The highest amount he could withdraw was four thousand kroner. He pressed the key, and after some grinding noises from the guts of the machine, eight five-hundred notes fluttered out through its jaws.
He wasn’t happy with that, inserted the card again and tapped in the same code number. The process was repeated, but this time he got only four notes.
‘What the fuck!’ he said. ‘What’s your credit limit?’
‘Credit limit?’
‘How much you can take out, for Christ’s sake!’
I looked askance from him to the screen. Then I gestured helplessly. ‘I suppose that must be it!’
He stared at me with an expression that said he felt like giving me a good beating anyway, but then he changed his mind. ‘OK … let’s go then.’
‘Where?’
‘We’re off.’
Once we were strapped in again, he pulled out from the kerb, drove along Michael Krohns gate and down Damgårdsveien. I followed the route as well as I could, though not quite knowing what we were doing.
Damsgårdsveien was undergoing some renovation work. Great parts of the old industrial buildings were going to be replaced with new dwellings, but many of the older houses were still left, several of them long abandoned by their former owners and tenants.
Bønni turned in by one of these. It was a tall industrial building consisting of six storeys. On the pavement in front, I gazed up at the sombre façade. At the very top, behind lowered blinds, something shone dimly, like the light of a UFO landed on a mountain top in the hope that it wouldn’t be noticed. A thought struck me: The Tower? Maybe this is it…
Bønni brusquely shoved me towards the main entrance, which was locked. He pressed in a code on the pad beside the door, there was a click and he pushed the door open. We entered a drab stairwell, dimly illuminated by the reflection of a neon tube some way up the stairs.
He opened the lift door, thrust me in and tapped the button for the fourth floor. Another door with a coded lock, and when it opened it was as though we had entered a lost version of One Thousand and One Nights, complete with scantily clad women, a striking number of them foreign in appearance. The walls were covered with dark-red silk wallpaper, and the muted lighting came from fittings partially hidden behind ceiling mouldings. At the end of the room there was a staffed bar. At various small tables sat well-dressed men aged from their late twenties to their seventies, with glasses in their hands or on the table in front of them, and not a single one without the company of a lady.
‘Boss in?’
The bartender nodded, and Bønni carried on, knocked on a mahogany-veneer door, waited for a noise inside, and when he heard it, opened, pushed me into the room and closed the door firmly behind us.
We had walked quickly through the salon outside, but not so quickly that I hadn’t recognised a face there. I just couldn’t place it.
I stumbled into the room and had to make a grab at the big desk so as not to fall on the floor. It had thick, transparent glass on top, and there weren’t many writing implements on it. The walls were varnished in some black, shiny material. Dark-green, heavy velvet curtains were drawn in front of the windows, which normally would have offered a view of Puddefjord and the districts of Møhlenpris and Nygårdshøyden. A sweet, acrid smell of cigar hung over the room, and behind the desk sat a man in a dark suit, with blond hair and regular, almost anonymous, facial features. He observed me through his cool, light-blue eyes as, with studied movements, he lit the cigar he had just poked into his mouth.
‘This is the individual who has been going round asking after you,’ said Bønni.
The man behind the desk weighed me up. When he spoke there was a clear accent. ‘And who are you?’
It was as though my head was gradually returning to its place. ‘The name’s Veum. Varg Veum.’
Bønni threw my wallet on the table in front of the second man, who opened it and removed one of my cards. He read it carefully, then glanced up at me and nodded. ‘Private investigator. Well, well.’
‘And you are … Karsten?’
He didn’t answer, but said: ‘What do you want?’
‘To talk to you. But not now. Not … like this.’ What I meant was: Not now, while I’m so rat-arsed. But I didn’t say that.
‘But this is your chance. Tomorrow could be too late.’
I sighed and tried to remember. What is it I wanted? Why have I been asking after him? The face of my nameless client appeared in my skull somewhere. But how would I explain to him who he was when I didn’t even know his name?
‘There’s a man who owes you money. You’ve got photos of him.’
He raised his eyebrows mockingly. ‘Lots of men owe me money, Veum. I’ve got photos of lots of men too. You’re going to have to give me a peg to hang this on.’
‘A peg?’
‘A name.’
‘Yes, that’s the problem.’ Unconsciously, I stretched a hand into my inside pocket.
The man I assumed was Karsten motioned to Bønni. At once he was on top of me, grabbing my arm so that it couldn’t move and sticking his own hand so deep into my inside pocket that he reached the business card I had put there some days before. Then he let go, stepped forward and passed the card to Karsten.
Karsten threw it a glance, nodded to himself and put it in his own inside pocket with an eloquent look at Bønni. Then he eyed me. ‘And what did this man want you to find out?’
I regarded him from under heavy eyelids. ‘Find out? I don’t remember.’ Deep inside my drunken head I realised I had committed a grave error. Nothing to be proud of. Nothing else to do but keep my mouth shut for as long as I could.
‘Shall I knock him about, Boss?’ I heard behind me.
Karsten sent me a measured gaze. ‘Doubt it would help. Just get rid of him. If he can’t be a little clearer, we have nothing to talk to him about.’
‘And by “get rid of ” you mean…?’
‘By “get rid of ” him I mean turf him out. Nothing else. Not this time.’
I stretched out a hand. ‘Can I have my wallet back?’
In one sudden move Karsten hurled the wallet towards me. It landed on the floor in front of me, and just bending down and picking it up felt like an effort beyond my powers.
Standing back upright, I said: ‘Just get in touch.’
He exchanged a look with Bønni and nodded. Bønni grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, turned me round and we performed a gentle retreat through the dark-red salon. The man I thought I recognised was on his way up a winding staircase to the floor above. He had his arm around the waist of a woman dressed in a scant bra and a kind of raffia skirt. As we passed he looked down and met my gaze.
It wasn’t a friendly look, and now I remembered who it was. Sturle Heimark, the ex-policeman I had last bumped into in Fusa late the previous winter.
Then we were in the lift and on our way down. Before getting into the car, I performed the same gesture as up on the fourth floor. I stretched out my hand and said: ‘My card.’
‘What the hell are you going to do with it? There’s nothing on it.’
‘My card,’ I repeated, a little more impatiently this time.
He took it from his inside pocket and slapped it down into my palm, so hard that it felt as if the sharp edge had cut into me. I closed my hand around it and put it as deep into my inside jacket pocket as I could.
Bønni drove me to the top of Puddefjord Bridge, where he pulled in and dropped me off as though hoping I would jump into the sea. I didn’t, but the night turned into morning before I was back in Telthussmuget.
During the subsequent days I expected the anonymous client to ring me at some point to hear what I had found out. It wasn’t exactly a conversation I was looking forward to, so in many ways I was relieved that I never heard from him. I had spent the advance, but that didn’t make my conscience feel any worse than it already was. Now though, barely a year afterwards, it struck me as strange that he had never contacted me. Perhaps ul
timately there had been a reason – a reason that had nothing to do with discretion. A reason I would prefer not to know.
23
On Friday morning I was summoned for another interview at the police station. Vidar Waagenes met me at the entrance and accompanied us upstairs.
‘Have they told you what they want to quiz me about?’ I asked.
‘No.’
The officers who had collected me from Åsane led us into an interview room and one stayed until Hamre and Beatrice Bauge arrived, both in uniform for the occasion. They greeted us politely, but in measured tones; Hamre somewhat downbeat, Bauge tense and ready for action, as though the next step in her career was now within reach.
Hamre had a thick wad of documents with him, Bauge a little laptop, which she opened in front of her and roused from sleep mode. Hamre leafed through the pile of papers until he found the ones he was after. She scrolled down the screen with what I assumed was the same result.
Waagenes sighed loudly. ‘Shall we get underway? I have to be in court at one.’
Hamre nodded assent.
Bauge said: ‘We’ll have to see how far we can get.’ She looked at me. ‘Depending on how willing the accused is to talk.’
‘As long as we have something to talk about,’ I said.
‘We do, I’m sure.’
‘Away we go then,’ I said impatiently.
Waagenes placed a hand on my arm, as if to say ‘easy now’.
Hamre and Bauge exchanged glances. She said: ‘Perhaps you’d like to start?’
Hamre sighed. ‘Fine.’ From under heavy eyelids he looked at me. ‘We’d like to put some names to you, Veum, so that you can explain what your relationship is with these people.’
I nodded. ‘OK. Fire away.’
He perched some narrow reading glasses on his nose and held one of the sheets he had located in front of him. ‘Mikael Midtbø,’ he read.
Everyone looked at me. I looked calmly at him. ‘Completely unknown. Never heard of him.’
‘No? Living in Frekhaug.’
‘He could be living on the moon for all I know. I’ve never heard the name.’
Bauge tapped away on her keyboard, stroked the mousepad and wrote a bit more. We watched her until she had finished, as though this was some kind of one-woman-show she was presenting.
In the meantime Hamre had selected the next document from his pile. ‘Per Haugen.’
I shrugged. ‘I met a journalist called Helge Haugen in Førde once. That’s as close as I can get.’
‘This is a fellow townsman of yours.’
‘Bully for him.’
Hamre eyed me despairingly. Bauge was playing her piano keyboard again, but not for as long as last time.
When Hamre took out the last sheet he had selected, a nervousness seemed to come over him. I knew him well enough to realise that this was serious now and I was not immune to a tingle between my shoulder blades.
He smacked his lips silently, then said: ‘This guy here then…’ He paused, as on cue as an actor. ‘Karl Slåtthaug.’
Then he fixed his eyes on me and watched closely. As did Bauge. Even Vidar Waagenes observed me with renewed interest this time.
I allowed the name to sink down into me, until it had reached the bottom. Then I nodded slowly as though only gradually recognising it. ‘Yes, him I know about.’
They waited. Hamre said: ‘“Know about”?’
I nodded. ‘I know him, but only peripherally.’
‘Ex-colleague, is he?’
I shook my head. ‘No. He started at Social Services after I’d finished there.’
‘Yes, yes, but in the same line of work. Trained social worker as well, we can see.’
‘Indeed! But that doesn’t mean we had much to do with each other.’
‘No?’
‘No! I’ve not seen Karl Slåtthaug since…’ Suddenly I realised I had gone down a blind alley. ‘Well, I might perhaps have bumped into him … last year some time.’
‘Bumped into?’
‘Yes, bumped into. We had a few beers. Nothing else.’
‘How would you explain all the emails he sent you last year?’
‘Emails? From Karl Slåtthaug! I don’t recall any.’
‘Emails with attachments you saved on your machine and – by the look of it – enjoyed at a later opportunity.’
‘Emails from Karl Slåtthaug I … that never happened. I can’t remember ever receiving any emails from him. When we said goodbye last autumn … well … neither of us expressed any wish to see each other again.’
‘Why not?’
I shrugged.
‘You had an argument?’
I leaned forward. ‘I don’t know how much you know about Karl Slåtthaug, but he finished at Social Services for quite different reasons from mine. His name appeared in connection with a case I was investigating…’
‘Last year?’
‘No, close on ten years ago. And he clearly blamed me for later events.’
Hamre arched his eyebrows. ‘Interesting, Veum. Are you suggesting he had a reason to take revenge on you?’
Bauge coughed in reproof, and Hamre glanced in her direction. Then he continued: ‘Not that that detracts from your responsibility.’
Waagenes was following with interest now.
‘We have only your word that you were … enemies,’ Hamre said.
‘We weren’t enemies. I had nothing to do with him!’
‘We’ve taken note … that you said that. But we have concrete evidence of the opposite.’ He tapped his forefinger on the table in front of him, emphasising the significance of what he was saying. ‘On your computer, Veum.’
I leaned back and threw up my arms. ‘As I’ve told you … this is simply incomprehensible. For me too, Hamre.’
‘For you too?’
‘Yes. Because surely you don’t believe this, do you? That I would…’
He looked at me askance. ‘My job isn’t about beliefs, Veum. It’s about knowledge. And bit by bit we know more and more about what happened.’
‘What, for example?’
Bauge intervened. ‘We’ll come back to that, Veum. Eventually.’
Waagenes spoke up. ‘On my client’s behalf I’d just like to draw your attention to the fact that we have our own computer expert, who is at present thoroughly examining the copies of both Veum’s hard drives we were given by the police – from his home and office computers. Until that work is complete we will reject all alleged evidence based on their contents.’
Beatrice Bauge eyed him with a bitter-sweet smile on her lips. ‘Noted, herr Waagenes.’ She turned to Hamre. ‘Anything else, Jakob?’
A spasm seemed to flash across his face as if he didn’t like such a young colleague addressing him by his first name. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not today.’
Bauge opened the door and shouted down the corridor. ‘You can take Veum back to Åsane now!’
‘You wouldn’t like to open the window and use a loud-hailer, would you?’ I said.
She tossed her head and walked off with her laptop firmly under her arm.
I turned to Hamre. ‘Such a lovely colleague you have, Hamre.’
He didn’t answer, just sent a measured nod to Waagenes and me, and left me to the two officers who would accompany me back to Bergen Prison.
‘I hope to get Siggen over to see you during the weekend,’ Waagenes said before we parted.
‘And I hope he’ll be of some use,’ I answered.
In the prison van no-one said a word. It seemed as if we were on the way to a funeral, and I had a disconcerting sense it was mine.
24
After the incident with the bank card and the hijacked account I had tried to pull myself together; although the bodged investigation for the man whose name I didn’t even know hadn’t exactly bolstered my self-confidence. I put the aquavit bottle in the office drawer, at the back, and piled up some unused notepads in front of it, so that it wouldn’t roll forward every time
I opened the drawer. I undertook another appraisal of the pile of bills, once again ordering them according to priority, and wondered if there was anything I could sell to pay the most urgent of them. But I couldn’t think of a solution. Most of my possessions I needed, and those I didn’t need, nobody would want.
I rang Nils Åkre and asked if he had any cases he could forward on to me.
‘After your success in Fusa?’ he replied.
‘My God, Nils, that’s almost two years ago!’
‘Nevertheless…’
Late that November I mixed with bad company again. So bad that I could scarcely remember where I had been. It didn’t get a lot better when I crawled back on land and the person I met there was Karl Slåtthaug; the only advantage was that he was paying. Bergen’s famous Børs Café was not so far from my office that I needed a map and a compass to get there, and on that Friday afternoon I sat down at one of the darkest tables, though still not dark enough for me to be able to sit in peace. I quickly recognised the man who crossed the floor and stood swaying by my table, and when he asked if he could buy me a beer a prompter in my wallet whispered: ‘Say yes.’
He thought we had suffered similar fates. ‘You and I and Social Services, Varg.’
‘You weren’t in Social Services when I was there.’
‘Later I was. And we all got to hear about it. A living legend,’ he grinned. ‘You couldn’t control your desires, either.’
I felt a chill in my solar plexus. ‘What did you just say?’
His gaze flitted from my mouth to my eyes and back again. ‘The drug dealer you beat up because he went to bed with one of your girls.’
‘She was a client, Karl. Not what I’d call “one of my girls”. It was someone I’d taken care of and got back on an even keel, only for her to be destabilised again by some bastard.’
‘Whom you killed, right?’
‘I beat him up, yes.’
‘But later he died.’
‘Many years later, yes. But … I had nothing to do with that.’
‘I heard a different story.’
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