The Frozen Woman

by Jon Michelet

  ‘What the fuck!’ the arrested man shouts and turns to Larsson, who is standing with his hands on his hips, grinning. ‘Are you a bloody terrorist or what?’

  ‘Police,’ Larsson says. ‘If anyone’s a terrorist here, it’s you.’

  Thygesen decides he can allow himself a shouted ‘Gotcha’ into the walkie-talkie as he clambers down the ladder.

  ‘Have you got officers in the trees as well?’ asks the cuffed man, tugging at the chains and kicking out behind him. Larsson performs an elegant sidestep.

  Thygesen pushes the gate open, perhaps with unnecessary force, causing the wire netting to hit the man cuffed to it amidships; he groans and curses.

  ‘Shut up, you imbecile,’ Thygesen says. ‘I’m Vilhelm Thygesen and I live here. So who the hell are you?’

  ‘ID,’ Larsson shouts in the arrestee’s ear.

  ‘ID yourself. If you’re a bastard cop I want to see evidence.’

  Larsson flashes his ID and frisks the man. All he finds is a Leatherman sheath on his belt.

  ‘Tell me who you are,’ Thygesen orders.

  A mumbled name passes his lips.

  Larsson flicks off his captain’s hat, grabs a handful of brown hair and forces the man’s head backwards. ‘You’re a bit of a scally, aren’t you?’

  ‘I said Thomas Gierløff, and that is actually my name. You’ll find a driving licence in the wallet in my inside pocket.’

  Larsson finds the wallet and studies the licence. Thygesen opens the envelope that was put in the post box.

  ‘What sort of morbid shit have you delivered today then, Gierløff?’ he says.

  ‘I repeat my offer on behalf of PP Productions of a role in a documentary video.’

  ‘Thanks a million,’ Thygesen answers. ‘Are you Captain Paw-Paw or Dr Papaya, or perhaps you’re one and the same person?’

  ‘I’m Paw-Paw, Captain. My father was a captain on Wilhelmsen Lines. My girlfriend is Papaya. She lived with her mother in Africa for a while and knows all about tropical fruit.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Larsson answers, taking the letter off Thygesen. ‘I can see a drawing of tropical fruit here, yes. But I can also see a drawing of a naked woman with a knife in her belly and I can read that you’re armed and want five kilos of amphetamines.’

  ‘Same sick shite as last time,’ Thygesen says.

  ‘I think we should confiscate the knife,’ Larsson says, removing the Leatherman from his belt. ‘I note that you’ve stuck a colour photo of a woman who was killed on the paper.’

  ‘It’s a different picture from last time,’ Thygesen says. ‘This is a close-up of Picea.’

  ‘You owe us an explanation,’ Larsson says.

  ‘I’m an artist,’ Gierløff says.

  ‘That explains nothing. We choose to regard you as a lowdown blackmailer. The basest of all criminals.’

  ‘I’m a video artist and live in the art colony in Ekely.’

  ‘Living in an art colony doth not an artist make,’ Thygesen says.

  ‘I invoke the freedom of art.’

  Thygesen slaps Gierløff around the face.

  ‘He hi…, he hit me!’

  ‘That was just a little softener to help you think straight,’ Larsson says.

  ‘You, you fucking numbskull,’ Thygesen shouts. ‘You, with your accursed video nonsense drove an innocent woman to her death. And then her picture’s in the papers and you want to try and profit from her death. You can take your artistic freedom and stuff it up your arse.’

  ‘I hadn’t expected such language from a lawyer,’ Gierløff says, trying to assume a superior expression. ‘The incident with the woman was for me an excellent opportunity to make a documentary. I had unique footage of her while she was alive, on the train from Copenhagen. Then it transpires she’s been murdered, she was the woman who was found in the garden here. Not many filmmakers have footage like that.’

  ‘Did he say fetish?’ Larsson asks.

  ‘No, footage. It’s English for film material, as far as I know,’ Thygesen answers. ‘Who let a dilettante like you into Ekely?’

  ‘We’re renting an atelier at my girlfriend’s aunt’s – she’s on long-term sick leave,’ Gierløff says. ‘I beg you to keep my girlfriend, and her aunt, out of all this.’

  ‘Edvard Munch would turn in his grave,’ Thygesen says.

  ‘What’s Munch got to do with this?’ Larsson asks.

  ‘He owned Ekely until his death in 1944. After the war an art colony moved in. It’s just up there. Hey, Gierløff, what gave you the brilliant idea that I cut kilos of amphetamines from the stomach of the dead woman?’

  ‘She looked the drug-mule type. That was one of the reasons I devoted so much photographic and filmic attention to her. When the customs officials came she disappeared into the toilet. I assumed she went there to swallow bags of drugs.’

  ‘If anyone swallowed drugs on that train,’ Larsson says, ‘it was your girlfriend. She had to be taken to A&E and pumped and given an antidote because she passed out on arrival in Oslo. Or have you forgotten?’

  ‘They were just sedatives,’ Gierløff says.

  ‘All right, Thygesen,’ Larsson says. ‘I think we’ll have to get the uniforms in, have Monsieur Video-Artiste here put in a bare cell and tell the lawyers to prepare a charge.’

  ‘I also have a right to legal assistance,’ Gierløff says.

  ‘You could try hiring me,’ Vilhelm Thygesen says.

  *

  Ragnhild Skammelsrud, who is prouder of coming from a family of smallholders in Rakkestad than being distantly related to one of Norway’s all-time great footballers, drives in through the gates of Trøgstad Prison. It is Saturday, a quiet afternoon in the institution where she works. A big fork-lift truck moving planks is working overtime and blocks the way to the building where she, as a social welfare officer, has one of the better offices. A one-man office, as it says in the prison manuals. A one-woman office, as Skammelsrud calls it.

  She is in low spirits. The news of Øystein Strand’s death has hit her hard. Trøgstad is a prison full of young men from the streets of Østland’s towns and the occasional older drunk driver or cheque counterfeiter. She is conscientious with everyone who comes to her, but over the years she has had a strong sense that her efforts are the labours of Sisyphus; she rolls a stone up a slope only for it to come rolling back down and fall even deeper.

  Øystein Strand had seemed to be an exception to this rule. He was a fantasist and a clown, yes, but also open-minded and a receptive soul. If you spend your days casting pearls before swine you are happy when the pearls hit a bird, even if the bird is an imitative parrot.

  After recovering from the shock of the news of Strand’s death she remembered the envelope he had placed in her hands, with an expression that was both mischievous and serious, and said ‘To be opened if anything happens to your banzai.’

  Skammelsrud unlocks her filing cabinet. She finds the letter under S, takes a silver penknife which she uses on solemn occasions, slices open the envelope which Strand had taken the trouble to seal with wax, and puts on her reading glasses: ‘Dear Ragnhild S(ocialist)! I have to go now, as they say here, out into freedom. You warned me about the dangers of freedom, and there are more dangers than you are aware of. If anything bad should happen to me you should know that I’ve played a high-risk game to ensure a just distribution of certain goods to a circle of my friends. The Samurai, you know. But they may have misunderstood my zeal, my positive-minded creativity and my energies. Accordingly they may try to “waste” me because they consider me a “grass”. If they do, strictly between you and me, Ragnhild S, I presume Leif A Borkenhagen, the Samurai chief, will be the instigator. You should also know that my game involves a high-ranking member of society by the name of Gerhard Ryland, the MD of the State National Oil Fund. He may feel pressurised to wish me
harm. If anything happens, you should inform the police I can document that Ryland has a skeleton in the cupboard and was trafficking women, which I think you will find repugnant. Probably though everything will run smoothly/turn out fine. Bye, Øystein S(uperboy).’

  Isn’t there a single decent person left in this country? thinks Ragnhild Skammelsrud as she dials a number on the phone. Gerhard Ryland, a fellow member of the Socialist Party in the sixties. He joined the Labour Party when the Socialist Alliance was formed in 1973 because he didn’t want to be in the same party as ex-communists even if he was a Soviet friend. But he held more of the fundamental beliefs than most of his new friends and had enough integrity and independence for Bondevik’s government – to the annoyance of Aftenposten and the financial newspapers – to appoint him – the Social Democrat – MD of the new oil fund. A fund which wouldn’t invest money in eco-unfriendly mining in New Guinea, but would try to secure Norwegian industry.

  ‘Is that the Kriminalpolitisentral?’ Skammelsrud enquires.

  ‘Kripos, yes, it is,’ answers a youthful voice.

  ‘I work in Trøgstad Prison, but I’m not used to ringing the police. I believe I have some important information and need to talk to the duty officer.’

  ‘Chief Inspector Vaage’s at the desk. Just a moment.’

  *

  Vaage has thrown on her uniform and chosen to drive what the police call a uniformed car. She sweeps into Anton Tschudis vei in Haslum with the blue light on to frighten the opposition. As Stribolt is in Halden and no one else knows the case as well as she does, she has put a replacement at her desk and taken the job herself.

  She doesn’t have time to ring the bell before a man she recognises from the papers is standing in the doorway.

  ‘I saw you,’ says Gerhard Ryland. ‘It ought to be possible to be more discreet.’

  ‘My apologies,’ Vaage says, ‘but we’re up to our knees in a murder investigation, a case involving a number of deaths, and we’re pressed for time and can’t be too fussy with formalities.’

  ‘My apologies too,’ Ryland says. ‘I should have contacted the police earlier. But I had greater priorities to consider.’

  ‘Not any more you don’t. Now the truth’s the greatest priority.’

  ‘I may be able to help you there. I think I know who she was, the woman who was found murdered in Vilhelm Thygesen’s garden earlier this year.’

  ‘Who was she?’ Vaage asks. ‘We’ve been searching for this piece of information for months.’

  ‘We don’t need to stand here talking on the doorstep. Come in.’

  Vaage hesitates. If the MD of the oil fund murders women she ought to step warily. She acted on impulse when she set off. It was foolish of her to be on her own, without any back-up.

  ‘I’m not violent,’ Ryland says.

  ‘That’s what all violent men say before they swing an axe. In a little while there’ll be more cars and officers here. Who was the woman and how did you know her?’

  Vaage steps into the hall where there is a rug that looks suspiciously like an authentic Persian.

  ‘Let’s go to my office,’ Ryland says. ‘Or the library, as my wife calls it.’

  ‘So that I can be throttled by the butler?’

  Ryland laughs the way a man who is not used to laughing does, with clenched lips: ‘I may be a kind of missing link in your investigation.’

  ‘You betcha.’

  ‘Does the name Katka Orestovna Grossu mean anything to you?’

  ‘No,’ Vaage answers. ‘Not in the slightest.’

  ‘Then I may have important information. By the way, is it a punishable offence not to report blackmail against your own person?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask the police lawyers. Did you say Katka?’

  Ryland answers in the affirmative.

  ‘Katka,’ Vanja says. ‘That’s a pet name in Russian, just like Vanja.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Did I forget to introduce myself?’ Vaage asks as Ryland opens the office door.

  21

  Vaage and Stribolt are sitting on the second-floor terrace in the Kripos building. Norway’s capital is festooned with flags on the occasion of Independence Day, 17 May.

  Stribolt fetches a jug of fresh coffee from the empty canteen. The man they have to meet at Gardemoen Airport doesn’t land until 16.10. They thought he would arrive at 12.50, but that was down to a misunderstanding in one of the faxes from Kishinev. 12.50 turned out to be the departure time from Moscow for the Finnair flight to Oslo via Helsinki. They have spent the interim time reviewing the Picea case, or the Katka case, as they should call it now.

  ‘I still insist Ryland was obstructing our investigation,’ Stribolt says, pouring the coffee. ‘He deserves to be charged for trying to hide evidence.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Vaage says. ‘He deserves a medal for providing decisive information that gave us an identification of the victim. No one’s obliged to report an amateur attempt at blackmail. We should be glad that not everyone who’s blackmailed and cheated immediately runs to the police and that some are adult enough to tackle the situation themselves.’

  ‘He just sat on the information he had about Katka for an eternity.’

  ‘That doesn’t fit the facts. He reacted as fast as he could, he was observant and wondered whether the woman who’d been killed in Norway could be the one he’d glimpsed in a hairdressing salon in Athens. He can’t be blamed for taking all the time necessary to verify that the photos were in fact of her.’

  ‘You, Vanja, as a feminist – as a kind of feminist – should react with disgust at the way Ryland treats his wife. What sort of man tries to stop Kripos interviewing his wife when she’s a witness in a murder case? He treats her like a domestic animal.’

  ‘Natasha Ryland’s a fragile flower. You mustn’t forget she’s a war victim.’

  ‘Was she fighting in the trenches around Leningrad?’ Stribolt counters.

  ‘A million people died in the besieged town. Don’t you think hunger and disease ravaged women and children as much as bullets and shells did the guys defending the front line against the Germans? That’s a typical male notion that only soldiers on the front line suffer war injuries.’

  ‘I cede the point.’

  ‘We’d better let the lawyers argue about any potential legal measures against Ryland,’ Vaage says.

  ‘You’re just saying that because for once our nitpickers are tending to your view.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we say a skål for what we’ve achieved?’

  ‘I never skål with coffee,’ Stribolt says.

  Vaage conjures up a yellow bottle and two paper cups from her bag.

  ‘And what plinkety plonk is that?’ Stribolt asks.

  ‘Egg liqueur. You should drink egg liqueur on 17 May. We always did at home in Træna. Mum made eggnog and dad tapped the moonshine in the outhouse, and then we all celebrated, each in our own key signature.’

  ‘It says Advocaat on the label. You bought this for Thygesen, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m going to buy a decent bottle of whiskey for Thygesen in recompense for ungrounded suspicions of murder and the pain and suffering.’

  Vaage fills the cups.

  ‘Here’s a skål for Colonel KO Grossu and hope he has a happy landing in Norway,’ she says. ‘Who pays his pension do you think, by the way? My money’s on the KGB or the old Soviet army. Signing with two initials instead of full names seems so old-fashioned and Soviet.’

  ‘We’ll have to ask him. But I think we should leave him in peace until he’s identified her.’

  ‘A skål for the colonel’s daughter, Katka, who sadly had an unhappy landing in Norway.’

  ‘Skål.’

  ‘It’s dreadful that a girl who studied social anthropology at university ends up as a hairdresser abroad because h
er home country is destitute,’ Vaage says.

  ‘What’s wrong with hairdressers?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Do you think that Katka really ended up on the streets in Athens or she got away before the gangsters managed to push her into it?’

  ‘All we can go on is what our Greek colleagues tell us. When they claim the girls in the salon serviced the guests at Holywell, in all ways, we have to take them at their word. Does the title No One Writes to the Colonel mean anything to you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Stribolt tells her it is a novella written by Gabriel García Márquez. He read it again when Kripos eventually managed to contact Katka Orestovna Grossu’s only known relative in Moldova, and it turned out to be her father – and he was a former colonel.

  ‘I visualise him as a colonel no one writes to any more,’ Stribolt says.

  ‘We’d better give him a warm welcome whoever he is.’

  ‘Has the interpreter been told the correct arrival time?’

  ‘Everything’s hunky-dory. She’ll show up, and she’s one of the better ones who don’t try to steal the whole show. I have to confess I’m really excited to hear what he says about his daughter.’

  ‘Got any more of that sweet stuff?’

  They say another skål for Bård Isachsen getting four weeks in prison. It should have been eight, according to the prosecution, after Isachsen also confessed carrying out surveillance on Øystein Strand and Terje Kykkelrud under orders from Leif André Borkenhagen.

  ‘A skål for Larsson whose stint in the plumbing van led to a remarkable success,’ Stribolt says. ‘And I suggest we raise our cups to the judge who sentenced Thomas Gierløff to two well-earned weeks in prison.’

  ‘Gierløff’s defence counsel did us a great favour by allowing him to keep repeating that the threats against Thygesen were a practical joke, of course,’ Vaage says.

  ‘What pleased me most was that all that cool defence crap about artistic freedom didn’t cut any ice with the judge. The day violent threats are raised to art we can all pack our bags. What about a skål for the excellent witness Hege Dorothy Rønningen?’

  ‘Dotti de la Motti,’ Vaage grins. ‘Have you found out what motti means?’