The Consorts of Death

 

A phone call from the past. ‘Cecilie speaking,’ she said, and when I didn’t react, she added: ‘Cecilie Strand.’

‘Cecilie! Been a long time. How are you?’

‘Could be worse.’

‘Are you still in social services?’

‘Some of us are still hanging in there, yes.’

‘Must be at least ten years since we last saw each other, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I crossed the mountains. Went to Oslo five years ago. Summer of 1990.’

‘You’re not ringing from Oslo now then?’

‘No, I’m in Bergen. Visiting my old mum in Munkebotn. Don’t know if you remember her?’

‘No, I …’

‘Well, that’s not so strange, but … I’ve got something important I need to talk to you about.’

‘OK.’

‘If you’ve got time.’

‘Time is what I have most of, as I usually say.’

‘Could we meet?’

‘Of course. Any suggestions where?’

‘What about in Fjellveien?’

I looked out of the window. The rain this morning had not exactly been a foretaste of autumn. Now the September sun was drifting like liquid honey over the town. Mount Fløien looked green and inviting, with Fjellveien as the equator and not a storm warning in sight. ‘Whereabouts?’

‘Shall we just see where we bump into each other? I’ll be leaving here in under half an hour.’

I checked my watch. ‘Great. Let’s do that then.’

Five minutes later I had put the answerphone on, locked the office door and set off. I crossed the Fish Market, passed the Meat Bazar at the bottom of Vetrlidsallmeningen and took the steps up towards the district of Skansen and the old, white fire station there. The first yellow leaves had appeared, but there were not many of them yet; green leaves still dominated. From the nursery in Skansen Park came the excited shouts of children banging mud cakes out of their plastic buckets. The last pair of magpies of the summer screeched shrilly from a chestnut tree still bearing its fruit. Finally, I cut up the tiny side street to Hesten and found myself in Fjellveien, where we had arranged to meet.

Fjellveien was Bergen’s number one street for promenading. Generations upon generations of people had taken their Sunday walks up there, enjoyed the view over their beloved town, pointed to the house where they lived and said, as if confiding a state secret: ‘That’s where we live.’ Hesten [The Horse] is the local name for the sign reading
Husk at hesten trenger kvile
[Remember the horse needs rest] which had been erected next to the drinking fountain, where there had once been a water trough, on the occasion of the Fjellveien centenary celebrations.

I started walking. A male pensioner with knee breeches, an anorak and a spring in his stride was on his way up to the
mountains
. A school class was jogging past the forester’s house with a sporty PE teacher at their head. The young children bobbed towards me, a slow wave-like motion, like the ripples on the sea of life they still were, a comfortable distance from the height of the storms even now. I moved to the side as they passed, not to be dragged into a futile dream of youth, into yearnings for long past lap times and the smell of perfumed T-shirts.

I looked at the clock on Mon Plaisir, the old temple-shaped summer house that backs onto Fjellveien and faces the sea. She should have been here by now. There was only the last bit of
Fjellveien
to go, by Wilhelmineborg and Christineborg, names that conjured up a time when every man was free to chisel his wife’s name into the landscape, if he could afford to. Here Sandviksfjell’s steep slopes rose to the arrow on top of the mountain telling you which direction the wind was coming from, if your eyes were sharp enough to see that far. Here the trees were tall and erect with trunks like brown columns, and the tree stumps and scree were testimony to the wind and landslide hazards.

I met her by the green telecommunications station directly up from a street called Sandvikslien. She was walking towards me wearing a denim jacket and jeans, with sunshine in her hair and a shoulder bag hanging down by her side. On seeing me, she stopped to wait, squinting through her oval glasses to make sure it was really me. Her hair was short and dark blonde with a veneer of grey that had not been there last time I saw her.

We hugged quickly and looked at each other in mild surprise, the way old friends do when the tattoos of time, carved with a sharp knife into your face and other places, cannot be denied.

She smiled fleetingly. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit late. My mother … now and again it takes time.’

‘We’re still in Fjellveien. No problem.’

She pointed to a bench. ‘Perhaps we could sit down? It’s lovely in the sun.’

‘Why not?’

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I phoned?’

‘After so many years, yes.’

‘Well, it’s only ten.’

‘A lot has happened in my life in those ten years.’

‘Really?’

She looked at me, waiting, but I didn’t follow it up.

‘You had something important to talk to me about, you said.’

‘Yes.’ She paused as we sat down. ‘Do you remember Johnny boy?’

That gave me a jolt. ‘How can you ask me that?’

‘Well … it was actually a rhetorical question.’

‘For six months it was like he was … ours.’

That made her blush, but that was not why I’d said it. It had been like that.

Johnny boy. At six, at seventeen and now …?

‘Tell me what’s happened.’

She gave a faint sigh. ‘He’s done a runner. In Oslo. Wanted for murder.’

‘Oh Christ. Again? How do you know?’

‘Yes, Varg. Again. And that’s not all.’

‘No?’

‘He left behind him a kind of death list.’

‘A what?’

‘Or … well, he’s made it known there are a few people he’s going to take out.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘And one of them is … you.’

‘What! Me?’

‘Yes.’

I sat in silence. Slowly my eyes wandered down to Byfjord and back a quarter of a century. I felt the sun weakly warming my face, but inside I felt frost, the frost that had somehow always been there and had never let go. The frost from the missing spring.

The first time I had met Johnny boy was one hot, sultry July day in 1970. Elsa Dragesund and I had been sent on a home visit to a flat on the Rothaugen estate, the massive grey blocks of flats near Rothaugen School. Some neighbours had reported the matter to the council and the social security people had passed it on to us.

Out of the two of us, Elsa was the one with the most social services experience. She was a sharp but good-natured woman, just turned forty at this point, with carrot-coloured hair and a
tendency
to dress in colours that were a bit too bright. I was
completely
new to the job.

The stairway was dark and damp even on a day like this; it was almost twenty-five degrees in the shade. There was no sign of any kind on the brown first-floor door. Through the matt glass panes we could hear the sound of loud music. We had to press the
doorbell
several times before shuffling steps could be heard inside; the door was opened a little way and a sallow face stared at us.

‘What d’you want?’ came the response, in broad local dialect.

Elsa put on a pleasant smile and said: ‘Mette Olsen. Is that you?’

The woman in the doorway gave us a vacant look. She was blonde, but her hair was greasy and unkempt. She was wearing a T-shirt with holes and threadbare jeans that had not been washed for the last month at least. She was thin, haggard and stooped, as though trying to dull chronic abdominal pains. Her lips were dry and cracked, and under the thin material of the T-shirt sprouted two small breasts, like children’s buns, flat and uneven.

‘We’re from social services,’ Elsa said. ‘Can we come in?’

For a second or two, a sudden fear flared up in her eyes. Then the channel closed, she stepped aside docilely and held the door open for us.

The smell that hit us when we entered the narrow unlit hallway was a delicate blend of acrid cigarette smoke, refuse and alcohol. On top of that, there was a smell of untended toddlers –
something
I would become depressingly used to during the years I was employed by the welfare authorities.

Without waiting for our host we followed the sound of the loud music into the sitting room, where a portable radio cassette player was playing a hissing cassette at full volume. I couldn’t place the music; it was rock with a heavy bass line which made the walls vibrate. Elsa resolutely strode in, saw the radio and pressed the right button.

The silence was deafening. Mette Olsen had trudged after us. She was gesticulating with her arms. Her eyes were blank and glassy. The explanation was not hard to find. On the worn coffee table and floor was a glorious selection of empty bottles, mostly beer bottles, but also wine and spirits, and the characteristic plastic containers used by homebrew suppliers. On a small chest of drawers were several empty boxes of pills, upside down and without lids, seemingly discarded after a last desperate search.

‘Where’s your little boy?’ Elsa asked.

Mette Olsen gazed around helplessly, then nodded towards a half-open door at the other end of the room. We stood listening for a moment, but not a sound reached us. Carefully, we walked towards the door, Elsa first, and pushed it slowly open.

A broad unmade bed filled one wall. A wooden drying rack had been shoved into one corner, loaded down with laundry. Clothes were scattered across the entire room, with no apparent system or pattern. There was a cot beside the bed, and in it was sitting a small boy, two and a half to three years old as far as I could judge, in a stained vest that had once been white and a swollen, soaking wet paper nappy under a plastic liner. He hardly reacted when we entered the room, just looked at us with blank, apathetic eyes. His mouth was half-open and dribbling, and in one hand he held a sandwich with what looked like chocolate in the middle. But worst of all was the silence. Not a sound came from him.

Elsa took a few steps forward before turning on her heel and staring at Mette Olsen – thin, shadowless and with an aggrieved expression on her face – in the doorway behind us.

‘Is this your child?’ Elsa asked with an audible tremor from her vocal cords.