The Writing on the Wall (11 page)

‘First it was so quiet that I was sure he’d left. But there was a smell, a smell I couldn’t identify … and when I got right into the room, there he lay, on the bed, in a really contorted position, wearing just, just … I had to be sick, so I dashed into the loo, but nothing came up. It was just my stomach turning, my whole
diaphragm
heaving, it hurt so. I think that’s what made me sick now I come to think of it.’

‘That’s not impossible.’

‘I never wear any stuff like that myself … I mean, black, it seems kinky to me.’

I didn’t comment on that aspect. ‘Was there anything in the room to indicate what had been going on there?’

‘Well, it looked as though there’d been a party. They’d helped themselves to beer from the mini-bar, and there were pillows – on the floor, one of the chairs had been knocked over, and in the bathroom …’

‘Yes?’

‘Just behind the toilet bowl, I saw it when I was bending over to be sick, there was a bottle lying on the floor, an empty – bottle of tablets.’

‘What did you do with it?’

She looked at me wide-eyed. ‘Do with it? I told the police, of course!’

‘Was there anything on the label?’

‘Do you really think I looked at it? It was all I could do to stand up. What I needed was – well …’

I drained my coffee. ‘Was there anything else in the room you particularly noticed?’

‘Nothing except what he’d … He’d tried to write something on the wall …’

‘What? He’d tried to write something?’

‘At first I thought it was blood that he’d smeared around, but then … There was no blood apart from that, and I … then I
realised
it was lipstick.’

She looked at me with an air of intense unease. ‘He’d
painted
himself, worse than the worst …’ She ran her fingers round her lips as though to show what she meant.

‘So he’d tried to write something, with the lipstick?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was it?’

‘First it looked just like a few squiggles, but later … it was a letter.’

‘A letter! Which one?’

‘A big – “T”.’

SOURCES ARE
, if anything, more important in my line than they are for the press and protected by just as strict a code of
confidentiality
. Maybe that was why I had so many useful contacts in the dailies.

The editorial world was a labyrinth, and a well-lit one, not so much because it was supposed to be difficult to find one’s way through it but to make room for as many people as possible in the currently available space.

I found Laila Mongstad in a little cubicle at the far end, with half a window facing the back of the Social Sciences block in
Foss-winckels
Street and the Catholic school in the next building. It was almost four years now since, at a surprisingly late stage in her career, she had been poached from the paper’s more radical cousin in Christian Michelsens Street and had long confirmed her
reputation
as a such a first-class reporter on social affairs that the paper had already been in the dock twice to answer libel charges
following
some of her revelations.

Perhaps it was all the dirt she spent her time digging up that had made her previously generous smile slightly frayed at the edges; or perhaps it was just age claiming its due. She’d kept up quite a pace over a career of thirty or forty years in newspapers, and, despite the fact that her blue-grey eyes were still full of energy and
dynamism
, I quickly calculated that she’d certainly turned sixty since we’d last had something special going. And we’d never really got any further than that.

The smile she gave me betrayed nothing. Her eggshell-blue silk blouse emphasised her large breasts, but I noted that she had done up the lower buttons of her red cardigan, most likely to
camouflage
the size of her waist above the tight-fitting dark-blue slacks.

‘How are you?’ I began cautiously.

‘Is this a friendly visit, or is it work?’ she answered, swivelling her chair away from the computer keyboard she was using.

‘Both.’

‘In that case, you’d better sit down.’

‘Thanks. Which shall we start with?’

She gave a crooked smile. ‘Which’ll take longer?’

‘I’m sure you know about – that girl they’ve found up on Fanafjell …’

‘Holger’s daughter. It’s dreadful. But …’

‘She’d been missing for a whole week, and I … I was hired two days ago to try and find her.’

‘I see. You got there too late?’

‘I wasn’t even close – but I did find something out.’

‘Oh?’

‘One of the places I learned she’d hung out in a good deal is an amusement arcade called Jimmy’s.’

She pulled a face. ‘Jimmy’s …’

‘Know the place?’

She pulled out a drawer in her desk. ‘How did you find out that she hung out there?’

‘One of her girlfriends said so.’

‘It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, of course, but …’

She had taken a large beige envelope out of the drawer. Now she opened it and tipped about twenty black-and-white
enlargements
onto the desk. ‘One of our photographers took these from a parked car at the beginning of January.’

She pushed four of the pictures over to me.

I looked at them. They showed the entrance to Jimmy’s. A young girl was coming out. In the next picture she was walking along the pavement, as the dark shadow of a moving car came into the picture from the right. In the third picture she stood half leaning over, looking into the car, and in the fourth she was
climbing
into the passenger seat beside the driver.

The car’s number plate had been touched up and was quite legible. I glanced up at Lalla Mongstad. ‘Have you checked out who the car owner is?’

She nodded.

‘And – ?’

She looked around and leaned so close that I caught a hint of her perfume, a fresh, sap-like scent. ‘A not entirely unknown local politician … You know who Hallstein Grindheim is, don’t you?’

‘The Christian People’s Party man?’

‘Unfortunately, you can’t see the driver.’

‘You mean you don’t know who the driver was?’

‘No.’

I looked at the other pictures. ‘Are there more like these?’

She leafed through a few pictures before taking three out and pushing them over to me.

One of them was almost identical to the first one I’d seen. It showed another young girl coming out of Jimmy’s. The next one showed her walking along the pavement in another street. I had to look closer at a couple of the hoardings to identify where it was. The third showed her going through the main entrance of the same hotel I’d visited myself a few hours before.

‘And then?’ I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘There’s a limit to how far we can follow this up, but … a rendezvous in one of the rooms?’ She handed me a fourth picture. ‘Here she’s on her way out two hours later.’

‘Where did she go then?’

‘To the bus station and then took the last bus home.’

‘But your paper hasn’t written about this yet, as far as I recall.’

‘No. At the moment we’re just gathering background material. When we come out with this stuff we must have cast-iron
evidence
to back it up.’

‘Excellent. What more do you know? I take it your people have been poking around at Jimmy’s too?’

‘You know who owns the place?’

I hesitated. ‘No, but since you say it like that … it’s Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, isn’t it?’

‘No, but you’re on the right track. The initials are the same.’

‘Birger Bjelland?’

‘Mm.’

‘Does this mean, in other words, that something can be pinned on the guy at last?’

She pouted sceptically. ‘Mm. Maybe we should put it like this … A long time ago he showed that he has as many lives as a cat. We can possibly shorten his life account by one if this really nails him.’

‘What about Hallstein Grindheim? Have you confronted him with the pictures?’

‘Not yet. But if we can only get him full frontal, he’s going to find it on the front page!’

‘With clothes or without?’

She bared her teeth, and I noticed how pointed her eye teeth seemed. ‘Without as well …’

‘But to come back to Jimmy’s, have you lot been to take a look around there?’

‘I’m too old and the wrong sex, in any case.’

‘But – ?’

‘Sure, I do have younger colleagues with the right calibre between their legs.’ She looked at me provocatively as though to intimate that I perhaps didn’t match up to her standards in that department. ‘But it’s hard to put your finger on anything specific. From the outside it looks like a normal amusement arcade. Most of those playing the machines are boys, and, of course, we don’t rule out the possibility that there might be some – traffic there too, but … it looks as though girls are the speciality, especially teenagers. They probably recruit the grown-up girls from
somewhere
else.’

‘The bar at the Week End Hotel, for instance?’

‘That hotel’s also changed its name recently, so … yes.’

‘Oh really? Very recently?’

‘Somebody’s bought out the family.’

‘Somebody?’

‘And it’s not Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson either.’

‘I see. So what do they call the hotel now? The Secret Garden?’

‘Is it a while since you ate?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pastel.’

‘So they’ve painted it as well, have they?’

She nodded.

‘I’m going to throw up.’

‘That’s why I asked …’

‘Mm. Well …’ I threw up my hands. ‘In other words, you’re strongly suggesting that Jimmy’s operates as a sort of procuring joint?’

‘Yes, I am – unfortunately.’

‘And how does it all work?’

‘Via a phone call to whoever’s on duty behind the counter. He writes something on a pad, and after a while the message is discreetly passed to whichever of the girls is in line for an – assignment.’

‘Then some of them are fetched by car, while others meet at a prearranged rendezvous?’  

‘Something like that.’

I leafed through the photos again, trying to read the
expressions
on the faces of the two young girls. You could see from their build that they were two different girls, but the photos were too indistinct to make out who they were.

I put aside one of the photos from the series ending at the hotel entrance. Then I pushed it over to her. ‘Could this be – Torild Skagestøl?’

She looked at me thoughtfully before picking up the picture and holding it away from her. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever set eyes on her … but some of the others could be …’ She glanced back at me. ‘Do you think there’s a direct link between this and the fact that she was killed?’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time a …’ I was reluctant to use the word. ‘That something like this has happened to a – prostitute, would it?’

‘No, you’re quite right there.’ She suddenly looked worried. ‘Ought I to inform the editorial board about this?’

‘For the sake of the girl’s reputation – and the parents – I’d rather we kept it between ourselves for the moment.’

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she said, suddenly looking official.

I pointed at the picture of the front of the hotel. ‘Doesn’t this ring any other bells?’

‘Should it?’

‘Last Friday at the same hotel.’

She snapped her fingers. ‘Brandt!’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Do you mean …?’

‘It was rumoured that he’d had a female visitor in his room, wasn’t it?’

‘And he did have, Varg, no doubt about it!’

‘Precisely.’

‘A municipal judge – and a man from the Christian People’s Party. It’s starting to add up to something …’

‘And it wasn’t exactly a book club meeting, was it?’

‘But … strictly speaking, this is a police matter, isn’t it?’

‘Sure, but then I haven’t said … I mean I was looking for Torild Skagestøl before she was found. I told the police what little I knew, but now you’ve got a lot more dynamite on Jimmy’s …’

She looked at me doubtfully. ‘But I’m not sure I want to publish all that yet. Besides, I’m sure the police checked out these activities long ago.’

‘Checked them out – and didn’t do anything?’

‘Are any of the girls under age?’

‘Well, no, not any of the ones I’ve spoken to.’

‘Exactly. So evidence has to be found that someone’s making money out of them.’

I thought for a moment. ‘Who knows most about prostitution in this city at the moment? I mean
outside
the police?’

‘In that case, I’d have a word with one of the people behind the most active Women’s Lib groups.’

‘Can you suggest anybody?’

‘Someone you could talk to and who also knows what she’s talking about professionally is Evy Berge.’

‘And who’s she?’

‘A nurse in A&E at Haukeland Hospital.’

‘Do you have any phone numbers?’

She turned to her computer and clicked the mouse. As the list of phone numbers came up on the screen, she said: ‘Some of these girls have had to go ex-directory … Evy too, actually. That means you have to keep it to yourself.’ She wrote down something on a yellow message pad. ‘Here’s the number of the department as well, in case she’s on duty. Actually …’ She started ferreting through the bundle of papers on the left-hand side of the desk. ‘Didn’t she give me …? Yes, here it is!’

She handed me a circular on which, under the title
RECLAIM THE NIGHT!
, a demonstration was announced for eleven p.m. the following Monday in C Sundts Street.

‘Will you be there?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m still keeping my distance from that, er – particular matter. But it might do you some good,’ she added with a pointed little smile.

‘Does this mean we’re onto the
friendly
part now? Is that it?’

She leaned forward and came a little closer, looking into my eyes with a rather ambiguous twinkle and said softly: ‘Still got any friendliness left, Varg? Is that a glimmer of belated love I see deep in there?’

The worst of it was that she almost made me blush. ‘Er – belated?’

‘Yes?’ She leaned a little closer still and took my hands.

We got no further. The door into the corridor flew open, and we heard the sound of hurried footsteps rushing into the room before a loud voice shouted: ‘I’m bloody well not having it! Buggered if I am!’

Through the shouting, I immediately recognised the voice. It was Holger Skagestøl.