The Frozen Woman

by Jon Michelet

  ‘Riiser. Bjørn Riiser.’

  ‘Name mean anything to you, Isachsen?’ Stribolt asks.

  The boy shakes his head.

  ‘Why did you kill him then?’

  ‘I haven’t bloody killed anyone!’

  ‘Easy now,’ Håkenby says. ‘And sit down. Otherwise we’ll have to handcuff you. Just to refresh your memory, Riiser is the man who lived next door to your uncle. When you set fire to your uncle’s house the fire spread to Riiser’s. He died and in fact his body wasn’t a very pleasant sight.’

  ‘I know nothing about that,’ Isachsen says, trying to keep the mask. He has turned very pale.

  Stribolt goes to the bookcase in the office and pulls out Norway’s Laws. He flicks through to the Criminal Code and assumes a very formal tone: ‘The thing is this, Isachsen. You’re likely to be charged with one count of arson and one count of murder, according to clause 148. Whosoever causes a fire, etc. The minimum sentence is five years if someone dies in an arson attack. But if arson is assumed to cover another serious crime then we’re talking the strictest punishment the law can apply. Sadly, that’s exactly what we think your mission was. To set fire to a house to destroy traces of an earlier crime. Personally, I think this crime was murder. In which case, you’re in dire straits, son.’

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ Isachsen says.

  ‘He wants a lawyer,’ Stribolt says, turning to Håkenby. ‘I think we should advise him against that.’

  ‘A lawyer will only make it worse for you now,’ Håkenby says. ‘I believe Chief Inspector Stribolt has something up his sleeve which might be better for you.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Stribolt says. ‘If you’re co-operative we might be able to lower the charge using clause 151, concerning negligence. The punishment for this is only “fines or imprisonment for up to three years”. This presupposes you come clean with us.’

  ‘I set fire to the house because Uncle Reidar wanted the insurance money,’ Isachsen says. ‘I didn’t mean to set fire to another house. That shit goes up like straw.’

  Stribolt decides to try a subterfuge: ‘An insurance swindle sounds plausible. However, one prerequisite is that the house is indeed insured. At Kripos we check most things, so we did a round of insurance companies as well. Your uncle didn’t have any insurance on the old shack. You might just as well have lit a bonfire for the insurance money.’

  ‘He has got insurance,’ Isachsen retorts. ‘The house was massively over-insured and he was always banging on about how he hoped lightning would strike.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Stribolt says. ‘Let me take another tack. Do you know a bikers’ club called the Seven Samurai?’

  ‘I’ve heard of them. But they aren’t round here. They’re in the forests by Moss.’

  ‘I’m going to read you a list of the three names of the leaders in the Seven Samurai. We at Kripos understand completely that no one wants to grass on their friends. So you don’t need to say a word. I just want you to give me a little nod if the name seems familiar.’

  Håkenby has to turn away so as not to smile at the trickery in progress.

  ‘Terje Kykkelsrud, known as Kykke,’ Stribolt reads.

  Isachsen nods.

  ‘Richard Lipinski.’

  No reaction.

  ‘Known as Lips.’

  A nod.

  ‘Leif André Borkenhagen.’

  The nod is so low that Bård Isachsen’s forehead is close to touching the table in front of him. He doesn’t lift his head again. A liquid is dripping on to the table.

  ‘You fucking know everything anyway,’ Isachsen says in a tearful voice.

  ‘We just have to fill in one or two details,’ Stribolt says. ‘I need to know which of them gave you the order to burn the house down. Kykkelsrud, Lipinski or Borkenhagen?’

  ‘Borken. It was Borken.’

  ‘Do you know where he is at present?’

  ‘He’s supposed to be going to one of the Baltic countries.’

  ‘How did you communicate?’

  ‘By mobile phone.’

  ‘Were you aware that what you were destroying was clues in a murder case?’ Stribolt asks.

  ‘I haven’t killed anyone!’

  ‘No one’s saying you killed the woman in question.’

  ‘What woman? I’ve never heard anything about any dead woman. Borken rented Uncle Reidar’s house off me to use it as a depot for smuggled goods.’

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘Booze and cigarettes.’

  ‘You’re not doing your cause any good by lying again. Let’s says drugs, shall we? Amphetamines. Cocaine?’

  ‘All I know is that it was dope.’

  ‘Håkenby, can you note down that we have a preliminary confession and we’re taking a break,’ Stribolt says.

  19

  Triumphant, Stribolt walks back to the office in Halden he regards as his own and rings Vaage.

  ‘We’ve got a witness statement which allows us to nail a couple more guys as well as Kykkelsrud. You can now officially search for Leif André Borkenhagen and you can have Richard Lipinski into the bargain.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Vaage says. ‘No point.’

  ‘No point?’

  ‘These boys are no longer with us, Arve.’

  ‘Vanja. Don’t talk in tongues like some Sami sorceress.’

  ‘The Swedish police have just contacted us because two men identified as the Norwegian citizens Borkenhagen and Lipinski have been found dead in Sweden. To be precise, in Låssa parish in Stockholm province.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less which parish they’re in. How did they die?’

  ‘Our Scandinavian brothers believe they were killed in what seems to have been a gang showdown. Lipinski was blown up by a bomb or a grenade, Borkenhagen was shot through the back of the head.’

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’

  ‘Yes, you can say that again.’

  ‘When were they killed?’

  ‘Probably last night. The Swedes will give us more precise info when they’ve finished the forensics.’

  ‘Have the Swedes got any leads?’

  ‘They’ve just started the investigation. Our two Samurai were found in a hidden area by Lake Mälaren. There are no witnesses, at least not so far, who saw or heard anything. The bodies were found by an ornithologist. A birdwatcher.’

  ‘Are we sending officers over to help?’ Stribolt asks.

  ‘Not for the moment. The Swedes are more experienced at handling gang murders than we are.’

  ‘Kykkelsrud?’

  ‘No results from the search in yet. He might have been part of the massacre, only he hasn’t been found yet. Might be at the bottom of Lake Mälaren.’

  ‘Do you want to hear what I discovered in Halden, in all modesty?’

  ‘Come on then.’

  Stribolt tells her about Rønningen’s statement, the arson and murder in Aspedammen, the arrest of Bård Isachsen and the links between him, Øystein Strand and the three leaders of the bikers’ club.

  ‘And where does this take us?’ Vaage asks.

  ‘I’ve come up with the following hypothesis: As regards Picea, I think she was the victim of a tragic mix-up. Rønningen told me that a dark-haired woman panicked and left the train in Ed on the Swedish side of the border. Her panic was triggered by an invasion of Norwegian customs officials carrying out a foot-and-mouth check. Let’s say this woman, the one who got off in Ed, was a drugs courier. She was supposed to meet a gang in Halden, but never got that far because she fled in haste without telling the gang. Picea got off in Halden because she was being harassed by the idiot who took photos of her and threatened Thygesen. Picea might have left the train in Halden although her ticket was for Oslo because she was exhausted after a long journey. Or quite simply because she thought she’d find a cheaper hotel room in a
provincial town than exorbitant Oslo.’

  ‘So far, so good.’

  ‘So Picea gets off in Halden. Waiting for her is a sombre welcoming committee consisting of one or more Samurai. They assume she’s the mule they’re expecting. Dark-haired foreigner, right? The station’s unlit. All cats are grey in the dark. The bastards, in my opinion there must have been more than one, bundle her into the car they have nearby. She protests and resists, perhaps violently. From Rønningen’s description of her on the train we know Picea had a temper and wasn’t the type to let herself be pushed around. The Samurai don’t understand why she’s so stubborn. They tie her up, I suppose, and drive her to this remote house in Aspedammen which they’re still using as a base. There, they search her, in an extremely brutal way, I reckon. They don’t find what they’re looking for: amphetamines in bags stuck to her body. I’m ninety-nine per cent sure Picea wasn’t a courier. What she did have stuck to her body must have been something else, travel documents perhaps, as we’ve talked about before. The Samurai are furious that they’ve been tricked, as they think. They take out their fury on Picea. She’s stabbed to death. It must have been a terrible sight because I know now there was blood all over the kitchen in the house. The murder might have taken on a ritual character or the bastards thought she must have swallowed the bags of dope and started cutting her open, but realised it was a waste of time.’

  ‘It bothers me that we still don’t know who she was.’

  ‘Me too, you can’t imagine how much,’ Stribolt sighs. ‘There are some indications that she was Russian, but that’s all I have. I don’t completely understand Øystein Strand’s role in all this, even if he found what apparently was her bag.’

  ‘Isn’t Strand a classic example of a guy who knew too much or sang too loud in prison?’

  ‘I think there’s more to it than that. There’s a missing link in this case somewhere.’

  ‘The person who’s threatening Thygesen?’

  ‘To be frank, Vaage, I think that’s a red herring. But I forgot to ask you if Larsson caught anyone.’

  ‘Larsson’s brooding in his brother-in-law’s old banger while Thygesen’s climbing trees in search of fungus.’

  ‘Fungus? Mushrooms? In trees? At this time of year?’

  Vaage spells out Thygesen’s state of mind. He is suffering from acute fungal neurosis, bordering, in her opinion, on paranoia.

  *

  Gerhard Ryland has found what he is looking for and what he feared he would find. In Natasha’s chaotic photo collection there is one picture, a slightly grainy colour photo, of two women standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. One is his wife. The other is very similar to the newspaper sketch of the murdered woman. In the background you can glimpse hairdryers, the kind that are used in salons.

  So his suspicion that the foreign woman was one of the staff at Holywell Hotel in Athens is borne out.

  Ryland turns the photo over. Natasha always writes on the myriad of photos she takes or has taken. This one is no exception. Natasha has written in pencil, in that slanting style she has when she writes Norwegian letters:

  ‘Katka (Orestovna Grossu) and Natasha (Blagodarjova Ryland), Athens, Christmas holidays 2000, Holywell Hotel. Great girl, terrible perm. We spoke Russian. Her favourite book is Solzhenitsyn’s 1814.’

  Katka is the usual abbreviation of Yekatarina. Russian abbreviations have become common girls’ names in the West. Katya rather than Katka. Katinka, from Katarina, Tanya from Tatyana. This is how the great Russian bear influences an otherwise Americanised western world.

  ‘But Grossu?’ Ryland says, lighting up his pipe, a smaller crooked one than Stalin’s. Grossu is a Latin name, it occurs to him. Romanian? There is something familiar about Grossu. Could a Grossu have been one of the butchers during Ceauşescu’s time?

  Ryland gets up from the chair in his office and walks over to the shelf where he has his volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He checks the 1988 edition and the 1989 edition. No Grossu. In the 1990 edition, which deals with events that took place in 1989, there is one, a gentleman, or rather a ‘comrade’ by the name of Semyon Grossu. In fact, he was a leading politician. But not in Romania. In Moldavia, as the region was called when it was a Soviet republic.

  The Encyclopaedia says: ‘On November 10 the republic’s Ministry of the Interior was attacked and set ablaze. Over 2,000 MVD troops were flown in, and calm was restored after the hard-line party leader, Semyon Grossu, was dismissed.’

  The country is called Moldova today. It has received its independence, but the former granary and the great wine cellar of the ex-Soviet Union has sunk into deepest poverty. Moldova has become the poorest country in Europe and exports almost nothing except prostitutes.

  Was she one?

  Perhaps the hairdressing salon in Holywell Hotel was only a front, as they say, for prostitution?

  Katka Grossu. Yekaterina Orestovna Grossu.

  It strikes Ryland that he may be the only person in Norway, in the whole universe for that matter, who knows about this person, in the sense that he can attach a name to a photo, and knows about her fate in Norway. Natasha will know the name as well, of course, but a veil of oblivion has been drawn over the meeting with this Katka.

  The Norwegian police, who were responsible for the identikit picture in the newspapers, perhaps don’t even know who she is, Katka Grossu. He should inform them. It can be done anonymously. He could ring and say: ‘I’m Mr X. I know that the woman who was found in Thygesen’s garden was Yekaterina, known as Katka, Orestovna Grossu, probably of Moldovan origin. Hope this information will be of use to you. Goodbye.’

  The problem is that all telephone conversations can be traced back to the caller. Whether he uses a landline or a mobile makes no difference in this regard.

  He could ring from a phone box. A phone box! In Bærum? Only decrepit people nostalgic for the past would even think of using a phone box near Haslum. And if they did, they would soon find out it has been vandalised. Even if there is a phone and a cable, there won’t be a dialling tone and if, contrary to expectation, there is a dialling tone, it won’t be possible to insert a card or a coin because the slot has been sealed with chewing gum.

  A better solution would be to write a letter on a diskette at a computer and have the text printed in a specialist office somewhere. He will have to do this, but it will have to wait until the weekend.

  He is at war with the Finns; he is at war with Peterson and Kingo. He can’t wage war on all fronts like some Napoleon or Hitler.

  Gerhard Ryland goes into the garden to get some fresh air. The garden is overgrown and needs some attention. The pine hedge bordering his plot – Natasha’s and his plot, he shouldn’t forget that – has taken on a brownish hue. Several of the branches have brown needles. There is bound to be a practical, scientific explanation for this phenomenon, but it doesn’t interest him in the slightest.

  ‘Katka Orestovna,’ he says in a low voice. ‘May peace be with you.’

  Ryland turns on his heel, fetches a chisel from his toolbox in the cellar and breaks open a drawer in Natasha’s bedside table, where she keeps her diaries. They are a secret to this whole nasty world, but not to him. She has often asked him to read them aloud to see if he is keeping up his Russian, a female wile.

  He finds her diary of 2000 and leafs through to 18 December, the day they arrived in Athens, finds nothing, thumbs further to 19. And sees the name Katka.

  In his office, with the help of his Norwegian-Russian dictionary, he notes down: ‘Beautiful, brown-eyed Katka Orestovna from the salon told me she has to flee for her life. The Kishinev mafia have come to Athens. They want to force her into prostitution. They are especially cruel to her because she comes from a “bad family”. A relative (uncle, great-uncle? I don’t remember) was supposed to have been a big wheel during the old (good old! Better than today anyway with every
one starving in what used to be the Russian granary) regime. “I don’t want to be a whore,” Katka said. “Come to Norway,” I said. “We – I, my husband and the whole nation – protect women.” She took my address and a hundred US dollars (disgusting money!), so she had something for the journey. I daren’t ask Gerhard for more. He wants to see the Acropolis even though it’s raining and we’ve been there before. Pops is as stubborn as a mule! He’s been on one of his rare shopping trips! He’s bought two records by Mikis Theodorakis and a tie. So boring, but it suits him. I shouldn’t eat so much Turkish delight.’

  Ryland opens The Times Atlas 1986 and sees that Kishinev was the biggest town in what was known as Moldavia in those days.

  The pieces are falling into place. He should hand them over to the police, but can’t bring himself to do so. Now the nation’s interests are not his primary concern, Natasha is. He doesn’t dare imagine how she would react to a police interview.

  20

  Thygesen sweeps his hand along some pine branches; the brown needles fall off in a shower as soon as he touches them. He sees a man, a young man, wearing a leather coat and a captain’s hat on his head walking along Bestumveien. The wind lifts the skirts of his long coat and makes them flutter.

  ‘Possible target approaching,’ Thygesen says into the walkie-talkie, thinking that sounds like pseudo-military language.

  ‘Him in the Gestapo coat?’ Larsson asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll hold on until I see him put something in the post box.’

  The man heads straight for the post box on the gate, doesn’t stop to look around, doesn’t see Thygesen high up the ladder in the clump of pines, takes out an envelope, opens the lid of the post box and pops it in with a nonchalant flick.

  Larsson is out of the van. There is a metallic glint of something in Larsson’s hands. He sneaks up from behind.

  Before the young man realises what is going on he is attached to the wrought-iron gate by a pair of handcuffs.

  Which Gunvald Larsson did in a surprisingly nimble and professional fashion, Thygesen thinks.