From the concrete kerb we looked down a steep slope towards an area of newly planted conifers. Under the road a concrete channel had been built to carry one of the streams running down from the mountain behind us. Around the mouth of the tunnel two plain-clothed individuals were carrying out a meticulous examination of what I reckoned must be the actual place where the body had been found, partly beneath the road itself.
I saw it straight away. There was something that didn’t add up.
I turned and looked across at the far side of the road. There, the mountainside sloped gradually up towards the top of Fanafjell, the trees like tall dark sentries reaching right down to the edge of the road.
Slowly I redirected my attention to Sidsel Skagestøl. Tall, erect and silent, she stood there, apathetic almost, staring down the slope not unlike someone contemplating suicide on a bridge, wondering whether to jump or not. Beneath the surface, her feelings were no doubt in turmoil, wave upon wave dashing against the rocks so hard that the spray was visible in her eyes. But she did not jump: just stood there, alone and dignified as though already at the cemetery saying her last farewell before the body was interred.
She glanced quickly sideways, as if to reassure herself that it was me standing there. ‘I just can’t imagine it.’
‘I’m sure it’s best like that,’ I said gently.
‘This isn’t where she died…’
‘Probably not.’
‘It’s just a – place where… her body was kept. She’s never actually been here herself. Not what was Torild.’
‘You’re quite right about that. Now you’ve seen it, I think you should sort of erase the image of this place – not from your memory, because I don’t think you could do that, not for a long time anyway, but from your consciousness, from the place where you are – and where, in a way, your daughter will also always be.’
She turned to face me. For the first time today she looked me straight in the eye, and the trace of a smile flickered over her mouth. ‘Was that the sociologist in you speaking?’
I smiled back. ‘Probably. But he’s the one who’s usually right. Inside me, I mean.’
During the drive back one thought kept coming back to me: Surely the police must also have seen it? The thing that didn’t add up?
I drove her right back to the door. ‘Shall I come in with you?’
‘I don’t think that’s really necessary.’ She glanced at the door, where Holger Skagestøl was already coming out to meet us.
‘How are you feeling, Sidsel?’ he asked. ‘Did you manage all right?’
An involuntary twitch ran across her face. She became a paper cut-out someone had suddenly crumpled up. ‘Why shouldn’t I have managed? It was just a place, wasn’t it? Why don’t you go up there yourself? You won’t find Torild – not there either!’
He made an awkward gesture of the hand and looked dejectedly at me before turning to her again. ‘The children are taking it – well. Alva is with them just now. I called her and asked her to -’
‘Oh! I have to put up with that too, do I?!’
‘The children can spend the night at their place, Sidsel. Then you can get a proper rest.’
‘Who is Alva?’ I asked.
‘My sister,’ said Skagestøl curtly.
‘It might be best for Sidsel to be with the children.’
‘And what business is that of yours, Veum?’
‘None, strictly speaking, but she’s been a hundred per cent calm now, during our drive.’
He grew red in the face. ‘A hundred per cent calm now! What are you implying?’ He rushed up to me as though about to hit me.
I immediately took a step or two back.
‘For goodness’ sake, Holger! Don’t be such an idiot! Listen, we can’t leave Alva in there on her own, can we? She’ll wear the children out.’
Holger Skagestøl controlled himself, cast a final look of irritation in my direction before turning his back on me and following his wife inside. ‘She’s reading to them, Sidsel!’
Neither of them took the time to say a formal goodbye to me. My duty as a chauffeur was done; and I hadn’t been much of a sleuth either. In fact, the only thing I could be credited with was that I’d more or less just happened to be there.
I got into the car, turned in the driveway, and then drove slowly down the steep slope to Sædalen, thinking: Surely the police must have seen it?
Sixteen
SHOULD I CHANCE IT and call Muus straight away, at the risk of receiving a thorough bollocking as soon as I opened my mouth? Or should I do as he’d told me: mind my own business?
The problem was that I didn’t have any business at the moment, and the devil makes work… The death notice I’d received in the post lay there smouldering away in my desk drawer, a sword poised over my head, and I preferred to push it out of my mind.
I called Paul Finckel.
‘Oh my God!’ he groaned. ‘Is this the big “Be nice to Paul” day or what? Or have you got something new to tell me?’
‘No… It’s just that I’ve been up to the place where the body was found.’
‘What? So you didn’t go right down to it?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘No, because it’s supposed to be a restricted area for everybody!’
‘It was.’
‘Well, did you go up there alone or what?’
‘No, with the girl’s mother. It was she who asked me to do it.’
‘With the mother, you say? How did she take it? You do realise this could make one hell of a headline, Varg?’
‘You know me, Paul. I don’t want to appear in the paper!’
‘You are a news item, Varg! You can’t help it.’
‘I can help it if you want anything more out of me, though.’
‘OK, only out with it -’
‘She took it well, Paul. Shocked and upset, of course, but – quite normal for a mother who’s just lost her daughter. There’s nothing to say, Paul. Nothing to tell you.’
‘So why the hell did you call me, then?’
‘To ask you one more question.’
‘Well, didn’t I just know it?!’ He fumbled with the receiver. ‘Come on, don’t hold back: spit it out and tell uncle!’
‘You press people always run something on the witnesses. This jogger who found the corpse, have you got his name?’
‘His name? I don’t even know what type of trainers he uses! The police haven’t given us a scrap of information about him.’
‘But it is a man?’
‘Well, he was certainly referred to as he the first time I talked to them at the station.’
‘But you must have some sources down there, surely? No leaks?’
‘Not a drop, Varg, not one… Pretty amazing, actually, don’t you think?’
‘Right. That’s just what I thought too.’
But afterwards I felt reassured. The police had seen it too.
If nothing else, idleness led to restless pacing to and fro across my office floor.
I glanced at the Nordnes calendar on the wall. Maybe I should take a leaf out of Muus’s book: circle in red the date which Anon had chosen as the day for my final curtain: Wednesday, the following week.
Was I to conclude that today was consequently my last Friday ever and make it a Friday to beat all Fridays? Ought I to book a suite at the Solstrand Fjord Hotel and invite Karin to come along for a winter weekend she’d never forget? Or, struck by the paralysis that would overcome anyone who received such a message, should I lie down and abandon all hope…?
For several minutes I racked my brains trying to think who on earth could have thought of sending me such a message. It could be a sort of sick joke, of course, but the only person in my circle of acquaintances who had both the imagination and the lack of taste to do such a thing was the man I’d just talked to on the phone, and in that case, he’d hardly have lost the chance to make some small hint about it. In the course of almost eighteen years as a private investigator I’d obviously trodden on a good many toes but not, I hoped, so hard that anyone would want to go to such drastic lengths to pay me back. At any rate, not if they were thinking of carrying out the threat. In my situation I was afraid it wouldn’t be much use reporting it to the police either. They’d probably ask me to deal with this particular case myself.