‘Yes, I have. But my days are long enough as they are.’
‘Here, let’s see… She was found yesterday evening. At about ten o’clock. It was a jogger who, er, had to answer a call of nature and scrambled down from the road up there. God knows whether he’ll ever go jogging again.’
‘Joggers don’t give up the ghost that easily.’
‘In any case, he came across something lying there, under some bushes, went to take a closer look and, well, you know the rest.’
‘No more than what’s in the papers.’
‘And there isn’t much more than that to tell either. Her clothes were in a mess, but the police are still unable to say whether she’d been raped or was the victim of some other kind of sexual assault, as the expression goes.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Nothing so far. Do you know anything else?’
‘Not yet. But I’ve been on the trail of a girl for a couple of days and still not found her…’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Er… But if it’s not her…’
‘A hundred per cent on the QT, Varg.’ His voice took on a harder note. ‘One good turn deserves another. Next time you ring, you might find I’m busy.’
‘Strictly between us, then, Paul. Her name’s Torild Skagestøl.’
I trotted out with her surname quickly and casually, but he immediately seized the connection. ‘A relative of Holger?’
‘His daughter.’
‘Exactly.’ I heard him making a note of it. ‘Anything else?’
‘Not yet. But if I receive confirmation that it is her, I may come back to you with more information.’
‘Can’t we deal with it now?’
‘Have to check it myself first, Paul. To be quite frank, I’ve hardly found out anything.’
‘Starting to feel your age, are you, Varg?’
‘No more than you, I hope. Anyway, thanks a lot.’
‘Same here, old wolf.’
I hung up and shifted a few piles of paper about again. One page floated down to the floor. As I bent down to pick it up, the phone rang.
I grabbed the page, placed it in front of me, lifted the receiver and answered: ‘Hello?’
‘It’s Muus. I heard you’d rung.’
‘Yes, I… Has she been identified?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I think you should get down here, Veum.’
‘When?’
‘I’m already expecting you.’
‘Be there in five minutes.’
As I hung up, my eyes fell on the sheet of paper in front of me.
I jumped. In all the fuss, I’d almost forgotten.
What I was looking at was my own death notice, dated five days hence.
Thirteen
WE HAD SO CONSISTENTLY AVOIDED each other the past few years that when I met Dankert Muus that day I was struck by how much older he looked.
Not only had he put on a fair amount of weight, he’d also become greyer, and his hair was thinning. The grim set of his mouth was more pronounced; on the other hand, a kind of peace seemed to have settled over him. No longer did it look as though he might leap over the desk and grind you to a pulp if you contradicted him; on occasion, he could even throw his typewriter after you.
Through the open door he signalled a rather heavy handshake. ‘Come in, Veum. Have a seat.’
I did as he said and shot a quick glance round me. The office bore clear signs of the fact that, in a year’s time, the whole department would be moving into the new wing now going up on the corner of Allehelgens Street and Nygaten. It hadn’t had a lick of paint in the last five or six years, at any rate. And in a way Dankert Muus looked a bit like that too.
He looked at me dispiritedly. ‘Jensen said you’d been trying to find this girl?’
‘I have been looking for a particular girl, yes, that’s right.’
He breathed in deeply then slowly exhaled. ‘I’m afraid I can confirm it’s the same person… if the name Jensen had noted was correct.’
I felt numb, as if I’d stayed too long in the water after a dip too early in spring. ‘Torild Skagestøl.’
He nodded. ‘Her father’s just identified her. I went up with him to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and we got a provisional statement from him before he had to go back home to – his wife.’
In a flash I saw before me Sidsel Skagestøl in the large east-facing sitting room. That view would lose something of its charm for her now and for a good many weeks to come. Indeed, it might well never regain it.
‘He said she’s been missing since the end of last week, and that his wife had engaged you to look for her.’
‘Yes, but not till Wednesday, and it wasn’t till yesterday that my investigation really got off the ground.’
‘And what did you find out?’
‘Not much. I talked to a few of the girls in her class. They were in town together last Thursday, raking about, window-shopping, probably went to a place called Jimmy’s. Know it?’
He nodded.
‘They were seen there, her friend Åsa, herself and an – escort.’
‘Åsa…’ His ballpoint was at the ready.
‘Furebø. They were old friends and still knocked about together. I don’t think Åsa told me everything she knows. For example, she could definitely give you people the name of that “escort”.’
‘Anything else?’
‘There was another friend, also a girl from her class, Astrid Nikolaisen…’ I paused as he noted down the name and the exact address. ‘That was the one who said she’d seen these three at Jimmy’s, probably last Thursday.’
‘And her escort…’
‘That’s a loose end I hadn’t even begun to tie up. Now I probably never will -’
‘No, probably not.’
‘No?’
‘No!’ He swivelled partway round on his office chair, looked at a place on the wall and pointed with a finger as chubby as a sausage. ‘See that calendar, Veum?’
‘Yes.’ A traditional-looking annual calendar hung on the wall; it had no illustrations and was divided up into squares, like a sort of window on the future, which at that point in the year it was in a way. One of the days had been circled by a dark-red felt-tip pen.
‘See that date ringed there?’
‘March 1st?’
‘Exactly.’ He moved the corners of his mouth to one side, baring his teeth in something that just resembled a smile. To me, though, it looked more like the leering grin of a wolf. ‘Liberation day!’
‘Isn’t that still May 8th?’
‘My liberation day, Veum! The day I reach retirement age!’
For a moment I seemed to feel the breath of time on my neck like frost smoke on a cold winter’s day. – Life without Muus? Was that possible? And how come I didn’t feel even a momentary surge of joy at the thought of it?
‘You mean you’re – sixty?’
‘On February 27th!’ He smiled, proud as a six-year-old kid.
‘Maybe that should be the retirement age for private investigators too.’
‘Sixty?’ said Muus dryly. ‘Most give up at fourteen.’
‘And what are you thinking of doing for the next few years? Court usher or town crier?’
A new look came over his face, a milder and completely different expression from anything I’d ever seen on it before. ‘I’ve always been very fond of flowers, Veum.’
‘Oh…?’
‘At Easter my wife and I are off to Holland for the bulb season. And later this year I’m going to be out in the garden every hour God sends.’
‘Sounds – very nice.’
He looked at me sharply. Then the dreamy expression on his face was gone, and he returned to what was still the humdrum daily grind. ‘So what I mean, Veum, is this. I’ve no intention of seeing the last few weeks of my life here at the station wrecked by you getting under our feet and playing the big private investigator at the expense of us ordinary overworked civil servants! Is that clear?’
‘It never occurred to me to -’
‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes.’