Slay Ride Read online

  Declining a pressing invitation from Arne to dine with him and Kari, I ate early at the Grand and went upstairs to do my homework.

  The police had been painstaking, but the net result, as Lars had said, was nil.

  A long and immensely detailed autopsy report, filled with medical terms I only half understood, concluded that the deceased had died of three overlapping depressed fractures of the skull. Unconsciousness would have been immediate. Death followed a few minutes later: the exact interval could not be specified. Immersion was subsequent to death.

  The nylon rope found on the deceased had been unravelled strand by strand, and an analysis had indicated it to be part of a batch manufactured the previous spring and distributed during the summer to countless shops and ships’ chandlers throughout greater Oslo.

  The nylon rope found embedded in a concrete block in the Øvrevoll pond was of identical composition.

  The cement block itself was a sort of sandbag in widespread use for sea-walling. The type in the pond was very common, and none of the contractors currently using it could remember having one stolen. The writer of the report added his own personal opinion that no contractor would ever miss one single bag out of hundreds.

  The properties of the bag were such that its ingredients were crumbly when dry, but solidified like rock under water. The nylon rope had been tied tightly round the cement bag while it had still been dry.

  Extensive enquiries had dug up no one who had heard or seen any activity round the pond on either the night of the deceased’s disappearance or the night he had been removed from the water. The night-watchman had proved a dead loss. There were lists of everything they had found in Bob Sherman’s pockets and in his over-night bag. Clothes, watch, keys were all as they should be: it was papers I was interested in, and they, after a month submerged, were in a pretty pulpy state.

  Passport and air ticket had been identified. Currency notes had been nearly all British: total value fifteen pounds sterling. There had been no Norwegian money to speak of, and certainly not five canvas bags of it.

  The report made no mention of any papers or ruins of papers being found in the overnight bag. Nor of photographs: and photographic paper fared better than most under water.

  I read everything through twice and drew no conclusions which the police hadn’t. Bob Sherman had had his head bashed in, and later he’d been roped to a cement bag and dumped in the pond. By person or persons unknown.

  By person or persons who were doing their damndest, also, to remain unknown.

  I lifted the polythene-wrapped knife from my sponge case and propped it against the reading lamp; and immediately the slice down my chest took up throbbing where it had left off that morning. Why was it, I wondered irritably, that cuts only throbbed at night?

  It was as well though to have that to remind me not to walk trustingly into hotel rooms or hail the first taxi that offered. Business had been meant in London, and I saw no safety in Oslo.

  I smiled ruefully to myself. I was getting as bad as Arne at looking over my shoulder.

  But there could be a lot more knives where that one came from.

  10

  In the morning I took the knife along to the police and told them how I’d come by it. The man in charge of the case, the same policeman who had been overseeing the dragging of the pond, looked at me in a sort of startled dismay.

  ‘We will try to trace it, as you ask. But this knife is not rare. There are many knives of this kind. In English those words Norsk Stål on the blade merely mean Norwegian steel.’

  His name was Lund. His air that of long-term policemen everywhere: cautious, watchful, friendly with reservations. It seemed to me that many policemen were only completely at ease with criminals; and certainly the ex-policemen who worked for the investigation branch of the Jockey Club always spoke of petty crooks more affectionately than of the general public.

  Dedicated to catching them, policemen also admired criminals. They spoke the same language, used the same jargon. I knew from observation that if a crook and a detective who didn’t know each other turned up at the same social gathering, they would unerringly seek each other out. Unless one of them happened to be chasing the other at that moment, they would get on well together; a fact which explained the apparently extraordinary shared holidays which occasionally scandalised the press.

  Lund treated me with scrupulous fairness as a temporary colleague. I thanked him warmly for letting me use his files, and he offered help if I should need it.

  I said at once that I needed a car with a driver I could trust, and could he recommend one.

  He looked at the knife lying on his desk.

  ‘I cannot lend you a police car.’ He thought it over, then picked up a telephone, gave some Norwegian instructions, put down the receiver, and waited.

  ‘I will ask my brother to drive you,’ he said. ‘He is an author. His books make little money. He will be pleased to earn some for driving, because he likes driving.’

  The telephone buzzed and Lund evidently put forward his proposition. I gathered that it met with the author’s approval because Lund asked when I would like him to start.

  ‘Now,’ I said. ‘I’d like him to collect me here.’

  Lund nodded, put down the receiver, and said ‘He will be here in half an hour. You will find him helpful. He speaks English very well. He worked once in England.’

  I spent the half hour looking through mug-shots, but my London assailant was nowhere to be seen.

  Lund’s brother Erik was a bonus in every way.

  He met me in the front hall with a vague distracted grin as if he had been waiting for someone else. A tallish man of about fifty-five, he had sparse untidy blond hair, a shapeless old sports jacket, and an air of being totally disorganised: and he drove, I soon discovered, as if other cars were invisible.

  He waved me from the police building to a small-sized cream Volvo waiting at the kerb. Dents and scratches of varying rust vintages bore witness to long and sturdy service, and the boot was held shut by string. Upon opening the passenger-side door I found that most of the interior was already occupied by a very large Great Dane.

  ‘Lie down, Odin,’ Erik said hopefully, but the huge dog understood no English, remained on his feet, and slobbered gently down my neck.

  ‘Where first?’ Erik asked. His English, as his brother had said, was splendid. He settled himself in the driver’s seat and looked at me expectantly.

  ‘What did your brother tell you?’ I asked.

  ‘To drive you around and if possible make sure no one bumps you off.’ He said it as casually as if he’d been entrusted to see me on to the right train.

  ‘What are you good at?’ I said curiously.

  ‘Driving, boxing and telling tales out of school.’

  He had a long face, deeply lined round the eyes, smoother round mouth and chin: evidence of a nature more at home with a laugh than a scowl. In the course of the next few days I learnt that if it hadn’t been for his highly developed sense of the ludicrous, he would have been a dedicated communist. As it was he held good radical left wing views, but found himself in constant despair over the humourlessness of his fellow travellers. He had worked on the gossip pages of newspapers throughout his youth, and had spent two years in Fleet Street; and he told me more about the people he was driving me to visit than I would have dug out in six weeks.

  ‘Per Bjørn Sandvik?’ he repeated, when I told him our first destination. ‘The upright man of the oil fields?’

  ‘I guess so,’ I said.

  He took off into the traffic without waiting for a gap. I opened my mouth and shut it again: after all, if his brother was trusting him to keep me alive, the least I could do was let him get on with it. We swung round some hair-raising corners on two wheels but pulled up unscathed outside the main offices of Norsk Oil Imports Ltd. The Great Dane licked his great chops and looked totally unmoved.

  ‘There you are,’ Erik said, pointing to an imposing double door e
ntrance into a courtyard. ‘Through there, turn left, big entrance with pillars.’

  ‘You know it?’

  He nodded. ‘I know most places in Oslo. And most people.’ And he told me about his years on the newspapers.

  ‘Tell me about Per Bjørn, then.’

  He smiled. ‘He is stuffy, righteous, and has given himself to big business. During the war he wasn’t like that at all. When we were all young, he was a great fighter against the Nazis, a great planner and saboteur. But the years go by and he has solidified into a dull lump, like the living core of a volcano pouring out and dying to dry grey pummice.’

  ‘He must have some fire left,’ I objected. ‘To be the head of an oil company.’

  He blew down his nostrils in amusement. ‘All the oil companies in Norway are tied hand and foot by government regulations, which is as it should be. There is no room for private speculation. Per Bjørn can only make decisions within a small area. For anything above ordering new ashtrays he has to have permission from the government.’

  ‘You approve of that?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘What do you know about his family?’ I asked.

  His eyes glimmered. ‘He married a thoroughly boring plain girl called Ragnhild whose dad just happened at that time to be the head man in Norsk Oil Imports.’

  I grinned and climbed out of the car, and told him I would be half an hour at least.

  ‘I brought a book,’ he said equably, and pulled a tattered paperback of The Golden Notebook out of his jacket pocket.

  The courtyard, tidily paved, had a stone-edged bed of frostbitten flowers in the centre and distinguished pale yellow buildings all round the edge. The main entrance to the left was imposing, and opposite, to the right, stood a similar entrance on a much smaller scale. The wall facing the entrance from the street was pierced with tall windows and decorated with shutters, and the whole opulent little square looked more like a stately home than an oil company’s office.

  It was, I found, both.

  Per Bjørn’s secretary fielded me from the main entrance, shovelled me up one flight of carpeted stairs and into his office, told me Mr Sandvik was still at a meeting but would not be long, and went away.

  Although the building was old the head man’s room was modern, functional, and highly Scandinavian, with thickly double-glazed windows looking down into the courtyard. On the wall hung a simple chart of a rock formation with layers labelled impermeable, source, permeable and reservoir; a list saying things like spudded Oct. ’71, plugged and abandoned Jan. ’72; and three brightly coloured maps of the North Sea, each of them showing a different aspect of the oil drilling operations going on there.

  In each map the sea area was subdivided along lines of latitude and longitude into small squares which were labelled ‘Shell’, ‘Esso’, ‘Conoco’, and so on, but although I looked carefully I could see none marked Norsk Oil Imports.

  The door opened behind me and Per Bjørn Sandvik came in, as pleasant and easy as ever and giving every impression of having got to the top without pushing.

  ‘David,’ he said in his high clear diction, ‘sorry to keep you waiting.’

  ‘Just looking at your maps,’ I said.

  He nodded, crossing to join me. ‘We’re drilling there… and there.’ He pointed to two areas which bore an entirely different name. I commented on it, and he explained.

  ‘We are part of a consortium. There are no private oil companies in Norway.’

  ‘What did Norsk Oil Imports do before anyone discovered oil under the North Sea?’

  ‘Imported oil, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I smiled and sat down in the square armchair he indicated.

  ‘Fire away,’ he said, ‘with the questions.’

  ‘Did Bob Sherman bring you any papers or photographs from England?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Lars asked us this on Tuesday. Sherman did not bring any papers for anyone.’ He stretched out a hand towards his desk intercom. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Very much.’

  He nodded and asked his secretary to arrange it.

  ‘All the same,’ I said, ‘He probably did bring a package of some sort with him, and he probably did pass it on. If anyone would admit to having received it we might be able to take it out of consideration altogether.’

  He stared vaguely at his desk.

  ‘For instance,’ I said, ‘if what he brought was straight pornography, it probably had nothing to do with his death.’

  He looked up.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And because no one has said they received it, you think it did not contain pornography?’

  ‘I don’t know what it contained,’ I said. ‘I wish I did.’

  The coffee arrived and he poured it carefully into dark brown crusty mugs.

  ‘Have you discarded the idea that Bob Sherman was killed by whoever stole the money?’

  ‘It’s in abeyance,’ I said, refusing the offered cream and sugar. ‘Could you give me your impression of Bob Sherman as a man?’

  He bunched his lips assessingly.

  ‘Not over-intelligent,’ he said. ‘Honest, but easily influenced. A good rider, of course. He always rode well for me.’

  ‘I gather Rolf Torp thought he rode a bad race for him that last day.’

  Sandvik delicately shrugged. ‘Rolf is sometimes hard to please.’

  We drank the coffee and talked about Bob, and after a while I said I would like very much to meet Per Bjørn’s son Mikkel.

  He frowned. ‘To ask him questions?’

  ‘Well… some. He knew Bob comparatively well, and he’s the one good contact I’ve not yet met.’

  He didn’t like it. ‘I can’t stop you, of course. Or at least, I won’t. But he has been very upset by the whole affair, first by thinking his friend was a thief, and now more since he knows he was murdered.’

  ‘I’ll try not to worry him too much. I’ve read his short statement to the police. I don’t expect to do much more than cover the same ground.’

  ‘Then why bother him at all?’

  After a pause to consider it, I said, ‘I think I need to see him, to get the picture of Bob’s visits complete.’

  He slowly sucked his lower lip but finally made no more objections.

  ‘He’s at boarding school now,’ he said. ‘But he’ll be home here for the afternoon tomorrow. If you come at three, he’ll be here.’

  ‘Here… in your office?’

  He shook his head. ‘In my house. The other side of the courtyard.’

  I stood up to go and thanked him for his time.

  ‘I haven’t been of much use,’ he said. ‘We’ve given you a pretty hopeless job.’

  ‘Oh well…’ I said, and told myself that things sometimes broke if one hammered on long enough. ‘I’ll do my best to earn your money.’

  He saw me to the top of the stairs and shook hands.

  ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘And thank you.’

  I walked down the quiet stairs to the large empty hall. The only sounds of life seemed to come from behind a door at the back of the hall, so I walked over and opened it.

  It led, I found, straight into the next door building, one dedicated not to front offices but to getting the paper work done. Even there however things were going at a gentle pace without any feeling of pressure, and in the doorways of the row of small offices stretching away from me stood relaxed people in sweaters drinking coffee and smoking and generally giving no impression that commercial life was rushing by.

  I retreated through the hall, through the courtyard, and back to Erik Lund. He withdrew his eyes from his Golden Notes as I climbed into his car and appeared to be wondering who I was.

  Recognition of sorts awoke.

  ‘Oh yes…’ he said.

  ‘Lunch, then?’ I suggested.

  He had few definite views on where to eat, but once we were installe
d in a decent restaurant he lost no time in ordering something he called gravlaks. The price made me wince on behalf of the racecourse, but I had some too, and it proved to be the most exquisite form of salmon, cured instead of smoked.

  ‘Are you from Scotland Yard?’ he asked after the last of the pink heaven had been despatched.

  ‘No. From the Jockey Club.’

  It surprised him, so I explained briefly why I was there.

  ‘What’s all this about being bumped off, then?’

  ‘To stop me finding out what happened.’

  He gazed past me in thought.

  ‘Makes my brother Knut a dumb cluck, doesn’t it? No one’s tried to get rid of him.’

  ‘Knock down one policeman and six more pop up,’ I said.

  ‘And there aren’t six more of you?’ he asked dryly.

  ‘The racing cupboard’s pretty bare.’

  He drank coffee thoughtfully. ‘Why don’t you give it up while you’re still whole?’

  ‘Natural bloody obstinacy,’ I said. ‘What do you know about Rolf Torp?’

  ‘Rolf Torp the terror of the ski slopes or Rolf Torp who designs glass houses for pygmies?’

  ‘Rolf Torp who owns racehorses and does something in mines.’

  ‘Oh. Him.’ He frowned, sniffed, and grimaced. ‘Another goddam capitalist exploiting the country’s natural resources for private gain.’

  ‘Do you know anything about him personally?’

  ‘Isn’t that personal enough?’

  ‘No.’

  He laughed. ‘You don’t think money-grubbing says anything about a man’s soul?’

  ‘Everything any man does says something about his soul.’

  ‘You wriggle out of things,’ he said.

  ‘And things out of people.’

  ‘Well,’ he said smiling, ‘I can’t actually tell you much about that Rolf Torp. For one thing I’ve never met him, and for another, capitalists make dull copy for gossip columns unless they’re caught in bed with their secretaries and no pyjamas.’

  Blue pictures for blackmail, I thought irrelevantly. Or black and white pictures for blackmail. Why not?

  ‘Do you know anyone called Lars Baltzersen?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. The Chairman of Øvrevoll? Every man’s idea of a respectable pillar of society. Entertains ambassadors and presents prizes. Often a picture on the sports pages, always beside the man of the moment. Mind you, our Lars was a live wire once himself. Did a lot of motor racing, mostly in Sweden. That was before banking finally smothered him, of course.’