Cockroaches(78)

He held up the cigarette and blew on the glow.

“Well, I continued bumming smokes off strangers when we arrived in Cannes. To start with, she thought it was funny. When I started to flit from table to table at restaurants in Paris, she thought it was less funny and said I could have one of hers, but I refused. When she met Norwegian friends in Amsterdam and I began to bum fags off them while her packet was on the table, she thought I was being childish. She bought me a packet, and said begging for cigarettes wasn’t on, but I left it in the hotel room. When we were back in Oslo and I continued there she said I was sick in the head.”

“Has this story got a point?”

“Yes, she stopped smoking.”

Løken chuckled. “So there’s a happy ending.”

“At about the same time she met a musician from London.”

Løken spluttered. “You must have gone a bit too far then.”

“Of course.”

“But you didn’t learn much from it?”

“No.”

They smoked in silence.

“I see,” Løken said, stubbing out his cigarette. People had started coming out of the room. “Let’s go somewhere and have a beer and I’ll give you the whole story.”


“Ove Klipra builds roads. Apart from that, we know very little about him. We know he left for Thailand as a twenty-five-year-old with his engineering degree unfinished and a bad reputation, and that he changed his name from Pedersen to Klipra, which is the name of the area in Ålesund where he grew up.”

They were sitting on a deep leather sofa, and in front of them were a stereo, a TV and a table with one beer, a bottle of water, two microphones and a song book. Harry had at first assumed Løken was joking when he said they were going to a karaoke bar, until he had the reason explained to him. They could hire a soundproof room on an hourly basis, no names, order what they wanted to drink, and beyond that they would be left in peace. Also, there would be the right number of people for them to come and go unnoticed. It was simply the ultimate place for secret meetings, and it appeared it wasn’t the first time Løken had been there.

“What kind of bad reputation?”

“When we started to delve deeper into this case it turned out there had been a couple of episodes with underage boys in Ålesund. Nothing was reported, but rumors spread and he found it an opportune moment to move. When he came here he registered an engineering company, had some business cards made, on which he called himself Doctor, and started knocking on doors saying he could build roads. At that time, twenty years ago, there were only two ways to get your hands on road-building projects: either by being related to someone in government or by being rich enough to bribe the same. Klipra was neither and of course the odds were against him. But he learned two things you can be sure formed the basis of the fortune he has today: Thai and flattery. I haven’t made up the bit about flattery; he has boasted of it to Norwegians living here. He claims he became so skilled at grinning that even the Thais thought it was too much. In addition, he shared his interest in young boys with a few of the politicians with whom he began to associate. It was perhaps no disadvantage to share vices with them when the contracts for building the so-called Hopewell Bangkok Elevated Road and Train System, BERTS, were handed out.”

“Road and train?”

“Yes. You’ve probably noticed the big steel pillars they’re driving into the ground everywhere in town.”

Harry nodded.

“For the moment there are six thousand pillars, but there will be more. And not just for the motorway because the new train will be above that. We’re talking fifty kilometers of ultramodern motorway and sixty kilometers of rails worth twenty-five billion kroner in order to save this town from suffocating itself. Do you understand? This project must be the grandest road-building project in any city ever, the Messiah of tarmac and sleepers.”

“And Klipra’s in on it?”

“No one seems to know who’s in or out. What’s clear is that the original principal player from Hong Kong has withdrawn and the budget and the schedule are likely to go tits up.”

“A budget overspend? I’m shocked,” Harry commented drily.

“But that means there will definitely be more for the other players, and my guess is Klipra is already well ensconced in the project. If some drop out, the politicians will have to accept that the others adjust their bids. If Klipra has the financial capacity to take a bite of the cake he’s been offered, he can soon become one of the region’s most powerful entrepreneurs.”

“Yes, but what does this have to do with child abuse?”