Vibeke Glenne leaned over the table.
– That’s right. He was twenty years older than her. Famous for being in the Resistance; later became a supreme court advocate.
– Torstein Glenne? exclaimed Viken, astonished that the connection hadn’t occurred to him earlier. – Is your husband Torstein Glenne’s son?
He composed himself and flipped on through the album, stopping at a page with a number of swimming scenes. Fjord, smooth sloping rocks.
– Where were these taken?
Vibeke Glenne cast a quick glance.
– At the cabin. The summer place down in Larkollen. We’ve still got it.
Viken’s eyes narrowed.
– Summer place? Does it have a basement?
– A creep-in basement. Why on earth do you want to know that?
Viken didn’t answer.
– How old is the cabin? he wanted to know.
Vibeke Glenne raised her chin, obviously a mannerism of hers when she was thinking about something.
– It’s been in the family for a long time. From when Torstein was a child, I should think. From about the twenties or thirties.
– Is this Axel or Brede?
Viken held the album up so she could see.
– Axel, she decided.
– Show me a picture of Brede.
She pointed lower down on the page.
– But they’re absolutely identical, Viken protested, – even got the same swimming trunks. How can you be sure?
– Axel told me who was who.
Viken flipped on. Father, mother and one of the twins.
– Are there no pictures of them together? he wondered.
– What do you mean?
Viken searched back through all three albums.
– Dozens of pictures of twin brothers, but not a single one of them both together.
Vibeke Glenne looked exasperated.
– And what’s supposed to be the significance of that?
Viken mulled it over.
– You tell me. Probably none. Who have you talked to about Brede?
– Talked to? Actually, no one other than Axel.
– Are you telling me that you have never heard his parents or other members of the family say anything else at all about this twin brother?
She said: – Brede was sent away from home when he was fifteen. According to Axel, it was impossible for him to go on living there. He was beyond control. It was something that was never talked about in the family. Brede was, and is, taboo. Axel said I wasn’t to mention him to other people.
– So the parents sent their fifteen-year-old son away and never wanted to see him again?
– Axel’s family are a little unusual, Vibeke Glenne confirmed. – Not exactly awash with love and affection. I’ve never known my mother-in-law, Astrid, to care in the slightest about anyone other than herself. Not even her grandchildren. And old Torstein was, of course, a god. Remote and severe.
After a short pause she added: – Axel never talks about it, but I have noticed that he is still preoccupied with his twin brother. When he called yesterday, he mumbled something about finding him. It’s almost certainly got something to do with what happened when Brede was sent away.
– And what did happen?
She leaned back in the chair, crossed one leg over the other. Norbakk stood up before she began to speak.
– Afraid I’ll have to use your toilet too. No, don’t get up, I can find my own way.
48
– GET ANYTHING OUT of your visit to the toilet? asked Viken once they were seated in the car again.
Norbakk swung the vehicle down towards the gate and out on to the road.
– Mostly just the usual stuff, he said. – I presume you don’t want the brand names of a lot of shampoos and hairsprays and skin creams.
– Could probably use a few tips, said Viken. – What about medicines?
– Paracetomol, ibuprofen, stuff like that. A couple of things I didn’t recognise; I’ll check them when we get back.
– Doctors want to stuff us full of chemicals for the slightest thing, Viken observed. – But when it comes to their own family, they shut up shop. You said mostly the usual stuff?
Norbakk accelerated out of the roundabout.
– Well, not all parents with a family of young kids have a pair of handcuffs hidden away at the back of the wardrobe in the bedroom.
– Handcuffs? And in the bedroom?
– I got mixed up with all the doors and by happenstance ended up in the wrong room.
– I didn’t hear that, Arve, Viken grinned. When the sergeant was still wet behind the ears, he was the one who had taught him the use of the word happenstance. It had served him well many times himself.
He sat there scratching his jaw.
– So Axel Glenne allegedly has a twin brother, he said after a while.
– Allegedly?
Viken started humming a melody. Even the most fervent Stones fan might have had difficulty in recognising ‘Under My Thumb’.
– I have very clear memories of a case we worked on when I was in Manchester. Chap who had been knocked down and stabbed, had his credit card and all his ID stolen. He didn’t know who the attacker was, but he was able to give a very detailed description of him.
He carried on humming, possibly the same song. Norbakk glanced over at him.
– Was the case solved?
– Indeed it was. The description fitted the victim himself so well that some bright spark thought of checking it out. And it matched.
– He’d stabbed himself and stolen his own ID?
– Exactly. But it was impossible to get him to see it. He’s still walking around believing he was attacked. If, that is, the shrinks haven’t managed to get his head sorted out. And now I’m going to reveal to you why I’m telling you this entertaining little tale. Imagine a man in his forties. He has a twin brother no one in his family has ever seen hide nor hair of.
– His brother hates him.
– All right. But there is not one damn picture of the two of them together.
– Chance is what rules almost everything that happens in the world.
Viken gestured with his arm.
– Don’t get me wrong, Arve. I’m not the type that takes the long way round. The simplest answers are always the best. But this business about the twin…
– Was he thrown out of the house? I didn’t hear the whole story.
Viken took a box of pills out of his pocket and tapped out a couple.
– Acid indigestion, he explained. – Bananas are just as good, but I can’t go around looking like a starving ape.
He found a bottle of dead fizzy water in the glove compartment.
– The Glenne family hardly sounds like the best family in the world to have grown up in. But everyone has some sort of cross to bear. You know about the father. One of the heroes in the Resistance, and after that, a big cheese in the supreme court for years. They still called him Colonel there, long after the war ended. And the mother, according to Vibeke Glenne, was an immature and self-centred upper-class woman. But there again, it’s by no means certain a daughter-in-law is the most objective person to provide that kind of description. The older Mrs Glenne apparently didn’t want children. And when she suddenly found herself with two, that was at least one too many. It was worse for the twin who was disciplined according to Old Testament principles. Naturally he grew up to be the terror of the neighbourhood. The good twin, Axel, always tried to defend him – this is still according to the younger Mrs Glenne – but the whole thing exploded the summer they turned fifteen.
He put the tablets in his mouth, swallowed them down with a swig of water, and made a face.
– Would have been better off using wiper fluid, he groaned.
– What happened that summer?
Viken started chewing on a salt pastille. He noted with satisfaction that his story about the twins had captured Norbakk’s full attention.
– Vibeke Glenne says that at one time old Torstein had a dog. Apparently he was more devoted to it and treated it better than his wife or his kids. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was true. I was fortunate enough to meet Colonel Glenne on several occasions before he retired. The rumours I had heard were by no means exaggerated: he was not the sort of man you messed about with, if I can put it like that.