Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy: an Inspector Sohlberg mystery (Inspector Sohlberg Mysteries)

by Amundsen, Jens

  His boss putted superbly. He motioned for Thorsen to come over and his boss said in the friendliest voice:

  “I’ve noticed over the years that you have switched your hobbies many times.”

  “Why yes I have.”

  “Remind me. You started out on the Police Reserve . . . on probation. Right?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And then you became a Police Constable. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Interesting . . . that’s also when you took up horseback riding as a hobby . . . because that was what your boss liked to do on weekends. Right?”

  “Yes,” said Thorsen uncomfortable and unsure where the conversation was going.

  “Then you switched hobbies as you went up the ranks to become a Police Sergeant . . . and then to a Police Inspector. As I remember from way back then . . . you changed your hobbies to tennis and then to sailing each time that you got a new boss. Correct?”

  “Yes. I took lessons for my hobbies. They were fun.”

  “Oh I bet they were. And then you got promoted to Chief Inspector and then to Superintendent. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I remember correctly that’s also when you again switched your hobbies to skiing and then to playing that board game . . . Scrabble. Right?”

  “Yes. I love skiing and playing Scrabble.”

  “Just like your bosses.”

  “I. . . .”

  “Then you switched to playing bridge before you became the Police Chief for the Oslo district.”

  “Why yes. I love playing bridge just like you do. As you say . . . the cards exercise the brain.”

  “And now you have switched to golf . . . the hobby of my boss the National Police Commissioner . . . and his boss the Minister of Justice and Chief of Police.”

  “Yes . . . but only because the golf range offered me real cheap lessons thanks to a coupon I got in the mail.”

  “Do me a favor.”

  “Yes . . . of course.”

  “Stop taking golf lessons.”

  “Of course sir.”

  “You need to quit golf.”

  “Why not? . . .Yes. . . I will.”

  “In the first place golf is a whole other game in a totally different category than from what you’ve ever played. Don’t you see? . . . Golf requires skills and talent that you simply do not have . . . no matter how many lessons you take or how much you practice. Understand?”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Do you? . . . Good. I’m also sure that you can now see why someone like you . . . with so little talent and practice . . . is playing so very badly today.”

  “Of course.”

  “What a shame that my boss the National Police Commissioner invited you to the golf course where he and his boss the Minister of Justice are members. I don’t think that you see how you’ve embarrassed them with your atrocious playing and ridiculously vulgar polyester clothes and cheap clubs. I hope you will never again even think of accepting an invitation from any member of this club. Do you understand?

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Also . . . I understand that you got invited here today because you’ve been going to the same golf range as the National Police Commissioner.”

  “A coincidence I can assure you.”

  “One that will never be repeated since you are quitting golf. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Alright. I better hurry. I see that my bosses are almost at the eleventh hole.”

  Thorsen went to get his putter to finish playing the ninth.

  “Oh no Thorsen. You’re leaving right now. Go back to the office. I’ll tell my bosses that you left because you just couldn’t play well and realized that you’re just not cut out for this game.”

  “Of course. Can you—”

  “No. I won’t be driving you back in the cart. You can walk yourself back to the club house.”

  “Thank you sir. Have a great game.”

  “I will especially now that we had our little talk.”

  Thorsen hid his shaking hands. He should have known that his boss was always watching his every move including his joining the golf range where the Minister happened to practice his golf swing. Thorsen had less than ten years to go before retirement. He could not afford to get demoted or even worse laterally transferred to Tromsø up north or some other frozen wasteland halfway up to the North Pole like Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago where one Police Superintendent had committed suicide after being transferred there for the wrongful conviction of five innocent men.

  At the club house Thorsen was directed to the private ferry terminal where Thorsen almost passed out when he realized that his boss had kept his round-trip ticket. Thorsen had almost no cash and as a non-member he had to pay 150 kroner or almost $ 30 U.S. dollars for the one-mile ferry trip to the Snarøya terminal on the mainland where he had left his car.

  What would he do now that he had his marching orders?

  He realized that he would have to move people around in his department and even worse bring in someone smart to get results.

  “Never hire smart people to work for or around you,” his mother had told him. “They don’t take orders very well and they will always outshine you. Even worse they’ll get promoted and sooner or later take your job. No! No! No! Make sure that you always employ people as dumb or dumber than you. And my son you are not smart so you be very careful. Only hang around smart people as long as they help you.”

  Thorsen smiled at the thought of his clever mother. She was absolutely right. As a puppet he too could play the part of the puppet master and start pulling strings and moving his own puppets around. He would rearrange the chess pieces so that he had a chance of success.

  By the time the ferry got to the Snarøya terminal Thorsen knew exactly what he needed to do. First he would get flowers for his mother and go visit her in the afternoon and then he’d go have dinner with his good wife whom his mother had picked from the village. He remembered his mother always saying:

  “Us simple country people are winners because we are survivors. Peasants are born to survive! Remember this Ivar and you will do well.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Daddy! Daddy! I want my Daddy!”

  The man looked at Karl Haugen and said, “Not now Karl.”

  “I want my Daddy!”

  The man shook his head. Children never failed to amaze him.

  ~ ~ ~

  “I’m going to take a nap as soon as we’re done,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “Are you going to take a nap?”

  “I doubt it.” Harald Sohlberg dried the plates and silverware that his wife rinsed and handed him from the kitchen sink. “I’ll read for a while . . . then maybe take a walk in the old neighborhood. I just can’t sleep in the afternoon. Not even after my fifteen mile run this morning.”

  “If you don’t take a nap then that means that you are not going to have any sleep over a twenty-four hour period. Don’t forget . . . we have a party with the Otterstads that doesn’t start until eight. They like to celebrate Saint Hans Aften . . . St. John’s Eve . . . until very very late.”

  “I know. They don’t even light their bål . . . bonfire by the beach . . . until after midnight.”

  “Then there’s all that food. You’ll get reflux if you eat late. . . .”

  “I promise I won’t eat so much that I feel like throwing up in bed.”

  “You always say that and then you go ahead anyways and overeat like crazy. There’s going to be lots and lots of food. And that means lots of rømmegrøt . . . sour cream porridge. They’ll probably be serving food until two or three in the morning. You know you always go crazy eating rømmegrøt. Remember when we went to my parents in Bergen after we met? . . . You had almost four liters . . . a gallon . . . of my mother’s rømmegrøt.”

  He could almost smell and taste the pudding of sour cream with melted butter and brown sugar and cinnamon. “Yes! I still
remember that. But I rarely have it any more . . . this will be my once-in-a-year feasting on my favorite food. Besides . . . it’s been ages since we celebrated Sankthans . . . Midsummer’s Eve. It’s been what? . . . Maybe fifteen years since we spent a Sankthans in Norway? . . . It’s been at least five years since we’ve been in Oslo during the summer for more than a few days.”

  “True. I’m so happy we came back. Three weeks of summer vacation!”

  “Don’t forget though. I must do a presentation at headquarters before we can leave. Then we’ll be off to see your folks and enjoy lovely Bergen once again.”

  Fru Sohlberg handed him the last dish and noticed his eyes. “Won’t it feel strange going back to the National Police Directorate? . . . Are you nervous?”

  “Yes and no,” he said fully aware that his wife could read his face and gestures like an open book. Not even the best lie detector and voice stress machine could surpass her skills at accurately and instantly detecting his real feelings and thoughts. Sometimes he wondered if she and not he should have been a Police Inspector. He had no doubts that Fru Sohlberg would probably have solved more crimes than Herr Sohlberg given her special talents.

  She turned and looked at him. “It must be strange if not difficult to have so many reminders of the past . . . beginning with this house.”

  “Yes,” he said. “A remembrance of things past. This house brings back my childhood . . . and so many memories . . . even those as a young adult.”

  During the past two days he had been embarrassed when she had caught him lost in memories while he stared wistfully at different rooms of his old childhood home. He felt foolish at his sentimental longing for the good old days of his youth. And yet he yearned for the happy and carefree life that he had enjoyed at the lovely waterfront home of glass-and-cedar thanks to his generous and loving parents.

  Emma Sohlberg read his face and said, “Well . . . you can’t be blamed for feeling nostalgic over the great childhood you had here with your parents.”

  “True,” said Sohlberg, “but it’s all in the past.”

  She dried her hands on the towel that he held. She pulled him closer with the towel and kissed him gently on the lips. “Please take a nap if you can.”

  Sohlberg smiled and watched her walk down the hallway and up the stairs. He drank the last of the sparkling mineral water of the third Farris bottle that he had consumed after returning from his early morning run. He sauntered outside and headed past the towering pines down to the beach where his father had built a small guest cabin.

  His father had built the cabin and used it as an office after his refurbished industrial machinery business took off in the early 1980s. Of course the cabin and the sailboat and the floating dock and other luxuries came only after many years of struggling and economizing. Sohlberg remembered many cold winters with little heat in the house and simple paper shades for curtains. Norway’s oil boom greatly prospered his father’s business in the 1980s and Sohlberg sometimes wondered if he should have gone into business with his father.

  “Me the businessman,” Sohlberg said to himself as he sat down before his father’s desk.

  The desk faced a panoramic wall-to-wall window that extended from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. The sun-drenched Oslofjord’s blue waters beckoned.

  So . . . here I am . . . back home.

  Intense melancholy overcame Sohlberg. He longed to live in his homeland. And yet he was doomed to permanent exile outside of Norway in an obscure paper-pushing bureaucratic job at Interpol. Sohlberg desired one thing above all: to investigate homicides and major crimes. But his “adviser” position at Interpol meant that he would never investigate any crime unless a local law enforcement agency authorized him to do so.

  Satan has a better chance of working in Heaven.

  Sohlberg’s fancy title and decent salary as a Senior Adviser to the Secretary General of Interpol was no substitute for his ruined career as a homicide detective in Norway.

  I got punished for doing my job. . . .

  No way I was going to back down from arresting those two bribe-taking Supreme Court Justices.

  Maybe I did go over the top when I dragged them out in handcuffs through the court’s main doors on Høyesteretts plass . . . in front of so many newspaper and television reporters.

  He watched a faraway sailboat skim the water so gracefully that it appeared to be floating in the air.

  Time to do chores.

  In less than an hour Sohlberg had carefully organized and added up the receipts and invoices that he needed to present to Interpol as soon as possible. He wanted to quickly get reimbursed for more than $ 12,932 U.S. dollars that he had spent on airlines and taxis and hotels and meals on his recent round of traveling to Norway from the USA. He decided that he would send the reimbursement request by fax later that night to Lyon in France. But he had to make absolutely sure that he added and included every item correctly because he knew better than to submit a wrong reimbursement request to the accountants and bookkeepers at Interpol. The bean counters always made him and other Interpol advisers and field agents feel that they were somehow defrauding Interpol even when submitting the most accurate of expense reports.

  Sohlberg had as ususal organized all the paperwork for the expense report on a day-by-day basis from the day that he and Fru Sohlberg had flown out of Seattle in the United States to the day that they arrived in Copenhagen Denmark for a four-day meeting of Interpol’s National Central Bureau (NCB) for the European Region. He still needed to add the paperwork for the airfare from Copenhagen to Oslo and the car rental at the airport.

  Representatives from all 49 member nations of the Regional European NCB had attended the Copenhagen meeting to review and discuss links between major organized crime groups that smuggled drugs and humans from Asia into the western shores of Canada and the United States.

  Sohlberg spoke at the Copenhagen meeting in his official capacity as a full-time Interpol Adviser. During the past two years he had worked out of Seattle in the USA and directed a secret 12-country investigation into the smuggling of pure grade Number 4 heroin by criminal gangs from Russia and Canada and the USA.

  He placed the Interpol forms for reimbursement on the desk and was focusing on not making any errors when his cell phone buzzed angrily. Sohlberg frowned when he saw the incoming phone number on the little screen.

  “Hei,” he said trying to sound as relaxed and casual as possible given the caller’s identity.

  “Are you free to talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you still on schedule to give a talk three days from now on heroin smuggling to all twenty-seven of our districts?”

  “I am. Why do you ask?”

  “We need to meet. Come by my office after you finish your talk.”

  The call from the Commissioner for the Oslo Police Regional District enraged Sohlberg. He hated Ivar Thorsen. Technically the man was still his boss and that made Sohlberg hate him even more. On days like this Sohlberg felt that he would explode and have a heart attack or a stroke over the cruel fact that he was still subject to taking orders from an incompetent fool like Ivar Thorsen.

  To think that they had once been close friends all the way from kindergarten to high school!

  Even as Sohlberg thought about their lost friendship from so long ago he remembered that he and other classmates could barely tolerate Ivar Thorsen after a couple of hours. Few could tolerate the man’s hypocritical fawning. Thorsen’s endless bootlicking disgusted all but the dumbest persons as grotesque and obvious attempts to ingratiate himself into a subservient but beneficial relationship. In other words Ivar Thorsen had inherited all of his mother’s pushy and cunning social designs and schemes but none of her charms which included the ample bosom and other intimate delicacies that she first shared with her employer’s son and then with the employer himself.

  “Why?” shouted Sohlberg. “Why do we need to meet? What’s this about?”

  “I’ll see you at noon sh
arp.”

  Sohlberg immediately hanged up without waiting to hear more. “What a piece of garbage that Thorsen! Just what does he want from me?”

  His former friend Ivar Thorsen was now the enemy and 100% responsible in Sohlberg’s mind for pushing him out of Norway and into Lyon in France for a job at Interpol. According to the press release at the time: