Wolves in the Dark

by Gunnar Staalesen

  I heard nothing from the Fusa Chief of Police, and a week later, now one of the first days in March, I took the initiative and called him.

  ‘Klyve here,’ the Chief said when I was put through to him.

  ‘Veum,’ I said. ‘I’m ringing regarding the case I spoke to your officer about last week.’

  ‘Yes, I made a note of that. Knut Kaspersen.’

  ‘Have you got any further with it?’

  I heard the sound of documents in motion. Klyve belonged to the paper generation and didn’t trust the computer screen’s captivating reality. While searching he answered: ‘Yes, we’ve done some investigation work. It was you who suggested we look for fingerprints on his boat, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The piles of paper fell silent. ‘Yes, here it is. Well, we did. Don’t tell me we don’t respond to requests.’

  No, I wouldn’t do that, not on this occasion anyway.

  ‘But we didn’t find any. Apart from the deceased’s, mostly. The others were so faint they were impossible to identify; and as for the two people you’d said we should concentrate on … no matches there either.’ For some reason he was chuckling.

  ‘Something funny?’

  ‘No, no, not really. But they weren’t very happy to see us. It turned out … You didn’t mention that one of them was a former colleague of ours. His prints were in our police files, of course. When we spoke to him he didn’t have very nice things to say about you, Veum.’

  ‘No, I can imagine.’

  ‘The other one refused to give us any prints at first.’

  ‘You mean Svein Olav, the deceased’s nephew?’

  ‘Yes. He’d got it into his head that you’d tipped us off, so you’re warned. We’ll have a closer look at him, but in a different context.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I don’t know how much I should tell you, but, as he kicked up such a fuss about having his fingerprints taken, we went to the trouble of getting a search warrant for his business, and I think I can say that his accounts were extremely dubious. As was the documentation for the provenance of the immense stock of computer equipment he had. In short, that case is still under investigation.’

  ‘And what did you mean by “you’re warned”?’

  ‘I can’t rule out the possibility that we’re talking here about, at best, receiving stolen goods or, at worst, the illegal acquisition of computer goods.’

  ‘And that means break-ins and theft?’

  ‘For example. And in such circles they have their own form of justice, as I’m sure you know. So if I were you I wouldn’t go down any dark alleyways or back streets in the near future, and if you should see young Kaspersen or any of his pals there, I would turn around on the spot and leg it.’

  I felt an unease spread through my chest and said: ‘Are you saying I need police protection?’

  Again he chuckled. ‘If so, you’d have to take that up with my colleagues in Bergen. But thanks anyway for your help, Veum. We need alert civilians in our society too.’

  I guessed his calling me a civilian was not chance. ‘And you’re not going to take the drowning any further?’

  ‘Unless something new crops up, I think you can regard that case as shelved.’

  The following day I rang Nils Åkre and told him about my failed attempt to make Sturle Heimark pay what he owed, and I recommended he send a heavier heavy next time. We agreed that the advance covered the expenses I’d had and so that matter was shelved too, at least in my office.

  Two or three weeks later, what the Fusa og Tysnes Chief of Police had prophesied came true. After a two-day beano I ended up in bad company in one of the town’s back streets and was beaten up so viciously that it took me several days to struggle to my feet. When they had finished the brutal going-over, I received one last kick to the ribs, and one of the assailants leaned over, exhaled bad breath into my face and said: ‘Greetings from Fusa, Veum.’

  With the greeting came two massive black eyes that took two weeks to lighten enough for me to be able to pass children on the pavement on the way to my office without frightening the life out of them. I had hoped that was the end of it, but now – two and a half years later – I was not so sure it was.

  14

  The heavy cell door yawned open. I blinked and saw Johnsen, the warder, letting Vidar Waagenes back in. In one hand he was holding a plastic bag bearing the name of one of the town’s most reasonable clothes shops.

  He lifted up the bag to show me. ‘These clothes will suit you well, Veum.’

  ‘If you could get me out of this nightmare, that would suit me better.’

  He smiled encouragingly. ‘All in due course. Initially we have the hearing. When we know the result of that we can start the wheels turning. I’ve already been in contact with a computer expert I use on such occasions: Sigurd Svendsbø. I’m going to demand a complete copy of both your hard drives so that Sigurd can go through them with a fine-tooth comb and see whether there’s anything we can find out.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Have you remembered anything in the meantime?’ He pointed to my notepad, which lay next to me on the bench.

  ‘I’ve made some notes and written down a few names. But there’s bound to be more out there in the mists. As I said earlier today, these last three or four years haven’t been good for me.’

  ‘It’s definitely too early to take this any further now, but as soon … when the hearing’s over we’ll know more about where we stand.’

  Suddenly I felt immensely tired. Any expectations of a positive outcome from the hearing had long since evaporated. As Waagenes started taking out the clothes he wanted me to wear I was reminded of my early childhood and my first day at school, when my mother had done the same.

  Afterwards I felt like an unwilling bridegroom who was to be presented to the magistrate with his future spouse, to be given a life sentence with only very limited opportunities of appeal, at least for the first part of the term. I could hardly squeeze into the grey trousers he had bought and I gave up on the button on the waistband. I didn’t feel very comfortable in the matching jacket either, but the shirt was alright, so long as I didn’t do it up the whole way, which I never did when I wore a tie. Of course, he had bought one of those as well. It had a discreet, grey-and-black checked pattern and wouldn’t have looked out of place at a funeral; very suitable in other words.

  Waagenes went through the court procedure point by point, and I nodded my head in acknowledgement at each one. After all, I had attended a few over the years, sitting in the audience.

  ‘But this will be in camera, as requested by the police and out of consideration for the ongoing investigation.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I sighed. ‘So there’ll be no press either?’

  ‘There are no reports taken of the hearing, but there’ll be enough scribbling. The first articles have appeared in online papers, so…’ The dot-dot-dot was in his eyes as he looked at me.

  Before we were transported to the Law Court I was handcuffed. In the backyard we were led into the police vehicle that would take us through Bergen, but from the side street next to the Law Court, named after an old tavern – Fortunen – it was open season for anyone who wanted to see the unfortunates being led to an uncertain fate.

  Luckily there was limited attendance in the courtroom. Beatrice Bauge greeted us in measured tones from her position on the left of the room. On the bench beside her sat Hamre, stony-faced. The atmosphere was strained, tense, and it didn’t get much better when the judge entered, closely followed by a registrar who would take the minutes, as Waagenes explained to me discreetly in one ear.

  Everyone stood up. The female judge, her hair well groomed, nodded graciously to us all, and we sat down. After some introductory remarks about the nature of the case, she gave me a stern glare over her glasses and said: ‘Do you plead guilty?’

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to ask Barrister Beatrice Bauge to present
the prosecution case.’

  Which she did, briefly and to the point. The case had international ramifications, it was still being investigated, and for this reason it was of immense importance that the accused was held in custody, initially for a period of four weeks, and that access to visitors or mail should be denied.

  The judge nodded sympathetically and asked if the defence had anything to add.

  Waagenes rose to his feet and said the accused refuted the charge, rejected any possible association with it and was innocent. He therefore asked for him to be set free with immediate effect. Then he added: ‘But should the court come to the contrary conclusion, I will have to insist – further to my legal right to visit the accused in custody – on permission to take with me a computer expert, for whom I can vouch, since some insight into this particular field of knowledge could have substantial significance for how we tackle the case. In addition, we must seek from the court a ruling that a complete copy of the contents of both hard drives seized by the police shall be supplied to us so that we may undertake an independent examination.’

  The judge looked as if she had to ponder long and hard what he meant by that, and to be on the safe side she conferred with the registrar, a relatively young man, to be sure she had understood correctly.

  ‘Do the police have any objections to the defence receiving these copies?’ she asked.

  Bauge and Hamre conferred on the bench. They didn’t appear to be wholly in agreement, but in the end Bauge gave in to Hamre, turned to the judge and said: ‘No. We can accept that.’ But she couldn’t refrain from adding: ‘The defence counsel has so few other pleasures in life.’

  The judge sent her a sharp look. ‘Spare me the levity in such a serious case. Has anyone else anything to add?’

  No-one had, and she didn’t spend long reaching a decision. She upheld the prosecution plea. The accused was to be held in custody for four weeks without mail or visitors. He would have restricted access to the press – all material surrounding the ongoing case was to be removed – but no access to the radio, TV or internet. The judge did, however, give permission to the defence counsel to take what she called the ‘requisite expertise in computer matters’ to meetings with his client. Afterwards she banged the table with her gavel, declared the session closed, got up and departed the courtroom, bearing a royal mien, followed with alacrity by her young registrar.

  I slumped back down on the bench. Hamre made eye contact, gloomier than I could ever remember seeing him, while Beatrice Bauge tidied up her papers with an arrogant toss of her head in our direction.

  I looked at Vidar Waagenes. He appeared to be more concerned than I would have liked, but when he noticed my gaze he straightened up, sighed and said: ‘At least she supported us on one point. As soon as we have the copies I’ll have Siggen get cracking. If there’s anything to find, he’s the right man, I can promise you that.’

  I watched the police officers at the back of the room get up, one with handcuffs at the ready. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Now I’m afraid Åsane is the next stop, Veum.’

  ‘And I’ve always done my very best to keep a safe distance from IKEA.’

  ‘OK, but we have to travel further than that, you know.’

  He was right. I knew. As we passed IKEA on the way out, for the first time I felt a sudden urge to go shopping, but we continued on our inexorable journey to Bergen State Prison and the tall, grey walls that surrounded it, like concrete city ramparts in the wilderness between Haukås and Hylkje. Not a place you would wish to go. Not a place you would dream about if you weren’t having nightmares and the alarm clock would soon be telling you it was morning and nothing dangerous had happened. But I wasn’t so lucky. When the third iron gate clanged shut behind us there was no escaping. Good advice was expensive and my account had been empty for years.

  15

  During my first days in Åsane I was left in peace. As I was supposed to know as little as possible about the ongoing investigation, I received neither post nor visitors and was kept in isolation from the other inmates. I had my food served in the cell and had access to the library after normal opening hours. I grabbed a large number of books without checking much, except to see whether I had read them before; there were a couple I fancied re-reading. For one hour every day I was taken to the exercise yard, accompanied by one of the warders. I could only fantasise about what the police were doing in the meantime.

  When I wasn’t reading I paced the cell floor nervously. I peered through the bars of the window to see what the weather was like; it changed from sun to rain and back again with no effect on my mood whatsoever. Low-pressure cyclones were queueing up in the cell.

  My sole visitor, apart from the warders, was Vidar Waagenes. He did what he could to cheer me up. At present they were waiting for the copies of the hard drives to arrive so they could get started, but ‘Siggen’s raring to go’, as he put it. Also he had, at my request, had a long chat with Sølvi and he brought her ‘warmest wishes’. ‘She’s looking forward to you getting out, Varg.’ I was happy he used my first name. We were on a personal level then. As soon as he switched to my surname, it was formal, and that unsettled me.

  I thanked him and asked him to ring her and say hello. ‘I wish I could talk to her myself.’

  ‘Yes, I know. We’ll have to see how long this is going to last. There’s no-one else you’d like me to contact?’

  ‘There’s my son and his family in Oslo. We don’t talk a lot, but he might be worried if he’s tried to call me and I didn’t answer the phone.’ I gave him Thomas’s telephone numbers – mobile, home and the university – and he promised to take care of this as well.

  ‘As my defence counsel, are you allowed to say anything about the case I can’t read about?’

  He gave an affirmative nod. ‘But there’s not much in the papers. No more than we already know. The press ban is just nonsense, but as the judge accepted it, there’s not much we can do about that now.’

  ‘My name hasn’t been revealed?’

  ‘No, no, not yet anyway. You’re referred to as a man of fifty-nine from Bergen, and the same applies to the others: man (thirty-eight), Nordhordland; man (forty-seven), Bergen; and man (seventy-two), Bergen.’

  ‘Wide age-range, in other words.’

  ‘My guess is the police will confront you with some of these names when you’re called in for an interview again.’

  ‘Will you be present?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  After a short pause he resumed: ‘Have you remembered any more people who may be harbouring a grudge against you?’

  ‘No. I can’t concentrate in here. But I’ll try and pull myself together.’

  ‘But you had remembered some, you said, last time we chatted?’

  ‘Yes.’ I told him about Sturle Heimark and my failed mission to Fusa. I also mentioned what I’d regarded as a suspicious death there and the possibility that both Heimark and the deceased man’s nephew, Svein Olav Kaspersen, were in cahoots. I told him about the computer business owned by Svein Olav and his friend from Bergen, Hjalmar Hope, and what the Chief of Police in Fusa had said.

  He noted down the names and said he would see what he could find out. ‘That’s good, Varg. Keep it up. Try and put everything else to one side and concentrate on this.’ He deliberated, then added: ‘If you need it, I can arrange for a visit from a doctor or a psychologist.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll try without first.’

  ‘Fine.’ He looked at the books on my table. ‘You’re getting stuck into some reading, I see.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m getting a bit of exercise. With luck that’ll keep me going until they realise what a dreadful mistake they’ve made.’

  He smiled wanly. ‘Good. I’ll be back tomorrow, whether there’s anything new or not.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  We shook hands, and he was conducted out of the cell. I heard the door being locked and stood staring at it. After a while I sat down on the chair i
n the bare interior. I turned to the table attached to the wall, took out my notepad and gripped the biro tightly, as though this ritual would facilitate searching back into the murk I had been stumbling around in for much too long.

  The wall was an eggshell colour. I sat staring at it, trying to focus on the task Waagenes had given me. Gradually I felt the pressure lift from my shoulders and neck. My eyes lost focus, my eyelids half closed, and from my consciousness a scene appeared: one afternoon in early October two years ago, Nicolai S. Clausen visiting me in my office with an offer I should have turned down, bearing in mind the consequences.

  16

  When you receive a client it might be advantageous if you are as sober as possible. The well-dressed man in the grey suit and light-brown coat came in through the waiting-room door while I stood behind the desk with nothing to lean against. I motioned him to the client’s chair and plumped down, a view of Mount Fløyen and Bryggen at my back, no other light in the room except for the desk lamp. If he had been sceptical at the outset he didn’t seem reassured now.

  He remained standing in the middle of the floor. After an inspection of the office he looked at me disapprovingly and said: ‘Nicolai S. Clausen. I need a private detective. But I’m not convinced you’re right for the job.’

  I let that seep in and made another vague flourish towards the client’s chair. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

  He was around fifty years old with dark, wavy hair, brushed back, shiny, not the slightest hint of grey, which made me suspect some of the colour came from a bottle. His nose was long and straight, his eyebrows were arched and his eyes blue and sceptical. Under the suit he wore a white shirt, open at the neck, where you could glimpse some steel-grey masculine hairs that had not yet been dyed.