The date rang a bell somewhere. 27th November 2000, so the year before; wasn’t that the day I went to Åsne’s funeral? Was there a connection, which was now further reinforced by what I had seen in Ruth Olsen’s office? How old was her daughter? Eight or nine? Younger? Or older?
More and more leads were pointing to SH Data, and now there was another one. The hitherto extremely anonymous Ole Skarnes ran an accountancy firm with an office in the same building. It was, as yet, impossible to say whether this was the Ole Skarnes Maria Nystøl had called ‘the devil incarnate’.
I felt a tingle of unease as I made my way along the balcony around to the opposite side of the atrium. I wasn’t at all sure that Hjalmar Hope hadn’t alerted the police to my whereabouts. And what about the Securitas guard in the vestibule? Did the internal network the police had also include people like him?
Bjørna Fjord Accountancy had a very nondescript sign by the door, with no names of owners or employees. The door itself was solid wood, so there was no way of peeping in. But when I tried it, it opened.
I entered a much smaller room than that occupied by SH Data. As far as I could see, the total area had to be about a twentieth the size of where I had just been. Behind a desk sat a young woman leafing through a magazine while chewing energetically at whatever it was she had in her mouth. She barely looked up after I closed the door firmly and coughed several times.
‘Yes?’ she said, with no interest.
‘Is Ole Skarnes in?’
She appeared to need time to consider the question. Then she looked towards the end of the room, where there was a door in a full-height partition with one and a half metres of wall and a window section of matt-texture glass to make it difficult for people to see in.
‘Yes, I s’pose he is.’
‘Could I have a word with him?’
She pouted as if to suggest she would think about it. At length she said: ‘What was the name?’
‘Veum.’
She inclined her head, pressed an intercom button and lifted the receiver so that only she could hear what was said. ‘Someone’s asking after you: Veum, or something like that.’
She looked at me and I nodded confirmation.
From behind the glass I glimpsed a figure half rise, a dark silhouette against the window behind him. I didn’t have a decent view of him, but, judging from his pose, he was standing with the intercom phone in his hand as well.
‘Yes,’ said the obliging young lady, shifting the chewing gum to the other side of her mouth. ‘I’ll tell him. Yes.’ She put down the receiver and appraised me from under heavily mascaraed eyelids. ‘If you could give him five minutes, he’ll be able to receive you, he said.’
Again I felt my nerves tingle. Five minutes – what for? To call the police? Speak to someone he was in cahoots with: Bruno Karsten or Bjørn Hårkløv, if Maria Nystøl was to be believed? Or just finish what he was doing?
‘Been working here long?’ I said to make conversation.
‘Eh?’
‘I was just wondering if you’d been working here long.’
She took out her mobile and looked at it to see what the time was. ‘Since nine o’clock.’
‘Yes, but I meant … in general.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Are you hard of hearing? Since nine. I’m temping, if you understand what I mean.’
I could actually work that one out. ‘Right, so the permanent person’s off ill?’
‘Ill? He can’t afford any permanent staff any more. The whole company’s on the verge of bankruptcy. And that’s after being married to one of Bergen’s richest women.’
‘Really? I didn’t know that. Who is it?’
‘Sigrid Kronstad. The sister of Kåre Kronstad. Between them they inherited one of the biggest fortunes ever seen in Bergen. But she kicked him out, of course.’
‘Skarnes? Why?’
‘Well, I dunno. At work they said he had lots of affairs. But he hasn’t tried it on with me!’ She seemed a little disappointed.
Once again I made a mental note of Kåre Kronstad. Then I went on: ‘In other words, the upshot is that Skarnes is – to use your phrase – on the verge of bankruptcy.’
She nodded enthusiastically, as if to emphasise how funny she thought it was. ‘He has to pay up front to get anyone to sit here. But they take care of that in the office of course.’
‘Which office?’
‘Busy Business. Ever heard of them?’
‘No, actually I haven’t.’
‘That’s who I work for.’
‘And you’ve never been here before?’
‘Never been here and hope I never come back. He’s an…’ She mouthed the well-known Bergensian version of a swear word: ‘… asshole.’
‘I understand.’
‘I very much doubt you do.’ Now she was pointing to a couple of chairs and a shelf of magazines along the opposite wall. ‘You can sit over there.’ She turned back to her own reading material, in which she was engrossed within seconds.
I did as she said, went over to the magazines and flicked through them. None looked particularly interesting. Subject-wise there was a choice between finance and cars, but I was too restless to give either of them a chance right now. I sat on the edge of the chair, still feeling that I was trapped if he had called someone.
The next few minutes seemed like years. It was as though problems were piling up whichever way I turned. The information I had gathered was complicating the picture and I was no nearer an answer; more the opposite.
I sat flicking listlessly through a car magazine while keeping an eye on the glass pane between Ole Skarnes and me. I saw him get up and come towards the door, still a blurred silhouette against the window behind him. He stopped for an instant and peered through one of the stripes in the glass, but it still wasn’t possible to identify who he was.
Then the door opened. He stood there, met my eye and said with measured enthusiasm in his voice. ‘Veum? Come in.’
The receptionist watched me with complete indifference as I passed her. But this was the day’s second massive surprise for me. The nameless individual who had visited my office a year ago now had a name.
47
I followed Ole Skarnes into his office. He closed the door behind us, pulled a chair from the wall and placed it by the desk before taking a seat himself, a mirror image of how we had been in my office the previous year. But the situation was different at any rate. I was stone-cold sober, and at the outset he appeared to have everything under control.
He was wearing a plain, grey suit, a white shirt and a rust-red tie with a pattern of white trumpet lilies. He had a well-groomed little beard and his thin hair was cut close to his scalp on both sides. On top he was bald. He had narrow, indiscernible lips and his mouth was pinched as he observed me with his back to the daylight, like an expert interrogator ready to spring into action.
In fact it was him who set the ball rolling. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here, Veum?’
‘You remember me?’
‘Of course. But I never heard anything from you, so…’ His shoulders twitched. ‘Have you come to pay me back my money perhaps?’
‘What money?’
He raised his voice. ‘The advance I gave you and which you never invoiced me for.’
‘I didn’t make a note of your name.’
‘I gave you my card, but you didn’t seem to be up to par, to put it mildly, so if you’ve spent it I won’t exactly be surprised. However, that makes it all the stranger that you’re here.’
‘Your name came up, in a particular context.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Did you manage to sort out your problems then?’
He held the mask, but I sensed movement behind it. He took a deep breath before answering on the exhalation: ‘What problems?’
I leaned forwards a tad. ‘You’re right that I wasn’t up to par, as you put it, at that time. But let me sum up: Someone had taken compromising pictures of you, whic
h they threatened to make public in various ways if you didn’t pay them an … insurance fee, perhaps we can call it?’
He looked at me from his wax mask, without answering.
‘You were supposed to pay in cash, I seem to remember.’ I raised my voice to underline an important point. ‘And if you didn’t do what they said, they threatened to send the photos to your wife and release compromising material online.’
He still didn’t say anything.
‘And it sounds as if they succeeded with their intentions.’
‘Sounds?’
I tossed my head backwards. ‘The girl out there told me you were on the verge of bankruptcy. You can barely pay for a part-time receptionist and you have to pay in advance for their services.’
His face slowly reddened. The look he sent to the glass partition behind me didn’t bode well for a happy outcome of Miss Chewing Gum’s temping. He bit his lower lip. ‘Right. Things have gone downhill a touch since you and I last met. It was in fact to prevent this I visited you at the time.’
‘You asked me to find out who was behind it all. I’ve done that now even if it’s taken me a year. Are you still interested in the result of my investigations?’
‘You were supposed to find out who they were and you were supposed to gather proof for me. Are you telling me you have both now: names and proof?’
‘At least I know who they are.’
‘But…’ He stroked his beard pensively. ‘First off I’d like to know … You said my name had come up in a particular context.’
‘Yes. Are you interested in hearing which?’
‘To a degree, yes.’
‘You’re known to be a man with particular sexual predilections.’
Again his face darkened. ‘Known for … what do you mean? And which predilections, if I might ask?’
‘If you visit prostitutes you soon have a name, Skarnes. You soon have a reputation. Especially if you’re someone they have to be wary of.’
His jaw muscles had started grinding now. It was as though I could see his teeth gnashing and he was taking slow, controlled inhalations through his nostrils now. ‘Reputation?’ he forced out.
‘And you didn’t pay, either. It was a bonus, you said. And so there is a choice of conclusions: Either you had a bonus agreement with Karsten and the others, or that was the reason they went after you.’
He eyed me from the other side of the desk as though he no longer knew where I was going.
‘At any rate it was Karsten and Bønni you engaged me to find, and I repeat: Are you still interested in the result?’
He stared blankly at me as though it was no longer of any significance.
‘Yes? No?’
‘Let’s hear what you have to say, Veum.’
I studied him. He was a cold fish, and I didn’t know for certain where I was with him. As a matter of form, I took out my notepad and leafed through it. ‘Karsten is Bruno Karsten: German businessman with interests in Norway, so to speak. Dubious dealings of various kinds. Bønni is the nickname of Bjørn Hårkløv: He does Karsten’s dirty work. They used to run a place called The Tower. That was probably the club I think you told me about, where they’d taken photos of you through two-way mirrors. The same photos they used to blackmail you with later. Am I right?’
He sighed and made a vague movement with his head. He seemed almost weary of it all when he said: ‘So? What do you want from me, Veum? The fee for finally doing your job, one year late?’
‘Can you afford it?’
He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then found the right words. ‘I doubt your fee is that high.’
‘Don’t count on it. I remember something you said, Skarnes, as you were leaving that time. If you found out who these people were, they’d pay dearly. They’d realise who they’d tangled with. But you knew who they were if you got prostitutes as a bonus from them.’
Suddenly he raised his voice as if I’d pressed a hidden button. ‘There’s no-one I despise more than them!’
‘Who?’
‘The whores! Selling themselves for next to nothing. Debasing themselves for a pittance. Doing whatever they’re asked.’ A wolfish smile crossed his lips. ‘There’s nothing I like better than forcing them to do whatever I want and then afterwards – when they want payment – giving them nothing! Just leaving them there like the tarted-up clowns they are.’
I could feel the pressure building up inside me. ‘OK, so when you called it a bonus it was just a bluff, in other words?’ He didn’t answer and I carried on. ‘But you didn’t answer my question. You knew who they were, both Karsten and Bønni?’
‘I knew their names, yes. But that wasn’t what interested me most. I wanted proof, I told you. Proof I could use to stop them doing what they did anyway.’ He glowered at me ferociously. ‘And it was your fault, Veum! You didn’t do the job I asked you to do and instead…’ His voice barely carried now. ‘Instead they sent the damned photos to … Sigrid, my wife.’
‘And the result was…?’
He looked around, pointed to the reception. ‘You can see. These are the pitiful remains of my little empire.’
‘Based on your spouse’s fortune.’
‘Yes, indeed. Could I help it if my wife had a fortune and was willing to invest in what I was doing? She was no businesswoman herself. She’d inherited the money.’
‘Kåre Kronstad’s sister.’
He was taken aback. ‘Yes? So what? One of the town’s most prominent families and then … Can you imagine how it feels to be shown the door by people like that?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘No, you can’t, Veum! No-one else can, apart from the person who’s been through the experience.’
We sat looking at each other. I still didn’t know where I was with him. There was a cold impenetrability about him, and I had an unpleasant feeling he was holding something back; something he didn’t want to talk about.
‘But you made peace with Karsten and Bønni in the end?’
He gulped. ‘We came to an arrangement, yes. When there was no more cash…’
‘You still paid for their services – or was it really a bonus? If so, for what?’
‘Don’t even bloody think about it, Veum!’
‘I’ll think about what I like.’
He leaned forward. ‘In which case, I warn you. Those guys aren’t exactly nice. Tread on their toes and they’ll bite.’
‘Noted,’ I said, trying to appear bolder than I felt. Then I changed my approach. ‘This building. Lots of companies under one roof. Do you know any of the other people working here?’
‘Know them? Not many. Why do you ask?’
‘Hjalmar Hope, for example?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, Veum. Quite sure.’
‘And Åsne Clausen?’
‘…She’s dead.’
‘Exactly. And you knew her of course?’
‘Yes, she was Sigrid’s niece, as you know. Besides, I did her husband’s accounts.’
‘Right! And things are going as badly for him as they are for you at the moment, aren’t they.’
‘Clausen’s withdrawn. It’s his father-in-law running the business now.’
‘Kåre Kronstad. Your ex-father-in-law.’
‘Indeed. And so what?’
‘You still do his accounts?’
‘For Clausen? No. They’ve replaced me.’
‘I understand. Did you ever meet the son – Severin?’
‘Only briefly. At the odd family gathering.’
‘What about Ruth Olsen, a colleague of Åsne Clausen’s?’
‘I never had any contact with Åsne outside the family. I did the accounts for her husband, Veum. That was all.’
‘Perhaps we should talk a bit about your wife again. Are you divorced or still only separated?’
‘Is that any of your concern?’
‘There was no mercy shown when she received the photos in the post?’
/>
‘Mercy? In the Kronstad family? They don’t give you anything for free. I can tell you that for nothing.’
‘So you’re left high and dry, in other words?’
He glared at me. ‘I’ve lost most of my clientele. The house was hers. The car belonged to her. The mountain cabin in Geilo. All I was left with was the summer house, because that came from our family.’
‘The summer house? That’s on Lepsøy, isn’t it?’
He half confirmed this with a movement of his head.
‘So that’s why you moved there?’
He sighed. ‘I co-own it with my sister. Was there anything else, Veum?’
‘To all intents and purposes you’re a free man. You can visit whomever you like?’
‘Now you’ve lost me.’
‘But … you don’t fear anyone any more. You don’t owe Karsten and Bønni anything. You don’t need me.’ I went for the jugular. ‘You won’t pay for sex. So, I suppose you prefer those who make no demands?’
His smile was cold. ‘Who don’t make any demands? Yes, naturally, that’s the best.’
‘Because they’re young, I mean, and now I’m talking about children, Skarnes! Someone I spoke to called you a devil. Perhaps she saw the real you more clearly than anyone else?’
‘Maybe, Veum. Have you any proof for these allegations?’
‘Not yet. But I might have soon … and then I’ll be back.’
‘You do that.’
‘And I won’t be alone.’
‘Who will you have with you? Bønni perhaps?’
‘The police,’ I said with a stern glare.
But I wasn’t able to break him down that way, either. He was past the stage where he allowed his feelings to run away with him. Although a second or two later his eyes roamed, as though I had caught him in flagrante, or at least mentally.
We didn’t get a lot further. I stood up. He stayed seated behind the desk without moving. He didn’t say he would like to see me again, but I didn’t promise he wouldn’t.
In reception I smiled wryly at the young woman. ‘Have a nice day,’ I said without giving her the slightest inkling of what was awaiting her when Ole Skarnes called her into his office, not long from now. Afterwards it struck me that I ought to have warned her. If she wasn’t careful he might reveal the devil in him.
Wolves in the Dark Page 23