Fallen Angels

by Gunnar Staalesen

  After a little hesitation she pecked me on the forehead. Then she made herself comfortable, a wedge of the duvet in the empty space between us, her neck turned resolutely in the opposite direction.

  For a while I lay listening to her tense breathing. Jakob had made love to her. So had Johnny Solheim. Even Berge Brevik, on one solitary occasion. But as for me … who had … I had … for so many … years … I wasn’t going … to get…

  Then I drifted off, on the rolling swell of waves, rocked to sleep by a dream near a beach.

  My sleep was full of images. Once when I had half woken, she was lying with her back to me, I had my arms around her and could feel her long, slim bottom against my raised, stiff antenna and I drifted off again. Another time she had turned over and was breathing against my neck. Her hair was burning like a fire on the pillow and I lay with my trunk in the air ready to extinguish the flames. Then she was on the floor, with her back to me, naked. And finally … finally …

  …she was gone.

  I sat bolt upright in bed, surprised by the daylight around me.

  The room was empty and on the desk she had left me a note. At first she had written Thanks for…, but she had crossed it out. Then she had written Talk later…, but she had crossed that out too. She had finally opted for: Leave quietly so you don’t disturb Helga. Bye. Rebecca.

  I got up, aired the bed, dressed and tore two pages out of the newspapers she had found for me. Before I left I took a deep, deep breath to see if there was a trace of her fragrance left. But all I could smell was stale bedroom air and in my mouth the bitter taste of failed kisses.

  I was as quiet as I could be, but to no avail. Helga Bøe was sitting at the kitchen table glaring at me, fully dressed with a slice of dark rye bread in her hand. I made a vague flourish with my arm and tried to pass her quickly, on my guard against ambushes.

  She turned, grabbed a tomato knife and half-rose from her chair brandishing the weapon in my direction. ‘If anyone hurts Rebecca, they’ll have me to deal with. Have you got that?’ she said, and fell back heavily.

  I stood staring at the knife. ‘Is that … with retroactive effect as well?’

  She didn’t answer, and I left.

  Outside, the day waited like an unopened window in an advent calendar you never received.

  40

  At Johnny Solheim’s funeral we met again, almost all of us.

  Winter still lay waiting behind the sea somewhere. The mountains around the town were bare and grey as though beaten out of a metal plate a heavenly blacksmith had left behind, casually discarded over the town, unused for the time being.

  The faces of those gathered outside the chapel bore the same metallic hue. It was a sombre cortege, as is appropriate on such occasions.

  The two families stood apart without attempting even the most tenuous of contacts. Bente Solheim was wearing a black coat, which made her face more transparent than ever. Had it not been for the thick layer of make-up, she would have been invisible. It struck me that that was what she was: a powdered ghost. She was with two elderly people I assumed were her parents, some others who could have been sisters or sisters-in-law, brothers or brothers-in-law, and she had her eldest child with her, a seven-year-old boy who stood with his face closed to the cold and the crowd around him.

  Anita Solheim was a lot livelier, dressed in a fur coat that had seen better days, much like her, but her head was erect and she was watching the new arrivals with an eagle eye, the way a head waiter discreetly controls guests at a private party. Or perhaps she was looking for someone in particular.

  Her daughter, Sissel, stood beside her, in dark-blue cords and the same puffer jacket I had seen her wearing before. I didn’t see anyone who might be Ruth.

  I had rung Vegard Vadheim in the morning and told him about my failed mission to northern Hordland. I had said he should come to the funeral and he had growled, ‘I’d been thinking the same, Veum.’

  Afterwards I had called Belinda Bruflåt, but without success. Now she was walking up the hills from Møllendalsveien, wearing a scruffy rabbit-fur coat and an equally scruffy fur hat on her head. She walked like a diva, but behind the make-up she bore an expression that revealed how unsure she was which of her roles she should play on this occasion. Two paces behind her came Stig Madsen, like some sort of undertaker.

  The significance of Johnny Solheim in the local rock scene explained the large turn-out of former colleagues and rivals, from Rune Larsen to Tom Harry Halvorsen, across a large spectrum of known and half-known faces. Like ghosts they stepped out of the faded posters of the early sixties. It was as if the rock scene in Espeland Hall had been brought to life and there would be a repeat here and now, life-size, in full, and still going strong. But I wasn’t so sure whether all the musicians could still play. And I was even less sure whether they could hack a stage performance, as most of them were overweight and balding.

  Then came Rebecca, hurrying from the bus stop in Årstadveien. She walked with long strides as though on the way from one era to another. Her face always wore this shifting, pensive expression.

  I went over to her. ‘Hi. Thanks for last—’

  She interrupted me: ‘Not now, Varg. We can talk later.’ Her eyes looked past me, tense and expectant.

  I turned round and followed her gaze. Jakob was coming towards us, greeting left and right as he went.

  From the corner of my eye I saw some more familiar faces. Both Gro and Kari were here. My gaze rested on Kari, and a wary smile spread across her face, then she looked down.

  Jakob came over to us. When he said hello to Rebecca I seemed to see them from a great distance, like two figures in a cartoon, with frozen breath around their faces and empty speech bubbles coming from their mouths.

  ‘Hello, Jakob,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Hi,’ Jakob said with a strangely pinched countenance.

  ‘How … are things?’

  ‘G-good,’ Jakob said, then added: ‘Kind of.’

  I coughed and they turned to me as though they had forgotten I was there.

  Jakob smiled wryly and said to Rebecca: ‘Varg and I have … met up, Rebecca.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘I suppose you have.’

  There was a silence between us. A total silence.

  I gestured with my hand and stepped aside. ‘I just have to … Bye.’

  I walked over to Belinda Bruflåt. She looked at me with wet lips and dry eyes, still unsure about her role. Beside her stood Stig Madsen, looking as if he were her manager and I were a potential challenger for his post. I nodded briefly to him and turned to Belinda. ‘Is Ruth Solheim here?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me. I know you know her. Can you see her anywhere?’

  She scanned the growing crowd of people. Then she shook her head.

  ‘But you know where she…?’

  ‘We can talk later,’ she said, heading for the entrance without a backward glance.

  Stig Madsen followed her, looking at me with barely concealed triumph.

  Alright, if that’s how you want it, let’s talk later, all of us. Perhaps there’ll be another occasion in the not too distant future. At someone else’s funeral.

  Vegard Vadheim stood at the top step of the stairs leading to the cemetery, as motionless as a gravestone. His eyes were sweeping over the gathering of mourners, scrutinising face after face. He didn’t miss much.

  The only people I couldn’t see, of those I had met in recent days, were old fru Kløve, for self-explanatory reasons, and Halldis Heggøy, possibly for religious reasons.

  In other words, there was a great possibility that the person who had killed Johnny Solheim – and perhaps also Harry Kløve, Arild Hjellestad and Jan Petter Olsen – was present at the funeral.

  In which case the murderer was among us. But who was he … or she? And when would Ruth Solheim show up?

  The chapel doors opened and the crowd flocked around the entrance. I noticed that Rebe
cca and Jakob had found seats on either side of the aisle. I sat down next to Jakob.

  He glanced at me and muttered: ‘I have to talk to you, Varg. Afterwards.’

  I nodded.

  In front, to the right sat Bente Solheim, her son and closest family. A few pews further back sat Anita and Sissel, alone.

  I turned towards the entrance. People were still coming in. But no one I could identify as Ruth Solheim.

  Bringing up the rear was Vegard Vadheim, bowed with his coat hanging open. He nodded to the undertaker as if to say they could start now, then sat down in the last row and ran his eyes vigilantly over the assembled congregation.

  I met his gaze and nodded without getting an immediate response. Then I addressed my attentions to the front.

  The officiating priest came in from the left.

  It was Berge Brevik.

  He walked with his head held high as if invisible threads were holding it. His beard was quivering, and before sitting down, by the pulpit, his hands folded, he surveyed the congregation, located Rebecca, Jakob and … me, with the precision of inbuilt radar, nodded to the gallery and lowered his eyes.

  From the gallery came the raw, sensuous sounds of a violin: ‘In Moments of Solitude’.

  A sudden mood of reflection filled the church.

  Berge Brevik talked, as most priests do, about a Johnny Solheim none of us recognised, but maybe had dreamed about on the odd occasion.

  He spoke of the creative, hard-working Johnny, a busy representative ‘of so many branches of endeavour’, as he put it. In addition, he was an artist, an artisan within a decried sector of our cultural life, at least at a local level, but with a wingspan that would have afforded a flight of unimagined proportions if, for example, he had hailed from Liverpool or Memphis and not from Bergen. On a personal level he had been a good, self-sacrificing father and his wives’ … erm … his wife’s best friend. Now that he has departed this earth, so prematurely and so abruptly, he has left a void that could never be filled with anything but that which words of solace and reconciliation with the inevitability of death can offer. ‘God has given you the gift of solace, and only Jesus, the son of God, can reconcile you with this, and let you ask with Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians: “O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”’

  Rarely have so many rock singers sung so loudly in unison and with such turns of phrase as when their voices rose to the vaulted ceiling of Møllendal chapel and the wings of the hymn soared. The vocal power and volume had perhaps declined, but there was nothing wrong with their timing, and they lifted the melody to a level that was rare, causing the gallery choir hired for the service to look up from their hymn books and peer down over the edge.

  After the sprinkling of soil on the coffin, Bente Solheim and her little son went forward and each threw a long-stemmed red rose on top, and then we all trooped out.

  No one stood at the entrance to receive condolences. It wasn’t hard to imagine why.

  Having to shake the hand of your deceased husband’s former wife was one thing. It was quite another to shake the hand of his murderer.

  I looked around. People collected in groups to go back to town together in one car.

  Rebecca was already sprinting for the bus, not wishing to sit with any of us.

  Jakob came up alongside me and said: ‘Tell me, Varg … Didn’t you mention recently something about … pictures of angels?’

  I shot him a glance. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve received one too.’

  ‘What!’

  He almost looked solemn the way he was nodding.

  ‘Have you got it with you?’

  He nodded again, stuffed a hand in his pocket and pulled out a screwed-up piece of paper.

  I took it and put it in my inside pocket. I looked around. Most people had already gone. Bente Solheim was leaning against the elderly woman I assumed was her mother. She was weeping quietly while her son looked up at her with eyes only children can make so big, and only on occasions like this.

  Vegard Vadheim came towards me from the front door. ‘Well, Veum, anything new?’

  I shook my head, making my neck muscles creak. ‘N-no, I don’t think so. She obviously didn’t come to the funeral either.’

  ‘No, but we’ll find her. And soon. This is urgent.’

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘Don’t forget to contact us should you find out something.’ He cast a dubious glance at Jakob, nodded and walked on, down to the car park.

  Jakob looked at me. ‘What did he mean by that?’

  I shrugged. ‘Words. The jargon of our trade. Come here.’ I pulled him away from the chapel, up a path between the gravestones to where we were hidden behind some big rhododendron bushes.

  Then I took out the letter he had received. Before looking at it I asked: ‘Did you get this in the post?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Addressed to you personally?’

  He nodded again and I looked down at the crumpled piece of paper. It was virtually identical to the one I had seen at Bente Solheim’s.

  Four angel stickers stuck to one sheet. Now three of the heads were crossed out and around the fourth there was an ominous black square, like in the death notices. And that was exactly what this was.

  41

  We didn’t go on the town after this funeral. I recommended that Jakob showed the letter to Vegard Vadheim. He said he would think about it.

  I drove him home, dropped him off by Saint John’s church and had to go through three or four sets of traffic lights before I found an early-afternoon parking spot among the open-all-day Christmas shops and people on their way home for lunch. Two parking wardens watched me with undivided scepticism as I inserted coins into the meter, as if they were hoping I would run out.

  I went down to my office, where I first sorted the post and then my thoughts. The former was easy: all the brochures straight into the bin, bills in the pile and … there was nothing else.

  The latter was harder.

  I had too many thoughts, and they spanned too many years. I searched for a clear pattern, but one of the main pieces in the jigsaw was still missing and its name was Ruth Solheim.

  I rang Beate, my ex-wife, and arranged to pick up Thomas the following morning. Then I went to my car, snatching the prey from the claws of the two uniformed vultures waiting with bated breath around a corner for the sands in my hourglass to run out. Then I made a tour of what I called ‘the milieu’. I netted various birds in flight and rolled down the car window to talk to every girl I met, but without a tangible result. Ruth, who on earth was she? Yeah, they thought they’d seen her, but it was months ago.

  Then I met someone who had seen her … ‘Tuesday, was it? Yeah, in Sandviken, in a house with a demolition order … What, the address? She’d just slipped in with a customer. She didn’t live there.’ A girl’s thin voice said: ‘She probably had her own flat.’

  That was as close as I got.

  I drove home, changed into my tracksuit, jogged slowly up Fjellveien, did some stretches by the water trough on which it says horses need to rest, and then headed for Isdalen.

  The moon was above the mountains – a misty winter moon packed into greenish cotton, like an old Christmas tree bauble you find in the loft, in a cardboard box you had forgotten was there. The trees stood black and threatening, like a line of dead soldiers along the last part of the road to the Powder House. The moon reflected hazily in Svartediket lake, as though the bauble still wasn’t properly clean. And as I ran along the roads, my brain slowly cleansing itself, fresh oxygen allowed my thoughts to align themselves in new formations and more ideas emerged.

  The valley was deserted. In the distance some Alsatian owners were taking their dogs for a walk. A lone jogger ran towards me, out of the darkness, and was gone; but on the last part it was just me alone with nature.

  The mountains towered above, like pillars supporting the firmament, and in the broad Tarlebødal valley
the moon shone its pale light over the abandoned farmhouses, as lifeless as granite and as silent as the rest of the terrain, one Friday night in December, two days before the winter solstice.

  After arriving home and taking a shower, I dug out the telephone number of Helga Bøe. I called and asked if Rebecca was in. She wasn’t.

  I called Jakob. He was in. I asked if he had spoken to Vegard Vadheim. He hadn’t. ‘I’m not taking this that seriously, Varg.’

  ‘Right. No cause for alarm. There were only four of you, and now there’s one left. And the last person to receive a similar letter in the post was only Johnny.’

  ‘There doesn’t have to be a connection, does there?’

  ‘No, there doesn’t have to be. It could just be that someone is trying to frighten you. Sleep on it, Jakob.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Did you talk to Rebecca today, by the way?’

  ‘At the funeral? Not a great deal, no.’

  ‘OK. See you.’

  ‘Probably. Later. Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Later. This was the magic word that allowed everyone to escape reality. It was the sum of my achievements that day, and I was left feeling like I was flicking through a two-day-old newspaper.

  I called Belinda Bruflåt, without success.

  So I gave the rest of humanity the punishment they deserved. I didn’t call a single one of them.

  *

  Thomas and I spent an uneventful Saturday together. Uneventful for everyone except ourselves.

  We went swimming in Bergen’s first swimming centre, sat in the sauna like good pals, bought Saturday newspapers as if we were beginning to collect them for the Midsummer Eve bonfire, found ourselves a quiet table in an even quieter café, had a reasonable meal with a bottle of Farris and shared the papers between us over coffee.

  I occasionally glanced at him.

  It was odd to sit reading papers with your own son. He had passed the fifteen-year threshold this year; he had his confirmation behind him and life in front. I wasn’t at all sure I envied him.

  He had shot up in height. Almost precisely two weeks ago he had grown the last centimetre necessary to pass me on the way up. His hair was darker, he had started to shave – once a month anyway – and new secrets had appeared in his face. There were questions he wouldn’t answer and thoughts he would no longer share. He was a ship about to be launched after fifteen years in dry dock. Very soon he would disappear into the murkiest of all seas: adult life. He was on his way into dangerous waters, with pirates behind every skerry and the child he had once been was disappearing for good. Another one who had removed their angel wings and left them behind on a shelf in an abandoned bedroom somewhere.