Death in a Cold Climate

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Bjørn? Fagermo here. Do you remember you offered to take me along one night to the Cardinal’s Hat? Nothing like being introduced by a friend if you want to break down barriers, is there? Well, what say we make it tonight?’

  CHAPTER 13

  THE CARDINAL’S HAT

  At eight o’clock that evening the Cardinal’s Hat was comfortably full, with the usual mixture of students and shop assistants, stray bachelors and stray spinsters, drunken sailors and drunken lecturers. The air was thick with the fumes of beer and frying steak and the smoke of self-rolled cigarettes, but luckily for Fagermo this was not one of the evenings with live jazz. Then you had to bellow your lightest inanities, and take your companion’s reply on trust. So up and down the narrow L-shaped room conversation was rife, insults passed from table to table, girls passed from hand to hand, and lonely men on shore leave lurched around in search of confidants for their boozy, lying tales. It was not a smart place: jeans predominated, and heavy jerseys like dead, matted jungle undergrowth. The smart people went to the clubs and the hotel bars, where their sense of importance burgeoned in proportion to the grossness of the overcharging. The clientele of the Cardinal’s Hat went there because it was cheap and good; they ranged only from the middling well-off down to the middling hard-up.

  Bjørn Korvald and Fagermo collected their litres of beer at the bar counter and pushed their way through the dark-panelled room round to the foreigners’ table. For a moment they were not noticed, and Fagermo, gently stopping Bjørn’s progress with his hand, had a chance to observe the table and decide that he seemed to have struck it lucky. Crouched over their beers and red wines and Cokes, and deep in a variety of conversations or solitary musings were seven or eight people, and among them were at least two people he was happy to have a chance to speak to away from the inquisitorial atmosphere of the police station. There in the centre, chairman-like, was Helge Ottesen, plump, condescendingly matey, prosperous; and not far away was a young man–flushed, verbose, indignant–whom Fagermo strongly suspected to be the lecturer in French who had been here on the night of Martin Forsyth’s visit. For the rest there was a Hong Kong Chinese boy whom he recognized as working at one of the local restaurants, an Algerian student-cum-street-vendor, Dougal Mackenzie, who had found the body, and Steve Cooling, draped enervatedly over a half-bottle of red wine, some of which had streaked a vivid flash across his grubby tee-shirt.

  Not a bad haul. But now Bjørn Korvald made a move forward, and the table registered their presence. A sudden hush fell, silencing even the lecturer in French, who had been in full self-justifying spate about something or other. The hush was uneasy rather than respectful. Feeling as welcome as the returned Magwitch, they drew back chairs and sat themselves down at the table.

  It was Helge Ottesen who broke the silence and did the honours of this informal branch of the Foreigners’ Club. With a gesture both nervous and expansive–the behaviour of the fledgling politician in a tight spot–he half rose, shook hands with Fagermo with an unconvincing smile on his face, and gesturing to left and right made embryonic introductions around the table.

  ‘Mr . . . er . . . Cooling you know, don’t you? Yes? This is . . . Dr?–no–Herr Botner who teaches . . . er . . . French at the university, and Dr Mackenzie . . . oh, you’ve met . . . and, er, Monsieur . . . and . . . er . . . ’

  These last introductions were to the Algerian and the Chinese sitting at the end of the table, quiet and self-contained, regarding the scene with a genial fascination that showed they knew exactly who Fagermo was and why his appearance was received roughly like that of the spectre at the feast. Ottesen fussed further to cover up the coldness of the welcome.

  ‘It’s a pity there are no ladies here tonight. Gives you the wrong impression. My wife is at a Church ladies meeting, bazaars and things, you know. And there’s usually someone or other here: Miss Bryson who I think you interv–er, met, didn’t you? And we have the odd librarian and nurse who often drop in. Really we are not such a–what’s the phrase?–such a male-dominated group as we might seem tonight.’

  The tawdry cliché seemed to trigger something in the French lecturer, who was clearly on the way to being very nicely drunk indeed.

  ‘Male dominated? Male dominated? Fat chance these days. Fat chance. Have I told you –?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Steve Cooling, with that lazy American tolerance-with-limits. ‘Over and over. Put a stopper in it, can’t you?’ He turned to Fagermo. ‘He’s just been refused a grant for leave, and he’s convinced it’s because he’s a man.’

  Botner looked about to explode, and then just as suddenly subsided into his glass. Fagermo took the chance to study him. He was tall, well-fleshed and good-looking in a rather academic, rimless-spectacled way. The type to wear a suit to work, though at the moment his bachelor smartness was looking a little crumpled. He guessed he was the type who might as a rule be reserved, distantly charming, congenitally buttoned-up, but who occasionally broke out. Tonight seemed to be one of the occasions when he broke out.

  ‘Well, of course, we all know who you are,’ said Helge Ottesen, unable to conceal that nervous apprehension beneath a gummy smile, but making heroic efforts. ‘Is it allowable to ask whether you are on duty now, or is this a visit of pleasure?’

  ‘Oh, pleasure, pleasure,’ beamed Fagermo, raising his glass merrily to all and sundry, the ironic glint in his eye telling them that if they believed that, they’d believe anything. ‘We policemen have to have time off, you know, when we’re not terrorizing the poor motorist, or doing violence to the delinquents by our mere presence on Storgate on Saturday nights. We’re human, you know: we like to go out and have a drink, just like anybody else.’

  ‘And is it permitted to ask how the case is going?’ asked the slightly Scottish voice of Dougal Mackenzie, the irony in his eye answering that in Fagermo’s, and showing that he for one wasn’t taken in by Fagermo’s night off.

  ‘Oh yes, quite permitted. But I’m not sure I can tell you a great deal at the moment. It’s progressing-progressing in the way cases do. I’m learning more and more, stacking up a little heap of pieces of information. Eventually I’ll have to look at them all, discard quite a number of them, and then try to fit the rest together to make up a picture. It’s a long process, and very intricate.’

  ‘What you’re saying is, the case has wide repercussions, is that it?’ asked Steve Cooling.

  ‘If you mean: was it something more than his being slugged by a drunken teenager in a Saturday night brawl, then I’d say yes. It’s been clear from the beginning that there is more to it than that. Just how much more I can’t really decide at this stage.’

  ‘And yet he seemed such a very ordinary young man,’ said Helge Ottesen, in an almost pleading voice. ‘One really wonders if the sort of thing people are saying –’

  ‘Saying?’

  Ottesen was confused and declined to come out into the open. ‘Oh, you know, just gossip, gossip.’

  ‘Are they talking about spying? Or oil, perhaps?’ Fagermo asked the question casually, but when he put forward the second suggestion he saw Helge Ottesen blink so violently that it almost amounted to a flinch. He could have sworn too that somewhere on the table–where?–there was a flicker of movement from someone else too.

  Bjørn Korvald said: ‘Whenever anything odd happens in this town people always have explanations like that: Russian activity, American activity, one of the multinationals, one of the big oil companies–the more fantastic it is, the more important it makes people up here feel.’

  ‘Absolutely, absolutely,’ said Helge Ottesen, with such obvious eagerness that Fagermo marvelled at a politician being so transparent. He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘And yet spying isn’t unknown around here, is it?’ he said. ‘All very tin-pot and amateur, no doubt, with one side knowing exactly what the other is up to, and Norway winking at the antics of both because we’re a little country and don’t want to offend our big friends and neighbours. But it does go on
, and it could suddenly get serious–like the U2 incident. Then again, we know from Stavanger what sort of effects an oil bonanza would have. It’s perfectly obvious that some very big interests do get involved, and some decidedly murky happenings take place. One sometimes finds the fantastic explanation is the only one that makes complete sense.’

  There was an uneasy silence. ‘So what do you think?’ drawled Steve Cooling. ‘Was he some kind of small-time spy doing dirty work for one of the oil companies, or what?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fagermo, holding up his hand in protest, ‘now we’re getting too near the bone. I’m just offering a few conjectures, and I’m not going to tell you what I might or might not think. What I’ve got to do is reconstruct what this boy’s life has been like these last few years, since he left school. Reconstruct what he was like, come to that. One or other of you that I haven’t talked to yet might help me with that. You saw him. What sort of impression did he make on you?’ He looked around at the politely hostile faces around the table.

  ‘Cold little sod,’ said Botner, looking up from his near-empty glass. He had been drinking steadily and morosely. ‘You take . . . you take my word for it–cold little sod.’

  Helge Ottesen looked pityingly at Botner and raised a significant eyebrow in Fagermo’s direction: ‘He was a perfectly well-spoken young chap,’ he said. ‘Not a great talker, but I’m not sure I like that in young people. All too much of it among the students, I’m sure you’d agree. No, I’d say he was a very responsible young chap, as far as I spoke to him.’

  ‘How far was that? Did you have much conversation?’

  ‘Let me see: not a great deal. But Gladys–that’s my wife–Gladys and I tried to make him welcome, since he was a visitor. Told him about the town, what there was going on, what there was to do: the Museum, the churches and so on.’

  ‘You thought he was here for tourism?’

  Ottesen blinked. ‘Well, not exactly. Not at that time of year. But it was just a sort of introduction to the place.’

  ‘And you didn’t talk about anything more personal? Such as his work, for instance?’

  Helge Ottesen thought very carefully, with an appearance of trying to remember. ‘Let me see. He said he’d worked on boats, which surprised me rather, because he wasn’t what I’d call the type. How can I put it, not to seem snobbish? He wasn’t at all rough.’

  Botner threw back his head and roared a drunken laugh. ‘Splendidly democratic! Why don’t you say he wasn’t an obvious yob or an obvious lout and have done with it?’

  ‘Now you’re putting words into my mouth. All I meant was that he was rather a –’

  ‘A smooth customer?’ suggested Steve Cooling.

  ‘Was he wearing a ring when he came in?’ put in Fagermo quickly.

  ‘A ring?’ said Ottesen, startled. ‘I really couldn’t say. Does anyone remember?’ He looked round the table. All faces were studiously blank. But this time there had been a reaction, a flicker, Fagermo was sure of it.

  He said: ‘Well, never mind. Just a detail. Are you all agreed then, he was a smooth customer?’

  ‘Well certainly he was nobody’s fool,’ said Ottesen. That’s really what I meant. You wouldn’t easily put one over him. And though he’d knocked around the world he really seemed to have got something out of it.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Fagermo. ‘He talked about his travels?’

  Ottesen was on his guard at once. ‘Er . . . he talked, yes.’

  ‘Where exactly did you gather he’d been?’

  ‘Well, let me see, I’m not sure I remember that he specified . . . ’

  ‘If you talked about travel, somewhere must have been specified,’ pressured Fagermo.

  ‘Wasn’t there some talk about Greece?’ suggested Steve Cooling.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ottesen quickly. ‘I think you’re right. Gladys and I went there last year, you know, so I think we talked a bit with him about Rhodes.’

  ‘North Africa? The Gulf States? Iran?’ hazarded Fagermo.

  ‘Not that I remember,’ said Ottesen uneasily. ‘Gladys and I have never been there.’

  ‘No package tours to watch the adulterers being stoned? . . . Sorry, just my sense of humour. Well, this has all been very helpful. All the more so since we seem to have two very distinct impressions of young Mr Forsyth. On the one hand, he was respectable, well-spoken, responsible. On the other, he was–I hope I’m not overstating it–cold, calculating, ruthless.’

  ‘The two sides don’t entirely rule each other out,’ put in Bjørn Korvald.

  ‘By no means. I realize that. And I’ve met both views before tonight. Two of his girl-friends, for example, would seem to have lived with two entirely different men. But I’d like to hear more about the second view,’ said Fagermo, turning in the direction of Botner. ‘Because that’s more the type that gets murdered, isn’t it?’

  Botner was clearly not quite with them, but sitting back on his bench gazing vacantly at the ceiling with a petulant expression on his face.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ said Dougal Mackenzie. ‘He’s drinking to forget.’

  ‘I’ve got a grievance,’ said Botner distinctly. ‘I’ve got a bloody grievance. Did I tell you? I was –’

  ‘Yes, you told us,’ said Mackenzie.

  ‘Well, I haven’t told him. I was turned down for leave because I was a man. Of the male sex. Masculine in gender.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk crap,’ pleaded Steve Cooling.

  ‘Let him have his say,’ said Fagermo. ‘Then we can talk about something else.’

  This seemed to sting Botner. ‘Oh, uppity, aren’t we? Well, I tell you it’s true. There’s not a penny piece for anyone these days unless they’re studying women’s literature, or women’s history, or women’s bloody grammar for all I know. If you’re not studying role stereotypes for women in the negro novel or some goddam thing like that, you haven’t got a hope. It’s discrimination, that’s what it is! We’ve become the bloody underdogs!’

  ‘Well, now you’ve had your say,’ said Steve Cooling, ‘and it’s a pity you couldn’t do it a bit softer because there’s such a thing as lynch law where that subject is concerned, perhaps you could tell the gentleman what he wants to know?’

  ‘What gentleman?’ asked Botner, pulling himself to an upright position and looking round the table.

  ‘I was wondering,’ said Fagermo, ‘now you’ve told us your grievance, which was very interesting, if you could say why you thought Martin Forsyth was–what was your expression?–such a cold little sod.’

  ‘Because I remember watching him.’ Now he had got away from his sorrows he was speaking more naturally. ‘He was just here by chance, you know, just dropped in–or so he said–but there were certain things he did instinctively. Like right from the moment he sat down at this table he was alert to find out who was the most important person at the table. He just did it instinctively.’ He looked round triumphantly at the rest of the table to see if they were impressed by his perceptiveness, but he met studious blankness. ‘Well, he decided that self-important twit Nicolaisen was the most important–which is a bit of a joke, and shows he wasn’t as bright as you lot have been trying to make out. Anyway, he tried talking to him first, but he didn’t get anywhere, because our Halvard doesn’t like the young, and more especially young men, for reasons we all know and needn’t go into, so he saw he wasn’t getting through and he switched round and let old Ottesen prose on at him–oops, sorry! Forgot you were here!’

  ‘Oh now, I say–’ said Helge Ottesen, but whether in protest at being allotted only secondary importance or at this interpretation of Martin Forsyth’s behaviour was not quite clear.

  ‘And then, he was good at getting beer bought for him. I don’t think he bought one after his first. Both that poor little Bryson girl, who has to count every penny, and that streak of nothing Cooling–there I go again!–bought him drinks just before they left: he knew he wouldn’t have to buy them one in return.’

  ‘I’ve known
other people at this table do the same,’ said Mackenzie, with Scottish wisdom.

  ‘And then he let that girl pour out her boring little life story to him, just because he knew she was an easy lay. I was sitting opposite him and I could see he wasn’t listening to a single word, just thinking about his own concerns.’

  ‘Hell–if you go by that we must all be cold little sods, because we’ve all done the same,’ said Steve Cooling.

  ‘Wait, wait. He let her give him her address before she left, and he made some sort of a date with her, but after she’d gone he looked at me and said: “In case nothing better turns up.” Just like that. Do you see? He was a right bastard. He was ashamed, not because he’d led her on, but because she’s so boring and ordinary. He wanted me to know he was used to a better class of girl than that. For Christ sake get me a drink, someone. I’ve talked myself dry as a bone.’

  Bjørn Korvald obligingly got up, collected glasses and set off for the bar. Satisfied, Botner continued: ‘So I doubt if he ever turned up in her bed.’

  ‘He couldn’t,’ said Fagermo. ‘He was dead.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t have anyway,’ said Botner, ‘because he went on to something better.’

  ‘Oh? How do you know?’

  ‘I saw him! The next night, with a woman.’

  ‘Oh, you did, did you? A blonde, I presume, is that right?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’ Botner looked deflated. ‘I thought I was telling you something new. I might have known there were plenty of others who saw them.’

  ‘Was this on Biskopsvei, above the kiosk there?’

  ‘Oh no, no.’ Botner seemed to be trying to concentrate. ‘Not there. If I’d seen them there I’d have been in my car. And I wasn’t in my car. Was I?’ He looked around appealingly.

  ‘Let’s take it as read that he wasn’t in his car,’ said Dougal Mackenzie.

  ‘Well, then, if I wasn’t in my car, where would I be?’

  ‘Going to see Marit?’ suggested Steve Cooling.

  ‘Got it! Got it! I was going to see Marit. She’s one of the girls around the place, you know. I go there sometimes. So does Steve. Sometimes we meet in the street and toss up. That’s it. I was on foot, somewhere between my flat and Marit’s house. There you are. Now you know.’