‘The name’s Veum.’
‘Yes? Do we have an appointment?’
‘No, I’ve come to see you in connection with a death.’
She swung the chair right back round and stood up. ‘A death? What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know if you saw it in the papers… Torild Skagestøl.’
‘Oh, Torild…’ For some reason she looked almost relieved. ‘For a moment I was afraid that… But why have you come to see me?’
‘Because I thought that maybe you knew something about Torild, I mean that you knew another side of her than – her parents did.’
Her mouth became even smaller. ‘Another side? Who are you actually?’
‘I’m a private investigator who was looking for Torild the week she was – went missing.’
‘A private investigator? But I still don’t understand… Why have you come to see me?’
‘You were her Guides leader, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, I was leader of the troop she was in – but it’s… I mean she hasn’t attended since – spring last year.’
‘Is that when she stopped?’
‘Yes, er… just before summer, as far as I remember.’
‘And Åsa Furebø stopped at the same time, did she?’
She scratched her forehead as though to jog her memory. ‘Yes, that’s probably right… They were – best friends, you see.’
‘You say that as though it was somehow – suspect?’
She smiled, but not from the heart. ‘Suspect? I just meant… best friends tend to be in league with one another. Follow in each other’s footsteps, so to speak. When one of them stops, the other one often does too.’
‘So there was no special reason they stopped just then?’
‘Special? Have they said anything themselves?’
I purposely held back my answer and noticed how the pause made her uneasy, as if afraid of what I would say.
‘Er, no. They haven’t…’
This time she answered straight away. ‘No, because in our experience, that’s exactly the age – either they carry on or they stop, and then they carry on right until they become Head Guides. But as you can well imagine, many of them develop other interests at that age.’
‘Yes, I’m sure… I was in the Scouts myself once – and stopped at just about that age too.’
‘Yes, well, there you are, that’s what I…’
‘But actually, that’s not what I was trying to find out. How long were these girls Guides?’
‘Torild and Åsa?’ I nodded. ‘Oh, er… seven or eight years. Right from when they were at primary school.’
‘You must know them quite well, then?’
‘Yes, as far as… Over such a period of time they change quite a lot, you know.’
‘Yes, of course, but – what was your impression of them?’
‘Oh, er… they were perfectly ordinary nice young girls from good homes.’
‘Hm. Does that mean you also met the parents?’
‘Yes, I did. You see we sometimes had events that were attended by the parents. Usually at Christmas, or if we were planning a trip; and when they took the Guides’ Promise of course. The last few years we didn’t see all that much of them. When the girls had started to grow up, so to speak.’ She hesitated a little. ‘Apart from…’
‘Yes?’
‘The last time we were at camp, at Whitsuntide, north of Radøy, not all that far from Bøvågen, Torild’s father and Asa’s mother paid us a visit one morning.’
‘Torild’s father and Åsa’s mother? Wasn’t that a little – unusual?’
‘No, they would normally come down together, all four of them, but Åsa’s father was away on a trip, as we’d already been told in advance, and Torild’s mother didn’t feel well, so…’
‘And how did the girls react to that?’
‘Nothing special. There’s always a rather awkward atmosphere when the parents visit. Children need to be free from parental supervision sometimes as well, you know!’
‘As well?’
‘Yes!’ she said defiantly.
‘Yes, I suppose so…’ I nodded at her to carry on. ‘And then?’
‘Well, we gave them a cup of coffee made over a campfire, had a tour of the camp and went down to the cove where we used to swim, then they left. That was it.’
‘And in August of that year Torild’s parents separated.’
‘Oh? I didn’t know. But… the girls had already dropped out then, hadn’t they?’
‘So there’s nothing else you can tell me that might shed any light on what happened to Torild?’
‘No, I… I must admit, I got a bit of a shock when I saw it in the papers, but… And if it’s really true that she’d got involved in – Satanism… she’d moved a long way from the Guides in the space of just one year, I must say.’
‘If I told you she was taking drugs – and was also maybe involved in prostitution… would that surprise you?’
Her features alternated from shock to disbelief and – something else I couldn’t quite pin down. When she eventually replied her voice was shaking slightly: ‘Yes, that really would have shocked me, Veum.’
‘They never gave any hint of that while you -’
‘They were children, Veum!’ she cut in. ‘Children.’ She turned to face her computer screen as though it might offer a more complete answer to what I’d asked her than she herself could provide.
But she remained silent. She did not share the answers with me, if any there were.
Without troubling her with further questions, I nodded goodbye and left her, as silently as the passage of time, as silent and unremarkable as the sometimes sudden transition between childhood and adulthood in a young life: long before expected and completely unbidden.
Twenty-three
THE VIEW OVER THE GARAGES in Sporveien and the workshops in Mannsverk was the same as before: so much so that I couldn’t even tell if any of the buses had actually been moved.
I stood and waited after ringing the doorbell where Astrid Nikolaisen and her mother lived.
The curtains were drawn. And it was quite a time before there was a hint of movement in one of them, as if somebody was taking a careful peep.
Then there were muffled footsteps and the door was opened the tiniest crack.
Gerd Nikolaisen looked older than on my last visit. Now she seemed not far off forty. Her hair was untidier, as if she’d just got up, and she was also wearing nothing but a loose-fitting, dark-red dressing gown. The thick layer of make-up did not conceal a nasty swelling round one eye and on her lower lip on the other side, giving her whole face a tragic clown-like air.
She looked at me blankly. ‘What d’you want?’
‘Don’t you remember me? It’s Veum, I called on Thurs -’
‘Yes, I do. Astrid’s not home.’
She was about to close the door, and I leaned carefully forward. ‘Where is she then? At school?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Where then?’
She shrugged her shoulders with a jaded air. ‘Haven’t a clue.’
‘Have you read what happened to Torild?’
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
I glanced quickly both ways. ‘Listen… might I come in for a moment?’
She shrugged again before stepping aside. It made no difference to her. She apparently had nothing better to do.
I followed her through the dark hall and into the living room.
The room was spartan, dominated by chrome-plated tubular steel furniture with black, slightly grubby fabric cushions. In a corner stood a TV and on the floor below it a VCR, surrounded by a fair number of video cases. A rack contained a radio, a twin-deck cassette player and a gaping hole where the CD player should have been. The loose leads behind suggested it had once been there.