Wolves in the Dark

by Gunnar Staalesen

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ve rung a couple of times to ask if I’ve been in contact with you, but I don’t have a sense that they’ve prioritised the hunt for you. I suppose they assume you’ll appear at some point, voluntarily or not.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The next time I think I should answer that I have heard from you.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘In my profession I have a rule: Honesty is the best policy. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Situations can arise where a tiny white lie can be appropriate. Don’t tell me, as a lawyer, that you haven’t come across them.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Can you ring me if you find out anything about the names I gave you?’

  ‘I’ll see what I have time for, Varg. I have other clients as well, you know.’

  ‘More important than me?’

  ‘Everyone deserves some attention.’

  ‘And honesty is the best policy. Thank you. I’ll be hearing from you, will I?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  We hung up. While we were talking, someone else had been trying to contact me. I recognised the number. It was Nora Nedstrand. I rang back, and she replied almost at once, as though she had been sitting with the phone in her hand.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Veum here.’

  She got straight to the point. ‘I’ve arranged to meet Sturle. He’s expecting me at twelve o’ clock. I’ll be leaving at any moment.’

  ‘OK. Did you say … You didn’t mention my name, did you?’

  ‘…No.’

  ‘Then I’ll meet you outside where he lives.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, and rang off without wasting any time on pleasantries.

  I looked at my watch. Half past nine. I had two and a half hours. I leaned back against the sofa, took my notepad and slowly flicked through it.

  There were some almost invisible links between the cases I had tried to retrieve from oblivion. Between Sturle Heimark and Hjalmar Hope there was an obvious connection. What was more, I had seen Heimark in The Tower. I had been there with Karl Slåtthaug, who had a connection with Maria Nystøl, the children’s home in Olsvik and – again – the main man behind The Tower, Bruno Karsten. When I had been lying on the floor of Karsten’s office, they had talked above me about a Hjalmar. ‘Talk to Hjalmar. He’ll fix it. He’s the computer man.’

  Was it a coincidence or was it the same Hjalmar? I had seen Sturle Heimark and Hjalmar Hope in the car park outside the building containing SH Data. Hjalmar Hope had been a colleague of Åsne Clausen’s, I had been told by her son, and he had helped Severin to develop his computer game. So there was a clear link there too. Could Hjalmar Hope have been Åsne’s secret friend?

  I had noted down the name of another of her colleagues there, Ruth Olsen. I would very much like to have a chat with her. But top of the list was Sturle Heimark, and I would be meeting him with Nora Nedstrand at twelve.

  So far there were two deaths in these interconnected cases; three if I included the suicide of Oliver Nedstrand in the mid-90s. Knut Kaspersen had drowned in Fusa Fjord in February 2000, and Åsne Clausen had taken her own life in November of the same year. Many murders were disguised as accidents, and a suicide could easily be the result of a helping hand, so long as the circumstances didn’t invite a closer examination. But I was only on the fringe of these cases, at any rate the one in Fusa. And even in Åsne Clausen’s case it was only in the heads of Nicolai and Severin that I was a central factor in the sequence of events that led to the tragic conclusion. So why would anyone consider it important to blame me in the way they had done so convincingly? There had to be something behind all this.

  Computer skills were clearly a key feature and so far Sturle Heimark, Hjalmar Hope and Severin Clausen had stood out as being on the front line. Of these three, Heimark was the oldest and therefore the one in whom you would initially have least suspected such expertise. Another reason to try and wheedle something out of him.

  But Heimark was a hard nut to crack. As an ex-policeman he would be physically capable of defending himself, very probably mentally as well, and he had already tried once to get his former colleagues to take me in. He was bound to make another attempt, given half a chance. Still, that was my next move, with or without any help from Nora Nedstrand.

  I gave Madonna another portion of food, filled her bowl with water and received a long, friendly miaaaaaouw in gratitude. When leaving, I quickly closed the door and with the most natural expression in the world walked the short distance to the next street and around the corner, where I got into the car, started it up and once again drove ‘home’ to Nordnes.

  43

  The block where Sturle Heimark lived was in the part of Strandgaten that most reminded me of a provincial street in Siberia: a façade of concrete down both sides, built at the end of the 1950s when the council authorities responsible must have been on a study tour of Murmansk to find some architectural inspiration. Here the Russians had definitely won the Cold War.

  It was half past eleven when I found an empty space to park in the vicinity. I put enough coins in the meter to stay for two hours. To check I was in the right place, I strolled over to see if his name was on the list by the doorbells. It was, in discreet, hand-written letters. Then I walked back to the car, got in and waited for Nora Nedstrand to show up.

  The big, dark-grey Mitsubishi Outlander rounded the corner from Tollbodallmenningen at a few minutes past twelve. She found a free parking spot and fed the meter. The traffic wardens, it seemed, would have to look elsewhere for their prey today. I kept a wary eye open to check she didn’t have anyone following her, but no suspicious cars appeared. I hoped she wasn’t even aware that the police were after me, and I had to trust that she hadn’t told Heimark who she was coming with.

  She scrutinised the house numbers as she moved in my direction, and when she was close I got out of the car and met her on the pavement. She gave a start as though she hadn’t been expecting to see me.

  ‘Hi,’ she said dourly.

  ‘Hi. What did he say when you rang?’

  ‘He seemed a trifle surprised … and pretty annoyed. But when I said I had something important to tell him he agreed to meet me today.’

  I motioned to the door. ‘I hope he’s waiting for you then.’

  She pushed the door, but it was locked. Then she rang the bell and stood waiting for a response from the nearby intercom.

  It came, concise and to the point: ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s me. Nora.’

  The reply was a buzz from the lock. I pushed the door and held it open for her. An information board inside told us that S. Heimark lived on the third floor. We took the lift up without exchanging many words. She seemed quite nervous, and I didn’t feel on top form myself, if anyone had cared to ask.

  On the third floor his door was anonymous, the only one without a nameplate. I took up a position beside the door, on the edge of the stairs. As if to show how little interest he had in this visit, she had to ring the bell here too.

  As he opened the door I quickly stepped forward, put a foot inside and forced my way in before her. When he saw me he tried to close the door in my face, but I was in the hall before he could stop me. Nora didn’t move, as though frightened what might happen.

  ‘Veum?’ he barked, trying to puff himself up in front of me.

  ‘Disappointed you didn’t have me nabbed the other day?’

  ‘I already knew.’

  ‘Good contact with your old colleagues, I can hear.’

  ‘Good enough for this at any rate.’ He turned to Nora. ‘What the hell are you playing at? Have you joined forces with the likes of him?’

  Her face was a blotchy red, her eyes were filling. ‘He … he … forced me!’

  ‘And how did he know you were coming here?’

  ‘I … We…’

  ‘A deal, eh?’

  I advanced further into the hall. ‘Come in, Nora. He’ll have to listen to what
you have to say.’

  For a second or two I saw uncertainty spread across his face. ‘Tell me now. What do you have to say?’

  ‘I think you know, Heimark,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and sit in the lounge and discuss it together.’

  ‘I have nothing left to say to you, Veum! You know that.’

  ‘I don’t know that! After what you did when I was at Hjalmar Hope’s we have a lot left to discuss – about Bruno Karsten, about The Tower, about Hope and lots more, so it would be a wise move to invite us in. If you don’t I might ring the police this time and tell them where they can find a murderer.’

  ‘Murderer!’ he snorted. But he stepped aside and gestured to Nora to come in.

  They gave each other a wide berth, avoiding contact, and he slammed the door hard after her. Then he turned and waved us brusquely into what was apparently the lounge.

  It looked like the headquarters of a confirmed bachelor with no other interests in life than beer and football. There was a television in the corner of the room. The furniture was plain and sparse: four chairs in the same style and a battered coffee table in the middle. No pictures on the walls. No bookshelves. A plastic crate of empty beer bottles in one corner, a coffee cup and a Thermos stained brown on the table by one of the chairs. The TV was on, but with the volume down. The screen showed a football match between two teams with striped shirts, in which most of the players looked like South Americans.

  I nodded towards the TV. ‘Establishing another alibi?’

  He glowered at me, as though ready to pummel me with his bare fists. But he restrained himself. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that he was the strongest boy in the class after all. I would know how to give a good account of myself anyway.

  He faced Nora. ‘Have you been talking to him about that bloody ticket again?’

  She blinked and looked petrified. ‘C-can we … can I sit down?’

  He pointed fiercely at one chair. She slumped into it as though on the point of keeling over. He remained on his feet. So I did the same.

  She looked up at us like a naughty schoolchild called in to talk to both the headmaster and deputy head.

  ‘Well,’ I said in an attempt to take the lead. ‘She had to admit she found your plane ticket and she still has it. It can be documented that you were in Norway the weekend Knut Kaspersen died as a result of a drowning accident … ostensibly, as Svein Olav put it when I was there a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Ostensibly? Ask Svein Olav yourself how ostensible it was.’

  ‘Svein Olav? Do you mean to say…?’

  ‘Keep me out of this! I might’ve been there for a very different reason from the one you assumed.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And that would be…?’

  ‘Nothing to do with you.’

  ‘I know that you and Hjalmar Hope are in cahoots. Were you then too?’

  ‘You can keep Hjalmar Hope out of this.’

  ‘Him too? But I have to talk to Svein Olav?’

  A sudden protracted sob came from Nora. ‘I know it was you, Sturle!’

  We both turned to her.

  ‘You said so the first time you met him. The fu … I can’t even repeat what you said. The fu … homo, you called him.’

  ‘Knut…?’ I started to say.

  But he was quicker, irascible, as I had seen him before. ‘But he was! You could see it from miles off. But you never realised, Nora. You’re blind to … that sort of thing. Why do you think your husband hanged himself? Eh? He was frightened someone would discover what he and his business partner were up to. They were partners in all senses.’

  She was shaking as she burst out: ‘Oliver? And Knut!’

  ‘Svein Olav stumbled across them, although he was only a boy then. He told Hjalmar.’

  ‘Told him what?’

  ‘What Uncle and your husband were up to in the boat shed once when he was there. He wasn’t very interested in you. You told me that time and time again. You had only the one child as well!’

  ‘No, that … Oh, Jesus!’ She hid her face in her hands, and her whole body shook with long, painful sobs. Neither of us made a move to console her.

  I said: ‘So that was the motive for the … accident? Sexual discrimination. A poor gay man who wasn’t allowed to live his life in the village like any other person?’

  ‘Motive? Accident? In that case, it must have been Svein Olav. He was the type to react like that.’

  ‘So what was so important about what you and Hjalmar were doing that you had to come all the way up from Spain?’

  ‘That’s none—’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got the point. You’re a computer man, I’ve heard.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked daggers at me.

  ‘Was it an urgent matter that brought you home?’

  He didn’t answer, just sent me a laconic look.

  ‘And you still meet, I see.’ I decided to take a leap into the unknown. ‘Did you and Hjalmar put this filth on my computers?’

  He grinned malevolently. ‘Yes, I heard about that, Veum. Funny business. Clever people, obviously. But perhaps that’s the way you are, as you like homos so much…?’

  ‘You know Bruno Karsten, don’t you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘And Bønni.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re forgetting I saw you in The Tower once.’

  ‘So? It was a closed club. I was there as a client. Footloose and fancy-free. Who could deny me that?’

  Nora had removed her hands from her face. Now she was following what we were saying.

  ‘Ex-policeman out having fun, at the other end of the scale?’

  ‘And why were you there?’ he retorted. ‘You were after a slice of the action too, I assume.’

  ‘What sort of place was it?’ she asked unexpectedly.

  I eyeballed Sturle Heimark and answered bluntly: ‘A whorehouse. Where your ex-partner was a client, he says.’

  ‘And you too,’ he countered in kind.

  Her face went grey. With her white hair, this made her look much older than she actually was, a shadow of the exuberant woman I remembered from the first meeting.

  ‘I think this is how we should play it, Nora,’ I said. ‘When we leave this luxury apartment you go to the police station and produce your trump card. If you can also give them the plane ticket, they have an ace. Our mutual friend here will have to get himself the best lawyer he can find.’

  Heimark sneered at me. ‘I don’t even need the best, Veum. This is just rubbish from beginning to end. You have no idea what you’re talking about.’ He turned to Nora. ‘And to you I have only one thing to say. If you follow his advice it’ll be all the worse for you. I’ll sue straightaway for defamation of character and slander, if that’s what you want. And you’ll never see me again, until we meet in court, that is. Understood?’

  She nodded, mute, but I could see that what he had said had shaken her, and I saw my visit to the police station going up in smoke. ‘Will you come with me?’ she said, looking at me.

  Heimark smirked.

  ‘No, I … not today. There’s something else I have to investigate. But outside on the street I’ll give you the name of the officer you should speak to. I can guarantee they’ll give you all the attention you need.’

  Heimark snorted, but didn’t comment.

  ‘And as for you,’ I said, turning to face him again. ‘If you ring any of your former colleagues after we’ve gone I recommend you hand yourself in. I’ll be gone from Nordnes faster than they can take the lift down to the police garage.’

  But I didn’t like the way he watched us as we left. He didn’t seem particularly concerned, and in his eyes I saw a glint of triumph, as though he had several more cards up his sleeve than the one I had advised Nora to play. Did he in fact have the best hand when all was said and done?

  Downstairs, I gave her the names of Atle Helleve and Annemette Bergesen and advised her to ask for them by name at the police station. As she walked to her car she seemed rather
confused, and I still wasn’t sure she would go ahead and do it.

  I got into my car and took the shortest route out of the district, to be on the safe side. But no road barriers had been set up this time, either. There wasn’t so much as a sniff of a police car.

  44

  It was stupid to drive all the way to Sandsli without checking beforehand. After passing Danmarksplass, I turned down Kanalveien and into a car park in front of one of the businesses. From there I called SH Data in Sandsli and asked if Hjalmar Hope was in. He was, but by the time the nice receptionist had put me through I had rung off. Then I continued my journey.

  Once again I parked outside the big company block in Sandsli, but this time I went a step further and entered through the main entrance in the longer wall facing the car park. It was a large, modern building with a lot of glass in the façade. Inside, there was a central atrium, which rose to the top. Along the shorter wall in the entrance there was a board showing all the companies who had offices there: close on twenty altogether. There was a solicitors’ and a couple of accountancy firms on the list, but most were businesses connected with either IT or North Sea oil. I noticed one of the companies: Bjørna Fjord Accountancy A/S. That, I knew, was the firm where a man called Ole Skarnes was registered as the director. Chance? Maybe, maybe not.

  A Securitas guard sat in a glass box, observing me with some suspicion. SH Data had its offices on the third floor. To access the lift I needed an electronic card, apparently, so I used the stairs instead. That meant I wouldn’t get into the firm directly when I reached the top, but I would be on the internal balcony that ran around the whole atrium on every floor as an emergency exit. I had to talk into a loudspeaker beside the thick glass door to the open-plan offices. A beautiful, well-dressed blonde in her late twenties was sitting at a desk opposite the door and she answered when I pressed the button.

  ‘I have an appointment with Hjalmar Hope,’ I lied, and she looked up quickly before pressing a door-opener and letting me in.

  SH Data must have been doing well. In the large, light rooms I counted somewhere between twenty and thirty employees, all at work in front of their respective computers – some desktops, most laptops. The colours of the interior were light-grey and white, which made for an efficient though cool effect.