Death in a Cold Climate (15 page)

His mind unaccountably turned to the boy who had died in the snow of Hungeren, the boy he had met so briefly. There were rumours going round, talk–but then there was always talk, and half of it contradicted the other half, or was the purest nonsense. There was no reason to believe any one thing people were saying rather than another. No reason to fear the end of his little bonus. And
he had always found the police very amenable.

• • •

Idling along Storgate in a day full of frustrations and unproductive leads, Inspector Fagermo happened to see, by the open space in front of the Cathedral, two of the people on the fringes of the case whom he had not yet spoken to. On the pavement were planted the two local Mormons, with a hortatory placard, a hail-fellow manner and a promise of salvation available through the combination of Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith. They seemed to have plenty of well-wishers and casual acquaintances, but not many takers. On one of them the Arctic spring seemed to have laid an icy finger: the fair-haired, open-faced one had his tie riotously askew, his jacket and overcoat open, and he was getting as near to chatting up the girls as a street-corner evangelist could reasonably be expected to go. Fagermo stopped by them.

‘I've been meaning to look you up,' he said. ‘I suppose you can guess what I want to talk about.'

‘We told the police we'd be here,' said the heavy one, aggrieved. ‘It's our usual time and place.' His Norwegian was very grammatical and highly accented. As old Botilsrud had said, one never had much doubt with an American.

‘Not that,' said Fagermo. ‘It's about this murder.' The two faces at once looked mystified and concerned.

‘We haven't heard about any murder,' said the fair one. ‘Why should we have expected that you'd want to talk to us about a murder?'

‘We don't read the papers much,' said the other one. ‘We can, but we can't really afford to.'

‘I thought it was the main topic of conversation among the foreign community, that's all,' said Fagermo.

‘We're more religious,' said the heavy, obstinate one, obscurely.

‘Anyway, it's about a boy you met, way back before Christmas, in the Cardinal's Hat. I don't know if you remember?'

‘The Cardinal's Hat? Were we there?'

‘So all the available testimony agrees. I'm sorry if you're not supposed to be.'

‘Oh, it's not that so much. But we can't afford eating out or anything, and there's not much we can drink, so I can't quite see why we were there.' The fair boy thought for a bit. ‘Wait a minute! I remember now: we did go in one time, just before Christmas.' He turned to his fellow. ‘After Steinar, you remember.' He explained to Fagermo: ‘It's a boy we've been talking to a lot. He was really getting the message, but he sort of relapses now and then. We've been trying to be good influences, and if we hear of him like going off the rails, we try and get hold of him and talk him out of it, see what I mean?'

Fagermo nodded. It figured: drink and religion were the great weaknesses of a certain type of Norwegian, and some veered enthusiastically from one to the other. He said: ‘You went and talked to the foreigners' table there, if you remember.'

‘That's right, we did. I suppose we must have known somebody sitting there.'

‘Can you recall who?'

The two Mormons thought for a bit. ‘There was that man who's an outfitter–has a shop along here somewhere,' said the heavy one. ‘He was interested in our suits, said we always looked so smart.'

‘We had to tell him they were issued from headquarters,' said the fair one. ‘No sale. Then there was an American boy–often see him around–fairly quiet type. Student. And the girl from the USIO: we keep in well with them. They're a lot of help sometimes.'

‘Anyone else?'

‘There
were
others. I can't recall exactly –'

Fagermo prompted him. ‘There was a fair-haired boy, a stranger. You wouldn't have seen him before.'

The two of them thought. ‘That's right. Didn't say much. Looked–you know–sort of contemptuous. There's some like that: they look at us like we were some kinda freaks. Yeah, I remember him.' It was the fair-haired one speaking, and Fagermo felt fairly confident he really did remember.

‘You didn't talk to him?'

‘No, sir. We don't push in where we're not wanted, whatever some people may say. And we were just in looking for Steinar. But I remember seeing that boy again –'

‘The boy in the Cardinal's Hat? Where?'

The fair Mormon thought. ‘I know I did . . . Not long afterwards, too.'

‘It would have been the next day, or the one after.'

‘Was it him who got his number?'

‘Yes–we found him in the snow above Hungeren.'

The Mormon thought. ‘I can't get it. Give me a bit of time, though, and it should come. I'll get on to you as soon as it does. I usually do remember –'

‘If you do,' said Fagermo, ‘you'll be one of the few to admit remembering anything definite.'

‘Part of the training,' said the fair boy, grinning wide and tugging at his crazily askew tie. ‘Healthy mind in a healthy body, you know.' He sounded infinitely cynical.

Back in his office Fagermo sat at his desk and looked over the fjord, glimmering blue and gold like a vulgar evening gown. Things were beginning, just beginning, to make some sort of pattern in his mind. Always he had believed that one of the keys to the case lay in the character of the boy himself. What sort of person was Martin Forsyth? There was still a lot of work to be done
there, but he thought the blank outline, symbolized by that anonymous frozen corpse, was beginning to be filled in. But then there was that other vital question: what had Martin Forsyth
been
, what had he
done
? Here there were some pieces in place–pieces from Ålesund, from Trondheim, even from Mersea–but also great gaping blank spaces.

He turned back to his desk and began formulating his second set of questions for Interpol. Precious little he'd got from the first lot: no trace of a criminal record anywhere, not even of any minor involvement in questionable activities, or immigration troubles. But
something
of the boy's past must be recoverable, must be relevant. In fact, he felt sure that something would be crucial, that this was not a murder that could be explained by some sudden burst of passion that sprang up during his three days in Tromsø. He sighed. It was just his luck that Iran was currently in a state of turmoil–a jungle of conflicting forces so complex that none of the great powers seemed to know who to kowtow to. And yet, it was very possible that there some part of the solution might be lying. Aberfan, Mrs Forsyth had said, vaguely. Aberfan, Abadan . . .

He would have to trust to time and returning normality. Meanwhile the only thing to do was to formulate a series of clear, concise, to-the-point questions. He drew his pad towards him and wrote and thought for half an hour, concentratedly.

When he had finished he picked up his phone and got through to Bjørn Korvald.

‘Bjørn? Fagermo here. Do you remember you offered to take me along one night to the Cardinal's Hat? Nothing like being introduced by a friend if you want to break down barriers, is there? Well, what say we make it tonight?'

At eight o'clock that evening the Cardinal's Hat was comfortably full, with the usual mixture of students and shop assistants, stray bachelors and stray spinsters, drunken sailors and drunken lecturers. The air was thick with the fumes of beer and frying steak and the smoke of self-rolled cigarettes, but luckily for Fagermo this was not one of the evenings with live jazz. Then you had to bellow your lightest inanities, and take your companion's reply on trust. So up and down the narrow L-shaped room conversation was rife, insults passed from table to table, girls passed from hand to hand, and lonely men on shore leave lurched around in search of confidants for their boozy, lying tales. It was not a smart place: jeans predominated, and heavy jerseys like dead, matted jungle undergrowth. The smart people went to the clubs and the hotel bars, where their sense of importance burgeoned in proportion to the grossness of the overcharging. The clientele of the Cardinal's Hat went there because it was cheap and good; they ranged only from the middling well-off down to the middling hard-up.

Bjørn Korvald and Fagermo collected their litres of beer at the bar counter and pushed their way through the dark-panelled room round to the foreigners' table. For a moment they were not noticed, and Fagermo, gently stopping Bjørn's progress with his hand, had a chance to observe the table and decide that he seemed to have struck it lucky. Crouched over their beers and red wines and Cokes, and deep in a variety of conversations or solitary
musings were seven or eight people, and among them were at least two people he was happy to have a chance to speak to away from the inquisitorial atmosphere of the police station. There in the centre, chairman-like, was Helge Ottesen, plump, condescendingly matey, prosperous; and not far away was a young man–flushed, verbose, indignant–whom Fagermo strongly suspected to be the lecturer in French who had been here on the night of Martin Forsyth's visit. For the rest there was a Hong Kong Chinese boy whom he recognized as working at one of the local restaurants, an Algerian student-cum-street-vendor, Dougal Mackenzie, who had found the body, and Steve Cooling, draped enervatedly over a half-bottle of red wine, some of which had streaked a vivid flash across his grubby tee-shirt.

Not a bad haul. But now Bjørn Korvald made a move forward, and the table registered their presence. A sudden hush fell, silencing even the lecturer in French, who had been in full self-justifying spate about something or other. The hush was uneasy rather than respectful. Feeling as welcome as the returned Magwitch, they drew back chairs and sat themselves down at the table.

It was Helge Ottesen who broke the silence and did the honours of this informal branch of the Foreigners' Club. With a gesture both nervous and expansive–the behaviour of the fledgling politician in a tight spot–he half rose, shook hands with Fagermo with an unconvincing smile on his face, and gesturing to left and right made embryonic introductions around the table.

‘Mr . . . er . . . Cooling you know, don't you? Yes? This is . . . Dr?–no–Herr Botner who teaches . . . er . . . French at the university, and Dr Mackenzie . . . oh, you've met . . . and, er, Monsieur . . . and . . . er . . . '

These last introductions were to the Algerian and the Chinese sitting at the end of the table, quiet and self-contained,
regarding the scene with a genial fascination that showed they knew exactly who Fagermo was and why his appearance was received roughly like that of the spectre at the feast. Ottesen fussed further to cover up the coldness of the welcome.

‘It's a pity there are no ladies here tonight. Gives you the wrong impression. My wife is at a Church ladies meeting, bazaars and things, you know. And there's usually someone or other here: Miss Bryson who I think you interv–er, met, didn't you? And we have the odd librarian and nurse who often drop in. Really we are not such a–what's the phrase?–such a male-dominated group as we might seem tonight.'

The tawdry cliché seemed to trigger something in the French lecturer, who was clearly on the way to being very nicely drunk indeed.

‘Male dominated? Male dominated? Fat chance these days.
Fat
chance. Have I told you –?'

‘Yes,' said Steve Cooling, with that lazy American tolerance-with-limits. ‘Over and over. Put a stopper in it, can't you?' He turned to Fagermo. ‘He's just been refused a grant for leave, and he's convinced it's because he's a man.'

Botner looked about to explode, and then just as suddenly subsided into his glass. Fagermo took the chance to study him. He was tall, well-fleshed and good-looking in a rather academic, rimless-spectacled way. The type to wear a suit to work, though at the moment his bachelor smartness was looking a little crumpled. He guessed he was the type who might as a rule be reserved, distantly charming, congenitally buttoned-up, but who occasionally broke out. Tonight seemed to be one of the occasions when he broke out.

‘Well, of course, we all know who you are,' said Helge Ottesen, unable to conceal that nervous apprehension
beneath a gummy smile, but making heroic efforts. ‘Is it allowable to ask whether you are on duty now, or is this a visit of pleasure?'

‘Oh, pleasure, pleasure,' beamed Fagermo, raising his glass merrily to all and sundry, the ironic glint in his eye telling them that if they believed that, they'd believe anything. ‘We policemen have to have time off, you know, when we're not terrorizing the poor motorist, or doing violence to the delinquents by our mere presence on Storgate on Saturday nights. We're human, you know: we like to go out and have a drink, just like anybody else.'

‘And is it permitted to ask how the case is going?' asked the slightly Scottish voice of Dougal Mackenzie, the irony in his eye answering that in Fagermo's, and showing that he for one wasn't taken in by Fagermo's night off.

‘Oh yes, quite permitted. But I'm not sure I can tell you a great deal at the moment. It's progressing-progressing in the way cases do. I'm learning more and more, stacking up a little heap of pieces of information. Eventually I'll have to look at them all, discard quite a number of them, and then try to fit the rest together to make up a picture. It's a long process, and very intricate.'

‘What you're saying is, the case has wide repercussions, is that it?' asked Steve Cooling.

‘If you mean: was it something more than his being slugged by a drunken teenager in a Saturday night brawl, then I'd say
yes
. It's been clear from the beginning that there is more to it than that. Just how much more I can't really decide at this stage.'