Silje’s eyes widened and she moved to slam the door shut in my face, but I wedged a foot in the crack and stopped her.
‘What d’you want?’
‘You remember me, Silje?’
‘Course I bloody recognise you! What d’you want, I asked!’
‘Just to talk to you. About Jan Egil.’
‘You’ve done enough harm to Jan Egil and me as it is! I don’t wanna listen to you.’
‘Yes, I gather he… bears me a grudge.’
Her face hardened. ‘You can bet on that!’
‘But let me in anyway! We can’t stand here… It’s not good for your child.’ I indicated the infant with my head. It suddenly went quiet as if it were listening to what was being said.
She exploded with a small inarticulate outburst. Then she turned her back on me and retreated into the flat without a second glance. I closed the door behind me and followed.
It wasn’t a large flat, a room with a kitchenette and a sleeping niche where a curtain was half drawn. Outside the curtain was a narrow cot, almost a camping model. On the bed there was a pile of toys; it must have been used as a playpen during the day. The furniture looked threadbare: a burgundy sofa with grey sides and worn edges, a well-used leather Ekornes chair, creased with wear, a coffee table with a maze of circles from glasses, bottles and beer cans thrust down at will. But the only things there now were an eggshell-coloured mug with a red pattern and a coffee stain round the rim, plus a child’s plastic mug with a lid and spout.
‘A boy?’
She gave a surly nod.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Solve.’
‘Nice name.’
She grimaced. ‘You didn’t come here to chat, though, did you.’
‘No, I didn’t. Can I sit down?’ I indicated the leather chair.
She flourished an unoccupied arm and plumped down on the sofa while holding Solve to her breast. He was beginning to roll his eyes and make a few small chugging sounds now. ‘He’s got colic,’ she explained, as if I was conducting an inspection for social services or some other public department.
‘He seems happy here,’ I said without much conviction in my voice.
‘Yes, fancy that — so he does!’ She flashed a defiant glare, as though used to being contradicted.
‘The last time we met was almost eleven years ago.’
‘I haven’t forgotten, believe you me!’
‘No, I’m sure you haven’t.’
I looked at her. She would have to be twenty-seven now, a grown-up woman. I recognised the girlish features I had only come face to face with a few times before, and perhaps I could see more of her mother in her now: that slightly aggressive, jumpy nature that can afflict people whose lives have been placed under council care. The ponytail was gone. Her hair had been cut short and given a sort of shape. It emphasised the narrowness of her face. Her mouth bore a disgruntled set, and her eyes flashed, blue and bitter. She did not seem very happy with her existence.
‘Would you tell me about Jan Egil and yourself?’
‘Why should I?’
I leaned forward. ‘I’m here to help you, Silje.’
‘That’s what you said last time! But you lied, like all the others.’
‘I didn’t lie to anyone. I did what I could. But I’m afraid it wasn’t enough. The evidence was too strong, and there was nothing I could do about that.’
‘Jan Egil says you let him down. He should’ve shot you down while we were in Trodalen, he said. Then there would’ve been one less bastard in the world. It was your fault he was arrested.’
I felt an unpleasant tingle between my shoulderblades. ‘Goodness me, he can’t blame me for that. Think of all the police there were. He would’ve been arrested whatever happened. He was the one who asked them to get me from Bergen.’
‘Yeah, precisely!’ Tears appeared in her eyes. ‘Because he trusted you from that time in Bergen when you’d been like… like a father to him.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘And then you — more than anyone else — let him down.’
‘But, my God…’
‘Yes, you’d better start praying if you believe him. I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes when Jan Egil finds you!’ Through the tears her mouth twisted into a taut grimace, a parody of a smile.
‘I’ve spoken to someone called Cecilie,’ I said. ‘She told me he had a kind of… that he told you who he was going to wreak his revenge on?’
She studied me with her lips pursed and a glint of triumph in her eyes, as if relishing the hold she had over me. ‘Maybe,’ she whispered, so low that it was hard to catch.
‘What was that?’
‘Maybe, I said! You hard of hearing or what? He was gonna nail both you and that Terje Hammersten who was sleeping with his mother! And he didn’t have much time for the guy running the hospice, either.’
‘Hans Haavik.’
‘Yes, the one who buggered off with all the money that time, who inherited Libakk Farm.’
‘Right, do you mean… he was on his list, too?’
‘List?’
‘Yes, of the people he would take his revenge on.’
‘There was no list. They were just loose ends he had to tie up!’
‘He’s already dealt with Hammersten, I understand.’
‘So what. He’d killed others before, as far as I’m informed.’
‘You know about that?’
Her eyes flashed. ‘My father in 1973. Jan Egil told me that.’
‘Listen, Silje. Tell me… what actually happened between you and Jan Egil? Why has he set out on this… this mission now of all times?’
Her face was blank. ‘I don’t know anything about a mission. All I know is that when I was twenty I moved east to be close to where Jan Egil was. I knew he was in prison. When he started to get days out on probation, he came home to me, and we… we’ve always got on well, Jan Egil and me. We’re the same. Two of a kind. Nothing to hide.’ An expression of tenderness and wistfulness fell over her sad face. ‘Then
… about two years ago I became pregnant. Solve was born, and Jan Egil had yet another reason to behave properly, to get out and lead a normal existence, maybe for the first time in his wretched life. But it was not to be…’
‘Did you plan to live together?’
She shook her head. She said quietly: ‘No. He didn’t, anyway.’
‘Why not?’
‘Ask him!’
‘But he was here, and he visited you, didn’t he?’
‘A few times. Not as often as I would’ve wished. I don’t know but
… he seemed to be afraid. Afraid of being together with him, afraid of being in the same room as him.’
‘As… Solve?’
She nodded furiously. ‘Yes! As his own son!’
‘He might’ve been afraid of… he didn’t have the world’s greatest experience of fathers.’
‘And he was so restless! Fidgety. As though there was something he had to do — as if there was someone or something somewhere else. At any rate whatever it was, it wasn’t with me. In the end I was so tired of it that I was just glad if he went! I had been waiting for him here for so long, and when he finally got out he couldn’t settle to anything. He had to move on, somewhere else…’
‘So that was why he went to the hospice in Eiriks gate?’
‘Yes, he went there and met this Hammersten. You might not know this, but his mother had died. She died a year ago.’
‘Yes, I heard that. Did you have any contact with her?’
‘Not at all!’
‘But she lived up there, in the district, too. You must’ve bumped into her when you were visiting him?’
‘I saw her once. But when I asked him who it was, he just answered: Someone from the Red Cross. What was I s’posed to say to that? There was always someone from various organisations visiting the prisoners. It was only when she was dead that he told me who she was.’
‘I see. Let’s hang on to that thread for a moment. Hammersten. He met Hammersten again, you said. What did that lead to?’