He caught a tram to the quays by the City Hall. The police cordon was still fluttering on the pier close to Akerhus Fortress. It was fraying at the edges here and there.
Where could Nina and Stig have been?
The icy wind picked up over the open sea, cut into his face and tore at the ends of his scarf. He hurried to shelter behind the low office building in the middle of the quay.
This is where it happened.
Gunnarstranda stepped over the police tape and walked to the edge. Adeler could not possibly have slipped on the wet surface. Gunnarstranda could confirm that. Only if Adeler had been smashed out of his brain would he have fallen in. But he hadn’t been. Adeler had been sober.
How long had Adeler survived in the water before he was so frozen that he gave up and drowned? A minute, a minute and a half?
Gunnarstranda continued to the end of the pier. Icy fog hung black over the surface of the sea, steam coiled in thick spirals, rising slowly upwards and dissolving into finer mist, pierced with razor-sharp rays of sunshine, which partially coloured the cloud yellow, red and a smouldering hue, as if this wasn’t frost mist but waves of soot after the eruption of a volcano.
Gunnarstranda leaned back and established it wasn’t ash falling from the sky but snow.
He walked back to the crime scene. Examining his surroundings on the way. Where could the witnesses to the crime have been?
They were both homeless and crept somewhere every night to sleep.
They must have chosen a place that was sheltered from the wind, where they wouldn’t be seen and wouldn’t be harassed by the police…
Suddenly he saw where – something that wasn’t where it should be. A detail on the opposite quay. At the end of City Hall Quay 2 there was an overturned refuse container.
Gunnarstranda walked back and onto the next pier to check.
Yes, indeed, it was a clever little hiding place. The container was made of plastic, had four wheels and was a metre and a half in width and depth. The lid was open and rested against the wall; that was how they had slept in it, sheltered from the snow and wind.
He peered inside. Yes, someone had slept in there. It was lined with cardboard. Human bodies had clearly been here. And he found a ragged sleeping bag. Just one. The other one, it struck him, wasn’t here. Stig had taken it with him. It had been in the building in Grønland, in Stig’s little den there.
The two of them had spent the nights here in an empty refuse container insulated with cardboard and air. No one was at the end of the quay in winter, no tourists and no police officers.
But then one morning they had been lying there and had watched as Adeler was thrown into the water from the adjacent quay. They had seen him being murdered.
But the perpetrator had only seen Nina. Why?
Perhaps because she was already up?
At any rate she had fled while Stig was still lying in the container.
Afterwards, when Stig found out Nina had been hit by the train, he had understood. Then he was visited by the police and Stig decided to do something with regards to the killer. This decision would have fatal consequences.
The sleeping bag in the container was evidence. If they were lucky the lab would be able to trace DNA from it and compare it with Nina’s body. Some evidence then – but there would be more. Gunnarstranda needed forensics officers to secure the finds. He took a roll of tape from his pocket and started cordoning off the site.
4
‘Steffen here. Where are you?’
‘At home,’ Lena said.
‘What are you doing?’
Lena opened the glass cabinet over the bench with the phone to her ear. The crystal glasses she had bought on her summer trip to Prague stood in a neat line. She took one down. ‘What am I doing?’ She went to the fridge and fetched one of the quarter-bottles from the lowest shelf. Read the label. This was decent stuff. Henri de Verlaine champagne. ‘What do you think I’m doing? Shaving my intimate parts, aren’t I. Isn’t that what all your women are doing when you ring?’ With the phone to her ear she twisted off the top.
She filled her glass and sipped the precious drops. Brut. Nice.
Steffen chuckled. ‘You win, Lena. You’re the princess and I’m bewitched.’
Thank you, and the same to you, she thought to herself in the following silence. She had no idea what to say. It was she who was bewitched.
‘This is the point at which you ask what I’m doing,’ he said.
Lena hunched up one shoulder and held the phone between her head and shoulder while she drank more bubbly. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m standing outside your door.’
The bell rang at that moment.
Lena stood with the phone to her ear. ‘I have nothing to offer you,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’
‘That’s good. I brought some champagne with me.’
Lena took the empty quarter-bottle, opened the cupboard with the waste bin and threw the bottle in. ‘What brand?’ she asked.
‘Bollinger,’ Steffen said. ‘The one James Bond drinks. If you feel like a glass I think you’ll almost have to open the door.’
Lena nodded off and in the distance heard that Retrospect by Bel Canto was still playing. She opened her eyes.
Steffen came out of the bathroom and asked what the time was.
She reached for her watch on the bedside table. ‘Two minutes to eleven.’
After he had gone she lay wondering what she felt. Finally she realised that what she felt resembled sadness. It would have been nice if he had stayed a bit longer. Actually he could have stayed overnight.
The CD stopped playing.
She was hungry.
I could have made some supper for us, she thought. It’s boring to cook good food for one person.
She went into the kitchen. Without switching on the light. Opened the fridge door. A beaker of natural yoghurt beside a carton of semi-skimmed milk she knew had passed its sell-by date. The remains of yesterday’s dinner – half a grilled chicken – lay on a plate beside a jar of Dijon mustard. She took out the plate, twisted off a chicken bone and gnawed at it. She was thirsty now. The bottle of champagne on the sitting-room table was still half full. She had put out flutes because the bottle was Steffen’s. But she didn’t like drinking from such narrow glasses. The edge of the glass touched the tip of your nose and you had to lean right back to get the last drops. She grasped the half-empty bottle and drank straight from it. She sat at the worktop, not wearing a stitch, picked at the chicken with her fingers, licked her fingertips, grabbed the solid neck of the bottle, lifted and drank more.
Steffen should have stayed the night, she thought. We could have eaten this chicken, not to mention what we could have used the kitchen table for. She smiled at the thought. Got up and looked outside.
A car was in the car park with its engine running. A black Fiat 500. Was it really such a popular model?
Hesitantly, she turned her back on the window. Grabbed the bottle and went back to bed. She made herself comfortable with the pillow behind her back and put the laptop on the duvet. Found the Christmas music website. Dean Martin singing ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’. He wasn’t wrong.
She tried to think about Steffen, but instead her mind was on the car outside. She had seen a black Fiat 500 cabriolet when she visited Aud Helen Vestgård at her house. The same type of car had passed the drive to her garage half an hour later. And now there was a black Fiat 500 idling outside.
Could it be the same car?
Her stomach screamed yes. Her brain said no. They were three or, at most, two different cars.
In the end she couldn’t stop herself. She got out of bed. Went into the hall to the cupboard where she kept her binoculars. The laptop on her bed was playing ‘Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer’ as she went back to the kitchen. She peered out from behind the curtain. The car was still there. It was odd. It was past midnight, and it was at least twenty minutes since she had last looked ou
t.
She adjusted the binoculars. It had a roof, but the car was a cabriolet, yes, the one she had seen twice before.
It was impossible to see into the car. But she could see the registration number. She put the binoculars down. Grabbed a pen from next to the plate of chicken. Steffen is having a bad influence on me, she thought, and jotted the number on the back of her hand.
She cast her mind back. Actually she had made a note of the number the first time she saw the car. She had opened her handbag, rummaged around for a pen and an old receipt. But where was it now? Lena went back to the bedroom and searched. It took time. Her bag was full of old receipts. There. She checked it with the number on her hand. A chill ran down her spine. It was the same car.
She stood for a few seconds trying to gather her thoughts, then slowly crept back to the kitchen and pulled the curtain aside. She looked out. It was no longer there.
Wednesday, 16th December
1
Emil Yttergjerde asked if she’d been to a tattooist. They were standing by the drinks machine in the corridor and Lena was slotting in coins.
She showed him her hand. ‘Not exactly Chinese calligraphy,’ she said distantly and put the bottle of mineral water under her arm. She had been going to ring him, but now he was here she asked if he had managed to get hold of Adeler’s home help.
‘Pamina? She keeps ringing and asking about the funeral. And she’d like to work for me, too. I try to tell her to stop pushing. She only does undeclared work and I don’t want to cause her any problems.’
‘Did she have keys to the flat?’
‘She’s handed them in,’ Emil said. ‘She cleaned his pad on Wednesday afternoon and left a note to say he was short of washing powder. So she hadn’t been able to wash the clothes in the linen basket. She hadn’t seen Adeler for over two weeks.’
Lena went back to her office. She called the Vehicle Licensing Authority.
The car that had been idling outside her block of flats the previous night was owned by the rental company Hertz. Five minutes later she found out the car had been rented to a man named Stian Rømer at Oslo Airport on Wednesday, 9th December.
Her gut instinct that insisted it was the same car in all three instances was strengthened. Rental car.
The date – 9th December.
But the name, Stian Rømer, meant nothing to her.
Lena put on her coat and left. She headed for Oslo Station and caught the airport express to Gardermoen.
In the arrivals hall she made for the Hertz desk. The guy sitting in front of a computer was an overweight, unshaven young man with a snus lip. His head poked out of a huge puffa jacket. He stank of sweat and was drinking tea from a paper cup.
Lena showed her ID.
The young man had no idea who had taken the Fiat. The agreement had been made online a long time ago, it was always like that. That was the system. The customer came, was given the keys and signed a piece of paper. He didn’t know who had given him the keys. Customers delivered the car with a full tank when they had finished. The keys were in the ignition – and customers got on their plane. No hassle.
‘Can you get hold of the guy?’
‘Why should we want to?’ The man extended his snus lip into a grin. His mouth was like a rabbit’s. His front teeth were stained with snus tobacco.
Lena sighed. ‘Listen to me. I want to get hold of the man who’s rented the car, and I know you have the information I need. OK?’
The man blinked nervously. ‘All we have is his credit card.’
‘Precisely,’ Lena said. ‘That’s exactly what we want. Can you give me the information on the card?’
When she was back at Police HQ, she found a corner for herself and checked the online telephone directory. The name Stian Rømer didn’t exist. There was only one Rømer to be found. Her name was Bodil and she lived in Drammen. Lena tapped in the number and asked to speak to Stian.
‘Who’s speaking?’ The hoarse, slightly tremulous voice probably belonged to someone older.
If they were related, Lena thought quickly, this was the mother, aunt or grandmother.
‘My name’s Lena. Sorry to ring you like this, but I met Stian in Ibiza last summer and I’ve been searching everywhere for his phone number or address, and now I just had to try this number. Are you related to Stian?’
‘What was that? You met Stian where, did you say?’
‘Ibiza. My name’s Lena. He might’ve told you. Did he?’
‘No.’
‘Can I talk to Stian?’
‘Stian isn’t here.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Stian’s abroad.’
‘Oh, no,’ Lena exclaimed, genuinely disappointed. ‘You don’t say. Where?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’d really like to talk to him.’
‘I’d like to be able to help you, but Stian’s abroad and he can’t tell me where he is, either. He might’ve told you when you met that he works for the Intelligence Service, did he?’
‘Yes, he did, but … Are you Stian’s mother?’
‘Yes, I am. Stian has to sign an oath of secrecy and I’m afraid I can’t help you. But if you leave your phone number I can say you rang the next time he’s here.’
‘My battery’s running out,’ Lena said, thinking on her feet. ‘Where does Stian live when he’s in Norway?’
‘At home, of course, in Schweigaards gate in Oslo. Can I have your number?’
‘Get a pencil and paper quickly,’ Lena said. ‘My battery’s going.’
She could hear the woman putting the receiver on the table to get something to write with. Then Lena pressed ‘off’.
Immediately afterwards she used the police phone and rang the Intelligence Service’s personnel department. She asked for Stian Rømer. They couldn’t help her. She was transferred. She had to spell the name, but still didn’t get a response. Then she was transferred to another number and someone put her through to someone else. It took ten minutes to discover that no Stian Rømer worked in the Intelligence Service.
She put down the receiver.
She had seen a car three times. Yes, she told herself, the same car three times is two times too many. But not being able to locate the man who drove the car didn’t have to mean anything. The bluff about a job in the Intelligence Service could be a fib Stian Rømer had told his mother to avoid her badgering him or to impress her.
A man by the name of Stian Rømer had ordered a car at Oslo Airport the day before Adeler was killed. So what?
Lena sat staring into middle distance. She couldn’t get the black Fiat out of her head. She had an uneasy feeling in her stomach. There was something about that car. There was something about Stian Rømer.
That was as far as she got. Lena decided to drop the Fiat mystery and concentrate on reading the Pathology Institute reports.
When Lena straightened her back a quarter of an hour later she heard a familiar voice in the corridor.
She stood up and went out. Ingrid Kobro was in conversation with Rindal. She waved to Lena, who leaned against the wall and waited for Ingrid to finish talking.
Ingrid was close on fifty. But she still looked thirty-nine. Dark hair, not a single streak of grey, clear blue eyes and always a wry, knowing smile on her lips. Her glossy hair might seem dyed, but Lena knew the colour was genuine. When Lena started out in the police Ingrid held a protective wing over her. Unfortunately Ingrid had stopped working for the department six months before and had taken up a higher post in PST, the police security service.
Rindal moved on and Ingrid turned to her.
‘Long time, no see,’ Lena said, and gave Ingrid a hug.
‘I’m here with the sole purpose of talking to you,’ Ingrid said.
‘That’s nice,’ Lena smiled. Then she noticed Ingrid’s serious expression and felt her smile fade. ‘Is it business or pleasure?’
‘Business,’ said Ingrid Kobro, guiding Lena into an office and closing the do
or behind them. ‘Always great to see you as well, Lena,’ Ingrid continued in her soft Sørland dialect. She breathed in: ‘Down to business.’
Lena was bewildered.
Ingrid sat down and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Lena,’ Ingrid said in a serious tone. ‘Why are you interested in Stian Rømer?’
In Lena’s head a bowling ball started rolling. It knocked down the pins with a bang: being transferred from pillar to post at the Intelligence Service and spelling Rømer’s name took on meaning. The questions about her name, address and telephone number…
Ingrid’s face had puckered in concentration. ‘We at Central Office don’t want Oslo PD undermining a case we’ve spent time and resources on.’
Lena noted the choice of words. ‘Central Office’. Ingrid was flagging up her authority.
‘Excuse me,’ Lena said with a cough. ‘I called the personnel department of the Intelligence Service. I can’t understand how I could’ve come anywhere near you or your people.’
Ingrid deliberated before speaking. ‘I didn’t know that,’ she said at length.
Lena had to laugh.
‘What is it?’ Ingrid asked with the same crooked smile.
‘How can you know that I’m interested in Stian Rømer?’
‘We’ve got the guy under surveillance. He arrived in Norway a week ago and rented a car from Gardermoen. You were interested in it too, weren’t you?’
This took Lena by surprise. ‘What?’
‘We’ve got you on film and we have a recording of you using your official authority to demand information from Rømer’s credit card.’
‘Have you been spying on me?’
Ingrid shook her head. ‘We’re interested in Stian Rømer, and we don’t want Oslo PD destroying what we’ve built up.’
Lena told Ingrid about the car she had seen three times, how it was outside her block of flats after midnight, told her about Hertz and Stian’s mother, Bodil Rømer. She told Ingrid almost everything.
The Ice Swimmer Page 13