by K. K. Beck
At the Bergen airport she found Kessler next to her in the passport control line. “I suppose your friend is meeting you,” he said.
Worried that he’d offer to share a taxi or something, she smiled and nodded, wondering when she’d ever be rid of him. He seemed interested in her in a way that managed to be both mysterious and slightly unpleasant.
When she pushed her baggage cart into the main waiting area, he was again at her side. In desperation she gave a little wave to a tall, good-looking blond man who seemed to be waving toward someone near her.
“Your friend?” said Kessler, raising an eyebrow and smiling just a fraction, in what she thought might be his version of a leer.
“Yes,” she said, perversely pleased she’d picked such a handsome fake lover. Now, surely, Kessler would back off. She congratulated herself on her quick thinking.
Unfortunately the tall man she’d fingered turned out to be meeting Kessler and came over and greeted him. The three of them stood there awkwardly for a moment, and the Norwegian said to the Swiss, “I got your fax this morning. I am glad I was able to meet this flight. Actually it was better for me than later.”
Kessler gave one of his Teutonic little nods—presumably of thanks—and said to the man, “I didn’t know you were at that seafood show in Seattle. And met the charming Miss da Silva there.”
Kessler in gallant mode was a bit startling. His accent sounded suddenly kind of cute.
“I’m sorry?” The blond man looked back and forth between Kessler and Jane, obviously wondering what the hell was going on.
“No, I’m sorry,” Jane said with a big smile. “Across a crowded room I guess all Norwegians look alike. This is, of course, not my friend.”
Great. Now Kessler thought she couldn’t even recognize the man she was coming to spend the week with. “I’m a little nearsighted without my glasses,” she added, trying to preserve what little dignity she had left.
“We may all look alike to you,” said the tall Norwegian, “but if I had the pleasure of meeting you before, I know I would have remembered.” The poor man looked tremendously relieved that he hadn’t committed some social gaffe.
Jane backed off and made a flustered but speedy exit. She abandoned the cart around a corner, wrestled off her bag and retreated to the nearest ladies’ room to regroup. Surely Kessler wouldn’t follow her in there. She’d give him and his Viking companion enough time to leave the airport before she emerged and trusted that Bergen was a big enough town that she could avoid him from now on.
One thing was interesting: Kessler had changed his flight. Could he have done it to get on the same flight as Jane? But why?
She took a cab through snow-covered woodsy scenery to her hotel. When she’d barreled off from Lofoten, she’d been purposely vague about her arrival time back in Norway. That way she could avoid being met by another gracious fish bureaucrat.
Now she felt deliciously alone in her nice anonymous hotel room. She avoided the television set as though it were an unexploded bomb, and after a brief collapse on the bed, rummaged among her papers for her itinerary.
She was due shortly at a nearby hotel for a breakfast meeting. She took a short, slippery, packed-ice walk alongside the harbor. The water was incredibly still, and the old, solid brick buildings were reflected in it in a way that managed to be both stately and somehow festive.
Breakfast was a sumptuous Norwegian smorgasbord: a selection of breads and cheeses, eggs—boiled and scrambled—big Icelandic shrimp in their shells bristling with orange roe, pickled herring, salmon caviar, lettuce and tomato slices, waffles and jam. Jane staggered through an interview with a cod importer, taping everything for Carla, picking up more brochures and hoping her questions weren’t too dumb.
Back at the hotel, she was slightly chagrined to see that her minders had caught up with her. There was a message from someone named Solveig, who was coming by to escort her to the Fisheries offices later that afternoon.
Once in her room, Jane set about to try to make sure Knutsen didn’t remember her from the Fountain Room. First of all she removed the minimal makeup she wore most of the time. When she sang, she went all out—lipstick and mascara, foundation and blusher—and that’s how he’d seen her. Next she brushed her hair back from her forehead and fastened it with a couple of clips. She tried using an eyebrow pencil to add a widow’s peak to her newly exposed brow but decided it looked too peculiar and washed it off again.
Maybe she should have brought some Kmart glasses. She could look like the repressed woman in a corny old movie who at some point removes her glasses, lets down her hair and causes the hero to gasp, “Why, Miss Jones!”
She supposed that as she was impersonating a fish journalist, she should have worn earrings shaped like halibut or something; then she remembered that Ragnhild up in Tromsø had given her a fish-shaped pin. She attached this to the lapel of her jacket and arranged the silk scarf with salmon swimming upstream under her jacket in a kind of matronly pouf she’d seen on Carla when they had first met.
She looked herself over in the full-length mirror. She didn’t think she’d fool anyone she knew, but then Knutsen didn’t really know her. She experimented a little with posture, it being one of her theories that the two most effective things a woman could do to look attractive were to stand up straight and to smile, and she was especially careful to do both on stage. It followed that doing just the opposite would create a radical change in appearance.
She rounded her shoulders, let her chest cave into her ribs and scowled. The change was quite remarkable. She looked truly pathetic. The whole wretched life of this new persona unreeled itself in Jane’s mind, going back to early self-esteem problems in adolescence, subsequent disappointments in career and personal relationships and, finally, years of self-indulgent therapy and crabby bitterness. Hardly the kind of person who could bully the truth out of Knutsen.
Oh, the hell with it, she thought. She unclipped her hair and put on a little mascara and lipstick. So what if he recognized her? Let him be confused. She’d have him cornered in his office, and she’d just demand to know what he remembered about Marcia’s last night on earth.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Her escort, Solveig, turned out to be a large, freckled young woman with pale orange hair. They met in the lobby, where she presented Jane with a few pounds of brochures, a calendar, another oven mitt, and a huge glossy cookbook.
Jane thanked her warmly and took it all over to the desk for pickup (and possibly disposal) later.
They then took a taxi to the Fisheries Directorate, a name that conjured up in Jane’s mind a scene from a children’s book, where bureaucratic fish wearing cartoon spectacles sat behind desks and shuffled papers, blowing bubbles and making policy.
Solveig seemed sweet and rather passive, which was good news because Jane was already scheming to eliminate her from the room when she interviewed Knutsen.
Whatever happened during the interview, Jane was determined to blow off any more hospitality or further meetings. Her flight left in the morning; she would declare herself off duty until then.
“We are having it very lucky,” said Solveig. “There is a meeting of the International Salmon Marketing Committee here in Bergen this evening, so you can write about this, too, perhaps.”
“I doubt it,” Jane said firmly. She remembered something Carla had said back at the Meade Hotel. “Those meetings are generally closed.”
“Well,” said Solveig, taking on a look of stubbornness Jane hadn’t anticipated—there was something ominous about the clench of her wide jaw—“they will be wanting to announce a new marketing campaign, and I think they will be glad to be talking about it.”
“I’m terribly sorry, but—”
“We have faxed your magazine,” said Solveig. “And the meeting is in your hotel, so it is very convenient.”
Jane tried to think of another way out—ever since her failure at the airport with Kessler, she’d felt off her game—but just then the
taxi pulled up in front of a handsome glass building, and Solveig was paying the driver and getting a receipt with the decisive air of one who had not only finished a discussion, but won. Lest there be any doubt, Solveig turned to her and said, “Amanda Braithwaite says you should write about this. You know Amanda, of course?”
Jane thought about winging it, then decided not to bother. “Never heard of her,” she said.
“She is an English lady. Very experienced in food marketing. She will be handling the campaign. You will be meeting her at the hotel tonight.” Solveig smiled and added, “Of course Mr. Carver, your editor, knows her. She is buying advertising from your magazine.”
Good old Norm. Jane supposed if this Amanda Braithwaite wanted to be featured in a fashion layout, modeling fish wearables, she could have that, too. Further struggle seemed pointless. Jane reasoned that she had to eat anyway. She might as well bring along the trusty tape recorder and come up with something Carla could fashion into a sidebar.
The Fisheries offices were housed in a stunning modern building that incorporated some ancient wooden beams and brick walls. Solveig led her to Knutsen’s office overlooking the harbor, and they waited outside for a moment. Jane managed to ditch Solveig by demanding in a high-handed way that she confirm her plane reservations and make sure she would get her frequent flyer miles. As Jane didn’t collect miles on SAS, she figured that would stall her a little. Solveig crept away, outwardly passive once again.
Finally Knutsen came to the door, wearing a Mr. Rogers–style cardigan of thick gray wool over a white shirt and tie. He didn’t look like a thrill killer at all. He smoked a pipe, which he held up questioningly as he said, “You don’t mind, I hope?” with a look of genuine concern.
“Not at all,” said Jane, who rather liked the smell of pipe tobacco.
“Ah, Americans,” he said, all twinkly. “You don’t like people to smoke or drink too much. . . .”
“Or eat whales or wear fur,” said Jane, laughing. “I know. We can be very annoying and self-righteous sometimes.”
He held up a finger in the manner of a winsome professor. “We will get along fine,” he said in a cozy little singsong accent. He waved a hand at the chair in front of his desk, waited politely until she was seated, then sat down himself and smiled at her with a pleasant, expectant look. “What can I do for you?” he said. “What do you need to know?”
Jane made a great show of fumbling with her tape recorder while she decided what the hell to ask before she started grilling him about Marcia St. Francis. “I’m sorry I missed your speech in Seattle . . . ,” she began.
“I tell you what,” he said, “I was just going through the things I brought back from Seattle, and I have a tape of the speech. Why not take it with you?”
“That would be wonderful,” said Jane. “You don’t need it?”
“I always come back from these conferences with all kinds of tapes and papers, and I never go over them again. Least of all my own.” He pawed around in a drawer.
“All I have to say about all the problems of the world of salmon marketing are in the speech,” he said with a self-deprecating little smile, handing her a cassette with a courtly nod.
“Did we meet in Seattle?” he asked, squinting at her a little. “I know I met some woman from your magazine, and you do look familiar, but I thought her name was different.”
“Perhaps you met my colleague,” said Jane. “Carla Elroy? You’ve spoken with her on the phone before, I know.”
“Yes, but I am sure I have met you, too,” he said, looking genuinely confused.
“These conventions can be very overwhelming,” said Jane. “A lot happens, and people are jet-lagged and socializing a lot.”
“That’s for sure,” said Knutsen, touching his forehead.
Jane imagined he was remembering his hangover and thought for a moment she had an entrée. Yes, she could say, you were pretty drunk yourself. Remember lurching around the Fountain Room? But she couldn’t bring herself to do it just yet.
“Tell me about the marketing campaign you’ve just put together,” she said. “I understand Amanda Braithwaite is involved.” Solveig had expected her to know who this person was. Presumably Knutsen did, too.
“Ja,” he said, leaning back and blowing a crown of blue smoke that floated across the big window overlooking the harbor, like a baby cloud trapped somehow on the wrong side of the glass. “As I am sure you know, farmed salmon has been in a terrible state for years. We Norwegians developed the technology, and before we knew it the world was covered with salmon farms and there was overproduction. We have been too generous with our knowledge.”
Jane nodded and checked to see that her tape was moving. It was.
“And then of course we have had trade problems, duties, legal problems. Everyone knows that if we get people to eat more salmon, there is plenty of business for all of us. Instead we are fighting each other the whole time.
“Now it seems we can have a—what do you call this, when you stop fighting a war?”
“A truce?” said Jane.
“Ja, ja. If we can spend on marketing a little of what we have been spending dragging each other before the GATT and the EC and the Department of Commerce, we can get people to eat more salmon. It is not so difficult. Everyone loves salmon.”
“Of course,” said Jane.
“So Amanda is putting together a campaign, and we are discussing for the first time the campaign itself, not only how we will pay. Before we are talking only about the budget, but I think this is a better way. Amanda is a very intelligent woman. She has worked very hard. Perhaps we can all agree. We even have”—he leaned over as if imparting startling information—“the Alaskans involved! The wild salmon people. I never thought I would see this.”
“I never thought I would see the Berlin wall fall in my lifetime,” Jane said solemnly.
“Exactly!” He tapped with his pipe on a big glass ashtray, and a lot of tarry tobacco fell out in a smoldering mass.
“What kind of a campaign are we talking about?” said Jane.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Knutsen said, scraping away at his pipe with a knife. “In this country we prefer to promote the fish on its merits. Not by using a lot of young, half-naked girls in black stockings, like I saw in Seattle.” An expression of moral repugnance crossed his features.
Oh, really? Jane thought to herself. You seemed to be getting into it when I saw you last, lurching around the Fountain Room requesting “Yust Von of Dose Tings” and trying to cop a feel here and there, not to mention the handcuffs, you nasty hypocrite.
“Listen,” she said, “I knew one of those half-naked girls. She ended up dead. In the room next to yours.”
His excavation in the bowl of his pipe ceased, and he set it down very carefully in the ashtray and folded his hands in front of him as if in prayer, all the while gazing across at her. His light blue eyes uncrinkled and grew suddenly exposed—fuller, paler and glazed over. She wondered if it were grief or disingenuousness. Or fear.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “A terrible thing. I was very shocked. All these guns you people have . . .”
“You knew her, didn’t you?” said Jane. “You went off with her that evening. People saw you leaving together.”
Knutsen stood up and stepped back from his desk. “I ask you please not to discuss this,” he said.
“Too bad,” said Jane. “The girl’s parents have a right to know what happened to their daughter. You’re the only person who knows, and you’ve refused to help.”
“I spoke with the police in Seattle about this poor girl,” he said stiffly, reaching for the phone. “If you don’t have more questions about the marketing campaign, then . . .”
“Don’t touch that,” said Jane. “Not unless you want me to tell the world about those handcuffs you were wearing that evening.”
Knutsen’s eyes retreated into leathery folds. “You were there,” he said. “I saw you. You were singing. Cole Porter.”
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Jane remembered the two-dollar tip he’d given her and wondered how she could have been suckered in by that avuncular cardigan and the pipe.
His hands had balled into fists. Jane suddenly got up and leaned across his desk. “Look, I’m not here to upset you,” she said in a softer voice, the voice women used when trying to calm down men who were feeling cornered. “I don’t want to embarrass you. Just tell me what happened so I can tell her family. Then we can forget all about it. If you’ve told the police, you can tell me.”
Unspoken was the threat that if he didn’t, she’d retail the story about his kinky evening in Seattle around the industry.
He sat down heavily. She sat, too, slowly, so as not to startle him. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Who are you? They told me you are a journalist. Now I remember you singing in a bar.”
“I am a private investigator, working for the family,” she said brusquely.
“Then why do you pretend to be these other things?” he said. “Why didn’t you just call me up and ask your questions?”
“I tried,” she said. “You refused to speak with me.”
“So that was you? Well, it is natural,” he said. “Why should I speak to you?” He looked remarkably helpless.
Jane suppressed her pity and came down hard. “So I won’t tell everyone in the industry how you were involved with her. How you came back with that thing on your wrist.”
“But I was drunk!” he said, as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did. “I drank a lot of whiskey, and then this girl . . . I am sorry she is dead, but you see, she was very strange. She rubbed up against me in the bar and asked me to go with her. I am a normal man. A normal man who was very drunk.”
“Where did you go?” said Jane.
“I don’t know. A house somewhere. And before I know what is happening, she has this thing clamped around me, like in some American film. I am telling you honestly, I was terrified.” He seemed to be pleading with her. “I am in a strange country, a country that we hear is full of murderers and crazy people, and I am chained to a . . . what do you call it, a heating thing.”