Lethal Investments

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  Frank nodded slowly. Thinking to himself that this piece of information was actually very useful. Nevertheless, he knew his boss well enough to realize that the time had no doubt been underlined in thick red ink in the man’s brain.

  ‘What do you reckon about Sigurd Klavestad?’ Gunnarstranda asked across the desk. ‘Do you think he was telling the truth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ Gunnarstranda said, nodding to himself as he continued to fill in the pools coupon.

  Frank frowned. ‘Why?’

  Gunnarstranda kept writing and counted the crosses.

  ‘Why?’ Frank repeated, louder.

  ‘I let him go,’ Gunnarstranda said without looking up. ‘I’ve put Jack Myrberget on his tail for the time being.’

  The coupon was finished and he put it in the inside pocket of his suit jacket hanging over the back of the chair. Took another coupon from the pile at the bottom of the drawer. Filled out the squares without any difficulty this time.

  ‘I’ve used this line of twelve numbers now for twenty-five years,’ he said. ‘Every week for twenty-five years. Do you know how much I’ve earned from it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fifty-four kroner. Last Saturday. I got ten right.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve won in twenty-five years?’

  ‘With that line, yes. But I know it’ll do the trick one day!’

  ‘Fifty-two weeks a year. For twenty-five years. Have you ever bothered to work out how much money you’ve wasted?’

  ‘Whoa there. Just imagine if I win!’

  ‘Fifty-four kroner!’

  Gunnarstranda put back the coupon. ‘What did you find out about Software Partners?’

  Frank swung himself round again. ‘Oslo West,’ he summed up. ‘Nice people, every one over forty with varying risk margins. Expensive clothes, expensive place, computer technology. Five employees. I spoke to three of them. The only oddity was that they had put a new lock on their filing cabinet. A beast of a lock. I’m writing a report on it now.’

  He snatched a bag from the floor. ‘I was given a whole pile of glossy advertising.’

  He lifted the bag of brochures. ‘The outfit’s small but they boast as if they were IBM. Apparently they’re in a period of expansion. I didn’t understand all of it, but they’re going to increase their equity and get more distributors up and down the country.’

  Gunnarstranda took some of the material from the bag. ‘I’ve got some bedtime reading then,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Finance Manager,’ Frank continued from the chair, ‘is someone called Øyvind Bregård, an unmarried bodybuilder. Not very talkative outdoor type who claims he spends his free time hiking in the forests and fields. Admitted, after a lot of fuss, having gone to bed with Reidun, a while back. She gave him the elbow.’

  ‘Anything there?’ Gunnarstranda asked.

  ‘Possible – he doesn’t have an alibi for the Saturday. Claimed he went to bed early to go walking on the Sunday. Which he also did alone.’

  The inspector nodded slowly.

  ‘The Marketing Manager’s called Svennebye. Apparently he’s vanished into thin air. His wife rang and was very animated while I was there. Her husband hadn’t come home from the office after news of the murder was announced. Wife hasn’t seen him since.’

  Gunnarstranda whistled. Fingers groped for the butt in the ashtray.

  ‘I promised the secretary I would follow this up,’ Frank said with some hesitation. ‘She seems pretty run-of-the-mill. Oldest one there. Just a bit jumpy.’

  He waited until the inspector had lit up.

  ‘Then there’s this other woman, Sonja Hager. I mentioned Bregård’s fling with the dead girl, and she got all het up.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Far from it. The woman’s married to Engelsviken, the MD. No, not jealous.’

  He walked to the sink in the corner. Drank some water. ‘But she gets pretty aerated about marriage as an institution,’ he concluded. Wiped the back of his hands on his beard.

  Gunnarstranda was smoking. ‘Anything there?’

  ‘Something I can’t put my finger on,’ Frank said, walking back to his place. ‘She thought Reidun Rosendal was using other people.’

  ‘How so?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘Think it’s all wrapped up with sex.’

  ‘Using men?’

  ‘Don’t know. The woman was generally very vague.’

  Gunnarstranda patted his pockets and gripped the door handle.

  ‘You’ll have to put that in your report. Take the evening off when you’ve finished.’

  Frank sat staring at the door as it closed, then turned back to his computer. When I’ve finished, he thought, downhearted, and made a start.

  14

  Gunnarstranda parked his car at the very top of the ridge, where the gravel road stopped and widened into a turnaround. An hour and a quarter’s drive from Oslo, to Hurumlandet, the peninsula to the south. If the gods were with you, that is, because the traffic lights had to be green at various strategic points and Oslo Tunnel free of congestion.

  The gods weren’t today. He checked his watch with a grim expression. He had been forced to stop the Skoda at least seven or eight times on the road out of Oslo. The engine had been playing up. It died if he did more than seventy. Started spluttering and coughing, and he lost speed, with the result that he had drivers up his backside angrily flashing their lights and honking their horns. Until he felt duty-bound to pull in, to park, nose pointing into the ditch, and to let the worst of the traffic drone past, nervous all the time that the car wouldn’t start again. He had gone through the repertoire. Pulled out the choke, put his foot down on the accelerator, hoping that it would manage a few more kilometres until the same thing happened. A dreadful trip. But now at long last he was at his journey’s end.

  His annoyance at the rigours of the drive had not yet subsided. So he sat calmly looking out of the car window until the familiar feeling announced its arrival. That wonderful feeling of being at home. Private. He thought about Edel. She had managed to make a kind of garden out here. Now, since she was no longer alive, he continued where she had left off. Her whole life she had wanted a place like this and got it in the end. Gunnarstranda did what she could not. Took over. Half his life he had lived not knowing the difference between an ash leaf and a maple leaf. Now he knew a great deal more besides. And four years had passed since she died.

  He as good as lived here for six months of the year, from late April till well into October. This was his private haven. Yet he was unable to see the brown pine trunk in front of his cabin without feeling a prickling up his spine. The tingling and the image of Edel in rubber boots with the woven basket over her arm, back from mushrooming. He mused on why it was always that image. Why there were no others and why he got this simultaneous tingling.

  From the large pine a little path led twenty-five metres to the cabin which was concealed behind two large rocks. It was at the front that the miracle revealed itself. Spring, summer and autumn. Here she had produced whatever there was to produce in this climate. And he had maintained it. Already now, as he was unloading the files and papers from the car, a worried frown was carved into his forehead. The problem of watering during the summer. You never knew, a case like the murder of Reidun Rosendal could be a protracted affair. For the next few weeks he would not be able to live here at any rate, but what would it be like in May, when perhaps the spring drought would come?

  This line of thought was interrupted by heavy steps and the crack of twigs. From the undergrowth by the road came a man dressed in a faded Icelandic sweater and raggedy trousers. Gunnarstranda recognized his neighbour Sørby, who saluted him with a hand to his forehead and a nervous smile.

  Gunnarstranda mumbled something incomprehensible in response and concentrated on his luggage.

  Sørby belonged to the coterie of pensioners who stuck together out here, partied, played accordion and dressed in rags. The policeman did not like him.
The man was an old windbag. Talked about his kids as if he were confiding state secrets.

  Gunnarstranda couldn’t give a flying fart about people’s children or grandchildren. Least of all those this fat bastard was responsible for begetting. Besides, he suspected that the gang of pensioners was talking behind his back at accordion evenings.

  Inasmuch as Sørby considered it appropriate to stand there, irresolute and docile, the man could not be on an honest errand.

  Gunnarstranda squinted with distaste in the man’s direction. Wondered what the fat scarecrow had been doing in the area. Snooping probably. Him and the others.

  United, they were such a powerful force. Until they sneaked up one after the other to ask about cuttings and roots. The ones who didn’t dare went nosing around when the ‘cop’ was in Oslo. Gunnarstranda always found evidence of their movements afterwards. Later there were often a few new stalks among the trees by Sørby’s plot, before they all died. For neither the wife nor the idiot himself knew what a spade was, or manure, or lime, or anything.

  ‘That’s looking good,’ the pensioner fawned, waggling his head towards what was visible of a planned extension to the cabin.

  Gunnarstranda shrugged and lifted a bag in each hand.

  ‘Cost a bit, won’t it?’ Fatso chatted.

  ‘It will indeed. A bloody packet. You wouldn’t be able to afford it.’

  Don’t think you’re used to being insulted, Gunnarstranda thought, revelling for a moment in the sight of the other man’s fallen face before curtly bidding him goodbye and turning his back.

  Afterwards he walked along the mountain looking at the tendrils lying across the cliff face, checking the buds and stems. Went on towards the west of the cabin where a five-by-one-metre hole had been scraped out down to the rock, away from the wall, and a line of poles had been cemented in. The footprints from Sørby’s tramping around were clearly visible in the wet gravel. Good thing I haven’t bought the materials yet, he thought. So the man won’t be tempted. Anyway, there won’t be time for any building for a while.

  He straightened the plastic sheet covering the small cement mixer and walked back. Lit a cigarette on the stool in front of the outside fireplace.

  Edel had been the one to attend to social matters. As for him, he met enough people in the course of his job. Too many to waste his free time chatting. Edel would certainly have taken pity on Fatso in the raggedy trousers. Would probably have strolled down to his place with plants and handy tips. Although the advice would have been a waste of breath, anyway.

  The air was still. But then you were shielded from the wind up here. It could come only from the south, and that was rare. The lake in the valley lay smooth and shiny and emphasized the silence with its reflections of the bare trees. He stood up. The characteristic squeal of the telephone penetrated the timber walls.

  It was Jack Myrberget. Sigurd Klavestad’s travelling companion.

  Jack, as was his wont, did not beat about the bush:

  ‘Sigurd Klavestad is not on his own any more.’

  ‘Mhm,’ grunted Gunnarstranda. He had settled down on the sofa and put his feet on the table; he was relaxed and waiting. It was dark indoors, and outside the dusk was not even capable of bringing a shine to his shoes.

  ‘He caught the bus along Drammensveien and got off at Vækerø. Ambled over to some building called Rent-An-Office. Lots of small businesses.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Didn’t the woman work for a computer company?’

  ‘Software Partners they call themselves.’

  ‘That’s where they are.’

  Gunnarstranda gripped the receiver harder. ‘More!’

  ‘He went in at three and came out at half past. Together with a woman. About thirty, dressed like an office worker, long dark hair, one seventy tall, nice-looking, black birthmark between her mouth and chin.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I’m looking straight at them now. They’re sitting and drinking wine across the street. Fingers interlaced, occasional floods of tears. What do I do if they go separate ways?’

  Gunnarstranda deliberated. ‘Follow the male,’ he decided at length. ‘But keep me posted.’

  That’s it, he thought, putting down the receiver. Sodding car. It would have to give up the ghost today of all days!

  15

  Frank yawned. It was morning. Somewhere between six and half past. Weather grey and cold. The damp mist engulfed houses, trees and cars. The moisture in the air could be morning mist and could be more stubborn fog. Too early to tell as yet. It could be a nice, mild day or downcast and rainy.

  Two lines of cars were parked bumper to bumper across the street. It was so early there were few gaps. Most people were sitting at the breakfast table with newspapers spread out and drinking coffee.

  The thought of coffee depressed him. No breakfast, no coffee, no shops open anywhere and probably hours of futile waiting on the horizon.

  Gunnarstranda had woken him with a telephone call three-quarters of an hour ago. Ordered him up to Lambertseter pronto! Not by car. That was why he was walking along Mellombølgen to locate his boss’s position. He was tired. Never got enough sleep. Which, in fact, often affected him until about mid-morning.

  Further down the street he could see small smoke clouds escaping from the window of a dark civilian car parked untidily and protruding half a metre into the carriageway. The windows were steamed up and tiny wisps of bluish-white smoke rose skywards. Gunnarstranda had left a crack open. Frank opened the passenger door and stepped in.

  ‘I haven’t had any breakfast yet,’ he grumbled in an accusatory tone. No greeting.

  ‘Here you are,’ said Gunnarstranda, passing him an old-fashioned, shiny Thermos flask. Frank twisted the cap, which sprang open with a pop. And the wonderful aroma of strong, black coffee filled the car. He took a yellow plastic cup with a grubby rim from the dashboard and poured.

  ‘You haven’t eaten. I haven’t slept.’

  Gunnarstranda stubbed out the cigarette in the overfilled ashtray.

  ‘I’ll give them twenty minutes, then I’m going in.’

  He looked at his watch. Then focused on the middle entrance in a low block ahead of them. A flagstone path stretched twenty metres from the pavement to the entrance. Three entrances to the block in all. The greeny-brown spikes of some large berberis bushes partially concealed the doors. Along the three sections ran parallel lines of verandas. All with raised awnings in a loud yellow colour.

  ‘Who are we waiting for?’ Frank asked.

  ‘The man. Sigurd Klavestad primarily, and a woman.’

  Gunnarstranda’s eyes did not deviate from the front door. ‘Jack rang me at half past ten last night, at my cabin! He refused to take responsibility since the man had a woman with him, so I had to come back here. It took me three hours to get to Grønland to change the car. There’s something up with the Skoda; it keeps misfiring and dying on me.’

  He paused, flicked some ash from the cigarette and continued:

  ‘So I’ve been sitting here alone all night ensuring that the woman up there is still alive. You don’t know a cheap car mechanic, do you, by any chance?’

  Frank spared his boss one of the many jokes about Skodas. ‘I know of a guy in Kampen,’ he said blowing on the coffee and slurping a sip straight afterwards. ‘Lives in a collective with a girl I know. Works freelance.’

  ‘No questions asked, know what I mean?’

  Frank dismissed his boss’s sarcastic tone with a shrug. ‘You asked if I knew someone cheap.’

  The man at the wheel stroked his chin with a rasp; patchy bristles scraped against his palm. ‘Klavestad left the Software Partners building at half past three. With this woman, Kristin Sommerstedt.’

  Frank carefully rotated his head. A bit more awake. Remembered her. The long hair and the office outfit, the receptionist.

  Gunnarstranda tossed his head. ‘That’s her flat.’

  ‘Kristin Sommerstedt was supposed to have
been friends with Reidun Rosendal.’

  ‘Is that so? Well, they caught the local train to the National Theatre. Went to the restaurant and sat drinking wine for a couple of hours, knocked back quite a bit. Spent most of the time crying and intertwining fingers. Afterwards walked round Aker Brygge, nipped up into town and down to the underground, came here half past seven last night, switched off the light at eleven and that was when Jack phoned me.’

  They both stared at the broad, brown front door.

  ‘The man’s probably been dipping his wick while I’ve got one hell of a headache and I’m in a bad mood.’

  Gunnarstranda yawned and banged his hands on the wheel.

  Frank poured more coffee. Watched his boss check his watch.

  ‘At a quarter to we’re going in,’ Gunnarstranda repeated, licking his lips. His eyes were red-rimmed.

  The door opened. They gave a start, but then relaxed. An unknown man in a brown jacket with cropped hair walked on to the pavement. Unlocked the Opel in front of them.

  Gunnarstranda twisted his watch strap as the car drove off.

  ‘They may have decided to have a lie-in,’ Frank said in consolation. Feeling the coffee had lit a spark of life somewhere behind his eyes.

  ‘It’s only half an hour since the light came on up there, in one window.’

  Yet again the door opened. A middle-aged lady stood for a second under the little porch and took a deep breath. Slowly put on a pair of gloves and walked calmly down the road towards the underground.

  The windows misted up. It had been bad before, but now it was worse because of the steam from the coffee in the yellow cup. Frank pulled the sleeve of his sweater over his hand and rubbed away the condensation.

  This time. The door opened again and Sigurd Klavestad stood there alone. Gunnarstranda already had his mobile phone at the ready, tapped in a number without taking his eyes off the young man on the flagstone.

  Sigurd Klavestad was paler than before. The area around his eyes had gone an unhealthy dark colour. This contrasted with his white complexion and gave his face a concave appearance. His long hair was still collected in a pony tail.