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Authors: Gunnar Staalesen
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with extremely fine stitching at the waist. With long white fingers and nails the same reddish tint as her skirt, she showed how the garment was chained to the rack. ‘We do this so no one can just come in, snatch a garment and run off. Apart from this, every single item has a security tag that sets off an alarm if you try to leave without paying.’
‘And does it remain there even when garments are being tried on?’
‘Of course. Besides … we always size up our customers.’ Here she looked at me sharply. ‘In this trade you soon learn to be discerning about people.’
‘So how did Åsa manage it then? The girl I mentioned.’
‘Oh, one asks oneself, doesn’t one?!’ She looked at me with raised ironic eyebrows.
‘Yes, I am asking – you.’
‘It definitely wasn’t a theft.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘We spoke to the assistant who had sold her the jacket. She recognised her straight away. She’d been struck by the fact that a girl so young had so much cash on her.’
‘So she bought it, in other words?’
‘She did.’
‘But how … what did she have to say about it?’
‘That’s just what’s so incredible. She denied it! She hadn’t bought it, she said, but had stolen it. And her father insisted she was right!’ Her pearl grey eyes flashed. ‘Can you imagine?’
‘But they went back home, with a new jacket?’
‘Which her father paid for, yes! In addition to the fact that they returned the other one …’
‘But why … couldn’t they just have paid for the one she claimed she’d taken?’
‘ She wanted to do that. But her father wouldn’t. If she wanted a jacket, all she had to do was choose another.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Even though it was more expensive, actually – well, for us it didn’t make any difference,’ she added. ‘We were paid twice, after all.’
‘Hm.’
‘Yes, strange, isn’t it? But in any case it can’t be a matter for the police, can it?’
‘No, not as such … It would have to be the finance section in that case …’
‘The finance section?’
‘Yes, to see how you’ve entered all this in the books …’
I smiled gently as I left. If nothing else, at least I’d given her that to chew on.
Nine
THE PLACE that went by the name of Jimmy’s was in a side street in the city centre, close to one of the most traffic-congested parts of the Central Ring and less than five minutes from Bergen Cinemas’ main fleapit in the Concert Palace, which now smacked of neither concerts nor palaces but was distinguished by its trendy new abbreviation CP, with the numbers ‘1 to 14’ added to it.
I vaguely remembered the place as a slightly dated snack bar from the sixties and seventies, always at least a decade too far behind the times to appeal to the youth of today. It was not until the end of the eighties, when they staked everything on the new electronic games machines, that the place looked as though it had found its true clientele: few people under ten but even fewer over thirty. Yet they’d kept the old name – it had originally been called after James Dean – through both hard times and good, so steadfastly in fact that it had long since become a landmark. Everybody knew where Jimmy’s was.
It still more or less functioned as a sort of snack bar, even if it steered well clear of such new-fangled things as kebabs and fresh salads. What you got here was hot dogs in defrosted bread and hamburgers from the microwave, glistening with fat, and smeared in mustard, ketchup and onions, the only available accompaniments . If you had time to wait, you could always get hold of a cup of coffee there too. Mainly, people drank Coke and similar soft drinks.
Despite the fact that it was as gloomy as a cathedral in there, I still felt like a canary at a cat show when the door slid shut behind me, and a few phosphorus-coloured teenage faces looked up at me from their seats round the garish noisy games machines. It
‘And does it remain there even when garments are being tried on?’
‘Of course. Besides … we always size up our customers.’ Here she looked at me sharply. ‘In this trade you soon learn to be discerning about people.’
‘So how did Åsa manage it then? The girl I mentioned.’
‘Oh, one asks oneself, doesn’t one?!’ She looked at me with raised ironic eyebrows.
‘Yes, I am asking – you.’
‘It definitely wasn’t a theft.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘We spoke to the assistant who had sold her the jacket. She recognised her straight away. She’d been struck by the fact that a girl so young had so much cash on her.’
‘So she bought it, in other words?’
‘She did.’
‘But how … what did she have to say about it?’
‘That’s just what’s so incredible. She denied it! She hadn’t bought it, she said, but had stolen it. And her father insisted she was right!’ Her pearl grey eyes flashed. ‘Can you imagine?’
‘But they went back home, with a new jacket?’
‘Which her father paid for, yes! In addition to the fact that they returned the other one …’
‘But why … couldn’t they just have paid for the one she claimed she’d taken?’
‘ She wanted to do that. But her father wouldn’t. If she wanted a jacket, all she had to do was choose another.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Even though it was more expensive, actually – well, for us it didn’t make any difference,’ she added. ‘We were paid twice, after all.’
‘Hm.’
‘Yes, strange, isn’t it? But in any case it can’t be a matter for the police, can it?’
‘No, not as such … It would have to be the finance section in that case …’
‘The finance section?’
‘Yes, to see how you’ve entered all this in the books …’
I smiled gently as I left. If nothing else, at least I’d given her that to chew on.
Nine
THE PLACE that went by the name of Jimmy’s was in a side street in the city centre, close to one of the most traffic-congested parts of the Central Ring and less than five minutes from Bergen Cinemas’ main fleapit in the Concert Palace, which now smacked of neither concerts nor palaces but was distinguished by its trendy new abbreviation CP, with the numbers ‘1 to 14’ added to it.
I vaguely remembered the place as a slightly dated snack bar from the sixties and seventies, always at least a decade too far behind the times to appeal to the youth of today. It was not until the end of the eighties, when they staked everything on the new electronic games machines, that the place looked as though it had found its true clientele: few people under ten but even fewer over thirty. Yet they’d kept the old name – it had originally been called after James Dean – through both hard times and good, so steadfastly in fact that it had long since become a landmark. Everybody knew where Jimmy’s was.
It still more or less functioned as a sort of snack bar, even if it steered well clear of such new-fangled things as kebabs and fresh salads. What you got here was hot dogs in defrosted bread and hamburgers from the microwave, glistening with fat, and smeared in mustard, ketchup and onions, the only available accompaniments . If you had time to wait, you could always get hold of a cup of coffee there too. Mainly, people drank Coke and similar soft drinks.
Despite the fact that it was as gloomy as a cathedral in there, I still felt like a canary at a cat show when the door slid shut behind me, and a few phosphorus-coloured teenage faces looked up at me from their seats round the garish noisy games machines. It
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