Wolves at the Door Read online

  Solheim looked down the slope. ‘Is that your car down there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Looks like you might have to get a new one.’

  ‘Can I have that in writing?’

  Hamre looked in the opposite direction, at the SUV on the other side. ‘We got the reg numbers and realised you were involved. That one must be a rental vehicle. Do you know who was driving?’

  ‘Sigurd Svendsbø, from what I could see.’

  He nodded. ‘Bjørn Hårkløv was stopped by the Hønefoss police this morning, after a brief chase. Svendsbø was the only one left.’

  Solheim added: ‘Doesn’t look like he’s going to be much of a problem.’

  We followed his gaze. The firemen had opened the side of the SUV now. The whole of the cab was blackened. Hanging in the seat belt with the punctured remains of an airbag, like a burnt pancake over his shoulders, were the equally blackened remains of what appeared to have been Sigurd Svendsbø. This time there wasn’t going to be any return. Flames are more lethal than water, when all is said and done.

  ‘I don’t understand how he could know where I was.’

  ‘He might’ve been tailing you,’ Solheim suggested.

  ‘Unlikely. I would’ve seen him.’

  ‘These guys are pros,’ Hamre said. ‘My guess is we’ll find a transmitter under your car, if we have a look. It might even have been there for quite a while. They knew where you were last Sunday, for example.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s not impossible.’

  ‘So, what were you doing in these parts?’ He looked at me from the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Clearing up three murders for you.’

  He was silent as he allowed the information to sink in. ‘And by that you mean…?’

  ‘The case I mentioned and discussed with you lot at the beginning of last week.’

  ‘And you omitted to mention when we were talking last night?’ Solheim said.

  ‘In a way there were other cases in my head then. What led me to the solution was on my computer when I went to my office this morning.’

  ‘And as usual you forgot to ring us?’ Hamre said.

  I coughed and nodded. But I was willing to concede the point. I might have looked slightly abashed.

  Hamre rolled his eyes and looked heavenwards. ‘Lordy, Lordy, I’m so happy I’ve only got a few weeks left.’

  ‘But I haven’t arrested anyone.’

  ‘Really? You don’t say. Did you think perhaps that we would take care of that?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, of course. He was explicit enough, but … he has a special background, so you’ll have to see what you can get out of him.’

  Once again he rolled his eyes. Then he addressed Solheim. ‘Take down a name and an address, and we’ll go there as soon as we’ve finished here.’

  Solheim took out his notebook and biro and looked at me. I gave him the name, address and a detailed description of how to find him. He made notes. ‘You’ll be there in twenty minutes at the most,’ I added.

  ‘My sincere thanks, Veum,’ Hamre said, the sarcasm as thick as syrup. He gazed around at his colleagues from the various departments. ‘You’d better ask them who can drive you home. It won’t be us.’

  He nodded to me and motioned to Solheim to accompany him to the second car. The questioning of the lorry driver had finished. The traffic police were busy now, taking photos of the wrecked SUV and the dead man in the front seat. In the end it was an officer from the local police force who drove me back to Bergen. I asked him to drop me off at my office and went upstairs to lick my wounds as best I could. The first person I rang was Sølvi.

  48

  The ensuing days came to be subsumed under the heading ‘recap’. I was summoned to the police station and questioned about the conversation I had with Hans Storebø, including my own detailed description of what he had said about the three deaths. We also covered the original intended hit-and-run incident at the beginning of January, the one that had led me to investigate this case. We agreed that it had been Sigurd Svendbø behind the wheel and not Hans Storebø. The grey Golf told its own story, and there was no doubt about who had been driving, even if he called himself Svein Sløvåg when he rented it. In addition, it had apparently been him who had been making the silent calls.

  I phoned Foyn and brought him up to date. I asked him to send my regards to Mørk and to apologise for not ringing him back earlier. ‘Heh heh,’ Foyn replied. ‘I’ll invite him over for a good cognac, then he’ll probably t-take it with equanimity. After all, the most important thing is that the case was solved.’ We agreed to keep in touch in case we needed to give each other a helping hand on a later occasion.

  On Friday Sølvi called and invited me to lunch at Enhjørningen – ‘The Unicorn’ – just round the corner from where she had her office in Bryggen. The sloping floors, the old paintings on the wooden walls and the fresh spring cod served with potatoes, roe and Sandefjord butter made me feel I was in the eighteenth century, far from Golfs, SUVs and other lethal weapons on four wheels. But Sølvi looked conspicuously serious, from start to finish. After the events of the previous week it hardly came as a surprise that she had taken an important decision. Out of consideration for Helene and the sole responsibility she bore for her, she could no longer expose herself or Helene to the burden it was to have a relationship with a man who had a profession like mine. She liked me very much, as she said with a sad little smile, and I was genuinely welcome back after I had called it a day and joined the ranks of pensioners. I answered that I was afraid I couldn’t afford to do that for a few years yet and thanked her for the offer. She gripped my hand and said: ‘I’m going to miss you, Varg.’

  ‘And me you,’ I said.

  When the meal was over, we walked together down the narrow stairs. In the hall she gave me a quick peck on the mouth before going to fetch her car from the multi-storey car park under Dreggsallmenningen.

  I walked back – not home, but to my office. I had also taken a decision. Without any further hesitation, I picked up the envelope from the Public Health Institute, tore it open, took out the sheet of paper and began to read.

  The answer was unambiguous. Almost half an hour ago I had lost a lover. Now I had lost a father as well. That is, I had also acquired a new one. One I had never met, but whose name and identity I knew.

  I opened the lowest drawer, took out the office bottle of aquavit, filled up the waiting kitchen tumbler and sat leisurely drinking it. I did nothing with any greater urgency than this and at length I went home.

  How many answers did you need actually? Was it perhaps enough now? Time to close the office door for good? To find something else? Beekeeper, could that be something for me?

  It was a freezing-cold January evening. Above me, the sky was studded with stars. Too many to count, too many to keep watch over. I had to contact a decent accountant; perhaps he or she could help me. Or I would have to cope on my own, as I had always done.

  The stars accompanied me all the way home. But it was all the company I had. And my car? It lay somewhere in Sotra, a wreck waiting for its final anointing with oil. No more roundabouts for the Toyota. No more stop signs. No more miles on the clock. Its time was up, once and for all.

  For me it was different. My clock was still running. In Telthussmuget I let myself in and went upstairs to the first floor in the darkness. I didn’t need any light. I knew where I was going. Home. Home sweet home.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  One of the fathers of Nordic Noir, 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 twenty titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and sold over four million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Espen Seim. Staalesen has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour) and W
here Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for crime fiction. He lives with his wife in Bergen.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Don Bartlett completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000 and has since worked with a wide variety of Danish and Norwegian authors, including Jo Nesbø and Karl Ove Knausgaard. He has previously translated The Consorts of Death, Cold Hearts, We Shall Inherit the Wind, Where Roses Never Die, Wolves in the Dark and Big Sister in the Varg Veum series.

  Copyright

  Orenda Books

  16 Carson Road

  West Dulwich

  London SE21 8HU

  www.orendabooks.co.uk

  First published in Norwegian as Utenfor er hundene by Gyldendal, 2018

  First published in English by Orenda Books, 2019

  Copyright © Gunnar Staalesen 2018

  English translation copyright © Don Bartlett 2019

  Map copyright © Augon Johnsen

  Photograph of Varg Veum statue supplied courtesy of Augon Johnsen

  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 978–1–912374–41–0

  eISBN 978–1–912374–42–7

  The publication of this translation has been made possible through the financial support of NORLA, Norwegian Literature Abroad.