Robert Goddard - Found Wanting

The river bus moved away from the jetty through a slush of half-formed ice and headed south. Eusden and Norvig stood watching it go, Eusden’s mind racing to calculate what he should or should not admit. Norvig smiled at him, as if sensing his indecision.

‘For fanden, jeg fryser.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t speak Danish, Mr Eusden?’

‘No.’

‘I said I’m fucking freezing. Why don’t we talk over a drink?’

The Nyhavn canal was lined with bars and restaurants – a colourful, crowded scene in summer, as Eusden well recalled, with diners and drinkers massed at outdoor tables, admiring the elegant yachts tied up along the quay. A cold late afternoon in February provided a different, bleaker scene, relieved only by the reds and yellows of the house fronts and the enticingly twinkling lights of those bars that were open for business. They went into the first one they came to after leaving the jetty.

‘This morning, Karsten was supposed to be here in Copenhagen, but wasn’t, and you weren’t supposed to be in Århus, but you were,’ Norvig opened up as they settled at a table. ‘Now he’s still not here. But you’ve arrived instead. What am I supposed to make of that?’

‘How did you know who I was?’ Eusden countered, aware that this was to be a game of who could learn more from the other.

‘Karsten said he had to meet a woman at the Phoenix this morning before coming on to meet me. When I still hadn’t heard from him this afternoon, I went there to see if they knew anything. The name Burgaard meant zip to them. But Eusden? That was different. You left while I was standing at reception. The guy on the desk pointed you out to me.’ Norvig lit a cigarette, proffering the pack to Eusden, who waved it away. ‘So, I’ve answered your question. How about answering mine?’

‘Well, like you say, Karsten’s gone missing. I’m… trying to track him down.’

‘Because…’

‘He’s a friend.’

‘Yeah. Right.’ The barman approached. Norvig ordered a beer. Eusden nodded his assent and he made it two. ‘How’d you meet him?’

‘Economics conference… at Cambridge… last year.’

‘Uhuh. And since then you’ve become… an item?’

‘An item?’ Belatedly, Eusden caught Norvig’s drift. ‘No. I-’

‘Karsten’s bøsse , Richard. Gay. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. As a friend of his.’

‘How do you know?’ It was the best retort Eusden could manage.

‘We’ve met a few times. It was obvious.’

‘Maybe you’re just his type and I’m not.’

‘Stop fucking me about, Richard. Where’s Karsten?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, that makes two of us, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes. It does.’

The arrival of the beers imposed a brief truce, which Norvig extended by sitting back in his chair to savour his first swallow and following it with a thoughtful pull on his cigarette. ‘What do you do for a living, Richard?’

‘I’m a civil servant. I work at the Foreign Office in London.’

‘The Foreign Office?’

‘That’s right. What about you?’

‘Freelance journalist.’

‘Were you meeting Karsten… about a story?’

‘Yes. I was.’

‘Did it involve… Tolmar Aksden?’

Norvig smiled. ‘There it is. That name. Tolmar Aksden. The Invisible Man. Yup. He was on the agenda, all right. Are you interested in him… officially?’

‘Officially? No. I’m on leave.’

‘Which you’re spending with your not very close friend Karsten Burgaard in Århus. In the middle of winter. That’s great. That’s so likely.’

Eusden did not react. He was beginning to feel he might actually win out in the trading of points. ‘Have you written about Aksden before?’

‘Most Danish journalists have. Tell me, Richard, do you ride?’

‘What?’

‘Do you ride? Horses, I mean.’

‘No.’

‘Well, I do. And when I was a boy I worked weekends at a stable. It means I know what horseshit smells like. So, stop shovelling it in my direction, OK? Karsten told me two Englishmen had shown up in Århus with access to highly sensitive information about Tolmar Aksden. The sort of stuff that might knock a couple of digits off Mjollnir’s share price for starters. I’m guessing you’re one of those two Englishmen. Let me finish before you deny it. Karsten’s given me titbits about Mjollnir quite a few times. It’s his specialty. He made it clear this was something big, something… shattering. He needed to collect some documents from a woman staying at the Phoenix. Then we were to meet. He never showed. Now, I don’t know what you had going with him and I don’t necessarily care. If you’ve got the documents, I might be in the market for them, no questions asked. You understand?’

Eusden stared Norvig down as calmly as he could before responding. ‘I don’t have the documents.’

‘Do you know where they are?’

‘I-’

A phone began ringing in one of Norvig’s pockets. ‘ Skide ,’ he said, pulling it out. ‘ Unskyld. Hallo? ’ His face was a mask during the conversation that followed, to which he contributed little beyond ja, nej, okay and tak , interspersed with sighs suggesting that something other than unalloyed good news was being conveyed to him. He said nothing at first after ringing off, gazing at a point in the middle distance somewhere over Eusden’s shoulder. Then he murmured, ‘Karsten’s dead.’

‘What?’

‘He hit the wall of a flyover on the motorway near Skanderborg early this morning. High-speed crash. No other car involved. Apparently.’

The shock was followed for Eusden by the sickening realization that if Burgaard had not decided to go it alone, they would have been together in his car. ‘What do you mean – “apparently”?’

‘It was around four thirty. Empty road. No witnesses.’

‘You’re suggesting… he was run off the road?’

‘Did I say that? Fuck, this is serious.’ Norvig contemplated just how serious over several nervous drags on his cigarette. ‘No, no. They wouldn’t. It must have been just… an accident. Maybe there was ice. Maybe he was… careless.’

‘But you don’t think so.’

‘I don’t know.’ Norvig grabbed his phone again, as if intending to make a call. Then he thought better of it and clunked it down on the table. ‘You got here safely, didn’t you?’ He glared accusingly at Eusden as he stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Look, I know nothing about this. I came by train.’

‘Who’s the woman at the Phoenix?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter.’

‘The other Englishman, then. Who’s he?’

‘Marty Hewitson. He is a friend.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Århus. But he’ll be here soon. Probably tomorrow.’

‘OK, Richard. Let’s be cool. Accidents happen. Business is business. You get these… documents. You have them in your hand. They deliver what Karsten promised. Then I’m interested. Anything less – any more horseshit – forget it.’ Norvig scribbled a number on a corner of the front page of Børsen, tore it off and passed it to Eusden. ‘Call me. If there’s something to talk about. If not, we never met. Understood?’

‘Understood.’

They left separately, at Norvig’s insistence. Eusden would actually have been glad of his company, rattled as he was by the news of Burgaard’s death. An accident was credible enough. He had probably been speeding, his head full of plans to smooth talk Vicky into handing over the case. Or maybe he had just fallen asleep at the wheel. Oh, yes, an accident was the obvious explanation. And yet… And yet.