‘Two hundred metres further down Ekebergveien.’
‘Why did you stop there?’
‘To think.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Jonny Faremo came down the hill in his car.’
Lystad stared at him with interest.
Frølich made him wait.
‘What happened?’
‘I followed him in my car.’
Lystad had to wait again.
‘It was lunchtime. It was half past one.’
‘But what happened?’
‘He must have spotted me. I lost him ten minutes later. Somewhere between Gamlebyen and the main station. The whole idea was stupid, so I wasn’t particularly bothered when he disappeared.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I drove home and had a bite to eat.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I drove to Blindern University where I tried to meet a lady who works there. Reidun Vestli.’
‘Why was that?’
‘She has a close relationship with Elisabeth.’ Frølich searched for words before continuing: ‘They have, or have had, a relationship. I assumed this woman might be able to tell me where Elisabeth is.’
‘And could she?’
‘I didn’t meet her. She’s off sick.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I tried to ring the lady at home, but only got the answer machine. Then I drove home.’
They stood looking at each other. Lystad cleared his throat. ‘Anyone able to confirm you were at Blindern?’
‘I would presume so.’
‘Presume?’
‘There was a student. I was trying to find Reidun Vestli’s office. She was an MA student, borrowing Reidun Vestli’s office, and it was she who told me Vestli was off sick.’
‘And what did you do when you got home?’
‘Watched a film, looked at the walls, had a few beers.’
‘And the day after?’
‘Nothing. Looked at the walls. Got sick of that and went on the town in the evening.’
‘And can anyone confirm that?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you get home last night?’
‘Don’t remember.’
‘What time did you get to Blindern the day before yesterday?’
‘I don’t remember, but it was in the afternoon.’
‘Well, Frølich …’
The same smile, a touch patronizing, sympathetic.
‘I’ll find out and let you know.’
‘Were you in Ekebergveien last night?’
‘Possibly. I have no idea.’
‘And what do you think I’m supposed to make of that answer?’
‘I don’t think anything.’
‘You were seen in Ekebergveien last night.’
‘Well, then, I must have been there.’
Lystad waited for more.
Frank Frølich breathed in. ‘I was drunk. It wasn’t meant to happen, but I became sentimental. The last thing I can remember is that I was talking to a colleague in Café Fiasco. It’s by the main station – they sell cheap beer. Met a colleague there, Emil Yttergjerde. He and I stayed there drinking and chatting about this and that. At some point in the night I got into a taxi. The cabs are, as you know, parked just around the corner between Oslo Spektrum and Radisson Hotel. I don’t remember much about the drive, but I didn’t go all the way home because I was feeling ill. I got off in Gamlebyen because I had drunk too much and needed to throw up. And I began to walk to freshen up a little. I walked up and down the streets all night. I got into my own bed at eight o’clock this morning. I’d been wandering the streets for several hours, along Ekebergveien too, I’m sure.’
‘Did you try to get in touch with Faremo or his sister during the night?’
‘No.’
‘And you’re absolutely positive?’
‘Yes.’
‘One of Faremo’s neighbours thought he saw a powerfully built man sneaking around outside their door.’
‘I don’t sneak.’
‘What time was it when you got home?’
‘As I said, at eight. Came right in and straight to bed.’
Lystad shoved his hands in his pockets and gave a crooked smile. ‘We’ll have to come back to this story, Frølich.’
‘I wouldn’t have expected anything else.’
The silence hung in the air for a few seconds. The lift shaft hummed.
Then stopped. The door opened. A woman with a stoop came out. She peered up at them. ‘Hello,’ Frølich said.
The woman stared at him, then at Lystad, then turned her back on them and rang the neighbour’s bell.
Lystad said: ‘You haven’t seen anything of his sister – since she vanished?’
‘No.’
‘If you see her, tell her to get into contact with us.’
Frank Frølich nodded. The antipathy he had felt towards Lystad was gradually dissipating.
After closing the door he stood motionless staring, first at the door, then at the floor. His mind was a blank. Finally he went to the fridge. His liver should have something to do, but only a little bit. A tiny little bit.
Next morning it was cold, but there was no frost. It was a day for the last yellow leaves to exhibit themselves, another attempt to clothe the grey-green countryside in colour. Reidun Vestli’s house lay to the west, on the slope over the river Lysaker, roughly midway between Røa and the Kolsås Metro bridge – an affluent, modern estate. Here there are lines of terraced houses between apartment buildings, each house with its own patch of lawn, each drive its own BMW. Frank Frølich passed a man wearing suit trousers and rubber boots washing his car with a small high-pressure cleaner. He passed two more drives, two more BMWs and one more man in suit trousers, rubber boots and a high-pressure sprinkler over the roof of his car. A clone, he thought, or maybe just a déjà-vu experience. Anyway, neither of the two men had seen him. No one sees anything, no one remembers anything. Only in police interviews do they see and remember much more than you could imagine.
Her doorplate was made of brass. He stood in front of the door and rang. Above the brass plate was a bronze lion’s head with the doorknocker hanging from its jaws. He banged the doorknocker. One single knock. The door was opened.
He hardly recognized the woman at the door. That time, in the lecture hall, she had given the impression of being strong. Then, she would have typified the profile of the terraced house, fitted the row of house fronts – decorated in cleverly devised earthen colours, brown and dark red shades which matched her skin, her hair with the henna tint and her brown eyes. The Reidun Vestli standing in the doorway now was a shadow of herself. Her face was harrowed through lack of sleep; her lower lip had unhealthy coffee stains. She was wearing an unbecoming track suit, which emphasized the impression of decline. The smell of unventilated smoke wafted through the front door. ‘You,’ she said in a rusty voice. ‘I know who you are.’
He cleared his throat. ‘May I come in?’
‘Why?’
Frølich didn’t answer.
Finally she took a decision and stepped aside.
The room smelt of smoke and full ashtrays. Reidun Vestli stood in front of an enormous coffee table overflowing with loose sheets of paper and old newspapers. There were a few unframed canvases hanging on the walls.
Frølich guessed one had been painted by Kjell Nupen, another, a darker motif, by Ørnulf Opdal. He didn’t dare hazard a guess at the last. But there was something clean and tidy about the two walls. They reminded him of her meticulously tidy office and dominated the room like immovable pillars. On the floor, empty wine bottles and crisp packets, a half-open pizza carton and empty packets of cigarettes. A mini stereo balanced precariously on a mass of loose cables beside a makeshift unmade bed which looked like a divan. A large number of CDs were scattered around the floor. A dusty, greasy, rusty tea maker had pride of place on the window sill, surrounded by dead flies.
This is what Elisabeth was drawn to!
He took care not to step on any CDs.
To this woman with metallic-coloured teeth from the previous day’s red wine, smelling of nicotine, coffee, lack of sleep and dust. Her longings brought her here.
The woman lit a cigarette from the stub of the one she’d just finished. Her hand shook. When she stood like that, concentrated and bent forwards, she also revealed the pouches of fat on her hips and thighs, a network of wrinkles between cheek and chin, a head wreathed by lifeless, unwashed hair, in turn wreathed by blue cigarette smoke. She was the crowning glory of a total work of art: the materialized essence of litter, blaring radio, mess and an aura of liberated indifference. The hoarse voice said: ‘What do you want?’
‘I rang you a couple of days ago. But you broke off the conversation and switched off your phone.’
‘Have you come here to have that confirmed?’
‘You were driving a car.’
‘You really are a detective. No wonder you work for the police.’
‘You were suddenly taken ill.’
‘The detective is correct. I’m still ill.’
‘It happened at the same time as Elisabeth chose to disappear.’
‘Really? Has she disappeared?’
‘You know very well she has.’
‘Your imagination is running away with you. You should stick to the facts, Sherlock.’
‘Tell me them.’
‘What would you like to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘Everything?’ She went closer and pulled her lips into a venomous grimace.
Frølich sensed a feeling growing inside him: irritation at everything she stood for, the snobbish arrogance, academia, all the mess in this room, all the secrets she had hoarded in this nest of hers. ‘Everything,’ he repeated in a thick voice.
Reidun Vestli went in closer. ‘But can you take it?’
‘Take what?’
‘The truth.’
‘I think I can, so long as you spare me bullshit like this.’
He ran his eye along a row of books against the wall and stopped when he saw titles like
The Story of O
and
Catherine M
– erotica, the term used in academic circles for what others call pornography.
‘Are you capable of understanding that someone can develop a deeper insight into, for instance …?’ Reidun Vestli hesitated as Frølich took the top book from the pile and held it up.
‘What, for instance?’
She looked at the book he was holding in his hands. ‘My God, don’t be so banal.’
They exchanged looks and he turned away. ‘You disappoint me,’ she said.
‘Banal?’ he asked.
‘You’re just so damned predictable and tedious.’ She put the cigarette between her sore lips and inhaled deeply. Her fingers were still trembling. ‘I really thought you were a rather interesting person,’ she said. ‘According to Elisabeth, you are.’
‘Perhaps she’s mistaken,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’m completely predictable and tedious, but I didn’t come here to talk about me. I want you to tell me where she is.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Now it’s you who disappoint me,’ he said, toe-punting a book. ‘I knew Elisabeth was studying. Is she into books like this?’
‘Don’t you know? I had expected you to know, you being a detective and all that.’
‘I just want to find her.’
‘Why?’
‘That has nothing to do with you.’
‘What will you do if you find her?’
‘That has nothing to do with you, either.’
‘Well, I know how men and women spend their time. You don’t need to give me your version.’ She pulled a scornful face. ‘Not surprising you’re jealous, you poor thing. Of course you know nothing about her mind. Has she never told you?’
‘About what? About you?’
Reidun Vestli smiled disdainfully. ‘Not about me,’ she whispered. ‘Not a single word about me, while I know most things about you. So she hasn’t talked to you about what she and I have in common? Does that make you a little jealous?’
Jealous. Am I? And if this obsessive unease I feel is jealousy, what triggered this jealousy? Elisabeth’s and Reidun’s physical or intellectual intimacy? Or both? Or the fear of being kept as an onlooker to whatever it is they share?
‘What should I be jealous of?’
‘For instance, our common sense of wonder.’
‘Wonder.’ He articulated the word with derision.
‘Yes,’ she went on. ‘Elisabeth is, for example, captivated by language. She even has her own theory about the power inherent in words, where there is no place for emotions, how words can fill out and add extra dimensions when perceptions and the physical stop short.’
Frank Frølich watched her mouth. She enjoyed saying these things. She enjoyed telling him she had a nearness with Elisabeth which he had never had. She had pronounced the word
physical
with disgust.
This is what you are,
he thought:
you’re an ageing lesbo who cannot stand the thought that I entered and satisfied the woman you desire. You cannot bear the thought that as a man I am capable of giving her something you cannot.
He whispered: ‘You should be able to accept …’
‘You going to bed together?’ Reidun Vestli interrupted with a malicious smile. ‘What do you think of me, actually – or of her? Do you imagine I would get involved with another person if it wasn’t about emotion? Do you think you’re something special or unique because you’ve got a dick?’
The aggression that came with the words was numbing. He managed to force out: ‘Vulgarity doesn’t become you.’
‘I’m not vulgar. I’m defending myself against you. You think you can come here and enter my home, driven by a pathetic longing to possess and dominate the woman I love. You enter this house asserting that your gender gives you extenuating characteristics which are supposed to make you special in my eyes. You don’t have an inkling about Elisabeth; you don’t know who she is. You know nothing about a single thought or dream she and I have shared. Have you and Elisabeth ever talked? Have you discussed anything? Have you and Elisabeth ever taken your minds off your genitalia to explore whether you can share the pleasure of anything intellectual?’
It was his turn to jeer at her. ‘Share the pleasure of something intellectual, my arse!’
She drew in her breath sharply. ‘Quite honestly, I cannot fathom what she sees in you at all. In addition to being simple, you’re not even particularly good-looking.’ She looked away and added casually: ‘Has it ever occurred to you she’s trying to escape from you?’
‘That idea is totally irrational.’
She sent him an oblique glance. ‘Are you frightened I know something you don’t?’
Her facial expression, the malicious glee following the question caused him to swallow hard.
She noticed and laughed. It was a bright resonant laugh, a spiteful laugh. ‘You pathetic little man, what do you take me for? I love her and she loves me. Apart from sharing a bed, we share something else, something with a soul, a mind and self-respect!’
Frølich was sweating. This intense creature who crushed him with her words, the tense atmosphere in this stuffy flat, the unmade bed where she and Elisabeth had made love. ‘The great love affair of yours seems to have faded,’ he said deliberately. ‘Or perhaps you’re ill for other reasons?’
Reidun Vestli lit another cigarette, folded her arms across her chest and smoked with trembling hands.
‘Say what you want or get out.’
‘Did I touch a sore point perhaps?’
‘As I said, get out if you have …’
‘I want to know where she is.’
‘I have no idea where she is!’
‘I think you’re lying.’
‘Your word against mine.’
He stood up. ‘It would be to Elisabeth’s benefit if you told the truth.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Not at all. In my pathetic masculine way I’m taking care of her. I’m searching for her because I wish her well. I respect her decision to be with you, or on her own or with someone else. But I happen to know that she is in hiding and because I work for the police, I know she’s being stupid to hide in this way – after all, a murder has been committed. Whether she likes it or not, she’s part of this case. You may be able to satisfy her physically and intellectually, and your high-flown intellectual love may be worth more than mine, but I know one thing you cannot distort with your prattle: hiding will do her no good.’
‘You don’t know everything.’
‘If she’s hiding, I assume she’s afraid of something. And this is where she’s made a miscalculation.’
‘You don’t understand that it’s you she’s hiding from?’
‘I think Elisabeth intended to go on her travels when she supplied the alibi for her brother and his gang at the hearing. I think she contacted you to help her find somewhere to hide. I think your so-called illness started when she contacted you. And I think you and she were together in the car when I phoned you a few days ago. I’m certain you know where she is.’
Reidun Vestli slowly raised her head. The look she gave him was red-rimmed, but thoughtful at the same time.
Frølich was unsure whether he should tell her or not, but decided he would. He said: ‘Elisabeth’s brother is dead, in all probability murdered.’
Her eyes clouded over now, still thoughtful though, almost calculating.
‘It’s important you tell us where she is!’
‘Do you imagine I’m completely stupid?’ Reidun Vestli hissed. ‘Do you imagine you can come here with no other authority than your physical bulk and order me about? Will you leave! Off you go! Out!’ She shoved him towards the door. ‘Out!’ she repeated.
He sighed heavily and obeyed. She slammed the door with a bang. He stood on the step, heard her steps dying away. Reidun Vestli’s reaction told him he was right. But so what? He hadn’t got anywhere.