Lethal Investments

24

Before Frank received a call from his boss, he had been busy studying Sonja Hager’s list of Software Partners’ business connections. Prospects for a successful trawl did not look too promising. The problem was the range of different commercial activities. Some were shops; some were small businesses you find are obscure broom cupboards in large rental complexes; while others were standard bookshops. Some filtering was necessary.

He summoned up patience and sat down with Bryde’s classified telephone directory and Televerket’s Yellow Pages. He began to sort names of firms systematically by groups: one for buyers of computer solutions, one for potential company owners and one for both.

After two and a half hours’ slog he laced up his boots, put on his green anorak and set off to do some field work.

A bite, first cast of the rod.

The drive where he found himself was at the back of a side street off Rådhusgata. The place was a vacuum. In Rådhusgata cars and people sped to and fro without even so much as a sidelong glance at the quiet nooks and crannies, it was like being behind a breakwater. Here.

The business could not be very interested in having customers because the shop window was characterless, coated in dust, its presence only marked by a worn awning that flapped and creaked to the movement of the heavy traffic beyond. The sun had successfully removed almost all the colour from the posters. Box files, electric typewriters and unwieldy calculators behind the glass.

He went in. A bell jangled. Pure tea-shop stuff. Well, almost. The aroma of freshly baked buns was missing. No comely wench behind the counter, either. The absence of staff was conspicuous. He looked around. Alone. Not a soul to be seen. Dry air. The buzz of a photocopier and the faint drone outside were the only sounds to fill the room.

He shook the door again. Shrill jangle of the bell.

Something stirred.

Then he was there. The man was getting on in years. Erect back. Short and plump with a wig that was as black as the bristles on a paint brush. Tiny tufts of genuine hair, of the thin, grey variety, stuck out of his ears.

‘Morning!’ the man smiled in welcome with an outstretched hand.

Frank showed his ID.

The happy expression on his features was gone, but he politely offered Frølich a seat behind a room-divider where he had set up a little office overflowing with newspapers and unfinished crosswords.

The police officer passed him the photograph of Reidun Rosendal without uttering a word.

The shop-owner ran his hands across the table, lifting piles of paper until he found his glasses. They had black plastic rims and thick lenses. With these on his nose, he nodded again and again at the girl in the photograph.

‘She’s dead,’ Frank said to make him stop. ‘Murdered, and I’m investigating her death.’

The news had an impact. The man chewed the ends of his glasses. ‘Dead?’

‘Did she often come here?’

It took the man quite some time to compose himself. ‘Very often. Last week she was here,’ he began, fidgeting, disorientated. ‘No, no, no,’ he sighed. Strange look in his eyes.

The policeman leaned back in his chair and waited.

‘She handled the co-ownership.’

‘Co-ownership?’

‘I’ve become a co-owner of Software Partners.’

His face suddenly creased. A kind of reaction to the officer’s curiosity.

‘We’re interested in anything to do with Reidun during the last weeks of her life,’ Frølich explained reassuringly. ‘Absolutely everything. We don’t want to go on tapping in the dark.’

The man surveyed him over the edge of his glasses.

Frølich inclined his head with a jovial smile. Wondering at the same time how come this creep with the sixties staplers in the shop window could be a co-owner of a yuppy firm in prestigious Oslo West.

The man stopped staring over his glasses and declared: ‘I own this block where we are now.’

He paused for reflection as though the whole thing was a long story.

‘Over the last few years this shop has been a loss-maker… I’ve kept myself afloat with the rents I earn from the block. And that is how I would have continued, had it not been for the biggest tenant.’

The shop-owner named a technical journal. Frank recalled the dusty rows of empty windows on the floors above. He doubted the rental income would make this guy fat.

‘They served notice. You see, without them I would actually have gone bust.’

The eyes under the wig were doleful. ‘Everything’s tight now, the rental market’s at its zenith and there have been too many office blocks built over the last few years. It’s impossible to get new tenants, so the outlook for increasing your income is grim.’

He stared into the distance, then suddenly brightened up.

‘Had it not been for this offer from frøken Rosendal, well, I don’t know what I would have done!’

‘What offer was that?’

‘I’ve become a dealer. Of a new series of commodities. I’ve bought myself into a company… and I’m now a co-owner.’

Another partner for Software Partners! The logic was all in the name.

‘How did you become a co-owner?’

‘I bought a share of the firm and thereby an automatic right to sell their products.’

‘A kind of franchising?’

‘No, no, co-ownership.’

‘But isn’t competition fierce in the computer market?’

‘Yes, it is.’

A smile flickered around the man’s mouth. His eyes sparkled as he exclaimed:

‘But now Software Partners have launched a commodity they have sole rights to throughout Norway!’

As if the competition would be any the less for that, the policeman thought.

‘So you’ve bought shares in Software Partners?’

A shadow of doubt crossed the man’s face again.

‘Shares? I suppose I have…’

‘Haven’t you received them?’

Apologetic smile. ‘I gather there’s a technical innovation here, to avoid red tape. A-shares and B-shares or something like that.’

Not completely happy with his answer. Shifted uneasily in his chair.

‘Is it permitted to ask how much this partnership has cost you?’

Defensive furrows above the glasses.

‘I can’t see the logical connection with the case.’

Time to let a silence get under his skin, thought Frank. Met the man’s gaze and allowed a silence to pervade the room. The eyes across the table roamed.

‘Two hundred and fifty thousand!’

‘That was bold!’

His surprise was sincere. Two hundred and fifty thousand kroner was a lot of money, at least for this man.

The shop-owner didn’t like the surprised tone. ‘Calculated risk,’ he boasted. ‘You’re never too old to take a risk.’

Pause. Thoughtful examination of the ceiling. ‘But there is no risk here, either. This new software will have people banging down the doors of whoever has the rights. Software Partners have the monopoly in the country. I’ll be killing two birds with one stone, reaping the benefits from the mother company and getting the profit through the shop!’

The policeman stretched out his legs.

Knew the arguments. They were the same as in Bregård’s glossy brochure.

The guy was a pipe smoker. The pipe had once been red and shiny, made from briar root wood. Now it was stained and matt. The mouthpiece was worn, green at the tip and chipped from a firm bite. The man filled it with tobacco from a tin on the table. Rød Orlich.

‘You’re never…’ puff puff… ‘too old…’ puff … ‘to take a risk…’ puff puff.

Blue smoke wafted upwards. Nice aroma. Used match in the ashtray. Another match.

‘I had the choice…’ puff… ‘either to buy myself a life annuity which was not index-linked… or…’ puff … ‘you see, I’m thinking about my pension – ahh, tobacco is where I like to indulge myself… or invest in a risky project, use my savings to make an investment. I chose the latter. I put in everything I had!’

He is content now. Pipe between his teeth. Thumb in his waistcoat pocket. Rounded stomach straining against his waistcoat. Wig with the Hitler haircut.

‘That’s what the problem is today of course! The private sector needs venture capital. Solid companies like Software Partners have problems when they approach ordinary financial institutions.’

He had forgotten his pipe, waved it around. ‘Tell me why I should hesitate? Why shouldn’t I grab the chance while it’s there? Frøken Rosendal personally calculated a return on my investment that no one would dare dream about in today’s market.’

‘Frøken Rosendal?’

The man nodded. ‘Yes, indeed. Frøken Rosendal in person!’

Frank gasped internally. A/S Software Partners: the revue act woman in flat shoes, Bluto and the snob from the house on the hill. Reidun with a tight skirt and a background in the Post Office. Would these characters provide this gentleman the returns no one would dare dream about? Something jarred.

‘Are there enough funds for others to get in?’

Pipe back in his mouth. Business-like expression, matter of fact. ‘The company has set a ceiling for the number of partners and the minimum stake is a hundred thousand kroner.’

He pondered. Puffed on his pipe. To the policeman’s amazement, he got the pipe going immediately. Nice smell.

‘I must say I’m glad I signed up early.’

‘You really do have faith in this, don’t you.’

A light brown drip of saliva from the pipe stem dropped on to Reidun’s photograph. ‘If you had met her you would have known this business was the real McCoy.’

He had assumed the dreamy expression he had had before. ‘She was from another world.’

‘Another world?’

The detective wiped the photograph with the sleeve of his jumper. The stain would not go away and blurred the girl’s face.

‘Yes, how can I put it, not just tall and attractive, but, well, look around you!’

‘Yes?’

‘I saw it on your face the minute you stepped in here. You saw it straight away, didn’t you! A bankruptcy. Look around you! What sort of turnover do you think I can boast? Nothing. Every summer I have letters from the tax office because they can’t believe my figures! What do you think I could buy from this woman who loyally drops round with her brochures and spends valuable time here? Nothing! But she came! Again and again and again. She was a woman from another world!’

Frank knew he wasn’t going to get his questions answered.

Time to hit the road.

Luckily his pager bleeped.