She came with me to the door. ‘You’ll ring as soon as you – have any news, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
Down at the lights that control the traffic in the narrowest part of Sædalsveien, I waited at red. It struck me that certain situations in life are just like this too. You sit waiting at red, and when the light eventually changes to green, an articulated truck squeezing through on amber slams straight into you without giving you the faintest chance of avoiding it.
When the light changed to green it was with the greatest caution that I drove around the first blind bend.
Six
THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE in Mannsverk have never liked hearing the district called by its original name of Toadsmarsh. But at the end of the fifties, when we were in competition with some boys from that district over a couple of girls from Fridalen, we never called them anything but toads, which unleashed such a backlash that we very soon had to leave the Fridalen girls to their own devices and turn back to the more central parts of town, where it was us who were cocks of the walk.
Astrid Nikolaisen lived in the thirteen-storey block of flats that serves as the landmark for the whole district. The thoroughfare running beneath it became a veritable wind tunnel when the wind blew from that direction.
I found her surname on one of the letter boxes beside the entrance to the lifts but had to search floor by floor along the external walkway to find the right apartment. In addition to the two lifts, there was a staircase at every corner of the building, and I zigzagged my way up to the sixth floor, where I found the same name on a door and rang the bell.
The woman who opened the door looked younger than I’d expected. Despite the heavy make-up, she didn’t look much older than her early thirties. She was wearing tight-fitting slacks and a striped, brightly coloured woollen sweater that seemed long enough to serve as a sort of miniskirt. Her hair was so dark and neat that it almost looked like a wig. ‘Yes?’ she said and clamped her dark red lips together in a kind of turkey-mouth.
‘Veum. I’m from… It is Mrs Nikolaisen, isn’t it?’
‘You can drop the Mrs. But my name is Nikolaisen, yes.’
‘Is Astrid Nikolaisen at home?’
She sized me up. I added: ‘Perhaps she’s your sister?’
In spite of the layer of make-up, I noticed she was blushing. ‘Yes, no, she’s my daughter. Just a second, I’ll see if she’s home.’
She closed the door and I stood outside waiting. From here I could see straight down into the depot of the Bergen Tram Company. The rather random collection of workshops and tower blocks didn’t exactly make Mannsverk a showcase for fifties town planners if they could put up with something like this.
The door behind me opened again.
It was the same woman. ‘What’s it about?’
‘Actually, it’s about a friend of hers, Torild Skagestøl, who’s been missing from home for nearly a week.’
‘And what’s Astrid got to do with that?’
‘Nothing, probably. I just wanted to ask her a few things about – Torild. Who she was with and things like that.’
She still looked a bit suspicious. ‘Are you from the police?’
‘No.’
‘Child Welfare? Social Security?’
‘No, nothing like that. I’m here on behalf of the family.’
‘She’s just got up… But OK then. Come on in.’
As I followed her in, I stole a glance at the clock. It was eleven-forty. Did that make Astrid Nikolaisen a member of social group B or C?
The hall was papered with red lilies on a violet background. Through an open door an advert blared loudly from a local radio station.
She knocked on a door. ‘It’s Gerd. Can we come in?’
I could just make out a muffled ‘yes’ through the door. The woman opened it and stood aside to let me in. As I passed her I caught the scent of perfume: heavy, like lily of the valley kept far too long in an airless room.
The girl inside was just zipping up the front of her tight jeans, not without some difficulty, the whiteness of her plump midriff emphasised by the black bra, which was all she’d had time to put on. The look she gave me was brazen and provocative, and her slightly heavy face was a puffier version of her mother’s, except that it was even more heavily made up, if with slightly blurred features since it was all too obviously the mask she’d been wearing yesterday.
‘Astrid! Put something on!’ said her mother over my shoulder.
I turned to face her. ‘I can wait out here…’
‘No need. Put your sweater on!’
‘Yeah, yeah, bossy britches!’ said her daughter. ‘I’m sure he’s seen a bra before!’
I waited for a few seconds before turning around again. Now she’d pulled on a maroon sweater and was just straightening her dark, slightly red-tinted hair. ‘What’s he want?’
‘To talk about Torild Skagestøl,’ I said.
‘Go on in.’ The mother pushed me gently into the room. ‘Tell him all you know, Astrid. I’m tidying up in the sitting room if you need me.’
Then she left us.
I glanced round. It was quite a small room, furnished with an unmade bed and a cross between a chest of drawers and make-up table in white. There were two beanbags on the floor. By the bed stood an old-fashioned Windsor chair and on the floor beneath the window lay an untidy pile of comics and pop and fashion mags and a handful of pulp fiction. Various items of clothing were strewn about the room as though she’d been looking for something, but I knew from experience that this state of untidiness was very often just how teenagers marked their territory.
She turned her streaky face towards me with a slightly too cynical look for her age. ‘What’s up with Torild?’
‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’
She sat down on the corner of the bed and nodded in the direction of the two leather beanbags. ‘Park yourself there.’
‘I think I’d rather stand, actually,’ I said leaning against the doorframe.
She made a sucking noise between her teeth and shrugged her shoulders without insisting any further.
‘You two are friends, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. We meet up in town now and then but not much more than that.’
‘In town?’
‘Yeah, at Jimmy’s and places like that.’
‘Jimmy’s, that’s an amusement arcade, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, you can play the machines if you like. I just go there for a burger and to hang out with folk there. There’s always some all-right guys there.’
‘Oh? Know any of their names?’
‘No, why should I? What’s it to do with you anyway?’
‘But Torild used to go there too, did she?’
She nodded.
‘And Åsa?’
‘Yeah, she did too. There was loads of us.’
‘What…’ I thought better of it. ‘Listen, places like that are expensive, aren’t they?’
‘So what’s free then apart from coffee and cake at church and stuff like that?’
‘Where did you all get the money from?’
She gave me a look of contempt. ‘From home, of course. Pocket money. A few of us have part-time jobs. I have a Saturday job at the Mecca now and then.’
‘On the till?’
‘Nope, stocking shelves.’
‘Do you sometimes steal things?’
‘What’s the idea? Thought it was Torild you were supposed to be asking about!’
‘Åsa had to take back a leather jacket she’d stolen yesterday.’
Her expression became slightly less cocky. ‘Oh?’
‘Her dad took her down there.’
‘What a pillock!’
‘You mean it was OK?’
‘Well, I’ve never stolen nothing anyway!’ But she avoided my eyes as she said this.