by Jo Nesbo
‘Because—’ Martinsen began, and at that moment I knew.
‘Actually, no,’ I interrupted, and gave her what I hoped looked like an embarrassed smile. ‘On the morning of Willumsen’s death, I actually woke to the sound of a Jaguar. The car, that is. Not the creature.’
Martinsen stopped speaking and looked at me expressionlessly. ‘Continue,’ she said.
‘It has a very distinctive sound in the low gears. It snarls, like one of the big cats, like a...well, a Jaguar, I guess.’
Martinsen looked impatient, but I took my time. I knew that in this minefield, the slightest false step would be punished without mercy.
‘But by the time I was properly awake, the sound had gone. I pulled the curtain open and half expected to see the Jaguar. It was still dark out, but there was no car there, I could see that. So I thought I’d dreamt it.’
Again Martinsen and Kurt exchanged glances. The Sulesund guy clearly didn’t take part in this aspect of the investigation. He was what they call a crime-scene technician, so what he was doing here I still didn’t know. But I had a feeling that I would soon find out. Well, at least I’d given them a story that held water even if they found the Jaguar down in Huken. Then it would look as though Poul Hansen had driven up here the morning after the murder, maybe to make another attempt to extort money from us, his summer tyres had lost their grip on Geitesvingen and he’d slid over the edge and down into Huken unnoticed by anybody. I took a breath. Wondered whether to get up for more coffee, felt I needed it, but stayed seated.
‘The reason we’re asking is that we spent some time tracing a mobile phone number for Hansen,’ said Martinsen. ‘Presumably on account of his occupation, he didn’t have a phone registered in his own name. But we checked the base stations round here and they had registered signals from only one phone with this Danish number over the last few days. When we looked at which base stations had received signals from this Danish number, they coincided with witness observations of the Jaguar. What’s odd is that if we look at the period around the time of the murder, that is, from roughly the point at which he visited you, the phone has remained within the same, very limited base-station area. This one.’ Martinsen described a circle in the air with her index finger. ‘And there is no one else but you Opgards living up here. How do you explain that?’
57
THE KRIPOS WOMAN – SHE probably had a more formal title – had finally come to the point. The mobile phone. Of course the Dane had a mobile phone. I had quite simply neglected to think about it when we made the plan, and now Martinsen had traced his phone to a small area in the vicinity of our farm. Just like the time with Sigmund Olsen’s phone. How the hell could I have made the same mistake twice? Now they had established the enforcer’s phone had been somewhere near Opgard before, during and following the murder of Willum Willumsen.
‘Well,’ said Martinsen and repeated herself: ‘How do you explain that?’
It was like one of those video games where a load of objects come flying towards you at different speeds and in different patterns, and you know it’s just a question of time before you crash into at least one of them and then it’s game over. It takes quite a bit to get me worried, but now my back was sweating. I shrugged my shoulders and tried desperately to look relaxed: ‘How do you explain it?’
Martinsen seemed to take my question as rhetorical, as people say, ignored it and for the first time leaned forward in her chair. ‘Did Poul Hansen never leave here after he came? Did he spend the night here? Because no one else we’ve spoken to has put him up, no boarding house or anyone else, and the heater in that old Jaguar isn’t much good, so it would have been too cold to sleep in his car that night.’
‘Then he probably booked in at the hotel,’ I said.
‘The hotel?’
‘A joke. I mean, he drove up to the ruins and let himself into one of the workers’ cabins, because of course they’re unoccupied at the moment. If he’s so good at jemmying locks he’d manage that easy enough.’
‘But the mobile phone shows—’
‘The hotel site is just over the hill here,’ I said. ‘In the same base-station area as us, isn’t that right, Kurt? Because you once came up here looking for a mobile phone.’
Kurt Olsen sucked his moustache with something that looked like hatred in his eyes. Turned to the two KRIPOS investigators and gave a quick nod.
‘What that means then,’ said Martinsen without taking her eyes off me, ‘is that he left his phone behind in this workers’ cabin when he left to kill Willumsen. And that it’s still up there. Can you call up some reserves, Olsen? Looks as though we might need a search warrant for these cabins, and this sounds like a lot of searching.’
‘Good luck,’ I said, and stood up.
‘Oh, we’re not quite finished yet,’ said Kurt.
‘All right then,’ I said, and sat down again.
Kurt wriggled in his chair, as though to show he was sort of making himself even more comfortable. ‘When we asked Rita if Poul Hansen might conceivably have had a key to the basement door she said no. But then I saw her face twitch, and I’ve been a policeman long enough to be able to read faces just a little bit, so I pressed her on it, and she admitted that at one time you had been given such a key, Roy.’
‘OK,’ was all I said. I was tired.
Kurt was forwards on his elbows again. ‘So the question is, did you give that key to Poul Hansen? Or if you let yourself in at Willumsen’s the morning he died.’
I had to stifle a yawn. Not because I was tired, but because the brain needed more oxygen I suppose. ‘What in the world makes you think something like that?’
‘We’re just asking.’
‘Why would I kill Willumsen?’
Kurt sucked on his moustache and looked at Martinsen, who gave him the OK to continue.
‘Grete Smitt once told me that you and Rita Willumsen had a thing going up at the Willumsen cabin. And when I confronted Rita Willumsen with this after she’d told me about the basement key she admitted it.’
‘So what?’
‘So what? Sex and jealousy. Those are the two most common motives for murder in every developed nation in the world.’
That was straight out of True Crime too unless I was very much mistaken. I could no longer stifle that yawn. ‘No,’ I said, my trap wide open. ‘Of course I didn’t kill Willumsen.’
‘No,’ said Kurt. ‘Because, of course, you’ve just told us you were snoring away in bed up here at the time at which Willumsen was killed, meaning between six thirty and seven thirty in the morning?’
Kurt fiddled with his mobile phone holder again. It was like having a prompt. And now I got it; they’d checked the movements on my mobile phone too.
‘No, I got up,’ I said. ‘Then I drove down to one of the jetties on Lake Budal.’
‘Yes, we have a witness who thinks they saw a Volvo like yours come driving from up that way just before eight o’clock. What were you doing there?’
‘I went to spy on the bathing nymphs.’
‘Sorry?’
‘After I woke up and thought I’d heard the Jaguar I remembered that Shannon and Rita were going ice-bathing, but I didn’t know exactly where. So I guessed it would be somewhere on a straight line between Willumsen’s house and the lake. Parked at one of the boathouses and looked for them, but it was too dark and I couldn’t locate them.’
I saw Kurt’s face sort of implode, like when the air goes out of a beach ball.
‘Is there anything else?’ I asked.
‘Just to be on the safe side we’re going to check your hand for GSR,’ said Martinsen, still pretty much expressionless, although her body language had changed. She’d turned off that air of tense, hypersensitive awareness, something you maybe need to have done martial arts or street-fighting to notice. Perhaps she didn’t even realise it hers
elf, but somewhere inside she had concluded that I was not the enemy, and now she eased off almost imperceptibly.
Enter the crime-scene technician who opened his bag. He took out a laptop and something that looked like a hairdryer. ‘XRF analyser,’ he said and opened the laptop. ‘I just need to scan your skin and we’ll get the result immediately. First I just need to connect it to the analysis software.’
‘OK. In the meantime shall I pop upstairs and fetch Carl and Shannon, so you can talk to them too?’
‘So you can scrub your hands first?’ asked Kurt Olsen.
‘Thanks, but we don’t need to talk to them,’ said Martinsen. ‘We’ve got what we need for the time being.’
‘I’m ready now,’ said Sulesund.
I rolled up my shirtsleeves, held my hands up in front of him and he scanned me as though I was an item from my service station shop.
Sulesund connected the hairdryer to the laptop with a USB cable and typed. I saw that Kurt was tensely scrutinising the technician’s face. I felt Martinsen’s gaze on my own as I let it glide out the window and thought it was a good thing I’d burned the gloves and the rest of the clothes I’d been wearing that morning. And that I should remember to wash the bloodstained shirt I’d been wearing on New Year’s Eve so that I could wear it at the funeral tomorrow.
‘He’s clean,’ said Sulesund.
I seemed to hear Kurt Olsen’s silent curse.
‘Well,’ said Martinsen as she stood up. ‘Thanks for your cooperation, Opgard. I hope you didn’t find this too unpleasant. But we need to be a little tougher in cases of murder, you know.’
‘You’re just doing your job,’ I said, and rolled down my shirtsleeve. ‘And that’s all there is to it. And...’ I pushed in a wedge of moist snuff, looked at Kurt Olsen and added, quite truthfully: ‘...I really do hope you find Poul Hansen.’
58
IN A STRANGE WAY WILLUM Willumsen’s funeral felt like the funeral of the Os Spa and Mountain Hotel.
It began with Jo Aas’s valedictory speech.
‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,’ he said. And went on to say how, one brick at a time, the departed had built up a company that prospered because it played a natural role in local society. It was and remained a response to a real need felt by those of us living here, said Aas.
‘We all knew Willum Willumsen as a hard but fair businessman. He made money where there was money to be made, and never made a deal he didn’t think would end up being to his advantage. But he kept to the deals he made, even when the wind changed and profit turned to loss. Always. And that is the kind of blind integrity that defines a man, that is the ultimate proof he has backbone.’
At this point Jo Aas’s gaze was fastened on Carl, who was sitting next to me on the second bench of a packed Os church.
‘Unfortunately, it seems to me that not all of today’s businessmen here in the village live up to Willum’s standards.’
I didn’t look at Carl, but it was as though I could feel the heat from the blush of shame burning in his face.
I’m guessing that Jo Aas chose that particular occasion for the character assassination of my little brother because he knew it was the best platform for what he wanted to say. And he wanted to say it because the same thing still drove him: he wanted to set the agenda. A couple of days earlier, Dan Krane had written a leader on current and former council leaders in which he had described Jo Aas as a politician whose outstanding talent was to have an ear to the ground and understand what he heard, and then adapt his responses in such a way as to make them seem in some magical way like a compromise of the views of all involved parties. It meant his suggestions were always accepted, which in turn created the impression of someone who was a powerful leader. Whereas in reality he had either simply adapted to his audience, or else merely gone with the flow. ‘Is it the dog wagging its tail, or the tail wagging the dog?’ wrote Dan Krane.
Of course, a lively discussion had ensued. Because how dare that cocky newcomer attack his own father-in-law, their beloved old council chairman? There were numerous responses both in print and online, to which Dan Krane replied that he had not been criticising Jo Aas. Because wasn’t it the democratic ideal that the people should be represented, and could there be a more genuinely democratic representative than a politician who gauged the mood of the people, and adapted his responses accordingly? And, in a way, Krane’s point was now being illustrated, because what we heard from the pulpit wasn’t Jo Aas but an echo from the whole village, communicated via the man who always interpreted and then communicated what they, the majority, thought. Because even for those directly concerned, that’s to say us, up at Opgard, it had been impossible not to know that people were beginning to talk. Maybe news had leaked that Carl had lost control of the hotel project after he had fired the main contractors. That Carl was struggling with the financing, that he had taken out personal loans in secret, and that the accounts did not reveal the true story. That the fire might have been a deathblow. For the time being it might be the case that there was nothing concrete to go on, but it was the sum of small things known by certain persons here and there which together made up a picture no one was happy with. But then Carl had been so optimistic in the autumn, loudly proclaiming that things were back on track, and that was of course what the villagers wanted to hear, now that they had already invested in the project.
And now Willum Willumsen had been killed by an enforcer, if the journalists who had invaded the village were to be believed, and what did that mean? Some thought he must have owed someone a great deal of money. According to rumour, Willumsen had been into the hotel more heavily than all the rest of them, that he’d handed out big loans. So was this killing the first crack in the foundations, a warning that the whole thing was about to go to hell? Had Carl Opgard, that slick, preacher-tongued charmer, come back home and led them all a merry dance with his castle in the air?
As we left the church, I saw Mari Aas – the usual warm, dark glow of her face now pale against the black coat – arm in arm with her father.
Dan Krane was nowhere to be seen.
The coffin, carried out by relatives wearing suits too big for them, was loaded into the hearse and driven off as we stood there, sort of devout-looking, and watched it.
‘They’re not cremating him now,’ said a voice quietly. It was Grete Smitt who suddenly appeared at my side. ‘The police want to hang on to the body as long as possible in case something crops up they need to check. They’ve just lent the body for the funeral. Now it’s going straight back to the freezer.’
I continued to watch the hearse, driving so slowly it looked as though it was standing still, as the white smoke billowed from the exhaust. When at last it vanished round the corner I turned to where Grete had been standing. She was gone.
The queue of those wishing to offer their condolences to Rita Willumsen was long, and I wasn’t at all sure my face was something she wanted to see right then, so I walked off and got into the driver’s seat of the Cadillac and waited.
A besuited Anton Moe and wife passed in front of the car. Neither one looked up.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Carl once he and Shannon were seated and I started the car. ‘Know what Rita Willumsen just did?’
‘What?’ I said as we drove out of the car park.
‘As I was offering my condolences she pulled me towards her and I thought she was going to give me a hug, and then she whispered “murderer” in my ear.’
‘Murderer? Are you sure you heard right?’
‘Yes. She smiled. Grin and bear it, all that stuff. But, I mean to say...’
‘Murderer.’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s probably been told by her lawyer that her husband wrote off thirty million in debt and gave you another thirty just before he died,’ said Shannon.
‘Does that make me a murde
rer?’ Carl shouted indignantly. I knew he was upset, not because he was innocent but because the accusations were unreasonable, given how little Rita Willumsen could know. That was how Carl’s brain worked. He felt Rita Willumsen had judged him on the basis of who he was, not the facts, and that hurt him.
‘It’s no wonder she’s suspicious,’ said Shannon.‘If she knew about the debt, then she probably thinks it’s strange her husband didn’t tell her he’d written off such a large sum. And if she didn’t know about it, then she probably thinks it stinks, that her lawyer receives the document after the murder, but signed and dated several days before it.’
In reply Carl just grunted. He obviously felt that not even such logical reasoning was any excuse for Rita’s behaviour.
I looked up at the sky ahead. The forecast had been for fine weather, but now dark clouds were driving in from the west. Things change quickly in the mountains, as people say.
59
I OPENED MY EYES. IT was burning. The bunk beds and the walls around me were aflame, the fire raging at me. I jumped down onto the floor and saw long, yellow flames flaring up from the mattress. So how come I felt nothing? I looked down at myself and saw it. Saw that I was on fire too. I heard Carl’s and Shannon’s voices from their bedroom and ran to the door, but it was locked. I raced to the window and ripped aside the burning curtains. The glass was gone, replaced by iron bars. And there, in the snow outside, stood three figures. Pale, unmoving, just staring at me. Anton Moe. Grete Smitt. And Rita Willumsen. The fire truck came crawling from the darkness down by Geitesvingen. No siren, no lights. Dropping down and down through the gears, the engine roaring louder and louder, the truck going slower and slower. And then it stopped completely and began sliding back down into the darkness from which it had emerged. A bow-legged man came rolling out of the barn. Kurt Olsen. He was wearing Dad’s boxing gloves.
I opened my eyes. The room was dark, there was no fire. But the roaring was there. No, not a roar, but an engine revving furiously. It was the ghost of the Jaguar on its way up out of Huken. Then, as I grew more wide awake, I could hear it was the tractor-like sound of a Land Rover.