Cold Hearts Page 14

  I asked her if it was Kjell Malthus and Rolf Terje Dalby she had on her mind, but as far as they were concerned she was not very forthcoming. She had been totally unaware that Rolf Terje and Maggi had grown up together, or that he had been her brother’s best friend.

  I had referred to what Tanya had told me, that Maggi had said she wasn’t going to be there long, she would soon be on her travels. She had looked at me with astonishment and asked me: ‘Why the hell did she say that to Tanya, and not to me?’ I had explained it was tied up with the trick she refused. When I told her about the two guys who had beaten up Tanya, she said: ‘That was what I told you when I hired you! Do you think …? Perhaps it was them who came back? Were they the ones who killed Tanya? Did it just go too far this time?’

  We got no closer to the answer.

  Over the rim of the aquavit glass I asked: ‘What got you into this mess, Hege?’

  ‘What do you think? Nine out of ten girls are victims of child abuse. Drugs come with the territory …’ She swallowed hard, and the follow-up lived long in the memory. ‘As for me I was raped by three classmates when I was at school. And I didn’t have anyone I could talk to.’

  This burned right through me like an electric shock. ‘Not even …?’

  She laughed when she saw my expression, but it was a cheerless laugh. ‘No, not even Thomas. It was over between us when this happened. The little there had been …’ Her smile softened. ‘He was sweet, actually …’ Then her eyes darkened again. ‘One of them was my best friend. Or so I thought.’

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘Yes, she held me down. But that was the worst bit, anyway. Her being part of it. Afterwards she said it was because I had made a move on her boyfriend.’

  ‘And this boyfriend, was he one of the attackers?’

  ‘No. But I was in love with him. So, in a way, she was right. It was my own fault.’

  ‘It’s never your fault when that sort of thing happens, Hege.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘But Maggi …?’

  ‘Yes? Did she tell you … a similar story?’

  ‘No, but she … not in so many words. It was a hellish winter night, ten degrees below and not a single bloody punter out in a car. We went up to hers and sat drinking. I told her – the same as I’ve told you, but perhaps in more detail, and she said … Yes, I understand how you feel, Hege. I know exactly what it feels like.’

  ‘Exactly what it feels … Did she say anything else? Who, when, how?’

  ‘No, she didn’t say any more. It ended up with us lying in each other’s arms and crying. And the next morning we spewed in unison.’ She smiled cynically. ‘At one in everything.’ Then she held out her empty glass. ‘Another?’

  I poured slowly. ‘Perhaps it’s time to go to bed?’

  She gave a wry smile. ‘Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘My bedroom’s in there. You’re here.’ I pointed to the sofa. ‘I’ll find you some bedlinen.’

  I went into the bedroom and fetched some clean sheets and a padded quilt from a wardrobe. When I entered the living room again, she had removed her blouse. Her lingerie was black, but her upper body was pale and a bit flabby.

  I threw the linen on the bed while she slid down the zip on the side of her skirt, let it fall and blew a kind of trumpet fanfare.

  ‘Relax, Hege. I’ve see naked women before.’

  ‘So you’re not a homo then? That’s not your problem?’ she blurted with an aggression I had not expected. ‘Or is it because I am who I am? There have been far too many on top of me? And you’ll become a customer like all the others?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. On the contrary. In fact, you’re my customer. You pay for my services, and it would be immoral of me to … exploit the situation.’ The moment I said it I knew what the counter-argument would be.

  ‘Exploit the situation! Don’t make me laugh! As if I haven’t been …’ With a swing of the arm she unhooked her bra at the back and slung it into the air. She peeled off her panties and threw them towards me. They didn’t quite reach. ‘I haven’t had a trick all day. I’m showered and fresh, as fresh as any girl on the game!’

  She thrust her hands behind her neck, spread her legs and strutted her stuff. There was a feverish glow in her eyes, and the artificial smile she put on for me would have disintegrated at the slightest touch.

  I tried to hold her gaze. In a dry, sober voice I said: ‘I’ll go and get ready in the bathroom first, Hege. I’ll put out an extra toothbrush and hang up a towel for you.’

  ‘I’ll put out an extra toothbrush!’ she mimicked. ‘You’re not going to wipe my arse for me as well, are you?’

  ‘Let me know if there’s anything you need. And put on your clothes. The show’s over. The audience’s gone home.’

  I turned and left. In the bathroom I washed with cold water, thoroughly. Raising my head and looking at myself in the mirror, I glimpsed a shadow of the same feverish glow I had seen in her. I finished and cleaned up for her, but when I went in she had crawled under the quilt and turned her back on the room.

  ‘Good night,’ I said.

  She nodded in silence.

  ‘I have to get up at seven for a meeting at eight, but you can lie in for as long as you like, just close the door after you when you leave.’

  She rolled over and looked at me with raised eyebrows. I knew I was taking a risk, but on the other hand both the TV and hi-fi were such old models that she wouldn’t get much for them on the open market. Besides, the TV was bigger than bankers’ bonuses. She nodded. ‘Thank you … I’m sorry I was … so stupid. You’re almost as sweet as Thomas.’

  ‘Almost,’ I said.

  She smirked. ‘Good night.’

  I closed the door behind me and lay for a while listening to the sounds of the night: a cat out a-courting in Fjellgaten, an owl flying low over Skansen, a driver changing down with revs too high on the Øvre Blekevei hill. The whole time I was distressed by the image of Tanya lying on the quay by the Customs House, pale, dead, without even the minimum accompanying customs declaration.

  Then I must have fallen asleep. I woke with her standing beside my bed. Her voice was thin, reedy. ‘Varg? I can’t sleep. Can I come into your bed?’

  Half delirious and incapable of resistance, I folded the duvet to one side. ‘OK then, but to sleep, alright.’

  She snuggled up to my back and put her arms around me. ‘I kept thinking about Tanya,’ she said.

  ‘I did, too. But try to sleep now.’

  ‘I’ve got some condoms in my handbag.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ In one agile leap I was over her and onto the floor. ‘I’ll take the sofa. Sleep tight.’ Once a scout, always a scout. Someone should have awarded me a medal.

  At that she gave in. Perhaps when it came down to it what she had been after was my bed.

  The next morning she was fast asleep when I inched the door open to say that I was off. I shrugged and crossed my fingers that she would take no more than the aquavit bottle as she left.

  At eight I had a meeting with Nils Åkre at my office. If nothing else, at least I felt I had a kind of moral advantage over him now.

  23

  IT WAS CLOSER TO HALF PAST when he turned up. On the other hand, I’d had the time to brew some coffee in the meanwhile.

  ‘Heavy night, Nils?’

  He sent me an annoyed look. ‘Don’t you go thinking …’ But he broke off, accepted the offer of coffee and sat staring stiffly out of the window, where the sun still had a bit to do before it struggled over Mount Ulriken.

  Then he turned to me with a gloomy countenance. ‘How long have we known each other, Varg?’

  ‘More than twenty years. I remember contacting you when I first started in this business, and that was in 1975.’

  ‘I’ve given you lots of jobs over the years, haven’t I?’

  ‘If that’s an intro to saying it’s all over now, save your breath, Nils. I’ve never been a mora
list. What folk do in their free time and with whom they do it has never been any concern of mine. And I’ve never met your wife.’

  His face creased. ‘You don’t understand. Siv and I are not in a relationship.’

  ‘No?’ I observed him over the top of the coffee cup. It was not a pleasant sight. Lack of sleep lay like a grey membrane over his massive face. He had been unfortunate with his morning shave, and his hair looked thinner than it was wont to do. ‘Well, some time ago you said you hardly knew her, if I haven’t mis-remembered.’

  ‘Everyone can have one lapse, can’t they?’

  I did something between shrugging and showing with a nod that I understood what he meant.

  ‘I’d had a bit too much to drink. I mean … when it happened. And I was fascinated by that cold distance of hers. Always felt like that. Wondered what you needed to do to break the ice.’

  ‘And you found out?’

  He sent me another annoyed look as though I had disturbed his line of thought. ‘She’d been drinking too. It was after the annual … Christmas dinner.’

  ‘Original.’

  ‘Oh, I know! Spare me your usual comments, Varg. Sometimes I get so bloody sick of them.’

  I didn’t answer. I hugged the ropes in case he began to windmill flailing fists.

  ‘We were standing in the taxi queue, and when at last it was our turn we took the same taxi. We arrived at where she lived, and she said she would pay, but I said: “No, no, Siv. I’ll take care of it.” Then she looked up and asked: “What about another glass of wine?”’ He eyed me defiantly. ‘Would you have turned down the offer perhaps?’

  I could have told him about what I had turned down over the previous day, but I saved that for another occasion. Once again I shrugged, so as not to provoke him further.

  He had finished his coffee, and angrily snatched the coffee pot and poured himself a refill, right to the brim. ‘Shit, Varg! It was the very devil’s own dance!’

  ‘Some think he has a finger in most things we do.’

  Resigned, he raised the cup to his mouth without bothering about the coffee slopping over the side and dripping onto his lap. His gaze was distant and very close at the same time. For a second or two I wondered whether he was on something, but I rejected that idea. Not Nils Åkre, our insurance man for more than two decades.

  ‘It’s been like a nightmare for me ever since that unfortunate December night. As though I were … as though … it goes against everything I believe in, Varg. Everything I stand for.’

  I nodded with complete understanding. ‘Perhaps it would help …’

  ‘If I unburdened myself?’ he interrupted, not without a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘For example.’

  ‘OK. Listen to my charming little fairy tale then!’

  I settled down to do precisely that. To listen.

  ‘The taxi driver sent me a knowing wink as I paid, and I gave him an extra tip to stop him opening his gob. I went up with her and was given a glass of wine … and a bit more.’

  Another pause as his eyes flitted in and out, back and forth in time.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Varg. That woman has got major problems.’

  ‘She … changed her mind, did she?’

  ‘Changed her mind?! Did she hell! You don’t bloody think I raped her, do you … or something similar? I told you I got … what I wanted.’ He corrected himself without delay: ‘What she had to offer.’

  ‘I see. So what were the problems?’

  ‘Women nowadays are not very shy, are they.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I’m an expert on women nowadays …’

  ‘Ho ho ho!’ A touch of the good old easy-going Nils Åkre returned. ‘Don’t make me laugh, Varg. You a single man and all that.’

  ‘Sort of living apart together, I think some say.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, but enough of that. Siv wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  He sighed and his eyes went distant again. ‘We finished our glasses, and then we messed around and kissed a bit. I began to fiddle with her dress. It was a wonderful dress, black with silver glitz in the material, but quite special. The neck was cut quite high up, with long sleeves, as though … as though she wanted to show as little skin as possible.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘But then … she suddenly pulled away. “Wait! Let’s go into the bedroom” … I didn’t mind of course, the way the situation had developed, but … when we went in she closed the door and insisted we kept the light off. The black blinds were down, and for a second or two I thought, oh shit! The woman’s mad! She’s going to kill me. But then I felt her hand on … yes, between my legs, and it wasn’t long before we lay on the bed and … went for it.’

  ‘Right. That sounds disturbingly normal, Nils.’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t get undressed.’

  ‘She would have had to if you … went for it, as you put it, surely?’

  ‘Yes, but no more than necessary. She kept her dress on, just pulled it over her thighs and … her tights down … but she kept her panties on, I almost had to force my way in … from the side.’

  ‘Well, well … embarrassment of the first meeting. Has it been that long since you were young, Nils?’

  ‘First meeting … we’re not bloody seventeen years old any more, Varg. This is two adults getting down to business of their own free volition and without any form of persuasion or force.’

  ‘Fine. But I still don’t understand how this can be as serious as you suggest. I mean … Perhaps that’s how she likes it. I’ve heard of worse pleasures than doing it fully dressed.’

  ‘Jesus, Varg. Can’t you hear what I’m saying? The woman’s got problems. Major problems. The story doesn’t finish there.’

  ‘Carry on then!’

  He looked at me, nettled. ‘As you know, Varg, I have a solid physique.’

  ‘No one can take that from you. All the teacakes in Fyllingsdalen … there are better diets.’

  ‘It was as if the devil was inside me. I wanted her naked! I lay on top of her with all my weight and pulled her dress up until it was trussed round her neck, pulled it over her face, stuck her arms in the air and forced her evening dress off. Then I tore off her underwear, and as if that wasn’t enough, I searched for the lamp on the bedside table, found the switch and turned on the light. She jerked back against the bed head, as naked as a baby, trying in vain to cover herself …’

  ‘And you still maintain you didn’t rape her?’ I mumbled.

  He was barely listening. ‘But it wasn’t her breasts she was trying to cover. Nor her muff. It was her arms.’

  ‘Arms! Not needle marks?’

  ‘Needle marks? No, scars. Both arms were covered with scars. Long, swollen scars. Some of them with fresh scabs; others were old and healed.’

  ‘But …?’

  ‘She’s been self-harming, Varg! She’s been cutting herself for years!’

  ‘Herself?’

  ‘She … admitted it herself. She said: “You should go, Nils. Forget this evening. Forget what you saw. This is my dark secret, and now you know it you can never come back.”’

  Shaken, I sat in my chair as chaotic images flickered past my skull. ‘But you did … the last time was yesterday.’

  ‘The last … yesterday! That was the first time I had been there since then.’

  ‘So why did you go there yesterday?’

  He smacked the coffee cup down hard and stood up. ‘It was a fiasco, of course. Had I known you would be there …’

  ‘And what difference did that make?’

  ‘The reason I went was that you had been talking to her as part of your assignment. I went there to tell her whatever she told you she must not under any circumstances mention this.’

  ‘And what was so dangerous about it?’

  ‘You should be old enough to understand, Varg. This will complicate our relationship for years to come.’

  ‘Had you rung her beforehand to say you
were coming?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘She had washed her hair and she didn’t like me being there. I had the feeling she was expecting someone.’

  ‘It wasn’t me at any rate. I hadn’t rung to … forewarn her. I went on the spur of the moment.’ He checked his watch. ‘But I have to go. I have a meeting at ten. And now you know, Varg. Now two of us know. I hope you can understand that Siv Monsen is a woman with major problems. Approach her with caution. Great caution.’

  I nodded, got up and escorted him to the door. ‘Don’t delete my telephone number, Nils. This will stay between us.’

  He nodded back. ‘Nothing will be as before, but let’s try.’

  We shook hands in a formal manner, and then he was gone. I slumped down onto the chair behind the desk and sat looking out of the window.

  The sun had risen above the mountain now. But it was pale and ill humoured. It seemed to be already regretting its appearance. And I felt quite secure. It wasn’t going to shine on us for long on this January day.

  24

  ANNEMETTE BERGESEN LOOKED STRESSED. She finished what she was doing on her laptop, shoved some high piles of paper to the side, fetched something that looked, from my side of the desk, like an autopsy report, flicked through it swiftly and put it down with an impatient gesture before, at length, fixing me with her eyes and saying: ‘Right, Veum.’

  I felt exactly as if I had been summoned to the headmaster for a serious offence during my wild schooldays at Bergen Cathedral School. ‘Don’t blame me. You’re the one who asked me to come here.’

  ‘Obviously a hasty decision. But let’s get down to brass tacks, Veum. What can you tell me about Tanya Allilujeva Karoliussen, which according to our investigations is the official name of the dead woman?’

  ‘Tanya Allilu … Karoliussen. Married in Norway?’

  ‘Separated. Former permanent address given as Kirkenes. Now living in a basement flat in Løvstakksiden. Rogagaten. But I was doing the asking, wasn’t I?’