The Writing on the Wall

Twenty-nine

I FOUND DANKERT MUUS in his office.

He looked up when I knocked, as delighted to see me as if I’d just trampled all over his tulip beds on a Saturday off.

‘Can I have a word with you?’

‘If it’s absolutely essential.’ He looked at me suspiciously. ‘I made things perfectly clear, didn’t I, Veum?’

‘Yes, but this is about something else, actually.’

‘Which is?’

‘I see from the papers that you’re making a lot of headway.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘The chap you’re holding… You must have some good evidence, since he’s been promoted to a “suspect”?’

‘In the papers, yes! You mustn’t believe everything you read. But I have no comment to make either to you or to anybody else outside the force.’

‘He still hasn’t been charged, I understand?’

He gave me a long-suffering look ‘What was it you wanted, Veum?’

‘You don’t think it might help if I had a word with him?’

‘He’s in custody as a witness, Veum. No one is allowed near him without a very good reason.’

‘Who’s his lawyer?’

‘That daft bugger Vidar Waagenes. But I’ve laid it on the line for you, haven’t I?’

I looked at him. Despite the fact that he sounded like himself, it wasn’t the same Dankert Muus who sat there. There was something resigned and fatalistic about him as though the only thing that was keeping him going was the red ring on his wall calendar.

I leaned forward. ‘I called by yesterday. Helleve gave me the green light to carry out my investigations into prostitution.’

‘Did he now?’

‘I mean, we know that Torild Skagestøl -’

‘Veum!’ He closed his eyes at the mere mention of the name.

‘Look, Muus, just hear me out.’

He opened his eyes again and nodded. ‘All right, then!’ he said with a jaded air, sitting heavily back in his chair.

‘We know she frequented a number of places we can link with prostitution. I’ve talked to a person who recognised her as having been with Judge Branch the day he -’

He stamped both feet on the ground and sat up in his chair. ‘Veum!’

‘And one of the places she used to visit a lot was Jimmy’s amusement arcade, which the papers also mention today and which most people regard as being more or less a knocking-shop, and they’re not talking about knocking on doors, Muus, they’re talking about real business.’

I wasn’t going to let him interrupt me now. ‘A tip-off I’ve got from some of the Women’s Libbers who organised the demo in C Sundts Street yesterday evening also implicates the bar in what used to be the Week End Hotel, now the Pastel, as a similar knocking-shop, and who owns both Jimmy’s and the Pastel Hotel, Muus? Who else but Birger Bjelland, the prodigal son from Stavanger?’

He gave me a hard look. ‘That comes under another department, Veum.’

‘Even if it’s directly linked with the murder?’

‘We-ell… no, maybe not then.’

‘There’s nothing you lot want better than to finger Birger Bjelland, right?’

‘It won’t be in my time.’

‘If I were in your shoes, I’d have asked Helge Hagav -’

‘Who gave you that name, Veum?’

‘Er… a press contact,’ I lied, quick as a flash.

‘Jesus Christ! So the vultures are after their pound of flesh again, are they? What would you have asked him about in our shoes, did you say?’

‘What he’d got to do with Birger Bjelland. Who it was who got Torild Skagestøl to try drugs, and where they got the drugs from.’

‘OK, Veum. I’ll take it at face value. Would this be the motive for the murder, according to you?’

‘Either that or jealousy.’

‘Because she…’ He made a few illustrative gestures with his hands.

‘For example.’

Muus rose, went over to the calendar on the wall as though to get as close as possible to the day circled in red then turned and fixed me with that dispirited look of his. ‘But you said you’d come to see me about something completely different, Veum.’

I pushed my chair back slightly to put myself out of his reach. ‘Yes. I’ve come to report somebody.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Exactly.’ He gave a deep sigh, went back to his desk and sat down again. ‘How do you spell it?’

I reached down into my inside pocket, took out the envelope containing the threatening letter and placed it in front of him. ‘Just before the weekend I received this.’

Without saying a word, he opened the envelope and read the page with the death notice on it. Then he looked up again. ‘When’s the funeral? So I can arrange to be there, I mean.’

I gave a crooked smile from the corner of my mouth.

‘You’re surely not taking this seriously, are you?’

‘Oughtn’t I to?’

‘Veum… in the almost forty years I’ve been in the force, I couldn’t count the number of threats I’ve received, most of them were verbal, admittedly, but quite a few were written ones as well. Never, not one single time, has anyone even come close to carrying out the threat.’

‘So you mean I should just forget about it?’

‘In any case, we can’t offer you personal protection just on this basis. But of course, I can ask the patrol cars to drive down your street a bit more often, if you like. When did you say it was?’ He glanced down at the letter. ‘Tomorrow. Exactly. That means it’ll be Monday or Tuesday in other words.’

‘Er, what will?’

‘The funeral,’ said Muus sardonically. Then he changed his expression. ‘Honestly, though, Veum. Do you have any personal enemies, I mean, such bitter enemies that they might send you – something like this?’

I hesitated.

He noticed it. ‘Well?’

‘Remember The Knife?’

His eyes glinted. ‘There’ve been quite a few with that name. But I guess you mean the one you got sent down that time. What was his name again, Harry Hopsland?’

‘I think I saw him in town yesterday…’

‘He reported you once, didn’t he?’

‘So you do remember.’

‘As if we could ever forget it, Veum. That the case was thrown out, I mean.’

‘As far as I gather, he’s more or less kept to Eastern Norway since he got out, hasn’t he?’

‘You may be right. If you can give me a minute, I’ll go and get his file.’

Two minutes later he was back with a small index card in his hand, partly typewritten, but with handwritten additions in biro and pencil. ‘Now, let’s see. Yes, that’s right. He did six years. Since his release he’s mainly remained down in Vestfold, some of the time in the Oslo area. He was mixed up with the people involved in pyramid selling in the early eighties. He’s had two charges for GBH, aggravated by the use of dangerous weapons. He got six months for one of them. The other charge was thrown out because of insufficient evidence. Then he was arrested again in Sandefjord in the summer of 1989 on suspicion of pimping at one of the tourist hotels there, but that didn’t get to court either, probably for the same reason.’

‘What about… that time we nabbed him here in Bergen? It was because he was operating as a pimp and dealing in drugs at the same time. He was both the chicken and the egg, so to speak.’

‘In that case he escaped being arrested for it.’ Muus turned over the card. ‘So you think he might be back here in Bergen?’

‘Doesn’t it say anything about it on there?’

‘No, we don’t register absolutely everything, you know.’ He nodded. ‘But he has family in Bergen, I see.’

‘Does he?’

‘A son. Ole Hopsland, born in 1971. And he also has two brothers, or step-brothers they must be, actually. That fits in too. The Persen brothers.’

I nearly shot out of my seat. ‘Persen?!’

‘Yes. Know them?’

‘No, but I’ve just…’

‘They’ve been around on the fringes of the criminal underworld here for fifteen or twenty years. Kalle and Kenneth: what original names! Kalle works at…’ He paused for a moment. ‘Exactly, at Jimmy’s.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Kenneth’s never actually had a proper job, I don’t think. “Seeking employment” – isn’t that what they call it nowadays just so we won’t forget that they’re jobless, and that some of them will remain so for the rest of their lives…?’

‘Actually, I’ve met him as well, in connection with this case.’

‘Oh?’

‘At the home of one of the girls whom you’ll certainly have questioned as a witness. Astrid Nikolaisen…’

‘Yes, we may have. It’s Jensen who’s dealing with the girls.’

‘Apart from the fact that she hasn’t showed up at home since – Sunday.

He frowned. ‘Not shown up, you say?’

‘Yes, I… But it strongly looks as though she’s shacked up with Persen.’

‘My God. Well, well, well, I’d better get Jensen to check up on this.’

‘I can show her where he lives.’

‘Just give us the address, Veum.’

‘Sure?’

‘A hundred per cent.’

I gave him the address in Nedre Nygård. After noting it down, he looked up at me slightly askance. ‘What actually happened between you and The Knife that time, Veum? Something to do with a girl, wasn’t it?’