Authors: Jorgen Brekke
* * *
The police station was located on the floor below his bedchamber, with an excellent view of the jail across the street. Nils Bayer sat in his office thinking about Jon Blund.
I don’t know what it is about that name
, he thought,
but it has a sinister ring to it
. In truth, a gloomy gray light had settled over this day, while the ungodly forces that had brought the horrors of the day into view remained hidden under a pitch-black veil. He’d opened the police log to write his report, but he realized that these sorts of musings were material for a poet, not a public official. His thoughts were not yet clear enough to be recorded in the log. This seemed to have clouded his mind and made him sluggish. And there was no one with whom he could discuss the matter.
Police prosecutor Sivert Bekk was out at Brattøra to inspect a Dutch ship that had docked the night before. The two officers whom Bayer employed, to whom he paid much too high a wage, were the illiterate and quarrelsome Torsten Reutz and the good-natured Jacob Torp. Both had been sent out to investigate. Reutz was to inquire at all of the city’s taverns to find out whether any brawls had taken place the previous night and, if so, whether weapons had been drawn. Once the occurrence of such an event had been established, the officer was charged with finding out whether anyone had been injured or killed during one of these fights. This had to be done, even though Bayer was convinced that Jon Blund was not killed in a common pub brawl.
The other police officer, Torp, had been told to ask the city’s coachmen whether they’d seen anything unusual during the night, such as passengers behaving oddly or wearing tattered and bloody clothing. Coachmen were often good witnesses. Unfortunately, the police chief had recently beaten a recalcitrant coachman with his police cane so hard that it broke, and the man had borne the imprint of the police emblem on his back for weeks afterward. Not that the coachman hadn’t deserved it. He had behaved shockingly toward Torsten Reutz, who had done nothing more than attempt to mediate in an argument between two coachmen waiting for their masters outside the cathedral one Sunday morning. The mediation failed, and the coachmen wound up in a scuffle. Reutz had found himself with no recourse but to summon Bayer himself, and when the more hot-tempered of the two coachmen hadn’t shown the chief the respect that his office deserved, Bayer had had no choice but to reprimand him. Regrettably, the coachman’s master was a powerful man in town, and he had filed suit against the police chief. The case had not resulted in any fine, but Bayer had lost the cooperation of the city’s coachmen. He was still hoping that Officer Torp, his most loyal assistant, would be able to get some information out of them.
Bayer was thinking about money—a never-ending topic for him. Four years ago, he’d paid the monstrous sum of 2,400
riksdaler
to secure the position as Trondheim’s police chief. It was sheer madness, of course. But it was those sorts of whims that governed his life. The loan he’d been forced to take at the time made it completely impossible for him to live on the three hundred
riksdaler,
the salary that came with the job. For that reason, he’d been fighting a long battle to be paid one
skilling
for every barrel of salt and grain that came into the city, such as the police chief in Kristiansand was allowed. He had also traveled all the way to Copenhagen to appeal to the king to increase his income by other means. But the chief administrative officer had refused to give him more. Bayer’s last accounting showed that after he’d paid the interest on his debt and the wages of his officers and prosecutor, as well as the other expenses of the police station, he would be left with an annual income of thirty
riksdaler.
Trondheim’s police chief was living in poverty, and he could only dream of ever starting a family of his own.
* * *
The police station consisted of one room with two desks, four chairs, a bookcase that held the police logs, and two windows that faced the street. The walls were bare timbers. The room also had one door, which had just opened. Torp’s round face and worn clothing came into view. Torp was a pious man with a large family. Bayer liked the man simply because, in spite of much digging, he’d never been able to find anything negative on Torp.
“The coachmen refuse to cooperate,” said Torp.
“Our good Lord and Savior! Do you mean to tell me that they’re still brooding about that incident?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And here I thought that the city’s coachmen had memories shorter than a fly’s. By God, I’ll change their minds. Where’s my cane?”
Bayer got up from his desk and took a quick swig from the flask that he’d filled with poor quality aquavit at the pub in Brattøra.
“Bunch of damned riffraff!” he grumbled. “Where are they now?”
“A lot of the coachmen are over on Munkegata, where a dinner has apparently been arranged for the city’s gentlemen. Not that I have any particular grasp of what’s right or wrong in such cases, and no one can say that I don’t have full confidence in the police chief’s judgment in every matter, but wasn’t it your cane that got us into this rather unfortunate situation to start with?” Torp ventured timidly.
“That may be, but let me tell you, I was not nearly generous enough with the blows I delivered. Those damned coachmen have no respect! This case won’t be solved until they’ve got the seal of the city pounded into their skin, one and all. Ah, here it is.”
Bayer strode across the room and grabbed his police cane, which was leaning against the wall next to the door. Then he threw on his coat, stuck the flask in his pocket, and left before Torp managed to voice any other objections.
On the doorstep, Bayer tripped and fell. He landed on the cobblestones on his stomach, knocking the air out of him. Furious, he tried to get up, but then he realized how exhausted he was. He fumbled in his coat until he found the flask. Then he slowly rolled onto his back and shook out the last drop. As he drank, something broke loose inside him. He felt tears welling up and was unable to hold them back. Those fucking coachmen, he thought. Fucking troubadours, fucking womenfolk, fucking life. Weeping, he got to his feet. There was now a hole in the right knee of his trousers. Then he picked up his cane and began slamming it against the ground. He kept on until it was completely shattered. The police emblem, the handle with the city’s coat of arms, flew across the street and landed in the gutter. Then he opened his mouth and the contents of his stomach gushed out of him.
He went back inside, not to the office, but up to his room. There he washed the vomit from his mouth with water that had been left in a pitcher from the day before. He filled the chamber pot to the brim, then went over to the window to empty it before he sank his heavy body onto the bed. Only sleep could bring him peace.
* * *
“Chief!”
No more than an hour could have passed, and no dreams had managed to enter Bayer’s hazy slumber before he was awakened by Torsten Reutz.
Bayer mumbled words that even he didn’t understand and sat up. Instinctively he reached for his flask, but then remembered it was empty.
“I hope you have a very good reason for disturbing my deep ruminations,” he said.
“Some would say that peace and order are more important than contemplation, for a police chief,” said Reutz, that shameless lout. Bayer always wondered if he ought to fire this swine who drank more than he did and was insolent and coarse in every way. And he would have if Reutz hadn’t proven so useful when it came to collecting fines and dealing with dishonest shop owners, or loose women who sold their wares from illegal stalls.
“What do you want?” Bayer growled, noticing that the gravy in his throat had once again congealed. He stretched and then took out his pipe and tobacco pouch from his waistcoat pocket.
“A brief report and an additional piece of information that I think will interest you,” said Reutz, spitting on the floor.
“For God’s sake, can’t you see the spittoon over there?” Bayer pointed to the corner near the window.
Reutz ignored the remark.
“It was quiet in the city last night. Not a single brawl to speak of. But in a pub on Bakklandet, I made an interesting discovery.”
“And what was that?” Bayer noticed that his curiosity was stronger than his annoyance.
“A Swedish gentleman took lodgings at the inn. He was apparently exceedingly well-dressed, in the latest fashion, as if he’d come straight from Paris. This gentleman inquired of the innkeeper whether he knew of a red-haired troubadour.”
“Heavens! That
is
interesting. And where might he be now?”
“He wasn’t in.”
“Good. I suspect that a distinguished gentleman such as himself probably would not speak to anyone other than the city’s police chief.” Nils Bayer got up from the bed. He was just one small dram away from being in a very good mood.
“
When did you
last see her?”
The newly built Rosenborg School was bright and open. Fredrik Alm was closed and dark. He was such a teenager. A bewildering time of life, Chief Inspector Singsaker thought. He’d been given the use of a conference room that faced the cafeteria. The buzzing voices of kids standing in line outside reminded him of the sound inside his own head. He tried to tune out the swarming voices, but it took a lot of energy to do so.
Fredrik Alm nervously rocked his chair back and forth. He sat against the far wall. Singsaker was on the other side of the table, blocking the view to the door. It was probably best that he was alone with the boy. Two police officers in such a small space would have scared him more than was necessary.
“Yesterday,” said Fredrik in a deep voice that sounded as uncertain as he looked. “She stopped by yesterday. We looked at pictures from the party.”
“The party?”
“The party at Dina Svensen’s house.”
“A big party?”
“No, only a few kids were invited.”
“I understand that you and Julie aren’t together anymore. Is that right?” asked Singsaker, trying to catch the boy’s eye. Fredrik kept his gaze focused on the table.
“Uh-huh,” he muttered.
“Yet you both go to the same parties, and she drops by your place to look at pictures afterward. Isn’t that a bit unusual?”
“I don’t know.”
Singsaker didn’t either. He’d been young so long ago.
“Where do you think she is, Fredrik?” he asked, realizing that he was diverging from the script.
“I don’t know.”
“Does she often disappear like this?”
Fredrik looked up from the table, then lowered his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said again.
Singsaker stared at him.
He’s scared
, he thought.
Probably because he likes the girl
.
“I’ve never been able to figure out what she’s thinking,” said Fredrik.
“Do you think she went away of her own free will?”
He didn’t reply, just stared at the table. Someone had written on the surface with a ballpoint pen:
Nadia Torp is a whore.
“Was it you or Julie who wanted to break up this time?” asked Singsaker.
For the first time, Fredrik looked the inspector in the eye.
“What do you mean?”
“The two of you broke up. One of you must have decided to call it quits.”
“Oh, right. It was her.”
“Yesterday when she came over, was there anything else she wanted to talk about besides the pictures from the party? I mean, couldn’t you have just posted them on Facebook?”
Fredrik was again staring down at the table. He held his hand in front of his mouth as he said, “No, there was nothing special.”
“Did she want to get back together?”
“We didn’t talk about that.”
Singsaker could tell that he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he switched to more concrete questions.
“Are you aware that Julie often takes her dog out for a walk in the evening?”
“Yes, she does every night.”
“And did she ever mention anything unpleasant that happened when she was out with the dog?”
“No.”
“Nobody who talked to her or bothered her? Nothing like that?”
“No, except…”
“Except what?”
“I went on the walk with her one night last week. There was a man shoveling his driveway. He asked her about something.”
“Do you remember what it was?”
“He asked her why she wasn’t singing. Julie always sang when she was out alone. But then he noticed me walking a few steps behind, and he didn’t say anything else. Julie seemed to know who he was.”
“Did she say how she happened to know him?”
“No, and I didn’t ask.”
Singsaker asked Fredrik to describe the man and the house where he lived while he took notes, thinking that they needed to check this out. He also jotted down the following frightening thought: “
There’s a similarity between Julie Edvardsen and the murder victim: Both of them sang when they went out walking. Coincidence?
”
* * *
The first two girls on the list of friends couldn’t tell Singsaker even as much as Fredrik had. Neither of them had seen Julie since the party on Saturday night. She’d been acting perfectly normal. Now Singsaker waited for the next girl. Feeling a bit embarrassed, he stared at the graffiti on the tabletop with the unflattering statement and realized it was referring to someone with the same name as the next witness. He spat on his thumb and tried to rub off the words before she arrived, but they were impossible to remove. So he decided to cover it with his notebook. That meant that he had to stretch out his hand in a rather uncomfortable position in order to write anything down, but he’d manage.
Nadia Torp had been more liberal with her makeup than the other two girls Singsaker had spoken to, but it was still discreetly applied. Had something changed with the way girls wore makeup? Something he wasn’t aware of? He assumed that she also had what her girlfriends would call “her own style.” She was wearing an oversize old T-shirt with a picture of the equally old Norwegian punk band Kjøtt on the front. She must have gotten it from her father or a cool uncle. Over it she wore a reddish brown ribbed-knit cardigan with ruched sleeves. It looked expensive. Singsaker didn’t think she looked like a whore at all. He thought she looked cool.