Cockroaches(51)

“My grandfather ate almost nothing but eels,” she said. “From just before the war until he died. Stuffed them down, couldn’t get enough.”

“I’ve also been given some information regarding the will.”

“Do you know why he ate so much eel? Oh, of course you don’t. He was a fisherman, but this was before the war and people didn’t want to eat eel in Ørsta. Do you know why?”

He saw the same pain flash across her face as he had seen in the garden.

“Fru Molnes—”

“I’m asking if you know why.”

Harry shook his head.

Hilde Molnes lowered her voice and tapped a long red fingernail on the tablecloth as she pronounced every syllable. “Well, a boat had gone down that winter, it happened in calm weather and only a few hundred meters from land, but it was so cold that not one of the nine men on board survived. There’s a channel under where the boat capsized and not a single body was found. Afterward people claimed that a huge number of eels had come to the fjord. They say eels eat drowned men, you know. Many of the victims were related to people in Ørsta, so the sale of eels took a nosedive. People wouldn’t dare be seen returning home with eel in their shopping bags. So Grandad reckoned it was worth his while selling all the other fish and eating the eel himself. Born and bred in Sunnmøre, you know …”

She drank from her glass and placed it on the table. A dark ring spread across the cloth.

“Then I suppose he got a taste for it. ‘There were only nine of them,’ Grandad said. ‘That can’t have been enough for so many of them. I might have eaten one or two who fed on the poor fellers, but so what? I didn’t taste any difference anyway.’ No difference! That’s a good one.”

It sounded like an echo of something.

“What do you think, Hole? Do you think the eels ate the men?”

Harry scratched behind an ear. “Well, some people claim mackerel eat human flesh too. I don’t know. They probably all have a bite, I imagine. Fish, that is.”

Harry let her finish her drink.

“A colleague of mine in Oslo has just spoken to your husband’s business lawyer, Bjørn Hardeid, in Ålesund. As you perhaps know, lawyers can revoke client confidentiality when the client has died and in their opinion the information won’t harm the client’s reputation.”

“I didn’t, no.”

“Well, Bjørn Hardeid didn’t want to say anything. So my colleague rang Atle’s brother, but unfortunately there wasn’t a lot to be got out of him, either. He went particularly quiet when my colleague proposed the theory that Atle didn’t own as much of the family fortune as many might have thought.”

“What makes you think that?”

“A man who can’t pay a gambling debt of 750,000 kroner doesn’t necessarily have to be poor, but he is definitely not someone who has a substantial share of a family fortune amounting to two hundred million kroner at his disposal.”

“Where—?”

“My colleague called the Brønnøysund register and got the figures for Molnes Furniture. The capital on the books is less of course, but he discovered that the company is listed on the SMB, so he rang a broker who worked out the stock exchange value for him. The family company Molnes Holding has four shareholders—three brothers and a sister. All the siblings are on the board of Molnes Furniture, and there are no reports of any sales of shares since they were transferred from Molnes Senior to the holding company; so unless your husband sold his part of the holding company to one of the others he should be good for at least …” Harry glanced at his notepad where he had written down every word of what was said over the phone. “Fifty million kroner.”

“They have been thorough, I can see.”

“I didn’t understand half of what I just said, I only know it means someone is holding back your husband’s money, and I’d like to know why.”

Hilde Molnes peered at him over her glass. “Do you really want to know?”

“Why not?”

“I’m not so sure that those who sent you imagined they would have to delve so deep into the ambassador’s … private life.”

“I know too much already, fru Molnes.”

“Do you know about …?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly …”

She paused while finishing her Mekhong. The waiter came with a top-up, but she waved him away.

“If you also know that the Molnes family has a long tradition as pew warmers at the Inner Mission chapel and members of the Christian Democratic Party, you can perhaps work out the rest.”