The Writing on the Wall

by Gunnar Staalesen

  The characteristic smell of suede and leather grew stronger with every step I took into the shop. As I climbed the four steps to the domain of the upper classes, I noticed another less identifiable smell that reminded me ever so slightly of formalin and probably came from the furs of which there were several racks here. I located the manageress in a cross between an office and a glass showcase at the far end of this part of the shop.

  She was one of those well-turned-out women, with pale skin and a hint of red in their hair, who never seem older than their late forties. She looked as though she’d been born and grown up in a beauty salon, a creature of luxury whose true place is lounging on a sofa with a fur jacket slung casually over her shoulders, a glass of champagne in her hand, rather than spending her days in something so vulgar as a boutique. The russet leather skirt and the light-green silk blouse hinted that she probably had very exclusive tastes in underwear too. Perhaps this is why I suddenly thought of Judge Brandt … Where did he buy his stuff? I wondered.

  The look with which she sized me up put me straight into the category of middle-aged deliveryman. Her voice was crystal clear and cool as she stood up behind the narrow dark-brown desk and said: ‘How can I be of assistance?’

  ‘The name’s Veum. Varg Veum.’

  I put out my hand, and she gave me a perfunctory handshake as cool as her look and didn’t even bother to introduce herself.

  ‘It’s about this theft from the boutique …’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘Er, there was a father in here yesterday, wasn’t there? To smooth things out after a theft by his daughter?’

  ‘Oh, you must be thinking of …’ Two tiny rosettes appeared on her prominent cheekbones. ‘It was extremely unpleasant. And even harder to fathom.’

  ‘Harder to fathom?’

  ‘You’ve come here.… Who reported this? We didn’t at any rate …’

  ‘Actually, it’s about another girl from the same milieu …’

  A pensive frown appeared on her brow and remained there, almost like the symbol for infinity. She paused in front of one of the clothes racks. ‘Look at this. Considering the value of what we have on display here, we’ve installed the most sophisticated security measures.’ She took out one of the items of clothing, a short green leather jacket with extremely fine stitching at the waist. With long white fingers and nails the same reddish tint as her skirt, she showed how the garment was chained to the rack. ‘We do this so no one can just come in, snatch a garment and run off. Apart from this, every single item has a security tag that sets off an alarm if you try to leave without paying.’

  ‘And does it remain there even when garments are being tried on?’

  ‘Of course. Besides … we always size up our customers.’ Here she looked at me sharply. ‘In this trade you soon learn to be discerning about people.’

  ‘So how did Åsa manage it then? The girl I mentioned.’

  ‘Oh, one asks oneself, doesn’t one?!’ She looked at me with raised ironic eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, I am asking – you.’

  ‘It definitely wasn’t a theft.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘We spoke to the assistant who had sold her the jacket. She recognised her straight away. She’d been struck by the fact that a girl so young had so much cash on her.’

  ‘So she bought it, in other words?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘But how … what did she have to say about it?’

  ‘That’s just what’s so incredible. She denied it! She hadn’t bought it, she said, but had stolen it. And her father insisted she was right!’ Her pearl grey eyes flashed. ‘Can you imagine?’

  ‘But they went back home, with a new jacket?’

  ‘Which her father paid for, yes! In addition to the fact that they returned the other one …’

  ‘But why … couldn’t they just have paid for the one she claimed she’d taken?’

  ‘She wanted to do that. But her father wouldn’t. If she wanted a jacket, all she had to do was choose another.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Even though it was more expensive, actually – well, for us it didn’t make any difference,’ she added. ‘We were paid twice, after all.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Yes, strange, isn’t it? But in any case it can’t be a matter for the police, can it?’

  ‘No, not as such … It would have to be the finance section in that case …’

  ‘The finance section?’

  ‘Yes, to see how you’ve entered all this in the books …’

  I smiled gently as I left. If nothing else, at least I’d given her that to chew on.

  Nine

  THE PLACE that went by the name of Jimmy’s was in a side street in the city centre, close to one of the most traffic-congested parts of the Central Ring and less than five minutes from Bergen Cinemas’ main fleapit in the Concert Palace, which now smacked of neither concerts nor palaces but was distinguished by its trendy new abbreviation CP, with the numbers ‘1 to 14’ added to it.

  I vaguely remembered the place as a slightly dated snack bar from the sixties and seventies, always at least a decade too far behind the times to appeal to the youth of today. It was not until the end of the eighties, when they staked everything on the new electronic games machines, that the place looked as though it had found its true clientele: few people under ten but even fewer over thirty. Yet they’d kept the old name – it had originally been called after James Dean – through both hard times and good, so steadfastly in fact that it had long since become a landmark. Everybody knew where Jimmy’s was.

  It still more or less functioned as a sort of snack bar, even if it steered well clear of such new-fangled things as kebabs and fresh salads. What you got here was hot dogs in defrosted bread and hamburgers from the microwave, glistening with fat, and smeared in mustard, ketchup and onions, the only available accompaniments. If you had time to wait, you could always get hold of a cup of coffee there too. Mainly, people drank Coke and similar soft drinks.

  Despite the fact that it was as gloomy as a cathedral in there, I still felt like a canary at a cat show when the door slid shut behind me, and a few phosphorus-coloured teenage faces looked up at me from their seats round the garish noisy games machines. It was as though a caste mark had been daubed on my forehead, the number fifty flashing on and off, on and off so everyone could see what team I played for. The only individuals who didn’t honour me with a look were those in the middle of a game. The others soon lost interest, even though I couldn’t help noticing that some of them cast furtive glances in my direction every time I moved, unsure what organisation I might represent.

  The games machines were marshalled into four rows, two facing each of the sidewalls and two back to back in the middle of the place. Once I’d grown accustomed to the light I soon got my bearings in the rest of the room.

  Behind the counter at the far end sat a great lump of a chap in his late thirties, with bulging biceps beneath the originally white but now ketchup-spotted chef’s smock. He had a mousy little moustache, a cigarette stub at the corner of his mouth and a bad-tempered, jaded look which did not bode well for would-be troublemakers. He was reading a paper in the light from the open back door. As I came in, he threw an expectant look over the edge of the folded newspaper, his only reaction being a hint of suspicion, causing an involuntary twitch at the corner of his mouth before he could control it.

  In front of the counter were a couple of bar stools and in the corner at the far end I could just make out two unoccupied round tables. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty youths were gathered round the games machines, four of five of them girls. One of the girls was playing a machine with a friend. It was Astrid Nikolaisen.

  I jingled a few loose coins in my pocket and stood at one of the machines, looking at the trailers boasting the merits of the game, supposedly tempting me to throw myself into battle to find and release the abducted bank director’s daughter somewhere in the ghetto
of a large American city such as New York.

  The block letters of the title were lit up in garish colours like in a secondrate fifties B-movie: RANSOM!

  ‘Gonna play?’

  I looked down at the young lad who had come and stood beside me. He had long, wispy locks of smooth fair hair. ‘Yeah, maybe. Can you show me what to do?’

  ‘Got any money?’

  ‘It’s on me.’

  He edged me gently aside and pointed. His shiny blue bomber jacket had a big green and orange dragon on the back. ‘Stick the coins in there. One player or two?’

  ‘Er … one.’

  He grinned. ‘It’ll be just me, then.’

  ‘You’re going to be fighting against heavy odds.’

  ‘Bah! Know where they pop up from, don’t I?’

  And he did know. After choosing which character he wanted to be, his weapons and which qualities would be the most important (brute force, intelligence, speed), he was suddenly in a back street in the ghetto. Armed gangsters popped up all over the place, from behind the corners of buildings and dustbins, at upper floor windows and from manhole covers. The lad shot them down at a rate of knots, and the points total soared in the top right-hand corner before further hordes sprang out.

  As he stood there playing, and I pretended to look on, I kept watch out of the corner of my eye to see whether anything worth noting was happening anywhere else in the room.

  The man behind the counter was once more engrossed in the paper. A couple of new players had come in now; a few others stood fumbling with their money to see whether they had enough for another go.

  Suddenly I met Astrid Nikolaisen’s eyes, as, pulling a face, she turned away from the machine now flashing GAME OVER at her.

  It was a few seconds before she recognised me. Then she set off in my direction with a great yawn as though keen to show off her new fillings. ‘What the bleeding hell’s this? Are you tailing me or what?’

  The man behind the counter looked up and put the paper aside.

  Calmly I said: ‘Take it easy. It’s a free country, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not for the likes of you!’ She turned towards the counter. The guy who’d been sitting there was already coming out from behind it. ‘Hey, Kalle! We’ve got a snooper here!’

  An infernal din was coming from the machine beside me. I looked down at the screen. A colossal giant filled the end of the back street, where he was peppered with machine gun fire from my brave combatant, until his whole silhouette flashed before finally collapsing into a pulsating figure on the tarmac: 1000, 1000, 1000!

  The man she had called Kalle stopped in front of me. He looked even bigger now that he was standing up, and his breath stank of onions and cigarettes. ‘What’s the idea?’

  ‘Better ask the young lady, hadn’t you? I’ve come here to play the machines.’

  The lad beside me looked up. ‘He’s with me! It’s my uncle, innit!’

  Kalle glanced suspiciously from the lad to Astrid Nikolaisen.

  ‘He was at our place a few hours ago – said he was looking for Torild!’

  ‘Tor …’

  ‘Just ask Kenneth!’

  He turned to face me again. ‘That true?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

  ‘He’s my uncle!’ said the lad. Now he’d come into a massive warehouse and let loose a no-nonsense burst of machine gun fire at one of the gangster bosses.

  ‘Don’t talk bollocks, Ronny!’ snapped Astrid Nikolaisen. ‘You haven’t got no bloody uncle!’

  ‘Who says I haven’t?’ – Rattatattataaaat! – Four or five gangsters hit the deck in a hail of bullets.

  Kalle scowled at me, head slightly on one side. ‘So which is it, law or social worker?’

  ‘I’m qualified as the latter.’

  ‘So what Astrid says is straight-up, then?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true that I called at her place and asked her a few questions about a friend of hers in the same class. One of the places that came up in our conversation was this one here.’

  He looked crossly at Astrid.

  ‘Yeah? So what’s wrong with that?’

  Ronny was over the moon. The final picture on the screen showed the bank director’s daughter in a clinch with her saviour, as the message BONUS 10,000, BONUS 10,000, BONUS 10,000!!! flashed across the screen.

  Kalle pointed a podgy finger at him. ‘As for you – don’t you ever show your ugly mug in here again!’

  ‘Don’t talk to my nephew like that!’ I said.

  ‘Come again? You really mean …? I’ll say what I like – don’t give a bugger who it is!’

  ‘What are you getting your knickers in a twist for?’ I asked quietly. ‘Paid for the game, didn’t I? Got something to hide, have we?’ Hamming it up for all I was worth, I cast a searching look round the room.

  A few of the youths had gathered round us now, most of them just nosey parkers, but a couple of them looking as though they were dying for a chance to pitch in if he threw me out.

  ‘Got an eyeful now?’

  ‘It was Astrid who mentioned the name of this friend of hers. Torild. Know her, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know the name of every bugger who comes here!’

  ‘Oh no?’ I turned to Astrid. ‘Maybe you could explain who she is to him?’

  She looked at me hesitating. ‘Torild … That girl who … One of the girls I usually knock about with.’

  He coughed disgustingly. ‘Doesn’t make any odds, I’ve nothing to tell you about her. If she’s done a runner, then …’ He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Did I say she’d done a runner?’

  He looked sideways. ‘Oh? Wasn’t that why you …?’

  Astrid looked at him vacantly. Neither of them was much good at lying.

  Bonny tugged at my coat sleeve. ‘Fancy another game, uncle?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not now, Bonny. Another day.’

  ‘Is that a deal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘See you, then!’ A touch uneasily he shuffled back to the pals

  he’d come in with.

  Just then the phone rang behind the counter. Kalle looked at me and nodded towards the exit. ‘There’s the door.’

  I didn’t budge. ‘I can see that.’

  For a moment we stood there glowering at each other, and I could see his biceps tighten. Suddenly he turned to the counter. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep your hair on!’

  I followed him, and the group of youths surrounding us slowly moved aside. As he picked up the telephone he turned and flashed a smouldering look straight at me.

  ‘Jimmy’s! Yeah. No, not now. No. I’ll explain later. Yeah. OK. See you!’

  He threw the receiver back down and barked: ‘Is that it?’

  ‘A hot dog with ketchup only, thanks!’

  He planted his great big fists hard against the counter as though about to leapfrog right over it.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ I said, ‘think I’ll skip it. I’m not all that sure about …’ I ran my eyes over the counter. ‘A while since you’ve had a visit from the health inspector, is it?’

  ‘If you don’t get your arse out of that door double quick you’ll be the one getting a visit from them. Got it?’

  ‘Got it … This town ain’t big enough for the both of us. That means –’

  ‘I’ve seen the film.’

  ‘Me too. But did you see the credits?’

  ‘Credits …’

  ‘They say who wrote the script. And it sure as hell wasn’t you, Kalle!’

  With that, I turned and walked towards the door. But I threw a quick backward glance to make sure that a missile bearing the words ‘THE END’ was not winging its way towards the back of my head.

  Ten

  ONCE OUTSIDE JIMMY’S I paused for a moment to take stock.

  So far I hadn’t made much progress to speak of. I could call it a day, go down to the office and just fill in the blanks on my form with Tippex. Or I could take up a spot in the nearest
doorway and hope Fate would intervene before I rotted away.

  I looked around. A high greyish-white sky lay over the town. It was still only four-thirty and another hour before it got dark. On a corner a block and a half away the golden glow of a small café-cum-patisserie beckoned invitingly. I decided to give Fate half an hour.

  In the café I bought a mug of hot chocolate with cream and a bun with generous sprinklings of cinnamon round the edges before taking a seat at one of the tables by the window facing Jimmy’s.

  Not long after I’d sat down, Ronny came out, turned towards the door and gave two fingers to somebody or other before looking around and making off fast round the nearest corner.

  Otherwise, not much else happened apart from the build-up of traffic leaving town. The rear lights of the cars daubed red stripes along the steamed-up windowpane as they drove past, and along the pavement there were suddenly empty metered parking places.

  When my allotted half hour was up, with Fate the loser, I stacked my plates together and carried them over to the counter with a crooked little smile at the plumpish lady behind it as though we’d shared a secret moment together that Thursday afternoon. The smile I received in return suggested that was exactly what we had done; it was just that I hadn’t realised it.

  Outside the air was cold and raw, and I thrust my hands deep into my overcoat pockets. I had just decided to take a little stroll past Jimmy’s again before calling it a day when the door suddenly opened.

  Two of the girls emerged, their heads close together and slightly huddled against the biting wind, which forced its way like an unwelcome guest through the narrowest part of the street. Neither of them was Astrid Nikolaisen.

  Both of them were wearing tight-fitting jeans and anoraks a size too large. One of them had a broad red headband around her dark hair; the other a dark corduroy hat with a wide brim turned up in front. Right outside Jimmy’s they stopped under the yellowish-white glow from a swaying street lamp. The girl wearing the hat held out a scrap of paper. Open-mouthed, her friend looked into her face as though not quite able to restrain her sense of shock – or perhaps it was anticipation.