Blame The Dead

Nineteen

I'd hardly got away from the phone when it went again. A voice that was soggy but sharp, like wet salt: 'Mr Card? I am Inspector (First Class) Vik. We met this afternoon.'

'Of course. Are you coming round?'

'If you please. Will you wait there? – I will be only a few minutes.'

He was less than one minute, so the bastard must have been ringing from the lobby. Maybe he'd hoped to catch me still swallowing the plans of the fort., He was wearing the same creased brown suit, and carrying an old overcoat in some loose-woven pale-green stuff with several strands sticking out and the lining hanging loose at the bottom. If you'd met that coat on the street you'd have given it five pence for a cup of coffee and kept at arm's length while doing so.

I held up the bottle of Teacher's. 'Does the superintendent let you drink on duty?'

He sniffed loudly. 'I can say it was medicine. No water, please.'

I passed him a good medicinal dose.'Skol.'

'Skol'He gulped. 'To be a superintendent in Norway you must have a degree in Law. I will never be asuperintendent. I had a war instead of a university course. Then…' He shrugged and looked at me with bleary thoughtfulness. It hadn't been self-pity: it was just a gentle, roundabout warning that he didn't believe in legal niceties.

Then he said, 'I have talked to your Scotland Yard…'

I nodded. That would be pure routine, of course; but their answer hadn't been.

He asked, 'Do you have a gun with you?'

'No.'

He emptied his glass, stood up. 'Do you object if I search? I have no… you call it a warrant.'

I shrugged and held my arms out ready.

He sat down again, satisfied. If I was ready to let him search then there wasn't anything to be found. It told me something about what the Yard had told him, but maybe even more about him.

He held up his glass and I poured him another and looked at the level in the bottle. 'I'll have to start travelling again soon.'

'Skol. But not too soon, please. Do you have a point-two-two-of-an-inch pistol?'

'I've got four – at home. Was that what shot him?'

He just nodded, then got outa handful of Kleenex and started excavations on his nose. 'Now – why did you come to see Steen?'

And so I gave him the story. About being with Fenwick when he got shot, about wanting to know why, about getting hired to find out, about Fenwick having visited Bergen before, about Steen's letter to Mrs Fenwick. All I left out was various guns, Mockby, Bertie Bear, truth-drugs, and Miss Mackwood having me tailed. Maybe it made it all a bit duller, but at least it came out shorter.

Of course, the Yard might have told him I'd been carrying a gun when Fenwick got killed, but he wouldn't expect me to admit that sort of thing anyhow.

'What did you believe Steen would tell you? '

I thought about that. 'What it was all about, I suppose.'

'You truly do not know?'

'Something to do with ships – I'd guess. Steen surveyed them and Fenwick insured them; that's the obvious connection. There could be others.'

'Such as getting murdered, perhaps?'

'That, too. By the way – Fenwick was shot with a nine-millimetre Browning, I was told. I don't know what model.'

He nodded appreciatively, shaking a small cloud of moisture from his nose. 'Thank you.' He made a note about it.

I said, 'D'you knowwhen Steen got shot, yet?'

'Doctors never know. He was alive until at least three o'clock. He telephoned to an agency that does secretary work for him. Why do you ask that?'

'A twenty-two isn't a cannon, but it isn't a typewriter, either.'

He nodded again. 'He – they – held up a cushion against the head and fired through it. The doctors found threads in the…, the wounds. I believe it makes a good silencer.'

I'd heard the same myself, though never tried it. And you can't fit a proper silencer on a gun like the Mauser, where the slide comes right to the muzzle.

I asked, 'Did you find the gun?'

'No. And he even took away the empty shells – unless it was a revolver and that I do not expect. He was most careful.'

Friend, you have no idea of just how careful he was. I wanted to ask about the condition of the bullets – could they be matched to the gun? (I doubted it: a lead bullet going through bone isn't going to show many clear rifling marks afterwards). But I'd pushed the talk of guns far enough, even for somebody with my built-in interest.

He asked, 'Have you telephoned to your friends in England yet?'

'I tried. Couldn't get through.'

'How long will you stay in Bergen now? '

'It's getting a little difficult to justify, isn't it? Anyhow, how much work are y ou going to let me do? '

He considered this and then, knowing exactly what I'd meant, asked, 'What do you mean? '

'Talk to people. Like that secretarial service. And his wife and friends. Parents.'

There is no wife. And only his father is alive. He lives near Oslo.'

'You haven't answered me. Can I ask questions without you jumping all over me?'

He swilled the last of the whisky around the glass and gulped it down in a rather formal gesture. 'Perhaps, if the family permits.' Then he stood up. 'But perhaps tomorrow, it will all become very simple. Something will appear from his papers, his private letters – and we need not worry about your strange mysteries.'

'Do you really think so?'

'I do not know. With this murder, there was a very great hatred – or none at all. That careful cushion, the picking up of the shells. I think perhaps you know of the world where one does not need hatred to kill. We will see.'

I shrugged – and shivered a bit, inside.

He picked up his overcoat, gave me one serious but damp look, and went his way.