The Writing on the Wall (24 page)

I MET VIDAR WAAGENES
in the police station.

‘What on earth’s happened to you?’ he asked, nodding at my face.

‘A car accident.’

‘Serious?’

‘Mainly for the car.’

As we walked down the stairs to the remand cells, he said: ‘You’ve been engaged
pro forma
to assist the defence in their work. But I wasn’t thinking of paying you any fee, just so we both know where we stand.’

‘Are things that tight?’

‘Not if you should turn up something I can use. In that case, I’ll be willing to discuss it. Fair enough?’

‘
D’accord
.’

The police sergeant in the remand section checked our papers thoroughly before letting us into the cell where Helge Hagavik sat reading a popular men’s magazine of the kind which mainly
concentrated
on hunting, fishing, crime and naked women.

Helge Hagavik was both larger and in more impressive shape than I’d anticipated. His hair was light blonde, short and curly, and his skin still had a faint trace of colour from the solarium. He looked well built: no bodybuilding fanatic but not a skinny long-distance runner either. When he stood up I saw that he was nearer six foot one, with clean regular features. It wasn’t hard to understand that this was the sort a sixteen-year-old girl could have fallen for.

‘Hello, Helge!’ said Vidar Waagenes with forced heartiness. ‘This is Veum, who thinks he may have something to contribute, to your case I mean.’

Helge Hagavik eyed me suspiciously. ‘How exactly?’

‘I’m a private investigator. I was hired to find Torild when she went missing from home.’

This did not make him any less suspicious. ‘What might you be able to contribute?’

‘A few facts I’ve gathered during my investigation.’

‘Shall we sit down?’ Vidar Waagenes suggested. He had brought in a Windsor chair, which he pushed over to me, himself sitting on the bunk beside Helge Hagavik.

‘And what facts are those?’

‘Are we agreed that you knew Torild Skagestøl?’

He looked at his defence lawyer, who nodded. ‘Yes,’ he muttered.

‘Where did you meet her?’

He shrugged. ‘Somewhere in town. At a pub or a disco.’ His eyes glazed over. ‘I don’t remember exactly.’

‘Not at Jimmy’s, then?’

He bit his lower lip nervously. ‘No, not – there.’

‘But the two of you did meet there later?’

‘Yes, but that was only because I worked there a bit.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Oh, tidying up and washing the floor, emptying the game machines and stuff.’

‘So you’re not at school?’

‘No, I dropped out.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Which school did you go to?’

‘Sixth Form College. Doing marketing. But I got sick of it. There was too much homework, and I was pissed off with school.’

‘So how did you get this job at Jimmy’s?’

‘I train a lot. Pump iron, go running and cycling, windsurfing, downhill skiing, anything that’s a buzz. I met the brother of the bloke who runs Jimmy’s down at the fitness centre …’

‘Kenneth?’

He moved his head slowly from side to side as though he was exercising his muscles there. ‘Yeah.’  

‘All that ground’s been covered, Veum,’ Vidar Waagenes broke in. ‘Helge’s admitted he knew Torild. Also that they were going out together for a while. But to conclude from that –’  

I interrupted him. ‘Were going out together for a while? So was it over?’

Helge Hagavik looked almost embarrassed. ‘Yes. – From my side at any rate.’

‘But the two of you were seen together last Thursday.’

He blinked with both eyes. ‘Last …’

‘Yes, the week she disappeared! You were one of the last people she was seen with. And it was you who – found her. The police aren’t stupid, you know. It’s not without
reason
that you’re in here.’

‘Veum,’ Vidar Waagenes began to say.

‘But I didn’t kill her …’

‘No, I don’t think you did either.’ I let my words sink in to both of them for a moment before adding: ‘So it’s all the more
important
for you to tell the truth! Don’t you understand that? However painful or difficult it is.’

‘Yes … I could never have killed her …’

‘No? How long did you go out together?’

He wagged his head a little. ‘A couple of months.’

‘When?’

‘Last autumn.’

‘And were you
really
going out together? You know what I mean, don’t you? Did you go to bed with her?’

He looked down. ‘She said she was sixteen! She looked older than she was!’

‘In other words, yes. And when did it end?’

‘Well, it didn’t really end, as such.’ Suddenly, he looked right into my face. With a slightly cocky smile he said: ‘I don’t believe in the big love affair. I had a few others besides her.’

‘Other girls? The same age?’

He nodded before quickly adding: ‘And older ones! You meet them at the fitness centre, anorexic-looking forty-year-olds who go to aerobics to keep their figure. They fall like flies if you just look at them.’

I smiled to myself. They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But the way to some men’s hearts is to appeal to their vanity. I’d found Helge Hagavik’s Achilles Heel. Now all I had to do was apply some pressure.

‘You’ve had a lot, then?’

‘Couldn’t count them!’

I tried to look both impressed and jealous. In fact, it was not that difficult. ‘What was your impression of Torild?’

He took on a man-of-the-world air. ‘She couldn’t get enough. Well, that’s how they are at that age, isn’t it? Once you turn them on. But she wasn’t very experienced.’

Against my will, I felt myself starting to seethe again inwardly. ‘But you weren’t the first she’d had sex with?’

Although slightly reluctant, he was forced to admit this. ‘No, she wasn’t a virgin.’

‘Did she say anything about who she’d been with before?’

‘She muttered something about a boy in her class. It hadn’t been much to write home about, apparently.’

‘I’m sure it wasn’t. Compared with you.’

He looked suspicious again.
What was I driving at?

‘But back to the day she disappeared. Thursday, February 11th. You met her at Jimmy’s …’

‘Yes. But we just sat and talked. It was her and that friend of hers, Åsa …’

‘Have you done it with her too?’

‘Eh? Åsa? No, she was a bit too … And besides, she didn’t
interest
me. I don’t take everything that’s on offer, you know!’

I leaned forward slightly. ‘You obviously know what goes on at Jimmy’s?’

‘Goes on?’

‘Yes, since you’ve worked there and everything. The police know about it, and so does everybody else. The phone calls from the bar at the Pastel Hotel. The girls who’re sent out on –
assignments
. Torild was involved in that too.’

He scowled at Vidar Waagenes. ‘And?’

‘There’s something I’d like you to know, Helge. That is, if you don’t already … Who was it you said runs Jimmy’s?’

‘Kalle …’

‘But he doesn’t own the place.’

‘No …’ He felt he was on less certain ground now.

‘Anybody can call the Companies Registration Office in
Brønnøysund
and find out who the registered owner is, so you might just as well say it.’

His eyes flitted about, but he said nothing.

‘Birger Bjelland, right?’

Vidar Waagenes glanced at his client. ‘You knew that, didn’t you, Helge?’

‘Yes, I – gave them a hand now and then. I’ve got my driving licence, haven’t I?’

‘A Ford Sierra. Second-hand.’

‘Impounded by the police for forensic tests,’ said Waagenes.

‘Are you saying you were a chauffeur for Birger Bjelland?’

‘Him as well. I drove them, when they were going to play poker and stuff.’

‘Birger Bjelland and who else?’

‘Er … Fred, Kenneth, Kalle …’

He shrugged his shoulders and looked at me askance.

‘Listen … No, let’s start at the other end. Tell me about how you found Torild.’

His jaw clicked. ‘I’ve told the law that hundreds of times!’

‘And me,’ said Vidar Waagenes, but I could tell from the look of him that he wanted to hear it again. ‘But all the same, Helge, it won’t hurt to tell Veum as well.’

‘OK then!’ His look became distant again. ‘So … I was out jogging last Thursday. I still live at home, and I often run up towards Fanafjell to push myself a bit, up steep hills.’

‘Sounds reasonable.’

‘But then, maybe it was something I’d eaten or some tablets that had disagreed with me, you see, I take a fair amount of –
bodybuilding
products. So I had to – have a shit. And I didn’t much like the idea of crouching down just at the side of the road, so I walked down the slope on the right, and down in the bushes I suddenly saw that someone was lying there.’

‘So you were surprised when it was also somebody you knew?’

‘Surprised? I was stunned. And I immediately realised what it would make me look like. But shit, I said …’

‘Literally.’

‘I couldn’t
not
report it either!’

I scratched my cheek. ‘But you do realise the situation you’ve placed yourself in, and I don’t mean vis-à-vis the police but in
relation
to Birger Bjelland & Co?’

‘No, I …’

‘By “finding” Torild Skagestøl the way you did, it means that, through you, the whole operation could be exposed.’

‘Operation?’

‘And I guarantee you that lot don’t treat squealers with kid gloves.’

‘Squealers! I’m not a grass!’

‘Oh no? You could say it looks pretty much like it though! And I can guarantee … you won’t be safe anywhere. They have their people, not here maybe, but when you’re taken to prison to serve your sentence … They’ll get you then, Helge. You can count on it!’

He turned back to Waagenes. ‘But I only
found
her!’

Vidar Waagenes sighed. ‘Yes, that’s been your story all along, Helge. But if it’s true that you’re so closely connected with them … then Veum’s right. The only thing that can help you is to tell the truth. If you’re lying, you’re simply in danger of being sentenced for something you didn’t do. Don’t you see that? The police have very strong clues, there’s no denying it.’

‘You’re my defence lawyer, aren’t you?’

‘Yes I am, but we’re not in court now, Helge. Any defence lawyer would say to his client that, when we’re talking between ourselves, you have to put all your cards on the table. Understand? That’s the only way we can help you.’

‘If what you say is true, it doesn’t make any odds whether I say anything or not. I’ve had it, in any case.’

‘But you admit you chauffeured for them,’ I said quickly. ‘So why can’t you admit that you did so on that occasion too? I mean, that you drove Torild’s body up there, alone or with somebody else, and dumped her, and that later your conscience started to bother you … You’d been going out with her, so she must have meant
something
to you! … And that’s why you pretended to have found her. But you weren’t the one who
killed
her, were you?’

I’d seen people crack before. It follows a fairly regular pattern. After they’ve stuck to the same lie for days, weeks even, someone suddenly finds a fissure in the dike and hammers in a wedge then the whole house of cards collapses, and they make a clean breast of it, often in a surge of almost heart-rending relief.

Helge Hagavik’s macho mask crumbled like clay. He wept like a child, Vidar Waagenes having to put his arms round him and do what he could to comfort him. In other circumstances it would have seemed comical: dapper little Vidar Waagenes with his dark boyish hair, arms round the big blonde child weeping away what was left of his solarium tan onto his lawyer’s breast.

Meanwhile, I sat motionless on my chair with the same bitter taste in my mouth as always on such occasions. Did triumph always taste so bitter because you knew how many people’s fates you had trampled on to achieve it?

When he eventually looked up at me again, he was red-eyed, his cheeks bloated with weeping. He looked like a six-year-old who’d been given a rocket for being naughty at school.

‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘What happened to her?’

‘She … I stayed behind at Jimmy’s after she … I sat in the room at the back with Kenneth drinking coffee and watching TV. They’ve got Eurosport. – There was a phone call. Something had happened – so could we come and clear up?’

‘Who was it who rang, did you say?’

‘Dunno.’

‘And what happened then?’

‘We went up, and there she lay.’

‘Torild?’

He nodded.

‘And was she dead?’

‘Yes! She was dead. No doubt about that.’

‘It must have been a terrible shock for you.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, yes …’

‘But – so was there nobody else in the room?’

‘No, just her. She was lying on the bed, naked, and we – we saw straight away, her eyes, wide open …’

‘Did the two of you find out what had happened?’  

‘No. Some of the clients could be a bit rough, you see? Kenneth said it was definitely somebody who’d completely lost it.’

‘And … but who let you in?’

‘To the hotel? Kenneth had a master key.’

‘Kenneth? So which hotel was this?’

‘The Pastel, of course! What did you think?’

‘And which day?’

‘Thursday! Well, that was when it happened.’

‘Not Friday, then?’

‘Friday? It was
Thursday
! Believe me, I
know
!’

‘OK. So how did the two of you carry out your assignment?’

His mouth started to tremble again. ‘Kenneth had one of those plastic bin liners. We got her into it, carried her down to the car, put her on the back seat and drove off. We talked a fair bit about what we were going to do with her, whether we should dump her in the sea or … But then we decided to take her up there, to Fanafjell, and it was Kenneth’s idea that we should c-carve a Satanist emblem onto her skin, to put people off the scent. She was dead anyway, so it didn’t make any odds to her!’