relationship,’ she said. Sarcastically. ‘You make it sound like a business deal or something. Yes. We resumed the relationship, but not right away. It took a while. He said … he said he’d been looking for me, that he’d moved out there, got a job just so he could be near me. Maybe meet me again. It – it made an impression on me.’
‘I can see how it would.’
‘Oh you can, can you? For a long time, I’d been aware it was over between Jonas and me. And I needed tenderness. Love. I loved Jonas. I still do. I’ll love him until I die, even though he’s already dead. The thing between Gunnar and me – that was different. I mean, it was pretty much one-sided. Like the relationship between Jonas and me. But this time the one-sidedness wasn’t on my side, I mean.’
‘So you started a relationship with him?’
She nodded silently. Swallowed. Her eyes flickered.
My head was throbbing. A real headache was on the way. Paulus Smith looked bleakly at her. She looked at Hamre.
‘When did it happen?’ Hamre said. ‘Was it before or after you and Jonas Andresen separated?’
She sobbed painfully. ‘Before! But it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t adultery. It wasn’t that way. It was finished between Jonas and me. I felt it. With every fibre of my being. As if all the love inside me had turned to ice. It was locked up in the darkest places inside me. Do you know what I mean? It wasn’t
long before Jonas – left. But it happened before he did!’
‘Is it possible that’s why your husband left you?’
‘Who? Jonas? Never! He had his – her. Solveig what’s-her-name. I don’t think he ever had a clue about Gunnar and me. He would have shown it. And anyway, he would have said something about it when he left. No. Nobody knew but Gunnar and me. We were as careful as we could be. It wasn’t very often.
‘We only got together when we were absolutely sure. Either at his place – mostly there – or at mine. But it was safer at his place. We were happiest there.’
‘Were you happy together?’
That baffled look again. ‘Happy? As happy as two disappointed people can be. It was good to be able to show real tenderness again – to be shown it. Have it. Good to be able to share something with somebody else, even if it was a secret, something dirty. Something – ordinary.
‘You’ve got to understand. I come from a very strict background where things like this are involved. Adultery’s a deadly sin. Unforgivable. No matter what the circumstances. Jonas’s adultery didn’t make mine any better. Didn’t excuse it. Do you understand?’
‘Did you two ever talk about …?’ He stopped. Rephrased the question. ‘Fru Andresen, can you tell me why Gunnar Våge would murder your husband? Was he jealous?’
She shook her head. Puzzled. ‘We were almost divorced already. There wasn’t any reason why he’d be jealous. It was already over between Jonas and me.’
‘No feelings involved then? Not on your side?’
She didn’t answer. We watched her search for the words. She opened her mouth several times but no sound came out.
‘You realise that the evidence still points to your having killed your husband? In spite of what happened tonight,’ Hamre said.
Paulus Smith broke in. ‘Listen, Hamre. Slow down, man. You can’t mean that …’ He looked at me for help. When I didn’t say anything, he continued. ‘Gunnar Våge killed that boy this evening. And as far as I understand, he’s already confessed it.’
Yours Until Death Page 27
