Death in a Cold Climate (19 page)

‘And did you talk to him?'

‘No, we didn't, because he turned off: before we got down to where the road forks he'd turned off down into Isbjørnvei.'

‘And kept on going down there?'

‘I guess so. We didn't follow him, because we were on our way home. But in any case, you can't really
go
anywhere down that road–only Isbjørnvei and Binnavei just above. Binnavei's full of university people, and so's the first part of Isbjørnvei: they shut the door on us like we were the curse of Dracula. Must have something to hide, I guess. Then along Isbjørnvei there are some more naval people–they're OK. Then round the loop in the road there are some people employed in the Town Council offices. Real snooty, some of that lot. But anyways, I guess this guy must have had a date with someone or other in those three groups down there.'

‘That,' said Fagermo, ‘is what I'd guess too. Now–when was this? Can you be absolutely exact?'

‘Yes, I can,' said the Mormon boy, taking out his diary for the previous year. ‘Every month we enter up the area to be canvassed each day, and we only depart from it if something
very
special or unexpected turns up. In other words, virtually never. Right?'

‘Right,' said Fagermo, impressed in spite of himself by the Big Company efficiency of the whole futile operation.

‘In my eighteen months here I only remember us changing schedule once–about a year ago, because of Easter: the holiday was longer than we'd calculated.
Right? So this is a regular record–' ‘tapping the diary–‘of where we were, and when. And it says we did the far end of Anton Jakobsensvei and up to Nordselvei on December twenty-first. So it was coming down from there, some time I'd guess between one-thirty and two-fifteen, that we saw this boy.'

He leaned back in his chair with a self-congratulatory smile on his fair, open face.

‘I'm impressed,' said Fagermo. ‘Tell me one thing, though. You've told me how you can be sure
when
it was you saw him, but how come you're so sure
where
it was? People don't remember so exactly as a rule.'

For a moment the young man looked embarrassed. ‘Well, hell, we're trained in that kind of thing–cultivating the memory–it goes with the job . . . But, well, if you want to know, something had just happened that made everything stand out in my mind that day. I'd–well, I'd just met a girl –'

‘Really? I thought Tweedledee was there to protect you against things of that kind.'

‘Yes, well, that's the idea. And he did his best, by Chr-George he did. But sometimes it happens you can-sort of–get a message across without talking. Right?'

Mindful of Fru Nicolaisen, Fagermo began to wonder why the human race had ever taken to speech. ‘So I believe.'

‘And well, I let him talk to the parents, and let him get all bogged down with his diagrams–we have a lot of diagrams, but Joseph, he wasn't too hot with them–and, well, while all that was going on I sort of-well, I suppose you could say I made eyes at the daughter. Or we made them at each other. And I managed a date before we got out of the door. So you see, I was all keyed up when I saw this boy, and I suppose that's why I remember exactly where.'

‘Well, well,' said Fagermo, ‘it all sounds practically
Shakespearean. I didn't know such things happened these days. I trust the course of true love has run smooth?'

‘Pretty much so, but it's getting time alone that's the problem. Joseph was pretty hot on the rules.' He got up. ‘So I'll be getting along, OK? She's got the day off
gymnas
today. Sick. We've got till eleven-fifteen tonight, when I have to meet the plane. See you around, OK?'

‘I expect so,' said Fagermo. ‘Oh, just one more question: do you ever actually make any converts?'

The boy paused in the doorway and scratched his chin: ‘Well, no. Not what you'd call converts. Lots of people are interested, but they don't actually–come over. We're really just sort of showing the flag. What you might call maintaining a presence in the area!'

And he breezed out. So that was it. They were the spiritual equivalent of a NATO base. Fagermo meditated on this idea for some time, then shrugged it from him, regretfully.

• • •

Moving house is always a business, and Norwegians like to do things thoroughly. No good Norwegian housewife would want to move into a house that was not, from the beginning, spotlessly clean. Fru Dagny Andersen was a very good Norwegian housewife, and she had made it clear to the removers, her husband, her friends back in Bergen and anyone else who would listen (for she was a thoroughly tedious woman) that she needed three solid days' cleaning in this new house before the family could be moved from Bergen to Tromsø, where her busband was taking up a Professorship in Reindeer Husbandry.

So there she was, with a sleeping-bag and lots of plastic buckets, with a rigidly classified collection of cloths and mops, giving the house a thorough going over from ceiling
to basement before the removal men could be permitted to unload their household effects into it. She scrubbed, scoured, washed and polished, her whole body sweating in the spring sunshine, her mind almost blank but for the topics of rival cleaning fluids, and washing powders, and a dreadful generalized feeling of self-righteousness.

‘They
said
it was done,' she said with a smug smile to Fru Vibe, her neighbour, as she passed on her way to the shop, ‘but it never is, is it? Not
properly
. I wouldn't have wanted to bring my family into
this
. Not the state this place was in. I like to know a place is really
clean
.'

And Fru Vibe kept her end up by agreeing wholeheartedly, and with lots of housewifely detail about corners and bottom cupboards, though in her heart of hearts she did have a slight sense that cleanliness could be carried too far.

But now Fru Andersen was coming to the end of her tasks. The hall had been done, and the downstairs bedroom and the store cupboards, and now, with the front door open to let in the afternoon sun she was beginning on the
vindfang
, the little square place just inside the front door, designed to keep draughts out and protect the blessed greenhouse quality of the Norwegian home. Even a
vindfang
should be clean, and be
seen
to be clean, she said to herself complacently.

But when Fru Vibe came home from the shop an hour or so later she found Fru Andersen still on the floor, still at it, and in far from happy mood.

‘They said it had been done,' she said, stopping her scrubbing and poising herself on her haunches. ‘But look at that.' She pointed to a brown mark on the skirting-board near the floor. ‘It's not mud, I know that. I've been at it for nearly half an hour, and I can't get it out. I think it must be blood.'

Something stirred, uncomfortably, in Fru Vibe. Of
course, it couldn't be, it was impossible, and yet . . . It was as well to be sure. Something close to fear seized her stomach. Her solution, in all matters of doubt or complaint, was to dump the topic in the lap of Lindestad, the housing officer of the university. After all, they were the landlords.

‘I should give up scrubbing,' said Fru Vibe. ‘I'll ring up Lindestad and tell him to have a look.'

• • •

As luck would have it, Fagermo was sitting in Lindestad's office in the University Administration building when the call came through. Lindestad, a tough little man with a gnome face, was a rare specimen of omnicompetence, with an elephant's memory and the ability to fix anything that went wrong in his domain–which was what he usually did do, rather than undergo the frustrations of trying to get outside men to do it. But it was his memory that Fagermo was interested in at the moment.

‘The girl next door said it would take time to get the information,' he said. ‘She had to go through her files, I suppose. She said it would be quicker to talk to you.'

Lindestad grinned with amiable modesty. ‘What do you want to know?'

‘Well, basically this: who was in the university houses in Isbjørnvei in December of last year–that for a start. I gather there are flats in them as well, and I'd like to know who was in those as well.'

Lindestad thought and drew towards him a piece of paper. He wrote down the numbers of the university houses, and after some thought put down by them a list of names. ‘These are the main tenants,' he said, ‘of the houses that were occupied. The flats are a bit more difficult.'

He pushed the list towards Fagermo, and it was at this moment that the phone rang. As Lindestad answered a
patient and monotonous yes to the upbraiding voice on the other end of the line, Fagermo studied the list. But when Lindestad said ‘Blood?' he looked up with a definite flicker of interest. As Lindestad put the phone down with a promise to come out and see, Fagermo said: ‘Blood? Where was that?'

‘Isbjørnvei. Are you interested?'

‘Too right I'm interested. What number?'

‘Let's see. Must be eighteen. New people moving in today.'

Fagermo looked down his list and with a pang of disappointment saw by the number eighteen the one word ‘vacant'.

‘Was there no one at all there in December?' he asked.

‘No one in the main part of the house, anyway,' said Lindestad, getting up. ‘These houses are kept for Professors and the like: really it's a sort of ghetto for upper-rank academics. They're often vacant for a fair while, being kept for someone or other. This one has been vacant from last summer right up to now.'

‘What about the flat?'

‘Let's see . . . I think it's someone in the library . . . Yes, that's right. Don't remember her name–rather a pathetic-looking creature.'

Fagermo shook his head. That hardly sounded promising. ‘Let's go and have a look, anyway.'

When they got there they left the car below the road, down by the garages that served the houses, and as they climbed through the snow to Isbjørnvei Fagermo was aware of a face watching them from No. 12. Fru Nicolaisen, no doubt, perhaps hoping for a visit from her policeman lover. Shielding their eyes from the golden glare of sun on snow, Fagermo and Lindestad trudged up to No. 18. Fru Andersen and Fru Vibe were ensconced in the doorway, deep in the only topic Bergen people do talk
about when they get together, a nostalgic ramble through their rainy home city. They gave it up for business, however, on the approach of the two men.

‘Look at that,' said Fru Vibe to Lindestad, whose tolerant expression told of years of dealing with complaining tenants. ‘And you said it had been properly cleaned.'

‘It was cleaned after the last tenants left,' said Lindestad, edging his way into the
vindfang
. ‘That was last summer. You must expect a bit of dust.'

‘That,' said Fru Andersen triumphantly, ‘is not dust.'

Nor was it. It was a smallish, obstinate brown stain, clinging to wall and wooden skirting-board, just above floor level, and the lighter colour of the wall around told of Fru Andersen's Trojan endeavours to scrub it out.

‘Let me see,' said Fagermo, and squatted down on his haunches in the tiny space. He needed little time to make up his mind. ‘This mustn't be touched any further,' he said, getting up.

‘Not touched?' howled Fru Andersen, outraged. ‘But you can't expect –'

‘Police,' said Fagermo, showing his card. ‘This
must
not be touched. I'll have a man out to look at it in an hour or so. He'll have to take some sort of sample. Luckily there's still enough there to make tests on.'

‘Tests?' said Fru Vibe, agog with interest. ‘Then it
is
blood?'

‘I think so.'

‘I wondered,' she said. ‘That's why I rang. Do you think it's that boy?' She nodded her head in the direction of the mountains.

Fagermo looked at her with interest: a handsome, intelligent-looking woman. ‘Perhaps. It's what I'm working on. Had you any reasons for thinking it might be?'

‘Oh no. It's just that since he was found, so close to
here, we've all had rather a creepy feeling. And then when there was this blood . . . '

‘But this house was empty, wasn't it, in December?' Fru Vibe nodded. ‘Did you hear anything from next door?'

‘Not a thing,' said Fru Vibe. ‘It was winter, Christmas. You sort of shut yourself away at that time of year.' And as the reality of the thing struck her, she shivered. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Nor do I,' said Fagermo. And as he turned to go towards the car, leaving Lindestad to cope with the protests of Fru Andersen at being moved into a blood-stained house which seemed likely to be infested by policemen, he stood in the street, looking down the road at the other blocks and muttered: ‘I think I'm going to have to do some research into these houses.'

The University Library, two floors down from Department of Languages and Literature, where Professor Nicolaisen had his office, presented next morning a fairly somnolent appearance. There were no students around: perhaps they were at lectures, or perhaps they never came. A few hen-like women scuttled around from shelves to catalogue clutching cards, books and periodicals, and having a frail, burdened look, as if the world were too much for them. An enquiry to the two pregnant ladies on the desk resulted in Fagermo being shown into the back room where Elisabeth Leithe worked. One glance at her was enough to dispel any idea of her as a conceivable murderess. She was barely five foot four, thin and pathetic, wearing a dreary nondescript cardigan over a nondescript dress, and having a dreary, washed-out face over a nondescript body. Fagermo tried to imagine a murder in which she took an active role: imagined Martin Forsyth obligingly kneeling on the floor of the
vindfang
while she swung a blunt instrument and bashed the back of his skull. The idea was absurd. Even as he turned into the doorway she was sitting at her desk, seeming merely to peer over it, and contemplating several great piles of books waiting to have something done to them. Her eyes were great wet globes, as if somehow too much was being expected of her by someone or other. Fagermo introduced himself, sat down, and weighed straight in.