Death in a Cold Climate

by Robert Barnard

‘Yes, he was. I’ve looked in my diary. I went to the ten o’clock movies with a girl-friend. I remember he said he’d have another small one–so he was still around.’

  ‘And the others were still there–the academics, the Ottesens, the Mormons?’

  ‘Not the Mormons. They only dropped by for five minutes–I hardly noticed them, because I was talking. And Steve had gone. But the others were still there, I guess.’

  ‘And you made a date with him, didn’t you?’

  Nan Bryson’s face fell. ‘Who told you that? Hell–it must have been Steve. Will I bitch into him about that.’

  ‘We want to know everything, Miss Bryson.’ What did they think this was? A spooky children’s party game?

  ‘Yeah,’ conceded Nan, unconvinced, ‘but it didn’t come to anything, so it’s kinda embarrassing.’

  ‘What sort of date was this that you had? Was he coming to your flat?’

  ‘Room really. Yes, he was. He was coming for coffee, we said, the evening of the twenty-first, about eight. That’s why I feel sorta cheap. And then, when he didn’t turn up, that made it worse. It’s humiliating.’

  ‘I doubt whether he could turn up, you know,’ said Fagermo. ‘I should think he was under two feet of snow.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Nan Bryson. ‘That’s the best excuse anyone’s ever had for standing me up.’

  CHAPTER 7

  HUSBAND AND WIFE

  The rest of that day was a whirl of activity for Fagermo. Activity for him was not in itself unusual–though for many of his fellows in the Tromsø force it was–but the kind of activity was right out of the ordinary. Murder and manslaughter were certainly not unknown in the town, but they usually took very different forms from this: teenagers now and then went too far in their weekend jollifications and did each other in in a playful manner; murderous lunatics were given temporary passes to the outside world from the local mental hospital and had a glorious time carving their families up, after which they were taken back, and the psychiatrists rubbed their hands together and said, ‘We seem to have been a little premature,’ smiling sad, gentle smiles. But murders mysterious, murders involving unknown assailants–more, unknown victims–these were very much outside the general run. Even Fagermo was not entirely sure how to proceed.

  One of the things he did was to get an artist’s impression of the dead boy’s face, and get it sent hot foot to the local newspapers. The next thing he did was to send a detailed description to Interpol. Then he got on the phone to the Trondheim police station and dictated to them a series of detailed questions about aliens–aliens with police records, and above all aliens who had gone missing. An hour later they rang him back with a negative report.

  ‘There’s nobody missing that would fit the bill. Nobody that we know is missing, that is. All we have on our files are a middle-aged Italian musician and a pregnant German waitress. Both of them presumably have just gone home. Or possibly gone off together.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The point is, if his work permit wasn’t up for renewal between Christmas and now, we wouldn’t necessarily know he was missing. And even if he is on our books, he could easily have wound things up here, settled up with his landlord for his flat or whatever, and simply moved elsewhere.’

  ‘He’s supposed to notify change of address.’

  ‘Yes, but the bastards seldom do–you know that.’

  ‘The point is, this boy didn’t just move: he got killed. I’d have expected some landlord or girl-friend to have been on to you with questions.’

  ‘Well, nobody’s come in here. Perhaps he wasn’t intending to come back here after Tromsø anyway. What do you want us to do now? I suppose we could go through our records, start picking out likely names and checking up on them.’

  ‘Yes–that’s what I’d like.’

  ‘It’ll take time, as you know. And of course they’ll all scream “victimization”!’

  ‘You could confine yourself to men from the English-speaking countries, and I think you can cut out the States and Canada. They are usually recognizable when they try to speak Norwegian, and two of the people who spoke to him are quite positive that he wasn’t American. Check on anyone between, say, eighteen and late twenties. Those are the outside limits. I’d have said early twenties myself.’

  ‘That narrows it a bit. But we’ve got hundreds of the buggers here, remember.’

  ‘I know. But make it top priority, will you?’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ said the voice at the other end, in an intonation Norwegians take on when wishing to convey that they wouldn’t be hurried by the last trump itself.

  This casualness on the part of the Trondheim police, this refusal to be unduly put out by other people’s problems, was all the more aggravating the more Fagermo thought about the case, since he did not see how he could make a real start on essentials or make any significant progress before he had got for his corpse a name, a history, a personality. Here the boy was, murdered in a town in which he had just arrived–murdered, no doubt, by someone he met here, either by arrangement or by accident. But surely the reason for the killing must lie behind, lie elsewhere, in the boy’s past. This was no casual knock on the head from a drunken teenager. The concealment of the body surely proved that. The investigation therefore had to be two-pronged: establishing precisely what the boy did during his two days in Tromsø; establishing his past and his personality, with a view to finding connecting links with Tromsø. Until he could get some lead on the second strand of the investigation–and surely the vital information must lie in Trondheim, or Britain, or at any rate elsewhere–then he would merely be marking time.

  He looked down at the list of names of the people the boy had met at the Cardinal’s Hat. The Ottesens would have to be approached cautiously: the kid-glove, would-you-be-so-gracious-as-to-spare-us-a-minute-of-your-valuable-time approach, as befitted a local Conservative councillor and a possible future Mayor. The Professor could be approached a little more freely, a man of title without power. He took from his bookshelf the University Catalogue and looked under Nicolaisen. There were three, under the various possible spellings, but two of them were women. The other was Professor of English Literature, and his address was in Isbjørnvei. Not more than two or three hundred yards from where the body was found. Interesting. Fagermo looked at his watch. Five-fifteen. Not the ideal time for a visit in Norway, but it looked as if today the gentleman was going to have his after-dinner nap interrupted.

  As he was driven over the bridge in the direction of Hungeren where Professor Nicolaisen lived (and where the boy had found his long home) Fagermo noted walking down towards the bridge the two local Mormons, instantly recognizable figures. Always in twos, like Norwegian policemen, they wore dark grey suits in all weathers, with white shirts and neckties, and generally were impeccably turned out, as if their religion were an off-shoot of Wall Street, or at the lowest Savile Row. Fagermo looked curiously at the current representatives: both were healthy, prepossessing specimens as they all tended to be (what did they do with the unhealthy ones? Expose them on the Salt Lake?). These were clearly walking advertisements for their non-alcoholic and decaffeinated life-style. One was thick, chunky and serious, rather like a mortuary attendant in his dark suit and overcoat; the other was slim and fair, more carefree-looking, and with a tiny note of the careless in his dress: his tie was less than impeccably straight. He was looking around him with genial interest, while the other was looking directly ahead, his eyes on salvation, or the main chance, or something.

  They can keep, thought Fagermo to himself. The Mormons are always with us. They can only have seen the chap for five minutes or so. Anyway it sounds as though he was talking to (or suffering conversation from) Nan Bryson at the time they came in.

  Isbjørnvei was a new area of Tromsø, part of the opening-out that had taken place over the last ten years or so, and changed Tromsø from a large frontier outpost to a medium-sized country town. Little blocks of terraced houses had been built by various loc
al interests around a small ring road, which thus divided itself into thirds: one third for navy personnel, one third for the university and one third for employees of the local council. These three groups existed apart, occasionally holding out the hand of sceptical friendship–rather like the Western and Eastern power blocs, and the Third World.

  When Fagermo rang the door-bell at number twelve there was a longish pause. However, he was conscious of the pattering of socked feet upstairs, and sensed a face at the kitchen window looking down at the police car parked by the side of the road. Eventually the front door was opened by a long, gaunt, unattractive man with brown teeth and a manner which uneasily combined arrogance and uncertainty. The uncertainty was in this case probably aggravated by the nature of the visit: the man’s expression, Fagermo felt, would have been positively hostile, if only he dared.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘Professor Nicolaisen?’

  ‘Yes–’ opening the door an inch further.

  ‘I wonder if I might talk to you?’

  ‘What about?’

  Fagermo smiled in the friendliest possible manner, and said in a stentorian, neighbour-reaching voice: ‘About the murder of the boy whose body was found up the back here yesterday.’

  It was an infallible way of dealing with that sort of witness. The door was pulled hurriedly open, and he was ushered into the hall by a very flushed and flustered academic.

  ‘What an extraordinary thing to do,’ said Professor Nicolaisen.

  Fagermo looked at him blandly, as if his words might refer to the murder, or anything else under the sun but his own actions. Professor Nicolaisen, further fussed by this lack of reaction or apology, led the way up the stairs which ended in his sitting-room. All the main rooms of the house were on this floor, and there hung around the room a faint smell of cooking–unpleasant, as if the food had not been very good, or well-cooked, or the meal not very sociable.

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ said Nicolaisen. He stood for a moment towering over him like a crumbling crag, seeming uncertain whether or not to offer him coffee. Then, deciding against it, he collapsed into a chair, like a block of flats in an earthquake, looking at him all the while gloomily, and glowering with some obscure resentment.

  ‘Well?’ he said again. The word was obviously one of his words, an off-putting ploy to put students at a disadvantage, socially and intellectually. His face was cratered with the scars of many battles–of easy victories over cocksure students, of sterile trench-warfare with colleagues over matters of principle. There was in his manner a nervous intensity which contained the odd mixture of aggression and defensiveness which rodents have, and those who engage in university politics.

  Fagermo remained genially sociable. ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen the paper today?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve read Aftenposten.’

  ‘Less exalted than that. The local papers both had a report of the body which was found up the back here yesterday.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of it?’

  Professor Nicolaisen made a grudging admission. ‘I did hear some talk of it yesterday. People saw the police cars around, I believe. But I was busy with a guest lecture I’ve been invited to give in Gøteborg. And in any case I would not have gone up to gawp.’

  ‘That’s a pity, now. You might have recognized the corpse.’

  ‘Really? Hmm. A student, I suppose. Strange how the universities attract all the unstable types.’

  ‘No, not a student. Or not one from here, at any rate. No, this is the boy that’s been missing for some time. I believe the American student Steve Cooling came and spoke to you about him in the Pepper Pot some weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh yes? . . . I think I do have some vague recollection. But it was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But you had in fact met him?’

  There was a pause, and then the same grudging assent, as if anything but contradiction came awkwardly to the man: ‘I think we may have sat at the same table.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Fagermo smiled ingratiatingly. ‘But you didn’t come forward in answer to our advertisement.’

  Professor Nicolaisen bristled. ‘My God, I’ve had my office burgled three times in the last six months. On the last occasion they scattered my lecture notes out through the open window and defecated on the floor–and your men couldn’t even be bothered to cross the road and give it a look. Why do you expect me to come running to do your work for you in those circumstances?’

  Fagermo was unpleasantly conscious that–nasty though his manner was–the man had made a palpable hit. He decided he’d better not try to browbeat him, and became still more ingratiating.

  ‘Well, well, I do take your point. Yes, indeed. Well, perhaps I could tell you when you met the boy. In fact, you were both of you in the Cardinal’s Hat on the evening of December the nineteenth, and as you say, you both sat at the same table. You were with another member of the university, I think –?’

  ‘Botner. Lecturer in French literature.’

  ‘Ah, good. Now, I think you in particular should be able to help me. I’ve talked only to Americans so far–and you are something of an expert on English speech, so I’ve heard.’

  Fagermo went thus far with the soft soap rather dubiously, since he thought the man might be too intelligent to respond, but he was gratified to see a faint relaxation of the cheek muscles–a near-smile of gratified vanity.

  ‘Oh. You heard that . . . ?’

  ‘Now, you must have some memory of how this boy spoke. Would you say he was English?’

  Professor Nicolaisen sat back in a pose of contemplation, as if sitting for a bust of Milton. ‘Ye-e-es,’ he said finally, with lawyer-like deliberation. ‘Ye-es, almost definitely, I’d say. I couldn’t detect any trace of the colonial there–it almost always shows through.’ It was as if he were talking of a stain on the tablecloth.

  ‘English, you would say–rather than Scottish or Welsh?’

  ‘Ye-e-es, yes, I’d say so.’

  ‘Anything more precise? A Northerner, for example?’

  The intellectual pose was intensified: Paradise Lost was in gestation. ‘A Southerner, I’d say. And perhaps there was a trace of West Country there.’

  Fagermo took this with a pinch of salt, as so much flimflam, but he was glad his witness was mellowing into a better humour. He rubbed his hands with delight. ‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Now–what sort of impression did the boy make on you?’

  The response was very ready this time, and the good humour vanished. Professor Nicolaisen never spoke other than dismissively of the young: ‘No particular impression at all,’ he said. ‘He was just a young man–someone who happened to drop in and join us. No great force of personality–’ he smiled satirically–‘that I can remember.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Good heavens, Inspector, this is months ago. I couldn’t possibly remember. And I fancy I spoke to him very little. I was in conversation with Ottesen, I remember–sound man, not unintelligent. If I remember rightly, this boy was talking to some American girl: the young stick to the young, you know.’

  It was unfortunate that at this moment the door from the hallway opened and a young woman walked in, clearly straight from the bedroom. She could hardly have been more than twenty-three, was blonde, sleepy and well-fleshed, with a jumper pulled over bra-less breasts, and tight jeans. Fagermo might have fallen into the unlucky assumption that this was Nicolaisen’s daughter, had he not caught a glimpse of the man watching her with a greedy, untrustful look.

  ‘A visitor, darling?’ said the young woman in a bored voice, but looking at Fagermo appraisingly.

  ‘Inspector–Fagermo?–yes–my wife Lise.’

  She sat on the sofa opposite them, picked an apple from a bowl on the coffee table beside her, and bit into it, all the time watching Fagermo intently from under a Lauren Bacall lock of fair hair. He felt he was being added up like a column of figures. If she desired to make
an effect, she certainly succeeded with Fagermo, for when Nicolaisen said rather testily: ‘Where were we?’ he couldn’t for the life of him think, and for a moment there was an awkward pause.

  ‘I suppose you were talking about the boy,’ drawled Lise.

  Fagermo turned to her quickly, and she added: ‘The one they found up there,’ jerking her head back towards the big window behind her as if she were talking of a lost cat or an elk strayed from the herd.

  ‘You know about him?’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Her word was drawled with no sort of emotion, but no hesitation either. ‘He’s the one we met in the Cardinal’s Hat.’

  ‘I didn’t know that you’d met him too. We’ve been enquiring about him for some time. I wish you’d come forward.’

  ‘Didn’t think about it,’ she said, bored. In the silence her husband filled in nervously.

  ‘My wife came to fetch me at the Cardinal’s Hat. She’d been to a meeting, hadn’t you, dear?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Lise Nicolaisen, and her gaze fixed itself on Fagermo with great intensity. ‘Amnesty International.’

  The gaze was unblinking, yet if anyone could be said to wink without moving an eyelid Fagermo would have said she had done it. How wonderful, he thought, to marry a young wife and be made a fool of by somebody half your age. Nicolaisen was plainly confused and uneasy.

  ‘She just came in, and we–went, didn’t we, dear?’

  The girl chewed steadily on her apple.

  ‘And you left him there, did you, still talking to–who?–the Ottesens by then, I suppose?’

  ‘That’s right. The girl had gone a bit earlier. He was talking to the Ottesens.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Fru Nicolaisen, in that distant, languorous voice, ‘actually, he wasn’t talking.’ Fagermo turned towards her, to find her still gazing at him, apple at her mouth. ‘I had to go back, didn’t I, Halvard? I left my–’

  ‘Your gloves, you said, dear –’

  ‘That’s right, my gloves . . . and he was still there, and the Ottesens were talking with this lecturer in French–what’s his name?–and the boy was just sitting there on the other side of the table, looking into his beer.’