The Ice Swimmer

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  She left the flat. Sealed the door with police tape. Went downstairs and onto the street. The cold gnawed at her nose.

  Vanity and winter weather did not go together, Lena thought, as she stalked off in her long, thick puffa jacket, tying the cord of her fur hat under her chin. She felt like a penguin and probably looked like one too, but it didn’t matter. When the cold bit, health came before beauty. The people on the uncleared pavement were a study of hats, long coats and solid winter boots – also the man a few metres ahead of her. Reefer jacket and knitted beanie. Mittens.

  This man was holding the mittens on either side of his face and peering in through the window of her car.

  She coughed loudly.

  The man straightened up. She recognised him beneath the hat – just about. It was the journalist, Steffen Gjerstad.

  Gjerstad smiled when he saw her. ‘We meet again.’

  ‘We do indeed,’ she said, taking off one mitten and pulling the car key from her pocket.

  ‘I recognised Sveinung dangling from the crane,’ Gjerstad said.

  ‘I’ve interviewed the guy a few times. I suppose you’ve searched his flat?’

  ‘We have to inform the relatives,’ Lena said.

  His icy breath formed hoar frost on the tips of the hair sticking out from under his hat. ‘He was a Vestlander. Came from Jølster, I believe. Quite a broad accent and mentioned the place once. So I’m sure his mother and father live there – Jølster.’

  Lena involuntarily ran her bare hand through her hair and tucked the tips under her scarf. ‘And you’ve interviewed the guy? In what connection, may I ask?’

  Steffen Gjerstad grinned. ‘We can swap information,’ he said with a conspiratorial wink. ‘Was it an accident?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘But you don’t know for certain?’

  She liked the look of Steffen Gjerstad and smiled from behind her scarf. ‘It would be wrong to state anything until we’ve properly investigated what happened when he fell in. Do you know what his job was?’

  Gjerstad put his mittens under one arm then took a pinch of snus from a box he’d produced from his jacket pocket and shoved it into his mouth. ‘Civil service,’ he said, with a bulging lip. ‘Finance department.’ He dusted the snus from his hands.

  It struck Lena that taking snus was not the greatest seduction technique in the world. Then she said to herself: Seduction? Control your imagination.

  Steffen continued: ‘I haven’t got anything in print. The interviews, two of them – it was research – were for articles we were working on. By “we” I mean the newspaper.’

  ‘But you knew Adeler?’

  ‘No. I knew who he was, if I can put it like that. He met estate agents and financiers. The paper where I work focuses on the economy and markets, and those circles aren’t big.’ Gjerstad thought for a few moments. ‘Sveinung Adeler was something of a parvenu.’ He grinned. ‘Wanted to be interviewed at the Beach Club and places like that. He was a namedropper – “the other day I met such and such a celeb”. Always wore the latest fashion and held his nose in the air – that type. But he was alright, macho, trained hard, pretty high standard, told everyone LOUDLY AND CLEARLY that he skied the Birkebeiner and the Vasa and that race down in Italy…’ Gjerstad snapped his fingers searching for the right name. ‘Marcialonga.’ He ruminated. ‘Not exactly my style.’

  Lena unlocked the car. She had done the Birkebeiner three years in a row. ‘Nice to meet you, Gjerstad.’

  ‘Steffen.’ He winked.

  She had to smile again and repeated: ‘Steffen.’

  ‘And you?’ he asked.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Lena.’

  He waited with a furtive smile at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Stigersand,’ she added.

  ‘And do you have a phone number by any chance?’

  He didn’t waste any time, she thought, but she liked that. She liked the subtext. She ratcheted the atmosphere up a notch and asked: ‘What do you want with my phone number?’

  They looked into each other’s eyes, both smiling. He said: ‘In case something should occur to me, as they say in TV crime programmes.’

  She nodded, tongue-tied.

  He took a biro from an inside pocket. With his mittens under his arm he jotted down the number she gave him on the back of his hand. Both his hands were covered with notes in biro. There was something boyish about the sight and Lena felt a stab of tenderness in her chest. Enough is enough, she thought, and got into her car.

  She drove off without looking back. Stopped at the lights outside Soria Maria. Her phone beeped. Message: Forgot to say have a nice day, Steffen.

  He lifted her mood. She had to give him that.

  5

  Gunnarstranda had just sat down when the door opened.

  Rindal watched him from the doorway without saying a word.

  ‘My wife used to look at me like that,’ Gunnarstranda said, slamming the desk drawer, ‘if she’d cocked up the Christmas dinner or forgotten to go to the Vinmonopol on a Saturday.’

  Rindal didn’t smile. He came straight in and closed the door behind him. ‘Would you mind contacting the Metro ops room in Tøyen?’

  ‘Regarding what?’

  ‘We’ve just received a phone call,’ Rindal said. ‘From their security department.’

  Gunnarstranda angled his head, intrigued.

  ‘The incident today. There’s more to it than we assumed.’

  ‘We?’ Gunnarstranda mused, although he said nothing. He waited for Rindal to continue.

  ‘The traffic controllers had been warned there were people in the tunnel. They stopped the traffic. They switched off the electricity and sent in security officers to inspect. It was all called off as a false alarm. No one was seen. The trains and trams get the green light. Traffic starts up again. Next thing they know, a woman throws herself under a train. It’s happened before. People contemplating suicide are cunning. They hide. I’ve walked the stretch between Grønland and Tøyen myself several times. I’m sure you have, too. There are bomb shelters and corridors down there. The woman in question found a hiding place and jumped out when the first train came. But now the Metro’s security people have rung me to say that they’d registered an alarm going off at an emergency exit inside. It happened after the collision and none of the staff went out through that exit.’

  ‘What about Axel Rise?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I thought he was handling this case.’

  Rindal took a deep breath. ‘There’s something I think you should know about Axel Rise,’ he said in a low voice.

  Gunnarstranda stood up and put on the coat hanging over the back of his chair.

  ‘Rise and his partner had a son two years ago. This boy has a syndrome – brain damage and some mucus stuff. He needs round-the-clock nursing, a respiratory aid and regular oxygen infusions. The boy lives at home, but there are night nurses and alarms, and if he starts thrashing about in bed he’s straight to hospital, and apparently he does that quite often.’

  Gunnarstranda sank back down on his chair. ‘The poor man,’ he mumbled.

  ‘It doesn’t end there,’ Rindal said. ‘A sick child is one thing, but it takes its toll on your relationship if you have no private life and have your home invaded by a variety of nurses day after day, month after month. It’s even worse trying to keep your career going, especially as a police officer. He applied for a job here to get some mental space. But he goes to Bergen every weekend and once or twice a week. When he isn’t working or on duty he’s plagued by a bad conscience. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure he’s the right man to draw conclusions in a case such as this.’

  ‘I see. But it doesn’t seem such a good idea to work in Oslo when you’ve got a wife and child who need you twenty-four hours a day in Bergen.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, that’s none of our business,’ Rindal said. ‘But
having a child who needs you twenty-four hours a day must affect your mind. The man needs some space.’

  Gunnarstranda sat looking at Rindal, silent.

  ‘I’d just like you to know how the land lies,’ Rindal said. ‘I’m asking you and the others to be considerate towards Rise; that’s why I’d like you to do this extra job. Check out the alarm and reassure the traffic controllers. They’re upset and want clarity.’

  Gunnarstranda hadn’t been to the Metro’s new operational switchboard before. But he remembered the old one very well. There had been flashing analogue bulbs, a control panel mounted on cardboard, all connected to chunky switches and grey telephones that reminded you of the 1960s.

  The new switchboard was separated from the world by a large, glass sliding door. The room was impressive. One long wall was a gigantic computer screen on which the train network was lit up with colour codes for various stations, and for turning loops, train markings, track changes and the movements of the trains from station to station. It was reminiscent of pictures from the Pentagon, Gunnarstranda thought, as he turned from the broad screen and walked towards the employees controlling the surveillance cameras. On the wall were monitors showing pictures projected by fifteen of the several hundred operative cameras. They showed stretches of rail, tunnel openings, ticket machines, platforms and a train pulling into a station that Gunnarstranda recognised as Majorstua.

  Gunnarstranda was on nodding terms with most of the staff in the ops room. These were people who had worked at Oslo Metro for years – who had started as conductors, barrier guards or train drivers when the network was still called Oslo Sporveier. These operators knew the network inside out.

  He nodded to one, knew exactly who he was, but couldn’t put a name to him.

  Two minutes later the operator had rewound the Grønland tape to 06:30. The picture was in colour with a high resolution.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ the operator asked.

  ‘A woman dressed in a red track suit.’

  The picture showed people standing still, people walking to and fro.

  ‘She was a junkie from the Plata area,’ Gunnarstranda added, ‘but you might not be able to see that.’

  Nothing. They had the road going down to Grønland Station on the screen, they had what was known informally as the junkie staircase, then the corridors, the halls, the platforms, but no red track suit. The minutes ticked by on the CCTV.

  ‘My mistake,’ the operator said. ‘The driver who rang the alarm thought she was on her way south from Tøyen.’

  They watched new footage. ‘Tøyen has lots of platforms.’

  People walked to and fro, got off and on the train.

  But they didn’t see anyone in a red track suit.

  ‘Perhaps she came by train,’ Gunnarstranda said.

  ‘We have the same picture that the train drivers have on their screen before the doors close,’ the operator said.

  ‘If there’s a sighting of someone on the track at 06:30, we’re looking for a train that dropped her off just before,’ Gunnarstranda said.

  The pictures came up. The whole length of the train. Passengers getting out. Doors closing. Train setting off. Another train arriving. Doors opening. Passengers getting out.

  There. A passenger jumping out just as the doors closed.

  ‘That’s her.’

  The person moved out of the picture.

  ‘The tunnel,’ Gunnarstranda said.

  They watched the same red figure back down the platform, turn and jump onto the track. She was swallowed up by the darkness of the tunnel.

  Both Gunnarstranda and the operator stared intently at the screen.

  ‘There,’ said Gunnarstranda with a smile. ‘There were two of them.’

  Pictures don’t lie. On the screen it was clear. Someone wearing a short jacket and a hood over his head hurrying after Nina Stenshagen, scrambling over the plastic barrier at the end of the platform, running down the steps and disappearing into the tunnel.

  ‘That man knows what happened,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘It must have been him who went through the emergency exit after the incident.’

  ‘That doesn’t help us much,’ the operator said darkly. ‘It means our security officers missed both of them when they were inspecting the tunnel. That’s impossible.’

  ‘The lights were on when they were searching the tunnel, were they?’

  The operator nodded. ‘But there are no cameras in the tunnel.’

  Gunnarstranda sat deep in thought. This case was beginning to stimulate his interest. The man in the picture followed Nina Stenshagen into the tunnel. Why? What was he doing when she threw herself in front of the train? Why did he keep hidden? Why did he leave the tunnel only after the collision?

  ‘Can you see if you can get the face of the guy in the hoodie?’

  The operator rewound the tape.

  He shook his head. ‘Looks like we’ve only got his back.’

  ‘He must have got on the train at some point,’ Gunnarstranda said.

  ‘There are lots of stations to choose from,’ the operator said.

  Gunnarstranda stood up. ‘Would you mind working on it a bit more and contacting me if you find anything?’

  6

  In the break Lena found a table with the day’s tabloids on it. Empty and half-empty cups were scattered across the surface. On top of the papers was a plastic box of cinnamon snaps. Beside it a poinsettia. She pressed a fingertip into the soil. Dry. She grabbed a half-full tea cup and emptied the contents into the pot, then lifted the box of biscuits and took the top newspaper. Nothing about the drowning in the harbour by the City Hall. What about the online papers?

  Lena got up and went into her office. Took her laptop from the bag hanging over the chair.

  VG-nett and Dagbladet.no had pictures of the ambulance and staff in the hi-vis jackets. Aftenposten had found an old archive photo of Lena. She never liked seeing herself in photos. In this one her hair was awful. The articles said nothing except that a man had been found dead in the sea.

  She couldn’t resist the temptation. On the Birkebeiner website she looked for the name of Sveinung Adeler. His results popped up. Adeler had been a fit man. 2.57.06. That was phenomenal. Skiing from Rena to Lillehammer in less than three hours. Her own PB was 3.48.24. On that occasion she had been so tired over the last ten kilometres that pure willpower was all that had held her upright. Stopping would have meant she would have been teased by all her male colleagues for eternity and beyond – by Emil Yttergjerde in particular.

  She decided to google the journalist Steffen Gjerstad. There were a number of hits. He clearly did a lot of social networking. She was invited to click onto Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Instead she looked for pictures on Google. She flicked through them. A pretty good-looking guy. His own man. In two of the photos he was with a group of young women. They were laughing. He obviously liked being the only man. In one photo he was looking up at the photographer with a tentative expression. She liked that. That, and his smile.

  She clicked on the Dagens Næringsliv website and searched his name. The titles of a series of articles he had written rolled out. Finance and feature articles. One about sailing boats, one about modern dress codes for men and one about trends and mechanical Swiss clocks. Not exactly her sphere of interest.

  What kind of guy was Steffen in private? Did he like Tom Waits, for example? Did he have posters of erotic female singers on his bedroom wall?

  She bookmarked all Steffen Gjerstad’s newspaper articles and closed her laptop.

  The phone rang. It was Ragnhild, who worked in the Sogn and Fjordane Police District. Lena and Ragnhild had gone to police college together. They chatted for a bit then Ragnhild came to the point. Sveinung Adeler’s relatives in Jølster had been informed of his death by the parish priest. Ragnhild offered to visit his parents.

  Lena agreed. ‘Ask if they have his cleaner’s phone number. I’d also like to know who he mixed with in Oslo,’ she said. ‘If
his parents could give us a hand there, it would be good. Ask if he had a girlfriend or if there were any exes. Ask when they last spoke to their son and if they knew what plans he might’ve had for Wednesday evening. Oh, and Ragnhild?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you ask them for a photo? As recent as possible.’

  She stared into the distance. Again she was thinking about Steffen Gjerstad. At that moment the phone rang.

  Two minds – one idea. It was Steffen Gjerstad. She grabbed her phone. It thumped in her hand like a little heart. Should she answer it? She liked him well enough. But things were going too fast, and they shouldn’t.

  Emil Yttergjerde came in, strode towards the plate of cinnamon snaps. ‘Lena, your phone’s ringing.’

  She nodded and put it back in her bag. ‘Let it.’

  7

  ‘It was my understanding I’d be working in the missing persons section,’ Axel Rise said.

  Section Head Rindal said nothing. He leaned back in his armchair and observed Rise from under lowered eyelids.

  ‘I applied for Frølich’s job,’ Rise explained. ‘Frølich was responsible for missing persons.’

  ‘Frank Frølich’s suspended from duty,’ Rindal said. ‘His case is still pending. And we’re reorganising this section until further notice.’

  ‘But the job description—’

  ‘That’s irrelevant,’ Rindal interrupted. ‘This is my responsibility. I assign staff to reports of missing persons.’

  Rise appeared put out.

  Rindal drew a deep breath. ‘You did a good job on the Metro this morning, but apparently there was a hiccup regarding the emergency exits.’

  ‘OK, I’ll sort it out.’

  ‘Gunnarstranda’s there.’

  Rise’s face tautened.

  ‘I couldn’t find you,’ Rindal said, taking a strip of chewing gum from the packet on the desk.

  ‘You’ve got a tough situation at home and you travel,’ Rindal said. ‘But some jobs need an officer round the clock.’

  When Rindal went to carry on, Rise flicked his hair behind his ears and interrupted him: