Death in a Cold Climate (17 page)

‘I'm sorry about this,' he said to Korvald. ‘Not exactly cosy, but the only people I usually entertain here are suspects or witnesses. Still, at least we're not likely to be interrupted. Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable.'

Bjørn Korvald pulled up a chair, but could hardly make himself comfortable: seated opposite that intimidating
desk he seemed immediately to fit into that slot marked ‘suspect'–or, worse, that slot marked ‘informer'. It seemed to affect him adversely. He sat there grimly, waiting for Fagermo to begin.

‘Well, let's get it over with,' said Fagermo. ‘You realize as well as I do what everyone there tonight was thinking.' Bjørn nodded. ‘It's a small road, Elgveien, isn't it? How many houses would you say were in it altogether?'

Bjørn thought: ‘Not more than seven, I suppose. And most of them single-family houses.'

‘Yes. And this Botner saw a blonde woman going into it with Martin Forsyth, the night before the murder, in all probability. I'm putting it bluntly, you see. Is there anyone else in the street the description might fit?'

Bjørn sat with his head in his hands. ‘Most of the families are older than us. I practically ruined myself building there. There are two couples in their sixties. Three I suppose in their fifties. One of them has a teenage daughter . . . '

‘It didn't sound like a teenager.'

‘No, it didn't. I suppose my–my
wife
is the obvious one.'

‘That's what I was thinking. Do you mind if we talk about her a bit?'

Bjørn Korvald looked as if he minded a lot. Suddenly he had lost all that air of youth regained that Fagermo had noticed in him since he had left his wife. His shoulders sagged, his face-muscles were relaxed like a gassed soldier's. He seemed to want nothing so much as solitude to think. But Fagermo decided he had better talk now, and be done with it.

‘I'd better tell you what I know about this blonde. Tonight wasn't the first time I'd heard of her. As far as we know they met some way up Biskopsvei on the night after Forsyth was in the Cardinal's Hat–probably the day
before he was murdered, as I say. Whether they'd met before we don't know. Perhaps–but our witness thought not, and our witness is a sharp old body I wouldn't like to contradict. She thought, in fact–sorry to have to say this, Bjørn, she thought that one picked up the other.'

Korvald looked up, great thick lines along his forehead, but he flapped a hand dismissively: ‘No, no–it's nothing to me. Would to God she had someone. But not
him
.'

‘Exactly. Not him, and not him
then
. But we've got to take the facts as we find them, as we always do in my job. Let's take it as a hypothesis, nothing more, that she was walking down Biskopsvei, and stopped him and talked to him on one pretext or other. Now–does that surprise you? She was twenty minutes or so's walk from home.'

Bjørn Korvald straightened. ‘Well, not entirely, to tell you the truth. Once or twice people have mentioned that they've seen her, on her own. Don't know why they tell me. Busybodies, I suppose. And one evening, coming home, I thought I caught a glimpse of her–near where I have my flat.'

‘Spying on you, do you think?'

‘Something of the sort is what I thought. Perhaps wanting to know if there's any other woman. There isn't, by the way.'

‘What about the children? What have you got?'

‘Two little girls. Five and seven. That's what's been worrying me, of course. But I've no evidence that she's often out at night. They're very good sleepers, and in fact she may well get a baby-sitter in. What occurred to me was . . . '

‘Yes?'

‘It's just an idea, but I thought she might want to
prove
something–to the neighbours, and so on. She always worried about the neighbours.'

‘What sort of thing?'

‘That she wasn't lonely, went out a lot, had heaps of friends, that sort of thing.'

‘I get you. And it wouldn't be true?'

‘No, it wouldn't. It was always just the home with her, and the children of course. And me, I suppose, in a way. So I just thought that, having got a baby-sitter in, she might have to go out. And she'd have nowhere to go.'

‘It's pretty pathetic.'

‘Don't I know it. I've tried–but anyway, we're not talking about my domestic problems. The point is, I think she'd like to know what I've been doing. Perhaps she's been around more often than I've seen. Or perhaps she's made a habit of picking men up. I'm afraid I'm pretty remote from her now, so I really wouldn't know.'

‘How often do you see her?'

‘Once a week, when I go for the kids. Not always then. Often they're watching for me, and they run out. And sometimes they come to me by bus.'

‘What sort of state would you say she was in? Mental state?'

Bjørn said reluctantly: ‘Not too good, I'd say.' He was clearly a battle-ground of conflicting emotions that told him that he
was
responsible and was
not
responsible,
was
involved and was well out of it. He said: ‘It's difficult to know what to do. I couldn't go back to her and stay sane, not after I've had my freedom. But there's nothing else would satisfy her. No–not even that would. It just
shouldn't have happened
. She simply can't face up to the fact that it did, it has happened. She has no idea
why
. She's as bewildered now as the day I said I was getting out. The only thing that would really put her little world together again would be to wake up and find it was all a dream. So really there's nothing I can do.'

‘The question is,' said Fagermo, ‘what should I do? I'll have to go and talk to her. How should I approach her? Do
you think she'll deny it?'

‘I think she may well,' said Bjørn. ‘She doesn't have any beautiful abstract passion for truth, certainly. I suppose nobody much does, these days. And you've got to remember that there's no proof it was her.'

‘No, no. Still, we've got Botner. If necessary we could have him identify her. I shouldn't think she'd want things to go so far–that is, if she's nothing worse to hide than a night with a stranger. Do you think there's any way of getting her on my side–palling up with her? It would make it easier.'

Bjørn thought. ‘I'll tell you how I see her. I think she has always lived in a fairy-tale world in which she is the perfect woman, the perfect wife, the perfect mother. Her mother coached her in what she had to do and be when she married, and she fulfilled her instructions to the letter, and lived in a kind of dream in which she was sanctified by virtue of her clean windows and aired sheets. Do you get me? She's self-righteous without being religious. If you're going to say anything that smashes that image she has of herself, I think she's going to deny it, I'm afraid, however you approach her.'

‘So–no chink in the armour?'

‘If there is one, I never found it.'

• • •

‘Try around eleven-thirty,' Bjørn Korvald had said to Fagermo before he left. ‘Åse should be at school, and with a bit of luck Karen will be playing with the neighbours' little boy.'

So at eleven-thirty, with the sun shining in a postcard blue sky and the temperature edging over zero, Fagermo trudged up the snow-lined path to the house Bjørn and Sidsel Korvald had built for themselves in their less than blissful married years. It was a moderate-sized wooden house, with a built-in garage and large plate-glass windows,
unnaturally clean, on the first floor. He rang the bell–electronic, two notes with an interval–and looked at the lead-lighted coloured windows around the heavy wooden front door.

Sidsel Korvald was prompt in answering, opening the door with an automatic smile switched on simultaneously with the turning of the doorknob: ‘Yes?'

She was doing a very good performance of an ordinary Norwegian housewife on an ordinary day of the week, going about her ordinary business. That it
was
a performance Fagermo realized by that sixth policeman's sense, which is a combination of sad experience and commonsense psychology. There was strain in the lines of the forehead, a haunted, inward-looking anxiety in the eyes. But the mouth put up a show of confidence and welcome, and she was boringly neat as a new pin.

‘Fru Korvald? I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes? My name is Fagermo–I'm from the police.'

She showed no sign of stepping aside to let him in, and the smile was extinguished. ‘My husband doesn't live here at the moment,' she said.

‘It was you I wanted to speak to,' said Fagermo. Then, lowering his voice considerately, a thing he wouldn't have done for Professor Nicolaisen, he said: ‘It's a matter of some importance. I think it would be better if we could go inside.'

She looked at him with a wild glint of fear, the mouth now set in a resentful straight line. But finally she stood aside, and Fagermo went determinedly through the hall and upstairs to the living-room. She followed him with every appearance of feeling deeply injured by his call. As if to make something or other plain to him she looked at his shoes and did not ask him to sit down. He sat down.

‘I'm sorry to barge in like this, Fru Korvald,' he said, ‘but believe me, it's going to be easier if we try to talk
things over in a friendly way.'

She pursed her lips together, said nothing, but finally sat down on the sofa, her knees close together, her hands clasped in her lap. As he was trying to think up a way of approaching her, she suddenly blurted out, as if clutching at a straw that had already proved its fragility: ‘If it's anything to do with money, I think you ought to see my husband. He sees to all the bills and things.'

‘It's nothing to do with money,' said Fagermo gently. ‘It concerns a boy–a young man–you may have read about him. He was found dead, murdered, over in Hungeren.'

‘Oh yes?'

Her clamlike stance was more revealing than a more gushing response would have been. Of course she must have read about the murder. Fagermo said: ‘No doubt you will have read about it in
Nordlys
.'

‘I may have,' she said, as though the words were being prised out of her. ‘I don't have much time . . . '

‘Did it occur to you when you read about it, that you might have known the young man?'

‘Certainly not!' The words shot out bitterly, shocked but without surprise. ‘Why should I have known him? He was a foreigner, wasn't he?'

‘That's right. English.'

‘Well, then.' She subsided into silence, as if she had proved a point.

‘And yet, I think you did know him. I think you met him one night just before Christmas, up on Biskopsvei. Or perhaps you had met him before?'

‘No!'

‘No, you hadn't met him before?'

‘No–I don't know what you're talking about! Biskopsvei is miles from here. What would I be doing there at night?'

‘That I don't know. I don't suppose it's of any importance. What is important is that you met this boy–Martin Forsyth his name was, by the way–up in Biskopsvei, just above the kiosk.'

‘I deny it. You're talking nonsense.'

‘I see. There could, of course, have been some mistake. But we have several witnesses. I'm afraid I shall have to arrange an identity parade . . . '

Sidsel Korvald's mouth was working convulsively. ‘I don't understand what you're saying. Why should I go through an identity parade? What are you accusing me of?'

‘Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.'

‘Then this is just–persecution!'

‘Fru Korvald, the only reason I have to get you to confirm that you met Martin Forsyth that night is because I have to trace
all
his movements in the two days before he was murdered. Can you see that? It would have been much easier for you if you had come forward yourself when the case first came into the papers. Now I can see that you find it hard, and embarrassing. I'm sorry about that. But as far as we can gather he was seen alive after you met him. We have no suspicions of you. You need have no hesitations about speaking. Only please tell the truth–and tell
all
the truth.'

He leaned back in his chair. What he had said was not perhaps as impeccably truthful as he had enjoined her to be, but he had the satisfaction of watching it sink into the pretty, empty, self-absorbed face of the woman opposite. He let the ball settle down in her side of the court, and waited long minutes for her to say something.

‘What do you want to know, then?' The words came very low, reluctant.

‘How did you come to meet Martin Forsyth?'

‘I . . . I met him on Biskopsvei, as you said, one night.
I, well, I asked him the time.'

‘You were doing–what?'

‘Walking. Just walking.' She saw him watching her, waiting for more, and she burst out: ‘I've had a lot of troubles. You don't know. I've been shamefully treated. I need to walk sometimes. To think.' A nerve in her cheek began to twitch uncontrollably, making her left eye blink grotesquely.

‘Yes, I had heard that,' said Fagermo.

She cast a suspicious look, as if to enquire who he had been talking to, but, getting no response, her grievance took hold of her again, and she spat out: ‘Can you understand how–how a man who has a lovely home, and lovely children, and everything made easy for him, just as he likes it, can just get up and go off? Not go off with anyone, but just go off? Off to some nasty little room, and live on his own? Can you explain it?'

The voice was like a wailing saxophone, full of humiliation and despair. Fagermo felt no compulsion to answer honestly, and he said gently: ‘It must be difficult to understand.'

‘I can explain it. He's mad. That's the answer. There must be madness in his family somewhere. He's taken leave of his senses.'