Wolves in the Dark

by Gunnar Staalesen

  I was having trouble focussing. In an attempt to disguise what I had been imbibing I lunged at a tin of throat lozenges I had on the desk, took one myself and passed the tin to him. He stared at me with disdain, holding up both hands, as though I had offered him a deadly poison.

  I closed the tin and put it back on my desk. At the same time I shifted a letter-opener to the pile of unopened window envelopes, as if opening them was the next point on the agenda.

  Nicolai S. Clausen coughed impatiently. ‘Erm, aren’t you interested in hearing what my visit is about?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said, waving my right arm again. I used the other to maintain my balance on the chair.

  ‘I need some discreet surveillance of my wife’s movements on nights when I’m travelling; or at any rate when I’m busy with other matters and not at home.’

  Almost on automatic pilot, I started to trot out my fixed rule never to take on such cases, but he interrupted me before I had got further than ‘such cases’.

  ‘And I’ll pay well.’ He glanced at the window envelopes with a sardonic expression. ‘Probably a lot better than you usually earn.’ He leaned forward. ‘On condition that you bag a result.’

  The window envelopes were like sirens; they lured you onto out-of-the-way paths and sent you crashing down cliffs as soon as they saw an opportunity. The sirens sang so beautifully in my head that I gave in without any substantial resistance. I took my notepad and pen and articulated as carefully as I could: ‘Then I’ll need some factual information about you and her.’

  Nicolai S. Clausen was the owner of a company that specialised in financial advice: Nico Vest AS. His wife was called Åsne, and they had one child, a boy who was now fifteen. ‘Yes, Åsne was no more than twenty when we met,’ he added, as if that had any relevance. She worked for a computer firm in Sandsli – SH Data – as an office manager.’

  ‘SH?’

  ‘Yes, it’s supposed to stand for Sherlock Holmes, a famous problem-solver. You may have heard of him.’

  ‘Older colleague,’ I mumbled, mostly to myself.

  ‘Bit of a stretch, if you ask me.’

  Clausen’s own company had an office in Valkendorfsgate, and the family lived in Kalfarlien; neither of these addresses told me anything.

  ‘And what makes you think your wife’s…?’ I let the word hang in the air.

  ‘Unfaithful? You just know, don’t you?’

  I shrugged, so imperceptibly it was hard to notice.

  ‘I’ve noticed it in the way she behaves … sexually, if I can put it like that. And there are other signals.’

  ‘Such as…?’

  ‘Well … she used to like coming on trips with me. Now she prefers to stay at home. If we’re invited out somewhere – professionally, that is – she always asks if it’s absolutely necessary. And then there are the phone conversations that suddenly stop when I appear. Things like that.’

  ‘Well … in cases like these…’ I sighed. ‘You might…’ I couldn’t finish what I had intended to say. ‘You need to give me more to go on. You said your wife’s thirty-five or thirty-six. Did I understand you correctly?’

  ‘That’s correct. Thirty-six. We met when she was twenty and the following year we were married and … became parents. But we didn’t have any more after him. Severin.’

  ‘Your son’s called Severin?’

  ‘Yes. After his grandfather. My middle name.’

  I mumbled as I wrote it down. ‘Nicolai Severin Clausen.’

  He glared at me. ‘But this has nothing to do with the case!’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. It’s just good to have all the details clear right from the word go.’

  ‘Then I’ll give you some more specific details. Tomorrow at lunchtime I’m going to London and I’ll be there until Monday evening. Various meetings.’

  ‘At the weekend?’

  ‘In our line of work there are no weekends, Veum.’

  I made a few illegible squiggles on my pad. ‘I’ve made a note of that.’

  He sent me an indulgent look. ‘I’d like you to find out what Åsne does while I’m away and then report back when I contact you on Tuesday.’

  I sighed. ‘But then I need at least a photo of her. Have you got one?’

  He put a hand in his inside pocket and took out a wallet that was so slim it suggested there were more cards than cash. He fished out a newspaper cutting and passed it across the table to me. ‘I happen to have this.’

  I looked at the cutting. It was an article about new appointments in the business sector. Åsne Clausen looked young and attractive, with a pronounced jaw and short, practical hair.

  ‘Her hair’s a bit different now. Longer fringe and a lighter colour.’

  In this family they had ‘his’ and ‘hers’ bottles, I gathered.

  ‘And how does she get to and from work?’

  ‘She has a car. A red Toyota Yaris.’ He gave me the registration number, and I wrote it down.

  ‘So you think I should drive to Sandsli, park at a suitable distance and see what happens?’

  He shrugged. ‘Something like that.’ He added, sarcastically: ‘You’re the pro.’

  ‘I’d like to say that this is not what I do normally.’

  He had taken a credit card from his wallet and held it in his hand. ‘You’re a private detective, aren’t you? With a diploma and so on?’

  ‘Diploma?’

  ‘Obviously you don’t have a sense of humour. How much do you want as an advance?’

  I gulped. ‘This’ll take a few days.’

  ‘Five thousand, is that enough?’

  ‘And it’s the weekend.’

  He raised his eyebrows ironically. ‘Then let’s say ten. Have you got an account number you can give me?’

  I took one of my business cards from the holder on the desk and passed it over to him. He put it in his wallet without even a glance.

  ‘I’ll transfer it from my laptop in my car. It’ll be there in ten minutes.’ He rose to his feet and buttoned up his jacket. ‘I hope you understand this is not something I do with a light heart, Veum. Nothing would please me more than the result of your surveillance turning out negative.’ He walked towards the door. ‘You’ll be hearing from me on Tuesday.’

  ‘Have a good trip to London,’ I mumbled.

  As soon as he had gone I flicked through the pile of bills to see which needed paying first. From memory, ten thousand wasn’t the biggest advance I had ever received, and it wouldn’t take long to spend it. If nothing else, it deadened the bad conscience I already had about taking the job. But I carefully averted my eyes as I passed the mirror over the sink on my way out.

  17

  That night I drank only water. However, I still wasn’t sure if I ought to be driving until well into Friday. Recently I had felt that there was more alcohol than haemoglobin circulating through my veins, and the red there was lay like a thin fruit soup over the whites of my eyes.

  During the morning I tried to gather as much background information about Nicolai S. Clausen and his wife Åsne as I could. One of the searches revealed an article about their son, Severin: a newspaper interview discussing a middle school’s early use of computers. Regarding the parents, I found out that Åsne’s maiden name had been Kronstad. She was the daughter of Kåre Kronstad, a well-known name in Bergen shipping circles, who did a lot of business in the country, but less outside its borders. Dagens Næringsliv suggested Kåre had invested quite a lot of money in his son-in-law’s company, Nico Vest AS, owning a shareholding of forty percent. I didn’t find much else about Åsne I didn’t know already from the text, accompanied by a photo, that Clausen had given me the day before. Although, from various fun-run race results, I gleaned she was an enthusiastic participant. Notably, she had run the uphill Stoltzekleiven Opp in under fifteen minutes, which I considered a very good time for a jogger. It would have taken me close on half an hour if I had tried, and that was on one of my better days.

  In t
he end I contacted Geirmund Granerud, a peripheral acquaintance who had given up trying to sell shares to me, but who was chatty enough whenever we met. He didn’t have much more to tell me than I already knew either. However, he said there were rumours in the business world that Nico Vest was being investigated by the Fraud Squad because there was some suspicion of insider dealing in connection with a large share issue earlier that year, but he didn’t know how much truth there was in this. Nicolai Clausen was generally known as a cunning fox, he said, and someone who had ‘married well’.

  ‘And by that you mean…?’

  ‘He brought a name with him – from both of his grandparents – but moss had grown over the old money he represented. At the time it had been a smart move to marry Kåre Kronstad’s only daughter and have a finger in the in-laws’ financial pie.’

  ‘So they didn’t marry for love, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘When did they ever, in those circles?’

  ‘Well, you know more about that than me.’

  ‘Nic isn’t known as the kind to reject a woman who offers him the goods.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He’s bound to have some skeletons in his cupboard. I bumped into him in New York once a couple of years ago; he was in the company of a very curvy so-called escort. And it didn’t look as if it was international finance the two of them were discussing at the bar.’

  ‘Hmm. Interesting.’

  ‘But of course, don’t quote me, Varg.’ He already sounded as if he regretted what he had said.

  ‘No, no. I’m as discreet as a Catholic priest.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very reassuring any more.’

  ‘You can trust me, Geirmund.’

  ‘OK.’

  If what he said was true, why was Nicolai S. Clausen so uneasy about what Åsne was doing while he was on his travels? Was it something to do with sauce for the gander being forbidden to the goose? Or was there something else behind it? Something to do with money?

  ‘Kåre Kronstad, is he well off?’

  ‘All things considered, yes. He’s invested wisely and doesn’t take great risks. His ships sail as they always have done, although not with the same profits, nor with a Norwegian crew, apart from the captain and a couple of the officers. Otherwise it’s Poles and Filipinos. However, he has salted away a substantial part of his fortune in investments in oil, computer technology and other areas where the stock quote is still rising. No danger signals on the horizon, as far as I know.’

  Armed with this I got into my car and drove to Sandsli well before the working day was over. I had found the address of SH Data in the Yellow Pages and had, as always, my road atlas with me, even though in this case it turned out to be unnecessary. SH Data shared the building with several other companies and the logo of the biggest one lit up half of the front wall, visible the second you turned in from Flyplassvegen.

  I drove into the large car park and slowly passed the lines of vehicles until I found Åsne Clausen’s gleaming-red Toyota Yaris. I cast around for an empty space not too far away and found three or four in the parallel line. So, I would have a good view of her car whenever she appeared. There was nothing else to do but switch off the engine, lean well back and unfold the first in the pile of newspapers I had bought. Experience is the best teacher. Surveillance jobs can soon become tedious, and it didn’t take long before boredom became so overwhelming that it was hard to stay awake. On the seat beside me I had a little camera ready for use if need be.

  Even though it was a Friday afternoon few people left their place of work until it was time in Sandsli. It was past four before anything started happening at all and the biggest rush came between half past four and five. By then it was difficult to distinguish one person from another, and I had to stare hard at the red car to make sure Åsne Clausen wasn’t suddenly there and moving off.

  I recognised one person: Hjalmar Hope, whom I had come across in Fusa six months before, was clearly still at large. He was chatting cheerfully with a colleague across a dark-blue version of the latest Audi, and there was nothing to suggest he had anything to fear, either from the authorities or from any other quarter. They finished their conversation, and Hope got into his car and reversed, while his colleague walked further down the lines to his own car.

  Åsne wasn’t on her own either when she rolled up at ten minutes to five. Her fringe might have been long and untidy, but it was the hair I recognised first, and then the face with the strong jaw. She was wearing a colourful jacket of twisted wool, with bright strands of red, blue and green, and elegant light-blue jeans. The man who was accompanying her was dressed in more everyday clothes – a short outdoor jacket, dark trousers and a grey scarf tossed casually over his shoulder. They walked together as far as her car and parted company without a hug or any other intimacy. After she got behind the wheel he continued down through the rows of cars. He had an idiosyncratic way of moving, a kind of jig with expansive arm movements, like a middleweight boxer on his way into the ring before a defining title match.

  I glanced down at the camera. I hadn’t decided on when to take a shot and when it was too late. That spoke volumes about how good I was at this work.

  Her car turned out of the parking space. After a shortish wait I set off after her. I didn’t want to have too many cars between us in the traffic hell customary at this time of day. At the roundabout by Flyplassvegen she indicated for the Bergen lane, and I moved up to two cars behind her. We dawdled along at a speed of ten to twenty kilometres an hour, and even more slowly as we approached Lagunen, which was reputed to be Hordaland’s biggest shopping centre, surrounded by what seemed like boundless chaos. At a snail’s pace we moved along what was supposed to be a motorway, but which, in fact, functioned as an airport travellator. Even at my age I could have run the same distance in half the time.

  Sensibly, she turned off at Hop, drove down Storetveitvegen into town, turned off again at the end of Lake Tveite and entered Nattlandsveien, into the traffic leaving the centre. In the process we had lost the cars between us. If she looked into her rear-view mirror, we would have eye contact over a distance of less than five metres.

  When she turned into Kalfarlien I decided to do the same, but then she pulled in to park, so I continued past without a glance in her direction. I parked on the slope where Forskjønnelsen met Leitet – two street names that told Norwegians something about classic urban renovation and old rural settlements on the mountainside above the town.

  I strolled back, saw that she had left her car tucked nicely into the kerb and in the, approximately, hundred-year-old white building behind the hedge, glimpsed her fair hair as she shuttled backwards and forwards in what I assumed was the kitchen: straight from the computer industry to modern domestic service. I continued almost right to the end of Kalvedalsveien, where a lanky boy with a fashionable rucksack rounded the corner and passed me. I checked both directions, then turned round and walked back whence I had come.

  The boy in front of me opened the gate and walked up the garden path of the same house that Åsne Clausen had entered. When I passed it this time he had already gone, and so had Åsne from the kitchen window. I was fairly confident this was Severin returning home from school.

  At the end of Kalfarlien there are some narrow wooden steps going up to where you can follow a path leading to Leitet. I took them and went behind a bush for a pee. If there was one thing I disliked about jobs like this one it was the stress it put on the bodily functions of a man in his late fifties. But that wasn’t what I disliked most. From the day I opened my agency in the mid-70s I had consistently rejected the so-called marital cases. The main reason had been that I considered such cases private, and the longer I could make ends meet without resorting to them, the happier I was. Now this time had clearly gone, creditors were more ruthless and ever-ready Varg was more ever-ready than he used to be.

  In a way it made me feel like a beginner again. I was much more at home with cases where I could call on people,
talk to them face to face and try to find out what was lurking behind their smooth facades. Actually I would rather have been investigating Nicolai S. Clausen, for example, in a business context.

  But I had to be satisfied with the crumbs from the table. There wasn’t much else I could do but get in the car, drive up to Leitet, turn round at the intersection there and drive back to Kalfarlien, where I shot into a free parking space – miraculously there was one – switch off the ignition and wait for something to happen.

  Kalfarlien is not one of the town’s busiest streets, even if there is a lot of traffic going to Skansen, through one of the gaps in the toll ring around Bergen. A lot of people walked as well, and sitting behind the wheel I felt as discreet as a modernist installation in a Munch museum.

  Dusk turned to night. If this job was going to continue I would have to remember to bring sandwiches next time. My stomach had been rumbling for some time when mother and son appeared by her car. She sent a glance in my direction, then another, but she was too far away for me to be able to read her expression. Then they got in the car.

  They drove down to Kalvedalsveien and turned right towards the centre. I followed them. Down the hill to Stadsporten, I was no longer in any doubt: now I saw her eyes in the rear-view mirror more times than traffic safety normally required. At Bergen Katedralskole she pulled in and dropped off her son. Luckily I had been held up by the lights at the Nygate crossroads, but I set off on green and turned into Lille Øvregate, which was the only option she had in this traffic lock step. She went down Øvre Korskirkeallmenning, left again into Kong Oscars gate, and was heading back home, for all I knew. But at Nygaten she took a right, and not long after we were going down Bryggen in convoy. We passed Bergenhus Fortress, the big Bergen Fiskeindustri building in Bontelabo, the old timber houses in Skuteviken and carried on. In Sandviksveien she suddenly pulled in and parked in front of the large brick building known locally as Sing Sing. I did the same, about twenty metres behind. She got out of her car, slammed the door and strode in my direction with her eyes firmly focussed on my windscreen.