The girl to whom I explained the purpose of my visit was in the lower part and shook her head, saying she knew nothing about it, quickly directing me to the manageress, who inhabited the upper sphere.
The characteristic smell of suede and leather grew stronger with every step I took into the shop. As I climbed the four steps to the domain of the upper classes, I noticed another less identifiable smell that reminded me ever so slightly of formalin and probably came from the furs of which there were several racks here. I located the manageress in a cross between an office and a glass showcase at the far end of this part of the shop.
She was one of those well-turned-out women, with pale skin and a hint of red in their hair, who never seem older than their late forties. She looked as though she’d been born and grown up in a beauty salon, a creature of luxury whose true place is lounging on a sofa with a fur jacket slung casually over her shoulders, a glass of champagne in her hand, rather than spending her days in something so vulgar as a boutique. The russet leather skirt and the light-green silk blouse hinted that she probably had very exclusive tastes in underwear too. Perhaps this is why I suddenly thought of Judge Brandt… Where did he buy his stuff? I wondered.
The look with which she sized me up put me straight into the category of middle-aged deliveryman. Her voice was crystal clear and cool as she stood up behind the narrow dark-brown desk and said: ‘How can I be of assistance?’
‘The name’s Veum. Varg Veum.’
I put out my hand, and she gave me a perfunctory handshake as cool as her look and didn’t even bother to introduce herself.
‘It’s about this theft from the boutique…’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘Er, there was a father in here yesterday, wasn’t there? To smooth things out after a theft by his daughter?’
‘Oh, you must be thinking of…’ Two tiny rosettes appeared on her prominent cheekbones. ‘It was extremely unpleasant. And even harder to fathom.’
‘Harder to fathom?’
‘You’ve come here… Who reported this? We didn’t at any rate…’
‘Actually, it’s about another girl from the same milieu…’
A pensive frown appeared on her brow and remained there, almost like the symbol for infinity. She paused in front of one of the clothes racks. ‘Look at this. Considering the value of what we have on display here, we’ve installed the most sophisticated security measures.’ She took out one of the items of clothing, a short green leather jacket with extremely fine stitching at the waist. With long white fingers and nails the same reddish tint as her skirt, she showed how the garment was chained to the rack. ‘We do this so no one can just come in, snatch a garment and run off. Apart from this, every single item has a security tag that sets off an alarm if you try to leave without paying.’
‘And does it remain there even when garments are being tried on?’
‘Of course. Besides… we always size up our customers.’ Here she looked at me sharply. ‘In this trade you soon learn to be discerning about people.’
‘So how did Åsa manage it then? The girl I mentioned.’
‘Oh, one asks oneself, doesn’t one?!’ She looked at me with raised ironic eyebrows.
‘Yes, I am asking – you.’
‘It definitely wasn’t a theft.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘We spoke to the assistant who had sold her the jacket. She recognised her straight away. She’d been struck by the fact that a girl so young had so much cash on her.’
‘So she bought it, in other words?’
‘She did.’
‘But how… what did she have to say about it?’
‘That’s just what’s so incredible. She denied it! She hadn’t bought it, she said, but had stolen it. And her father insisted she was right!’ Her pearl grey eyes flashed. ‘Can you imagine?’
‘But they went back home, with a new jacket?’
‘Which her father paid for, yes! In addition to the fact that they returned the other one…’
‘But why… couldn’t they just have paid for the one she claimed she’d taken?’
‘She wanted to do that. But her father wouldn’t. If she wanted a jacket, all she had to do was choose another.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Even though it was more expensive, actually – well, for us it didn’t make any difference,’ she added. ‘We were paid twice, after all.’
‘Hm.’
‘Yes, strange, isn’t it? But in any case it can’t be a matter for the police, can it?’
‘No, not as such… It would have to be the finance section in that case…’
‘The finance section?’
‘Yes, to see how you’ve entered all this in the books…’
I smiled gently as I left. If nothing else, at least I’d given her that to chew on.
Nine
THE PLACE that went by the name of Jimmy’s was in a side street in the city centre, close to one of the most traffic-congested parts of the Central Ring and less than five minutes from Bergen Cinemas’ main fleapit in the Concert Palace, which now smacked of neither concerts nor palaces but was distinguished by its trendy new abbreviation CP, with the numbers ‘1 to 14’ added to it.
I vaguely remembered the place as a slightly dated snack bar from the sixties and seventies, always at least a decade too far behind the times to appeal to the youth of today. It was not until the end of the eighties, when they staked everything on the new electronic games machines, that the place looked as though it had found its true clientele: few people under ten but even fewer over thirty. Yet they’d kept the old name – it had originally been called after James Dean – through both hard times and good, so steadfastly in fact that it had long since become a landmark. Everybody knew where Jimmy’s was.
It still more or less functioned as a sort of snack bar, even if it steered well clear of such new-fangled things as kebabs and fresh salads. What you got here was hot dogs in defrosted bread and hamburgers from the microwave, glistening with fat, and smeared in mustard, ketchup and onions, the only available accompaniments. If you had time to wait, you could always get hold of a cup of coffee there too. Mainly, people drank Coke and similar soft drinks.
Despite the fact that it was as gloomy as a cathedral in there, I still felt like a canary at a cat show when the door slid shut behind me, and a few phosphorus-coloured teenage faces looked up at me from their seats round the garish noisy games machines. It was as though a caste mark had been daubed on my forehead, the number fifty flashing on and off, on and off so everyone could see what team I played for. The only individuals who didn’t honour me with a look were those in the middle of a game. The others soon lost interest, even though I couldn’t help noticing that some of them cast furtive glances in my direction every time I moved, unsure what organisation I might represent.
The games machines were marshalled into four rows, two facing each of the sidewalls and two back to back in the middle of the place. Once I’d grown accustomed to the light I soon got my bearings in the rest of the room.
Behind the counter at the far end sat a great lump of a chap in his late thirties, with bulging biceps beneath the originally white but now ketchup-spotted chef’s smock. He had a mousy little moustache, a cigarette stub at the corner of his mouth and a bad-tempered, jaded look which did not bode well for would-be troublemakers. He was reading a paper in the light from the open back door. As I came in, he threw an expectant look over the edge of the folded newspaper, his only reaction being a hint of suspicion, causing an involuntary twitch at the corner of his mouth before he could control it.
In front of the counter were a couple of bar stools and in the corner at the far end I could just make out two unoccupied round tables. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty youths were gathered round the games machines, four of five of them girls. One of the girls was playing a machine with a friend. It was Astrid Nikolaisen.