‘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.’
‘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.