prevent the murders from taking place.
The victims were nearly always done to death outdoors in forest
or farmland, and always with a sharp butcher's knife. Soon, almost
half the guests from Hamilton's fancy dress ball had been killed, and
the serial killer began to get closer to the laird and the duke, not to
mention the chief constable. He knew very well that he'd been the
sixteenth piece to be taken on the board.
Naturally enough, one of the first suspects was Iain MacKenzie
who'd been so irrevocably humiliated by his wife that fateful night,
and had now lost her for good. Apart from the laird and the duke,
MacKenzie was the last piece left standing on the chessboard and, in
theory at least, he might have been able to remember every move in
the game. But when the thirteenth and fourteenth murders took
place while MacKenzie was in police custody, he was set free with a
pat on the shoulder.
The laird himself was questioned by the police. It was he who
had lost the game, not without a little disgruntlement, and he was
also one of the few who knew the game move by move. The police
also wanted to ask the laird why he had organised such a bizarre
masquerade in the first place.
When the butler was brought in for questioning at the police
station, they raked over certain inconsistencies between his own
statements and the laird's, but he was never on the list of suspects.
He was, however, able to tell the police that, both before and after
that calamitous Midsummer's Eve, he'd been concerned about
Hamilton's mental health.
The farmer and his wife who'd cried off only a few days before the
party were also brought in and eliminated from the enquiry.
She was finally caught red-handed after gaining entry to MacIver's
barn and stabbing the farmer in the chest with a butcher's knife.
It had been easy enough for Mary Ann to gain entry to the local
farms, lawyers' offices and large estates. Nor had she found any
difficulty in enticing the women and men of the place out into forests
and moors.
Chief Constable MacLachlan was an experienced police officer,
but even he had to ask Mary Ann what her motive for the most
brutal series of killings in Scotland's history could have been.
The bewitchingly beautiful Mary Ann told him it was shame.
It had been an enchanted evening, and she clearly recalled all
the lips she'd kissed and all the passionate embraces she, with
tenderness and desire, had allowed herself to be swept up in, but
subsequently she had felt ashamed of her immorality. She could
have elected to take her own life, but that wouldn't have made
things any better. Mary Ann couldn't bear the thought that any of
the laird's guests should go on living with the recollection of her
chasing about the hedges ofHamilton's garden giving herself to half
of Scotland.
Many attended and wept bitterly when Mary Ann was hanged
at Glasgow a few months later.
That September I began to study history. Sometimes I
invited a girl student home for cheese and wine or omelettes
and lager. I could grill steaks as well, and I could make stew,
fish soup and pickled herring.
I was just waiting for Maria to come and tell me that she'd
got the job she'd applied for in Stockholm. Then she rang
one evening and asked if she could come round. When she
turned up, she was carrying a large bunch of yellow roses.
They were for me. It seemed strange. I didn't know what
she wanted, but I knew that something was up.
We sat leaning across the kitchen table holding hands. I'd
switched off all the lights. Only a single lighted candle stood
on the table between us. We'd drunk a bottle of cheap red
wine.
I was glad to have Maria back, but I wanted her to get to
the point. First, she told me she'd got the job in Stockholm
and that she'd be moving in December. I thought that I
could learn to live in Sweden too, but before I was able to
speak Maria said something that shut the idea of Stockholm
out for ever.
She looked into my eyes and said that she had a favour to
ask of me. It was something that would last our entire life-
time, she said.
I felt a tremor pass through my body. For the first time I'd
been able to embrace the notion of something that might
last my whole life. I liked the sound of the word 'last', it was
a beautiful word.
'I want to take a child to Stockholm with me,' she said.
Once more I felt that Maria was the only woman I'd ever
met whom I didn't always understand. It was what I liked so
much about her. It's impossible to love anyone you always
understand completely.
'I want you to give me a child, Petter,' she said.
I didn't grasp the significance of what she was saying. I
was still thinking about what it would be like to move to
Stockholm. Should I sell the Oslo flat? Or simply let it out?
But then Maria said that she didn't want to spend her
entire life with one man. She was just like me, she said.
Maria knew me intimately, I'd told her about all my female
visitors. I felt I was seeing myself in a mirror.
Maria wanted to have a child by me. She said I was the
only man she could contemplate as a father to her child,
she'd known that since we first met at Ullev�lseter, but she
couldn't tie herself to me. She asked me to make her
pregnant. She asked me to inseminate her.
I laughed. I thought it was a rather neat idea, and one so
absolutely in my spirit. Procreation without commitment
was right up my street.
We sat there a long time talking the matter over, but not
at all in an earnest way. We were laughing and joking. Maria
wanted us to sleep together again, and the idea was alluring.
We could sleep together until Maria got pregnant. Then
she'd have to leave for Stockholm.
Despite all this, I wasn't ready to father a child. I wonder
if I ever have been. The mere thought of looking into my
own child's eyes struck me as awful. I hadn't liked having
my head patted and I hadn't enjoyed having my cheek
pinched. So how would I manage being the one doing the
patting?
I mulled over these aspects as well. I didn't want a child,
but I could help Maria. The more we talked, the more
convinced I became that her idea was a brilliant one. She
stipulated that we had to make a pact. She said we had to
promise not to try to find one another after she'd moved to
Stockholm. We would never be able to meet again. I wasn't
even to have her address. And, most importantly, we were
to swear that even the child's paternity was to be a secret
between the two of us. All I was to be told was whether it
was a boy or a girl.
I was so fascinated by this scheme that I felt the blood
begin to pound in my veins. Maria was not just my equal, I
felt she excelled me in talent and audacity.
Giving a woman a child that wasn't to be mine suited me
perfectly. I'd always liked spreading myself, emptying
myself, but I'd never been much interested in what I might
call copyright. I'd never had any need to be applauded for
what I did or initiated, not even when I was little. I received
no ovation for the taxis I ordered. Ordering taxis had been a
wonderful idea, but no one had thanked me for it after-
wards.
Now we'd be able to meet often in the days to come.
That alone was a great inducement. I've never found it easy
to look more than a few days into the future. I've looked
backwards and to the sides, but I've never taken much
account of the days to come. I told Maria that I accepted her
conditions. It would be an honour to make her pregnant, I
said. It would give me such enormous pleasure. We had
a long laugh at that. We guffawed. We got randier and
randier.
Several glorious weeks followed, and even now they feel
like the only weeks of my life when I've been truly alive.
We termed our special relationship an ad hoc romance.
We couldn't stay in bed making children all day, but we
spent the entire twenty-four hours together. We went for
long walks in the city and in the forest, and I narrated some
of my zaniest stories. Maria had a particular penchant for an
involved tale about a jeweller who committed a posthumous
and thoroughly premeditated triple murder. I actually told
the story I'd sold to the author in Club 7, too. After all,
Maria was leaving the country.
I had to tell some of the stories twice or three times. Maria
said she wanted to try to learn them by heart. The only
problem was that I was never able to tell a story exactly the
same way twice. At times like these Maria would leap in and
prompt me. She couldn't understand how she could be
better at remembering what I'd said and the exact way I'd
expressed it. I explained that the only real skill I possessed
was improvisation.
Soon came the day we'd both been waiting for, Maria
with joy and I with sorrow. Her pregnancy test was positive
and Maria opened her arms wide and rejoiced. Jokingly she
that as well.
Maria remained in Oslo a couple of months more before
moving to Stockholm. We saw less of each other again. She
sometimes phoned and asked me over to the campus to tell
her a story, and I never made excuses, but it was odd to
think that a part of me had already taken root in her body.
Then Maria went. She rang before she left. I didn't go
with her to the station.
*
I was the right man to give a woman a child he wasn't to
share. Why shouldn't I let Maria have the child she wanted?
It was easy. It was free. It cost me nothing. I reckoned it was
I who should be grateful. But everything has two sides. I
never imagined I'd have to pay so dearly for it. I wasn't
allowed to see Maria again.
However, it took several years before our solemn pact
came into full force. She came to Oslo with her daughter
four times in all. Maria simply called her 'Poppet', but she'd
obviously given her another name as well. I imagined that
Maria used a pet name just to keep her real one from me. At
our final meeting, the child was almost three. That was
when the pact was renewed and it had to be the very last
time I saw her. Maria's idea was that the little girl mustn't
form any impression of her father. And for that matter I
wasn't to form any real image of her either, as I wasn't a
proper father.
She was a sweet little girl. I didn't think she took after
Maria or me, but I could see a clear resemblance to my
mother; she had the same high cheekbones and the same
widely spaced eyes. I felt my mother was reborn, and that
it was I who'd given her a new chance. I realised, of course,
that I was fantasising.
The last time I met Maria and the little girl was on a warm
June evening in 1975. We only had a few hours together,
and we spent them by Lake Sognsvann. We'd brought along
prawns, French bread and white wine. Maria and I sat
chatting about the old days while the little girl splashed
about at the water's edge with an inflatable swan. When she
ran up from the water for her juice and biscuits, both mother
and daughter permitted me to wrap her in a bath towel and
dry her. I helped her with her dress too, it was the least I
could do. Maria had once said that I'd make a 'marvellous
daddy'.
Poppet sat down on the towel between us, and I began to
tell her a long fairy tale, or a saga as I called it. She was
laughing even before I really got going. I don't know if she
understood what I said, and perhaps that was why she was
laughing, but I tried to use some Swedish words to make
things easier for her.
I told of a small girl about her own age, who was called
Panina Manina and whose father was the ringmaster of the
finest circus in the whole, wide world. The circus came
from a faraway land, but once upon a time, long ago, it was
on its way to Stockholm where, by invitation of the King
and Queen of Sweden, it was to set up its big top in a park
right in the middle of the Swedish capital. All the circus
trailers drove up through Sweden in one long line, and
in the procession were elephants and sea-lions, bears and
giraffes, horses and camels, dogs and monkeys. The trailers
also contained clowns and jugglers, fakirs and tight-rope
walkers, animal tamers and bare-back riders, magicians and
musicians. The only child in this whole great caravan was
Panina Manina. She was treated like a little princess because
she was the ringmaster's daughter, and it was said that
destiny had decreed that she would become a tamous circus
artiste.
The little girl sat bolt upright listening to my story, but
she never said anything, so I couldn't be certain how much
she was taking in. I assumed that at least she was getting
something of the atmosphere of the fairy tale. I glanced at
Maria, and she indicated that it was all right for me to
continue. I think she was pleased that the little girl, too,
could share at least one story. Even Metre Man had settled
himself against a tree so that he could hear the rest of the
tale. As he sat down, he raised his green hat and gave me a
confidential wink. I think he was in a good mood. Perhaps it
was the first time he'd felt like one of the family.
I told how all the big circus lorries and trailers halted for
dinner by a large lake deep in the Swedish forests and, while
in the water. The ringmaster thought that one of the clowns
was keeping a watchful eye on her, but the clown had
misunderstood and thought the animal tamer was supposed
to be looking after Panina Manina while the adults roasted
wild boar steaks on a huge cam
p fire. At all events, when the
great convoy was due to continue its journey to Stockholm
a few hours later, nobody could find her. They searched for
her all evening and night, and many of the animals were let
loose to see if they could pick up her scent, but all to no
avail. After searching high and low for Panina Manina most
of the next day, everyone came to the conclusion she must
have drowned in the lake. For hours, two camels stood at
the water's edge drinking, they drank and drank, and there
was a general belief that this was because they recognised
the smell of Panina Manina in the water, and they were
probably trying to drink the lake dry. But at last the camels'
thirst was slaked and the ringmaster's daughter was still
missing, and remained so. It was said that the ringmaster
cried himself to sleep for many a sad year afterwards, because
Panina Manina had been the apple of his eye, he had been
fonder of her than all the rest of the circus put together.
I pretended to wipe away a tear, and I think the little girl
gazed up at me. It seemed she had at least understood the last
thing I'd said; after all, she'd been paddling down there at
the water's edge herself quite recently, so I hurriedly went
on:
But Panina Manina hadn't drowned. She'd simply gone
off to do a little exploring while the grown-ups sat in front
of the fire drinking wine and eating wild boar meat. She
followed a nice little path into the forest, and soon her legs
were so tired that she sat down in the ling between the tall
trees. As she sat there listening to the doves cooing and the
owls hooting, she fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke,
she imagined she'd only dropped off for a few minutes, but
in reality she'd slept all through the night and more besides,
for the sun was now high in the sky. Panina Manina took
the path again to find her way back to the camp fire, but she
wasn't able to find a single circus trailer, and soon she was
lost in the forest. Late that evening she arrived at a small
homestead with a little red house and a flagpole flying the
Swedish flag. A pink caravan stood parked in front of the red
wooden building, and perhaps it was this that attracted
Panina Manina's attention, for to her it looked rather like a
circus trailer. Although she was only three, she went up
to the caravan and knocked at the door. When no one
answered, she crawled up a small flight of stone steps leading
up to the red house and knocked on the door there. It
opened and out came an old woman. Panina Manina wasn't
frightened; maybe this was because she was a real circus girl.
She looked up at the strange lady and said that she'd got
separated from her daddy � but she spoke in a language the
woman couldn't understand, because Panina Manina came
from a faraway land that the old lady had never visited.
Panina Manina hadn't eaten for almost two days, and now
she put her little hands to her mouth to show that she was
hungry. At that the woman realised that she was lost in the
forest and let the little girl in. She gave her herring and
meatballs, bread and blackberry juice. Panina Manina was so
hungry and thirsty that she ate and drank like a grown-up.
When night came, the woman made up a bed for her and,
because they couldn't talk to each other properly, she sat
down by the bed and sang her a lullaby until she fell into a
deep sleep. As she had no idea what the girl's name was she
simply called her 'Poppy'.
Poppet glanced up at me again. Perhaps it was because I
was miming the way Panina Manina ate herring and meat-
balls, but it might also have been because she had noticed
that the girl in the story had been called 'Poppy'. I wasn't
certain she'd understood much of the story itself, but I went
on:
Panina Manina lived in the little house for many years. No
one in the whole of Sweden managed to find out who her
mother and father were and, as the years passed, Panina
Manina's memory of the ringmaster grew dimmer and
dimmer. Soon she was talking fluent Swedish and had
forgotten her own language because she hadn't got anyone