The Fourth Man

by K. O. Dahl

  ‘The thing that disturbs me most is the fact that they knew when to strike.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Gunnarstranda opened the car door and said: ‘Come on.’ He half-guided and half-supported the heavy Frølich out through the door of the Skoda and into the entrance of the apartment building. It was morning. A newspaper boy on his bike rattled past. A man who came shooting out of a door stared wide-eyed at Frølich’s distressed condition.

  They stumbled into the lift. The door closed with a bang and the lift jolted into action.

  Frølich repeated: ‘What do you mean?’

  Gunnarstranda narrowed his eyes with annoyance. ‘Do you think I’m daft, Frølich? These men struck tonight, pinched the key but didn’t touch your money, your phone or your watch. How could they know you had the key on you? They haven’t made a move before tonight. I didn’t talk to anyone about the key. If you want any sympathy from me in this case, I want to know how they knew that tonight of all nights was the time to attack.’

  ‘There was just one man. I suggest you ask him.’

  ‘Bloody hell, you’re pathetic.’

  Frølich went quiet. The lift stopped. Gunnarstranda pushed open the door. They went out. Frølich searched his pockets for his bunch of keys, found it and opened the door.

  ‘You were allowed to keep those keys then?’

  Frølich glared at him. ‘I haven’t got anything to offer you, I’m afraid.’ He sank down into the sofa.

  Gunnarstranda stood in the doorway. His eyes were aflame. ‘You came to me with the key for help. You serve me up some idiotic justification for wanting to take the key with you. Then you almost get yourself killed, only to ring me and wake me up instead of calling emergency services. Well, you got some help. But if deep down you’re the man I take you for, and you still want my help, I have to bloody know what you’ve been up to!’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘And why can’t you tell me?’

  Frølich went quiet again. He put a cushion behind his neck.

  ‘Answer me! Why can’t you?’

  Frølich closed both eyes and let out a heavy sigh. ‘Before going to yours last night I went to the club where Merethe Sandmo used to work. I talked to someone working there, a woman.’

  ‘A woman.’ Gunnarstranda pulled a face, as if he had been eating lemons. ‘A woman,’ he repeated with revulsion. ‘What is it with you and women?’

  ‘Wait a moment – she put me onto Ilijaz Zupac. I went there a few days ago on a pure hunch and had his name presented on a silver platter. And yes, I went back there last night. But she’d been told to keep away from me. I took a risk. Thought I could smoke them out by asking her to tell these people – no idea who they are – that I had the key. She must have done that, at least it wasn’t very long before the motorbike smacked into me.’

  ‘What’s the lady’s name?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Frølich!’

  ‘It’s true, I don’t know. She’s got red hair, or black hair dyed red, a pretty fiddly hairstyle – you know, Afro locks and so on. She’s about twenty-eight, give or take the odd year. But what’s more important is that the banks open soon.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Gunnarstranda said, exasperated. ‘You think I’m stupid.’

  Frølich breathed out.

  Gunnarstranda turned in the doorway and said: ‘I’ve thought a lot about the work we’ve done together, Frølich, and it’s gone well. I sort of thought we complemented each other. But now – it’s no good you keeping things to yourself and going round behaving like an idiot. There are too many dead people in this case: Arnfinn Haga, Jonny Faremo and Elisabeth Faremo. Add the academic at Blindern who killed herself and we’re up to four. You’re a policeman. I would never have believed I would see you lying there with one foot in the grave or that you’d be telling me tales during an investigation.’

  ‘I would never have believed it either,’ Frølich said. ‘But I know who it was,’ he mumbled.

  Gunnarstranda shook his head. ‘Even if we’ve arrested a man on a motorbike before, it’s not certain he was the one who knocked you down.’

  ‘How much do you bet?’ Frølich mumbled. ‘I bet you a hundred it’s Jim Rognstad.’

  ‘Maybe he lent his bike to someone,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘If he did you’ve lost a hundred kroner.’ Gunnarstranda shut the door and left.

  27

  Inspector Gunnarstranda had opted to go by train. One glance at the timetable told him that the journey would take a good hour. He would arrive there at roughly the same time as the bank opened. Yttergjerde and Stigersand had already taken up positions nearby.

  The train journey was a long, tedious business. He remembered he had done the trip before — it must have been in the sixties, to see a cup match between Vålerenga and a team from Sarpsborg. With the exuberance of youth and faith in technology he and a friend had caught the train, only to arrive in Sarpsborg well after the match had started. Forty years on, he had forgotten that the railway track had been laid between the majority of the milk-churn collecting points in central ∅lstfold. But now – before the October sun rose – there was neither the chance nor the time to enjoy the view of stubble, farmyards or the black-ploughed fields. Gunnarstranda was co-ordinating the troops by phone and running through his logbook.

  When he had been travelling for a little more than half an hour, the phone rang again. It was Lena Stigersand who said simply: ‘Bingo.’

  ‘More,’ Gunnarstranda said.

  ‘I’m sitting here with the bank manager. They have a safety deposit box which was issued to Jonny Faremo and Vidar Ballo in 1998.’

  ‘Who has authorization?’

  ‘Jim Rognstad and someone called Ilijaz Zupac.’

  ‘And the vault containing the boxes?’

  ‘In the cellar.’

  ‘Is there a camera down there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK. Let’s cross our fingers they turn up. If not, I’ll get a court order for the box to be opened. Whatever happens, I’ll keep a low profile. Ballo and Rognstad both know me.’

  Lena Stigersand tentatively cleared her throat.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If they do come, should they be arrested?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And the charge?’

  ‘Reasonable cause for suspicion of violence towards a public servant.’

  The railway station was opposite the bank building. It was a fairly modern brick building which also housed a chemist’s shop and a medical centre. Gunnarstranda joined the queue in front of the ATM and noticed Yttergjerde sitting in a car outside the large station kiosk. It was his turn at the cashpoint and he took out five hundred kroner. Then he went to find somewhere to have breakfast. He walked beneath some tall trees by the railway line. The dead leaves lay in frozen rosettes on the sticky tarmac. On the other side of the lines he found a coffee bar in a combined pictureframing business and gallery. He ate a ciabatta sandwich and drank a cup of black coffee while keeping an eye on the pedestrian area where warmly dressed people hurried to and fro. A bearded man came cycling along with both red-gloved hands ostentatiously stuffed in his pockets and his eyes fixed rigidly ahead of him.

  He had finished his coffee and was fuming about the politicians’ ban on smoking in restaurants and cafés when the glass door flew open and Yttergjerde rushed in and ordered a new-fangled coffee from the menu hanging on the wall behind the young girl at the cash desk.

  ‘I’ve just seen someone with worse up-and-over hair than you, Gunnarstranda,’ Yttergjerde said.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Gunnarstranda answered, straightening individual strands over his bald head while studying his appearance in the window.

  ‘Peder Christian Asbjørnsen,’ Yttergjerde said.

  ‘He’s been dead for over a hundred years.’

  Yttergjerde waved a fifty-kroner note. ‘He’s alive on this.’

  Gunnarstranda glanced at the portrait of the
man on the note and snapped: ‘Aren’t you supposed to be watching the bank?’

  At that moment there was a crackle on Gunnarstranda’s short-wave radio. It was Stigersand from the command car.

  She said: ‘I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?’

  ‘The bad news.’

  ‘Only one person came.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s making himself comfortable on the back seat here with me – so you’ve got your good news at the same time.’

  Yttergjerde grinned.

  The girl behind the counter poured Yttergjerde’s coffee into a paper cup. They went out. Gunnarstranda lit a cigarette in the cold and inhaled greedily. Yttergjerde turned and then stopped. ‘What do you think about when you stand like that?’ he asked.

  ‘I think about a novel I once read,’ Gunnarstranda answered. ‘Nordahl Grieg’s May the World Stay Young, written in 1928.’

  ‘Why that one in particular?’

  ‘Somewhere he wrote how dangerous it was to smoke in the cold of winter.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The writer maintained that what was dangerous was inhaling the cold into your lungs, not the smoke.’

  ‘So the world’s no longer young,’ Yttergjerde said, grinning at his own witticism.

  ‘You could say that.’

  They walked slowly towards the railway line. The blue lights from the police cars flashed across the wall of a brick building on the opposite side. ‘Does nothing surprise you, Gunnarstranda? Having one of these guys pop up is actually like winning the lottery.’

  ‘There are far too many things which surprise me.’

  A train was coming. The bells at the crossing rang and the gates were lowered with a creaking noise. Gunnarstranda waited. Yttergjerde, who was already on his way across, stopped and went back to wait for the train to pass too.

  ‘What, for example?’

  ‘Well, for example, how much people know about television programmes. They talk about this or that series. Not just people at work; people interviewed in the papers talk about TV. People on TV talk about TV.’

  ‘Nothing surprising about that, is there?’

  ‘My opinion has always been that you should never expose yourself to that sort of thing.’

  Yttergjerde smiled thinly. ‘If you were ever forced to cut down on anything, I suppose it would have to be your consumption of whisky and tobacco, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I would have problems existing without tobacco, but a life with an excess of low-quality TV would be worse. Bad TV cripples people’s sense of aesthetics in the short term and in the long term creates decadence.’

  The train rolled up the slope from the west remarkably quietly. It click-clacked past, came to a halt in front of the yellow station building and once again the gates of the level crossing were raised to the accompaniment of creaking noises.

  Two police cars were outside the bank. They had been sent by the Follo police division. The third car was civilian and it was the one with the flashing blue light – a discreet lamp on the roof and one inside the grille. There were two bulky shadows in the back seat. The door on the driver’s side opened and out stepped Lena Stigersand.

  ‘Who is it?’ Gunnarstranda asked.

  ‘Jim Rognstad.’

  Gunnarstranda bent down to have a look inside. Rognstad sat, massive and unmoved, on the back seat.

  ‘Was he riding a motorbike?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tow it in. Material evidence.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  ‘When did you catch him?’

  ‘We let him go down to the vault unchecked, he collected what he was after, and then we arrested him on the way up.’

  ‘What have you confiscated?’

  ‘A briefcase full of money.’ Lena Stigersand lifted up a document case. ‘Lots and lots of money.’

  Gunnarstranda glimpsed through the car window again. ‘And the safety-deposit box?’

  ‘It’s empty now.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘He hasn’t been asked.’

  They stood for a few seconds without saying anything. Lena Stigersand spoke up. ‘Well, what shall we do?’

  ‘We’ll bang him up. The public prosecutor will decide what to do with the money.’

  Yttergjerde opened a car door. ‘Are you coming back with us?’

  Gunnarstranda shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the train. I’ve got some thinking to do.’

  He watched the procession of cars drive away. Finally, he turned and wandered past the railway station, continued past a bus stop and over to a large car park. He stopped, raised a hand and waved.

  An engine started, and a silver-grey saloon reversed out of a row of cars and drove towards him. The car pulled up.

  Gunnarstranda opened the door and sat inside without a word.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ Frølich asked.

  ‘I don’t think you even know how ridiculous this is,’ Gunnarstranda answered. ‘But since you’re here anyway, you can drive me to Oslo.’

  ‘What was in the safety-deposit box?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘So Inge Narvesen will be happy?’

  ‘Presume so. The box was issued immediately after his safe was stolen. And Zupac is an authorized keyholder.’

  ‘So Narvesen will probably be able to claim the money. Could be complicated, though, digging up an old case, from 1998, and charging another man.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Ballo may have stayed away, but he’s not innocent.’

  Frølich drove off. They took the E18.

  Gunnarstranda added: ‘But Rognstad will get off this time.’

  They didn’t speak, until Frølich could no longer stand it. He said: ‘Why should he go free?’

  ‘What are you going to charge him with? You didn’t see your attacker, did you?’

  ‘But he had the key to the safety-deposit box. He obviously stole it from me.’

  ‘If you report him for assault.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, go ahead. But do that and you’re off the case. Any evidence that has passed through your hands will be totally worthless in a case against Jim Rognstad.’

  Frølich drove in silence.

  ‘Besides, Rognstad can always say he borrowed the key from Vidar Ballo and he has no idea where Ballo got it from. And we can’t check that story out because Ballo is nowhere to be found.’

  ‘You’re a real optimist, you are.’

  ‘Wrong’ Frølich, I’m a realist. Rognstad’s going to the safety-deposit box to collect the money changes nothing. Jonny Faremo and Vidar Ballo have had free access to the box for six years. The only thing Rognstad needs to say is that he got the surprise of his life when he saw the money in the box and he doesn’t know where it came from. It could have been put there by Jonny Faremo, who is dead, of course, and so cannot answer any questions. See? All that has happened today is that probably Narvesen’s money has turned up again. We haven’t got enough on Rognstad to make any charge stick.’

  After another silence Frølich said:

  ‘Couldn’t you use the torched chalet, Elisabeth’s murder?’

  Gunnarstranda shrugged. ‘We’ll have to wait and see. The local Fagernes police have got photos of Ballo, Faremo, Rognstad and even Merethe Sandmo. So we’ll see what they can uncover.’ Gunnarstranda looked over at his colleague and said: ‘There’s one thing we haven’t discussed, Frølich.’

  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Could your lady friend have set fire to the chalet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Elisabeth, set fire to herself? The idea is absurd.’

  ‘Let me put it a different way. Could she have killed herself?’

  ‘Why would she kill herself?’

  ‘That sort of thing happens.’

  �
��But no one chooses to burn themselves willingly.’

  ‘Suicidal types might, Frølich. They’re not as lucky as Ophelia. They don’t all have a romantic millpond in the moonlight to hand when misfortune beckons.’

  ‘Listen to me. Elisabeth did not take her own life. You cannot make me believe that she set fire to herself.’

  ‘But she might have taken sleeping tablets and fallen asleep with the candle lit.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘The fire in the chalet was probably started by a candle, a candle in a bottle.’

  Frølich said nothing.

  ‘The local police and the fire investigators are agreed on that,’ Gunnarstranda added. ‘And it’s not so unlikely that she was depressed after the death of her brother, is it? She didn’t have any other family. Just imagine, she’s on the run from some roughnecks, then her brother dies, her protector, the anchor in her life. Many would become emotional for much less.’

  Frølich deliberated before speaking. ‘I tend to the view that the candle was helped on its way, by someone who first of all dealt with Elisabeth – by Rognstad, for example. There was a fire because someone wanted to conceal a murder.’

  ‘Naturally that is a possibility, but it is no more than a hypothesis.’

  ‘Hypothesis?’

  ‘Kripos find human remains subsequent to a chalet fire. The cause of the fire seems to be a candle which has toppled over. So the sequence of events is: someone reading in bed falls asleep, the candle is lit and she dies of carbon monoxide poisoning before the fire really takes hold.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘I don’t believe anything. I’m just telling you the theory Kripos have come up with.’

  Frølich took a deep breath. They had arrived in Spydeberg. He indicated right and stopped at the petrol station. ‘I’ll show you something,’ he said finally and pulled out Reidun Vestli’s suicide letter from his inside pocket.

  Gunnarstranda finished reading the letter, then took off his glasses and chewed the ends. ‘Why didn’t you show me this before?’ he asked gently.

  ‘It came a couple of days ago. The crux is …’

  ‘It came? To your post box?’