Gunnar Staalesen
The consorts of Death
1
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 Floien 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.
2
