Death in a Cold Climate (11 page)

‘So usually when he was away, you just got the odd card, is that right?'

‘Yes, that's right. Sometimes–you know, when he was away before, and went all over the place–we'd get cards and
I
wouldn't know where they were from. I kept meaning to look them up, but we haven't got an up-to-date atlas.'

She spoke as if towns made a habit of moving restlessly about the world, and she looked at Fagermo as if to establish a sort of intimacy of self-satisfied ignorance. He found her still, as he had from the beginning, oddly repellent.

‘You don't have any of the cards, do you?' he asked.

‘I don't. I expect I threw them away, or gave them to some kiddy or other. They're always doing these
pro
jects in school these days, aren't they? My little girl or one of her friends is always on at me for this, that, or the other.'

‘Do you remember any of the places they came from?'

‘Well –' it was clearly a major effort–‘I
think
one of them was from Italy. Tripoli or some such town . . . Then there was a town with a funny name–like Aberfan or something, but that's where the kiddies died, isn't it, wasn't it awful? and this one was foreign, I knew from the stamp . . . Anyway, there weren't many cards, no more than two or three to the best of my recollection. And then suddenly he'd turn up on the doorstep, large as life.'

‘So you'd say he was a restless boy?'

‘Well, they are, aren't they? Young people. I mean, it wasn't like that when
we
were young, was it? 'Course, there was the war, so people had to stay put, but I don't think we
wanted
to go traipsing off to these places the way
they do now. I know I didn't.'

‘But he did?'

‘Well, he must have, mustn't he?'

Fagermo was beginning to find this a very strange conversation indeed. As soon as he asked a question about her son, Mrs Forsyth seemed to want to generalize out, to say what ‘they' did these days, or to talk about herself–anything, in fact, except talk about her son and his habits. Could it be, Fagermo wondered, that she knew practically nothing about her own son, and had a faint sense of embarrassment at her own blankness?

‘You never tried to stop him, though, going off to these “foreign parts”?' he asked.

‘Fat lot of use it would have been if I had,' she said shortly. Then, thinking she might have offended him, she added: ‘Not that I've anything against foreign countries, of course, and anyway Norway's not really foreign, is it?'

‘Not for me,' said Fagermo, and put on a charming smile he usually reserved for worthier recipients. He decided to take the conversation back to an earlier period, when it might be thought she would have been more aware of her son and his doings. He said: ‘Had your son been unsettled earlier–when he was at school, for example?'

‘Well . . . I wouldn't say that, no. We gave him a very good education . . . '

‘You mean he went to private school?'

‘Oh no, no. He went to the Grammar School at Colchester. We've still got one, you know.' Her bosom swelled with inexplicable pride.

‘Does that mean he won a scholarship?'

‘Well, sort of: he got through his eleven-plus. He was never one of the
really
bright ones: they put him in Science. But he always did quite well, really. We let him stay on till he was sixteen, and he got his GCE.'

Fagermo had heard the expression ‘Big Deal', and thought it might be an appropriate reaction to that ‘let him stay on'. He asked: ‘Was he ever in trouble–girls, for example?'

‘Not that I know of. Of course they know so much these days, don't they? Makes you wonder sometimes–the things they come out with. It must be the telly, or some of these set books they read in school. My father would have walloped me, I know that, if he thought I knew half what these youngsters know today. But I don't think Martin was ever in what you'd call trouble.'

‘Did he get on with his father?'

‘Well . . . I don't know what to say, really. They never
didn't
get on, if you know what I mean . . . '

‘No rows?'

‘Oh, rows . . . Well, Jack would shout at him now and then, as is only natural, and he'd swear back, but there was nothing . . . nothing
nasty
about it. There wasn't much between them at all, really, if you know what I mean. They both went their own ways.'

Fagermo had a sudden vision of this home as an bare prison, full of self-contained cells–or as a frozen waste of non feeling. Somehow it seemed pointless to continue the conversation, so little did the woman seem to know of what her son was, or thought, or did. He stirred in his chair, preparatory to leaving.

‘Did you know your son's Norwegian girl-friend, Anne-Marie Lausund?' he asked.

‘Oh
yes
. Ever so nice. So quiet-spoken and that. I
do
think Norwegians are
nice
.' She looked at him invitingly, and was disappointed in his clear blue gaze in return. She chattered on, apparently quite happy to get off the subject of her son. ‘Oh yes, we knew her quite well. She came out with us a couple of times, perhaps three. We used to drive over to the Bull at Thaxted, I remember, ever such a nice
pub, lots of university people use it, and professional people, and there's ever such a nice atmosphere on Saturday nights. Yes, we had some lovely evenings there. She was such a nice little thing, and spoke lovely English–ever so attractive.'

‘She has a baby now.' She looked at him blankly, and Fagermo added: ‘Your son's.'

At the thought of grandmotherhood an unconcealable spasm of distaste crossed her face.

‘I hope she's not expecting us to do anything about it. We're not well off, and we've got more than enough on our plate as it is. And I mean, you can't
prove
that sort of thing, can you?'

‘She's not expecting anything from anybody. I just thought you might be interested.'

‘Oh, I see. Well, it's not something anyone'd be proud of, is it? . . . I don't know as I'd want it known.'

‘There's no reason why it should be.' They reached the front door, and Fagermo asked: ‘Will your husband be in later in the evening?'

‘Well, I don't know. He's on the boats, you know. He'll probably be down at the Yachtsman at seven or half past.'

And at half past seven he was, indeed, in the Yachtsman. He was sitting at a table with a group of his pals, engaged in an intense discussion over a newspaper, folded over to the racing results. The landlord pointed him out, and Fagermo took a pint of (he thought) typically weak English beer over to the table, and made himself known. The table fell silent at his name, and he realized that Jack Forsyth had certainly heard the news, and so had his pals.

Forsyth cleared his throat with embarrassment, and then got up and shuffled off with Fagermo to another table, where he sat down and contemplated his beer. His eyes were wetter than his wife's, but not with grief. He
searched his mind for something to say, and then finally came out with: ‘Rotten thing, this.'

And for the rest of the ten minutes Fagermo stayed, he got out of him nothing more meaningful than that. As he left, he saw him scuttling back to his mates, eager to resume the business of living.

On the way back from England Fagermo stopped off again in Trondheim, and took a taxi to the Continental Shelf Research Institute, where Forsyth had worked. It was a tubular building on the outskirts of the town, like a hideous white worm, curiously involuted. Nobody much seemed to be around, or to know where anybody else was, but finally he found himself talking to Gunnar Meisal, a large man with a genial, chinny face that seemed to have been carved out of sandstone by an inexpert hand. He at least had known Forsyth–remembered him from several North Sea expeditions.

‘Perfectly capable lad,' he said, sitting Fagermo down by his desk, piled high with crazy graphs and endless lines of computer figures. ‘Unusually so. A real find, because they're not so easy to come by these days. He was experienced, and knew what he was doing. The great thing was, you didn't have to keep your eye on him the whole time.'

‘He was crew, was he?'

‘That's right. The Institute has a couple of boats, with full time crew, because one or other lot of us here is out at sea for one reason or another much of the time.'

‘Doing what? Or is that top secret?'

‘No, no,
what
we're doing isn't top secret, though the details of what we
find
sometimes are.'

‘Why?'

‘Oil. A lot of what we're doing these days goes straight to the Department of Oil and Energy, or else to the State Oil Company. It's the sort of information that all sorts of
foreign oil companies–especially the American and British–would like to get their hands on. The Russians show a lot of interest as well–that's partly why there's been so much Russian activity up in the Northern waters recently: curiously well-equipped fishing-boats–you must know all about that sort of thing, coming from Tromsø.'

Fagermo nodded. It was a common joke how advanced fishing technology had become in Russia. ‘Could you give me some idea of what Forsyth was involved in, in his work for you?' he asked.

‘Basically it's a question of collecting scientific data: what everyone is interested in is which areas of the North Sea and the Barents Sea are most likely to be profitable. Let me put it very simply –' and Gunnar Meisal crouched forward in an expository pose and gave a little lecture involving gas chromatographs, spectrometers, hydraulic content, multi-channel folds and subsamples. At the end (Fagermo had fixed his eyes on him in desperate attentiveness, and tried to stop them glazing over) Meisal leaned back again in his desk chair, a benevolent expression on his face, conscious of having rendered the subject simple almost beyond the limits of scholarly responsibility. Fagermo trod his way carefully forward with his next question, conscious of the danger of revealing his still near-complete ignorance.

‘I see,' he said, sounding unconvincing to himself. ‘The long and the short of it is, you're getting information, doing research, that a lot of people–foreign companies, and governments as well–would like to get their hands on.' Meisal nodded. ‘Would that be relatively simple information–the sort of thing that can be carried in the head?'

‘No, no–certainly not. Highly technical. It's the sort of stuff that we would have to analyse in depth. Or often the
Oil and Energy Department uses consultants–highly qualified people in universities, technical colleges, and so forth.'

‘So it's difficult to imagine Forsyth being able to make use of the sort of information you might be getting on these trips.'

‘Very difficult. Because he'd have to know what he was doing. Much of what we're up to would be quite meaningless to the average crew member; he wouldn't know what was of value, what wasn't. Of course Forsyth was a bright boy, and experienced. It's just
possible
, if he was really clued up, he could get hold of the stuff people are willing to pay good money for. But if it's a question of leaks to foreign concerns, it's much more likely to happen at the consultant level–they would really know what's wanted.'

‘And the companies would really pay good money for this information?'

‘I wouldn't mind betting. It would have to be good money, to be worth anybody's while. The oil companies have got their fingers in all sorts of pies in this country, since the various North Sea blocks proved workable and profitable. They use some of the same people as the Americans and Russians use–spies, information agents, whatever you like to call them. And they've usually got someone or other on the relevant local councils in their pay: they get a retainer to keep the oil company's interests in mind.'

‘
Really
? That could be interesting. Mostly the right-wing people, I suppose?'

Meisal shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. The other lot don't go much on oil, but they're pretty fond of money. You know how easy they find it to square things with their consciences. Suddenly you start hearing them say that if there's one thing they think they can justify spending money on it's a bit of extra room for the kiddies to play in,
and before you can blink your eyes they've got five-bedroom houses and ten-acre gardens.'

‘You could be right,' said Fagermo. ‘And of course the oil companies are probably interested in Tromsø.'

‘They're interested in all the bigger towns in the North–for when the bonanza starts north of the sixty-second parallel. It'll be this year, or next year–but whenever it is they want to have their lines open well in advance. They say there's even more money to be made from the Northern blocks than there has been from the Southern ones. And they're damn right!'

Fagermo sat for a moment in thought. ‘Well, well,' he said finally. ‘The modern gold rush. It seems to have some funny side-effects . . . Now, this boy, Forsyth, did he strike you as trustworthy?'

Meisal pondered. ‘It's not something we think about: security is something that usually only matters higher up, and anyway the cloak-and-dagger aspects are not really our affair, only the research . . . I was just with him on a couple of trips. He was certainly a pleasant chap: not talkative, but you could talk
to
him. He fitted in well, even though he didn't talk much Norwegian. He liked earning money–from overtime, that sort of thing–but most of the crew-men do. And I knew we wouldn't keep him for long, because he was too bright. There are lots of jobs waiting for a chap like that. I imagine he was biding his time, saving up, and he just moved on when he was ready.'