The Last Fix (26 page)

    The
ageing woman in the wheelchair sat with her mouth half-open and concentrated.
The egg box in one hand and the glue in the other. A drop of saliva gathered on
her lower lip, stretched into a long, viscous thread of slime and slowly
reached her lap before she had taken the decision to cast off.

    'No,
no, dear Stella!' the man said in an affected voice, wiping her mouth with
paper and gently closing her mouth. 'We don't sit like that, do we?' Georg Beck
winked at Frølich again. 'Not when we have strange men here!'

    The
old woman shrieked with laughter and a smile revealed bluish-grey false teeth.
Her arms were so thin that the skin hung off her forearms. Her lined fingers
were splayed out and she was staring at a point in the far distance.

    'Now,
now,' Beck reproved in a gentle tone. 'That's how to squeeze the tube. You can
do it, Stella. Squeeze the tube! Not so hard, Stella! Not so hard. You've
squeezed tubes before, Stella!'

    He
winked again at Frølich, straightened up and stood for a few seconds
looking at the woman in the wheelchair. Her hands with the egg box and the tube
of glue sank into her lap and stayed there, immobile. She sat unconcerned, with
her mouth half-open staring ahead of her.

    Beck
shook his head in despair and turned to Frølich. 'Right, handsome, fire
away!' he said producing a grin that exposed a large gap between his front
teeth.

    'It's
about the party at Annabeth s's house.'

    'Oh,
my God, what a dramatic end!' Beck put on an affected expression. 'Come with
me,' he exclaimed and wiggled his way to some free seats beneath the window.
'Don't bother about Stella. She can't hear anyway. I was there and, with my
sense of timing, I left before it happened. That's what I call being off-form,
not smelling a scandal when the word is written in capital letters and flashing
neon lights.'

    Beck
gave the policeman a cool once-over and held out a chair for him. 'Whatever you
do, Chief Inspector, don't rattle the handcuffs here or we'll all swoon!'

    'What's
your connection with Gerhardsen and s?' Frølich enquired.

    'Oh,
I just cast a bit of glamour over the gathering,' Beck said with a giggle. 'But
Annabeth is so
lovely.
She's the one who arranges for me to go there.
When she asks it's
simply not on
to say no. I only work freelance… for
Vinterhagen; I don't have the
energy
for any more. But I do enough to be
invited to parties. Then he brings out the best cognac, Bjørn does - the
good-time Charlie.'

    'The
good-time Charlie?' Frølich asked.

    'Whoops,'
Beck exclaimed, putting a hand to his mouth. 'Have I said too much already?
There you see - me and good-looking men, not a good combination.'

    Frølich
stared.

    'I
mean Bjørn's feelers were out for the poor girl, or his hands might be a
more apt expression,' he said with a meaningful glance. 'My goodness, where
that man has had his hands. It doesn't bear thinking about.'

    'You
mean he…'

    'Yes,
he was playing footsie under the table. What do you say to that? During the
meal. With that poor girl, not that I am a complete innocent, and she wasn't
either, I'm led to believe… ' Beck laughed out loud and winked. '… Not that we
need to go any deeper into that side of the case, eh? Anyway, Bjørn was
sitting at the same table as Annabeth, wasn't he. Not that that made any
difference. On the terrace he had one hand up her skirt.'

    'Katrine
Bratterud's?'

    'Yes,
I suppose that was her name.'

    'You
saw that?'

    'Not
only me. Annabeth did, too. She was grinding her teeth so hard we were
beginning to think there were mice behind the walls.' He laughed again. 'And
perhaps that turn of phrase says it all.'

    'How
did the girl react?'

    'My
God, I have no idea. I retreated - at once because Annabeth was clenching both
fists and on her way to the terrace. I hadn't come to the party to ring for an
ambulance. Anyway I sat down and started chatting to some other people.'

    'But
how…?' Frølich searched for words. 'Were they being intimate? On the
terrace? I mean Katrine and Gerhardsen - or did she seem to be rejecting him?'

    'I
have no idea. Maybe, maybe not. They didn't meet much resistance anyway - his
hands I'm talking about.'

    'But
did you see how it finished up?'

    'Look,
handsome…'

    Frølich
cleared his throat. 'I mean, did you see what happened when fru Ås joined
them?'

    'No,
and thank God I didn't. I would guess Annabeth made Bjørn control
himself.'

    'But
if something had happened on the terrace, something
scandalous
… I
presume you would have known?'

    'Of
course.'

    'But
you think the advances Gerhardsen made to the murder victim led to an emotional
response ' from Annabeth s?'

    'Lordie,
the way you speak.
The murder victim.
I'm all on edge.' He gesticulated
and put on a serious face. 'But yes, she was affected by the situation, there
is no question.'

    'Were
you aware that the girl became ill during the party?'

    'I
heard about it and that is what I cannot forgive myself for. The scandal was
already in full flow. I left straight afterwards.'

    'You
left the party alone?'

    'No,
there were five of us. It was so boring there. We went to Enka.' Beck winked.
'That is, we dropped three of them off at Smuget. Lasse and I went on. Lasse,
he's my man of the moment.' He smiled.

    'Who
was in the car?'

    'There
was Bjørn, well oiled as always…'

    'Annabeth's
husband?'

    'Yes,
and there was the boyfriend of the girl we're talking about… a cutie with
particularly attractive legs, and a woman who was clinging to him.'

    'You
dropped these three off at Smuget?'

    'Yes,
Bjørn and the woman and the athlete… Ole. Nice name, isn't it? I always
go very solemn when I hear that name. I think of the violinist, Ole Bull, you
know, the piece of music
The Herb Girl's Sunday.'

    'The
Herd Girl's Sunday.'

    Georg
Beck gasped and patted his forehead. 'There you see. This is putting me all on
edge.'

    'Why
didn't you and Lasse go to Smuget?'

    'We
wanted to go to Enka, but the others, above all Bjørn, wanted to go to a
place with more of a hetero feel. So we dropped them off. Lasse and I went to
Enka where we met another couple and we went back to my place at half past
three, all four of us. I suppose, that's what you call an alibi, isn't it?'
Beck put on a roguish smile and leaned forward. 'Would you like me to go into
detail?'

    Frølich
sighed and tore a sheet from his notebook and passed it to Beck. 'Could you jot
down the names here, please,' he said, and stood up.

    The
two policemen sat comparing the various witnesses' statements. Frølich
fed all the material, about the murder victim's movements into the computer.
Gunnarstranda Bad been sitting and looking at the prison photo of Raymond Skau
for a long time. 'This man is central,' he concluded.

    'He's
never at home, anyway,' Frølich remarked over his shoulder.

    Gunnarstranda
stood up. 'We'll have to try his door several times and if that does not
produce results we'll ask someone to batter it down,' he continued, and went
quiet when the telephone rang. A few seconds later he put down the receiver
with a grunt and got to his feet again. 'That was Yttergjerde,' he mumbled in
his excitement.

    'What
happened?' Frølich asked.

    Gunnarstranda
fumbled with his coat. He couldn't get it on fast enough.

    'The
clothes. They've found her clothes,' the police inspector said. With that he
about-faced and went off in a flap. His coat fluttering behind him. His arms
outstretched. Nose bent over like a beak. He resembled a hungry seagull
floating on an up-draught behind a ferry, cheerfully pensive and excited at the
same time.

    Frølich
turned off the road, drove into the gravel car park and came to a halt. The two
detectives walked the last part, the older one a good two metres ahead.
Yttergjerde and his men had blocked off the area beneath the road.

    'This
is not far from where she was found,' Frølich mumbled.

    Yttergjerde
met them. 'Floated along in a plastic bag,' he said. 'That is, it was bobbing
up and down in the water between the rocks over there.' He pointed.

    The
two of them followed. The items of clothing lay on the ground packed in
transparent plastic on which big puddles had collected in the drizzle. Frølich
could make out a black bra, black panties, a grey shirt, a blouse, but only one
shoe.

    'The
other shoe?' Gunnarstranda asked.

    'This
is all there was,' Yttergjerde said. 'And the bag, of course.' He pointed to a
white plastic bag advertising the supermarket chain Joker in green writing. The
colour was faded.

    .
'And the bag was found there?' Gunnarstranda pointed to some large rocks at the
water's edge. They jutted out into the water beneath the trunks of two enormous
pine trees.

    'Yes,
and it was knotted, so I suppose it will go to the lab?'

    'Did
the bag float there or was it thrown?'

    'Hard
to say, if it wasn't thrown from up there…' Yttergjerde nodded towards the road
where an ageing blue Volvo full of inquisitive youths was slowly trundling
past.'… It can't have happened very far from here.'

    'No
jewellery, handbag or personal effects?'

    Yttergjerde
shook his head.

    'We'd
better have a look around,' Gunnarstranda said, walking up to the motorway.
'How far away are we from the place where the body was found?'

    'Two
or three kilometres.' Frølich, turning, nodded towards the west. 'And
about the same distance to the area where Henning and Katrine were parked.'

    'The
killer threw the clothes first, then the body?'

    'That's
possible,' Frølich mused. 'Depends which way the car was going.' He
looked up and down the road. 'The plastic bag on the right hand side of the
road, the body on the left…'

    'If
the car was going west from here towards Oslo city centre,' Gunnarstranda
added. 'Henning Kramer said the girl walked up towards Holmlia, and if she was
picked up there, the car must have been on its way out of Oslo. In that case he
got rid of the body first and then the clothes?'

    They
got into the car. Frølich started the engine. 'Did you notice the
clothes?' he asked.

    Gunnarstranda:
'What do you mean?'

    'Is
it significant? I think it looked as though she had undressed herself.'

    'Disagree,'
said Gunnarstranda. 'The clothes didn't seem to have been ripped to shreds,
which is quite another matter. We'll have to see what the lab people say.'

    Frølich
nodded, drove out of the car park and headed back towards Oslo city centre. As
they approached Hvervenbukta Frølich slowed down and pulled into the
side. On the left they could make out the white bathing hut on the jetty, the
green lawns leading up to the car parks and the pine-clad ridge of Ljanskollen.

    'No
problem at all,' Frølich said. 'If the killer drove as we have just done
and pulled in where we are now, he must have carried her across the road and
then thrown her over the safety barrier.'

    'That
suggests then the car was going in the opposite direction,' Gunnarstranda said.
'So the killer drags Katrine into the car, rapes and strangles her, strips her,
drives seven or eight hundred metres down the road, stops, lifts her over the
barrier, gets back in, drives on and…'