‘If so, it’s not the first time you’ve violated professional ethics, Langeland.’
‘Watch your mouth or I’ll withdraw my offer!’
‘Offer?’
He pursed his lips and stood up. ‘Come with me.’
I joined him. Vibecke remained sitting, still half in shock at all she had learned over her elegant teacups.
I tried to catch her eye. ‘Goodbye, fru Langeland. See you again perhaps.’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ Langeland mumbled.
She raised her head, but her eyes never reached any higher than my chest. ‘See… you.’
She was sitting by the large window like a little mermaid on the bank of the rest of her life, without the slightest confidence that she would ever be venturing out to sea again. She was stranded for good.
Langeland led me downstairs and asked me to wait in the hall while he went to his study to fetch the car key. From somewhere behind the wall panelling, tiny Lin scuttled out with my coat held in readiness, as if she had known for some time that I was leaving. Langeland returned, and we left the house together. He pressed a remote control and the broad garage door swung upwards.
There were two cars inside. One was a huge four-wheel drive, a Range Rover, the other a natty little Toyota Starlet.
‘You’ll have to take Vibecke’s,’ he growled, nodding to the tiny Starlet. ‘More your style, I would guess.’
‘I’ll be right at home,’ I said. ‘No problem. I’ll even be able to find the brake pedal.’
He didn’t smile, just pressed the key fob and the alarm was switched off. He opened the car door and peered in, as if to make sure there weren’t any personal effects left there. ‘I trust you will return it safe and sound, Veum.’
‘If that’s within my powers,’ I said, taking the key and sitting behind the wheel. After pushing the seat back a couple of notches I started the engine. The radio came on, a local station playing thump-thump-thump music. I turned down the volume and peered up at Langeland. ‘Then I’ll be saying “see you” to you, too.’
‘I wish it were avoidable, but we have to have the car back. Listen, Veum…’ He leaned forward, with a sudden insistent expression on his face. ‘Try to bring Jan Egil back with you. Whatever he’s done, it’s important that he and I talk.’
‘As solicitor and client or as…?’
‘Yes, yes! And I trust you’ll keep your mouth shut about the other business. If… when he finds out, I want it to be from me. Understood?’
‘Understood. Quickest way to Ulleval Stadium is down to the ring road, then head east, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘Good luck…’
‘Thank you.’
I put the car into gear and carefully manoeuvred my way out of the garage. He walked ahead and opened the gate. I raised my hand as I passed. Then I was on my way.
As I swung into Dr. Holms vei and down towards Besserud, I noticed a large black car with darkened windows parked a bit further up the road. The muscles in my midriff tautened instinctively, and my mouth went dry. But it was impossible to see if anyone was inside, and for as long as it was in my rear-view mirror, it didn’t move.
I adapted quickly to the car. It wasn’t very different from my Corolla, but I would have felt more like the king of the road if he had lent me his four-wheel drive. I kept glancing in the mirror at regular intervals. When I was almost in Slemdal I suddenly noticed a big black car barely a hundred metres behind me. At that distance it was difficult to tell if it was the same one, but the feeling in my stomach did not improve.
The black car followed me right down to the ring road. I lost sight of it in the traffic build-up behind me. It was impossible to see if it was still there. When I saw Ulleval Stadium rise before me, I took a right and pulled over. I sat waiting, totally composed. After thirty seconds a big, black car drove past heading east towards Tasen without turning off the ring road.
I waited for a few more minutes, but it didn’t reappear. Reassured, I drove off again. After passing the stadium, I turned off towards a petrol station on the right and pulled into a large, at this moment, unused car park. I pulled up outside the Mercedes showroom, switched off the engine, opened the door and got out. A bit nervous, I strolled around the car without stopping in case someone had me in their sights. I was uneasy.
From the ring road I heard the sound of traffic, a regular pulsating rhythm. The lights from the town contaminated the evening sky with jaundice, and from high above me I heard the throb of a plane on its way to Fornebu.
I heard the sound of his footsteps on the tarmac. He came round the corner from the back of the showroom as if on a quick evening run out with the dog. But he didn’t have a dog, and he came straight towards me.
He was wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, and his body had grown since I last saw him. In Forde — and the last time in the courthouse in Bergen — he had still cut a gangling, immature figure, not unlike the man I now knew was his father. During his prison stay he had obviously killed lots of hours in the gym. He was bigger and bulkier and definitely looked more dangerous than he had before. Coming to a halt in front of me, he radiated an edgy, pent-up strength that, if released, could have trashed me in the space of a few short seconds.
Under the peak of his cap, he was staring at me through wide-open dark eyes. Without changing expression, he nodded towards the car. ‘Get in.’
I did as he said, leaned over and opened the door on the opposite side. He dropped in so heavily that for a moment it felt as if the whole car would tip over. ‘Drive,’ he said.
‘Where to? Shouldn’t we — ?’
‘Just drive!’ he ordered roughly, and I didn’t feel it was the right time to object.
53
On the ring road, I tried again. ‘I have to know which direction we’re taking.’
‘We’re just going somewhere we can have some peace and quiet. I’ll tell you.’
I cast a sideways glance. ‘What is it exactly you want with me?’
‘You know what.’
‘No, I don’t! Wasn’t it enough with Hammersten?’
We passed a turn-off, but he just pointed ahead. ‘It wasn’t me who killed him!’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘He was dead when I found him.’
‘When you… but what did you want from him?’
‘I was shoppin’ in the street when I met him. I knew of course that he… he’d been married to my mother. My real mother.’
‘Yes, you met her again, I gather. She visited you at Ullersmo Prison?’
‘I recognised her soon as I saw her.’
‘You recognised her? But you were just three when you… were taken from her.’
‘Not that time, you idiot!’
I was suddenly ill at ease. ‘So when was it?’
‘It was when we were comin’ home from school in Angedalen. Silje and I. We walked past a woman walkin’ along the road, and I can still remember her gawping at us. At me most of all. Afterwards we had to laugh at her, and Silje said: Did you see the old biddie! She must be completely crazy, and then we laughed even more. And when she turned up at Ullersmo I recognised her at once. Not as my mother of course, but as the crazy woman from Angedalen. So, we had been laughing at my mother, my own real mother. I wonder if you can imagine how that felt! I could’ve cried, a grown man… and it was the likes of Hammersten who had turned her into what she was. I understood that from what she told me later.’
‘But what — ?’
‘And then I knew what I’d been missin’ for all those years.’ His voice was trembling, as if it was hard for him to speak, harder than any bench presses. ‘The other so-called mothers’ve never loved me, not like her, who had to live without me for all that time. And who came after me, through the prison gates. But we had a few good hours anyway, at the end of her life.’
For a while we sat in total silence. The impression I was left with from what he had just said was so strong that I found it difficult to continue the conversation. It was Jan who resumed. ‘He said I should drop by to see ’im.’