Death in a Cold Climate

by Robert Barnard

  ‘If you could tell me where your flat is, and Marit’s house.’

  ‘Oh yes–on the edges of Håpet. That’s where we both live. A bit of a university slum. And this boy–what was his name?–Forsyth, and this girl, this woman rather, blonde, thirtyish, thirty-five maybe, they were walking along, he with his arm around her, casual, and she talking very high and fast. That’s it. And I know where it was. I’ve got it. It was the corner of Elgveien. They were turning in. He saw me over his shoulder–saw me and grinned. That’s how I know. That’s how I know he was a cool, slimy bastard.’

  ‘Elgveien,’ said Helge Ottesen. ‘Elgveien.’ He looked up at Bjørn Korvald returning with two glasses of beer. ‘Isn’t that where you . . . where you used to live, Bjørn?’

  Half-way through the question he had faltered, and an air of profound embarrassment came over him.

  CHAPTER 14

  WIFE OF A FRIEND

  The goodbyes as Fagermo and Bjørn Korvald left the Cardinal’s Hat were genial but edged with unease, like a schoolboy’s to his teachers on his last day, uncertain of what relationship each might have with the other in the future. Fagermo was urged to come back often, but like the schoolboy he felt he would not. A policeman does not mingle casually like other men: how many of the normal topics of conversation in the Cardinal’s Hat would be discussed with equal freedom with a policeman there? He and Bjørn fought their way through the fug to the cold, clear darkness outside, and stood together uncertainly on the icy pavement.

  ‘I think we’d better talk,’ said Fagermo abruptly. ‘Where shall we go? My office?’

  Bjørn nodded unhappily, and they trudged the two minutes’ walk past the SAS Hotel and round to the station. As soon as he swung open the door to his office Fagermo realized his mistake. The room was dominated by his desk, and the only natural place for him to sit was behind it. It was no place for a heart-to-heart with a friend about the friend’s wife. With a sigh he accepted the inevitable, took off his coat, and sat himself on the swivel chair.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said to Korvald. ‘Not exactly cosy, but the only people I usually entertain here are suspects or witnesses. Still, at least we’re not likely to be interrupted. Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable.’

  Bjørn Korvald pulled up a chair, but could hardly make himself comfortable: seated opposite that intimidating desk he seemed immediately to fit into that slot marked ‘suspect’–or, worse, that slot marked ‘informer’. It seemed to affect him adversely. He sat there grimly, waiting for Fagermo to begin.

  ‘Well, let’s get it over with,’ said Fagermo. ‘You realize as well as I do what everyone there tonight was thinking.’ Bjørn nodded. ‘It’s a small road, Elgveien, isn’t it? How many houses would you say were in it altogether?’

  Bjørn thought: ‘Not more than seven, I suppose. And most of them single-family houses.’

  ‘Yes. And this Botner saw a blonde woman going into it with Martin Forsyth, the night before the murder, in all probability. I’m putting it bluntly, you see. Is there anyone else in the street the description might fit?’

  Bjørn sat with his head in his hands. ‘Most of the families are older than us. I practically ruined myself building there. There are two couples in their sixties. Three I suppose in their fifties. One of them has a teenage daughter . . . ’

  ‘It didn’t sound like a teenager.’

  ‘No, it didn’t. I suppose my–my wife is the obvious one.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. Do you mind if we talk about her a bit?’

  Bjørn Korvald looked as if he minded a lot. Suddenly he had lost all that air of youth regained that Fagermo had noticed in him since he had left his wife. His shoulders sagged, his face-muscles were relaxed like a gassed soldier’s. He seemed to want nothing so much as solitude to think. But Fagermo decided he had better talk now, and be done with it.

  ‘I’d better tell you what I know about this blonde. Tonight wasn’t the first time I’d heard of her. As far as we know they met some way up Biskopsvei on the night after Forsyth was in the Cardinal’s Hat–probably the day before he was murdered, as I say. Whether they’d met before we don’t know. Perhaps–but our witness thought not, and our witness is a sharp old body I wouldn’t like to contradict. She thought, in fact–sorry to have to say this, Bjørn, she thought that one picked up the other.’

  Korvald looked up, great thick lines along his forehead, but he flapped a hand dismissively: ‘No, no–it’s nothing to me. Would to God she had someone. But not him.’

  ‘Exactly. Not him, and not him then. But we’ve got to take the facts as we find them, as we always do in my job. Let’s take it as a hypothesis, nothing more, that she was walking down Biskopsvei, and stopped him and talked to him on one pretext or other. Now–does that surprise you? She was twenty minutes or so’s walk from home.’

  Bjørn Korvald straightened. ‘Well, not entirely, to tell you the truth. Once or twice people have mentioned that they’ve seen her, on her own. Don’t know why they tell me. Busybodies, I suppose. And one evening, coming home, I thought I caught a glimpse of her–near where I have my flat.’

  ‘Spying on you, do you think?’

  ‘Something of the sort is what I thought. Perhaps wanting to know if there’s any other woman. There isn’t, by the way.’

  ‘What about the children? What have you got?’

  ‘Two little girls. Five and seven. That’s what’s been worrying me, of course. But I’ve no evidence that she’s often out at night. They’re very good sleepers, and in fact she may well get a baby-sitter in. What occurred to me was . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s just an idea, but I thought she might want to prove something–to the neighbours, and so on. She always worried about the neighbours.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘That she wasn’t lonely, went out a lot, had heaps of friends, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I get you. And it wouldn’t be true?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. It was always just the home with her, and the children of course. And me, I suppose, in a way. So I just thought that, having got a baby-sitter in, she might have to go out. And she’d have nowhere to go.’

  ‘It’s pretty pathetic.’

  ‘Don’t I know it. I’ve tried–but anyway, we’re not talking about my domestic problems. The point is, I think she’d like to know what I’ve been doing. Perhaps she’s been around more often than I’ve seen. Or perhaps she’s made a habit of picking men up. I’m afraid I’m pretty remote from her now, so I really wouldn’t know.’

  ‘How often do you see her?’

  ‘Once a week, when I go for the kids. Not always then. Often they’re watching for me, and they run out. And sometimes they come to me by bus.’

  ‘What sort of state would you say she was in? Mental state?’

  Bjørn said reluctantly: ‘Not too good, I’d say.’ He was clearly a battle-ground of conflicting emotions that told him that he was responsible and was not responsible, was involved and was well out of it. He said: ‘It’s difficult to know what to do. I couldn’t go back to her and stay sane, not after I’ve had my freedom. But there’s nothing else would satisfy her. No–not even that would. It just shouldn’t have happened. She simply can’t face up to the fact that it did, it has happened. She has no idea why. She’s as bewildered now as the day I said I was getting out. The only thing that would really put her little world together again would be to wake up and find it was all a dream. So really there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘The question is,’ said Fagermo, ‘what should I do? I’ll have to go and talk to her. How should I approach her? Do you think she’ll deny it?’

  ‘I think she may well,’ said Bjørn. ‘She doesn’t have any beautiful abstract passion for truth, certainly. I suppose nobody much does, these days. And you’ve got to remember that there’s no proof it was her.’

  ‘No, no. Still, we’ve got Botner. If necessary we could have him iden
tify her. I shouldn’t think she’d want things to go so far–that is, if she’s nothing worse to hide than a night with a stranger. Do you think there’s any way of getting her on my side–palling up with her? It would make it easier.’

  Bjørn thought. ‘I’ll tell you how I see her. I think she has always lived in a fairy-tale world in which she is the perfect woman, the perfect wife, the perfect mother. Her mother coached her in what she had to do and be when she married, and she fulfilled her instructions to the letter, and lived in a kind of dream in which she was sanctified by virtue of her clean windows and aired sheets. Do you get me? She’s self-righteous without being religious. If you’re going to say anything that smashes that image she has of herself, I think she’s going to deny it, I’m afraid, however you approach her.’

  ‘So–no chink in the armour?’

  ‘If there is one, I never found it.’

  • • •

  ‘Try around eleven-thirty,’ Bjørn Korvald had said to Fagermo before he left. ‘Åse should be at school, and with a bit of luck Karen will be playing with the neighbours’ little boy.’

  So at eleven-thirty, with the sun shining in a postcard blue sky and the temperature edging over zero, Fagermo trudged up the snow-lined path to the house Bjørn and Sidsel Korvald had built for themselves in their less than blissful married years. It was a moderate-sized wooden house, with a built-in garage and large plate-glass windows, unnaturally clean, on the first floor. He rang the bell–electronic, two notes with an interval–and looked at the lead-lighted coloured windows around the heavy wooden front door.

  Sidsel Korvald was prompt in answering, opening the door with an automatic smile switched on simultaneously with the turning of the doorknob: ‘Yes?’

  She was doing a very good performance of an ordinary Norwegian housewife on an ordinary day of the week, going about her ordinary business. That it was a performance Fagermo realized by that sixth policeman’s sense, which is a combination of sad experience and commonsense psychology. There was strain in the lines of the forehead, a haunted, inward-looking anxiety in the eyes. But the mouth put up a show of confidence and welcome, and she was boringly neat as a new pin.

  ‘Fru Korvald? I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes? My name is Fagermo–I’m from the police.’

  She showed no sign of stepping aside to let him in, and the smile was extinguished. ‘My husband doesn’t live here at the moment,’ she said.

  ‘It was you I wanted to speak to,’ said Fagermo. Then, lowering his voice considerately, a thing he wouldn’t have done for Professor Nicolaisen, he said: ‘It’s a matter of some importance. I think it would be better if we could go inside.’

  She looked at him with a wild glint of fear, the mouth now set in a resentful straight line. But finally she stood aside, and Fagermo went determinedly through the hall and upstairs to the living-room. She followed him with every appearance of feeling deeply injured by his call. As if to make something or other plain to him she looked at his shoes and did not ask him to sit down. He sat down.

  ‘I’m sorry to barge in like this, Fru Korvald,’ he said, ‘but believe me, it’s going to be easier if we try to talk things over in a friendly way.’

  She pursed her lips together, said nothing, but finally sat down on the sofa, her knees close together, her hands clasped in her lap. As he was trying to think up a way of approaching her, she suddenly blurted out, as if clutching at a straw that had already proved its fragility: ‘If it’s anything to do with money, I think you ought to see my husband. He sees to all the bills and things.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with money,’ said Fagermo gently. ‘It concerns a boy–a young man–you may have read about him. He was found dead, murdered, over in Hungeren.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Her clamlike stance was more revealing than a more gushing response would have been. Of course she must have read about the murder. Fagermo said: ‘No doubt you will have read about it in Nordlys.’

  ‘I may have,’ she said, as though the words were being prised out of her. ‘I don’t have much time . . . ’

  ‘Did it occur to you when you read about it, that you might have known the young man?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ The words shot out bitterly, shocked but without surprise. ‘Why should I have known him? He was a foreigner, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right. English.’

  ‘Well, then.’ She subsided into silence, as if she had proved a point.

  ‘And yet, I think you did know him. I think you met him one night just before Christmas, up on Biskopsvei. Or perhaps you had met him before?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No, you hadn’t met him before?’

  ‘No–I don’t know what you’re talking about! Biskopsvei is miles from here. What would I be doing there at night?’

  ‘That I don’t know. I don’t suppose it’s of any importance. What is important is that you met this boy–Martin Forsyth his name was, by the way–up in Biskopsvei, just above the kiosk.’

  ‘I deny it. You’re talking nonsense.’

  ‘I see. There could, of course, have been some mistake. But we have several witnesses. I’m afraid I shall have to arrange an identity parade . . . ’

  Sidsel Korvald’s mouth was working convulsively. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. Why should I go through an identity parade? What are you accusing me of?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.’

  ‘Then this is just–persecution!’

  ‘Fru Korvald, the only reason I have to get you to confirm that you met Martin Forsyth that night is because I have to trace all his movements in the two days before he was murdered. Can you see that? It would have been much easier for you if you had come forward yourself when the case first came into the papers. Now I can see that you find it hard, and embarrassing. I’m sorry about that. But as far as we can gather he was seen alive after you met him. We have no suspicions of you. You need have no hesitations about speaking. Only please tell the truth–and tell all the truth.’

  He leaned back in his chair. What he had said was not perhaps as impeccably truthful as he had enjoined her to be, but he had the satisfaction of watching it sink into the pretty, empty, self-absorbed face of the woman opposite. He let the ball settle down in her side of the court, and waited long minutes for her to say something.

  ‘What do you want to know, then?’ The words came very low, reluctant.

  ‘How did you come to meet Martin Forsyth?’

  ‘I . . . I met him on Biskopsvei, as you said, one night. I, well, I asked him the time.’

  ‘You were doing–what?’

  ‘Walking. Just walking.’ She saw him watching her, waiting for more, and she burst out: ‘I’ve had a lot of troubles. You don’t know. I’ve been shamefully treated. I need to walk sometimes. To think.’ A nerve in her cheek began to twitch uncontrollably, making her left eye blink grotesquely.

  ‘Yes, I had heard that,’ said Fagermo.

  She cast a suspicious look, as if to enquire who he had been talking to, but, getting no response, her grievance took hold of her again, and she spat out: ‘Can you understand how–how a man who has a lovely home, and lovely children, and everything made easy for him, just as he likes it, can just get up and go off? Not go off with anyone, but just go off? Off to some nasty little room, and live on his own? Can you explain it?’

  The voice was like a wailing saxophone, full of humiliation and despair. Fagermo felt no compulsion to answer honestly, and he said gently: ‘It must be difficult to understand.’

  ‘I can explain it. He’s mad. That’s the answer. There must be madness in his family somewhere. He’s taken leave of his senses.’

  She subsided a little. This was clearly an answer her walking had evolved, the only possible solution to her personal conundrum.

  ‘So you were just walking, and thinking. That’s very understandable. But you talked to Forsyth for a little while, didn’t you? What about?’

&
nbsp; ‘I suppose about–about his being a foreigner, and what he was doing in Tromsø at that time of year. Things like that.’

  ‘And then you asked him back here?’

  For a moment all rage and shame seemed to have left her, and she answered dully: ‘Yes,’ adding, as if not expecting to be believed: ‘For coffee.’ Then, with some of the old defiance she said: ‘You don’t know what it’s like, only having children to talk to all day long. I get sick for a grown-up voice.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Fagermo. He could, too. ‘What did you talk about? Yourself? Him?’

  ‘Oh, we talked about him. A man doesn’t want to be burdened with a woman’s problems, does he? I–I asked him to tell me about himself.’

  It sounded like a whore’s ploy, but Fagermo blessed her for it. ‘That’s what I was hoping. What did he tell you?’

  ‘Well, we came home and in fact we–we had a drink. I had some in, for Christmas. I have a lot of friends who might call.’ No friends, no calls, thought Fagermo. ‘So we walked back, and it was nice to have someone to–to lean on, and we sat down and I got drinks, and he told me about his travels. It was fascinating. Such interesting things, wonderful places.’

  ‘What sort of things, places?’

  She drew her hand over her forehead distractedly. The strain was telling. She had to think, hard. She hadn’t listened, thought Fagermo; she hadn’t been interested. ‘I remember a lot about Greece,’ she said finally. ‘About a shipping millionaire’s yacht. He’d been a crew member. Not one of the millionaires you read about . . . And then there were a lot of Arab places, I don’t remember their names, but it was . . . fascinating. And then Iran. I remember that because it was in the news, and of course I’d seen pictures of the Shah and his wife. Isn’t it awful about them? Yes, I remember he talked about Iran.’