He found his trousers and pulled them on. ‘Someone I know.’
‘Who?’
‘A cop.’
A hollow thud told him that the lift door had closed. Seconds later the bell rang. Matilde backed into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
Frank looked around him in panic. An empty bottle of wine on the floor. He put it on the table. Went to the front door and opened it. ‘Apologies for the mess,’ he said. ‘But you woke me up.’
He turned, found his T-shirt on the sofa. He pulled it over his head.
Gunnarstranda bent down and picked up the wine bottle, read the label and placed it back on the table. ‘Fredrik Andersen,’ he stated sharply.
‘What about him?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Come on, Frølich. If I say a man’s dead, he’s dead.’
Frank slumped down onto the sofa.
‘Killed by an unknown perpetrator,’ Gunnarstranda said. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands buried in his coat pockets.
Gunnarstranda turned to the closed bedroom door. ‘Late night?’
Frank didn’t answer. He was thinking about Fredrik Andersen. Dead. That was definitely unreal.
Gunnarstranda turned back. ‘Your car was seen outside his place yesterday afternoon. Now he’s been murdered and you have something to tell me.’
Frank didn’t answer at once. He formed a mental image of Fredrik Andersen on the chair outside his office. The well-spoken Trondheimer with the shoulder bag and the tenacious commitment.
As he tried to digest the tragic event he felt the smart of a growing annoyance. Andersen had sprung up from nowhere and into his office. The writer had known what Frølich had been doing. Now Gunnarstranda had come through the door and he knew what Frank had been doing. As though he were a chess piece being moved around, watched by an invisible audience.
Gunnarstranda sat on the chair opposite the sofa. They sat eyeing each other. Frank noticed Gunnarstranda had given up on ties. The top button of his shirt was open. There were red patches on the skin around his Adam’s apple. It moved.
‘Something’s happened to your mug.’
Involuntarily, Frank ran a hand over his chin. ‘Am I bleeding?’
Gunnarstranda shook his head.
Frølich twigged. ‘I shaved off my beard.’
Gunnarstranda produced a wan smile. ‘So that’s what you look like.’
He cleared his throat before Gunnarstranda could say any more: ‘I was there about an assignment. Andersen hired me for a job.’
‘What kind of job?’
‘Oath of confidentiality.’
‘Are you being funny?’
‘I earn my bread from this. I don’t joke about the source of my existence.’
‘Frølich. The man was killed.’
‘How?’
Gunnarstranda gave a wry smile. ‘Why was your car outside his house?’
‘He came to my office and told me he was working on a book. For some reason he thought I could help him with it and wanted to hire me.’
‘To do what?’
‘This assignment is between me and my client.’
‘This client’s dead.’
‘Then I’ll deal with his heirs.’
Another wan smile from Gunnarstranda. ‘Andersen hires you to do a job and you decide to drive to his house and spy on him?’
‘I was waiting for him. Others were spying on him.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘Bjørn Thyness. He had Andersen under surveillance. I went there because I had to turn down the job. I wanted to make that clear and return the advance he’d given me. That was why I was sitting in my car.’
‘Did he turn up?’
‘No. But I waited there from two till four. And I saw Thyness stop outside the house twice in that time.’
Gunnarstranda was silent.
‘Has that given you food for thought?’
Gunnarstranda shook his head. ‘Bjørn Thyness works in the immigration unit. What he or the immigration police were doing outside Fredrik Andersen’s house yesterday I have no idea, but I doubt it was surveillance of Andersen. I would’ve known.’
‘Immigration? When did he start there?’
‘Six months ago – maybe more like a year. I don’t remember. But you’re digressing. Did you try to contact Andersen in any other way?’
‘I rang him. But I got his voicemail. That happened every time I called. By the way, he’s written a book about the Sea Breeze. The fire on board the ferry.’
‘I know. I’ve read it. Crap, if you ask me.’
‘Why?’
‘Conspiracy theories and a load of hot air about how incompetent the police are. Crap and always has been.’
‘Were you on the case at the time?’
‘I interviewed some survivors, yes. It was a massive job. It wore people down. It used all the resources we had for months. A hundred and fifty people died.’
‘What do you reckon? Was the case solved?’
Gunnarstranda shook his head. ‘Don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘It’s possible. But the chief of police was a clown and the DPP never had any direct dealings with the work that was done. This happened half a lifetime ago, though, and I don’t give a shit about the case. You’re digressing again. You used to have a gun. A Heckler & Koch P30.’
‘Don’t have it anymore.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘I sold it.’
‘You did what?’
‘Relax. The guy who bought it had all the right papers.’
‘The guy? Why won’t you say his name?’
‘You didn’t ask. And I still can’t see what relevance it has to your case.’
Gunnarstranda sat watching him without speaking.
‘Yes?’
‘Time for the question we’ve both been waiting for: Where were you between midnight and two o’clock last night?’
Frølich smacked the table.
‘You were on the table?’
He nodded.
‘What were you doing there?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you?’
‘Try me.’
‘I was pretending to be a lion tamer.’
Gunnarstranda got up and made for the door.
Frølich watched him go. ‘Was Andersen shot?’
Gunnarstranda turned. ‘Funny old situation we’ve ended up in,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think?’
Frank nodded.
Gunnarstranda gripped the handle and pulled the door open.
‘Let me put this the way they do in the films you like,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave town. The police will need to question you again. Many times.’
Then he was gone. The door slammed behind him.
He waited until he heard the lift start up. Only then did he struggle to his feet and go to the window.
In the reflection he saw the bedroom door open. Matilde came out, without the duvet this time.
‘You’ll catch a cold,’ he said.
She didn’t answer.
Gunnarstranda appeared on the pavement in front of the block. Bald, lean and stooped. His coat tails flapped. He resembled a miserable bird of prey flapping its wings.
‘Who’s he?’
‘Someone I worked with for many years.’
‘What did you do?’
‘We caught crooks. Now he’s probably thinking I’m one of them.’
‘Does that matter?’
He turned to her. It struck him that Guri would be upset when she heard what had happened. Aisha, too. The hopes that Guri had for her had probably gone with Andersen.
‘Not sure,’ Frank said. ‘This situation’s new for both of us.’
19
While Matilde was in the shower, he went online. The various websites presented the case in very similar ways. A man in his forties had been found dead in his home by the polic
e and medics between two and three o’clock in the morning. A neighbour had heard some noise in the house and rung emergency services. Some news sites focused on a potential scandal about response times. The ambulance had arrived two hours after the neighbour rang. The man had been dead when the ambulance staff finally reached the place. The cause of death wasn’t given, but police assumed it was murder. So, he mused, Andersen must have been stabbed or shot. Gunnarstranda asking about his Heckler & Koch suggested shot. But if he had been, neighbours would surely have reacted to the sound, it wouldn’t have been just some noise in the house.
Found in his home.
There had only been one name under the doorbell. Did Fredrik Andersen live alone? The way the news was being reported suggested he did. But someone had been in the house while he was waiting in the car outside. An elderly woman had come out. Furthermore, someone else had remained inside. The woman had turned and waved to them. Who was she? And who had she waved to? Andersen? A partner or a guest?
Matilde came out of the bathroom wearing jeans and a black bra. Water dripped from her hair onto his shoulder as she stood behind him, reading.
‘Is the dead man the one who knew about Aisha’s sister?’
He nodded.
‘Did he have any family?’
‘Dunno. Doesn’t say anything about one.’
‘Did that guy who came here say anything about how it happened?’
‘Gunnarstranda? No.’
‘Did you ask?’
‘No. He wouldn’t have told me a thing anyway.’
‘Why did he come here?’
‘They’re sure Andersen was killed and I was in contact with him yesterday.’
He entered Andersen’s name on the Yellow Pages website and discovered that only one person lived in the house: Fredrik Andersen.
‘He lived alone,’ he said. ‘Of course he may have children or they might live somewhere else. With their mother, for example.’
Matilde went onto the veranda and lit up a cigarette.
He stayed where he was. Recalling the previous day. Visualising Andersen’s house, the fence, the narrow path with spiraea bushes and the rubbish bins by the drives.
Bjørn Thyness from the immigration unit was carrying out surveillance on a writer who had criticised the police in a book. A book about a tragedy at sea.
He Googled Sea Breeze. The screen was filled with photographs of the ferry on fire, pictures he had seen in newspapers countless times over the years. He Googled the ferry again, but combined with Andersen’s name. Bookshop advertisements and a couple of hits came up. He skimmed the articles. The blaze aboard the boat happened in 1988. Arson on a ferry from Oslo to Copenhagen. It had started in the middle of the night while the passengers were asleep; 159 people died. A mass killing. The investigation was carried out by the fire department at Oslo Police Headquarters, as it was known then. There were photographs of the main investigator. Frølich knew that the man was dead now. There were photographs of the puffed-up Tromsø chief of police, who promised the public that the case had been cleared up. He was also dead now. There were photographs of the then assistant DPP, who dismissed the case against the man the Oslo chief of police singled out as the arsonist. The assistant DPP was now Norway’s DPP. There were photographs of the man the police identified as the culprit. A young Dane who died in the fire. Oslo Police thought he had tried to chat up a few women on the trip between Oslo and Copenhagen, had been rejected and stormed into a rage. So he had set fire to some rubbish in a corridor and then went to his cabin to sleep. Odd behaviour. Everyone thought so. And the conspiracy theories grew from there. Someone else had set fire to the boat. Someone cashed in big time on the insurance. Financiers. Mafia.
Andersen’s book must have had some impact on the public as Oslo Police had been ordered to re-investigate the case two years earlier. He knew about the new investigation, now that he came to think about it. But he had never taken much interest. These specialist groups in the police soon became full of themselves. This particular one had come to the same conclusion that the police had put forward in 1988. The police rejected the notion that there had been criminal goings-on after the ship had been evacuated. Actually they hadn’t found any evidence against the alleged perpetrator either, but they still didn’t want to acquit him.
Andersen had obviously had a different opinion from the police. The publisher’s promotion highlighted Andersen’s assertion in the book that there was no evidence against the man the police identified in 1988. Furthermore, Andersen named members of the crew he believed were involved in the onboard sabotage. Andersen maintained that they pumped great quantities of diesel from their tanks around the ship. The fuel was allowed to burn for hours and in this way caused immense destruction. This damage guaranteed the payment of a huge insurance sum to the owners. Andersen had followed the money trail. In his opinion, the ferry had been sold by one company to another for an artificially inflated price. So the insurance pay-out was disproportionately high. The knock-on effect for the seller, an American shipping company, which at that point still held insurance rights, was that it reaped the rewards. The police had never been interested in facts such as these, he claimed.
Fine, but what sort of proof did Andersen have that the police had overlooked? Frank continued to Google without finding an answer. However, he did turn up the fact that the Norwegian Parliament had set up a committee to carry out an inquiry at the same time as the police’s second investigation. This committee came to the same conclusion as the police: no sabotage activity on board the ferry.
The parliamentary committee’s view was that there was a natural explanation for how the blaze had developed.
So, he thought to himself: the Sea Breeze case had been shelved, filed away and assigned to oblivion. Twice it had been dropped by the police, and once by a parliamentary committee. Andersen’s book had stirred up a storm, but in the end was just baying at the moon.
But why would the police be keeping an eye on Andersen now?
Bjørn Thyness worked in the immigration unit and Andersen had said he was working on a book about refugees in Norway. Writing a book wasn’t a crime, though. At least not in Norway. There were two possible reasons for the surveillance on Andersen: either he had committed a criminal act during his research into refugees in Norway, or the surveillance team had gone too far and done something that didn’t bear scrutiny.
Matilde was behind him again. On the screen was a picture of the ferry in flames.
‘What’s so special about that boat?’
‘Apparently Andersen wrote a book about it. The fire on the passenger ferry.’
‘I’ve heard about it,’ Matilde said. ‘A neighbour of my mother’s lost a twelve-year-old daughter. She was going on holiday to Denmark with a friend.’
They concentrated on the text, both of them.
‘Let’s eat,’ Matilde said. ‘I’m meeting Guri in a couple of hours. If she remembers.’
20
After Matilde had left, Frank prepared to leave for the office. As he came out of his flat he found himself staring at Bergersen, who was sporting a pair of shorts. The sight was so unusual and Bergersen’s legs were so parchment-white that he felt he had to say something. ‘Nice out today,’ he said, opening the door of the lift when it stopped in front of them.
‘Not half,’ Bergersen said. ‘Lovely out today.’
They stood in silence as the lift descended to the ground floor. He let Bergersen leave first. Shot him a glance as he unlocked and checked his post box. He and Bergersen had been neighbours for at least eight years. And this was perhaps the third time they had spoken to each other.
No post. He locked the box and left.
At that moment a taxi pulled up by the entrance. He stepped aside to let it pass. An elderly man was sitting on the back seat.
The man waved.
Frank nodded back and walked on as a car door opened behind him.
‘Frølich?’
The elderly ma
n was attempting to haul himself out of the taxi. He had a crown of wild, grey hair. His beard was as hoary as his hair, and his mouth shone with gold fillings as he grimaced with his exertions.
‘It is Frølich, isn’t it?’
He nodded to the man, who was probably in his seventies, wearing mustard-yellow trousers and a blue shirt under a light-grey jacket. He struggled out of the back seat with an elbow crutch in his hand. The driver passed him a receipt and his change, and the man switched the crutch to his other hand.
Frølich moved back as the taxi set off down the drive. The man was leaning on his crutch.
‘Jørgen Svinland,’ the man said, extending a hand. ‘Fredrik Andersen was my nephew.’
He shook the man’s hand. ‘My condolences,’ Frank said, not quite knowing how to handle this situation.
They were both silent. Svinland was clearly moved. It was as if he were burning to say something.
‘Can we find somewhere to sit?’ he said at length, raised his crutch and patted his hip with his free hand.
‘Arthritis.’
Frølich cast around. There were no benches in Havreveien despite all the lawns.
‘Let’s go up to my flat.’
21
He held the door open for Svinland and led the way to the lift, which they found waiting for them. He let the old boy go in first. The man was sucking a pastille. A smell of camphor spread through the lift, which stopped on the first floor. A small girl with pigtails and wearing a summer dress came in. She stood staring at the wall in embarrassment as the lift ascended. No one said a word.
The lift stopped and Frank held the door open for the man, who hobbled out.
Frank unlocked his flat and held open the front door. ‘Excuse the mess. I live on my own.’
Frank noticed an empty beer can beside the record-player. He stuffed it into his jacket pocket and turned to his guest.
‘I understand you’ve heard what happened last night,’ Svinland said.
His eyes were moist.
‘I know that Fredrik Andersen died,’ Frølich said warily. ‘But I don’t know any more than is on the net.’
‘Fredrik’s mother, Katinka, is my sister,’ Svinland said, sitting down in the armchair in front of the television.
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