No Echo

by Anne Holt

  “At least the most prominent,” Samir Zeta interjected.

  “… the most prominent Norwegian chef, he was a natural choice for a project such as this. And we had come quite a long way with it.”

  “How far?”

  Idun Franck was well aware what Frederik Krøger was querying. He wanted to know how much the whole thing had cost. How much money the publishing house had thrown out the window on a project that, in the best-case scenario, would have to be put on ice for some considerable time.

  “Most of the photographs are done and dusted. Also the recipes. However, there’s an appreciable amount of work to be undertaken with respect to Brede Ziegler’s life and personality. He insisted on concentrating first on the food, and then we were to follow up with anecdotes and reflections on his life connected with each individual dish. Of course, we’ve chatted a great deal, and I have … notes, a couple of tapes, and suchlike. But … the way I see it today … Can you pass me the pot?”

  She tried to pour coffee into a cup without a handle, decorated with the Teletubbies. Her hand was shaking, or perhaps the thermos coffee-pot was too heavy. Coffee spilled across the surface of the table. Someone handed her a blank sheet of paper. When she placed it over the spillage, the brown liquid seeped out along the edges and ran across the table, dripping on to her trousers.

  “As I was saying … We could of course make use of what we have for a straightforward cookery book. One among many. The pictures are good, for that matter. The recipes are fabulous. But is that what we wanted? My answer would be—”

  “No,” Samir Zeta said, feeling too warm in his sweater.

  Frederik Krøger pinched the bridge of his nose and hiccuped.

  “I’d like you to put that down on paper, Idun. When I … With figures and all that. We’ll take it from there. Okay?”

  No one waited for an answer. Chair legs scraped across the floor as they all scuttled out of the conference room. Only Idun was left sitting there, her eyes fixed on a black-and-white photograph of a cod’s head.

  “Saw you at the cinema yesterday,” she heard and looked up.

  “What?”

  Samir Zeta smiled and ran his palm over the door frame.

  “You were busy. What did you think?”

  “Think?”

  “About the movie! Shakespeare in Love!”

  Idun lifted the cup to her mouth and swallowed.

  “Oh. The film. Excellent.”

  “A bit too theatrical for my liking. Movies should be movies, in a sense. Even if the actors are wearing costumes from the sixteenth century, they don’t need to talk like that, do they?’

  Putting down her Teletubbies cup, Idun Franck rose and tried, to no avail, to wipe a dark stain from her trouser leg. Then she looked up, smiling faintly as she collected her papers and photographs, paying no heed to the spilled coffee that had stuck two large color photographs of fennel and spring onions together.

  “Actually I really liked the film,” she said. “It was … warm. Tender. Colorful.”

  “Romantic,” Samir said, grinning. “You’re an absolutely hopeless romantic, Idun.”

  “Far from it,” Idun Franck said, closing the door softly behind her. “But at my age that would be permissible anyway.”

  4

  Billy T. was fascinated. He held the glass up to the light and studied a ruby-colored spot wedged inside pink pack-ice. Russian Slush was most certainly not the best drink he had tasted. But it looked beautiful. He twisted the glass toward the chandelier on the ceiling and had to screw up his eyes.

  “Sorry—”

  Billy T. held his hand out to a waiter in blue trousers and immaculate collarless white shirt.

  “What is this, in actual fact?”

  “Russian Slush?”

  One corner of the waiter’s mouth tugged almost imperceptibly, as if he didn’t quite dare to smile.

  “Crushed ice, vodka, and cranberries, sir.”

  “Oh, I see. Thank you.”

  Billy T. drank, though strictly speaking he might be said to be on duty. He had no intention of presenting the bill to the Finance Section; it was seven o’clock on a Monday evening, December 6 to be precise, and he could not care less. He sat on his own, fingering his glass as he scanned the room.

  Entré was the city’s new, undisputed “in” place.

  Billy T. had been born and raised in Grünerløkka. In a two-room apartment in Fossveien his mother had kept him and his sister, elder by three years, in line while she worked her fingers to the bone in a laundry farther up the street and spent her nights mending clothes for extra payment. Billy T. had never met his father. It was still unclear to him whether the guy had done a runner or his mother had turned him out before their son had arrived into the world. Anyway, his father was never mentioned. All Billy T. knew about the man was that he had been six foot six in his stocking soles, a womanizer of the first order, and an out-and-out alcoholic into the bargain. Which had in all likelihood led to an extremely premature death. Somewhere far back in his memory, Billy T. had gained an impression that his mother had one day come home surprisingly early from work. He could only have been about seven years old and kept off school because of a bad cold.

  “He’s dead,” his mother had said. “You know who.”

  Her eyes forbade him from asking. He had gone to bed and had not got up again until the following day.

  There was only one picture of his father in the apartment in Fossveien, a wedding photograph of his parents that had, surprisingly enough, been allowed to remain on display. Billy T. suspected that his mother used it to prove that her children had been born in wedlock, if anyone should be impudent enough to assume any different. If a stranger were to set foot inside the front door of their overcrowded apartment, the wedding photograph was the first thing they spotted. Until the day when Billy T. had come home in his stiff uniform, having passed his exams at what was then called police college. He had sprinted all the way. Beads of sweat hung from the synthetic fibers of his clothing. His mother refused to let him go. Her skinny arms were locked around her son’s neck. His sister sat laughing in the living room as she opened a cheap bottle of sparkling wine. She had become a fully qualified nurse two years earlier. The wedding photograph had disappeared that same day.

  Billy T. had not acquired a taste for alcohol until he reached the age of thirty.

  Now he was over forty, and weeks could still pass between the occasions when he drank anything other than cola or milk.

  His mother still lived in Fossveien. His sister had moved to Asker with her husband and eventually three children, but Billy T. had remained in Løkka. He had experienced all the ups and downs of the district since the start of the sixties. He had grown up with an outside toilet, and been at home on the day when his mother, tearful and proud, had run her fingers over their newly installed WC in what had until then been a closet. He had seen the urban regeneration program break the back of one housing cooperative after another during the eighties, and had lived through trends and fashions that came and went like birds of passage in Cuba.

  Billy T.’s love for Grünerløkka was anything but trendy. He was not someone who had only recently fallen in love with Thorvald Meyers gate’s tiny, jam-packed bars and cafés. Billy T. lived outside the Løkka community that had formed in the course of the past four or five years. It made him feel old. He had never been in Sult waiting an hour at the bar for a table. At Bar Boca, where he had once ventured for a glass of cola, his eyes had stung after only a few minutes of claustrophobic posturing at the bar counter. Instead, Billy T. took his youngsters to the McDonald’s across the street. The world outside his windows had become something that did not impinge on him at all.

  Billy T.’s love for Grünerløkka was connected with the buildings. With the houses, purely and simply, the old workers’ apartment blocks. Below Grüners gate, they were built on clay soil and had unexpected cracks in the middle of their façades. As a little boy, he had thought that the hous
es had wrinkles because they were so old. He loved the streets, especially the short and narrow ones. Bergverksgata was only a few meters long and came to an end at the slope down to the Akerselva river. The current can take you away, he remembered; you mustn’t venture into the water, the current might take you away! His body turned red with eczema every summer. His mother complained and scolded and smeared liniment on his back with furious hands. The boy jumped into the polluted water just the same the very next day. Summer after summer. It was a holiday as good as any.

  Entré was located on the south-west corner of the intersection between Thorvald Meyers gate and Sofienberggata. A department store full of old-fashioned women’s clothes that never sold had resisted the forcible modernization of Løkka for years. However, big business had won out in the end.

  He was sitting on his own at a table just beside the door. The restaurant was crammed, despite it being a Monday. The makeshift sign on the door had been written with a marker pen that had scored through the paper. Billy T. could read the reversed lettering from where he was seated:

  THE RESTAURANT’S OWNER AND CHEF, BREDE ZIEGLER, HAS PASSED AWAY. IN MEMORY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK, ENTRÉ WILL REMAIN OPEN THIS EVENING.

  “Fuck!” Billy T. said, gulping down an ice cube.

  He should not be sitting here. He should be at home. At the very least, Tone-Marit should have accompanied him if he was going to eat in a restaurant for once. They hadn’t been out together since Jenny was born. That was almost nine months ago now.

  A molar was causing him extreme pain. Billy T. spat the ice cube out into his half-clenched fist and tried to drop it unnoticed on the floor.

  “Anything wrong?”

  The waiter bowed slightly as he placed a glass of Chablis on the tablecloth in front of him.

  “No. Everything’s fine. You … you’re staying open today. Don’t you think many people will feel that’s … disrespectful, in a way?”

  “The show must go on. It’s what Brede would have wanted.”

  The plate that had just landed in front of Billy T. looked like an art installation. He stared in bewilderment at the food, lifting his knife and fork, but had no idea where to begin.

  “Duck liver on a bed of forest mushrooms, with asparagus and a hint of cherry,” the waiter clarified. “Bon appetit!”

  The asparagus was arranged above the liver like an American Indian tepee.

  “Food in a prison,” Billy T. murmured. “And where the hell is the hint?”

  A solitary cherry sat in splendor at the edge of his plate. Billy T. pushed it in and sighed in relief when the asparagus tent collapsed. Hesitantly, he cut a slice of liver.

  Only now did he catch sight of the table beside the massive staircase leading up to the first floor. An enormous picture of Brede Ziegler was displayed on an immaculate white tablecloth flanked by two silver candlesticks, a black silk ribbon draped across one corner. A woman with an upswept hairdo approached the table. She picked up a pen and wrote a few words in a book. Then she held her hand to her forehead, as if about to burst into tears.

  “You’d think the guy was a royal,” Billy T. muttered. “He hadn’t done anything to deserve a bloody book of condolence!”

  Brede Ziegler had looked anything but regal when the police had found him. Someone had phoned the switchboard and slurred that they ought to check their back steps. Two trainee police officers had gone to the bother of following that exhortation. Immediately afterwards, one of them had come running, out of breath, back to the duty officer.

  “He’s dead! There is a guy there! Dead as a—”

  The trainee had stopped at the sight of Billy T., who quite by chance had popped into the duty office to collect some papers, bare-legged and wearing only a singlet and shorts.

  “Doornail,” he had finished the sentence for the young man in uniform. “Dead as a doornail. I’ve been exercising, you know. No need to stare like that.”

  That had been eighteen hours ago. Billy T. had gone straight home without waiting to find out anything further about the dead man. He had taken a shower, slept for nine hours, and arrived at work one hour late on Monday morning in the forlorn hope that the case would end up on some other chief inspector’s desk.

  “Great minds think alike.”

  Billy T. looked up, at the same time struggling to swallow an asparagus spear that could never have been anywhere near boiling water. Severin Heger pointed at the chair beside Billy T. and raised his eyebrows. Without waiting for a response, he plumped himself down and stared skeptically at the plate.

  “What’s that?”

  “Sit on the other side,” Billy T. spluttered.

  “Why’s that? I’m fine here.”

  “Bloody hell. Move yourself! It looks as if we’re—”

  “Boyfriends! You’ve never been homophobic, Billy T. Take it easy, won’t you.”

  “Move yourself!”

  Severin Heger laughed and lifted his rear end slowly off the seat. Then he hesitated for a second before sitting down again. As Billy T. brandished his fork, something stuck in his throat.

  “Just joking,” Severin Heger said and got to his feet again.

  “What are you doing here?” Billy T. asked, once his throat was clear and Severin was safely seated on the opposite side of the table.

  “The same as you, I assume. Thought it would be a good idea to get an impression of the place. Karianne has interviewed a whole load of these people today …”

  He used his thumb to point vaguely over his shoulder, as if the staff were lined up behind him.

  “… but it’s helpful to take a look at the place. Check out the ambience, in a manner of speaking. What’s that you’re eating?”

  The food had been reduced to a shapeless jumble of brown and green.

  “Duck liver. What do you think?”

  “Yuk.”

  “I don’t mean the food. The place!”

  Severin Heger rapidly surveyed the room. It was as though his many years in the Police Security Service had enabled him to look around without anyone even noticing that his gaze had shifted. He held his head absolutely still and half-closed his eyes. Only an almost invisible vibration of his eyelashes betrayed that his eyeballs were actually moving.

  “Strange place. Fancy. Hip. Trendy and almost old-fashioned sophistication at the same time. Not my cup of tea. I had to flash my police badge even to get through the door. Rumor has it there’s a waiting time of several weeks to book a table here at weekends.”

  “Honestly. This food is awful.”

  “You’re not supposed to mash it all up into a mush, either, you know.”

  Billy T. pushed his plate away and took a gulp of white wine from the huge glass with a splash of liquid at the bottom.

  “What can I say?” he murmured. “Who could be interested in killing this Brede Ziegler?”

  “Aha! Numerous candidates. Just look at the guy! He’s … Brede Ziegler was forty-seven and a social climber all his life. In the first place he had an amazing favorite hobby: picking fights with everything and everyone in the Norwegian culinary milieu. Secondly, he’s achieved great success in everything he has—”

  “Do we actually know that?”

  “… both economically and professionally. This place here …”

  Now they both had a good look around.

  The Entré restaurant represented the fashion pendulum’s swing back from the minimalist functionalism that had dominated the business in recent years. The tablecloths were voluminous, white, and swept the floor. The candlesticks were silver. The tables were placed asymmetrically in the room, some of them on small podiums ten or fifteen centimeters above the rest. From the first floor a staircase flowed down, reminiscent of something from a Fitzgerald novel. The interior architect had understood that nothing should block the massive sweep of old, ornamental timber, and had created a wide corridor of open floor space all the way to the entrance. Four crystal chandeliers of varying size were suspended from the ceiling.
Billy T. fidgeted with a rainbow-hued reflection of light shimmering on the tablecloth in front of him.

  “… was a success from day one. The food, the interior, the ambience … Have you not read the reviews?”

  “The wife,” Billy T. said wearily. “Has anyone spoken to his wife?”

  “Farris mineral water, please. Blue. No ice cubes.”

  Severin Heger nodded to a waiter.

  “She’s in Hamar. Went to her mother’s before any of us had managed to talk to her properly. The clergyman arrived, the girl cried, and an hour later she was on the train. It’s understandable to some extent that she might need some motherly comfort. She’s only twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-four,” Billy T. corrected him, polishing off the last of the wine in his glass. “Vilde Veierland Ziegler is only twenty-four years old.”

  “Which means that our friend Brede was pretty well exactly … twice as old as his wife.”

  “Almost.”

  The waiter, who had just removed the catastrophic remains of the first course, made a fresh attempt. The plate was bigger this time, but the food was equally impregnable. Islands of mashed potato were arranged into a defensive fort around a piece of Dover sole decorated with thin strips of something that had to be carrot and something indefinably green.

  “It looks like a fucking game of Pick-Up Sticks,” Billy T. said despondently. “How on earth do people eat food like this? What the hell is wrong with steak and French fries?”

  “I can eat it then,” Severin offered. “Thanks.”

  The waiter deposited a glass of Farris with a sprig of mint hanging on the rim in front of him and vanished.

  “No, you bloody won’t. That dish cost three hundred kroner! What are these green streaks in the sauce? Confectioner’s coloring?”

  “Pesto, I think. Go ahead and try it. They had only been married for six or seven months.”

  “I know. Do we know anything about his assets, inheritance, will, and so on? Does everything go to his wife?”