The Writing on the Wall Read Online Free PDF Page B

shyness and sensuality.
    She pointed to a coat rack. ‘You can hang your coat up there.’
    I did as she said, followed her through the L- shaped hall, past the door into the kitchen, which looked out onto the back of the house, and came into a large, open-plan living room as luxuriously furnished as a showroom in a furniture store. A plum- coloured leather suite occupied the space in front of the picture windows facing south and east, while a dining table and chairs in dark-brown oak was the focal point at the other end of the room, just in front of the door to the kitchen. In the centre of the room there was also an L- shaped sofa and three chairs, all in dark-green material, set around a low black coffee table. The fact that the room didn’t seem too full gives some indication of its size, and there was still plenty of floor space for the children to play. Just now the place was as spick-and-span as an operating theatre.
    Cheerful morning sounds poured forth from a radio in the centre of a large dark wall unit. She had set the coffee table for two. ‘I’ve made a couple of sandwiches, and the kettle is on. I’m just going to make the coffee, so … if you’d like some?’
    ‘Yes please.’
    ‘There are – some papers …’ She pointed to the two Bergen newspapers that lay folded up beside the white coffee service as though she was my secretary and had prepared lunch for the boss.
    I leafed through one of the papers, while she was in the kitchen making the coffee. There had been a drugs raid in Møhlenpris, and two fifteen-year-olds had robbed a post office in Åsane at three-thirty the previous day. The raid had resulted in ten people being charged with possession of various amounts of drugs, mainly hash and tablets. The two fifteen-year-olds had been arrested an hour and a half later, having spent only eighty kroner on hamburgers and Cokes at a roadside café. Two new cases of AIDS had been registered in Bergen over the previous year, both in drug circles, and the health authorities stressed that heterosexuals had no cause to feel safer than homosexuals on that score.
    So the cartoons were a lot more fun.
    Sidsel Skagestøl came back in carrying a white coffee pot in one hand and a small dish with open sandwiches in the other. She put the dish down and poured out coffee for us both after I’d declined the offer of brandy in mine.
    For a moment we sat in silence. Then she nodded in the direction of the dish. ‘Help yourself.’
    ‘Thanks.’ I took one with a brown goat’s cheese and beetroot topping. ‘You haven’t heard anything from her, I take it?’
    ‘No, I haven’t … And you? Have you – managed to have a word with anyone?’
    I nodded. ‘Åsa and her parents and Helene Sandal.’
    ‘And … has anyone said anything?’
    ‘So far I’ve more questions than answers.’
    ‘Such as …’
    ‘That list we talked about last time, of her friends. Have you made one?’
    She looked past me, towards one of the shelves in the wall unit, where there was a collection of family photos. ‘No, I … When I started going through the list of her class, it dawned on me that – I didn’t know. If it had been a few years ago, at primary school, I could have given you five or six names straight away. When she was in the Guides. And a few more besides. But now … It suddenly occurred to me how little I knew her, in that way. I mean – who she spent her time with. Actually, I don’t know of anyone apart from Åsa.’
    ‘What about a girl called Astrid Nikolaisen?’ I asked, taking a bite of the open sandwich.
    ‘… Astrid Nikolaisen … Er … For me she’s nothing but a name. She’s never been here. I know she’s one of Torild’s friends from her class, I mean, since she started in Class 7 when she was twelve, but … I don’t think there’s any more I can tell you.’
    I swallowed my food. ‘Do you have her address, by any chance?’
    She glanced at the wall unit. ‘Yes, I think it’s in the