The Last Fix (50 page)

    'That's
no secret,' Sigrid said. 'I told you she rang, didn't I? She told me about this
man who attacked her.'

    'I
remember,' Gunnarstranda said. 'But you didn't tell me about the whole
conversation, did you?

    Helene
Lockert had been about to get married,' he continued, 'but she never got that
far. The man she was to marry is still alive. His name is Reidar Bueng and he
lives in the nursing home with the garden where a rose-sucker has shot out of
the ground. I met him there and we had a chat.'

    Gunnarstranda
coughed, once, and then again. He was hoping for a reaction to his long
monologue, but was disappointed. Sigrid Haugom watched him with large eyes, but
a gaze that was turned inwards.

    'I've
become acquainted with…' Gunnarstranda paused, searched for words and coughed
again. 'By chance I know the assistant matron at this place,' he continued.
'What she told me on the phone today is my small question to you, fru Haugom.'

    Sigrid
Haugom sat on the sofa, silent and distant.

    Gunnarstranda
looked straight into her eyes. 'I am wondering about the following: Why did you
spend a total of one hour with Bueng at this home the day after Katrine
Bratterud was murdered?'

    He
pursed his mouth and whistled as he bounced across Egertorget. He avoided two
Japanese tourists; they were each holding a map and looking into the air…
four little, three little, two little Indians. One little Indian boy.

    It
would be like visiting a sick patient. A quick, effective visit, the way
doctors did in the old days.
One little Indian boy.
The arm with the attaché
case swung to and fro. He followed the stream of people down Karl Johans gate.
A thin man with a harrowed face and long, black hair hobbled towards him with a
bent back.
An angel in disguise,
he thought, with a cold smile.
To
intercede.

    He
laughed aloud at the beggar's pestering for coins. What an angel! He ignored
the remark the beggar shouted after him. He didn't hear the words. If there was
one thing in this world that was of no consequence it was the junkie, he
thought. The ones I loathe most are the down-and-outs.

    One
small fix! The kind of fix that makes down- and-outs like him spread their
heavenly angel wings when he shoots up an overdose in his stupid, hedonistic
desire for self-extinction.

    He
crossed Skippergata on red, and with his head held high walked straight across
Fred Olsens gate to the station square. He ignored the hooting from the taxi
that roared up behind him, then veered left and raced into the taxi rank. One
man among many. Anonymous in the summer heat.

    'You
already know the answer, I assume,' Sigrid said. 'Otherwise you wouldn't have
asked. In fact, I have thought about you a little, about the kind of person you
are. You're the kind who tries to hide your real personality. You camouflage
yourself and play the part of a fool with transparent vanity. The comb-over of
yours that you arrange with such care, I suppose so that others, and particularly
women, will feel sorry for you - nothing is as pitiful as transparent vanity.
But I can see through your facade. You're an ordinary man, do you know that?
No, you're not even that. You're an underdeveloped little pleb, a man riddled
with complexes.

    You
come here and you already know the answer to your question. Yet you drag
yourself up here just for the pleasure of asking the question, to enjoy the
sound of the question in your own ears. You are a conceited little worm. Do you
know that?'

    Inspector
Gunnarstranda did not say a word in the subsequent long silence. He looked deep
into the eyes of the woman on the other side of the table. There was a moist
gleam in his eyes. However, Sigrid's cheeks burned red with anger.

    She
was the first to place her feet on the floor and break the silent battle
between them. 'You remind me of a little boy with his chemistry set,' she said.
'You're so damned pleased with yourself. The only thing that means anything to
you is to triumph, to show me that you know. But shall I tell you a secret? The
secret is that you know nothing. You don't have a clue. You haven't the
slightest concept of what is important, of what anything means.'

    The
policeman, who had been sitting there the whole time, unmoved, didn't stir now,
either. His moist eyes remained focused on hers until she looked away. 'You
don't need to look at me like that. It's pathetic. You know nothing, nothing of
any significance. Nothing!'

    'Did
you say that to Helene Lockert, too?' Gunnarstranda asked in a brittle voice.

    Sigrid
Haugom gave a contemptuous chuckle. 'I was waiting for that,' she said,
twisting her mouth into an ugly sneer and mimicking him:
Did you say that to
…
no, fancy that, I didn't.'

    'There
were no suitable words, I suppose?'

    'How
the hell can words help at such a time?'

    'So
you strangled her instead?'

    'Save
your breath, Gunnarstranda.'

    'You
strangled her,' the policeman repeated stubbornly.

    'Yes,
I did,' Sigrid admitted in a testy voice. 'Do you feel better now? Do you feel
a perverse potency when you hear such an admission?'

    'Katrine,'
Gunnarstranda said in a hoarse voice. 'Did she see her mother being strangled?'

    Sigrid
fell silent. Her face, the part around her mouth, froze in a distorted, pensive
grimace. The silence in the room was numbing. All of a sudden she stood up. 'I
can't take this silence,' she said quickly and went over to the window where
she clung on to the sill with one hand. She held the other to her temple. 'I
have a headache. You'd better go. This headache will be the death of me.'

    Gunnarstranda
turned in his chair and observed her. 'Did she see you doing it?' he repeated
in a low voice.

    'I
don't know,' she said. 'I just do not know.'

    'Why
did you never ask her?'

    'How
could I?' Sigrid put her other hand to her face. 'I mean it. I get headaches. I
can't have visitors here when I have a migraine,' she sighed.

    'You
mean Katrine was killed before you managed to ask her what she knew?'

    'Gunnarstranda.
Will you, please, go now.'

    The
policeman rose to his feet, breathed in and reluctantly crossed the parquet
floor. He stood behind her. The sun was roasting outside. The June sun that
baked the intermittent rain into the ground, creating fertile conditions for growth.
Everything green would grow skywards in June, become strong enough to master
flowering, seed setting and ripening through the summer and autumn. Beside the
sun lounger, the newspapers and sunglasses on the terrace lay the remains of an
old flower bed in which wheat grass and goutweed had taken over and colonized
the whole area with fearsome energy and vitality. A few poor overwintering wild
pansies hung their pale heads in the wilderness. The life-giving sun penetrated
the living-room window and cast a bright yellow rectangle across the wooden
floor and a small corner on the rug where she was standing. The same sunlight
created a faint image on the window pane. It was an almost colourless image of
the room they were in, the tables, the chairs, the clock on the wall and two
figures. Gunnarstranda concentrated on the contours of the woman in front of
him in the glass. She was standing with her eyes shut tight. Her skin was
stretched taut across her forehead and the fingers holding her head were like the
white veins of translucent leaves.

    'Why
were you never questioned by the police regarding the murder of Helene
Lockert?' he asked.

    Sigrid
gave a start. 'Are you still here? Didn't I ask you to go?'

    'Why
is your name not in the interview reports?' the policeman repeated after
clearing his throat.

    Sigrid
stood on the same spot without moving.

    'That
must have been a shock,' Gunnarstranda said, stepping closer to her back.
'Meeting her daughter again after all these years. Perhaps it was fate. Have
you wondered about that? Sometimes things do have a meaning.'

    'What
are you talking about?'

    Gunnarstranda
drew in his breath and tried to see if there were any changes in the face whose
flat contrasts he could just make out in the reflection of the glass.

    'My
wife died of cancer a number of years ago,' he said with a cough. 'All her life
she had had one single dream. I mean a real, a genuine dream.' He paused.

    'Yes?'
Sigrid said at length, either impatient or genuinely interested.

    Gunnarstranda
had to clear his throat again. 'Before she died she was given the chance to
experience the dream. But she was not the one to make it happen. She couldn't,
she was too ill. She didn't know the dream was reality until it happened.'

    'I didn't
dream about meeting Helene's daughter again.'

    'But
it happened,' the policeman said. 'Perhaps it was meant to happen.'

    'If
it was…' Sigrid spun round. 'Why should she be killed? Can you tell me that?
Was that meant to be as well?'

    'I
don't know,' the policeman said, looking into her eyes. 'I have no idea. But
the important thing is that you met, that you had the chance to love her.'

    Sigrid
looked away. 'You may be right,' she said. 'But that will never be enough.' She
paused. 'I thought that, too,' she continued at last. 'Katrine… when I first
saw her in Vinterhagen after all these years… it was as though Helene was
standing there. I knew she had to be Helenas daughter from the very first
moment.' Sigrid raised a faint, dreamy smile. 'The same wonderful blonde hair,'
she whispered. 'Helene's mouth, her body, her voice. I instantly knew who she
was, and I did wonder in fact if she and I were meant… But why should she be
killed?'

    Sigrid's
facial expression was genuinely questioning.

    'Why
were you never interviewed for the murder of Helene?' the policeman repeated
without the slightest intention of capitulating.

    'I
don't know,' she said, drained. 'Maybe Reidar never said anything about me.'

    'Reidar
Bueng? He mentioned your name. There must have been some other reason Kripos
crossed you off their list.'

    'I
was in Scotland. In Edinburgh.'

    'In
Scotland?'

    'Officially.'

    Gunnarstranda
smiled with curiosity. 'Tell me more,' he said.

    'At
last something you didn't know. I'm a qualified engineer, a chemical engineer.'

    'I
thought you were a qualified social worker.'

    'That,
too. But I took chemistry at university in Edinburgh after my school-leaving
exams. Engineering courses were the thing at that time.

    Unfortunately
I didn't go into a job straight afterwards. When I was about to do so, after
being a housewife for almost twenty years, my subject had changed and I hadn't
kept up. So I tried a different job. One that was about giving, repairing. Will
you promise to go if I tell you what happened'

    Gunnarstranda
sent her an old-fashioned look.

    'Always
true to yourself, eh. Upright. Promise nothing. The apostle for the ordinary
man.' Her •smile was bitter. 'I went home on a stand-by ticket. It was supposed
to be a surprise. In fact it is quite a banal story. I went straight to
Reidar's place. I wanted to surprise him and thought there would be no one at
home. But there was. In the bedroom. He was underneath her. My best friend. Do
you think that's stimulating? Men can find that kind of thing stimulating. I
thought it was loathsome. I could hear the noises arid stood there like an
intruder watching while she… do you understand? With my boyfriend. There's not
much more to say.'

    'Did
you go into the room? To the two of them?'

    'Are
you mad? No. I went to her place. I waited for her. I knew she wouldn't be
long. After all, she'd left her child in the playpen while she…'

    'So
you just waited for her?'