backwards, knocking over a standard lamp; I hit the wall and slowly sank until I was sitting on the floor, dazed and shaken. I felt a dull pain in my chest and a hot, smarting sensation in my ear.
Above me stood Terje Hammersten, ready to lay in to me if I tried to get to my feet. Trude had stood up, too, now. She rushed forward and put her arms around his upper body to restrain him. ‘Don’t, Terje! I told you not to. I’ll be evicted…’
I looked up at them. Everything was blurred. For one strange, long, drawn out moment they seemed to be one person, a two-headed, androgynous creature from a world where I didn’t belong. Then I succeeded in re- focusing. ‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘I won’t report you. There won’t be any trouble, so long as nothing else happens.’
Terje Hammersten lowered his fists, shook himself free from his sister’s grip and walked across to the window, where he stood with his back to us, gazing down at the road leading to Dale town centre.
Still dizzy, I slowly stood up. I felt nauseous and could see dots dancing in front of my eyes. All credit to him. He had a powerful fist on him. I nodded to Trude with a mixture of gratitude and the need to say she shouldn’t worry. I wouldn’t tell anyone.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.
I rolled my shoulders and rubbed my chest. ‘Could be worse.’ Without looking at Hammersten, I added: ‘I think I’ll be off.’
‘What did you actually want?’
I studied her. ‘To be quite honest, I’m not at all sure any more. But I’ve made a mental note of some things.’
Terje Hammersten turned round smartly, strode across the floor and came up close to me again. But this time I was prepared. I raised my fists in defence and eyed him stiffly.
‘Be careful, Veum!’ he snarled. ‘Be bloody careful!’
‘Unless I want to wind up like Ansgar Tveiten, you mean.’
Between us, Trude gave an involuntary sob. ‘Not again!’
The blood vessels in his temple swelled and the knuckles of his fists went white. But he kept himself in check. He didn’t lash out this time.
Without letting him out of my sight, I walked to the door, opened it and left the flat. In the corridor outside I hurried towards the staircase, then stopped to check if he was following. But there was no one, and, still feeling physically uncomfortable, I went down the steps and into the bright daylight. A high white sky hung over Dale, like a huge plastic cupola. A handful of gulls sailed on the wind to the steep walls of Heile Mountain, while complaining in grating cries about bad backs, poor catches or whatever it is gulls complain about.
It was beginning to get dark as I drove into Osen where the Gaular waterway plunged like a faded bridal veil towards the fjord. High up above the mountains the moon had appeared, the earth’s pale consort, distant and alone in its eternal orbit around the chaos and turmoil below. It struck me that the moon wasn’t alone after all. There were many of us adrift and circling around the same chaos, the same turmoil, without being able to intervene or do anything about it. We were all consorts of death.
33
It was six o’clock when I arrived at the hotel. There were no messages for me in reception. I went to my room, found Grethe’s telephone number and dialled. No one answered. I rang down to reception and asked if Jens Langeland or Hans Haavik were in. Langeland was out. Haavik was in his room. Did I want to speak to him? I considered for a moment and ended up saying no.
My body felt strangely restless. Maybe it was a side effect of the blow I received in Dale, or else it was something I had heard in the course of the day, a bit of information I still hadn’t managed to sift out from all the rest. Something that had invaluable significance for the development of the case, unless, as things were progressing, I should begin to say: cases.
The latter reflection caused me to ring the police offices and ask for Standal. He was in, but what surprised me most was that he was willing to talk to me.
‘Yes?’ his voice came on to the telephone.
‘Veum here.’
‘Yes, so I heard. What do you want?’
‘Anything new?’
‘Nothing you have any right to know, anyway.’
‘Well, right… Listen to me for a moment, Standal. I may have something to tell you that you don’t know.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘Have you taken out the old 1973 murder file yet? Ansgar Tveiten. The illicit alcohol business. We touched on it yesterday.’
For a moment the line went quiet.
‘We’ve got the file, yes. But so far we haven’t had time to look into the material in any depth. It’s quite a pile, Veum.’
‘I don’t doubt it. But it was shelved.’
‘Not shelved. It’s incorrect to say that. In active abeyance, we call it. We’re still gathering information for the case.’
‘OK. Then that’s perhaps what you’re doing now.’
‘And by that you mean…?’
‘Let me remind you what the lawyers Langeland and Bratet told us yesterday. That Silje Tveiten, as she is still called, is Ansgar Tveiten’s daughter. And I know that her uncle, Terje Hammersten, was on the police radar at that time, although nothing decisive was to come of it.’
‘We know that, Veum!’ he said impatiently. ‘I thought you said you had something to tell me.’
‘Well, listen to this then. Rumour has it that the deceased Klaus Libakk was involved in the same contraband operation. He distributed the goods to people in Angedalen. Did you know that?’
‘He wasn’t down on our records, at any rate. I’ll have to regard this as idle gossip for the moment.’
‘Odd. That his name isn’t in your records, I mean.’
‘It was a complicated case. With lots of ramifications. And when this murder came to light the investigators had to concentrate on that aspect.’
‘With not much success, it has to be said.’
‘Get to the point!’
‘Alright. I’d like to inform you that the said Terje Hammersten is in the immediate vicinity of Forde right now, and has been since Monday evening.’
‘Monday evening. Uhuh. Anything else?’
‘He stayed with a woman who’s lived in Jolster for the last couple of years. Her name’s Mette Olsen and she is the biological mother of Jan Egil.’
‘Hang on there, Veum. Let me take a note of that. Mette Olsen. Where does she live, did you say?’
I explained.
‘And this Terje Hammersten… do they live together or what?’
‘They did at some point. Something like that. And he has a sister who lives in Dale. Trude Tveiten, who was married to Ansgar Tveiten. In other words, Tveiten was his brother-in-law.’
‘This is beginning to become pretty entangled, I have to say. But I still don’t understand what you’re driving at.’
‘Then listen here. Let’s suppose that, just as a theory, of course, let’s suppose that Klaus Libakk was involved in the murder of Ansgar Tveiten in 1973. Unless Hammersten committed the murder at that time, that would give him a motive for exacting revenge on Libakk today. On behalf of the family, so to speak. He is hot-tempered and stands on his honour, I can assure you.’
‘But what about Kari Libakk? We’re not just talking about one murder victim here, Veum.’
‘No, but she may simply have been unlucky enough to have been married to the wrong person at that time in
