‘What do you want to do there?’
‘I’ve just found out I have a brother.’
He heard what she said, but couldn’t quite digest it.
‘Congratulations.’ That was the best he could manage.
She giggled. ‘Wild, isn’t it? He’s my half-brother. He and I have the same father. You’re the first person I’ve told. I got a letter today. He’s written that he’s my brother. He also says he contacted our father a few years ago.’
‘That’s fantastic. Getting a brother when you’re thirty-four.’
‘He traced me. He does genealogy. And I can take time off in lieu. I fancy going there. Are you up for a trip?’
‘Perhaps we can go via Ulsteinvik?’
‘Of course. What are you going to do in Ulsteinvik?’
‘It’s this Sea Breeze story. There’s a woman who lives in Ulsteinvik I’d like to talk to, but she rings off when I call.’
PART 2
1
He got up at the usual time and went to the window to check if there were any strangers around with malevolent intentions. Everything can become a habit.
There were gaps in the lines of parked cars. The pathway behind them seemed deserted. He fixed his gaze on one of the newly planted trees alongside the path to register, if possible, any sudden movements in his peripheral vision. But he saw only the postman pulling his trolley.
He tore himself away, brewed a cup of coffee and sipped it while packing the essentials in a rucksack. Thinking how wonderful it would be not to give a damn about anything. But he did. He put the memory stick containing the police documents in the rucksack. And packed his laptop. Then he stood by the window wondering what else to take with him so that he didn’t lose his grip on his assignments while he was away.
He was by the window when Matilde reversed up in front of the block of flats and hooted her horn – like in a film. He also felt as if he were in a film when, a few minutes later, he dumped his rucksack onto the rear seat beside Petter, who lifted a paw to attract his attention.
Matilde was excited. She was both looking forward to this and dreading it, she said, as they drove through Bryns Tunnel towards Alnabru. There was the sense of freedom you had when setting out on a journey without making any plans for your return. The destination was quite another issue though: family she had never known about and – not least – the prospect of finding out more. What had made her decide to visit them was that her brother wrote that he had contacted their father.
‘A letter appears in the post box and it opens a whole new world, a new life. At first I thought someone was taking the piss. But then I saw the family tree in the letter and checked with my mother, and she says it’s correct. The man who fathered this guy is my father, too. His name’s Simon.’
‘Your father?’
‘No. My half-brother. The man who wrote the letter. He’s a few years older than me.’
‘Does he know you’re coming?’
‘No.’
‘Shouldn’t you ring to make sure he’s at home?’
‘No. I don’t want to ring. I want to see him when he speaks.’
‘What if he isn’t at home?’
She glanced at him. ‘Try to be a little positive. I have a brother. I can meet my brother and then I might meet my father, too.’
She stretched her arm back to Petter and picked up a pile of CDs, which she handed to Frank. ‘You’ll have to be the DJ.’
She poked a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and pressed down on the car lighter. A red varnished nail uppermost.
Frank chose blindly from the pile. Trespass by Genesis, and soon the voice of Peter Gabriel filled the speakers.
They had been driving for three quarters of an hour when Matilde’s phone rang. She lowered the music and put the phone to her ear. After putting it down she had a worried expression on her face.
‘Who was it?’
‘Guri’s aunt. The funeral’s on Thursday.’
He fell quiet and so did she. It wasn’t going to be a long holiday.
‘Do you want to turn back?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘Do you?’
‘No.’
Matilde turned up the music and put her foot on the accelerator.
2
When he checked his wristwatch, a little later, he noticed a rattling sound in the casing. He turned down the music. Loosened his watch strap, shook it and listened.
‘What’s up?’ she said.
‘There’s a weird sound in my watch. There’s something loose.’
‘But is it working?’
‘Yes. What’s more, it’s accurate.’
She grinned. ‘A screw loose in all that sophisticated machinery? Sooner or later the watch’s bound to stop.’
They decided to drive on the western side of Lake Mjøsa. So they left the motorway at Minnesund, but stopped out of courtesy to let a line of veteran cars leave the petrol station. Matilde, who prided herself on her knowledge, reeled off the makes and models as the vehicles turned onto the road in front of them.
‘An A-model Ford, perhaps from around 1930, a Mercedes 300 Adenauer from the mid-fifties, an E-class 280 convertible – the stiff design tells you it’s from around 1980; the low-slung job is a Corvette Stingray from the mid-seventies; notice the change to the Volvo saloon from the sixties, and that one, that’s cool, a Mercury 1949.’
‘David Lindley sings a blues number about it,’ he said.
‘I’ve got that CD here,’ she said, putting the car in gear, but braked when a last veteran wanted to come out and join the others. It was a Citroën HY van from the late forties.
It looked like a bulldog struggling to keep up.
Matilde joined the line at the back and grinned. ‘There we are. We’re like a seventeenth of May procession.’
Frank took the pile of CDs and flicked through until he found David Lindley’s El Rayo-X. Pressed it into the player.
The first kilometres on the west of the lake felt like driving in Vestland. The road was narrow and winding with sudden cuts in the rock down to the water. North of the Skreifjella ridge the countryside opened up into a flat rural region.
On the way between Lena and Gjøvik Frølich nodded off. When he awoke it was because of a pungent smell. It was Matilde steering the car with her knees while varnishing her nails.
‘Check out the White Swan,’ she shouted, waving her fingers to let the varnish dry. She was right – the paddle steamer Skibladner was on its way from Gjøvik northwards.
The veterans bid farewell at the roundabout by Mjøs bridge. Matilde wanted to drive through Østerdalen valley and took a right to the bridge over the lake.
They found the R3 and turned onto it. Almost colliding with a car parked on a bend. Behind the car a man was urinating at the side of the road. He stood with his head bowed as if praying.
It was time to put on a new CD. He took one at random and soon a slow blues was oozing from the speakers.
‘Who’s singing?’
‘Janiva Magness.’
Matilde was hungry. When a roadside inn appeared, she left the road and parked. They went in and sat alone in a sea of spindle-back chairs. The menu informed them that the plat du jour was rissoles, cabbage with white sauce and potatoes. They made do with a couple of bread rolls each. Matilde asked if the Coke was in glass bottles.
No, they had only plastic bottles. Matilde ordered water instead.
‘And you?’ she asked.
‘A beer,’ Frølich said.
Afterwards they left the inn and walked down to the river flowing nearby. An idyllic gravel pathway ran alongside the river bank. They followed it under a bridge. When they emerged on the other side, the current slowed. Here the water in the river was still. They left the path and came to a clearing between pine trees where the noise of traffic was only a faint drone far away.
They sat down on the grass and gazed around. He closed his eyes. Her hair tickled his cheek and the sun warmed his neck, a
s though it was her breathing on him.
‘It’s hot,’ she said.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘We’re alone.’
‘And on holiday,’ she said, snuggling closer and fingering his shirt buttons. There was a rustle in the forest. They sat up. Something white fluttered on the slope above them. Shortly afterwards a bride ran out from between the trees.
3
The bride was holding a bouquet in one hand and raising her dress with the other so as not to trip. She apologised for the disturbance, but she had an appointment with a photographer here.
‘Now?’
‘In three minutes,’ the bride said after consulting a tiny watch on a gold chain around her wrist.
They rearranged their clothing before her entourage arrived. As they drove off, the bride and bridegroom were up to their knees in the water while an apprentice photographer held a white parasol above their heads.
Matilde turned down a less busy route running parallel with the main road. A turn-off appeared, a gravel track leading between the trees.
‘After all, we’re on holiday.’
The track became tractor ruts leading to a firing range. The convertible swayed like a hammock and the chassis occasionally scraped the ground. A sign said the firing range was private. They drove up to the clubhouse, turned, reversed a few metres and stopped under a birch tree with hanging branches, the leaves almost sweeping against their heads.
This car is a house, he thought, removing his seat belt. It has connections with every part of our lives. When it is scrapped and recycled one day, people’s journeys and their forgotten histories, full of life-affirming adventures, will be etched into every single nail that rolls out onto the conveyor belt. In this way our souls will live on in the walls of houses and children’s failed carpentry projects.
‘What are you thinking about?’ she said as she clambered over the console.
‘Us and the world.’
He was weighed down by a feeling of shame at having sex in a car in a forest and found it difficult to relax. Not only that, the dog at the back seized every opportunity to lick his ears. However, it was a moment that grew in beauty and strength as the affection they bestowed upon each other produced a special admixture of tenderness and laughter.
Matilde slept with her head on his left shoulder. He sat without moving to avoid waking her, playing with the birch leaves above him and gazing across the valley and the river at the mountain that rose on the opposite side. A nuthatch climbed down the trunk of the birch tree with its head down and tail up. Both he and the dog were watching it.
He reflected on his conversation with Bernt Weddevåg about the fire-stricken ferry. He reflected on Shamal and the colonel who wanted to get in touch with him. These thoughts bothered Frank. Even now, on a trip away from everything, he couldn’t quite shrug off the yoke he’d wanted to escape. He could feel a lock of Matilde’s hair tickling his neck and tried to deflect his sense of duty and appreciate instead the freedom he now had: the chance to put everyday cares behind him. After many years in the police he had longed for precisely this state of mind. When, late at night, he was dying to go home or simply be somewhere else, but was obliged to be present without knowing what he was really waiting for. Or when lack of sleep made getting through the start of a day as difficult as rowing a boat against the current. How satisfying it had been to say to Matilde on the phone that of course he could go on a trip. There was nothing here to hold him back.
But he wasn’t totally free, he reproached himself immediately afterwards. He had mentioned Oda Borgersrud’s name when Matilde asked him if he wanted to go with her. He had packed his laptop and his work commitments in his rucksack.
Could he not leave everyday life behind him after all? Or was it the control freak in him that made him want to legitimise the journey to himself, as though a mutinous conscience deep within him still viewed dropping what he was doing as irresponsible? I’m not leaving everything behind me, he thought. I’ve packed Jørgen Svinland’s assignment in my rucksack. Matilde is going to see her brother. I’m going to see Oda Borgersrud.
Matilde was cold when she woke. She whispered that she didn’t want to move because then time would start up again. He reached for her coat on the rear seat and wrapped it around her shoulders.
After a while she began to smile, even though her eyes were closed.
‘What is it?’
‘My back hurts.’
‘So time has started up again?’
She nodded.
4
They passed Rena. Matilde’s hair fluttered in the wind and the sun was reflected in her sunglasses. On the stereo there was a song that fitted their surroundings: ‘Long Strange Golden Road’ by The Waterboys. Matilde told him that her mother’s partner also had an old American car, a 1962 Rambler, and that he had just installed a record-player in it.
‘An original Norelco Mignon. It plays singles while you’re driving, forty-fives, and it doesn’t jump. It’s absolutely unbelievable. The challenge is to find singles that match the style of the car. Elvis and Jim Reeves and so on, and those discs aren’t easy to find.’
When they had reached the village of Stai she asked whether it was alright if they had a little company in the car. He shrugged. He didn’t mind and he had an inkling that they were now into her Østerdalen project. She pulled into a bus lay-by, took out her phone and began to text while telling Frank that she knew a guy who lived in Koppang. She informed this Gunnar that she and her ‘buddy’ were heading for Nordvestland and then he had asked if he could hitch a lift to Dombås.
‘Hope he hasn’t got a lot of luggage,’ Frank said, looking at the back seat. The dog was sitting on the floor, panting, and they had already stowed quite a bit of stuff on the seats.
Soon her phone peeped.
‘Gunnar’s ready,’ she said, throwing her phone into the glove compartment and making a sign. She told him that Gunnar was a musician and she knew him from the time when she tried her luck as a vocalist in a rock band.
‘Wow, have you sung in a band?’
‘It didn’t come to anything. Too much individualism among those guys.’
He leaned back, thinking the road in Østerdalen was made for cruising, with the taiga snow forest and the mighty river as a backdrop. He reached for a cigarette. She kept both hands on the wheel. He poked the filter between Matilde’s lips and held her cigarette as she took a drag. The filter was soon smudged with her lipstick.
At Koppang she left the main road and crossed the river Glomma, which formed eddies by the bridge piers.
The guy called Gunnar was waiting for them on a steep hill by Koppangtunet Hotel. He was in his forties, a tall, thin man with a somewhat odd appearance – an already long head was lengthened by a droopy moustache and a much-too-small peaked cap. He was wearing a white shirt and an open, black leather waistcoat over green, wadmal trousers secured with braces. On his feet he wore military boots with tightly laced shafts. The footwear made him look like a sculpture on stems. His luggage was an instrument case. He quickly cleared himself a space in the middle of the rear seat and sat down, without treading on the dog.
They drove for a while in embarrassed silence, then Frank Frølich thought he should break the ice. He turned round and asked Gunnar if he was a musician.
5
The passenger leaned forward, planted his elbows on the backs of their seats and said: ‘Eh, what?’
Matilde pressed the button that activated the folding soft top. Gunnar had to move his instrument case so that the top slotted into place. And when the silence settled around them and changed the sound of wind and speed to a muted hum, Gunnar said:
‘It was wonderful. Jesus, it was wonderful. At that time I was actually doing alright.’
‘When was that?’
‘When we played together.’
‘We rehearsed in a really awful hall in Gamlebyen,’ Matilde explained. ‘In Fredrikstad.’
‘And I was living in
Øra. I was living with a dame, Francine. Did you meet her?’
Matilde shook her head.
‘She was Canadian and it was, like, just us most of the time. We spoke French and none of my pals did, nor anyone in my family or the block of flats, for that matter. In a way it was the language that bound us together.’
‘We practised on Wednesdays,’ Matilde explained. ‘But we had to give up in the end.’
‘Why was that?’
‘You tell him,’ Matilde said via the mirror to the man in the rear seat.
‘I was playing an old Höfner bass,’ Gunnar said, ‘the same model that Paul McCartney played in The Beatles, and Vidar played a Goldtop, he always did have a load of money, did Vidar, and then there was Leif with his Stratocaster and Matilde on vocals, but I don’t know if you caught my drift there: Höfner bass, Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul. You’re rooted in tradition there. It’s the sixties and seventies in a nutshell. But Vidar had a screw loose. In between songs he sat blacking out sentences in the newspaper. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m crossing out the sentences I don’t like,” he said. And then you start wondering. We practised for hours without a drummer. That was also an argument for keeping a low profile, in my opinion. You can’t rehearse your self-penned repertoire without knowing how the drums have to sound. In the end, a drummer called Tommy joined us. He had copied the drum kit Keith Moon used on a record The Who released in 1969.’
‘The record’s called Tommy, of course,’ Matilde said.
‘Right,’ Gunnar said. ‘Two Premier bass drums, six tom-toms, one snare drum and three floor toms, three cymbals and a hi-hat. It sounded like a stone-crushing plant with a sense of rhythm. The trouble was that you couldn’t trust Tommy. He rarely turned up for rehearsals, and then he was hanging around with that woman from somewhere in Gudbrandsdalen, and she was totally off her trolley. I’m not kidding. We could sit there drinking coffee or Coke and then suddenly she’d start howling.’
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