“You blew it all, Klaus. When you pull out of here, I’m calling the police, you’ll be nailed for drunk driving. Fired, out of work. Maybe you can find a cleaning job.”
I sat the glass down carefully. I didn’t pity him, or only very little.
“It’s terminal, isn’t it? Where at? Lungs? Throat? Lymph nodes?”
“Life is terminal. Did you read the profile of me they published? Nobody will write about you, will they? You’re dead and buried. The papers haven’t been interested in you for a hundred years. I’ve even looked once in a while. Usually people show up in these ‘Where are they now’ type columns, but no. You are just a goddamn moving man driving humans around in an old diesel car. Meaningful work, eh? Challenging.”
“How long do you have left? Three months, six months?”
“I have a full calendar, Klaus. Lars von Trier calls me constantly, begging me. They call from Hollywood, goddamnit!”
“Yeah, I’m sure. But before long you won’t be able to answer the phone. You’re sick. You’re dying.” I threw the letter from the hospital in front of him, but he ignored it.
“Who calls you, eh? They call from offices and bars, say, ‘Yeah, hello, can we get a cab to Amagerbrogade, name’s Jensen.’”
I had put my glass down, but I still sat there with his Bodil. His idea was that I would use it to smash in his skull. That was his plan, however and whenever it had come to him. Invite me up, provoke me, humiliate me. Something like that. I set it on the chess table, and yes, he was still a great actor, for he didn’t bat an eye.
“I don’t know, Erik,” I drawled, because an idea had come to me. I stood up. My head buzzed a bit, too much whiskey in too short a time. But I was used to it. It would be all right. If he went for it, the revenge would be more than sweet. “Do you really want me to kill you, Erik? Just like that, without getting anything in return?”
For a long time he said nothing.
Then he cleared his throat and spoke with a surprisingly calm voice: “All right. I have a lot of cash on me. You can take some of the antiques. All the silver. Nobody saw us. You drove with the meter off. Nobody needs to know a thing. All you have to do is do it.” A crooked smile. “For once in your life just do it, Klaus.”
“Okay,” I said.
Surprised, Rützou stared at me.
After another moment of silence, I was afraid he was getting cold feet, but then, in the same composed, toneless voice as before, he said: “Do what you will, just do it quick. Goddamn quick. Understood?”
I nodded politely.
“One second.” He disappeared down the hall, rustled around in his office, and came back with a thick envelope that, excited now, he handed to me.
I looked. Nothing but large bills, lots of them. I stuck the envelope in my pocket and put the gloves on that I’d pulled out of my leather jacket.
Rützou had poured himself an extra large whiskey, and he drank so it ran down his chin and throat and stained the elegant white shirt under his tux.
“Let’s get it over with, goddamnit,” he gasped.
I started right in. Before any regrets came along. It’s not nearly as easy to strangle someone as you might think. It requires a lot of strength and grisly patience. But that I had! Rützou’s eyes started to bulge, the whites popped out, he gurgled and, I couldn’t believe it, turned an even more ghostly white than before. He put up a little resistance, but most likely that was a natural reflex. For the bastard really wanted to die. Though he wouldn’t be getting his wish, not yet.
“Shhoke harr-er, gaw-dammuh!” he babbled.
“Can you say please?”
“Puh-eeeze.”
His blue tongue hung halfway out of the preposterous, already putrefied chasm of his mouth, his eyes had shifted from white to violently bloodshot, life slowly faded from them; it was a fantastic sight, he hissed and gasped and drooled like a goddamn snake, and then I abruptly dropped my stranglehold.
“Did you really think I’d do it, you idiot?”
Rützou tumbled backward, grabbed his throat, and gasped deeply for breath. He stood and swayed in his ridiculous patent-leather shoes, completely groggy; he’d pissed his pants, I noticed, and I was already celebrating my little stunt when he suddenly threw himself upon me in a rage and bombarded my face with rock-hard punches, his anger apparently increasing his strength because I was starting to see black. Now it was me on the edge of being knocked unconscious. I had no choice but to hit back. I slugged him straight on the chin.
Rützou fell his entire length and banged his head on the sharp corner of the coffee table. It sounded ugly. My knuckles ached in my gloves. Rützou was on the floor, lifeless. I prayed that he was only unconscious, when I saw a thin trickle of blood appear. More of it came, and more, until it was a small, dark lake.
Desperate, I fell to my knees and shook him, but there was no doubt.
Rützou was dead.
The asshole had tricked me after all.
For several minutes I sat and stared into space, unable to think or act. Then I downed a shot and began removing all traces of my fingerprints: I was on file. One of the last things I did before leaving the apartment was to empty my glass and wash it carefully. It was like being in a film, or no, a grainy documentary …
Then I left.
Down the stairs, the wide, red stairs.
And there I sat. It was still pitch dark and incredibly cold. I took my gloves off and fumbled around for the pack of cigarettes, only two left. The moment the flame rose from the lighter, I saw a flash of my gaunt and battered face in the rearview mirror. It was the stupidest possible thing I could do, to sit here smoking; someone might see me. But I really needed that cigarette. The money in the envelope, I’d completely forgotten about it. What had I done with it? Yeah, the money was safe and sound in my pocket, and in a moment I would be gone, headed for the hills, nobody would connect me with his death. I stuck the key in the ignition.
But then another thought hit me, harder than Rützou’s fist. His girlfriend! They’d had a fierce fight earlier that evening. There were conspicuous signs of strangulation on his neck, anyone could see that he hadn’t just fallen down drunk. Suspicion would immediately fall on her. Maybe she had an alibi, maybe not. And if she didn’t, what would I do?
It was her or me. This would never end. Except for the one who was dead.
LAST TRAIN FROM
CENTRAL STATION
BY GUNNAR STAALESEN
Central Station
(Originally written in Norwegian)
Istedgade lay like a painted corpse as I emerged from Central Station late in the afternoon one Friday in November, the year the U.S.A. elected its first black president and the world immediately looked much brighter than it had the previous eight years.
For a long time, Europe has begun for most Norwegians in Copenhagen, and Central Station is the gateway to the rest of the continent. There you can buy an aquavit in the cafe at eight in the morning, even on Sunday, and you realize at once that you have arrived in another world.
Norway’s capital was located in Denmark for four hundred years. The despotic Danish sovereigns ruled from Copenhagen with an iron hand. At the beginning of the 1700s, a young man traveled from Norway to Denmark and became the first modern Nordic writer: Ludvig Holberg. Danes claim him for their own, Norway says he is Norwegian, but we in Bergen don’t take the debate all that seriously. We know exactly where he came from. The Danish encyclopedias also put it quite correctly: Danish writer, born in Bergen.
I had followed in Holberg’s footsteps many times myself, not in the pursuit of happiness, but usually to search for some young person who had run away from home. Copenhagen was also the most natural place for those on the run to hide out. It wasn’t so difficult to get there, but still you felt you were far away from home.
After the regular ferry route between Oslo and Copenhagen had developed into a floating orgy of alcohol and the night train from Oslo had been discontinued, most traveled
by air to Kastrup, Copenhagen’s airport. Generally I had taken the train. Now the only train ride was the one from the airport, but Central Station was still the customary place to get off. You took the escalator up from the platform to the main hall, where the big city’s noise and commotion hit you immediately. Arrivals and departures were announced over the speakers at regular intervals. Travelers of all nationalities and age groups passed by, some with backpacks, others with heavy suitcases that rolled on nifty little wheels, everyone on their way somewhere, even when waiting impatiently in groups. A railway station of this caliber is like a monument to the restlessness of the times, partings and farewells, greetings and embraces, teary smiles and sparkling laughter, noisy outbreaks of anger and murmured, intense confessions. All types of figures meet here, from the poorest beggar with outstretched hands to the richest businessman with the world’s fattest cigar clenched between his teeth like a lighthouse.
As for me, I didn’t stand out in any particular way. From the moment I walked into the hall, my gaze wandered from face to face, without much hope of finding the right one. After all, I hadn’t seen her for twenty-three years.
Heidi Davik was her name in 1985, and Heidi Davik was her name still. In the years between she had been married and divorced and changed her name back and forth. But both times it was her father who had given me the assignment.
The first thing he asked when he came to my office on that Thursday in November was if I remembered him. He was short, white-haired, and not too dissimilar from the candidate who had lost the American presidential election. But he was probably a few years younger, in his late sixties, I guessed. He was well-dressed, in a double-breasted suit.
“Faintly,” I answered.
“Thor Davik. You were in Copenhagen and found my daughter Heidi in the spring of 1985.” He opened the briefcase he’d brought with him and pulled out an old photo, yellowed and worn at the edges. “I gave you this shot back then.”
He handed me the photo, and I looked down and nodded. I recognized her. Back then she had been a sweet little girl, sixteen, with long, dark hair, a self-conscious gaze, and a nice smile. I had found her in Christiania, the free state, where she was living in the back room of what resembled a ceramics workshop, with a Dane two years older than her who had even longer hair and a short, scruffy beard, reddish-blond. There had been wailing and gnashing of teeth when I convinced her to accompany me back to Bergen, but it didn’t come to blows when she had to part with her soulmate. He looked rather miserable when I escorted Heidi out to Pusher Street and through the gateway of what had once been an abandoned military area, but which was still Scandinavia’s most popular hippie colony, though it had aged somewhat, just like the hippies.
“She doesn’t look like this now, I assume?”
“No, I just wanted to … Here!” He handed me a much more recent photo of an adult Heidi. I recognized her look and smile, but her hair was cut very short and bleached in blond streaks.
“So what’s the story?”
He gave me the short version. After returning home from Copenhagen, things had gone well for her. She studied to be a physical therapist, got a full-time job, married a colleague, and after seven years of marriage without children, she got a divorce. “Her name was Lorentzen when she was married, but she took her maiden name back after the divorce.”
“And what brings you here today?”
His gaze wavered. “It sounds almost like a bad remake of some film, but … she’s back in Copenhagen. She’s been there for fourteen days, and she doesn’t answer her phone. We don’t know where she’s staying, either. I … her mother is very worried.”
“But she’s an adult now.” I made a quick calculation. “Close to forty, if I’m not mistaken.”
“So what?” He seemed aggravated. “Your children are your children, all their lives.”
“And you won’t go down and try to find her yourself?”
“No. It’s impossible. She blames us for everything that’s gone wrong.”
“Everything that’s gone wrong? You’ve just described a more or less normal life.”
“Yes, well, except that we forced her to come home back then. She has never been able to forgive us for that.”
“The young man she was staying with down there … did she ever hear from him again?”
He scrunched his lips together. “We don’t know. But … we found this, among her papers, after she moved back in with us following her divorce. A small apartment in the basement. We can come and go …”
I realized he was trying to make excuses as best he could, and I held out my hand. He gave me a tourist postcard, conventional, with a photo of Tivoli on the front. I turned it over. There wasn’t much written: I’ll meet you here, as planned. If problems, call this number. Your Christian. Below it he had written a telephone number that began with 45, the country code for Denmark.
I looked at the more recent photo again. “Christian—and a phone number. Have you tried calling him?”
“Yes, but he said I must have the wrong number.”
“I see.”
“And we don’t have the strength for it. I want you to go to Copenhagen and see this man, Veum. We want to know what has happened to our daughter. Why she doesn’t answer us …”
I took the job, got on the Internet, and reserved a plane ticket for the next day. Meanwhile, I searched for the name and number and found what I was after: Christian Mogensen, with an address on Wesselsgade, which according to my well-worn map of Copenhagen lay right next to Sortedams Sø, one of the city’s lakes.
I thought about calling him before I left Bergen but decided that it would probably be more effective to wait until I was a short taxi ride from where he lived.
It worked. The man who answered the phone sounded flustered when I introduced myself as a private investigator from Bergen, but he admitted that he was indeed Christian Mogensen and that he had sent a card to an old girlfriend in Bergen. I said that if he didn’t provide information that would lead me to Heidi Davik, I would be at his door like some crazy Viking faster than he could say “three mackerels.”
He hesitated a few seconds, but when I added “or like a bulldog gone berserk,” he gave me an address on Lille Istedgade and said that’s where I would find her, if she was at home.
“Lille Istedgade?” I said, and he took my tone of voice in such a way that he quickly added, “Yes, but Istedgade isn’t like it used to be.”
“No?”
“Not at all.”
In many ways he was right. True, the street still had a porno shop or two, and a few of the girls strolling the sidewalk in what seemed to be a casual manner wore conspiculously short skirts for November. The long look I got from one of them told me that I could warm myself up with her if I was cold.
Nonetheless, there was a shined-up look to the street that hadn’t been there in 1985, and when I got to the address Christian Mogensen had given me, a side street to Sønder Boulevard, the building proved to be newly renovated, the stairway nice and clean, and the list of tenants in the vestibule indicated that it was an apartment building. The left-hand apartment on the fourth floor—the one Mogensen had told me to go to—was apparently unoccupied. At least there was no name on the list.
On the way up I met a couple descending the stairs. The woman was blond, with hair pulled back severely and gathered in a knot. She wore an elegant dark-blue coat and carried a small black envelope purse in her gloved hand. She stared straight ahead, not looking in my direction. Her companion did, however: a broad-shouldered man with short dark hair, in a black winter coat and dark pants. The look he sent me was angry and hostile, as if he were saying: Try taking her away from me, if you dare …
For a moment or two I considered whether the building might be something other than what it seemed, perhaps a refuge for sadomasochists or some other crazy group. Then they passed by me, leaving behind only the reek of her strong perfume. I assumed it was hers, but you can never be sure. Not nowada
ys.
No one opened when I rang at the fourth-floor door that had no tenant name. I tried several times, and the doorbell could be heard all the way out in the hall, but there was no reaction from inside. I studied the door. It was made of solid, heavy wood, and the lock seemed secure, not one you could work open with a hairpin and a credit card.
I grabbed my phone, called Mogensen again, and gave him my sob story.
“Well, she’s just out somewhere,” he said.
“Then I’ll pay you a visit instead.”
“No, no. Wait right there, Veum, I’ll come to you.”
“And how long will that take?”
“Less than a half hour. Get a cup of coffee in the meantime.”
I walked back to Istedgade, found a café on a corner, noticed the woman with the encouraging look at one of the tables but didn’t accept the invitation this time, either. I sat at the bar on a stool high enough to keep an eye on the entrance to the building I had just left, and I ordered a cup of black coffee and a Brøndums aquavit, the closest I could come to a Simers Taffel south of the Skagerrak.
After twenty-five minutes a black Mercedes pulled up and a man got out. He was tall and somewhat rangy, with red-blond hair and a beard. He looked around before crossing the street and entering the building.
I emptied my glass, nodded at the waitress, and followed him.
I stood in the hallway and listened. At first I heard nothing. Then a door slammed, followed by hurried footsteps down the stairs.
When he reached bottom he met my gaze. Now I recognized him. His hair was shorter, beard neat and well-trimmed, and he was distinctly better-dressed than the last time we’d met. But it was the same man I had found her with in Christiania twenty-three years earlier.
His voice shook when he said, “Veum?”
“That’s me. What’s going on?”
Before he could answer, his phone rang. He put it to his ear, and as he listened he gradually grew paler. “But … but you can’t …” He glanced up the stairway, as if he expected someone to come after him any second. “Yeah … all right, I’m coming. Track seven.”
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