‘You weren’t entirely honest, were you?’
‘Yes, I was!’
‘A lot’s happened since then, Åsa. You mustn’t keep anything back now.’
‘Like what, for example?’
I nodded at her new brown leather jacket. ‘Your Dad knew you couldn’t afford to buy a jacket like the one you two took back. And in the shop, it turned out the jacket wasn’t stolen. I’m not surprised he comes to fetch you.’
She looked away.
‘Where did you get the money from, Åsa?’
She didn’t reply.
I moved a step closer. ‘Do you realise what you’re doing with yourself, Åsa? With your own youth?’
She turned to face me again, an insolent look on her face. ‘It’s guys like you who want a piece of it!’
‘Guys like …’
‘Yes, don’t think I haven’t seen the way you look at me!’
‘I was looking at your jacket, Åsa!’
‘Oh yeah, it’s the blinking jacket you were interested in, is it?’
‘You’d do better to listen to what I’m saying to you, Åsa! You and Torild were with Helge Hagavik at Jimmy’s the Thursday she – didn’t come home, right?’
‘And what if we were? I told you, I went home earlier!’
‘So it was Helge Hagavik, then?’
‘Yes, I …’ Almost immediately her face closed up again. ‘Oh shit!’ she said almost inaudibly.
Higher up Merkurveien the whine of a car engine driven at speed could be heard; it was somebody in too much of a hurry for all the sharp bends. Then it came into view. The white Mercedes swept down towards the school and came to a halt just behind my little Toyota. Trond Furebø pulled on the handbrake, opened the door and was standing beside us all in one movement.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Veum?’ Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Åsa. ‘I was held up five minutes. I’m sorry. I broke our agreement.’
She gave him a look so much as to say this was one thing parents were experts at: breaking agreements.
He turned back to me. ‘I asked you a question!’
‘You didn’t give me a chance to answer.’
‘He was making advances to me, Dad,’ said Åsa pertly.
I stared at her.
‘Advances?! You mean –’
Just long enough for him to land the first impulsive punch – bang – on my chin.
I fell backwards, saw stars, and as I tried to focus, momentarily saw both of them double.
I nevertheless managed to parry the next blow, well enough to adopt a defensive position, and he was no trained fighter. His temper made his voice rise several octaves. ‘Goddamn it, Veum, we parents do all we can to protect our children, leave work early, just to get up here to fetch her every day, with all the impact that has on those crucial early evening hours at work, then you come and –’
‘Surely you don’t believe her, Furebø? Think I’m an idiot or something? I haven’t made any bloody advances to her at all! I asked her a couple of questions, and if you don’t believe me, then we can all three of us go down to the police station and repeat them there!’
He was calming down now. He kept glancing at his daughter. ‘Åsa?’
She looked at him defiantly.
‘I asked whether it wasn’t true that she and Helge Hagavik were among the last people to set eyes on Torild before she disappeared. She confirmed it. Helge Hagavik’s been taken into custody as a so-called “witness” in the case. He for one knows a lot more than he’s prepared to say. Which makes me suspect that Åsa knows more too …’
He had lowered his fists now. His arms hung straight down at his sides as though they didn’t belong to him at all. ‘Åsa …’
‘I’ve said all there is to say. Me and Torild were at Jimmy’s, and we sat there talking to this guy, I don’t know who he was or what he was called, and then Torild got … then there came … But I went home.’
‘Then Torild got what?’ I asked.
‘A telephone call!’
‘From who?’
‘How should I know? She had to go, she said, to He – to that guy and then – we left.’
As calmly as I could, I said: ‘The hardest thing about lying, Åsa, is that it’s so impossible to remember what you have said and what you haven’t. You’re starting to get your wires crossed.’
‘Like hell I am! I’m telling you exactly what happened! Torild left, and I left to catch the bus home. Just ask Mum what time I got back!’
‘That’s right, Veum,’ Trond Furebø said quietly. ‘My wife confirms that she came home surprisingly early that evening.’
‘But it still doesn’t explain … I mean, I think you know perfectly well where Torild was going that evening!’
‘No, I don’t know! I don’t!’ She turned to her father. ‘Can we go home now?’
‘Yes, we …’ Trond Furebø pulled himself together. ‘Strictly speaking, this is nothing to do with you either, Veum. Get into the car, Åsa. We’re going.’
I gave a heavy sigh.
If she was telling the truth, there were only two people who could confirm it. One of them was dead. The other was Helge Hagavik, and he was in custody.
Thirty-one
VIDAR WAAGENES had his office in the premises of a firm of solicitors on the fourth floor of a building in Strandgaten. He was smaller than he appeared in the pictures I’d seen of him in the papers. A dark lock of hair kept falling down over his eyes, and he had developed a practised gesture for pushing it back again.
He was only just over thirty but, despite his youth, had made a strong impression on the bench. So it surprised me that he made such a weak impression in the flesh, friendlier and more compliant than a broker sensing a good investment opportunity
It was nearly three o’clock before he could see me, the hearing he’d been taking part in having ended ‘a little early’, as he put it, hurrying back from court. His friendly secretary, who had given me a large mug of coffee while I waited, gave him a much larger pile of legal documents, which, to judge by the look on his face, he would be snuggling up in bed with that evening.
He beckoned me into his office, dumped the pile of documents on the ebony-coloured desk, hung his grey overcoat and the burgundy woollen muffler on a coat-rack and offered me a seat in an unusually comfortable chair.
He offered me a cigarette from an elegant case, and when I declined, took one himself.
‘How can I help you, Veum?’ he asked, lighting the cigarette.
‘Helge Hagavik.’
He inhaled the smoke pensively before blowing it out just as slowly. ‘I see. In what way, then?’
‘I’d like to have a word with him.’
‘What about?’
‘About what he did after Torild Skagestøl disappeared, among other things.’
‘Nothing that has anything to do with that, at any rate – if we’re to believe the statement he made to the police.’
‘And to you?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve nothing more to tell you either, Veum, even if I could. Is that all you wanted?’
A sudden suspicion came over me. ‘Tell me, who was it that actually hired you to take this case, Waagenes?’
‘I was officially assigned. Why do you ask?’
‘Well … He hasn’t mentioned Birger Bjelland to you, has he?’
‘No.’
‘The Persen Brothers?’
‘No. He stubbornly maintains he found her purely by chance.’
‘And you believe him?’
When he did not reply, I added: ‘He knew the girl personally, Waagenes! They were seen together the day she went missing from home.’
He ran his hand over his forehead, looking tired. ‘No, it’s just that I haven’t got him to talk yet.’
‘Maybe that’s how I could help you. If only I could have a word with him.’
‘Can’t you tell me what it is you know? Then I can take it up with him.’
&nb
sp; ‘I’d rather do it face-to-face. I have a reputation for getting people to talk. He might let his guard down more if he thought I was just an ordinary member of the public …’
‘I can’t let you speak to him unless I’m also present myself, Veum. We’d never be allowed to do that.’
‘Course not! But am I to understand you’re willing to give it a try?’
‘I’ll ask Hagavik himself first. I’m going to call in to see him tomorrow morning. Can you try and ring me at about midday during the lunch break?’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Don’t thank me too soon.’
♦
I called Karin from my office.
‘Personal or business?’ she asked.
‘Both – sort of.’
‘Let’s deal with the business first, then.’
‘OK. – It’s about a guy called Harry Hopsland: about my age, maybe a bit older. I’m trying to find out whether he’s registered that he’s moved back to Bergen and where he lives, in that case. He’s lived here before, you see. And then there’s his son, Ole Hopsland, born in 1971. If you could find out his address.’
‘OK.’
‘The second thing may be a bit more complicated. It’s about a chap from the Stavanger area, Birger Bjelland, and he must be round my age as well. As far as I know he came to Bergen about twenty years ago.’
A slightly more distant note had crept into her voice when she said: ‘He was the one behind it that time they nearly – did you in, wasn’t he?’
‘Yep.’
‘What do you want to know about him?’
‘I wanted to ask you to get in touch with Stavanger if you don’t have direct access to their archives via the computer network.’
‘Yes we do, within certain limits …’
‘I just want to know if he has any close relatives down here.’
‘That all?’
‘No. Just one more thing; now we’re into the personal stuff. Are you going straight home after work?’
‘Yes. I was intending to.’
‘I’m off to see Birger Bjelland now.’
‘No!’
‘If I haven’t called you by five o’clock, can you do me a favour and call the police?’
Her answer was an ominous silence.
‘It’s not dangerous, Karin. The guy’s a highly respectable businessman, putting the best complexion on it. I just want to talk to him, maybe drop a few depth charges. But don’t worry, I’ll be over the hills and far away before they go off.’
‘Sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
But there was one thing this job had taught me. You could never be quite sure. Especially when visiting people like Birger Bjelland.
Thirty-two
THE OFFICES of Birger Bjelland & Co. were located in the old warehouses facing the sea in Sandviken, and someone, Birger Bjelland perhaps, had forked out the cash to get them tarted up. Between the smell of seaweed and tar on one side and exhaust fumes and oil on the other, stood the whitewashed warehouse like a kind of barrier between the traffic in Sjøgaten and the gulls bobbing up and down on the water in Skuteviken.
The name of the firm was painted in large black letters on the front of the building, but the green door downstairs was locked, and there was nothing but a nameless bell and an intercom to suggest someone might conceivably say ‘Come in.’
I rang the bell.
A woman’s voice answered. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m looking for Birger Bjelland.’
‘And you are?’
‘Veum. Varg Veum.’
Silence.
After a while the intercom crackled again. ‘That’s fine. Second floor.’
The lock buzzed, and I went in.
You can never get rid of the smell of dried fish. Despite the fact that the timberwork in the ceiling looked new, that all the internal walls were freshly painted and the floor covering on the stairs still had no signs of wear, the odour of the warehouse’s original purpose still hung there. In a way, Birger Bjelland had chosen the right surroundings for the official side of his business activities. This was the smell of old Bergen’s trade links as a bridgehead between north Norway and Europe, Brønnøysund and Rostock.
Two floors up, the stairs ended in a door belonging to quite a different period. Its rough surface stained a mahogany colour and the gilt nameplate bearing the words BIRGER BJELLA ND & CO. engraved in black might have been the entrance to any agent’s in the mid-sixties.
I opened the door and entered a sort of antechamber, low-ceilinged and with dim lighting everywhere, except above the diminutive desk where a strong fluorescent light pinpointed the woman I had spoken to on the intercom. She was in her early sixties and so neat and trim that she might easily have been a bookkeeper for the Salvation Army, and no one would ever have dreamt of putting a hand either on her or in the till.
The look she gave me was the sort she reserved for someone who owed money, and she nodded towards the next door. ‘You can go straight in. He’s expecting you.’
I knocked all the same and waited for a few seconds before opening the door.
Birger Bjelland’s office looked out over Byfjorden. The old warehouse was so positioned that, if he opened the window, he could cast a line and catch a bite for supper, unless he objected to the high mercury content, of course.
Now he sat behind his desk with one hand concealed beneath it like some arch villain in a James Bond film waiting to press the concealed button that opens the trapdoor and propels the unwelcome guest straight down to the alligators in the basement.
He was not alone. Over by a window, as though he’d actually just been admiring the view, stood one of the hunks Bjelland practically always had in tow. In other contexts they would have been called bodyguards. Not without a certain self-irony, Bjelland called them his ‘office managers’. At any rate, this specimen looked as though he’d opened more bottles of anabolic steroids than account books in his time.
Birger Bjelland himself looked slightly like a fish out of water. His small mouth was half-open, and his strikingly pale eyes had an expressionless glassy look. He had a neat little moustache, mousy hair with a high hairline and something I assumed was a wig on top. Even though he was quite slim, there was something rounded and streamlined about him, which betrayed the fact that he was probably more at home in the backseat of a taxi than on an exercise bike.
His refined Stavanger preacher’s voice had come back to haunt me in some of my worst nightmares since the first time I’d heard it almost six years before. I’d met him face-to-face in Travparken one day last October when we’d had a few choice exchanges. The next time I met him I’d have been happier to feel I had the upper hand.
‘Take a seat, Veum,’ said Birger Bjelland, pointing with his empty hand to the large scarlet leather chair that towered throne-like on the client’s side of the desk.
As I was sitting down, I glanced over at his office manager. ‘Am I interrupting something?’
‘No, no. Fred and I were just sitting here chatting. It’s nearly time to be going home.’
Fred … I felt my palms moisten with sweat.
The man he referred to as Fred had the same type of moustache as his boss, although his hair was shaven right down to the scalp, and his nose looked as though someone had head-butted it a few times. When I met his eyes this time, it was with a sense of mutual understanding that we both knew where we stood, but that I would never be able to produce any evidence as to who it was who’d paid me a visit in my office the time they’d filled me half full of drink when my system was already awash with Antabuse, and all I could recall afterwards was the tone of Birger Bjelland’s accent and the name of his companion: Fred.
I looked demonstratively at the clock. ‘Yes, I have an appointment too … at five o’clock.’
Birger Bjelland gave me a look of sour anticipation. ‘No need to spin it out, then, eh?’
‘No.’ I tried to lean back in the chair as though I’d o
nly dropped in for a casual chat. ‘I’ve been told,’ I began, ‘that you’re the owner of an amusement arcade in the centre of town called Jimmy’s …’
He threw up his hands. ‘That’s no secret, Veum.’
‘Do you know what goes on there, I wonder?’
He leaned slightly forward. ‘No-o. What did you have in mind?’
‘Well, both myself – and others – have noticed that young girls are recruited for certain assignments … you can guess the sort I’m talking about … at certain hotels in the vicinity. And that they’re recruited at Jimmy’s.’
‘And how is this supposed to happen?’
‘Apparently by phoning the manager – Kalle Persen,’ I added to show how well informed I was.
Birger Bjelland clenched his fingers and looked disinterestedly at his nails. ‘No comment, Veum. How my staff run the establishments I have a stake in doesn’t concern me in principle, provided they don’t make a loss.’
‘You’ve also bought the former Week End Hotel, haven’t you?’
‘No reason to deny it. In any case, it was in the papers.’
‘The same type of thing goes on there too, centred on the bar and with the hotel rooms even more readily to hand, I imagine.’
He frowned as though something had just occurred to him.
‘So you’re not bothered what sort of reputation your hotels have either, are you?’
‘Reputations can take many different forms, Veum.’
‘Precisely. Was Judge Brandt one of the clients, I wonder?’
‘I do business with so many people,’ he said neutrally, ‘but that particular name is one I can’t say I …’
‘No? You must surely have read the articles in the papers about that girl who was found dead, up on Fanafjell … Torild Skagestøl. Does the name mean anything to you?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘Well, no. Perhaps not the name itself, but as an item of revenue in your accounts?’
‘You’ll have to talk to –’
‘Your accountant perhaps?’ I glanced quickly at Fred.
‘Yes, he’s a man of many parts.’
‘I’m sure he is. Helge Hagavik was a regular at Jimmy’s. Do you remember him?’
The Writing on the Wall Page 17