Hans Lahlum: Satellite People

The second book in the DI Kolbjorn Kristiansen series, 2015

English translation copyright © Kari Dickson, 2015

Some of the characters in this book may have been inspired by people who are now dead or alive, but the events that take place during the Second World War and in 1969 are not based on historical events. Magdalon Schelderup and all the guests at his last supper are fictional characters who bear no resemblance to any dead or living persons.

‘Good afternoon. My name is Magdalon Schelderup and is no doubt familiar to you. I would like to arrange a meeting with you this coming Monday. The reason being that one of my nearest and dearest is planning to murder me later on in the week!’

The time was a quarter past one. The day was Saturday, 10 May 1969. The place was my office in the main police station in Oslo. And the words seemed to hang in the air for a long time after I had heard them.

I waited for this particularly tasteless joke to be followed by either a loud laugh or the phone being thrown down. But the connection was not broken. And when the voice continued, it was without doubt Magdalon Schelderup’s distinctively rusty yet dynamic voice, just as I had heard it many times before on the radio and television. I immediately pictured the legendary businessman and multimillionaire as he was most often photographed for the papers: dressed in a long black winter coat, his furrowed face secretive and barely visible under a brown leather hat.

‘And just in case you should for a moment believe otherwise, I am Magdalon Schelderup and I am of sound mind and sober. You have been recommended to me by several acquaintances, and I was singularly impressed by your work in connection with the much-discussed murder case last year, so I thought I would give you the honour of solving this case too. The question is quite simply whether you can spare the time to meet me on Monday in connection with my planned murder, or not?’

I felt increasingly bewildered as I sat at my own desk on what I had presumed would be a very ordinary Saturday shift. It was starting to dawn on me that it was in fact Magdalon Schelderup who had called me and that he was serious.

I replied that I would of course give the case highest priority and suggested that we should meet that very same day, rather than wait until Monday morning. Not surprisingly, Magdalon Schelderup had obviously considered this possibility too.

‘The truth is that only an hour ago I thought of driving into town to meet you personally. But then I discovered that three of the tyres on my car had unfortunately been slashed overnight. I could of course have taken my wife’s car or used one of the company cars, and I can certainly afford to pay for a taxi, but this episode has made me strongly doubt whether the person I had thought of mentioning to you today is in fact the guilty party.’

In response to this, I asked if there were several people in Magdalon Schelderup’s closest circle who he suspected might want to kill him. There was a short burst of dry laughter at the other end of the telephone.

‘Absolutely. In fact, my closest circle is made up entirely of people who might be suspected of wanting to kill me. It is incredibly difficult to be both successful and popular over time. And given this dilemma, I have always chosen success. But what is new here is that I have good reason to believe that one of my nearest and dearest not only wants to kill me, but also has concrete plans to realize this sometime next week.’

The situation struck me as more and more absurd, but also more and more interesting. I heard my own voice say that we should then at least meet as early as possible on Monday morning. Magdalon Schelderup agreed to this straight away and suggested that I come to his home at Gulleråsen at around nine o’clock. He wanted to dig a little more and would assess the situation over the weekend, but was certain that he would be able to confirm his suspicions well enough to tell me on Monday.

Still dazed, I wished Magdalon Schelderup a good weekend and asked him to take every precaution against possible danger. He assured me that there was no risk of an attempt on his life before Tuesday afternoon, at the earliest. However, he would stay indoors at home until I came to see him on Monday morning and would do everything necessary to ensure his own safety.

Magdalon Schelderup’s voice on the telephone was just as it was on the radio: a grand old man’s voice, calm, convincing and determined. I put down the phone without any further protest and scribbled our meeting on Monday morning at the top of my to-do list for the coming week.

The remaining three-quarters of an hour of my Saturday shift passed without further drama. It was impossible, however, to stop my thoughts from turning to this unexpected telephone conversation. To the extent, in fact, that I called my boss to inform him about the phone call before I left the office. To my relief, he gave his approval of the way in which I had dealt with the situation.

Back home in my flat in Hegdehaugen, I found the latest article about Magdalon Schelderup in the pile of newspapers. It had been published only three days before. Yet another front page of the Aftenposten evening edition was filled with his photograph, this time under the headline ‘King of Gulleråsen’. It concluded by saying that if the richest man in Gulleråsen was not already one of the ten richest men in Norway, then he very soon would be. The value of his property and assets was estimated at over 100 million kroner. Only months before his seventieth birthday, the property magnate and stock market king was at the peak of his career. With increasing regularity, financial experts speculated that he was one of the twenty most powerful men in Norway, though it was now many years since he had retired from his career as a conservative politician.

Over the years, newspapers and magazines had used unbelievable quantities of ink to write about Magdalon Schelderup. To begin with, they wrote about his contributions as a Resistance fighter and politician during and immediately after the war. There was then a rash of speculative and far less enthusiastic articles about the contact his family businesses might have had with the occupying forces during the war, and why a few years later he stepped back from an apparently promising political career. Later articles about his growing wealth and business acumen were frequently alternated with other more critical articles. These discussed his business methods, as well as the breakdown of his first two marriages and the financial settlements that they incurred. The interest in his turbulent private life appeared to have diminished following some further articles in the early 1950s when he married his third wife – this time a woman twenty-five years his junior. In recent years, however, there had been more and more articles that questioned the manner in which he kept shop. Former competitors and employees more or less queued up to condemn his methods and he had regularly been taken to court. With little success. Magdalon Schelderup cared not a hoot what the newspapers and magazines said, and with the aid of some very good sharpshooting lawyers, he was never sentenced in any court.

And it was this dauntless and apparently unassailable magnate who had telephoned me today to say that someone close to him planned to kill him next week.