Lethal Investments (8 page)

The detective nodded slowly. Her self-image. Important. Was Johansen’s little rose a small, conceited know-it-all?

‘How good was she at this role?’

‘Fantastic.’

‘Did she challenge those around her?’

‘No, she was in total control. She did as she wanted.’

‘Did she manipulate people?’

‘I wouldn’t use a word like that. She did as she wanted.’

‘But she angered some people?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You just told me about an old pig who lost his temper.’

She didn’t answer.

He tried to visualize her. Reckless. Doing a striptease for a randy old sod hiding behind binoculars.

The woman on the sofa observed him. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t like that. She could be like that.’

‘Uhuh,’ he answered, mind elsewhere. ‘This Bregård, did he get lucky with Reidun?’

‘I have absolutely no idea!’

‘You weren’t on intimate terms?’

‘Not like that.’

‘Like what?’

Kristin laughed as if she had heard a good joke. ‘We didn’t discuss men!’

Kristin Sommerstedt’s mouth was surprisingly broad when she laughed. Her teeth were close together, pointed, with matt patches.

They sat for a while in silence and she it was who broke it eventually. ‘Sometimes they went out together, the staff in her office.’

‘Where to?’

‘I know she mentioned it,’ she mumbled.

Gunnarstranda stopped his pacing. ‘It wasn’t a place called Scarlet, was it?’

Kristin rolled her shoulders. ‘I don’t remember. We didn’t talk about that kind of thing, either.’

Smile.

‘Do you know the place?’

‘Never been there.’

‘Not that Saturday, either?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Where were you on Saturday?’

She met his eyes with the same smile. As if she had been expecting the question. ‘At the cinema with some good friends. Afterwards we went to Rockefeller’s, at about half past eleven, I suppose. Came home at three.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes. You can have a couple of phone numbers to corroborate I was at the cinema, and at Rockefeller’s.’

‘Fine,’ he mumbled and resumed his pacing. ‘Should it be necessary. By the way, what did you and Reidun talk about mostly?’

She motioned her head towards the loom. ‘Weaving.’

He nodded. He didn’t have a clue about textiles. ‘I rang early this morning,’ he said out of the ether. ‘Just to check you were alive.’

Smart girl. Thirty-ish and unmarried. Must have a strong will and be very self-assured. Perhaps the same words could describe the dead woman as well. He had an inkling they could.

‘Where was Klavestad going?’ he asked in a friendly tone.

She shrugged. ‘Work, I think. Bit down in the mouth,’ she exclaimed with a concerned look in her eyes.

The detective inspector felt his headache getting worse behind his forehead.

‘Goodbye,’ he said without standing on ceremony, turned on his heel and left.

The stream of people leaving the train and making for Egertorget in the city centre was broad and impenetrable. At the foot of the escalator it became narrower and denser. Commuters with dull eyes. The morning look. Low energy that dissipates into nothing around the head, passengers who don’t look around much. Frank Frølich could see that Sigurd Klavestad was not used to taking the Metro. Country boy in town. The man stood on the left up the escalator blocking the way for those in a hurry to catch a bus. The crowd pushed from behind. A blunt fellow with a hat jostled the clod to the right. Klavestad courteously let people pass and then resumed his old position. Idiot, thought Frank Frølich.

Once outside, Sigurd stopped and looked around. In the end, he began to walk, taking long paces, down Karl Johans gate. A bouncing gait with a stiff back. A freak’s walk. The policeman could not help comparing him with Finance Manager Bregård. The monkfish with thighs like logs. The Finance Manager next to Sigurd Klavestad. Moustache versus pony tail and black stubble. Frank noticed the girls turning their heads as they passed the man with the pony tail. Sigurd had an effect on women. No doubt about it.
Sensitive type. Women notice that kind of thing,
he supposed. The guy had trotted off to Reidun’s workplace to have someone to talk to. Had sat interlacing fingers with frøken Sommerstedt over a glass of red wine, shed a few tears. Tender soul. Probably talked about his Oedipus complex the way others talk about getting a dose of flu.

Frank Frølich imagined Bregård padding through the forests on a Sunday morning. The Finance Manager on Lake Bjørnsøen. Sitting on a collapsible chair by a borehole in slushy ice, fishing for small trout for hour after hour. Cap with loose ear flaps, then shuffle, shuffle, off to the next hole to pull up a perch or a trout. No. The guy with the thighs was not the type. Was probably a hunter. Yes, that was it, a hunter. That matched the moustache.

And these two totally different men had gained access to the same woman. The woman who blended in everywhere. A chameleon? One day dressed like a schoolgirl, Bregård had said, another like a jailbird’s dream.
Sheesh, where did the man get that image from? The way he said it, perhaps this particular fish had been caught once himself?

Sigurd stopped by a bench in front of the winter-dry fountain in the ornamental lake known as Spikersuppa. Sat down. Frank bought a copy of
Dagbladet
and a Kvikk Lunsj chocolate bar at the corner of Rosenkrantz’ gate. Stood leaning against a tree while Sigurd sat happily blowing small clouds of smoke into the ozone layer.

Frank recalled the woman’s mutilated upper body and reflected on the lack of a personal touch in her flat. One solitary shelf of Book Club publications. Unread, the paper still stiff. Blue, handmade ceramic wine goblets, placed to decorate the shelf. Nothing on the walls, apart from two broad-brimmed ladies’ hats covered with a thick layer of dust. A mirror with a stylish frame. A few records. Divergent taste. House music beside Pavarotti, Randy Crawford and Norwegian folk musician Lillebjørn Nilsen. Probably couldn’t call it taste.
What would give you a sense of her personality?

Clothes, he wondered. Clothes and sketch pad. They had found it in her bag. A sketch pad full of drawings and patterns. Clothes too, jackets and skirts, rough charcoal outlines, skinny bodies. But at least it was hers. Meant nothing to him, but it was human.

He checked his watch. Klavestad hadn’t moved for over an hour. He could feel that the chocolate had not filled his stomach. Hunger was making him uneasy. So he joined a group of people setting up banners in Eidsvolls plass.

At last the head appeared over the hedge. Frank bade farewell to the activists and happily followed in the direction of a McDonald’s.

Sharp neon lights, garish colours and happy people behind the counter. Few customers. He refrained from looking at himself in the mirror. Instead took a risk and queued behind Klavestad.

In fact, Sigurd ought to have been at work. His workplace wasn’t far away, either. A printing house. Obviously the stable type. Not today though. Nervous predisposition. The man’s wallet was shaking as he tried to pay. Long, lean, trembling, white fingers. Frølich stared with sympathy at the stiff digits feverishly searching for money. You’ll never tie any flies, he thought.

It was almost eleven when he set off on the trail again. He followed about seventy metres behind. The Big Mac in his stomach had sated his needs for the time being.

Up towards the tram lines. They stood waiting for a tram. Which turned out to be a number 11.

The tram wound its way through Storgata at a snail’s pace, but soon headed for Thorvald Meyers gate. The bogies creaked and squealed. Frank had taken a seat at the back of the last carriage. Tried to look anonymous. The tram swayed from side to side in rhythm with the irregularity of the rails. The rocking transferred itself to passengers’ heads. They swayed gently in rhythm. Same beat. The swaying transferred itself to the loops hanging from the metal poles in the centre of the ceiling. The loops swayed, the heads swayed. Sitting without a ticket in a conductor-less carriage was undisputed evidence that tailing was not his strong suit. He would be teased mercilessly for the rest of his life if he lost the chump because of a ticket inspection.

Klavestad had found a seat at the front. Sat sunken and small in a low single seat. Pony tail hanging down limply over the edge of the seat-rest. It swayed, too.

At last Sigurd raised his arm and pressed the button to get off at the next stop. Got up. Frank didn’t move. Glanced out of the window as casually as he could while Sigurd stared back pensively, straight at him. Two men staggered out of a gateway. They were so stoned they were almost walking sideways, both of them. One had had his nose flattened at some time in the past; it was almost level with his cheeks. A hare lip completed the desperado look to perfection. The second was taller, thinner, with glasses perched at an angle. The man’s brown teeth revealed a phobia of dentists.

The tram clanked to a halt. Klavestad got out. Frank followed. Colliding with one of the dope-heads, who grunted and spat a gobbet of phlegm on to a parked car.

Familiar territory. The route was in the direction of Reidun Rosendal’s address.

Frank hung back, fifty metres behind. Risky turf. Quiet district. To the right a playground before the iron fence of Dælenenga Stadium. Klavestad suddenly stopped. Staring at the ground. Frank had to keep going. Dangerous silence. Some distance ahead, an elderly lady in a grey woollen coat and matching hat weighed down by a carrier bag. He passed Klavestad on the other side of the road and made for a blue door advertising a lottery on the outside. A newsagent’s.

What was the guy thinking about? He looked like a poseur in a commercial. Hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, open jacket hanging becomingly loose.

Frank went in the door and almost bumped into Arvid Johansen. The old fellow was in his own world, exiting the shop the way old folk do when they think the ground is slippery. Using his stick for support. He swore like a trooper when Frank almost knocked into him. But he couldn’t be bothered to check out who it was. His eyes were fixed on the ground and he muttered imprecations to himself, unable to interrupt his sidling manoeuvre down the steps.

Inside the newsagent’s the peeping tom had left a stench of stale fish offal. The police officer tried to see out. But the window in the blue door was made of wired glass and opaque. Between the shelves of men’s magazines he could make out the old boy stomping down the street. Wearing a thick winter overcoat from the fifties, and a broad-brimmed hat which bounced up and down out of rhythm, like a marionette in a puppet theatre.

A Pakistani woman with black hair, a red shop apron and a smile asked Frank what he would like.

‘Pools coupons,’ he said, and she pointed to a shelf at chest height two metres away. Notepaper and biros lay to hand. Front stall seat. Almost. He had to bend, shield his eyes from several glossy and generously equipped nude models to catch a glimpse. The lady behind him probably considered him mad. He grabbed a stack of coupons from a holder on the shelf.

Outside, the distance between them was narrowing. The grunter was closing up on Klavestad. Actually, he wasn’t that stiff, the old boy. Didn’t need to support himself on the stick.

The old man stopped. What was going on? The seconds ticked. Suddenly Sigurd recoiled. What the hell! The man had lifted his stick. Sigurd backed away. Walked quickly, as though fleeing, craned his head. Sped round the corner.

The old boy stared after him for a moment. But then followed in pursuit. Back to the corner as well. Now his legs were moving faster. And the stick was turning like a crankshaft. His face was hard and closed.

Frank stuffed the coupons in his pocket, chucked a few coins on the counter, grabbed a newspaper and was off.

Gunnarstranda contemplated the ceiling of his office. Blinked, automatically raised his left arm and glanced at his watch. Two and a half hours’ sleep. Not bad. The headache was gone. On the other hand, he had a serious crick in his neck. His head had rested at too acute an angle on the arm rest of the old sofa. That would have to be enough. He threw off the tartan plaid, sat up and massaged his neck and throat while trying to keep his head straight. Felt the lack of sleep on his palate. Time for a coffee and a smoke.

Two hours later he was sitting in a police car on his way down Mosseveien. Thinking. The question was: how did the path young Klavestad chose lead to the centre of the drama that had taken place?

The probability that Reidun Rosendal was subjected to sexual abuse before the murder was minimal. Since her flat had not been broken into, Reidun must have let the murderer in through the front door. But what had happened then? And why all the mess inside when no one had heard anything?

The answer was obvious, he supposed. He just didn’t know what it was. That was the problem. To find the right answer he would have to ask the right question.
And where is the right question? It’s there. It just isn’t formulated yet. You can see it there, you can’t grab it though, because it slips away, like a tiny beetle you try to catch in a wash basin.

If you can’t ask, then you have to observe. And Frølich is a canny observer.

He passed Katten beach and glanced down at the smooth, wet rock-faces. Deserted. Only one person there. A thin elderly male figure dressed in blue with a black cap on his head and a solitary gull wheeling above him. At the front waddled a plump, ageing cocker spaniel. Panting, it turned its head, with a saliva smile and a patient look at its owner, who was bringing up the rear.

Gunnarstranda left the main road, drove alone through the illuminated tunnel and bore towards Holmlia. Which manoeuvre resulted in him driving in circles. In the end he drew up under a white arrow-shaped sign. His annoyance at getting lost had caused a stabbing pain from the earlier headache to return. The sign showed rows of numbers. It pointed towards a cluster of apartment buildings and small wooden houses where cars were prohibited. He got out and started a methodical search for number 66.

Marketing Manager Svennebye lived in number 66. The detective rang and his wife tore open the door. She was a well-rounded lady. Must have been around fifty. Wearing a blue suit, plus glasses and earrings the same colour as her shoes, mauve.

If she had been excited when she opened the door she was all the more disappointed when she saw the figure on the doorstep. Stared down at him. Tried to make him feel like a maggot with her gaze. That was fine. It matched his mood. He stared up at her. Short reddish hair. Pointed nose, small mouth with unusually thin lips. Nonetheless she had managed to paint a thick layer of brash red lipstick over them. The half-open mouth revealed that one of her front teeth was the same colour as her lipstick. The red stood out against the white.

Gunnarstranda introduced himself and was then asked in, after a moment’s considered hesitation. She walked ahead. The tight skirt was taut across her rump and emphasized the excess weight she was carrying. Thick ankles. In the living room she parked herself on a high stool by something vaguely reminiscent of a bar. She chewed on half a celery stick dipped into what seemed to be mayonnaise, glanced down at the inspector and spoke.

‘I don’t remember having made any kind of approach to the police on this matter!’

It was a proclamation. She wiped her fingers on a cloth on the counter. Her voice was strident and suited her.

‘Has your husband gone missing like this before?’

‘Who says he’s gone missing?’ she screeched. The thin top lip followed after a brief delay and rubbed against the lipstick-coloured tooth.

A silence grew as the policeman kept his counsel. The faint noise of children playing between the buildings penetrated through to them. The woman turned, took another stick of celery, crunched it between her teeth and chewed with loud chomping noises. Then she touched her skirt with her fingers this time, as if to wipe them.

‘When did you last see your husband?’ asked Gunnarstranda when she had finished. He had not sat down; he stood with his hands in his coat pockets inside the door.

‘Monday morning, before he went to work.’

‘Did you have any reason to expect he would not return from work on Monday?’

‘None at all.’

‘No rows, no dramatic family events?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘He behaved as he always did before going to work?’

‘Yes.’

‘So let me ask you one more time! Has this happened before?’

Her lips quivered. She removed her glasses and the detective could see she had discarded her mask. Tried to hide the movement, but failed, so the tears made stripes down her over-made-up cheeks.

Gunnarstranda waited patiently, but one finger had started to tap against his left trouser leg. This poorly concealed impatience had a knock-on effect. She took out a handkerchief she had stuffed up her sleeve and feverishly dabbed around her eyes.

‘Has he gone on the booze?’

‘What?’

‘Has he gone on the booze?’

‘How dare you!’

‘Calm yourself now!’

He had taken a step forward. But without removing his hands from his pockets. ‘You are talking to a police officer,’ he spelt out coldly. ‘Of course something may have happened to your husband. But it is unlikely since you have not reported him missing. So there are three possibilities. Either he is with another woman, or else he is lying somewhere plastered, or he has done a runner from something. It’s as simple as that. If it had been a woman you would have known, and you would not have rung his office.’

He turned to the window, looked around the room. ‘I’m investigating a murder connected with his workplace. Either your husband’s disappearance has something to do with my investigation or it hasn’t. So I am asking you: Has he gone on the booze?’

At that moment they heard a key in the front door. The woman looked at her watch. ‘Trine and Lene,’ she whispered and screamed into the hall:

‘I’m in here!’

Her voice cracked. The last word sounded like a scream from a seagull that had just been shot.

Gunnarstranda walked towards the two teenage girls. ‘Perhaps you two could fill me in on your father’s disappearance,’ he said turning to the elder daughter.

She stared back, stunned.

Gunnarstranda introduced himself.

‘Has something happened to him?’ the younger one asked nervously.

The police officer ignored the question and zeroed in the central issue. ‘Is this the first time your father has gone missing like this?’

‘No,’ she blinked innocently. She had blue eyes, which unfortunately she had inherited from her mother. They
weren’t
deep. They were just squeezed between two folds of skin either side of her nose. Piggy eyes.

The girl’s mother slid down off the bar stool and anxiously rubbed her hands against her tight skirt.

‘When was the last time he went missing like this?’

‘It’s what you said!’ the mother interrupted before the daughter was able to answer. ‘Egil can’t take his booze.’

‘Why is he on a binge now?’

She shrugged by way of response.

‘It’s always happening,’ the elder daughter interjected, clearly embarrassed.

The three women huddled closer. It happened automatically, they formed a barricade and the police officer smelt hostility in the air. So he relaxed, twinkled his eyes good-naturedly and clambered up one of the stools at the strange bar. He couldn’t even reach down to the foot support. His legs hung in mid-air. This gave him an opportunity to smile and stretch out his legs.

The tight defence loosened. The two young girls exchanged glances and giggled at the man with the short legs.

The detective grabbed his chance and assumed a grave expression.

‘Is he normally away for two consecutive nights?’ he asked with a worried crease between his eyes. All three shook their heads.

The mother’s pale blue eyes suddenly went moist again. ‘That’s the whole point,’ she wailed, gripping her handkerchief tightly. ‘This has never happened before.’