The Fourth Man (9 page)
Authors: K.O. Dahl
Tags: #Suspense, #Crime, #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Detectives, #Police Procedural, #Police, #Oslo (Norway)
He stood listening. Silence at first. Afterwards the sound of a voice. Reidun Vestli was talking to someone on the phone. Who else could it be but Elisabeth?
He was gaping at the door, but collected himself, turned and walked back slowly, past the car-washer clones, the BMWs, the fence posts and the spiraea hedges. Had he known, he would have spared himself this confrontation. On the other hand, some things had been confirmed. She knew. He was sure.
That evening he sat at home with a cold beer in front of the television. But he couldn’t concentrate. He zapped. A man and a woman were under a duvet murmuring into each other’s ears. Reality TV. He continued to zap. A cheetah running in slow motion. The animal was an explosion of muscular power and concentration. The cheetah’s eyes and body seemed to be living separate lives. Two lives merged into one, an engine which ran automatically. A body hinged at the hip joint. The cheetah launched itself at a Thomson’s gazelle, forced the poor beast to the ground and killed it with one bite to the throat. Afterwards the cheetah guarded its prey, breathless. The TV voice delivered its spiel about how this was the most critical moment for the cheetah. It was too tired to eat, but if it didn’t start soon, a lion or a hyena would come along and steal its prey. The commentator had hardly finished speaking when an extraordinarily ugly-looking hunched creature roared and frightened off the cheetah. The hyena bolted down the food while the poor exhausted cheetah sat some distance away watching its own lunch disappear. Several more hyenas arrived. They sank their jaws in the gazelle’s stomach, peered up and bared their blood-stained teeth.
He switched off the television.
Hesitantly, he reached for the telephone. He dialled Gunnarstranda’s number and for some strange reason felt guilty about doing it. It wasn’t quite ten o‘clock in the evening. Most probably the old codger was in the office. But he wasn’t: Gunnarstranda’s hoarse voice carried into the room: ‘Please be brief.’
‘I’ve been talking to Reidun Vestli,’ Frølich said, promptly regretting he had called.
‘And who is Reidun Vestli?’
‘Elisabeth Faremo’s lover.’
Silence on the line.
‘I suspect she knows where Elisabeth Faremo is.’
‘And?’
‘Just a tip. You could perhaps have a chat with her.’
‘Thank you for that.’
Frølich didn’t know what to say.
Gunnarstranda cleared his throat. ‘I take it you spoke to her in a private capacity.’
‘Naturally.’
‘My advice to you is to stop doing this too. You’re on leave, Frølich. Keep out of it, go on holiday.’
With that, the line went dead.
He sat there with the receiver in his hand. If he hadn’t felt stupid before, he did now. On top of that, Gunnarstranda’s coldness. But it was part of him. The problem was that he had never felt it before, not in this way.
That night he had confused dreams about Elisabeth and her brother. The two of them had the same look. One moment black with desire, the next mortally afraid. But which were her brother’s eyes and which were hers?
During the night all the clouds had dispersed and once again the cold had slipped in – setting the scene for a freezing cold late November morning. The air was as keen as a razor blade. The sub-zero temperatures had glued the night mist to the ice on the tarmac. He got into the car, drove out of town and headed east. Transparent mist steamed off the black ploughed fields as he approached Hobøl and Elvestad. Beyond the margins of the forest, in the distance, the globe of the sun resembled the red-hot bald dome of a creator poking his head over the crest to release a little more light for the people in the north. Soon the rays were so bright that Frank Frølich had to flip down the sun shield.
He paid at the toll gate in Fossum, turned into the Shell garage by Fossum bridge and filled the tank. The Glomma was flowing quietly but robustly under the bridge. He thought about Jonny Faremo. About swimming against the current in icy water.
After paying he got back in his car and studied the map. He was lower than Solbergfoss power station, but still above Kykkelsrud power station.
He sat thinking for a while before starting the engine and then drove behind the petrol station. There was a narrow, winding side road leading to a footbridge further along. He parked, got out and leaned against the stone barrier by the river. The water coiled as it followed the slow-moving current.
He stood watching the eddies in the brown-black water. If he fell in here his body would be carried far away in seconds. The cold water would paralyse him. His wet clothes would make it difficult to move. They would become heavy and sap his strength as he was dragged under. The river bank was inhospitable, only slippery rocks. To crawl ashore would be almost impossible. The strong current and the cold would make time a vital factor. How long could he survive?
He strolled along the path by the river. From here paths ran up to the ridge, between the old wartime bunkers. The picnic area on the opposite side of the river was less protected from prying eyes, but you could get rid of a body here relatively easily as well. Nevertheless, there was one fact that suggested that Jonny Faremo had not been thrown in here: the river was closed off further down by Kykkelsrud power station. Faremo had been found in a net further down.
He thought:
Perhaps it’s wisest to start there – in Kykkelsrud.
Perhaps it’s wisest to start there – in Kykkelsrud.
Frank Frølich crossed the footbridge. On the other side there was a commemorative monument – ‘The Battle of Fossum Bridge’. Here the Germans had met determined Norwegian resistance before their safe passage through to Oslo in April 1940. The full names of the fallen Norwegians were carved in stone.
Frølich went back to his car and drove on, over Fossum bridge, up the hills towards Askim. He passed a couple of automatic radar traps at such a slow speed that they didn’t flash.
A road sign indicated the turn-off to the next power station. He took it. They were building a new motorway here; he passed a few of the roadworks and machines. He accelerated down towards the local waterworks and bore left, towards the power station. The car continued downwards, approaching the river again.
He passed a few isolated old-style wooden houses – probably the homes of the power-station workers. Another turning. Shortly afterwards, a road sign: HAFSLUND ENERGI. The stone building was modern with large windows. Behind it the bank of the river towered up on the opposite side of the reservoir. He let the car roll down towards the power station and the dam.
There was a bleached, though still blue, parking sign by some fenced-in sheds to the left of the road. A relatively new Skoda Octavia estate was parked there. He recognized the car and was not at all pleased, but he parked next to it.
This wasn’t a good moment to meet Gunnarstranda. Frølich didn’t have a plausible explanation for why he was here. But did he have to have one? Did every step he took have to have a rational motivation? He scanned the area. Gunnarstranda was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t see anyone. There was no discernible activity from the houses scattered across the mountainside. Even the Hafslund Energi offices appeared dead. The frost made the tarmac smooth and slippery. He walked cautiously, stiff-legged, towards the dam. On his way down to the power station he passed three enormous discarded turbines which had been left for viewing on the frosty grass. To the right lay the reservoir, dammed up and black like a huge troll’s mirror. A tiny island close to shore stood out. The trees on the mountain slopes in front of the power station were reflected in the black surface of the water. The rate of discharge was low and revealed the whole stone construction forming the dam. On the left-hand side there was a fifty-metre-long dry concrete structure – a sluiceway without any water. It was a long way down to the bottom of the sluice. He felt an attack of vertigo as he peered down over the edge. Between the dam and the far sluice wall there were two large brick grids. A clammy stench of stagnant water came from an undisturbed muddy bed below. He walked out onto the dam and passed over what must have been the water inlet. The dam trembled slightly – a huge grumbling pulse. Water streamed down beneath him. And to the right, up to the wall, the surface water coiled slowly into eddies and currents. Here water was at work. In front, the waterfall was stemmed by a wall consisting of three large sluice gates.
He could positively feel the force of the water pressing against the wall as he stared at the course of the river a few hundred metres lower down. At that moment the sweet smell of a freshly lit Petterøe prickled his nose. Without turning his head, he said, ‘Gunnarstranda, are you still smoking?’
‘I’ve smoked for over forty years,’ Gunnarstranda said and went over to him. Gunnarstranda had his hands in his pockets as his cheeks greedily sucked the smoke into his mouth and down into his lungs.
‘But you really should give it up. You’re ill.’
‘I had thought about stopping, but then the doctor wanted me to chew gum with nicotine in. But that’s still nicotine, isn’t it? What’s the difference then? May as well continue smoking.’
Frølich smiled to himself.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Gunnarstranda asked grumpily.
‘I heard this joke about a man who was intent on giving up smoking. He met a friend who had succeeded. “How did you manage to stop smoking?” the man asked. “Well,” said the other man. “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. You buy a packet of cigarettes as usual, but whenever you want to light up, you first of all stick a cigarette up your arse.”
‘“Up your arse?” asked his friend. “Yes, up your arse. There’s no better way to tell yourself smoking is shit. You would never dream of putting the cigarette you had up your arse in your mouth afterwards,” the man said.
‘Well, the two men met a couple of months later. “Hi,” his friend shouts. “How did it go? Did you manage to stop smoking?”
‘“Of course,” the first man says. “Giving up smoking was easy. But actually it didn’t help very much.”
‘“It didn’t help very much?”
‘“The problem now is I can’t stop sticking cigarettes up my arse!”’ Frølich slapped his thighs and gasped with laughter.
Gunnarstranda glowered at him just as grumpily as before. ‘And there was me thinking the rumours about you were just bollocks,’ he said.
Frølich assumed a serious face again. ‘I was looking for you after I saw your car,’ he said.
‘You’re beginning to get on my nerves,’ Gunnarstranda said.
‘Oh?’
‘Just the fact that you come out here when you’re off work. At some point, if you continue to get under my feet, I’ll be forced to report you.’
‘And?’
‘Perhaps you can’t see your own stupidity, but everyone else can.’
‘Relax,’ Frølich said. ‘You won’t have to report me. Do you reckon Faremo was thrown in here?’
‘No, there isn’t enough water in the river.’ Gunnarstranda nodded in the direction of the exposed rocks in the river bed beneath them. ‘The waterfall is almost dry. It must have happened further down.’ He pointed. ‘On the promontory down there, perhaps. Perfect place for a crime. There’s a gravel path down to the river from it. Unfortunately, however, there’s a barrier closing it off. Padlocked.’
‘Has anyone got a spare key?’
‘Hardly. A man I met in there.’ Gunnarstranda tossed his head towards the turbine building. ‘He told me he lives in one of the houses on the slope. Reckons he would have noticed if anyone had passed through the barrier.’
They looked across the wide river valley in silence.
‘This station is not being used,’ Gunnarstranda said finally. ‘I was given a long introduction into energy and its history over there. Vamma, further down, and Solbergfoss, higher up, are the ones which produce the energy. This power station is only used when the water level in the Glomma is particularly high.’
‘But what do you think happened to Faremo? Was he pushed in? Or did he lose his footing on a slippery rock?’
‘Hard to say.’
‘They may not have driven down to the river. It could have been one person, or two, going for a walk.’
‘Could have been. And if there have been any sightings, I’ll soon find out.’
Frølich interpreted Gunnarstranda’s answer as an indication that this topic of conversation was not taboo. He said: ‘It’s absolutely crazy that Faremo should have died right now, isn’t it?’
‘Not everyone is permitted to choose the time of their death, Frølich.’
‘I’ve had a look at the map. There’s a road nearer to Askim looping down towards the river. From a logical point of view, a murderer could have driven along the road, got as close as possible to the river and found somewhere to offload Faremo. And he doesn’t need to be familiar with the locality.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, if he had been local he would have known about Vamma power station; he would have known that the river is closed off with a net which sifts the water and picks up debris. If he had driven a bit further and thrown Faremo in the river under Vamma, the body could have drifted several kilometres before it turned up in Sarpsborg – it’s quite a distance from Vamma to the net before Sarp waterfall.
‘Sounds logical – apart from one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re talking as if Faremo was killed first. But he had water in his lungs. He drowned. If it was murder, and the murder was not premeditated, Faremo may have ended up in the river as a result of a row, a fight, and that is the most likely scenario. So most of the investigation will be taken up with searching for someone with a score to settle with Faremo.’
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