Rogue's Gallery (8 page)

Flee it, I thought.

Gone were all hopes of serving this or that Danish
king. I had thought to bring international sophistication to the Danes' conduct of foreign affairs, but serving in an administration formed by King Fortinbras would be a nightmare. As soon as it was safe to do so I stuffed my belongings into a backpack and scuttled down to the docks. As luck would have it I found a fishing vessel ready to depart for Aberdeen. I breathed a sigh of relief as we crossed the bar and headed for the North Sea.

Thinking it over, the idea of Scotland appealed to me. The cussed old English Queen had, as near as dammit, named the King as her preferred successor. A fine, learned man, James VI, or so I'd heard. He had his drawbacks: a Danish queen and an anti-smoking obsession. But on the plus side he had two fine sons, a ready wit, and strong views on the divine rights of kings. He would need advice from some worldly-wise figure, someone with connections to the courts of Europe. Yes, there was no doubt about it: the Stuarts were the coming men. With my help they could become the foremost dynasty in Europe. I made a firm resolve to hitch my waggon to the rising star of the Stuarts!

Svein slowed down the car as we approached Fredshavn, probably to think. Svein can't drive fast and think at the same time, and he'd said to me as we set out: ‘Everything has got to be done
just right,
Loyd.' That was no doubt why he'd put me straight on the back seat. He doesn't mind me in the front seat if he forgets, but at other times he says it looks cutesy and odd, a dog on the front passenger seat. I can see through that sort of flannel. He's afraid people will think he's my chauffeur (which is pretty much what he is). But today, as we approached the high wrought-iron gates, I sat there unprotesting, so that everything was
just right.

Wrought-iron gates! you might think. I certainly did. Hardly a Norwegian touch. And that was only the start. Svein had to pull up in front of them, then get out and ring the bell on the right gatepost. Soon he was talking into thin air, then he jumped back into the car as the gates began swinging open to allow our admittance into the estate called Fredshavn. As we moved forward towards
the distant white house they closed silently behind us. We could be in Martha's Vineyard or Zurich. ‘Great wealth walks silently,' said the social philosopher dog Heidegger (fl. Trondheim 1920s). But he might have added that silently-walking money feels horribly creepy to those of us in the real world.

The hedges surrounding the estate, and the little box ones in the garden, were trimmed to within an inch of their lives, apparently with nail scissors. The grass was the same. No leaf, no blade was allowed the liberty of sprouting further than its fellows. All sign of individuality or enterprise was suppressed: all marched along like a splendidly-honed crack regiment, one body, not a thousand men. It was all very depressing.

‘We're mixing above our station,' said Svein. ‘No leaving your calling-card here, old boy.'

And the truth was, I wouldn't have dared.

We pulled up on a circular drive situated outside the front door. The door itself immediately opened, and a small man in something rather like a waiter's gear slipped out.

‘If you could put your car over by the stables?' he suggested insinuatingly, as if we had very nearly committed a serious
faux pas.
Svein nodded, drove over, then walked back to the house.

‘Keep it in, Loyd,' he whispered.

‘If you'd come this way, Herr … er …' said the small man, whose accent was south Norwegian, but whose inbuilt (or feigned) servility was all his own. In the hall he hesitated. ‘The dog …?'

‘Comes with me,' said Svein, to his credit. ‘He's part of the package.'

‘Aaah … Well, if you'll come with me? … The family is still at
middag
. I'm sure they won't be long.'

Our time had been specified, five forty-five, and we had arrived on the dot. The thought occurred to both of us that we had been intended to arrive during the family's
middag
to be kept waiting until they had finished it. We did not expect any explanation to be offered.

‘I used to know police chiefs like this,' whispered Svein to me as we waited in a little anteroom. ‘They'd give you an appointment for ten minutes before there was any chance of seeing you. Make sure you were sweating before the session even started.'

It was in fact twenty minutes before the manservant came back and invited us into the dining room to take coffee with the family. He once more gave me an
old-fashioned
look, but I was beginning to get the idea that he was finding the situation rather humorous. When we got into the large, light, airy room Svein pointed to a position by the door, from which I could take in the whole situation.

We were definitely mixing with our betters. The dining table was long and elegant, though only three people were eating at it. The three places had had removed all but the wine glasses and coffee cups, but those things and the central vase sparkled, sat elegantly, told the spectator how recherché and expensive everything was. Seated there, dressed formally, was a man in his early forties, a woman probably answering to mid-thirties, and a girl of about twelve.

‘Ah, Herr … er … urm. Will you take coffee?'

He made it very clear that inviting Svein to partake of
anything with the family, even so usual a thing as a cup of coffee, involved stooping. He introduced himself, his wife and his daughter, and they all sat down.

So here we were, among the nearest thing the Norwegian nation has to an aristocracy: Hans-Egil Fjørtoft, ship-owner, his wife Anne-Marie, and his daughter Ingrid. All three made a gesture towards making us welcome by quick, tight smiles. The daughter probably knew no better, poor thing. She would never have known anything else.

When Svein had been helped to coffee and had taken his suicidal amount of sugar in it, Herr Fjørtoft cleared his throat and began a clearly well-prepared introductory speech.

‘You'll be wondering why I called you. It is not without a great deal of thought that I've done so, but the truth is I need help of your particular kind.' (He made it sound like drain clearance.) ‘You may not know that I – and before me my father – have built up a collection of Norwegian art over the years—' He broke off to wave a hand in the direction of a picture on the wall.

‘Harriet Backer,' said Svein.

Herr Fjørtoft was clearly impressed. He didn't know Svein had seen it on the cover of a ‘Classics of the Hardangerfiddle' CD.

‘That's my latest acquisition, bought last month. But, on my father's initiative, we've specialised in Munch. In particular we have a very rich collection of the many variations he made of his most famous picture.'

No doubt thinking to be amusing, Svein, who one can't
take anywhere, opened his mouth, spread out his hands, and let out a peculiar noise. I gained the idea that the picture was called
The Howl.

‘Very comical,' said Fjørtoft, tight-lipped. ‘Yes, that picture. The number of preliminary studies and later variations on the components of that picture go into three figures.' (The man obviously thought in the number of figures any deal involved – pathetic.) ‘We have forty-seven studies. We regard our collection as something held in trust for the Norwegian people.'

Oh yes? I thought. And how many sweaty, jeans-clad, haversack-carrying ordinary Norwegians have been asked into the house to view the collection that you are holding in trust for them? ‘When someone says they're doing something for your benefit,' said the revolutionary dog thinker Che (fl. Hammerfest 1960s), ‘go and curl up in a corner and get out your reproachful expression.'

Before Svein had finished the syrupy coffee he so enjoyed, Herr Fjørtoft stood up.

‘Perhaps we should go and see the collection,' he said, in his lemon-sorbet sort of voice. We all began trooping out into the hall, but Frau Fjørtoft said off-handedly ‘I think I'll give this a miss,' and started up the stairs. Her husband did not react, and unlocked a door in a far corner of the hallway. We went into a small but light room, whose walls were full of engravings, lithographs, ink drawings and smallish colour pictures. All were versions of a
weird-looking
woman in a night landscape, her mouth open in a howl.

‘As you will see,' he said in his passionless voice, ‘there are
watercolour versions, lithographs, and so on, all variations either of the central woman of the picture, or of other elements in it. And we are always on the look-out for others,' he went on, still curiously uninterested in his manner of talking. ‘There are still many such images in private hands.'

‘Isn't it exciting?' said Ingrid, in her breathless, schoolgirl way. ‘Daddy says it's one of the dominating images of the twentieth century.'

‘And one day it will be yours,' he said without emotion.

So much for it being in trust for the Norwegian people. Since he could hardly be much more than in his early forties, that left him with thirty or forty years in control of the collection, with a like number for Ingrid later. Svein nodded, not commenting. And then he said:

‘Are there any of these of especial value?'

‘No. All are
quite
valuable, but their real worth is as a collection. Of course we let Munch scholars see them, if suitable arrangements can be made and watertight references are given.'

‘I see. Now I think I should meet your staff, and see also the reason you have become uneasy.'

Fjørtoft nodded, and led the way back to the hall. Here, though, he held back and let Ingrid take the lead, ushering us into a large kitchen, relic of the early twentieth-century lavishness favoured by Norwegian ship-owners who did well out of the Great War that their homeland did not participate in. The staff were seated round the table, eating their meal after preparing and serving the family meal. There were seven of them.

‘I suppose you met Mats,' said Ingrid, girlish still, but trying to be grown up. ‘He's our butler, or major-domo, or general head man. And this is Chris Farraday, my governess and companion.' She had indicated a young woman in her twenties – dark-haired, self-contained and intelligent. ‘She eats here because she's trying to learn Norwegian.' When Svein looked surprised, she added: ‘We don't talk much at dinner … We're not good talkers at all … And this is Vidar, our gardener, who has help from the village.' Of course Vidar was in his forties, silent, capable-looking, and he nodded acknowledgement. ‘This is Wenche, our cook.' The same age, stout, quiet, but with an incipiently satirical expression. ‘And there are Siri, Bente and Gry, who are sort of maids – they'd normally be gone by this time, but Daddy asked them to stay since you were coming.'

Svein nodded. ‘He was right. Because I need to make clear to you that what seems to be going on here is the work of a gang of art thieves – local, national, international.' He was becoming expansive, but to my ears his tone was gaining that unconvincing edge that told me he was telling porkies, or something a lot less than the whole truth. He had been told something by Hans-Egil when he was first called in that suggested to him an inside job. ‘So you're not under suspicion or observation, but what I need from you is that you go about your everyday tasks, your comings and goings, in the way you've always gone about them. What
you
do may influence when the thieves decide to strike.' He turned to the maids. ‘So today is an exception. In future you come and go in the regular way, understood?'

They nodded the glum assent of wage slaves who can't
wait to get away to Bergen, Hamburg or Soho. We went back to the hall where Fjørtoft was waiting for us uneasily. I guessed he never went into the servants' quarters. He led the way through the front door and round the house to the windows of the Munch room. He said, tight-lipped:

‘I mentioned on the phone the two pictures which had been misplaced.' He spoke with contained fury, like a Spanish Inquisitor speaking of an arcane blasphemy. ‘Then there was
this
.'

Svein examined the wood around the area where, inside, there was a latch. There were a series of random knife-cuts.

‘Ah yes. There seems to have been an attempt at a break-in,' he said, his voice now unmistakably his lying one. What we had there was not an attempt at a break-in but an attempt to suggest a break-in. ‘They would of course have set off the security alarms if they had succeeded.'

‘Of course,' said Fjørtoft. ‘One can only enter the room through the door from the hall that we used earlier, and then one must turn off the security switch just inside the door within two seconds of entering.'

‘How many keys are there to that door?'

‘One, mine. Oh, and one in my strongbox at Bergens Privatbank. In case of an accident, or something happening when I am abroad.'

‘That seems satisfactory. And now, if you will allow us, Loyd and I will walk around the grounds to see all possible means of access to the property.'

‘Is that necessary? Fredshavn is extremely secure.'

‘So was the National Gallery in Oslo,' said Svein. Fjørtoft looked taken aback, but he departed bad-temperedly.

‘Ha! Got him there, didn't I, old boy? That was where the oil painting of
The Scream
was stolen from in the 1990s.'

So it was
The Scream,
was it? I preferred my version. More canine, more desperate. As we walked around, Svein talked, as usual.

‘Cold old house, isn't it? Cold old household too. It's like going for a stroll in the Antarctic. You hear the ice floes crack and the icebergs collide. Not much fun growing up in a place like that. Or being the wife either, come to that. It's like Frau Fjørtoft had had a general anaesthetic or two, and not completely come out of them. Funny lot. Not really of this world. They think we accept that it's an outside job, but we don't, do we, old boy? Of course the obvious one to suspect is Hans-Egil himself. Staging a robbery to collect the insurance. Nobody goes by ship these days, do they, apart from cruises. Maybe the firm is on the rocks … Hello, what's that?'

I had seen him already and nudged Svein's ankles. It was a young man, maybe twenty, who was cutting away ruthlessly at a young tree. Svein turned on his heels and walked back to the house. He poked his head through the windows of the large kitchen and beckoned to Mats the butler.

‘Who's that boy I saw working over towards the east corner?'

Mats scratched his head.

‘Boy? Oh, that will be Semyon. One of these asylum people. Come from Chechnya or some such place. Works in one of the Bergen parks, and as a part-timer with us. Sleeps in the old stables.'

‘Why didn't you mention him?'

‘Didn't cross my mind, to tell you the truth. He can't speak Norwegian or English, so he doesn't communicate with any of us. Just comes and collects whatever's going to eat, and takes it back to the stables.'