‘We have a customer.’
‘Murder?’
‘A man. Cold and stiff as a Christmas anchovy,’ Gunnarstranda went on. ‘In Loenga.’
The line was cut. There was nothing to discuss. There was never anything to discuss. Frank Frølich turned over in bed. ‘I have to be off,’ he whispered with a croak and stopped short.
She wasn’t there. The duvet she had wrapped herself in a few hours ago was half on the floor. He sat up in bed, massaged his cheeks and cautiously called out: ‘Elisabeth?’
Not a sound.
He looked at his watch. It was half past four. It was night. He got up and sauntered into the living room. Dark and quiet. The kitchen – dark. The bathroom – dark and empty. He switched on the light, splashed water over his face and met his tired eyes in the mirror. Why does she do this? Why does she run away? When did she go? Why?
Exactly six minutes later, he was sitting in his car and driving down Ryenberg mountain. It had turned colder. A sliver of a moon shone in a starry sky. The temperature gauge in the car showed – 5 ° C. And he thought about Elisabeth in her skin-tight skirt and skimpy underwear walking down the road in this cold. Out of bed, out of the house, gone. Inside the car, he was so cold that he was hunched over the wheel, holding it with both hands. The studded tyres made a metallic sound on the tarmac and the bends in the road were frozen. Mist steamed over the water in the harbour basin. The right atmosphere for a murder, he thought, as he swung into Gamlebyen.
A patrol car stood outside the fence with its blue light flashing. Gunnarstranda’s Skoda Octavia was parked across the pavement. And behind the wire fence a small circle of people was standing around a shape on the ground.
Frølich closed the car door behind him and went through the gate with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. He was frozen and pangs of hunger for breakfast were stabbing at his stomach. The figure of Gunnarstranda came towards him. With the shirt under his autumn coat buttoned up wrong. An unlit cigarette bobbed up and down in his mouth.
‘Guard for Securitas. Found at 3.43 by a workmate. Obvious signs of an attempt to break into containers.’ Gunnarstranda pointed. The doors of a green metal container gaped wide open. ‘The container is owned by something called A. S. Jupro. It’s not clear what they took – but presumably it was some kind of electronic equipment.’
From a distance the dead man resembled an unconscious slalom skier. He was lying in a so-called stable lateral position. Wearing a boiler suit. Frank Frølich winced when he saw the man’s disfigured head and all the blood.
‘Pathologists call it “injuries inflicted by a blunt weapon”,’ Gunnarstranda said formally. ‘The back of his head has been stoved in. Finding the cause of death shouldn’t be the most difficult task on earth for the boys. Most probably that’s the murder weapon.’ He pointed towards a blood-stained plastic bag beside the corpse. ‘Baseball bat, aluminium.’
A sudden crackle came from one of the uniformed policemen’s short-wave radios. The man passed it to Gunnarstranda, who barked formally into it.
Frølich was unable to decode the message which came crackling back. But a grinning Gunnarstranda could. ‘Lock them up.’
He turned and checked his watch. ‘We’ve got them and now we can grab a bit more shut-eye. Sorry to wake you at such an ungodly hour, but that’s the job, isn’t it? No two cases are the same. I’ll catch another couple of hours myself,’ Gunnarstranda added. ‘Then we’ll do the interrogation at a more godly time. It’ll be wonderful to hit the sack.’
‘Who have we got?’ Frølich asked, bewildered.
‘A gang of bruisers,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘A tip-off. Not worth a great deal perhaps, but on the other hand there is a clear sequence of events.’ He pointed to the open container. ‘These boys were breaking in when the security guard arrived in his car.’ He pointed to a small Ford van a few metres away. The security company’s logo was printed on the side. ‘The guard saw something, stopped and went to check.’ Gunnarstranda pointed to an object next to the open container. ‘His torch – a Maglite – is over there. The men were caught red-handed, and a struggle ensued. One of them has a baseball bat and wallop. The guard falls there. Unfortunately for these three, he’s dead now.’
‘And we know who did it?’ Frank Frølich said with a yawn.
Gunnarstranda nodded. ‘As I said, a tip-off, and I would be very surprised if it wasn’t spot on.’ Gunnarstranda took a scrap of paper out of his coat pocket and read aloud: ‘Jim Rognstad, Vidar Ballo and …’ Gunnarstranda held the scrap up to the light. ‘Sometimes I can’t read my own writing … Jim Rognstad, Vidar Ballo and … can you read the name of the third man?’ he asked, straightening his glasses.
Frølich read it first to himself before reading out aloud: ‘It says Jonny Faremo.’
Frølich had felt the beast gnawing at his stomach all morning and decided to find out what had happened at the court hearing. However, as he was running down the steps between the court and Kafé Gabler he felt a growing reluctance to go on. So he retreated to Kristian Augusts gate to stand and wait on the pavement. Soon a group of people gathered in front of the court entrance. A little later the door opened. Elisabeth came out. He followed her movements. She left alone, taking small quick steps, without looking to the left or the right. He stood watching her slender back until she had rounded the corner and was gone.
The moment Gunnarstranda came through the wide doors, Frølich showed himself and stepped out onto the tramlines to cross the street. Gunnarstranda detached himself from the crowd on the steps, strode down to the pavement and also crossed the tramlines. Frølich joined him.
Gunnarstranda, uncommunicative, continued along the pavement at a brisk pace.
Frølich cleared his throat: ‘How did it go?’
‘How did what go?’
‘The hearing.’
‘Shit.’
‘Which means?’
Gunnarstranda stopped, let his glasses glide down over the bridge of his nose and scowled sharply over the top. ‘Are you wondering whether her brother will have to go to prison? Or whether all of them will have to go? Or are you wondering about your own future prospects?’
‘Just say how it went.’
‘Elvis has left the building.’
‘Eh?’
‘Jonny Faremo gave me the finger and walked out a free man. Because his sister, the little bit of fluff you’ve fallen for, alleges she was with her brother and the others in the flat at the time Arnfinn Haga was killed.’ The last word was delivered with a yell to drown the tram as it rumbled past.
Frølich waited for the din to subside. ‘She said she was in the flat with her brother and two others – after she was with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘She sneaks out of my flat while I’m asleep, wanders off in the middle of the night, to her place where her brother, Rognstad and this Ballo are, then they party until dawn?’
‘Don’t you two talk to each other, Frølich?’
Frølich didn’t know what to say.
Gunnarstranda continued: ‘Jonny Faremo, Jim Rognstad and Vidar Ballo and your …
sweetheart
… were playing poker in their flat. She also mentioned your name.’
Frølich felt his face go numb. ‘Me?’
‘She went into juicy detail about her night with you – prior to this round of poker.’
Frølich could still hear an echo in his head of his pathetic ‘Me?’
The silence between them grew. People passed them in both directions. A taxi trundled slowly by. The driver looked up at them questioningly.
Frølich said: ‘You don’t buy the story about the poker game?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Why wasn’t I called in as a witness?’
‘Would you have been able to say when she left?’ Gunnarstranda’s tone was acid.
‘Listen,’ Frølich said, annoyed. ‘I don’t like this any more than you do.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘I don’t understand why the judge accepted her testimony. It seems bloody unlikely.’
‘Could you have refuted it?’
‘No.’
‘So why should I have called you as a witness? I have no idea whether the judge believed her. The point is that her testimony denies us a reasonable cause for suspicion and hence their release is a clear sign to me: before the next round, produce more evidence against the Faremo gang or undermine Elisabeth Faremo’s testimony.’
‘What time of night are we actually talking about?’
Gunnarstranda took a deep breath.
‘What’s up?’
‘Pull yourself together, Frølich.’
‘Eh?’
‘You’re the one having a relationship with this woman! You’re the one who has been to bed with her. And you stand there like a donkey asking me about times. I don’t recognize you. Have a break. Go on holiday, take time off. You’ve been – excuse my French – humping the sister of a hardened criminal … for how long? For weeks? As far as I know, it might be all love and sweet music, but you’re a policeman for Christ’s sake. It might be a set-up. If you can’t see that, it’s my job to point out the possibility. Soon the whole force will see it. And then you’ll be suspended. And you can imagine how they will formulate the suspension, can’t you? That route is no good for you or me or the force. So, move out of the way of the elephants coming thundering around the bend. If you don’t move, you’ll be trampled underfoot. And whatever happens, you could do with a holiday. You’re a fucking shadow of yourself, man!’
Frank Frølich looked the other man in the eye. ‘What are you talking about? A set-up?’
‘The woman must have had something going right from the off.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘You told me you protected her – in Badir’s shop – got her out of the way when the police went into action?’
‘No one knew about the operation. Her going into the shop was a glitch. Chance.’
‘Fine, she entered the shop quite by chance. But then – during the shooting and while the crazy guys were being nicked – you say she was stuffing cigarettes into her rucksack? She must have been doing that to get you interested.’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea why she was doing that.’
‘Remember, she doesn’t have a record. But when the bullets fly and she is lying underneath a cop on the shop floor, she starts pinching stuff – isn’t that a bit odd?’
Frølich was sweating. ‘It might be odd, I don’t know.’
‘Just use your head. You’re in deep shit.’
‘But if this is all calculated and planned, I don’t understand why. Was she supposed to go around selling her body for months, making the wildest plans with me, in order to give her brother an alibi for killing a security guard in the harbour? My God, Arnfinn Haga, a twenty-two-year-old student working as a guard to earn some money on the side. Can’t you see that a conspiracy theory is completely absurd!’
‘So you think she’s in love with you and the business with her brother is pure chance, do you?’
‘Yes, in fact I do.’
‘Frølich, how long have we worked together now?’
‘A lot too long.’
‘Yes, probably, but we’ve muddled our way through quite a few cases. And even if no two cases are alike, a number of things about this one stink.’
‘Right!’ Frølich cut in. ‘But it’s also possible!’
‘What’s possible?’
‘It’s possible she had honourable intentions!’
‘Frølich! Stop being so bloody naive! There’s something not quite kosher about this bit of skirt. It doesn’t matter which way you look at every single bit of what you’ve told me, it all boils down to a con.’
Gunnarstranda moved off. He strode briskly along the pavement. Frølich caught up with him and said, ‘OK, let’s say you’re right. She did have something going. If you’re so damned sure, what was she after, then? What was she planning on the shop floor? If this is not about the murder of the Securitas guard, what is it about then? Is it about getting me into deep water? There must be easier ways of causing me trouble than to start killing people. You must be able to see that. The only thing she has achieved is to put me in a spot of bother with some colleagues who are wondering now about my judgement – and what would be the point of that? Well? Can you tell me?’
‘No.’
‘So, why the hassle?’
Gunnarstranda stopped again. He glared at the other man with ice-cold eyes. ‘I’m not hassling anyone. I never do. You’re the one following me. You’re the one doing the hassling. We both know that the main suspects left court free men and your name was used in the trial to achieve that outcome. That means – if you have to have it spelt out for you – you cannot continue with this investigation. I’ll investigate the murder of Arnfinn Haga now without your help. If I were you, I would do two things: first, take a week off to avoid a blemish on your record. Next, I would have a chat with the girl. You owe that to yourself and your future, and not least the girl herself – if she really does have honourable intentions. And now you’ll have to excuse me. I have a job to do.’
Frank Frølich watched him go. Gunnarstranda’s open coat flapped like a cape in his wake.
Time off? Suspension?
The words ricocheted through his brain. The blood in his ears pounded. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a mobile phone.
He rang Elisabeth Faremo’s number. There was no answer.
He stood looking at the phone. Nothing. Because she didn’t answer. That had never happened before. He tried again. Again no answer. He tried a third time. Her phone was switched off.