They continued to measure each other up. Lena waited for the question she dreaded. Her mind was racing. How should she present what happened?
But the question never came.
‘Let’s assume you’re right,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘Let’s assume it was Gjerstad who drowned Adeler and that the mercenary, Stian Rømer, shot the witnesses. What would Gjerstad’s motive be for killing Adeler?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lena said, unsure whether she was happy about this side-track or not.
‘Then I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m asking you if you’re just out to avenge a love that went wrong.’
Lena shook her head. ‘This isn’t revenge. I’ve finished with Steffen. And I do mean finished,’ she said. ‘Råholt’s just admitted that he and Steffen had collaborated to bring a scandal down on the Ethics Council and Polisario. Well, Steffen took the photos at the restaurant. Steffen appeared at the harbour when we were recovering the dead body. He spoke to me then, but he omitted to say he knew the deceased. He only told me that a few hours later, when he was outside Adeler’s flat waiting for me to come out. And it was only then he told me he had recognised Adeler when we lifted Adeler out of the water. And it was only then he told me where Adeler grew up – in Jølster. And he told me Adeler was a conceited namedropper and a fitness freak. All of a sudden Steffen knew a helluva lot about Adeler. Why didn’t he say any of that at the harbour? All the journalists outside the cordon were interested to hear if we could identify the dead man. Steffen knew who had drowned, but chose not to say anything. Why was he waiting for me outside Adeler’s flat?’
Gunnarstranda nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s a lot of questions you’re asking,’ he said. ‘But they don’t necessarily have the same answer. Let’s suppose you go ahead with this charade to lure the journalist out of hiding. Don’t forget the journalist has an ally in Rise. How could you carry off this ruse without it being revealed?’
Lena ruminated. ‘Rise’s friendship with Gjerstad can be used,’ she said. ‘When we feed him the name of the fake witness, we have to keep the plan to ourselves. He should be told the name, that’s all.’
‘And how will we do that?’
‘You just used the word “we”,’ Lena said with a smile. ‘You’re almost convinced.’
Gunnarstranda shook his head and replied: ‘It’s no good you feeling Gjerstad is the man. You have to be able to prove he was at the crime scene, that he had the opportunity and a motive to kill. You don’t know if Gjerstad was there at the harbour when the murder took place.’
‘If he was there he had the opportunity,’ she said.
‘But have you got a motive?’ Gunnarstranda riposted.
‘I’m sure there’s a motive,’ she answered.
‘But you don’t know what it is.’
‘No. But the person who killed Adeler also eliminated the eyewitnesses. If we let it leak out that there was a third witness near the quay, the man will attack that third witness.’
‘You still don’t have the motive behind Adeler’s murder. Remember Murphy’s Law. If it runs true to form, all you’ll achieve is a charge that has to be dropped because the attack on the decoy is an illegal, provoked act. Then the killer goes free and you’ve gambled away any chance to nab him.’
‘But there’ll still be reasonable grounds for suspicion. We can question him.’
‘The man will refuse to make a statement on the recommendation of his solicitor. Then it’s only a question of time before he goes free. No, Lena, the risk’s too great,’ Gunnarstranda concluded. ‘There’ll be no operation with a third witness.’
Gunnarstranda turned without another word, and went.
Disappointed, Lena was left watching the low-gravity, slightly skew-whiff figure.
Suddenly he turned and fixed her with a stare. ‘How can you be so sure Rømer wasn’t on the plane?’
She gulped, and shouted to make her voice heard: ‘I’ve been instructed by Ingrid Kobro not to say.’
A cowardly answer, she thought, leaning back. The snow that was drifting down was invisible in the night sky, but thick and impenetrable in the yellow glow around the streetlamps that succeeded one another in a straight line.
She lowered her head, ready for a confrontation. But Gunnarstranda had set off again without a word.
The snow lay like a fine layer of powder on the road, muffling sound. A tractor with a snowplough at the front and a snowblower at the rear came into Youngstorget. The orange flashing lights were reflected on the walls around. Even the roar of the diesel engine became a muffled growl. Christmas, Lena thought, trying to remember back. She hadn’t noticed a silence like this in snowy weather since she was a little girl.
Lena leaned against the wall, watching the small figure of Gunnarstranda, who hesitated for a few seconds by the steps to Møllergata 19, the old Nazi HQ, then turned and crossed the street. Soon the silhouette of the police officer had merged with the shadow from the towering building. The snow was falling heavily now. Soon his footprints would be small depressions in the thickening carpet.
Lena filled her lungs with air, turned and strode off in the opposite direction.
5
A Christmas song was audible from down the corridor: John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Happy Xmas. War is Over’.
No doubt about that, Lena thought, walking over to her pigeon hole. Quite a pile of post had accumulated. It was full to overflowing. She grabbed the pile and flicked through it as she walked to the office.
In the middle there was a thick, brown C4 envelope.
She was about to put it back in the pile when she saw it had been sent by the Finance Department – the secretariat of the Ethics Council. Lena raised her eyebrows.
She went into her office and opened the envelope.
In it was a stapled wad of typewritten sheets of paper. On top was a yellow Post-it:
Hi Lena,
Nice to meet you. Thought the following would interest you. The report is finished, as you can see, but we haven’t sent it on. As Sveinung’s dead, the case has been handed over to another officer, who will present his own conclusions. As this report no longer forms part of the official case, we can make an exception and allow you to peruse it. Naturally, the condition is that you treat this document as confidential information. Happy Christmas!
Soheyla M
This had to be a sign, thought Lena. Soheyla Moestue had been so correct and formal when Lena made enquiries in the secretariat. Soheyla hadn’t even wanted to investigate whether her colleague Sveinung Adeler had written a report on his journey to Western Sahara. Now she was sending her the whole file that Adeler had put together on MacFarrell Ltd.
‘The report is finished, as you can see, but we haven’t sent it on.’
Lena re-read the sentence.
She checked the date on the front: Wednesday, 9th December.
‘…finished … but we haven’t sent it on’.
The secretariat hadn’t sent it on. Why not?
Because Sveinung Adeler died during the following night.
Lena had to talk to Soheyla Moestue. She looked at her watch. It was evening. No one was at work now, but it would soon be Christmas and people were out and about early and late. Lena pulled out her desk drawer and found the little cardholder where she kept all her business cards. Yes!
On Soheyla Moestue’s card there was a mobile number.
‘Thank you for the report,’ she said when Soheyla picked up. Then she got to the point: ‘Just one thing though. Why wasn’t the report sent to the Ethics Council? Was it really stopped?’
‘Can I ring you back? I’m in a shop,’ Soheyla said.
‘Yes, of course,’ Lena said. ‘I think I know why, but I need to hear you say it.’
‘The case has been given to another officer,’ said Soheyla in a stressed voice. Lena could hear children shouting and the ringing of a till in the background. ‘As Sveinung’s dead he can’t justify his conclusions. So we asked for his report bac
k when we found out he was dead.’
‘Back?’
‘Yes, it went by post on Wednesday, the ninth of December. The following day, on the Thursday, when it was clear Sveinung was dead, we asked to have all his documents returned as, of course, he was unable to clarify them. The report you’re holding was never discussed. But I knew none of this when we two talked a week ago.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Lena said, and left her to do her shopping in peace.
Lena leaned back in her chair and could feel everything slotting nicely into place. The date on the report explained what had happened.
Sveinung Adeler, who was reporting on a company operating in occupied Western Sahara, on behalf of the Ethics Council, had received another request from Aud Helen Vestgård to meet Polisario. Meeting Polisario should have been a trivial matter – unproblematic. But it was quite a different business doing it at a restaurant in Oslo on the initiative of – and in the company of – an MP who had arranged the meeting. This context lent it a certain significance and impact. What at the outset would have been the normal investigations of a case officer could, in this new light, be interpreted as ceding to political pressure and lobbying. Naturally Adeler would have taken this into account. He was a young man with a career in front of him; a climber and a name-dropper; a party member who didn’t say no to an MP who condescended to call him and ask him out. However, he was in a dilemma. Adeler had no idea what Vestgård’s intentions were with such a meeting, but he was bound to have looked for a way of evading the taint of impropriety that attached itself to her invitation.
How could he avoid potential political pressure in this situation? How could he avoid future speculation concerning his neutrality and reliability because of this meeting?
Lena smiled to herself. Adeler had taken the only correct course of action. He had stopped work on the MacFarrell case before the dinner. In so doing he was able to counter possible criticism later: the meeting that evening didn’t affect his work – the report was finished and had been sent for approval beforehand! That was obvious. That was how it must have been. Nothing at all mysterious about it. Adeler had washed his hands of the case in advance!
Lena flicked through the report and decided to go straight to the conclusions and read the last page first. Then she skimmed through page by page and took a deep breath.
Lena wasn’t tired and fed up any more. She was wide awake when she picked up the receiver.
6
Elvis was singing ‘Blue Christmas’ on the stereo and Tove was sitting with a large Christmas card in her hand when Gunnarstranda came in through the door.
Tove got up, lowered the volume and showed him the motif on the card. ‘From Torstein,’ she said. The card was A4 size with a portrait of Elvis Presley. She opened the card. ‘Eh voilà,’ Tove said with a grin.
A sombre, slightly grating Elvis-voice rose from the card: ‘Merry Christmas, Baby!’
Gunnarstranda gave a nod of acknowledgement and removed his winter coat, which he had almost managed to brush free of snow. ‘Christmas,’ he said, kneeling down and unzipping his boots.
‘By the way, regards from Torstein,’ Tove said. ‘He’s better.’
‘Anything new?’
Gunnarstranda stood up and put his boots on the shoe shelf.
He went into the kitchen and put on the hot-water tap to warm his hands, which were red from the cold.
‘New?’ Tove mulled over the question. ‘Torstein’s latest theory is that all geniuses die when they’re thirty-seven years old. He put forward Rimbaud, Mozart, Henrik Wergeland and Jesus Christ as proof, and claimed the reason for the phenomenon is that the digit sum of thirty-seven is ten and of ten it is one and the number one is a symbol of a genius.’
Gunnarstranda turned off the tap, took a towel and dried his hands. ‘The digit sum of twenty-eight is also ten,’ he said.
Tove nodded. ‘I used that argument, too. But Torstein had an answer to that. His theory is that geniuses die when they’re nineteen, twenty-eight, thirty-seven, forty-six, fifty-five, sixty-four, seventy-three, eighty-two or ninety-one.’
‘What about one hundred?’
‘No geniuses become a hundred,’ Tove said, and added: ‘According to Torstein. And thirty-seven is a kind of peak, age-wise.’
Gunnarstranda considered this claim. ‘Miles Davis. He died when he was sixty-five. Which makes eleven and the digit sum of eleven is two. The theory doesn’t hold water.’
‘Torstein has never understood jazz,’ Tove said.
The telephone rang. Tove got up again and moved towards it. Gunnarstranda admired the swing of her hips as she did so. She took the receiver and held a thoughtful finger to her chin. They exchanged looks.
‘For you,’ she said, passing him the receiver.
‘I’m in the bath,’ Gunnarstranda said.
Tove shook her head. ‘Lena Stigersand,’ she said.
Gunnarstranda took a deep breath. ‘I just went outside and you can’t see me in the foul weather.’
She shook her head again.
Gunnarstranda took the receiver.
‘Please be brief,’ he said.
‘I’ve found the motive,’ Lena said, laughter bubbling in her throat. ‘It’s here on the table in front of me.’
7
It was a few minutes after midnight when Gunnarstranda turned off Østre Aker vei and continued towards the satellite town of Haugenstua.
He found Ole Brumms vei and drove up the little hill to the car park before the railway crossing. He parked. Got out and strolled towards the blocks of flats and the paths between them where the snow had been cleared. Yellow stains on the piled-up snow revealed that this housing co-op allowed dogs.
He was going to see Axel Rise – if this man was in Oslo and not in Bergen. All Gunnarstranda knew was the house number, not which floor Rise lived on.
The front entrance turned out to be in the middle of the block, closest to the railway line and the forest.
Gunnarstranda rang below and there was no response. When he went to press the bell for a second time the front door was opened by two young boys in jackets slightly too big for them and who, judging by their appearance, came from the Middle East. Both were grinning and exchanged glances when they saw him.
Gunnarstranda went in. There was a smell of frying oil. The lift was waiting. He entered and took it to the top floor. Then he went out and started walking down the stairs. He read the nameplates on all the doors, floor by floor. The problem was that many residents didn’t have a nameplate.
Neither did Axel Rise. Gunnarstranda recognised his motorbike boots though. They were parked tidily on a plastic mat outside a door on the fourth floor.
Gunnarstranda rang the bell.
Nothing happened.
Gunnarstranda looked at his watch. It was twenty-five to one. He was tired and impatient. He took his bunch of keys and used the ring to hammer repeatedly on the door and yelled: ‘Police! Open up in the name of the law!’
Soon afterwards he heard Bergensian swear words through the door.
The security chain rattled.
‘You? What do you think you’re doing?’ Rise groaned. He blinked sleepily into the bright light. All he was wearing was light-blue boxer shorts and a hairnet.
‘My gran had one like that,’ Gunnarstranda said, pointing to the hairnet. ‘But she only wore it when she had curlers in. Have curlers gone out of fashion?’
Rise automatically put a hand to his head and smiled sheepishly. At the same time there was a rattle of locks. Two neighbouring doors opened a fraction. Frightened faces peered out.
Rise sighed. ‘You’d better come in.’
Gunnarstranda went into a dark, poorly ventilated bedsit dominated by a wide bed. In front of it was an almost equally wide TV on a stand.
No chairs, no table.
Axel Rise pulled on a pair of jeans lying on the floor. He went towards the kitchenette where he opened the door of a low fridge. ‘Can I offer you anyt
hing?’
Gunnarstranda shook his head.
Rise fetched a red can of Christmas brew and sat down on the bed. He was a sight with his long hair in a net and his bare chest – truly bare, except for a large hairy mole between his nipples. It resembled a lucky charm – the scalp of a gonk troll.
Gunnarstranda remained on his feet.
‘And what brings such worthies to these parts?’ Rise asked.
‘We have a leakage problem,’ Gunnarstranda said.
‘The bladder, eh?’ Rise grinned. ‘Is that why you didn’t want a beer?’
‘I think you know what I mean, and I also think you can help me to solve it,’ Gunnarstranda said.
Rise took the remote control from the floor. He switched on the TV and zapped through the channels until he found one with carracing on. Then he made himself comfortable, and said: ‘Shut the door after you as you leave.’
Gunnarstranda stood in front of the screen. ‘Eighty per cent of the earth’s population are idiots,’ he said. ‘It’s what’s called the 80:20 rule. You can have a conversation with the twenty per cent. The other eighty per cent are all knuckleheads. Isn’t that depressing?’
‘You’re in the way,’ Rise said grumpily.
‘I asked a witness once where she lived,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘She said she couldn’t remember whether it was Nesodden or Notodden. She mixed them up. I told her Nesodden was a few hundred metres from here – I even pointed across Oslo Fjord to where it was. Nesodden’s the bit of land you can see out there in Oslo Fjord. However, Notodden’s a town a hundred and fifty kilometres from Oslo, so the question is fairly simple, I told her. “Do you live five hundred metres from here or a hundred and fifty kilometres?” And you know what she answered? “How the hell do I know?”’
‘What are you talking about?’ Rise said.
‘This is my offer to you. We’re close to a breakthrough in the Adeler Case. We’ll be there tomorrow. If you tell me right now, without any trickery, why you didn’t do your job when you were instructed to check out Aud Helen Vestgård, you’ll still be in the team and involved in clearing up the case. Otherwise you’re out. But you won’t only be out. I’ll tell everyone why. Oslo PD will become a living hell for you, and every single police district where I have contacts. You’ve got thirty seconds.’
The Ice Swimmer Page 29