The Fourth Man (15 page)

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Authors: K.O. Dahl

Tags: #Suspense, #Crime, #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Detectives, #Police Procedural, #Police, #Oslo (Norway)

BOOK: The Fourth Man
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‘Why does that kind of information go to Eco-Crime?’
‘Routine matter. Banks are obliged to report large transactions, cash withdrawals and that sort of thing to intercept potential money laundering.’
‘Has Narvesen said what the five million was for?’
‘No one has got round to doing anything yet. What is mindboggling is that this withdrawal took place on a very particular day.’
‘Which day?’
‘The same day Jonny Faremo was released and his sister made off for the woods.’
Frølich was staring out of the window as a couple of cars on the roundabout several metres below avoided a collision by a hair’s breadth. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘You wouldn’t be talking to me if you didn’t have a theory.’
‘There doesn’t have to be any connection at all, but you know how I feel about so-called coincidences.’
‘Gunnarstranda’s Coincidence Theorem,’ Frølich said with a tiny smile. ‘There’s no such thing as a coincidence. The word coincidence is a construct to replace and thus conceal the logical explanation of how things happen.’
‘You’re recovering, Frølich. When I die you can write my obituary. But if my theory is correct, Narvesen has taken out the money for a reason, and I’m guessing blackmail.’
‘Why?’
‘Narvesen has been blackmailed before.’
‘What?’
‘On a cruise. I looked up Narvesen in the archives. There was some story in 1991. Narvesen was one of the main shareholders in one of the shipping companies who sail American tourists round the Caribbean. It happened right after the fire on the
Scandinavian Star
. Everyone was talking about security and describing passenger ships as death traps, weren’t they. Someone was trying to blackmail Narvesen for ten million. If he didn’t pay up, information about inadequate security on the cruise liners would be leaked. The blackmailer was a Norwegian ex-captain from one of the cruise liners. The man had been fired for drinking and apparently wanted to get his own back.’
‘What happened?’
‘He was caught. Got three years.’
The two cars on the roundabout had caused a bottleneck. Someone honked their horn. Then the traffic started flowing again. A clenched fist shook from one of the car windows and the two cars were soon lost in the traffic.
Frølich said: ‘If the man was arrested, Narvesen must have gone to the police for help on that occasion. He hasn’t done so this time.’
‘That’s clear. But why else would anyone take five million out of the bank?’
‘No idea. But if Narvesen is such a whizz-kid in the stock market as you said, he would have been much more sophisticated with regard to money laundering. He could have used a trusted solicitor’s private account or something like that. Simply withdrawing cash suggests honourable intentions or extreme haste.’
‘Haste is a word I like,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘Especially with respect to the day the money was withdrawn.’
‘What does Sørlie say?’
‘Sørlie considers Narvesen as pure and spotless as a freshly scrubbed baby. And he believes it too. But I’ve never met anyone like that. I think anything is possible. Maybe Narvesen has been posing for photos in a G-string with an apple in his gob.’
‘No one is shocked by anything any more.’
‘Perhaps he likes little boys and was caught red-handed by his wife’s private detective?’
‘He was single at the time,’ Frølich said. ‘And I doubt he’s interested in anything other than women. Regardless of whether he’s married or not, there’s no shortage of single wannabees in
Dagens Nœringsliv
who spend their time screwing each other and drinking champagne in the breaks. No, sex is too old-fashioned. I would put my money on some financial hanky-panky.’
‘The problem is,’ Gunnarstranda said, ‘that Narvesen passes for an honest man – a model businessman for many people, I’ve heard said. At the stock exchange on top of that.’
‘There’s no honesty in the Oslo Stock Exchange, and Sørlie should be the first person to know that.’
‘Yes, but we’re talking about the part of the honesty spectrum covered by the law. Inge Narvesen is always on the right side of the line – with a good solid margin in between. Though there are not many options open when you have to justify a withdrawal of that kind of money.’
‘What about kidnapping?’ Frølich said.
‘He hasn’t got any children or any valuable racehorses or prizewinning hunting dogs. But I suppose Sørlie will put in a formal enquiry. Then we’ll see what Narvesen comes up with.’
After putting down the phone, Frank Frølich stood looking into space. He was wondering about Narvesen, about procedures. Sørlie and the formal approach.
Tick-tock
, he thought with irritation.
Tempus fugit. Time drags, everything goes slowly. Nothing happens
. He looked at the clock on the wall. Soon it would be one o’clock. Lunchtime for the workers. One thing he did remember from the kerfuffle surrounding the break-in at Narvesen’s in 1998 was an almost surrealistic conversation during the man’s lunch break at his permanent table at the Theatre Café.
Lunch. Theatre Café. The time
.
It was a long shot. But was there anything else he could do?
Frølich took the underground to the National Theatre station. From there he quickly crossed Stortingsgata and walked with lowered gaze past the windows where Theatre Café customers sat having their lunch – absorbed in themselves and each other. Turning the corner of Klingenberggata he peered in and spotted Narvesen sitting at his usual table – alone as had always been his wont. He was taking coffee – so he would soon be finished.
Frølich checked his watch again. It was approaching a quarter to two. He walked around the block and joined the queue of people waiting for the tram outside the National Theatre, opposite the windows of the Theatre Café. There was snow in the air. Tiny, dry snowflakes lifting on the wind and settling like fragments of dust on people’s shoulders and sleeves. He could make out Narvesen’s brown hair through the windows on the opposite side of the street. At two o’clock precisely the man rose and joked with the waitress clearing the table.
Good friends, good tips
. Frank Frølich waited until Narvesen had moved into the corridor towards the cloakroom. Then he sprinted away from the wall and crossed Stortingsgata. When Narvesen had eased on his winter coat and was on his way through the entrance, Frølich had one foot on the pavement.
He said: ‘Well, I never! Hello and nice to see you again! Long time no see!’
He grabbed the hand that Narvesen automatically stretched out.
‘Do I know you?’ The man’s whole being radiated bewilderment. In his winter coat, with his upper body bent forward and his gloves rolled up in his left hand, he resembled an old photograph of John F. Kennedy. Small granules of snow landed on his hair.
‘I’m a policeman. We met after a break-in at your house some years ago. Somebody had stolen a safe.’
The confused expression on Narvesen’s face changed to one of irritation. ‘The money which never reappeared?’
‘Half a million is nothing,’ Frølich said with a smile. ‘Compared with five million in cash.’
Narvesen’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t say anything.
‘Nordea registered a withdrawal of five million kroner in small notes in your name less than a week ago.’
‘And what has that got to do with you?
‘Maybe nothing with me, but with Eco-Crime.’
Narvesen stood facing him, thinking. The gloves he had held rolled up in one fist changed hands. Then he began to thwack them against individual snowflakes on one arm.
‘You’re a policeman,’ he said. ‘What was the name?’
‘Frølich.’
‘Right, now I remember you. You looked a little different then.’
‘I had a beard.’
‘Exactly, now it’s coming back to me. Well, then, you know I am a wealthy man?’
Frølich nodded. He was puzzled.
The man sees the cop who investigated a theft of half a million of his money and he says: ‘Right, now it’s coming back to me.’
Inge Narvesen started edging away. They walked side by side along the pavement. Narvesen said: ‘If I gave you a number – say, one million eight hundred thousand – what would that mean to you?’
‘A really nice apartment in one of the satellite districts – where I live now, for example.’
‘If I said eight million kroner, what would that mean to you?’
‘That would be harder to have any kind of genuine relationship with.’
Narvesen glanced at Frølich and gave a wry smile. They turned down Roald Amundsens gate towards Klingenberggata and Haakon VIIs gate. ‘I feel the same,’ Narvesen said. ‘Exactly fourteen months ago the value of a small part of my portfolio increased by 150 million kroner. Tomorrow, at this time, the same portfolio will be worth 300 million kroner more. This has nothing to do with me, but with a series of factors: current low interest rates, my own long-term investments, the breadth of my portfolio and, not least, how the general economy is performing in the market place. And it’s not the first time this has happened. On the roller coaster that is the stock market, I have experienced lots of what seemed to be endless boom times. But I’ve always come through the ensuing crises with both feet on the ground and a good base for further business. And I’ll tell you a little secret as far as that is concerned.’ Narvesen stopped. They had come to the corner of Klingenberggata and Haakon VIIs gate.
‘Well, tell me,’ Frølich said impatiently.
‘A good antidote to eternal optimism with stocks and shares is an occasional trip to the bank. Then I take out a pile of money. I stuff all the notes into a supermarket carrier bag and put it in a cupboard in the office. The last time I did this is less than a week ago. Yes, I withdrew five million in cash. It’s in my office. In a plastic bag. Whenever I make a transaction of such unreal proportions, I go to this cupboard and look into the bag and say to myself: “Inge Narvesen,” I say. “This is what it’s all about, this is real money. With the contents of this bag you can buy a reasonable home, an above-average car and a fair-sized holiday chalet. You can put the rest of the money in the bank and live on the interest.”’
‘You’ve got five million in a cupboard?’
Narvesen nodded. ‘And now I have to go back to my office and earn more money. Nice to meet you, Frølich. Have a great day.’
Frølich watched him go. Two minutes’ chat about money and ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ turned into ‘Have a great day’.
Five million in a cupboard in the office? Don’t make me laugh.
He did some mental arithmetic:
five
million kroner, that’s fifty thousand hundred-kroner notes. Is there enough space for them in a carrier bag – or if he had used thousand-kroner notes – five thousand notes? How many bags did he need? OK, Inge Narvesen wanted a genuine relationship with money, so why not confine the sum to a hundred thousand? Or two hundred thousand? That would be much more in accord with the logic behind the act. First of all, make a staggering profit and afterwards check how many notes make up just one hundred thousand. But – five million?
He thought back to the time six years ago. The atmosphere in Narvesen’s house. Deadly serious. The worry in his mother’s eyes – she had been there to represent him. Yes, that was what had happened: Narvesen had been on holiday, somewhere hot – Bahamas or Pitcairn Island or something like that – and his mother had turned up after the break-in. The crime had been committed in the son’s house. Must have been night time or early morning. Narvesen’s mother had sat like a lonely little bird in the corner of the sofa imagining all sorts of bogeymen while Narvesen sent his telephone instructions from the southern seas.
Frank Frølich thought about Ilijaz Zupac. So far he had served more than five years of the sentence for a second, more serious crime. Perhaps it was time to have a chat with Ilijaz Zupac.
 
It was a freezing cold morning. A narrow margin of cloud resembling red lava presaged daybreak over the mountain peaks. Frank Frølich was heading north on the E6 towards the rush-hour traffic and the sun rising in the east. He pulled out his sunglasses from the glove compartment. As his car sped over the ridge, Karihaugen and Nedre Romerike revealed themselves as a large patchwork quilt of farmland in hibernation. Three lanes, 120 kilometres an hour and only oncoming traffic. The scene seemed almost American. He pushed a Dylan CD into the player – ‘Slow Train Coming’ – and clicked forward to the title song. It was a long track and the driving guitar complemented the scenery. On top of that, there was something fateful and invigorating about the repeated refrain of a train coming. He felt he could be that train. It was moving slowly but it was making progress. When Dylan finished singing, he played the track again, until he arrived outside the high walls of Ullersmo prison.
After passing the gate in the internal prison wall, he was met by a young man with big, blond, curly hair, who said: ‘Are you the person who wants to meet Ilijaz?’
Frølich nodded.
‘I’m Freddy Ramnes, the prison doctor.’
The man’s handshake was firm and he looked Frølich steadfastly in the eye. He said: ‘Do you know Ilijaz Zupac from before?’
Frølich raised both eyebrows and considered the question briefly before deciding to answer honestly: ‘I arrested Zupac in autumn 1998. I questioned him at various times the same day and then gave evidence at the trial. Those are the only times I’ve seen the man.’
Ramnes hesitated. ‘Are you here on police business?’
‘I’m on leave at present.’
‘May I ask why you’re here?’
‘For personal reasons.’
They weighed each other up.
Frølich waited for the unpleasant question:
Which particular personal reasons? But it never came.
Eventually
Frank Frølich said: ‘Is there a problem? Doesn’t he want to talk to me?’
The doctor took his time to answer. ‘This has nothing to do with me,’ he said in the end, sticking his hands in his pockets as if the words he was searching for were down there. ‘It’s more the situation. Ilijaz is sick. He needs,
really
needs psychiatric treatment, a facility we are unable to offer.’ He went silent, apparently still searching for words.
‘Yes?’ Frølich said, expecting more.
‘We’re dealing with a
very
needy person here. I thought I should prepare you for that.’ Pause. Ramnes finally added: ‘Hmm. Shall we go?’
The echo of their footsteps resounded against the concrete walls.
This is unusual
.
The doctor is accompanying me on the visit
.
But then he’s young, probably an idealist.
They came to one of the more comfortable visiting rooms where inmates can meet their partners and there are condoms in the cupboard. The room was not very inviting, however. It contained one cheap sofa, one table and one armchair. Bare walls. In front of the radiator, between the wall and the armchair, a man was squatting on the floor. Frank Frølich didn’t recognize him. The previously golden skin was now grey. His hair was a greasy, tangled mess reminiscent of a crow’s nest; his back wretchedly rounded in a T-shirt full of holes. The man was squatting like a Hindu in meditation along the banks of the Ganges, hiding his head in his hands.
Frølich and Freddy Ramnes exchanged glances.
‘Ilijaz,’ Freddy Ramnes said.
No reaction.
‘Ilijaz!’
The figure stirred: a hand, filthy, with narrow fingers and long nails, began to wind strands of hair.
‘Ilijaz, do you want a Coke?’
The situation was ridiculous. Frølich looked across at the doctor whose expression was serious and empathetic.
‘Ilijaz, you have a visitor.’
A look, hunted, like a frightened cat’s, before his head hid itself again.
‘Ilijaz, would you like to come and say hello to Frank?’
The head didn’t budge.
Frølich cleared his throat. ‘Ilijaz, do you remember me?’
No reaction.
‘I arrested you that time six years ago, at the petrol station. I’m the policeman who talked to you afterwards.’
No reaction.
‘You had a Norwegian girlfriend called Elisabeth. I wanted to talk to you about …’ He paused when the figure on the floor moved. The crouching body turned away completely, into the corner.
Frølich and the doctor exchanged glances again. Frølich said: ‘Elisabeth Faremo. Jonny Faremo, Vidar Ballo, Jim Rognstad …’ He stopped. No discernible reaction. He cleared his throat and proceeded: ‘I have a photograph of Elisabeth Faremo. Would you like to see it?’
No reaction.
Frølich and the doctor looked at each other. The doctor had his hands in his pockets, waiting.
‘Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea,’ Frølich said.
Freddy Ramnes shook his head. He took a plastic half-litre bottle of Coke out of the pocket in his roomy jacket and put it on the table. ‘Bye, Ilijaz,’ he said, moving towards the door.
They walked back down the same corridor without speaking. ‘If I were to die while working here,’ Freddy Ramnes said in a voice quivering with anger, ‘I would like my gravestone to say I was killed by the Norwegian penal policy. Those with political responsibility have given
me
the happy dilemma of either securing him with straps or doping him up every evening so that he doesn’t do away with himself.’
‘Was he doped up now?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Does that mean he would have problems remembering names?’
‘No. It means he’s calm, but absolutely indifferent to what you or I might say. A lobotomy is much the same, according to those who are au fait with such things.’
‘What’s he suffering from?’
Freddy Ramnes walked on a few metres. Now that he had vented his fury, he was collecting himself and trying to regain the dignity his emotions had blown to pieces a few moments ago. ‘If I were a specialist in psychiatry, I might be able to tell you. The only thing I can do is apply for a place for him in an institution and receive rejections. After all, he is in an institution, isn’t he?’ Ramnes pulled a bitter face.
Frølich didn’t know what to say.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Ramnes continued in a gentler vein. ‘They’re just labels anyway. Psychotic personality disorder, bipolar personality disorder, schizophrenia, you name it, he might have it. Cynics might call it prison psychosis.’
‘As I said, I had some contact with Ilijaz six years ago and he was a very different person.’
Ramnes breathed in. ‘The only thing I know is that the illness and the symptoms have developed while he has been serving his sentence. It had already started when I first came here. Intense fear, withdrawal, paranoia. And it’s simply getting worse.’
‘Does anyone visit him?’
Ramnes stopped and gave him a sceptical look.
‘You seem like a decent person, Frolich. However, we’re now moving into an area where I’m bound by professional secrecy and you’ll have to direct your enquiries to others.’

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