The Frozen Woman

by Jon Michelet

  A talent, the only one you have in the world, has to be nurtured covertly and displayed on the street or in a half-pipe. Show it off, man! She had to admire him up in Hemsedal when he swept away from her on the black piste, the same girl who said he looked an idiot. Because what she really meant was that he was an idiot. A zero, as Uncle Reidar is always saying.

  Reidar has loads of loot and pulls loads of women. He hasn’t earned any money working but by smuggling booze and gambling at Momarken. Now he can live the life of Riley on Lanzarote without doing a stroke except for eating, drinking and bedding single women on package tours.

  Willing women. He would have liked a woman here, in this solitude, in this darkness. For lack of anything better, a picture of a woman.

  Bård goes with the flickering candle to the sitting room. There is a table with magazines in front of the fireplace. Just standard weeklies and clothes catalogues. In one of the catalogues there is a lingerie section. One in a tanga will do the job.

  Party time, man.

  17

  A big motorbike turns into a 24-hour service station in Borlänge, in the Swedish Dales. The man who dismounts is as large as his bike. In the neon lights by the pumps he surveys the contents of a thick wallet. Most of the notes are German marks, more than five thousand Deutschmark. In Swedish money that is one thousand eight hundred kronor. He also finds a driving licence, the kind Borken got from Drammen that time there were plenty of them in circulation. The licence is made out to a man by the name of Henrik Lindberg. The photo shows a plump, beardless guy of his age. If he is stopped at a checkpoint he can say his name is Lindberg and he has grown a beard since the photo was taken.

  He goes into the kiosk and buys a packet of plasters, a map of Sweden, a little torch, a steel Thermos which he asks to be filled up with coffee, a couple of bottles of Ramlösa mineral water and a sumptuous smörgåsbord, spread with liver paste. They have Petterøes tobacco, so he buys a five-pack and cigarette papers.

  In the toilet he washes thoroughly and at great length. He feels empty rather than tired, but his eyelids are heavy. When he took a bend around Lake Mälaren he managed to graze a knee. He washes it and applies a plaster. He has also got a terrible backache. It is forcing him to lean too far forward on the bike.

  He sits on a bench on the edge of the service station, gobbles down the sandwich and studies the map in the torchlight. The terrain ahead of him on his journey north is not new to him. There is hardly a section of the road in central Sweden he hasn’t been on at some time or other.

  The further north he goes, the more deserted the countryside. He has always loved these Swedish wilds. Wild forest kilometre after kilometre. The ride might fill the vacuum in his soul with the redemption the long haul in Sweden has always given him.

  Terje Kykkelsrud takes the driving licence from his slim wallet, cuts the plastic card into pieces with Borken’s knife and stamps the bits into the soil beside the bench. The plastic sleeve where he has kept the vehicle registration card for Brontes receives the same treatment. He throws his empty wallet into the bushes.

  He plans the route north alongside Lake Siljan to Mora and Orsa. From Orsa it is one hundred and twenty-five kilometres of forest and even more forest to Sveg. Then he crosses Orsa Finnmark, where unlike his own Finnish Forest in Norway there are still Finnish names: Noppikoski and Våssinjärvi. With the little he knows about the Finnish language he can say koski means waterfall and järvi lake. There are also Swedish names in Finnmark. Helvetsfallet, descent to hell, is the name of a gorge where the Norrland railway runs, marked on the map with a line as thin as a pubic hair. On a bad day, or at least a dark night, one might be tempted to go there to finish with this life and pass into a new one. Into hell.

  A little place east of the R45 has the name Rosentorp, a rose farm. In the next life he could settle there as a crofter, with or without rosebuds. Hunting and fishing, and if there was a woman in the picture, bringing up a bunch of kids. But the road from Rosentorp to Helvetsfallet is not long.

  ‘I never promised you a rose garden,’ Terje Kykkelsrud hums.

  A man who in peacetime has killed three men in one day can hardly expect a rose garden.

  From the pannier he takes out the Swedish plate from the Ninja that he stole for Beach Boy, unscrews the Norwegian plate on his bike and replaces it with the Swedish one. He throws the plate in the same direction as the wallet and feels a little stab in his soul. The plate has been on Brontes ever since he bought it new fifteen years ago.

  If he is stopped by the cops on the country road he will say that he borrowed the bike off a Swedish friend. They might believe him.

  He puts in the earplugs, leaves Borlänge and listens to the CD on Beach Boy’s player. The special lady, Laurie Anderson, sings to him alone all the way to Leksand. It may not be beautiful, but it is true.

  Did you think this was the way

  Your world would end?

  Hombres. Sailors. Comrades.

  There is no pure land now.

  When was the truth beautiful? Terje Kykkelsrud thinks as he shifts down and passes slowly through Rättvik. The lights from the small town reflect in Lake Siljan. This is beautiful, but in a minute or two the lights are behind him and no longer exist.

  After Orsa he gives it full throttle on the road that goes north through the immense forest. He plays the Anderson CD again and pushes Brontes as fast as he can to stay awake. Because of the ache in his back he lies so flat on the bike that his chin is almost touching the headlamp. There isn’t much to watch out for on the deserted country road.

  And we stand here on the pier

  Watching you drown.

  Love among the sailors.

  Love among the sailors.

  There is a hot wind blowing

  Plague drifts across the oceans.

  And if this is the work of an angry god

  I want to look into his angry face.

  There is no pure land now. No safe place.

  Come with us into the mountains.

  Hombres. Sailors. Comrades.

  Oh, the loneliness kilometre after kilometre.

  Soon he will have a lake on his left. It is called Fågelsjön. Bird Lake. He is flying like a bird himself through the night. Speed is all he has. Speed is his only quality.

  Far ahead he sees a red light. Could it be a signal lamp where the Norrland railway crosses the R road?

  No, the light is too small and too low to be a railway signal.

  It must be the rear light of a parked juggernaut.

  Just hurtle past.

  It is a one-eyed bandit.

  A timber lorry. The pile of logs is as high as a house.

  The vehicle has only one red eye, like a brother Cyclops on the road.

  Kykke tries to twist Brontes to the side, but his reactions are too slow.

  The bike skids out of control and slides away from underneath him. He is thrown sidelong into the logs.

  *

  It is the morning of Saturday 12 May. Maybritt Strand is sitting in a little house in Tistedalen and trying to swallow a mouthful of coffee. It won’t go down. She finds a bottle of three stars in the kitchen cupboard and pours a dram of cognac into her coffee cup. It helps. She has had a sleepless night sitting in the living room armchair, staring at nothing, and her eyes are bloodshot, like the eyes of a redfish dragged up from the depths of the ocean.

  She kept away from the tempting Rohypnol all night. In a very short time, the blink of an eye, she has lost her ex-husband and her son. If she is going to come through this crisis she will have to try to stay clean, off pills anyway.

  On the first floor her sister is asleep. She has come from Dokka to console and help her and all that that entails. Although she is a Christian she had a bottle of homebrew with her. A 69-year-old man has been found dead after a fire in an old detached house n
ear Aspedammen. The fire broke out in a neighbour’s house. Because of the strong wind sparks set fire to the house where the man was living. The police in Halden suspect arson.

  Cognac on an empty stomach makes Maybritt Strand feel dizzy. She leans back in the armchair and falls asleep at once.

  *

  An hour and a half later Stribolt is woken by the call he had requested. He starts working while he sits in the breakfast room at the Grand. He rings NSB to find out who the conductor was on the evening train to Oslo on 28 January. After being passed from pillar to post he is told the crew was Swedish. He rings the central station in Göteborg and there too he is sent from one person to another, backwards and forwards, until he finds an intelligent soul who can give him an answer. The crew on the relevant train consisted of three members of staff: Hernandez, Njutånger and Ställberg. Stribolt has to argue for a while until he is given their private telephone numbers.

  He doesn’t ring them in alphabetical order. For some reason he calculates that the person he is least likely to find at home is Hernandez.

  Njutånger is a woman with an extremely pleasant voice, judging by the message on her answering machine.

  ‘Helena Njutånger,’ Stribolt whispers and takes a sip of coffee, which is not at all bad considering it is the hotel variety. ‘What a name. A Swedish combination of beauty, enjoyment and regret.’

  Ställberg is at work, a grumpy man informs him. A son or a partner maybe.

  Hernandez answers at once. He has loud music on and puts down his phone to lower the volume. He is over the moon to receive a call from Norway and asks if the Norwegian officer can hear what he was playing.

  Stribolt knows as little about music as a former national football coach, Egil ‘Drillo’ Olsen. Pass, he says.

  Hernandez reacts with mild shock and tells him the piece of music was Edvard Grieg’s Violin Sonata in G Major. He must come from the far south of Sweden because he talks with a very strong Skanian accent.

  Once he is in the picture regarding the incident on board the train on the last Sunday in January, Hernandez remembers the young man who was harassing the other passengers by photographing or filming them.

  ‘My most important question is whether he stayed on the train to Oslo,’ Stribolt says.

  Hernandez is sure he did. On their arrival at Oslo station it turned out the young woman who was his travelling companion had fallen unconscious. An ambulance had to be called. From what Hernandez could see, the paramedics managed to revive the woman.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Stribolt says, even though in fact there was little to thank him for.

  He walks to the police station and is there for nine on the dot. The normal Halden silence is replaced by considerable activity. The Halden police have to deal with what might be a case of arson and murder. An elderly man, a retired seaman, has died in a fire in a house in Aspedammen. The fire started in a neighbour’s house, which was empty, and spread to the unfortunate man’s timber shack. He was found hanging from a window he had tried to escape through, completely charred.

  Vaage hasn’t emailed through a photo of Picea. Stribolt wonders whether to ring HQ, but decides to wait until half past nine when he has a meeting with Hege Dorothy Rønningen. He enquires after Gunvald Larsson to check whether a forensic analysis has been done on Øystein Strand’s motorbike.

  Larsson is out on a job, but in Oslo, not Moss. Stribolt phones him.

  ‘Weren’t you doing a bike assignment in Moss, Larsson?’

  ‘We sent Lein instead. I’m on a stakeout. Half the staff at Kripos are off sick after all the efforts to find the Orderud sock.’

  ‘Where are you then?’

  ‘I’m sitting in a plumber’s van where Bestumveien and Skogveien meet, hoping to catch some nutter who’s threatened Thygesen.’

  ‘Who sent you there?’

  ‘Vaage, backed up by the highest authority.’

  ‘I suppose we should have communicated via police channels, but I’m in Halden and I have some info you need right now,’ Stribolt says.

  He gives Larsson a description of the train pest.

  ‘Is he violent?’ Larsson asks. ‘Armed?’

  ‘His behaviour on the train suggests he does what suits him and he takes no account of anyone else. People like that tend to be aggressive when they meet resistance. Remember, Larsson, you’re a lightweight and you have no training in arrests.’

  ‘I’m a terrier,’ Larsson says.

  ‘OK, but you’re no bloody pitbull,’ Stribolt says.

  ‘Over and out.’

  *

  Maybritt Strand is woken by her sister, who immediately talks about the fire in Aspedammen. Her sister, Gretelill, was upset by all the sirens wailing on Friday night. Gretelill has got it into her head that Halden is a dangerous place which could blow up at any moment and where murderers lurk around every house corner. She justifies these fears by alluding to the ravages of the triple murderer in Tistedal at the beginning of the 1990s, and harping on about there being a nuclear reactor in the middle of town.

  ‘He was sweet, the boy who came to offer his condolences yesterday,’ Gretelill says. ‘Reminded me a bit of my own Kjellemann.’

  ‘Bård? Bård the Board? He’s a sack of shite.’

  ‘You shouldn’t use such vulgar expressions about people.’

  ‘He’s a spoilt brat who’s never done a stroke of work in his life. A conceited artist.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ says Gretelill. ‘If he’s as bad as you say, why did you lend him your petrol can then?’

  ‘I haven’t lent anyone a petrol can. Have I got a petrol can?’

  ‘The green one. For the lawn mower.’

  ‘Oh, yes. What about it?’

  ‘He walked off with it. Boys are always after petrol for their mopeds and so on, you know.’

  ‘Did Bård Isachsen steal my petrol can? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? And there was an arson attack in Aspedammen! Great heavens. I’ll have to ring the police.’

  ‘Your landline’s been cut off and your card’s run out, do you remember?’

  ‘Whoops, I almost said shit. I’d better cycle to the kiosk.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking, Maybritt. I can smell it on your breath.’

  ‘Lend me some money for a taxi, will you?’

  *

  At a quarter past nine Kripos forensics officer Lein calls Stribolt’s mobile phone.

  ‘The brakes on the Ninja were fixed,’ Lein says. ‘The guys at the garage in Moss and I are a hundred per cent certain. Whoever disconnected the brakes did an expert job. The boy riding the bike didn’t have a hope in hell.’

  Stribolt thinks a hope in hell was exactly what Øystein Strand did have, but doesn’t say as much. They discuss the fingerprints on the bike.

  Vaage rings and says the photo of Picea is being sent, but they have to solve a problem with the scanner first. She has also heard the latest news from Moss.

  ‘We’ve discussed that here,’ Vaage says. ‘In my opinion we have enough material to put out a search for Terje Kykkelsrud. Nationally and via Interpol.’

  ‘You do that,’ Stribolt answers.

  18

  At nine twenty-five the duty officer at Halden police station receives the photograph of Picea by email. He contacts the Kripos officer they have banging about the building.

  The sight of Picea alive has such an impact on Stribolt that he has to sit down.

  So that was how she looked. More attractive alive, of course, than frozen and dead in Thygesen’s garden or kept cool in the mortuary.

  Why did this woman have to die by a murderer’s hand?

  Here in the provinces of Norway from Russia. If she really was Russian.

  He has a vague theory as to why she was murdered. But more important than all theory is practice now.

/>   In the photo you can glimpse the top of a crocodile-skin bag in Picea’s lap.

  At half past nine Rønningen, the witness, arrives. She is even paler now than at the first interview. Stribolt accompanies her to the interview room. He pushes a copy of the photo across the table.

  ‘Yes, that’s her, the woman on the train,’ Rønningen says. ‘It’s so awful what happened to her.’

  ‘We’ll come back to the photo,’ Stribolt says, putting on the sternest tone he had in his repertoire. ‘Let me get straight to the point with another question. About her bag and what you know about it.’

  ‘There’s been a fire in Aspedammen,’ Rønningen says, chewing her lip. She has given the brown lipstick a miss today. Stribolt thinks she looks better now au naturel, but to be frank she has also lost her appeal.

  ‘I see,’ Stribolt says, leaning back in his chair expectantly.

  ‘I don’t feel well. I might be running a bit of a temperature. I’ll take my jacket off,’ Rønningen says. She is wearing a standard denim jacket, no special features. She removes it and hangs it over the back of the chair. Under her jacket she is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a tug and a line of writing beneath in German: Schlepper – kein Mensch ist illegal. The motif and the words attract Stribolt’s attention to such an extent that Rønningen becomes aware of it.

  ‘I got the T-shirt in Hamburg,’ she says. ‘We went there on a course with the school, college, that is. I was given it by some politically committed guy in a pub. Had to wash it three times to get it clean. The tug was bringing refugees to Germany.’

  ‘Are you interested in the refugee issue? Asylum seekers?’

  ‘A bit, all in the name of decency. Perhaps more than other students. I’d like to join Amnesty or something like that. But I haven’t got any time. My studies are swallowing me up.’