by K. O. Dahl
I forget no one
pain also passes
along a snapped twig
I forget no one
if I kiss you
He sank back down onto the bed. The words evoked their decisive encounter: the evening she had followed him home. The crush on the Metro, the sound of footsteps on the tarmac, the image of her silhouette against the street lamp. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek.
He flicked back. The words were the last verse of a long poem written by the deceased lesbian writer, Gunvor Hofmo.
He read the first verse of the poem:
I have lost my face
In these wild rhythms
Only my white body dances
Was that how she saw herself? A body without a face? He read again: ‘I forget no one if I kiss you’. The image of Elisabeth dissolved as he read. Had she left the book on purpose? Or had she simply forgotten it? A replica of Elisabeth’s tattoo, so peculiar to her, and unlike anything else, an intimate signature taken from her body, placed over the sentence she had used to initiate their relationship – I forget no one if I kiss you.
He could hear Gunnarstranda’s voice in his head: long bones. The words were immediately drowned by the noise of the crackling flames in his head. An image: a gigantic bonfire, a house aflame, a glowing heat, window panes exploding. Nothing else visible except the contours of a body enveloped in flames. Zooming in. The contours materialize into flesh – flesh blistering, melting, body fat hissing, burning with a yellow flame until it is carbon. His thoughts stood still, paralysed by the vision until he began to feel the book in his hands again.
If they were Elisabeth’s remains in the ashes of Reidun Vestli’s weekend chalet, if Elisabeth was dead, how was he ever going to recover?
He read the poem again. New images in his consciousness: him in the act of making love, a long time ago, the image duller, no colours. Elisabeth putting down the book and saying it wasn’t possible to read the same book twice.
Then he knew: it was about an old love. The sentence referred to one person in particular. He stood up and gazed blindly out of the window: Elisabeth initiating a relationship with him back then had to mean betraying someone else. But whom had she betrayed? Reidun Vestli? Could it be so simple? No, it couldn’t. This was about forgetting. This was something from the distant past. But who was it she didn’t want to forget?
And who was unable to answer? Her brother was dead. Reidun Vestli – dead. He weighed the embroidered bookmark in his hand. Embroidery. A motif tattooed on Elisabeth’s hip. There was a chance that someone had seen this tattoo before.
After a long shower and some breakfast, he switched on the computer and logged onto the net, Yellow Pages, Tattooists, Search. The list of outlets was long: Purple Pain in Heimdal, Odin’s Mark in Lillestrøm, Ow! Tattoo and Piercing in Bergen, Hole in One in Bodø. He narrowed the search down to the Oslo region and printed out the list. He looked at it. Almost like working as a cop again. A house-to-house job.
Perhaps he should do that? Report back to work and continue the investigation as part of his job? He dismissed the thought, left his flat and went down to his car.
It was a trek, in and out of tattoo parlours, walls covered with kitsch – motorbikes, skulls, sword and flames, roses, scorpions. In most of the places young girls were lying on their stomachs having a decoration tattooed onto the small of their backs. In others they lay on their backs and had roses or calligraphic symbols on their groins and thighs. One man wanted a crown of thorns around his arm; another wanted the name Leif Ericson on his leg. The routine was repeated: first of all, Frank Frølich showed the photograph of Elisabeth, then the bookmark with the unusual motif on. It looked like crow’s feet: strange lines with curls on. He didn’t find anything remotely similar. Many of the tattooists supplied photographs of their body decorations. Most of the practitioners looked like followers of the motorbike culture. But not a nibble anywhere.
In between visits, he stayed at home continuing the search on the net. He searched the words from the poem, a variety of word combinations, but without success. It was while he was going through the list on the printout for the third time that his eye was caught by a business called the Personal Art Tattoo Studio. What was special about the shop was that it was located in Askim.
It was a shot in the dark, but Jonny Faremo’s body was found there – in Askim. He might as well try there as anywhere.
He got ready, picked up his car keys and took the lift down. Out on the street, he breathed in the damp, heavy air. It had turned mild again. It wasn’t raining, but the air was full of vapour, a grey moist consistency, tiny drops of water, hovering in the mist and gently, ever so gently, floating to the ground.
After getting in the car, he took a wrong turn and ended up driving towards Olso city centre instead of towards Ski. So he headed for Simensbråten, went up Vårveien, over the hump and turned right, down Ekebergveien. He braked just before Elisabeth’s apartment block. A sudden impulse almost made him come to a complete halt. You aren’t dead. I refuse to believe that. It was pathetic, but the emotion was strong. He was certain she was there, in her flat. He reversed into the car park, got out and ran down the steps to the Faremo apartment. The door hadn’t been sealed. He stood gasping for breath. And rang. Not a sound. He rang again, listened and knocked. The apartment was dead.
But there were sounds coming from the neighbouring flat. He turned towards the adjacent door. The sounds from behind it died away. He went over and rang the bell. The sound of feet. A shadow flitted across the peephole in the door. More seconds ticked past until the chain rattled and the door was opened.
‘Nice to see you again,’ Frølich said.
The old man stared at him. His lips were quivering; his face was distorted into a grimace with a fixed squint into a sun long since disappeared.
‘We met a few days ago. I was making enquiries about Elisabeth Faremo. You said she had packed a rucksack and had gone away. You’ve spoken to the police about the same conversation. Do you remember me?’
The man nodded.
‘I was wondering about something,’ Frank Frølich said. ‘You’ve lived here longer than the Faremos, haven’t you?’
The man nodded again.
‘Do you know how long they lived together here? Did they move in at the same time?’
‘Why —?’ The man spluttered and found his voice. ‘Why are you here asking questions?’
Frølich chewed that one over. In the end he said: ‘For personal reasons.’
The man gave him a long, hard look. Eventually the answer seemed to pass muster. At least Frølich was unable to detect any scepticism in the other’s eyes when he said: ‘She moved in first. The brother came a few years afterwards.’
‘Can you remember what year it was when she moved in?’
The man shook his head.
‘Try.’
‘It must be a good ten years ago. Must be.’
‘And she lived on her own at first?’
The man shook his head. ‘There were a number of chaps, of course, particularly one, before the brother came to live here.’
‘Chaps?’
‘Yes, well, she’s a good-looking girl and there have been men, you know, but there was one who lasted quite a long time. I don’t think he lived here; he just stayed here for stints. I remember because I was a bit doubtful. He was one of our new countrymen, you know. He went off, thank God. At first we thought Jonny had given him the heave-ho, but Jonny was her brother, wasn’t he?’
‘One of our new countrymen?’
‘Yes, not a Negro, more like a Turk or a Slav. Slightly rounded head and long nose. Can’t remember what his name was, though. Something with an I … or was it an A … Ika? Aka? Nope.’ He shook his head. ‘Time passes; we get older.’
The information wasn’t a lot of use. Frank Frølich was being a policeman now. He had a job to do. Elisabeth Faremo, ex-lover, long bones. No resonance in his head, no fever, no disturbing ima
ges, no crackling flames. He pinched his arm and felt pain.
It was still early morning as he crossed Mosseveien driving towards Fiskvollbukta and Mastemyr. The journey to Askim took three-quarters of an hour. He was driving against the rush-hour traffic and the late-winter sunrise. He passed Fossum Bridge and the motorway construction site. When he turned off the roundabout on Europaveien, down towards the station and into Askim town centre he found the tattoo studio right in front of him. It was next to the offices of Lilleng Frisør in a solitary yellow building beside the railway crossing gates which divided the small town into two. On the other side of the railway line, opposite the beginning of the pedestrian area, there was a cafeteria which looked like a red military barracks.
The tattoo shop hadn’t opened yet. Frank Frølich decided to go for a walk around the town. He wandered through the pedestrian zone and turned right along a winding road which finally ended in a crossroads with traffic lights. Large square buildings dominated the landscape. This town could have been anywhere – flat land broken up by barrack architecture and special offers on groceries. But behind it he could glimpse greater ambitions: adventure pools, a manufacturing plant — the old Viking factories which had, as usual, been converted into a shopping centre.
As Frank Frølich was strolling over the railway lines on his way back, ten minutes later, he heard the familiar roar of a Harley in the bend by the station.
The man was a rotund, jovial type with long curly hair. Frølich showed him the photograph of Elisabeth Faremo, but he didn’t recognize her. Then he gave him the bookmark with the design of Elisabeth’s tattoo on. Which he did recognize.
22
Frølich had taken up a horizontal position on the sofa and was studying the ceiling yet again — a black mark beside the lamp. Might have been a fly. But it wasn’t moving. It was something else. He had stared at the ceiling from this position at least a million times, seen the mark and thought: perhaps it’s a fly. But not even this time could he be bothered to get up and find out what it actually was.
He lay on his back mulling things over. You know she had a tattoo done in Askim four to five years ago. What else? You don’t know what it represents or why she did it. The tattooist who had injected the ink into her skin had been supplied with a design and didn’t know what it symbolized. So he was no further forward: the man remembered the design, but not her face.
Frølich realized he was fumbling around at the edges of a puzzle, unable to make the pieces fit any longer. He would have to try another corner. But which one?
What set the whole business rolling? That one night, the murder in Loenga, the arrests based on the tip-off.
Question: Who tipped them off?
Answer: Merethe Sandmo.
Question: Why?
Answer: Not a glimmer. A mystery. It might have happened because Merethe Sandmo had first been with Elisabeth’s brother, then had gone off with Vidar Ballo. So there may have been some unknown factor in the group, an internal force driving these two events: Merethe Sandmo moving from one man to another and contacting the police when the three of them become responsible for a murder. However, when she blows the whistle, why does she give them only three names instead of all four?
Only one person could give him the answer to that: Merethe Sandmo.
And Merethe Sandmo worked as a waitress.
Frank Frølich, lying on the sofa and contemplating the black mark beside the lamp, knew he would be heading for the city centre.
He looked for a shirt and tie. When he had blown the dust off his suit, he realized he should have had it cleaned a couple of years ago. He left it in the wardrobe and instead chose a pair of dark linen trousers and matching jacket. Posing in front of the mirror, he mused: a little hair gel and he might make the grade.
He took the only taxi parked at the Ryen rank. The driver was reading Verdens Gang and was visibly startled when Frølich opened the door.
To the city centre, he said, and left the cab in front of Bliss, whose existence was announced by a flashing pink neon light on the wall. For a weekday, it was too early to go out. The doorman wasn’t in position yet, and apart from him there was only a single customer in the room. The customer was trying to strike up a conversation with the woman serving him. She was an exaggerated solarium-brown colour and had her hair in Rasta dreadlocks. Apart from a green mini-skirt and red fishnet stockings, she wore nothing. She must have been in her late twenties – a nicely compact stomach beneath her breasts.
Frølich sat down at a table in the corner. A poster said the show was due to start at nine. The text was illustrated with the regulation picture of a stripper climaxing, wrapped around a fireman’s pole.
The woman in the fishnet tights came over to his table and asked him what he wanted. Her nipples were the colour of chocolate mousse. Frank Frølich didn’t know where to look.
The befuddled man at the bar scowled; he obviously didn’t like any competition for the lady’s attentions.
Frølich decided to focus on her eyes, which shone like tram lights out of her solarium-tanned skin. He ordered a large beer and asked if he could speak to Merethe.
‘Merethe who?’
‘Sandmo.’
‘She’s left.’
Frølich determined to make the most of the opportunity: ‘Left?’
‘Yes. Stupid really. She was making good money here.’
‘Where’s she working now?’
‘In Greece. A club in Athens or somewhere like that. She got a good job. I was just a little jealous of her, working in Greece, wasn’t I? It’s warmer down there now than it is here in the summer.’
‘Damn!’ Frølich could feel himself getting into the role. ‘I’d have known where I was with her, if she’d said she was going to Greece, just to work … Left a long time ago, did she?’
‘About a week ago. Wait a moment – I’ll just get your beer.’
She crossed the floor like a ballerina, her breasts doing a jig as she swung round for a glass to draw his beer. The man at the bar was having difficulty balancing on the stool.
He reminds me of myself, Frølich thought glumly.
‘Do you know Merethe well?’ he asked, when the woman came back with his beer.
‘No, I’m a friend of Vidar’s, Vidar Ballo.’
‘Poor Merethe. I feel so sorry for the girl.’
‘And I know Jonny’s sister,’ Frølich said. ‘Elisabeth Faremo.’
The man at the bar yelled something or other.
The woman craned her head and screeched. She whispered to Frølich: ‘He’s so wearing.’
‘Right. I was with Elisabeth for a while. That was just after she went with that – hell, what was his name again? … some Iranian or Moroccan or wherever he came from …’
‘Ilijaz?’
‘Yes, Ilijaz, that was it.’
‘I’m fairly sure he’s a Croat.’
‘That’s right.’
The man at the bar roared again.
‘Coming!’ The woman went back to the bar and poured him a large beer which he took with a shaky hand.
Soon she was back. ‘Good to see a few new customers once in a while,’ she said. ‘Are you here for the show?’
‘Well, no, actually I came to talk to Merethe.’
‘I’m on at eleven. There are a few more people around then. Stag parties and that sort of thing. Just so naff. But you can come and see what you think.’
Frølich caught himself studying the hard lines around her chin, the first signs of a harrowed face, the glint of steel a long way behind her tram-light eyes.
‘Do you know what happened to Ilijaz?’ he asked and instantly knew he had blundered. She sent him a different, a strange look. All the scars and overgrown paths he had been examining in her face stood out in the same way that the autumn countryside takes shape when the early-morning haze lifts. He was the one she was avoiding now. The silence between them grew heavy and uneasy. She went back to the bar and stayed there.
&nbs
p; Which landmine was it I stood on? he wondered and finished his beer.
She didn’t return to his table.
When he went to the cash desk, he put a hundred-kroner note on the bar and said she could keep the change. She looked away.
Sitting in the Metro, he rang Yttergjerde and asked him if he knew any criminals by the name of Ilijaz. He suggested a few alternative spellings. Yttergjerde said he would follow it up.
Yttergjerde didn’t ring back.
He found out for himself.
It was three o’clock at night. He woke up with a start — he had been dreaming about Ilijaz.
23
Next morning he couldn’t get to the police station quickly enough. Lena Stigersand met him in the corridor. She shook her head patronizingly, but also squeezed his arm. ‘I know that man … good to see you again.’
‘Easy, easy,’ Frølich stammered, feeling the sweat break out over his whole body. ‘I just want to pick up a couple of things before I go back on leave.’
He unlocked his office and closed the door. That was lucky. Gunnarstranda wasn’t in yet. No one was there. He couldn’t face meeting anyone. It had been enough of a physical strain exchanging the few words with Stigersand. He shook his head like a punch-drunk boxer and went over to the desk with the computer on. Logged on and searched for his report about the break-in at Inge Narvesen’s in Ulvøya on 4 November 1998. Afterwards he looked for a report by the Bærum police about a shooting incident in Snarøyveien a few days later.
The moment the reports had been printed out and he had them stapled together, Gunnarstranda walked in through the door. The older policeman didn’t bat an eyelid, just took off his overcoat and hung it up.