Satellite People - Ханс Улав Лалум

‘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.