Wolves at the Door

by Gunnar Staalesen

  ‘It’s a manpower problem, not least in the capital,’ Mørk said.

  ‘Manpower or priorities, if you ask me,’ Foyn said.

  ‘Did you investigate these cases properly?’ I interjected. ‘Slåtthaug’s fallen under suspicion in several similar cases in Vestland.’

  ‘Well, no one asked us to check his records,’ Mørk said.

  ‘No. Can you take that up with the management committee at the centre? The chairman is one Pål Vassbotn.’

  ‘We’d better have a look at the case. Right now we have to concentrate on what happened to Slåtthaug. You explained the link between these two other deaths during the interview at the station, but there was one detail you forgot, which Hamre told me about.’

  ‘I can imagine. Yes, initially I was suspected of committing the same offence, but the charge was dropped. Someone had planted images on my computer and in fact this was proved by the police’s own experts.’

  ‘Yes, he told me that. But it means you have a very personal commitment to this matter. So personal that I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you the routine question: where were you on Wednesday evening?’

  ‘Wednesday? I was definitely in Bergen.’ I thought back quickly. ‘Late that afternoon I visited a few people connected with one of the other deaths. If asked, they’ll confirm that. Afterwards, I was alone with a bottle of aquavit, but I don’t think planes fly to Torp from Bergen that late in the day.’

  ‘Aquavit?’ Foyn repeated sardonically and raised his glass of brandy in tacit comment.

  ‘We’ll check the passenger lists on flights between Bergen and Torp on the relevant days. This priest you were talking about…’

  I opened my palms. ‘Well, I know nothing except that the term pastor was used about someone who could’ve been involved in one of the other deaths. That’s all. But it’s also why I reacted at once when Foyn mentioned that Slåtthaug was meeting a priest on Wednesday evening.’

  ‘That’s what his colleague, Anne Kristine Kaldnes, told me anyway,’ Foyn added.

  ‘And has since confirmed,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Mørk said. ‘And when we spoke at the station earlier today, you mentioned another priest, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Magne Molstad. He’s married to the ex-wife of one of the deceased. And his sister was a victim of the second man to die. A clear revenge motive in the latter case. As for the former … well, I can’t say any more. But there’s definitely the shadow of a motive there too, although not so strong as the other one.’

  ‘We’re checking the numbers Slåtthaug called on his mobile phone during the relevant days and slightly further back. No Magne Molstad has appeared yet. But there are a few calls from an unusual number this week, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.’

  ‘Unusual in what way?’

  ‘They’re from the phone box at Bergen railway station.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, in fact there are still some telephone boxes.’

  ‘So we’ll have to get some help from our Bergen colleagues to establish whether anyone has noticed a person using the phone box several days in a row.’

  ‘It’s in the entrance, as far as I remember. The staff working at the café might’ve seen someone.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of that. And then there’s a German number, registered to a Norwegian.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Frøken Kaldnes drew our attention to it, and when we were searching back through his phone conversations it appeared regularly until about three weeks ago. Since then there’s been nothing. When we checked with the German phone company they said the account had been closed, but they gave us the name and address of a Norwegian living in Hamburg. The name’s Stein Sløvåg.’ He focused on me. ‘Does that ring any bells?’

  ‘Sløvåg’s a ferry terminal north of Bergen. Otherwise, no bells.’

  ‘We checked the address, but it turned out to be a kind of boarding house, and the person in question moved out almost precisely three weeks ago, in mid-December, and he didn’t leave any forwarding address.’

  ‘Stein Sløvåg.’ I took out my notepad and jotted down the name and the Hamburg address.

  ‘We can’t find anyone registered under that name in Norway. That suggests it’s false.’

  ‘I see. That alone is suspicious enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course. So we have a little lead to work on there. We don’t have a cause of death yet, and until it’s confirmed that this really is murder and not an accident we can’t throw all our weight behind it.’

  ‘What about the link with the other deaths?’

  ‘I asked Hamre about that, and the Bergen police haven’t defined either of them as murder.’

  ‘I know. But when you told him about Slåtthaug?’

  ‘Well, he did react, I’ll admit that, and he promised he would get out the other two case files now.’

  ‘That’s something then.’

  ‘But let me add that Karl Slåtthaug isn’t the first body we’ve fished out of Ollebukta. There are several watering holes nearby and if someone’s walking home and needs a pee it’s easy to go down to the sea and accidentally fall in. In winter, especially, this can have catastrophic consequences.’

  ‘I understand that, but it’s now the third death among a very small circle of people. That doesn’t exactly smack of chance.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ He took a swig of beer, set the glass down and tasted the brandy, then said in a knowing tone: ‘So there’s only you left, Veum, isn’t there?’

  I looked at him solemnly. ‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

  32

  There were a few more rounds of brandy before we each went our separate ways on this Friday evening. I agreed with Mørk and Foyn that we should keep in touch in case anything else of interest cropped up. I doubted Mørk would stay true to his word, but was confident Foyn would keep me posted.

  On Saturday morning I flew back to Bergen, from two degrees below zero and a clear sky in Torp to six degrees above and discreet cloud cover in Flesland. I sat on the airport bus planning what I was going to do next.

  The investigation in Tønsberg would have to take its own course. And I would have to try and pick up the threads again in Bergen. There were two questions I wanted answered: who was this anonymous priest who had appeared in both Tønsberg and Bergen? And was it possible to find out who was hiding behind the name of Stein Sløvåg?

  As for the second question, there was a vague trail leading to Hamburg. Not only did a bell ring; alarm bells clanged. The 2002 case had involved a Mr Big from Hamburg who had also been in Bergen whenever his presence was required. He was responsible for the organisation of drugs sales, prostitution and cybercrime. In addition, he had been directly involved in precisely such cases as those that had occurred in Tønsberg: children going missing from the refugee centre. I had mentioned him when I talked to Annemette Bergesen. His name was Bruno Karsten. Like most big-time operators he was skilled at covering his traces – so skilled that the Bergen police had never managed to pin anything on him. I had no idea if he was on the German police’s radar.

  Playing some role or other, Karl Slåtthaug had been tied to Karsten’s network in Bergen, although at the time I had been unable to establish precisely how. If it was possible to connect this Stein Sløvåg with Karsten it would, at any rate, explain the link between Sløvåg and Slåtthaug.

  I got off the airport bus at the market place and walked straight to my office, where I switched on the computer and took out my phone. Actually I should have gone to Hamburg myself, but I hadn’t been there since the year I went to sea, which was in the early 1960s. Besides, my paymaster – me, that was – didn’t allow such financial indulgence at the moment. There was one other possibility, however.

  I sat down at the keyboard and searched for ‘Detektivbϋros Hamburg’. I soon had a long list. Most looked like detective agencies of a size that didn’t exist in Norway. Deciding who to contact would definitely be a shot in the dark. Most seeme
d well organised and punctilious, with office hours at any time of the day or night, the possibility of making an appointment via the net, maps showing directions to their offices and information about public transport to get there. It made me feel like the chairman of a tiny Norwegian football club trying to agree a training match with Bayern Mϋnchen.

  I scrolled down the list to see if I could find something like my own business – a single investigator with a corresponding set of ambitions. The name Aktivsucher appealed to me. An actively searching detective was how I often felt. Under this term appeared one Thomas Lang. Further down the list I found what was probably a married couple, or siblings: Hanne u. Bernhard Schultz.

  I tried the active searcher first, but he was obviously out, living up to his name. At any rate, he didn’t answer the phone. When I tried Hanne u. Bernhard Schultz, my call was answered by a woman. She apologised for her poor English, the language I had chosen to communicate with her in, as my German was pretty nonexistent, and she put me through to ‘mein Mann’, Herr Schultz, whose English was excellent and who listened with interest to what I had to say. In fact, it sounded as if he thought it fun to be called up by a colleague from Norway, a country he and his wife had visited many times as tourists, he said. When he heard I was ringing from Bergen he was even more effusive, and I sent a silent message of thanks to the local tourism director and his staff for ensuring that the town was flooded with German tourists from March to October, thus preparing the ground for cordial interaction between the two nations.

  Herr Schultz noted down my questions, as well as the names of Bruno Karsten and Stein Sløvåg. We agreed he would make some enquiries in exchange for what he called ‘a nice price’ if I were willing to give them some assistance, should they need a similar service in Bergen. We shook hands on this, symbolically speaking, and he promised to ring as soon as he had anything.

  I leaned back in my chair, fairly satisfied with my progress. As for the priest, I was stuck in a rut for the time being. I could of course get hold of a list of all the priests in Bergen and district, and then work through it. But it would be lengthy and pretty impossible to sift through as priests in the Free Church parishes also used the term pastor.

  I considered all the people I had spoken to during the last week. Was there anyone else apart from the deceased Mikael Midtbø and Karl Slåtthaug who had met this priest? What about the third man, Per Haugen? Neither his bereaved wife, nor his brother-in-law, Hans Storebø, was aware of any pastor turning up in his flat. That didn’t mean there hadn’t been one. Haugen could have met this person in the street. He (or she) could have walked with him down to the sea. The same modus operandi as in Tønsberg maybe?

  Moreover, there was the idea I’d had after seeing Sølvi’s reaction when we talked about the cases. Were there any lionesses out there? Had some of the women I had spoken to taken action, out of pure rancour, as the parish priest in Biskopshavn had suggested. Had a woman I’d not met done this?

  Once again I flipped through my notes. Once again, the name Stein Sløvåg brought me to a halt. There was something about this connection with Hamburg – and, possibly, Bruno Karsten – that quickened my blood. And there was yet another link: Bjørn Hårkløv. All the evidence suggested I should pay a call on him now, with all the risks that entailed. But it was Saturday morning and he was unlikely to be in the office. I didn’t fancy visiting him at home, either.

  My line of thought was interrupted by a phone call. It wasn’t a number I had entered, but I recognised it from a few days before. I recognised the voice too: ‘I apologise for disturbing you on a Saturday, Veum. This is Hans Storebø.’

  ‘No worries. I’m just sitting here thinking.’

  ‘You see … I went with my sister to the doctor’s yesterday. I might’ve mentioned this appointment when we last spoke.’

  ‘Yes, you did. How did it go?’

  ‘The doctor was very specific. She can no longer live alone and was put on an emergency list for a place in a home. I signed on behalf of the family. From what he said, there might be a move as soon as next week.’

  ‘That’s quick.’

  ‘But…’ He coughed. ‘There was something I’d like to tell you as you’re investigating this case.’

  ‘OK. Do you want to meet?’

  ‘That’s not necessary. We can talk now if that’s alright with you.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘The doctor informed me that she showed obvious signs of dementia. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have moments of lucidity in between. When we came back from the doctor’s yesterday she had one such moment. And what she said worried me.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And that was…?’

  ‘She was talking about a woman. A young woman, she said, but in her mind young can mean anything from fifty downwards. A woman had rung them the day before Per died. “The day before!” she emphasised and looked me straight in the eye with such clarity it was like … well, how she used to be. Later the same day she’d been shopping, to buy a few things. When she came back and was about to take the lift, the door opened and the woman who emerged was so agitated that she almost knocked my sister down in her hurry. Upstairs in the flat, my sister could see from the way Per looked that something had happened. He was much more restless than usual. He kept going to the window and looking down, as though he were keeping an eye on something. A couple of times he went onto the balcony and looked down, too. That same evening, so late that night was falling, he went for a walk, which was very unusual for him. He said he needed some fresh air. She didn’t remember how long he was gone, but when he came back, he seemed to have calmed down. The following day he got up as usual and went fishing. And that was the day he didn’t return.’

  ‘She remembered all this quite clearly? But … didn’t she tell the police at the time of the accident?’

  He sighed. ‘I asked her that. But she answered: “Tell the police? Tell them what?” And I said: “About this woman.” And she just looked at me in surprise and asked: “What woman?” Suddenly she was back in the mists. As I told you, there was a moment of lucidity, and then it was gone. But … the way she told me, that clarity of hers … made me nervous, very nervous. What if it was true? Someone had a score to settle with Per. She visited him at home, perhaps met him that evening – what do I know? – and then either arranged to meet him or, equally possible, met him the following morning, down in Frøviken.’

  I nodded to myself. Sølvi had used the word ‘lioness’. A furious mother? Or perhaps a victim herself? ‘I think you should tell the police this, Storebø.’

  ‘And what do you think they’ll do? This was in October, three months ago. An unknown woman, no description, and a death they’d decided ages ago was an accident. And the only witness is a partially senile woman. That’s why I’m ringing you, Veum.’

  ‘I’m a one-man band. So I can’t set up door-to-door enquiries. I have no machinery I can swing into action. The police can. And, as you say, there’s nothing really tangible. She – your sister – she didn’t give you any form of description of this woman, except that she was – your reservations accepted – young?’

  ‘No. I think I’ve quoted her almost verbatim. But I’ve wondered about Laila’s testimony in court. That was sexual abuse. Perhaps he didn’t stop at her. Perhaps there were others – girls in the neighbourhood, girls Laila was friends with; what do I know?’

  ‘I know about one at any rate, but she’s dead. Killed herself.’ And she had no sisters; only a brother, and he was a priest.

  ‘There you are. I’ve heard that in such cases the first abuse opens the sluice gates. Later it happens again and again. Even though he was only my brother-in-law, I’m ashamed to be related to him. I’m not unaware that the condition Tora’s in now could’ve been accelerated by what she experienced at home and, as you said last time we spoke, she denied it. Denied it ever happened. The doctor suggested as much. One of the causes of dementia at such an early age, as in Tora’s case, is trauma – the
kind she must be carrying, and which she has repressed because she refuses to assimilate it, to accept it’s happened, and so she shuts out the rest of the world too.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound unlikely. In which case, we’re talking about her as another victim, even though in a way she was an accessory and prepared the ground for her own fate.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call her an accessory, Veum, more a dumb witness. That’s as far as I can go. Perhaps it was the knowledge she took from our experiences as children, in Televåg, and the German reprisals afterwards. There was no point protesting. They were a lot stronger than we were; they burned our farms, killed our men, as Inger Hagerup wrote so grippingly about in one of her poems. The confrontation with pure evil.’

  Pure evil. These were the same words Hamre had used when we discussed this earlier in the week. And it wasn’t so hard to understand. What I had been confronted with over recent years had made such a strong impression on me that I had to ask myself the question: was this what it all boiled down to? Was this what we were talking about? Pure evil?

  ‘Do you think there would be any point my visiting your sister again, Storebø?’

  ‘To tell the truth, I don’t know. Even if you were lucky enough to encounter a moment of lucidity I doubt you’d get a description of this woman out of her.’

  ‘What if I showed her some photos of various women, as the police often do in similar situations?’

  ‘Photos of whom, for example?’

  ‘Yes, that’s a point.’ I couldn’t answer his question because I didn’t know. ‘Well, thank you for calling me. I’ll give this a bit more thought. If you should find out anything else, get in touch again. But I still think you should tell the police.’

  ‘Point taken, Veum. I might have to eat humble pie, even though I don’t really like crawling to those in authority.’

  ‘Are you at your sister’s now?’