I leafed back through my notes. Hadn’t Astrid Nikolaisen said the same when I talked to her? Yes, there it was… Torild and Åsa together with ‘some bloke or other’… Helge Hagavik, the mysterious ‘suspect’?
I made three mental notes. I should have a word with Astrid Nikolaisen; I should have another word with Åsa and – if possible – I should have a word with Helge Hagavik.
It would take up most of today and go a long way towards helping me forget what day tomorrow was.
The block Kenneth Persen lived in lay on the shady side of the street in the part of town that basks in the shadow of the towers of Vetlemanhattan on Nygårdstangen and is unlikely ever to see the light of day again.
His name was on one of the eight post boxes in the entrance hall downstairs, but as I climbed the stairs, there wasn’t a single name on a door anywhere, as if everybody who lived there was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I went from floor to floor, pausing to listen for any sounds that might indicate someone was home, knocked on a few doors where I thought I could hear signs of life, but nobody answered.
Eventually, I realised I’d spent quite enough time on this aspect of the project and left.
In front of the City Station a handful of youths lolled against the concrete wall at the entrance to the pedestrian underpass, smoking, schoolbags thrown at their feet, and making not particularly positive remarks to passers-by.
I went into the waiting room and looked round. The smell of cooking oil and printing ink hung like a ring of self-loathing around the snack bar on one side and a national newsagent’s on the other. The garish posters in front of the shops on the first floor proclaimed that the January sales were still on, but the spark had long since gone out of them. I saw no sign of Astrid Nikolaisen anywhere, but in the space of just a few minutes, I observed two drug transactions with no particular attempt to conceal what went on.
I met Sigrun Søvik in the café on the first floor, as arranged.
She was sitting at one of the tables facing Lille Lungegård Lake, in sharp profile against the bright daylight outside. She was wearing the same outfit as last time: a red shirt, blue jeans and a grey knitted waistcoat. On the chair beside her she had hung a greyish-brown, slightly old-fashioned sheepskin jacket with a ‘No To Nuclear Power’ badge on one lapel.
I waved to her from a distance and fetched a cup of coffee from the counter before making my way over and taking a seat opposite her at the table.
I unwrapped two sugar lumps, popped one into my mouth and took a swig of the piping hot coffee.
Sigrun Søvik followed my movements with her eyes as though I was demonstrating first-class engineering skills, or else because she was overjoyed at being able to put off the evil hour.
I stole a quick look at her.
Her cheeks were surprisingly red, as if she’d had to rush to get here in time. Her eyes flitted to and fro, from my coffee to my face, without settling on either of them.
‘You had something to tell me,’ I said tentatively.
‘Yes, I did… Afterwards… it occurred to me… From what I said, you may have thought something had happened – between Mrs Furebø and Holger Skagestøl… when they paid us a visit at Radøy.’
I nodded slightly. ‘Erm, not necessarily.’
‘But I – I know that it wasn’t the case!’
‘Oh?’
She looked at me, alarmed. ‘Yes, I mean, I don’t know, but… Was there something between them, then?’
I had to tread carefully. ‘I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at…’
‘What I meant was… At any rate, I know why Torild and Åsa dropped out, that’s what I meant.’
‘And it had nothing to do with…’
‘No! And that’s why I thought… You don’t need to bother anybody with all that now, after the terrible thing that’s happened to Torild…’
‘I see…’ I nodded at her to go on. ‘Why did they drop out, though?’
‘I… I caught them in the act.’
‘Caught them in the act?’
She looked out of the window towards the Electricity Board building, although it didn’t seem to cheer her up much. ‘You know, young people at that age, they’ve just – they’re in the process of discovering themselves… And that Friday evening, when everything was supposed to be quiet, I made my usual round of all the tents. I heard… sounds from Torild and Åsa’s tent… The light from a torch… I thought they must have been reading or – eating chocolate or… something like that. But when I unzipped the tent and put my head in…’
I waited.
‘They were – naked, and they…’ Her eyes swivelled round like a searchlight. ‘I’ve been involved in youth work for many years, I’m not all that easily shocked, but so young and already so depraved!’
‘In other words, they -’
‘Yes, I’m not going to say any more! Not about what they were doing!’
‘All right. But what did you do?’
‘I told them off, of course! Separated them and put them in separate tents for the rest of the time, but naturally I didn’t say anything to anyone – not to anybody, you understand, until now! I don’t want it to get out that something like that could happen when I was in charge! Do you understand?’
‘Yes, I do. But I can’t see what there is to make such a fuss about either. We were all young once -’
‘Not me!’
‘No?’
‘I mean I never did anything like that…’
‘No, I’m sure…’
She glanced at the clock. ‘I must be off now. I just wanted you to know that that was why they dropped out! Because they were embarrassed, of course! They couldn’t look me in the eye, either of them, for the remainder of that Whitsuntide camp.’
She stood up and put on her sheepskin jacket. She hesitated for a moment. ‘You won’t tell anybody, will you? Now that you’ve heard…’
I gave her a look of reassurance. ‘It probably… As you said yourself, they’ve more than enough to think about without bothering about youthful peccadilloes…’
When she had gone I slowly drank my coffee before heading off in the same direction.
Around Lille Lungegård Lake the flock of ducks had thinned out considerably. Only the omnivorous gulls tottered about on the half-melted ice, pecking around one of the holes near the edge in the hope of finding something to eat. The glass front of Hotel Norge reflected the winter sky in pastel tints. The music pavilion in the City Park was bereft of flower displays, and the beds were covered over with branches from fir trees, to keep the hope of spring alive. Who wanted to die or be buried in February, when life was slowly reawakening, when the new shoots were just beginning to push cautiously through the winter covering and when there would soon be some real warmth in the sun?
Not me, not anyone.
Twenty-nine
I FOUND DANKERT MUUS in his office.
He looked up when I knocked, as delighted to see me as if I’d just trampled all over his tulip beds on a Saturday off.
‘Can I have a word with you?’
‘If it’s absolutely essential.’ He looked at me suspiciously. ‘I made things perfectly clear, didn’t I, Veum?’
‘Yes, but this is about something else, actually.’
‘Which is?’
‘I see from the papers that you’re making a lot of headway.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘The chap you’re holding… You must have some good evidence, since he’s been promoted to a “suspect”?’