The Writing on the Wall

Sixteen

SHOULD I CHANCE IT and call Muus straight away, at the risk of receiving a thorough bollocking as soon as I opened my mouth? Or should I do as he’d told me: mind my own business?

The problem was that I didn’t have any business at the moment, and the devil makes work… The death notice I’d received in the post lay there smouldering away in my desk drawer, a sword poised over my head, and I preferred to push it out of my mind.

I called Paul Finckel.

‘Oh my God!’ he groaned. ‘Is this the big “Be nice to Paul” day or what? Or have you got something new to tell me?’

‘No… It’s just that I’ve been up to the place where the body was found.’

‘What? So you didn’t go right down to it?’

‘No. No, I didn’t.’

‘No, because it’s supposed to be a restricted area for everybody!’

‘It was.’

‘Well, did you go up there alone or what?’

‘No, with the girl’s mother. It was she who asked me to do it.’

‘With the mother, you say? How did she take it? You do realise this could make one hell of a headline, Varg?’

‘You know me, Paul. I don’t want to appear in the paper!’

‘You are a news item, Varg! You can’t help it.’

‘I can help it if you want anything more out of me, though.’

‘OK, only out with it -’

‘She took it well, Paul. Shocked and upset, of course, but – quite normal for a mother who’s just lost her daughter. There’s nothing to say, Paul. Nothing to tell you.’

‘So why the hell did you call me, then?’

‘To ask you one more question.’

‘Well, didn’t I just know it?!’ He fumbled with the receiver. ‘Come on, don’t hold back: spit it out and tell uncle!’

‘You press people always run something on the witnesses. This jogger who found the corpse, have you got his name?’

‘His name? I don’t even know what type of trainers he uses! The police haven’t given us a scrap of information about him.’

‘But it is a man?’

‘Well, he was certainly referred to as he the first time I talked to them at the station.’

‘But you must have some sources down there, surely? No leaks?’

‘Not a drop, Varg, not one… Pretty amazing, actually, don’t you think?’

‘Right. That’s just what I thought too.’

But afterwards I felt reassured. The police had seen it too.

If nothing else, idleness led to restless pacing to and fro across my office floor.

I glanced at the Nordnes calendar on the wall. Maybe I should take a leaf out of Muus’s book: circle in red the date which Anon had chosen as the day for my final curtain: Wednesday, the following week.

Was I to conclude that today was consequently my last Friday ever and make it a Friday to beat all Fridays? Ought I to book a suite at the Solstrand Fjord Hotel and invite Karin to come along for a winter weekend she’d never forget? Or, struck by the paralysis that would overcome anyone who received such a message, should I lie down and abandon all hope…?

For several minutes I racked my brains trying to think who on earth could have thought of sending me such a message. It could be a sort of sick joke, of course, but the only person in my circle of acquaintances who had both the imagination and the lack of taste to do such a thing was the man I’d just talked to on the phone, and in that case, he’d hardly have lost the chance to make some small hint about it. In the course of almost eighteen years as a private investigator I’d obviously trodden on a good many toes but not, I hoped, so hard that anyone would want to go to such drastic lengths to pay me back. At any rate, not if they were thinking of carrying out the threat. In my situation I was afraid it wouldn’t be much use reporting it to the police either. They’d probably ask me to deal with this particular case myself.

Think about something else: that would be best.

Twice yesterday I’d caught myself thinking about Judge Brandt. And that was the murder case that Muus had expressly forbidden me from investigating. But he’d not said a word about H. C. Brandt, had he?

No death notice had appeared in the paper yet, but the rumour factory suggested that, owing to the particular circumstances, the funeral would be a very quiet affair.

A visit to the widow to express my condolences would hardly be considered tactful or good manners. Yet no one could deny me a visit to the hotel where he’d met his death.