Death in a Cold Climate (5 page)

The mouth crinkled now. ‘Would you care to hazard an opinion as to the cause of death?' he asked.

The police surgeon, who liked his humour cosy, folksy and conventional, merely pursed his lips and fixed his eyes on the smash at the back of the skull. Jokes were of his life a thing apart–they were Fagermo's whole existence.

‘There's something about that body,' Fagermo went on. ‘The shape. Look at those thighs and calves. Thin, aren't they? The chest too, though he looks a healthy young chap. He doesn't look like a skier, does he?'

‘Is there any reason why he should be one?'

‘People don't usually go skiing naked, agreed–not at this time of year anyway. Still, most of the young people around here do ski . . . '

‘Are there any young people missing from around here?'

‘There are always missing young people. You find they've gone to sea, or to the university, or something . . . That fair hair, now–it's almost yellow, isn't it? Very unusual. Have you had a look at his teeth?'

‘I've had the body no more than a few minutes,' said the surgeon, rather snappily. He went to the head and peered into the jaws. The body was still half frozen, and he was careful not to disturb the gaping wound at the back of the skull. He took a torch and shone it into the slightly open mouth.

‘You could be right,' he said at last. ‘There's dental work there that doesn't look Norwegian. I'll be able to tell you more when I've had a more thorough look.'

Fagermo went on looking, his lips pursed as he considered the boy's way of death. ‘Whoever did it,' he said at last, ‘clearly didn't want it identified. He stripped off everything before he took it out and buried it in the snow.
Including a ring, you notice. It could have been a fairly messy business.'

‘He could have been naked when it was done,' objected the police surgeon.

‘It's a possibility, but I fancy not,' said Fagermo. ‘Look at the neck. There seems a definite line to the blood from the wound–as if it's been stopped by something: a shirt, a jacket, something fairly tight that's later been removed.'

‘If so, it could certainly have been messy,' said the surgeon.

‘So the longer the body is unidentified, the better our friend will like it,' mused Fagermo. ‘I think this calls for a bit of inspired guesswork . . . Wasn't there a missing persons ad from us in the paper five or six weeks ago? Some tourist or other, I seem to remember–a young lad.'

‘Search me,' said the police surgeon. ‘I wait for trouble to come to me.'

Fagermo looked at him with his characteristic look of somnolent humour, and went outside to his car. He put it in gear, and did the two-minute drive back to the station. There he went through to the inner office, a large but windowless room, rather smoky and smelly. Here was where most of the policemen in Tromsø spent much of their time during their spells of weekday duty (it was the weekends that were rich in hooliganism and drunkenness, and then they could sometimes be seen on the streets). And here they mostly were now, shirt-sleeved and feet up.

‘Who's missing?' said Fagermo casually as he went in, looking around from under his heavy lids.

‘That's what we were just discussing,' said one young constable, with some traces of eagerness still in him. ‘There was that young Fagertun boy –'

‘He ran away because his father knocked him around,' said Fagermo. ‘Don't blame him either–we should have locked the man up years ago if we'd had any gumption.
We'll find he's got a job on a boat I wouldn't mind betting. In any case he's much too young–only fifteen or sixteen, and I seem to remember the description said dark. What about foreigners?'

‘Foreigners?' There was a general vacant look.

‘You know, Germans, Englishmen, Americans, people who come from overseas,' said Fagermo in a deceptively helpful manner.

There was a general pause for heavy cogitation.

‘There was that boy,' finally said Sergeant Hyland, stroking his superb dark moustache and looking wise. ‘That boy we put out a notice about.'

‘Yes?'

‘Old Botilsrud at the Alfheim Pensjonat came in about him. Don't think there was anything in it myself. Boy had obviously cut off with some girl. He'd left behind a knapsack, but that didn't mean much, because there was very little in it. We put out the notice just in case, but nobody's come along.'

‘But he was foreign?'

‘So Botilsrud said. Couldn't put a nationality to it, though. Of course his records were all to pot.'

‘Get Botilsrud,' said Fagermo. And as Sergeant Hyland casually finished off his cup of coffee and started looking for his cap he added in a whiplash voice: ‘Fast!'

As Sergeant Hyland went through the door in as near as he liked to get to a hurry, Fagermo said: ‘I'll be next door. I'd better have a chat to the chappies who found him, though I don't suppose they can know anything of much interest.'

In the waiting-room next door the rather weedy man with the fat red cheeks and incipient tummy was sitting with his brown dog at his feet–the dog crouched forward, his head between his paws, suspicious and melancholy, painfully convinced that kennels were in the offing, or an
injection, or some other dimly remembered canine disaster. By them sat the other witness to the discovery of the body–a well-set-up man of thirty-five or so, sporty, and half in, half out of ski gear. They were talking a weird mixture of Norwegian and English, in which they were misunderstanding each other very amiably.

‘Ah,' said Fagermo to the Englishman, and sticking to English for safety's sake, ‘now it was you who found the body, wasn't it?'

‘Well–him really,' said the man, pointing to his dog, who brushed the dusty floor with a tentative wag of the tail. ‘He was making such a fuss I had to go over and look. Then Captain–what was it?–Horten came down, and we both more or less found it together.'

‘I see. And you are –?'

‘My name's Mackenzie. Dougal Mackenzie. I'm a Reader in Marine Geology at the university.'

‘And I'm with the navy, of course,' said Captain Horten.

‘Good,' said Fagermo. ‘Well, when you'd seen it was a body, what did you do next?'

‘Well, we didn't disturb anything–that's very important, isn't it?'

‘Oh yes. Though it would be more important if we thought he was lured naked under some pretence or other and killed there on the spot, but that seems unlikely. Still, at that stage you could hardly know.'

‘No–we didn't realize.' The Englishman's face had fallen. ‘We only waited to see that the ear was joined to a head, if you see what I mean. Not just a stray ear. Anyway, we put Jingle on his lead–I hope he didn't damage the body–and then one of us had to ring for the police. Captain Horten lives in Anton Jakobsensvei, only a minute or so away, so he went and I stayed on guard. Then the police came and took over.'

‘I see. Well, I don't suppose there's any more help you can give. Have you seen the body?'

‘Yes,' said Horten. ‘We both cut off home for a bite to eat, then came along here. They took us over to see–it–soon after they brought it in. I'm afraid I can't help: I've never seen him before.'

‘And you?' said Fagermo, turning hopefully to the Englishman.

‘No, never,' said Dougal Mackenzie. ‘It's not one of my students.'

‘You thought it looked like a student, did you?'

‘Well, he looked about the right age, that's all. And I'd heard there'd been several student suicides recently, though you seem to hush them up in this country.'

‘Hmm,' said Fagermo, not too pleased with the expression ‘hush up'. ‘Well, if that wound on the back of his head was caused by the lad himself, he'd have made his fortune in a circus. I won't keep you, but we'll certainly be needing you for the inquest. If you'll both just leave your addresses in the outer office . . . '

In the outer office, and making a superb fuss about it, was old Botilsrud from the Alfheim Pensjonat. He had not changed his manner since January (any more than he appeared to have changed his clothes), but behind the shrill cantankerousness and crankiness Fagermo detected a degree of human relish which he recognized as all too familiar: it was the feeling that he might be in on something important, something sensational even, and the anticipation that it would provide material to bore his guests with as he served them meals and illegal drinks in the months to come. Such emotions Fagermo had come to recognize as among the less pleasant side-dishes to murder.

‘This'll be a lesson to me,' he was saying in his high, thickly accented voice. ‘Never give information to the
police. Keep my mouth shut in future. I brought it on myself, and I'll take care not to do it again.'

‘I hadn't noticed you made a habit of trotting along to us with gen about the criminal activities of your guests in the past,' said Sergeant Hyland in his world-weary voice. ‘Quite the reverse seems to be the usual pattern, I'd say.'

‘Dragged away in the middle of serving dessert–what does it look like, eh? Driven away in a police car. Most of my guests will have paid up and left by now.'

‘What a refined type of clientele you must have,' said Hyland. ‘You must have gone up in the world since I was last there.'

‘Nonsense, Botilsrud, they'll be sitting up waiting for details,' said Fagermo, genially breaking in on the double act. ‘Your guests aren't fazed by the word “police”, if I know them. And I could even slip a word to the reporters about how helpful you've been.'

‘Then everyone will assume I've done it, whatever it is,' grumbled Botilsrud.

‘Come into my office, will you?' said Fagermo. ‘No, wait: better come over to the morgue first.'

Botilsrud did not seem to have caught the last bit, for he muttered all the way out to the main entrance: ‘If you was to tell the reporters you was deeply indebted to me for promptly coming forward as soon as I noticed the disappearance and the invaluable assistance I've rendered since . . . '

‘It doesn't sound like anything anyone would believe,' said Fagermo. ‘We usually like to assume the public wants to be helpful.'

‘Here, where are you taking me?' said Botilsrud, as he was hustled back into the police car.

‘The morgue,' said Fagermo, and kept quiet until they got there, though Botilsrud kept up his aggrieved whine. Fagermo opened the door to the morgue and signalled to
the police surgeon to cover the body to the neck.

‘Oh,' said Botilsrud, looking through the door; ‘it's a body, is it? I thought it might be.' The idea did not seem to upset him.

‘Yes, that's what morgues are for,' said Fagermo. ‘Nothing too unpleasant, though.'

‘Oh, I've seen bodies enough in my time,' said Botilsrud. ‘In the war, you know. I was in the Resistance.'

‘And never left it since,' said Fagermo. ‘Now–do you recognize him?'

Botilsrud came close to the dead face and squinted at it for some seconds. It looked almost as if he were trying to smell his breath. Then he straightened and said: ‘Yes, that's him. As far as I can say for sure. My eyesight's not so good as it was.'

‘That'll do to be going on with,' said Fagermo. ‘We might be able to get some more definite identification later on, when we have put a name to him. Let's go back to my office.'

They drove back again, and trailed up the cold stairs of the police station to Fagermo's office, this time Botilsrud making the journey in silence.

‘Now,' said Fagermo as he closed the door, ‘let me hear all you know about this boy.'

‘I told Ekland and Hyland everything I know,' said Botilsrud. ‘Why do you all want to waste my time? You could just go and look up their reports.'

‘We didn't know then what we know now,' said Fagermo, mentally adding the rider: and Ekland and Hyland haven't got the brains of a pair of pea-hens. ‘I gather since there was no name on the missing persons notice that you don't know his name. How come?'

‘It was near Christmas. My lists were in a muddle.'

‘Ah yes. Either through drink, or you're doing an income-tax fiddle. Not that that's anything I'm interested
in. So this boy didn't book in advance, then?'

‘He rang, as far as I remember,' said Botilsrud sullenly. ‘I think he rang up from town, then turned up at my place half an hour later.'

‘Ah ha–then he probably tried the hotels in town, found them full, and then went to the telephone directory. Might be worth making enquiries to see. Was this in the morning?'

‘It's a long time ago now,' grumbled Botilsrud. ‘It was a busy period. If you'd asked me in January, now . . . '

‘What were you doing when he turned up?'

‘Beds,' said Botilsrud, after a pause for concentration. ‘Came down from doing the beds, and showed him straight to his room. So it must have been morning.'

‘There, you see. If he'd arrived by coastal steamer he wouldn't get here till three. So if he came from any distance, he probably arrived by plane. Now–did you have any sort of conversation with him?'

‘No. Why should I? I was busy. Anyway, the lad was foreign.'

‘You don't know what nationality?'

‘No–I told the sergeant. He spoke Norwegian, but he didn't have enough to have a conversation in.'

‘Now that's interesting: just how much Norwegian did he have? Just a couple of phrases, for example–
takk
and
god dag
–a few things like that?'

‘More than that,' said Botilsrud. ‘He asked on the phone if I had a room–very slow, like, but it was in Norwegian. And he seemed to understand what I said to him–when I told him the cost of the room, and said he had to pay in advance.'

‘So perhaps a foreign student of Norwegian, or someone who'd been living here for a bit? Or would you expect a student to have a bit more than he had?'