‘Ve -!’ he managed to shout.
Bewildered, I stuck out my hand, but too late.
He was gone. His long-drawn-out scream was abruptly silenced.
For a long time I simply stood there. Then slowly I walked up to the gap in the wall, held on tight, stuck my head out and peered down.
He lay on his back on the quay in front of the factory, motionless.
The wheel had turned full circle. The death notice had been accurate. Only the name was wrong.
I found my way back down to the bottom of the staircase, but it was some time before I came across my shoes. Afterwards, it took me barely ten minutes to get out through one of the broken windows on the first floor.
I walked round the building and onto the quay. Harry Hopsland lay there with the back of his skull smashed and a mixture of blood and brains like a clumsily drawn halo round his head. His eyes were glazed and unfocused as though he was in the dock listening to the first of a long list of charges being read out to him. I had no need to hurry to call an ambulance. He had reached his destination.
I wandered up as far as Helleveien before managing to flag down a taxi. The driver shot me a quick glance when I asked him to take me to the police station.
In the police station I met an inspector by the name of Paulsen whom I’d met in passing once before. He was clean-shaven, with mousy-coloured hair and was not completely lacking in common humanity.
When I told him about Harry Hopsland he immediately called for an ambulance and asked for a patrol car to be sent out. When I told him about Birger Bjelland it was the last straw. ‘I’ll have to ring Muus about this,’ he said.
‘Can I report back tomorrow, d’you think?’
He gave me a worried look. ‘Need any help?’
‘No, but a good night’s sleep would be great.’ I wrote down a phone number on a notepad. ‘You’ll be able to reach me at this number here.’
He nodded. ‘OK. I’m sure it’ll be fine. We know where to find you.’
‘Oh? I wish I could say the same.’
Then I went off towards the phone number I’d given. I rang before letting myself in.
Fifty
‘WE REALLY MUST STOP meeting like this,’ she said the next morning, leaning over to my side of the bed and running her fingers gently over the scratches on my face.
I grimaced.
‘I mean it!’ she said. ‘One of these days I’m going to be called in to scrape you up off the ground in little pieces.’
‘So long as you don’t lose any of them,’ I said, trying it on.
‘That’s not funny!’
I ran the tip of my tongue over my dry lips. ‘Shall we make some coffee?’
‘But there’s no point trying to talk any sense into you! You’re just like -’ She stopped herself, but I knew what she’d almost blurted out: just like Siren.
‘That – reporter who was murdered. You knew her very well, didn’t you?’
‘Not as well as this.’
‘Do you, do they know – who did it?’
I looked aside. Did we know, actually?
‘If it turns out to be my fault that she… it’d be two deaths in one day I’d be responsible for.’ I looked up at her awkwardly. ‘I think I feel the burden of them on my shoulders already.’
The light outside her windows was sharp and white. The temperature had suddenly risen ten degrees, yesterday evening’s layer of snow had melted, through the open bedroom windows the twitter of birds could be heard from the trees in the old school garden, and there was an unmistakable feeling of spring in the air. February was on the way out. March was just round the corner, full of expectation like a young girl on the way to her first date.
Besides, it was Saturday; and we could linger as long as we liked over breakfast. We made bacon and eggs, sliced up some tomatoes and let them sizzle a little in the fat before putting them on our plates. We drank low-fat milk and coffee, ate slices of bread with honey and rosehip jelly, divided the Saturday paper in two and read it so slowly that it almost looked as though we were looking for something quite out of the ordinary; a code hidden in the text.
Laila Mongstad had made the front page again, but this time without her by-line. They hadn’t even revealed her name. For the time being, the case was being linked to what they called a ‘break-in at the newspaper’s offices in the evening.’ It was still too early to establish whether it had been pure chance that it was a ‘journalist on the evening shift’ who was the killer’s victim, or whether the attack was aimed at that journalist personally.
All I found on the other case was a little one-column announcement that ran:
Man found dead in Sandviken
A man in his fifties was found dead late yesterday evening, the victim of an accident on an industrial site in Sandviken. The deceased was already known to the police. The duty police officer, Inspector Arvid Paulsen, would not comment on the death other than to say that the usual investigations would be carried out.
Karin pushed her part of the paper across the table to me saying: ‘There’s a death notice for that judge here.’
‘Oh?’
I turned the paper and read:
‘Tora,’ I said almost to myself, ‘T for Tora.’
She looked at me over the top of her coffee mug. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, just thinking aloud.’
After breakfast I took a long warm shower while Karin was out buying more papers. In the Oslo tabloids the killing of Laila Mongstad was given full coverage, and she was named too. They had also dug up a ten-year-old photo of her from a Press Association directory. One paper carried a full interview with ‘a colleague on the evening shift’, Bjørn Brevik, who said a possible connection between the murder and the fact that Laila Mongstad had been working very hard for several months on exposés of what he referred to as ‘the Bergen underworld’ couldn’t be ruled out. The paper’s editor would not comment on the death at all, other than to say that he ‘found it shocking and highly regrettable’.
The death in Sandviken was not mentioned in any of the papers.
It was past one o’clock when there was a call from the police station. ‘Veum? Muus here. We’ve arrested Birger Bjelland. Do you think you could come down and make a full statement?’
‘Now? Right away?’
‘Any reason to postpone it?’
I gave Karin an apologetic look, mumbling: ‘No, I suppose not.’
Half an hour later I was down at the station, where Muus met me looking as though he’d been awarded the Royal Golden Order of Merit. In fact I couldn’t ever recall seeing him in such good spirits. ‘We’ve got him this time, Veum!’
‘Let’s hope so.’
I accompanied him up to his office, where Atle Helleve sat reading a paper while waiting.
‘No Saturdays off for you either?’ I joked.
With a sigh he folded the paper. ‘Far from the madding crowd on a day like this? Not likely!’
‘My goodness, a well-read policeman,’ I added.
‘We come in all shapes and sizes, you know.’
Muus looked slightly lost for a moment. ‘Let’s not waste any time. Sit yourself down, Veum, and let’s go through all the details.’
And that’s exactly what we did.
Again I went over everything I’d dug up about Birger Bjelland’s operation, the safe list, Jimmy’s and the Pastel Hotel, Dr Evensen and Bjelland’s other henchmen.
This time I added what I’d unearthed in Stavanger, if only to colour in his background.
Helleve was doing the note-taking. He wasn’t just well read but an ace on the keyboard too.
When I got to the events of the previous day they really started to prick up their ears. The battle with The Knife brought out a hint of the old Muus again. He leaned forward, bared his teeth and said: ‘That sounds like what the legal people usually call “involuntary manslaughter”,’ Veum…’