Yours Until Death
Page 28
‘Not officially,’ Hamre said.
‘No, but nevertheless,’ Smith said. ‘The motive’s dear enough. The boy had something on him. He knew Våge murdered Jonas Andresen. He was with Veum when it happened, and he could have seen something Veum didn’t …’
‘Could that be possible?’ Hamre said sourly.
‘It’s ninety-nine per cent certain he saw Gunnar Våge stab Jonas Andresen and then run down the stairway opposite to the one Veum ran up. When Våge realised today how much the boy really knew, there was only one thing he could do. If he wanted to cover his tracks. It’s as simple as that, Hamre. As simple as that.’
I leaned across the table and looked at Wenche Andresen. ‘You lied to me about Gunnar Våge, Wenche,’ I said.
The others were quiet. Wenche Andresen slowly turned and looked at me with those same big dark blue eyes I’d first gazed into less than two weeks ago. I looked at that mouth I’d kissed and had hoped to kiss again. Remembered how softly, how sweetly she’d offered it to me when I kissed her that first and only time.
‘You lied to me,’ I said. ‘Everything else was the truth. I’ve been able to check out the rest of it, more or less. You told me the truth about Richard Ljosne. He had to admit he lied when I confronted him with what you’d said. But when I asked you about Gunnar Våge, you lied. Why, Wenche? Why?’
She turned from me to Hamre as if his duty were to defend her from me. ‘I can’t understand why Gunnar would – why he’d kill Jonas,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You can’t understand why. We can’t understand why either. But maybe it’s not so strange. Because Gunnar Våge didn’t kill Jonas. You did.’
She spun around and looked at me, her face scarlet.
‘Listen, Veum,’ Paulus Smith said. ‘Listen, this is …’
Jakob E. Hamre leaned across the table and looked intently at her.
‘You did it,’ I said. ‘And it’s been you all along. We just haven’t seen it. I just haven’t seen it. But I get it now. And that’s why you lied.’
‘Why?’ she said.
‘You lied so nobody’d know you’d had anything to do with Gunnar Våge. Let alone that you’d been at his place. Let alone that you could have gone through his things and found the knife you killed Jonas with.’
‘He gave it to me. Gunnar gave me …’
‘And why was that? Did you two plan …?’
‘You don’t get it, Varg. I don’t think you understand anything. Yes, I got the knife from Gunnar, but it wasn’t because I planned – we planned to … It was so I could defend myself if – if Joker and his gang didn’t leave me alone. In case they kept on bothering us … I kept it in the top drawer of the chest in the foyer … in case they tried to break in or something …’
‘But nobody tried to break in. Jonas showed up. And you killed him.’
‘It was crazy,’ she said. ‘Crazy. It never should have happened, but …’
Hamre’s low-key calm voice interrupted. ‘Tell us about it, Fru Andresen. Calmly now. Tell us what happened.’
She looked at him almost gratefully. I realised I was tied in knots. And I felt infinitely lonely. As lonely as you could get. I looked at those intertwined fingers of hers again. That was how lovers hold hands when they moon over one another. But she wasn’t mooning over anybody, and the only person she twined fingers with was herself. Maybe she only loved herself, when you got right down to it.
‘I came back from the cellar,’ she said, ‘and he’d already let himself in. Suddenly it got to me. You don’t live here any more, Jonas, I said, you’ve no right to let yourself in now. He looked embarrassed. And then he began to apologise. Said he’d been so broke he’d been late with the payments. And on and on.
‘I don’t know what happened. But suddenly I saw red. It was as if all the hurt and hopelessness suddenly flooded over me. And things went black. And I thought how he’d wrecked the whole thing. With his adultery. He made me cheat. He made me commit a deadly sin.
‘I threw the jar of jam at him and it hit him on the forehead. He’s always had a quick temper, and he slapped me. Right in the face, so I fell against the chest of drawers and banged my hip. It really hurt.
‘I opened the drawer and found the knife and I – I hit back. I stabbed him. It – it just seemed to sink into him, and I … He leaned forward. I don’t know if he even saw the knife. He looked so confused.
‘What have you done, Wenche? he said. But I couldn’t stand the way he looked at me, so I pulled the knife out and stabbed him again and again. And again. He started towards me, and then – he fell.’
She stared darkly into space. ‘He lay there. I walked by him. Went to the door. Went outside. I remember screaming for help. I don’t know what happened after that. I think I fainted. I remember how frozen I was when you – Varg was first, and then …’ Her voice trailed into silence.
We knew the rest.
‘It happens so fast,’ she said. ‘Ending a life. One, two, three: just like that. Gunnar’s and mine too.’
‘And Roar’s,’ I said.
‘And Roar’s,’ she said tiredly. As if he were a distant relative she’d once known long, long ago.
We sat there. After a while, Hamre turned off the tape recorder. It was dead quiet in the room.
Then Smith stood up. Heavily. ‘You did a great job for the defence, Veum,’ he said. Leaden sarcasm.
Hamre and I stood up at the same time. We looked down at Wenche Andresen. ‘Can I have a few minutes alone with her?’ I said. Hamre looked at me. Deadpan. ‘You can’t do any more damage than you already have.’ Then he nodded and left the room with Smith. The constable still sat by the door but I didn’t count her. She was part of the scenery.
I went to Wenche Andresen, leaned over the table, bracing myself on my fists. She looked up at me with the same eyes, the same mouth. But I’d never kiss her. I knew that now. I’d never kiss her again.
‘I’m sorry, Wenche,’ I said. ‘But I had to say it. I had to. I believed you the whole time. I was sure you were innocent, that you didn’t do it. But when I finally realised you lied to me, I had to say it. I hope you understand.’
She nodded silently.
‘I really liked meeting you. You and Roar. Those evenings – I … It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so good. If things had been different, who knows? Maybe we could have – found each other. Maybe we could have meant something to one another.’
She looked at me.
‘But it’s too late now, Wenche. Much too late.’
‘I’m sorry, Varg,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it to be this way.’
I studied her face for what I hoped was the last time: eyes, lips, the drawn skin, the anguished expression …
And I thought about Roar. About the father she’d already deprived him of. And about the mother she was about to deprive him of. What would happen to him? To her? To me? I wondered where we’d all be in five years. In ten. There were too many questions and only one life to answer them in. Just one life – and it’s over so quickly. You go around with it in your hand one minute. Somebody’s taken it away from you the next, and you’re lying on the pavement.
I straightened up. Heard myself saying, ‘I make a date with you. Put it down: at six o’clock in the evening, a thousand years from now …’
‘What are you talking about?’
I shrugged. ‘Just something I once read.
Then I turned and quickly left the room. Didn’t look back. Hamre was waiting. ‘Smith’s already left. I don’t think he could have stood the sight of you again this evening,’ he said. ‘I can understand how he feels.’
I looked at him and this time there was no escaping his irritation. ‘What do you really think you’ve accomplished in all this?’ he said.
‘There are accomplishments and accomplishments,’ I said.
‘The same murderer is still in custody. Nothing new there. It’s still the same solution I gave you last Friday. The only new developme
nt is that between then and now, a guy’s killed a kid.’
‘Maybe it is exactly the same solution,’ I said helplessly. ‘But there are always a lot of sides to the truth. I’ve talked to a lot of people since Friday so maybe the reality isn’t exactly what it used to be. Not when you get right down to it.’
‘Sometimes I think the only thing you’re good at is playing with words, Veum.’ Hamre sounded tired. ‘It’s the only thing you don’t always screw up anyway. I happen to care about the facts. And they tell me an ordinary guy’s turned into a murderer and a live kid’s turned into a dead body since all this started last Friday. The guy could have gone on living his not very successful or exciting life, and I’ll admit the kid’s future didn’t look very bright. But each of them had a life ahead of him, Veum. There were two chances there that something might have come along some day. You’ve deprived them of those two chances once and for all. Do you get the point? Do you know what I’m saying?’
I knew what he was saying.
Silently, we walked up the stairs and I went home.
52
I was at the police station the next day. I was questioned once more about what had happened the previous evening. Then I signed the statement and left without anybody cheering or throwing confetti.
I took my time walking down to the office. Then up the stairs. Through the door with its pane of pebbled glass. Over to the desk. I wrote my initials in the film of dust so everybody’d know it was my office even though I wasn’t always there.
I sat down. My head was empty and my heart was like stone. I could see Håkonshallen across the rooftops. Beyond it were the outlines of a mothballed oil-drilling platform out in Skuteviken. Each of them was a cenotaph marking an era with a span of about seven hundred years. I felt seven hundred years old myself now and then.
I looked in my notebook for a number I’d written down several days ago. When I found it I looked at it as if it were some kind of magic formula. Or a key to the future.
I dialled the number. Got through to the switchboard. ‘Is Solveig Manger there?’ I said.
About the Author
GUNNAR STAALESEN was born in Bergen, Norway in 1947. He made his debut at the age of twenty-two with Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. He is the author of over 20 titles, which have been published in 24 countries and sold over two million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Epsen Seim. Staalesen, who has twice won Norway’s top crime prize, the Golden Pistol, lives in Bergen with his wife.
Copyright
Arcadia Books Ltd
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First published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company Ltd 1993
This B format edition Arcadia Books 2010
Originally published by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo as Din til Døden
Copyright © Gunnar Staalesen 1979
English language translation copyright © Margaret Amassian 1993
Gunnar Staalesen has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–909807–01–3
This Ebook edition published 2013
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