The Frozen Woman

by Jon Michelet

  He catches sight of a tiny figure drawn in a black felt pen on the wall. The childish line-drawing represents a stick man hanging from the gallows. Underneath there is a name in weather-beaten letters, and that name is Vilhelm Thygesen.

  ‘That’s the devil I painted on the wall,’ Beach Boy mumbles to himself. ‘A little snot-nosed kid painted a big sack of shit.’

  He pokes at the concrete. A flake peels off and the stick man has one leg less.

  ‘Serves you right, Thygesen,’ Beach Boy whispers. ‘You should have been knee-capped because you screwed up everything for the Seven Samurai.’

  He dances back to the big Kawasaki.

  ‘Thanks for picking me up, Kykke. You came bloody early this morning. Before the sparrows had farted and Mum had her slippers on. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Banzai!’

  ‘That’s enough now,’ Kykke says. ‘If you saw the sexy beast waiting for you inside the bunker, you’d pass out, my lad.’

  Kykke pulls down the zip on his leather suit, takes out a handkerchief and wipes the sweat from his thinly haired scalp and from his throat, which is covered with a carrot-coloured, grey-stippled beard, and straightens the string that keeps the black suede patch in place over his right eye.

  ‘You sexy thing, you sexy thing!’ Beach Boy sings, sitting on an imaginary motorbike and going vroom-vroom. He stops suddenly and asks worriedly: ‘You did remember to bring the key, didn’t you, Kykke?’

  He points to a solid padlock on one of the tarred doors.

  Kykke rattles the bunch of keys attached to his belt.

  ‘How drunk are you actually?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m as sober as Mette-Marit after her engagement to the Crown Prince,’ Beach Boy answers and laughs so much he splutters. ‘I might’ve OD’d on anabolic steroids in the slammer. It’s just rubbish, though, that they do your nut in.’

  ‘They don’t seem to have done much for your body either,’ Kykke says. ‘You’re just as skinny as you always were.’

  ‘If you lift wood all day at the saw mill in the perishing cold, you don’t feel any need to pump iron in the Trøgstad fitness studio in the evening. You’re too knackered to do any proper bodybuilding,’ Beach Boy says apologetically. ‘Shall we go in then?’

  ‘Hang about,’ Kykke says, holding the boy’s shoulder. ‘We just have to have a serious chat first. And I have to wipe off the sweat.’

  Beach Boy asks if they still have running water or if the bastards on the local council have turned it off for winter. Kykke replies that the water has been cut off for the winter, but he has rigged up a cistern under the gutters.

  ‘Happy times are here again,’ Beach Boy says, taking a mouthful of Coke he has conjured up from the folds of his baggy army trousers. ‘11 May. A week to go to Independence Day and it’s full summer.’

  ‘It came in one day.’

  ‘Kind of instant summer.’

  ‘Well put. I’ve always had you down as a clever lad, you know,’ Kykke says. He produces a packet of Marlboro from the breast pocket of his leathers.

  ‘Fag?’

  ‘Prefer roll-ups,’ Beach Boy says. ‘In pallet-nailing hell you’re soon hooked on Rød Mix. That’s the only tobacco they have in the kiosk. It’s real shit tobacco, but after smoking it for a couple of months filter cigarettes taste of diddly squat.’

  ‘I don’t smoke manufactured cigarettes either,’ Kykke says. ‘I just bought a packet in your honour. I’ve always thought of you as a smart lad and don’t you listen to all the mud-slinging.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Beach Boy says with a smile, revealing a row of teeth so perfect they could have been in a chewing-gum advert, and dances a few steps. His basketball shoes kick up dust. His trousers sag fashionably. He picks up an empty Castrol container, sees a stick and starts drumming while Kykke regards him in the way a patient dog watches a frisky pup. Beach Boy takes off his reefer jacket and hangs it over the handlebars of the Kawasaki. There is a wad of newspapers sticking out of one pocket.

  ‘Heard the latest about Jennifer?’ he asks.

  ‘Jennifer who?’

  ‘Jennifer Lopez of course,’ Beach Boy says, pointing to the motif on his T-shirt. ‘Some crafty bugger managed to film her while she was shagging a guy.’

  ‘I couldn’t give a damn about Hollywood whoring,’ Kykke says. ‘I’m off for a piss.’

  He lumbers by the concrete building which, according to what he has gleaned, was built as a garage by the Germans during the war, whatever Hitler’s lot would want with that in the middle of a dense spruce forest. Younger locals, who don’t have a clue, say the construction was erected as a NATO bunker, to protect the R120 road if the Russians advanced down it in their tanks heading for the Nike rockets in the Våler battery.

  Kykke walks round to the lee side, kicks the Seven Samurai sign he threw there in the winter and studies the thermometer on the wall. It is mounted on an enamel plate with IG Farben on. The enamel hasn’t cracked and the thermometer has never shown anything but what the weather forecast says. The screws holding the plate in place have crumbled to flakes of rust though. Obviously the Germans wouldn’t use acid-proof screws to put up a simple measuring instrument on a remote wall somewhere in Norway.

  He pees and confirms there is nothing wrong with his kidneys; his urine is the same colour as a pils, not a heavy lager. A layer of birch pollen floats on the surface of the water in the cisterns. He rinses his hands. Then tugs the German thermometer off the wall as a souvenir from The Middle of Nowhere.

  ‘Twenty degrees,’ he shouts to the lad. ‘Reckon it’ll be twenty-five before long.’

  ‘Great, then I’ll go to the sea in Fuglevik and get some sun on my body,’ Beach Boy answers, beating his chest like Tarzan. He rolls a cigarette with fingers covered with splinters after the saw-mill shift in Trøgstad, lights up and coughs.

  He studies the clubhouse. Above the brown doors, which tend to smell of tar when they get really hot, the name The Middle of Nowhere MC, motorcycle club, is still visible. It is painted in big, white letters with a silver shadow effect. The white has peeled off more than the silver. Someone has been busy with a spray can and there is graffiti on the concrete wall and the doors. Taggers, perhaps, or more likely school leavers. They usually come to this deserted place, pissed up, in their traditional red gear, park their traditionally red vehicles behind the building and do what Jennifer does. And there are splodges of red paint that look fresh. But the piglets and piglettes haven’t reached The Middle of Nowhere yet. The name stands there as a souvenir of the times when the Easy-Rider Chopper freaks had their quarters here and Beach Boy was an ankle-biter.

  In those days a plane mechanic by the name of Ottar Strand had a permanent job maintaining the rockets at the Nike battery. It lasted until 91, when the Nikes apparently reached their sell-by date. The Easy Riders packed up the year after and got an absolute palace in Spydeberg, thanks to the Socialist Party. Old Man Strand retrained. That was before the golden handshakes, before there were parachute payments, even if you weren’t a parachutist, just a lousy major.

  The Middle of Nowhere stood empty, and then, thank God, the Seven Samurai turned up and established themselves with the full MC Club turnout and secret initiation rituals for kids who hung around the clubhouse wide-eyed. Kykke began to build up a workshop which, in his words, would be the best Jap bike place in the whole of Østfold.

  ‘You know how to do almost everything and better than anyone else,’ Beach Boy says, straightening up. Hasn’t he shown he can think positively and work creatively the way Ragnhild, his welfare officer in prison, tried to inculcate in him?

  He is wondering what happened to the Seven Samurai sign. It couldn’t have rotted or fallen down by itself. He’d had to help mount the teak sign and he remembers all too well how Kykke insisted they used proper, stainless steel bolts. If the sheriff and the council big shots
have damaged the sign, then…

  Beach Boy fiddles with his tufts of hair. However dead cool he thinks the Manson drummer’s hairstyle is, it feels odd, as though it should be on some space creature that had just landed on Planet Earth.

  ‘Fixing your new dreads?’ Kykke says.

  Beach Boy is startled and turns to the giant who has come up behind him. Kykke is not exactly every mother-in-law’s dream, unless she wants her daughter to have a one-eyed troll. Imagine if Queen Sonja had taken the man from Moss into the palace.

  ‘You could give anyone the heebie-jeebies,’ Beach Boy says.

  ‘Do those chimps from the Kamikaze gang still go out to the nick in Trøgstad and whack tennis balls full of speed over the fence?’ Kykke asks.

  ‘Not that often,’ Beach Boy answers with a laugh. ‘Could be more often if you ask me.’

  ‘Bloody risky and a childish way to do business,’ Kykke says grumpily. ‘There’s been a lot of fuss because they let you out way before time. Was it just because your father kicked the bucket?’

  ‘Lots of people are released before time now. If you cop more than sixty days and your urine tests are negative, you only need to do two-thirds of the sentence. And then dad died, so I had social reasons as well.’

  ‘But you know how Borken and Lips talk and call you Song Boy and Singing Bird,’ Kykke says. ‘Stupid people might be tempted to believe you’d brown-nosed or blabbed your way out of jail.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’d sold your pals’ arses to someone who doesn’t deserve their own arse. But don’t give it a thought, Beach Boy. You don’t need to stand there staring at a hole in the ground like some schoolboy who’s been caught beating the bishop in the changing room. Old Kykke doesn’t believe everything he hears.’

  Kykke covers his ears with both hands to illustrate his point.

  ‘The sun’s so hot your brain goes mushy,’ he says. ‘Get over it, as they say up in northern Norway. That’s what I was told when I skidded big-time, crashed on to the pebbles on the beach in Lofoten and ended up with a face as flat as a flounder. Get over it, said the doctor at the hospital in Gravdal. That’s what you have to think in critical situations. Fight the pain.’

  He reaches over for the newspapers from the reefer pocket. Unfolds the Verdens Gang over the bike tank, leafs through and finds a drawing of a woman’s face. The portrait of the dark-haired woman looks like an identikit picture of a suspected criminal. Kykke reads aloud the text under the picture while Beach Boy watches. His face exudes both pride and fear.

  ‘This is the worst bit of mischief we’ve ever seen at the club,’ Kykke says, planting his index finger on the drawing. ‘That’s why you and I need to have a little heart-to-heart, however bloody hot it is here and however sweaty I get listening to your schizophrenic chatter.’

  He produces a bottle of Farris mineral water from the pannier on the bike and drinks half in one go, pours the rest on his handkerchief and knots it round his head.

  ‘You should be glad Borken isn’t here,’ Kykke says. ‘Borken’s really pissed off. He told me to ask you some questions. First up, who’s the woman?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Second up, do you know who killed her?’

  Beach Boy pokes the gravel with the stick. ‘I thought it had to be someone from Kamikaze.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I found a ladies bag I imagined was hers in the house in Halden, the shack up in Aspedammen which Bård the Board had rented out to the Kamikaze lot.’

  ‘How did you know it was hers?’

  ‘Well, I mean…’

  ‘Spit it out,’ Kykke says.

  ‘Did you say you had a Marlboro?’

  ‘The packet’s yours.’

  Beach Boy lights a cigarette, unable to hide the fact that his hands are shaking.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘there was so much damn blood on the kitchen floor and cupboard doors.’

  ‘The Kamikaze could have killed a chicken,’ Kykke says.

  Beach Boy laughs and says he doubts anyone has seen a chicken left alive, except for the workers on chicken farms. He breaks the stick and tosses one part in an arc over the road. A couple of seconds later a red Transit van drives up from the north, more kids celebrating the end of school. The driver hoots his horn, staccato. Beach Boy gives him the finger.

  ‘Let’s sit down, shall we,’ Kykke says. He walks around the concrete building and returns carrying a bench. He places it in front of one door.

  Beach Boy tries to peep through the cracks in the woodwork.

  ‘Is there really a cool bike in there?’ he asks.

  Kykke nods and sits down on the bench.

  ‘Positive?’

  ‘Jesus, you don’t think I’d lie, do you?’ Kykke says. ‘You can trust me. Lips and I are the last friends you have in the Seven Samurai. Borken said I should wallop you over the skull with a spanner and bury you in the green hell.’

  ‘Green hell?’ Beach Boy echoes, staring at Kykke in fear, as though the man might produce a spanner from up his sleeve.

  ‘The forest, Mongoloid Features,’ Kykke says. ‘Relax, lad. Do I look like I intend to smash your head down into your belly?’

  ‘No,’ Beach Boys answers, but steps back, kicks a small stone, and then another.

  ‘Can you stand still or sit down on the bench,’ Kykke says. ‘All your kicking’s making me nervous.’

  ‘What about me? I’m getting a bit stressed with all your talk of killing me and burying me and all that.’

  ‘You know what I mean by the green hell, do you?’

  ‘The jungle in Vietnam.’

  ‘Or the jungle in the Amazon. Surely you didn’t think I’d transport you all the way to the banks of the Amazon to bury you in the mud there, did you?’ Kykke laughs. His laughter sounds like the roar of a Kawasaki driven in an unusually low gear without a silencer.

  ‘You were just kidding then?’ Beach Boy says.

  ‘Have I ever hit anyone?’ Kykke asks.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘I’m a big guy, so I don’t hit.’

  Kykke points to the edge of a wood beyond the R120 where birch striplings, sallow and rowan trees display light green leaves against the background of dark spruces. A flowering wild cherry tree stands out amid all the light green.

  ‘Think it’s my style to bury a young lad in the forest, like a second Thomas Quick?’

  ‘No, serial killing isn’t really your style,’ Beach Boy says, and sits down on the bench beside the man with the eyepatch and a dripping handkerchief on his head.

  ‘If Borken had put a knife to my throat and ordered me to bury you, I would’ve refused,’ Kykke says. ‘Now you’ve heard what nasty thoughts chief Samurai Borken has about you. You can thank your Maker that I, as deputy, and Lips, as cashier, are of a different opinion.’

  Kykke pulls off the top part of his leather suit and ties the sleeves around his waist. He is wearing a lumberjack shirt underneath, soaked in sweat. He removes the shirt and hangs it from a nail on the door. Walks around in a vest and gets himself a green can of beer from the left-hand pannier of the Kawasaki. It is a Carlsberg covered with beads of moisture. Beach Boy asks how he has kept the beer cold and is told he has icepacks inside a little cooler bag in the pannier. Beach Boy looks longingly at the beer can, but he is informed that as he is going to test-ride the bike he will have to stick to Coke.

  It surprises Beach Boy that Kykke, who has been in the club for so long, has only one tattoo, at least only one that is visible on the winter-pale skin he reveals. It is a finely drawn affair on his upper left arm. Shaped like a diamond. Once, years ago, when he was a clingy, snot-nosed hanger-on, he asked Kykke what the tattoo was supposed to be. He was told gruffly that it was a souvenir of his days as a pirate, and he almost fell for it.

 
‘We have to talk a bit more about what happened this winter,’ Kykke says, wiping froth from his beard with the back of his hand. ‘So you went to the house in Aspedammen? How did you get there?’

  ‘In a car I nicked.’

  ‘What kind of car?’

  ‘Nothing special. A rusty old Opel Corsa.’

  ‘What the hell did you do out there?’

  ‘I wanted to see if there was any dope hidden in the house. It was a couple of days before I had to do bird in Trøgstad. I was crazy for something, anything. Bård had said he thought the Kamikazes used the shack as a depot for all sorts of goodies.’

  ‘Did you go alone?’ Kykke asks.

  ‘Completely alone, late at night. It was dark and really cold. And spooky in that shit-heap of a house.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Levered the rotting front door with a crowbar. And then I shone a torch round the haunted house and searched pretty systematically.’

  ‘Find any dope?’

  ‘Bit of powder in a kitchen cabinet. Tasted like amphetamine, but I wasn’t sure. Could just as well have been rat poison and there wasn’t enough for a decent dose. So I left it. Behind the kitchen door I found a ladies bag, and a bunch of crumpled plasters inside an envelope. And written on it was the name of that rich guy… the bag was empty. But it was a nice bag, crocodile skin.’

  ‘And you took the bag with you?’

  ‘I wanted to give it to a girl I was going out with, called Anita, as a goodbye present before I went to prison. So I went to the block of bedsits in Remmen where she lives. She’s a student. Anita liked the bag a lot. But then another girl appeared. Her name was Dotti. When she saw the bag she said she’d seen it before. Actually it belonged to a foreign woman she’d been sitting next to on the Göteborg train. It was all very embarrassing for me, but I managed to blag my way out by saying I’d found it in a litter bin at the railway station.’

  ‘In Halden?’

  ‘In Halden, yes.’

  ‘OK,’ Kykke says. ‘You find a ladies bag in an empty house and someone connects it with a woman she saw on a train. What makes you think the owner of the bag was murdered?’