When she had gone I slowly drank my coffee before heading off in the same direction.
Around Lille Lungegård Lake the flock of ducks had thinned out considerably. Only the omnivorous gulls tottered about on the half-melted ice, pecking around one of the holes near the edge in the hope of finding something to eat. The glass front of Hotel Norge reflected the winter sky in pastel tints. The music pavilion in the City Park was bereft of flower displays, and the beds were covered over with branches from fir trees, to keep the hope of spring alive. Who wanted to die or be buried in February, when life was slowly reawakening, when the new shoots were just beginning to push cautiously through the winter covering and when there would soon be some real warmth in the sun?
Not me, not anyone.
Twenty-nine
I FOUND DANKERT MUUS in his office.
He looked up when I knocked, as delighted to see me as if I’d just trampled all over his tulip beds on a Saturday off.
‘Can I have a word with you?’
‘If it’s absolutely essential.’ He looked at me suspiciously. ‘I made things perfectly clear, didn’t I, Veum?’
‘Yes, but this is about something else, actually.’
‘Which is?’
‘I see from the papers that you’re making a lot of headway.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘The chap you’re holding … You must have some good evidence, since he’s been promoted to a “suspect”?’
‘In the papers, yes! You mustn’t believe everything you read. But I have no comment to make either to you or to anybody else outside the force.’
‘He still hasn’t been charged, I understand?’
He gave me a long-suffering look ‘What was it you wanted, Veum?’
‘You don’t think it might help if I had a word with him?’
‘He’s in custody as a witness, Veum. No one is allowed near him without a very good reason.’
‘Who’s his lawyer?’
‘That daft bugger Vidar Waagenes. But I’ve laid it on the line for you, haven’t I?’
I looked at him. Despite the fact that he sounded like himself, it wasn’t the same Dankert Muus who sat there. There was something resigned and fatalistic about him as though the only thing that was keeping him going was the red ring on his wall calendar.
I leaned forward. ‘I called by yesterday. Helleve gave me the green light to carry out my investigations into prostitution.’
‘Did he now?’
‘I mean, we know that Torild Skagestøl –’
‘Veum!’ He closed his eyes at the mere mention of the name.
‘Look, Muus, just hear me out.’
He opened his eyes again and nodded. ‘All right, then!’ he said with a jaded air, sitting heavily back in his chair.
‘We know she frequented a number of places we can link with prostitution. I’ve talked to a person who recognised her as having been with Judge Branch the day he –’
He stamped both feet on the ground and sat up in his chair. ‘Veum!’
‘And one of the places she used to visit a lot was Jimmy’s amusement arcade, which the papers also mention today and which most people regard as being more or less a knocking-shop, and they’re not talking about knocking on doors, Muus, they’re talking about real business.’
I wasn’t going to let him interrupt me now. ‘A tip-off I’ve got from some of the Women’s Libbers who organised the demo in C Sundts Street yesterday evening also implicates the bar in what used to be the Week End Hotel, now the Pastel, as a similar knocking-shop, and who owns both Jimmy’s and the Pastel Hotel, Muus? Who else but Birger Bjelland, the prodigal son from Stavanger?’
He gave me a hard look. ‘That comes under another department, Veum.’
‘Even if it’s directly linked with the murder?’
‘We-ell … no, maybe not then.’
‘There’s nothing you lot want better than to finger Birger Bjelland, right?’
‘It won’t be in my time.’
‘If I were in your shoes, I’d have asked Helge Hagav –’
‘Who gave you that name, Veum?’
‘Er … a press contact,’ I lied, quick as a flash.
‘Jesus Christ! So the vultures are after their pound of flesh again, are they? What would you have asked him about in our shoes, did you say?’
‘What he’d got to do with Birger Bjelland. Who it was who got Torild Skagestøl to try drugs, and where they got the drugs from.’
‘OK, Veum. I’ll take it at face value. Would this be the motive for the murder, according to you?’
‘Either that or jealousy.’
‘Because she …’ He made a few illustrative gestures with his hands.
‘For example.’
Muus rose, went over to the calendar on the wall as though to get as close as possible to the day circled in red then turned and fixed me with that dispirited look of his. ‘But you said you’d come to see me about something completely different, Veum.’
I pushed my chair back slightly to put myself out of his reach. ‘Yes. I’ve come to report somebody.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Exactly.’ He gave a deep sigh, went back to his desk and sat down again. ‘How do you spell it?’
I reached down into my inside pocket, took out the envelope containing the threatening letter and placed it in front of him. ‘Just before the weekend I received this.’
Without saying a word, he opened the envelope and read the page with the death notice on it. Then he looked up again. ‘When’s the funeral? So I can arrange to be there, I mean.’
I gave a crooked smile from the corner of my mouth.
‘You’re surely not taking this seriously, are you?’
‘Oughtn’t I to?’
‘Veum … in the almost forty years I’ve been in the force, I couldn’t count the number of threats I’ve received, most of them were verbal, admittedly, but quite a few were written ones as well. Never, not one single time, has anyone even come close to carrying out the threat.’
‘So you mean I should just forget about it?’
‘In any case, we can’t offer you personal protection just on this basis. But of course, I can ask the patrol cars to drive down your street a bit more often, if you like. When did you say it was?’ He glanced down at the letter. ‘Tomorrow. Exactly. That means it’ll be Monday or Tuesday in other words.’
‘Er, what will?’
‘The funeral,’ said Muus sardonically. Then he changed his expression. ‘Honestly, though, Veum. Do you have any personal enemies, I mean, such bitter enemies that they might send you – something like this?’
I hesitated.
He noticed it. ‘Well?’
‘Remember The Knife?’
His eyes glinted. ‘There’ve been quite a few with that name. But I guess you mean the one you got sent down that time. What was his name again, Harry Hopsland?’
‘I think I saw him in town yesterday …’
‘He reported you once, didn’t he?’
‘So you do remember.’
‘As if we could ever forget it, Veum. That the case was thrown out, I mean.’
‘As far as I gather, he’s more or less kept to Eastern Norway since he got out, hasn’t he?’
‘You may be right. If you can give me a minute, I’ll go and get his file.’
Two minutes later he was back with a small index card in his hand, partly typewritten, but with handwritten additions in biro and pencil. ‘Now, let’s see. Yes, that’s right. He did six years. Since his release he’s mainly remained down in Vestfold, some of the time in the Oslo area. He was mixed up with the people involved in pyramid selling in the early eighties. He’s had two charges for GBH, aggravated by the use of dangerous weapons. He got six months for one of them. The other charge was thrown out because of insufficient evidence. Then he was arrested again in Sandefjord in the summer of 1989 on suspicion of pimping at one of t
he tourist hotels there, but that didn’t get to court either, probably for the same reason.’
‘What about … that time we nabbed him here in Bergen? It was because he was operating as a pimp and dealing in drugs at the same time. He was both the chicken and the egg, so to speak.’
‘In that case he escaped being arrested for it.’ Muus turned over the card. ‘So you think he might be back here in Bergen?’
‘Doesn’t it say anything about it on there?’
‘No, we don’t register absolutely everything, you know.’ He nodded. ‘But he has family in Bergen, I see.’
‘Does he?’
‘A son. Ole Hopsland, born in 1971. And he also has two brothers, or step-brothers they must be, actually. That fits in too. The Persen brothers.’
I nearly shot out of my seat. ‘Persen?!’
‘Yes. Know them?’
‘No, but I’ve just …’
‘They’ve been around on the fringes of the criminal underworld here for fifteen or twenty years. Kalle and Kenneth: what original names! Kalle works at …’ He paused for a moment. ‘Exactly, at Jimmy’s.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Kenneth’s never actually had a proper job, I don’t think. “Seeking employment” – isn’t that what they call it nowadays just so we won’t forget that they’re jobless, and that some of them will remain so for the rest of their lives …?’
‘Actually, I’ve met him as well, in connection with this case.’
‘Oh?’
‘At the home of one of the girls whom you’ll certainly have questioned as a witness. Astrid Nikolaisen …’
‘Yes, we may have. It’s Jensen who’s dealing with the girls.’
‘Apart from the fact that she hasn’t showed up at home since – Sunday.
He frowned. ‘Not shown up, you say?’
‘Yes, I … But it strongly looks as though she’s shacked up with Persen.’
‘My God. Well, well, well, I’d better get Jensen to check up on this.’
‘I can show her where he lives.’
‘Just give us the address, Veum.’
‘Sure?’
‘A hundred per cent.’
I gave him the address in Nedre Nygård. After noting it down, he looked up at me slightly askance. ‘What actually happened between you and The Knife that time, Veum? Something to do with a girl, wasn’t it?’
Thirty
I PARKED DIRECTLY OUTSIDE Nattland School. There were still ten minutes to go before the bell went for the end of the last lesson.
Yes, it had been something to do with a girl. But not the way Dankert Muus had always liked to think.
During the years I worked in Child Welfare there’d been two cases I’d been particularly taken up with. One of them was Siren, Karin Bjørge’s sister. The other was Eva-Beate.
Siren had not worried me all that much. She came from a family who took an interest in her and had a sister who sacrificed some of the best years of her youth to look after her. That everything eventually turned out as it did could not be laid at the door of the family or her sister.
But Eva-Beate had been a different matter. She was from a children’s home. Her mother, who was a drug addict, committed suicide when her daughter was no more than three years old, and I never really figured out whether she remembered anything at all about that first chaotic period in her life. Her father belonged to the army of the unknown. He was not even a name in the population register. The attempts made to place her in foster homes failed. She ran away every time. The only place she felt at all at home was in the children’s home. Everything was fine while the old housemother was still there. But when she retired new people took over. They tried their best to give Eva-Beate opportunities she hadn’t had before, tried to nudge her into school and vocational courses. But by then running away had almost become a way of life for her. She was one of those desperate kids whom nothing could hold, who shied away from the light as often as she could and sought the darkness wherever it was to be found.
To begin with, she was one of those ghostly faces that always turned up when we would check out a building due for demolition as we tried to track down other kids, the ones who were hauled in time after time when the police made a drugs raid. Then I suddenly started to get through to her, as if I reminded her of somebody or other. I invited her home to dinner. Together with a colleague, I went hiking with her in the mountains. Slowly but surely I drew her away from the drugs world and found out who her pimp was. But she didn’t want us to shop him. She couldn’t even entertain the thought of having to give evidence against him. He does you with his knife, she said. One of the girls who grassed him up was slashed to bits, here … and here … and here! She pointed first to one cheek, then the other, then to her breasts.
Then eventually I paid him a visit in person, at his usual table at the back of The Owl one day in October 1973. He asked me to come outside with him, and we walked up Olav Kyrres Street towards Nygårdshøyden. We went into the inner courtyard in front of the old mansion where the Conservatoire used to be, and suddenly he pulled his knife on me. But I was ready for him and kicked him in the thigh, twisted his arm right round his back so he had to let go of the knife. As I kicked the knife away, I gave him one of my lectures. – I can either break your arm, Knife, or I won’t. But I know all there is to know about you, and if you don’t bloody steer clear of Eva-Beate, I’ll tell the police all I know, with a copy to the Devil himself. He gasped: Why the hell don’t you do it, then? I twisted his arm a bit further without answering. – Get the fuck off me, he groaned. I’ll steer clear of the little slag!
I released my grip on him, and he fell over. I bent down and picked up his knife and put it in my pocket. Eyes flashing like a cornered rat, he said: I’d lock my bloody door at night, if I were you, Veum! I’ll come for you one of these days, and I don’t give a flying fuck if the whole Child Welfare Department’s standing guard over you and holding your hand! – Be my guest, I said, young and cocky as I was in those days.
Meanwhile, things went better than anyone could have expected with Eva-Beate. She really got back into attending school, found a foster family where she felt accepted at last, fell in love and suffered all the usual heartaches: just as life should be for a fifteen-year-old, even if she still had too many memories to have the courage to be fully at ease with her friends. I followed all these developments with great satisfaction, like a proud uncle on the fringes of her life, and several times when I was dealing with cases which seemed at least as hopeless as hers once had, I used her as an example of the fact that there were success stories.
Then all of a sudden, during the weekend of the national Mayday holiday in 1975, she disappeared. Her foster family were beside themselves with worry. I dropped everything I was doing, put on an oxygen mask and plunged deep down into the subterranean world she had frequented before. One day I passed The Knife in the street. He gave me two fingers with an unconcealed look of triumph in his eyes, but when I tried to grab him, he gave me the slip.
A week after she’d gone missing, we heard the first rumours that she was back on the leash again and was on the game. A fortnight after she’d run away from the foster home, she was found.
The trail led to a cheap hotel in the centre of town. Without realising it, I walked past one of the drug police’s cameras, went up the stairs to the second floor and barged right into the room they were in without even knocking.
Eva-Beate lay on her back in bed, thighs splayed, and her sex gaping like a bloodhound’s muzzle. Her vacant look showed she was completely out of her head, and there wasn’t much life in The Knife either as he lay there on his belly, wearing no more than a pair of tiny briefs and with one of his arms draped across her small breasts like a flabby, bloated maggot.
When I walked in he turned round with a sleepy expression on his face. As he swung his legs down onto the floor and reached for the knife that lay on the bedside table, Eva-Beate sat up confused in bed and reached out for him
as though she was having a nightmare and wasn’t sure whether she was asleep or awake yet.
First I kneed him in the face then broke his arm this time. I dragged him out of the bed and onto the floor and kicked him over and over again until I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and the two officers from the drugs section came storming in and had to get me in a half-nelson to calm me down. The Knife lay apparently lifeless on the floor in front of me, while Eva-Beate had sunk back into the same position as when I had come in, her sex like a trussed chicken between her legs.
Then we had to start again, right from the bottom. But this time with other people to help her. I never did actually get the boot from the Child Welfare Department. Yet some highly placed individuals suggested I should take some leave for as long as I liked, and I took the hint and never went back
That same autumn I opened my office on Strandkaien. Eva-Beate was not faring so well. She died of an overdose in Møhlenpris a few years later, never having really shaken the habit.
And here I sat again, almost two decades later, waiting for another girl whose circumstances were not quite so dramatic. But I was afraid that Åsa too was teetering on the edge.
The school bell rang, and it was not many seconds before the pupils began to pour out of the low building. I went to stand beside my car so she would see me.
She came out in a little group, yet there was something lonely and dejected about her. When she caught sight of me it was almost as though she was relieved to have an excuse for parting company with them. Nor did any of them show any visible reaction when she said she was off.
‘Hello, Åsa,’ I said.
She frowned. ‘Was it Dad who sent you?’
‘No. Should he have?’
‘He’s fetched me from school every day since – Torild went missing.’ She looked at the clock. ‘Suppose he must have been held up a bit then.’
‘I just wanted to ask you a question. Shall we sit in the car?’
She glanced up Merkurveien. ‘We can just stand here if you like.’
‘Last time we spoke …’
‘Yes?’
The Writing on the Wall Page 16
