She came out in a little group, yet there was something lonely and dejected about her. When she caught sight of me it was almost as though she was relieved to have an excuse for parting company with them. Nor did any of them show any visible reaction when she said she was off.
‘Hello, Åsa,’ I said.
She frowned. ‘Was it Dad who sent you?’
‘No. Should he have?’
‘He’s fetched me from school every day since – Torild went missing.’ She looked at the clock. ‘Suppose he must have been held up a bit then.’
‘I just wanted to ask you a question. Shall we sit in the car?’
She glanced up Merkurveien. ‘We can just stand here if you like.’
‘Last time we spoke…’
‘Yes?’
‘You weren’t entirely honest, were you?’
‘Yes, I was!’
‘A lot’s happened since then, Åsa. You mustn’t keep anything back now.’
‘Like what, for example?’
I nodded at her new brown leather jacket. ‘Your Dad knew you couldn’t afford to buy a jacket like the one you two took back. And in the shop, it turned out the jacket wasn’t stolen. I’m not surprised he comes to fetch you.’
She looked away.
‘Where did you get the money from, Åsa?’
She didn’t reply.
I moved a step closer. ‘Do you realise what you’re doing with yourself, Åsa? With your own youth?’
She turned to face me again, an insolent look on her face. ‘It’s guys like you who want a piece of it!’
‘Guys like…’
‘Yes, don’t think I haven’t seen the way you look at me!’
‘I was looking at your jacket, Åsa!’
‘Oh yeah, it’s the blinking jacket you were interested in, is it?’
‘You’d do better to listen to what I’m saying to you, Åsa! You and Torild were with Helge Hagavik at Jimmy’s the Thursday she – didn’t come home, right?’
‘And what if we were? I told you, I went home earlier!’
‘So it was Helge Hagavik, then?’
‘Yes, I…’ Almost immediately her face closed up again. ‘Oh shit!’ she said almost inaudibly.
Higher up Merkurveien the whine of a car engine driven at speed could be heard; it was somebody in too much of a hurry for all the sharp bends. Then it came into view. The white Mercedes swept down towards the school and came to a halt just behind my little Toyota. Trond Furebø pulled on the handbrake, opened the door and was standing beside us all in one movement.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Veum?’ Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Åsa. ‘I was held up five minutes. I’m sorry. I broke our agreement.’
She gave him a look so much as to say this was one thing parents were experts at: breaking agreements.
He turned back to me. ‘I asked you a question!’
‘You didn’t give me a chance to answer.’
‘He was making advances to me, Dad,’ said Åsa pertly.
I stared at her.
‘Advances?! You mean -’
Just long enough for him to land the first impulsive punch – bang – on my chin.
I fell backwards, saw stars, and as I tried to focus, momentarily saw both of them double.
I nevertheless managed to parry the next blow, well enough to adopt a defensive position, and he was no trained fighter. His temper made his voice rise several octaves. ‘Goddamn it, Veum, we parents do all we can to protect our children, leave work early, just to get up here to fetch her every day, with all the impact that has on those crucial early evening hours at work, then you come and -’
‘Surely you don’t believe her, Furebø? Think I’m an idiot or something? I haven’t made any bloody advances to her at all! I asked her a couple of questions, and if you don’t believe me, then we can all three of us go down to the police station and repeat them there!’
He was calming down now. He kept glancing at his daughter. ‘Åsa?’
She looked at him defiantly.
‘I asked whether it wasn’t true that she and Helge Hagavik were among the last people to set eyes on Torild before she disappeared. She confirmed it. Helge Hagavik’s been taken into custody as a so-called “witness” in the case. He for one knows a lot more than he’s prepared to say. Which makes me suspect that Åsa knows more too…’
He had lowered his fists now. His arms hung straight down at his sides as though they didn’t belong to him at all. ‘Åsa…’
‘I’ve said all there is to say. Me and Torild were at Jimmy’s, and we sat there talking to this guy, I don’t know who he was or what he was called, and then Torild got… then there came… But I went home.’
‘Then Torild got what?’ I asked.
‘A telephone call!’
‘From who?’
‘How should I know? She had to go, she said, to He – to that guy and then – we left.’
As calmly as I could, I said: ‘The hardest thing about lying, Åsa, is that it’s so impossible to remember what you have said and what you haven’t. You’re starting to get your wires crossed.’
‘Like hell I am! I’m telling you exactly what happened! Torild left, and I left to catch the bus home. Just ask Mum what time I got back!’
‘That’s right, Veum,’ Trond Furebø said quietly. ‘My wife confirms that she came home surprisingly early that evening.’
‘But it still doesn’t explain… I mean, I think you know perfectly well where Torild was going that evening!’
‘No, I don’t know! I don’t!’ She turned to her father. ‘Can we go home now?’
‘Yes, we…’ Trond Furebø pulled himself together. ‘Strictly speaking, this is nothing to do with you either, Veum. Get into the car, Åsa. We’re going.’
I gave a heavy sigh.
If she was telling the truth, there were only two people who could confirm it. One of them was dead. The other was Helge Hagavik, and he was in custody.
Thirty-one
VIDAR WAAGENES had his office in the premises of a firm of solicitors on the fourth floor of a building in Strandgaten. He was smaller than he appeared in the pictures I’d seen of him in the papers. A dark lock of hair kept falling down over his eyes, and he had developed a practised gesture for pushing it back again.
He was only just over thirty but, despite his youth, had made a strong impression on the bench. So it surprised me that he made such a weak impression in the flesh, friendlier and more compliant than a broker sensing a good investment opportunity
It was nearly three o’clock before he could see me, the hearing he’d been taking part in having ended ‘a little early’, as he put it, hurrying back from court. His friendly secretary, who had given me a large mug of coffee while I waited, gave him a much larger pile of legal documents, which, to judge by the look on his face, he would be snuggling up in bed with that evening.
He beckoned me into his office, dumped the pile of documents on the ebony-coloured desk, hung his grey overcoat and the burgundy woollen muffler on a coat-rack and offered me a seat in an unusually comfortable chair.
He offered me a cigarette from an elegant case, and when I declined, took one himself.
‘How can I help you, Veum?’ he asked, lighting the cigarette.
‘Helge Hagavik.’
He inhaled the smoke pensively before blowing it out just as slowly. ‘I see. In what way, then?’
‘I’d like to have a word with him.’
‘What about?’
‘About what he did after Torild Skagestøl disappeared, among other things.’
‘Nothing that has anything to do with that, at any rate – if we’re to believe the statement he made to the police.’
‘And to you?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve nothing more to tell you either, Veum, even if I could. Is that all you wanted?’
A sudden suspicion came over me. ‘Tell me, who was it that actually hired you to take this case, Waagenes?’