The Consorts of Death

10

The clientele of Bors Cafe varied according to the time of the day. In the morning, the majority were ageing alkies, seamen on home leave and pensioned-off harbour sweats. In the evening, you could meet anyone from petty criminals to Business School students with a penchant for field studies. At lunchtimes, when Paul and I met on this occasion, most customers were single men who valued the cooking at Bors over their own culinary skills. There had never been many women. Those that dropped in, however, became the centre of enthusiastic attention. No one took any notice of Paul and me raising our midday glasses of foaming beer.

Paul looked at me inquisitorially. ‘What’s going on, Varg? Have you started playing detective or what?’

‘No, no. It’s just this case we’ve been drawn into. We have to take care of a little boy. The mother kind of lives with Terje Hammersten, and that’s why I was interested in his background.’

‘My God. Living together? Poor woman.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s only one thing you can say about the guy. He hits like a hammer and he’s hard as stone.’

‘So I gather. When we got involved with these people three or four years ago, he was being taken in on some GBH charge.’

‘That sounds about right. He has a dangerous temper, as I said.’

‘But you were suggesting that…’

‘Yes?’

‘On the phone. Off the record, you said.’

‘Yes, it’s the kind of rumour we newspaper people have to grapple with all the time, you know. We’re never sure how much faith we can put in it. It was all to do with the great alcohol smuggling affair in Sunnfjord a year ago. I suppose it must have been early 1973. A boat was boarded by customs officials in one of the inlets between Verlandet and Atloy. Full to the gunnels with foreign goods ready for national distribution, so to speak, further down the fjord. A few days later one of the gang was found beaten to death with a baseball bat or something equally hard. Rumour has it that he was the snitch and that Hammersten was summoned from Bergen to deal with the matter. Pure Chicago, as I’m sure you appreciate.’

‘Why didn’t they do the job themselves, the people behind it?’

‘I suppose they were in prison already, most of them. A message must have been passed out via alternative channels. Pretty clear message, let’s put it like that. Blood had to be shed. But the odd thing was…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, the person who was killed…’ Paul tossed his notebook onto the table and opened it. ‘A certain Ansgar Tveiten… was his brother-in-law.’

‘Hammersten’s brother-in-law?’

‘Yep. Married to his sister, Trude.’

‘Uhuh. And what did she have to say to that?’

He grinned. ‘Nothing about that in the story. But he was never arrested for the crime.’

‘I’ll have to ask him face to face then, next time I bump into him.’

‘You do that and in the meantime I’ll order the flowers for your funeral.’

‘Does he belong to any other gangs in town, this Hammersten?’

Paul took a quick scan around. ‘You see the guys in the corner over there? Sort of semi-organised thieves. In Birger Bjelland’s network, the new Mr Big, a fence from Stavanger. The buzz is he’s building up quite an organisation, and Hammersten fits in there somewhere, I would guess.’

‘Birger Bjelland?’

‘Yes. Unknown quantity round here, but in Stavanger he’s pulled off some impressive jobs, my colleagues there tell me, using false companies and false accounts, if you understand what I mean.’

‘Not quite. But I get the gist. And where does Hammersten fit into this picture?’

‘A sort of errand boy, to put it euphemistically. Send Terje Hammersten to the creditors’ door and they beg you to be allowed to pay, the sooner the better.’

‘I hope he never comes to mine.’

‘Let’s hope so for your sake, Varg.’

We raised our glasses and finished our beer. Afterwards it was not far to Langeland’s.