The Ice Swimmer

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  ‘Yes. Your tip-off is incorrect.’

  Lena waited. But nothing was forthcoming. ‘Where were you last night?’

  Vestgård put on a weak smile, almost of acknowledgement. ‘At home.’ She added: ‘Here with my husband and child.’

  Lena made to leave.

  ‘You know, I suppose, I regard this as strange,’ said Vestgård, still with her fingertips in the tops of her pockets. ‘The security service reported the death threat to the police. If I hadn’t been concerned before, I was petrified then – this is just a bit over the top, isn’t it, someone wishing you dead? PST is taking this case seriously.’

  Lena nodded. She understood.

  ‘Then the police come and ask me about this instead.’ The woman fixed Lena’s eyes with her gaze.

  ‘I can only apologise,’ Lena said sympathetically. ‘On the other hand, it’s a positive that I’ve got a little further in my case.’

  Lena took off her gloves and gripped the door handle behind her. ‘Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.’

  Vestgård said nothing.

  ‘Have a nice evening,’ Lena said, stumbling out.

  Lena walked briskly down the drive and out of the gate. She fumbled as she inserted the key in the car lock. Her little Micra was as out of place here as she was.

  Immediately the thought had been articulated she lifted her head and inhaled the fresh, cold air. Then she noticed another little car a few hundred metres down the road. It was a black Fiat 500.

  Lena thought the model the height of cool – it was chic and rounded and loyally designed like the original classic of many years before. This one even had a hood – a cabriolet. She would have loved to buy one herself – if only she could have afforded a new car. In the meantime she would have to make do with dreaming.

  When Lena was small her father had kept an original Fiat 500 in the garage. This veteran car had been his great hobby, and every winter he spruced it up in preparation for the summer. He had loved the car and he had loved fiddling around with it. The car had also been an adventure for her. Small and compact, it had been like riding a dodgem on the road. And whenever Lena saw a picture of a Fiat 500 she thought about the pillow she’d had when she was a child. A white pillow with a black stain. She smiled at the memory. It hadn’t been her fault. She had forgotten she was dirty. Her father had dabbed oil on her nose when he was lying on his back, working under the car, and she had bent down to tell him dinner was ready.

  She opened the Micra door and was on the point of getting in. Then she noticed someone sitting inside the Fiat beneath the street lamp further down.

  Lena got in. Started the engine and put the heating on full. The person in the Fiat must have been frozen. The car must have been there for a while because there was frost on the inside of the glass. Why hadn’t they started the engine and the heating?

  She cast a final glance at the house. From a window on the first floor Vestgård and her husband were watching her. She considered what Vestgård had told her about the threat. Nothing on this earth is straightforward, Lena thought. But in the end I am a cop. She opened her bag and took out a pen and something to write on. Made a note of the car’s registration number.

  Lena was in her own world all the way down to Drammensveien. She drove home in a dream. Planning what she was going to do – maybe go skiing. Yes, that was definitely what she was going to do.

  She fumbled blindly for a CD in the pile and shoved it in. Soon Tom Waits was singing ‘Rain Dogs’ accompanied by a hurdy-gurdy.

  She was completely immersed until she arrived home at the block of flats in Tvetenveien and drove down into the garage complex. Then she glanced into the mirror. A car drove slowly past on the road behind her. A modern version of a Fiat 500 in black – with a hood.

  Was that possible? She stopped. Two identical cars? It seemed almost too improbable. She sat watching the garage door roll down behind her, immersed in thought.

  Seeing two Fiat 500s in the space of twenty minutes – well, maybe. But if both were black and cabriolets?

  Could that be chance?

  She dismissed the idea and parked.

  12

  The snow on the illuminated piste was packed hard. The intense cold would presumably keep most skiers indoors. So there would probably be ice on the tracks, which would make for heavy going. She wouldn’t need to apply much grip wax. More like glide wax. She fetched her skis from the tall cupboard in the hall and leaned them against the worktop, underside up. Ran her hand along the blades. What wax did she use last time? Purple? Or blue? May as well remove it. She looked for the wax iron and plugged it in. Ran the hot iron back and forth so that the paper absorbed the rest of the old wax. The last bits she removed with a knife. Then she rubbed in a good layer of wax. Melted the glide wax with the hot iron. Fetched the box of waxes from the cupboard under the worktop. Checked the thermometer outside the window. Minus eighteen. So it might be less than minus twenty on the piste. Light-blue VR30 should do the trick. She put two light layers under the binding and spent time distributing the wax with a cork. There we are. Perfect. If Lena was going to complete the Birkebeiner she would need to get a few kilometres in her legs every week. To progress. Gradually increase distance and speed. She changed into woollen underwear and ski pants. She allowed herself an extra woollen jumper under her jacket and ran down the stairs to the car.

  She drove to Ellingsrud and did her usual circuit to Mariholtet and back. The piste was compacted and icy, as expected. And the grip was good. The snow underneath sucked. Even on some gentle descents she had to dig in to maintain her speed. On the other hand, she could easily ski up the steepest sections without slipping once. The cold gnawed at her toes and chin; her frozen breath condensed into hoar frost in her hair. But she warmed up as she skied. The powerful lamps along the piste cast a strong light on the snow, and the total darknesss created a scenic backdrop for the run. The only sounds to be heard were the dry clicks as she used her sticks and the low whoosh of her skis on the snow. At times it was so quiet she could hear the crackle of the floodlights. There was no one else on the piste this evening. Most people considered twenty below too cold to train. Lena mentally thanked the piste manager for being such a sport as to keep the lights on. In these conditions it would have been possible to put in a shift in the darkness too, but the light made the experience memorable.

  After a shower she stood in front of the mirror, rubbing herself down. The area under her eyes was dark. I look exhausted. I’m getting on for thirty-four and look drained. She straightened up and took a step back. Scrutinised her naked body, turned around 360 degrees and stretched: taut stomach, muscular upper arms.

  But her breasts were too pendulous.

  She put down her towel and lifted them. Then she felt it, with her forefinger – a hardness, near the nipple.

  For a fraction of a second she met her own fearful eyes in the mirror. Held her left breast in both hands once more.

  Felt again. She had been right the first time. A lump.

  She repeated the movement with her right breast. All soft, no hardness.

  At once Lena was as hot as she had been after skiing. The steam and the silence in the bathroom were suffocating. She opened the door to the hall, walked naked into the sitting room, stood staring into the air. Images flickered through her brain:

  There were images of her beloved father who, in the space of a few weeks, experienced all the side-effects of a cytotoxin: the enormous weight loss, one bout of pneumonia after another, before losing mobility in his legs, getting infections in his blood, having problems with his teeth, then losing his hair – until there were only a few strands left, which he defiantly combed back. Her father had been turned into a shadow of his former self, a caricature, trapped in the claws of death, which squeezed and pressed and tormented the lean figure, shrank him from inside and brought him closer to the end with every day that he had to suffer.

  Lena was soon as cold as she had been hot.
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br />   Was it possible? That you could touch a breast and have your whole life turned on its head?

  No, she told herself, I’m strong! She focused on her reflection in the window. A supple body, fit and muscular.

  Yes, she was strong, but what about in a few months’ time? What about when her body was weakened by radiotherapy and cancer and no longer had any immune protection?

  She slumped onto a chair and talked herself round: Take it easy. This might be an innocuous cyst or a glass splinter you trod on when you were four, an object that has become trapped and moved around your body and turned up somewhere completely different. Now she was sure. That was the explanation. It was exactly what had happened before, when she was sixteen and had a lump on her arm. After a couple of weeks she had been able to coax out a tiny, harmless grain of sand.

  Suddenly the idea of illness was absurd. She was healthy. There was no lump. There couldn’t be. It had to be something else.

  Warily, she stroked her left breast. Felt nothing. Encouraged, she squeezed harder. Then she felt it again; it was small, tiny. A slight hardness. She looked up, glimpsed her eyes in the window reflection and caught herself in the lie.

  She got to her feet, hot all over. Dressed on autopilot. She went down to the cellar and fetched the cardboard box with the Christmas decorations. Back in the sitting room, she sat taking out Christmas pixies and candleholders while her thoughts were elsewhere. I am sitting here holding an ageing female pixie. Lena studied its wrinkled face and thought: My God, what am I doing?

  She put the figure back in the box and went to the kitchen. Opened the fridge. On the lowest shelf were eight quarter-bottles of champagne and prosecco. All Lena’s good friends knew she liked fizzy wine, which she kept in small bottles. They were the presents they gave her after trips abroad. Lena searched through the selection until she found a prosecco. She read the label – Villa Sando Fresco – opened it and filled a stem glass. Took the packet of spelt biscuits from the cupboard. Cheese. She wanted some cheese. Chèvre. The cheese in the bell had seen its best days. But with honey and nuts this was the greatest luxury on earth. Three thin spelt crackers, each with a bit of goat’s cheese, every bite with a hazelnut glazed with honey.

  She put everything on a dish. Carried it into the sitting room. Zapped through the channels. Serious male faces talking. Another channel: a reality show with blondes and plummeting cleavage.

  But Lena wanted something to laugh at. She got up and went into her bedroom where she had a shelf of DVDs. Her eyes found The Piano. She loved that film. The relationship between the mute Ada and tattooed George – desire and forbidden love. But The Piano was not the sort of film to make you laugh. Lena put it back and instead flicked through for Notting Hill.

  Soon she was back in front of the TV, watching Hugh Grant play the good-looking bookshop owner while the princess in the fairy story was browsing the books. Lena couldn’t concentrate. But she noticed her glass was empty. She went to the kitchen. No more prosecco in her selection on the lowest shelf of the fridge. The bottles clinked as she took out a Henkell Trocken. Sat down in front of the screen again. Rewound the film to where Hugh Grant pretended to be a journalist and introduced himself as a rep for the magazine Horse and Hound. But the scene wasn’t funny any more.

  She went to prod her breast again, but forced herself to refrain.

  Lena put her feet on the table and a blanket over herself and stared at the ceiling. When she woke up, the film was over. She was cold under the blanket.

  Lena got up with difficulty, shuffled into the bedroom and slipped under the duvet.

  Friday, 11th December

  1

  Rikard Svenaas opened the window on counter two.

  Svenaas always walked around with his teeth bared in a lop-sided grin, as though someone had cut off his lips with a sharp knife. Gunnarstranda jumped every time he caught sight of the man even though he had witnessed the same sight for close on twenty years.

  ‘Can’t you cover your teeth for once, man? Seeing you like that makes me nervous.’

  ‘I’ve been like this my whole life, Gunnarstranda. You and my wife can found Naggers Anonymous, but it won’t help. This is what I do when I’m concentrating. What are you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘I want to see what Nina Stenshagen had in her pockets when she was run over in the tunnel.’

  Gunnarstranda stood waiting by the window as Svenaas disappeared inside. ‘Can’t have been much,’ he called to the broad back. ‘It was handed in yesterday morning.’

  Svenaas returned with a small plastic bag labelled ‘Nina Stenshagen’.

  The bag contained two syringes packed in cellophane, a mobile phone, a shrunken pouch of Petterøes roll-up tobacco, nail-clippers, a disposable lighter with the Rema 1000 logo and a few coins.

  ‘The phone,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘Can you ring Telenor and crack the PIN?’

  Svenaas grabbed the phone and studied it with his teeth bared in an even broader grin. ‘Not necessary. It’s switched on. But the battery’s weak.’ He passed the phone to Gunnarstranda, who put on his spectacles.

  It was a Nokia, quite similar to his own. He tapped on the menu until he found Nina’s phone list. Flicked down until he found the name Stig. He took a biro from his pocket, noted the number and was about to pass the phone back to Svenaas, then hesitated. ‘You’re quite a dab hand at these things. Can you see who she called yesterday – just before she was killed?’

  ‘We can see the last number she called.’ Svenaas fumbled with the phone. ‘Here you are.’ He read out the number. Gunnarstranda compared it with his piece of paper. It was the same number: Stig Eriksen.

  ‘When did she ring this number?’

  ‘Tuesday evening.’

  Gunnarstranda frowned. ‘Are the date and time correct on the phone?’

  Svenaas checked, and nodded.

  ‘If she rang someone with this phone on Wednesday or Thursday morning, it would be registered, wouldn’t it?’

  Svenaas nodded again. ‘Doesn’t look as if Nina Stenshagen has used this phone since Tuesday evening.’

  Gunnarstranda pushed the bag back over the counter. ‘Would you be so kind as to copy the phone numbers in the list – before the battery dies?’

  Svenaas grunted an answer and disappeared inside again.

  Gunnarstranda tapped Stig Eriksen’s number onto his phone. It was still early, but Stig lived on the street. People living outdoors in below-zero temperatures don’t tend to sleep in. The phone rang in his ear. Gunnarstranda was on the point of giving up when at last there was a crackle at the other end. He heard the din of traffic as Stig fumbled with the phone.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Stig Eriksen?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Gunnarstranda, Oslo Police. I’m ringing about Nina Stenshagen. Nina…’

  He hesitated. Stig had rung off.

  Gunnarstranda looked at his phone for a few seconds. He called again – same number. It rang three times in his ear, then Stig’s phone was switched off.

  Gunnarstranda gazed into the air thoughtfully.

  Svenaas peered out from behind a shelving system. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He didn’t want to talk to me.’

  ‘Surprised?’

  Gunnarstranda didn’t answer.

  Svenaas waved the phone. ‘This might take a while.’

  When Gunnarstranda was back in the department, he stood in front of the window thinking about Nina Stenshagen. A homeless woman who dies at the age of forty-four. If it was true that as she had worked as a train driver on the Metro she would have known the tunnels under Oslo city centre like the back of her hand. She would have known where the bomb shelters and the emergency exits were.

  He looked out of the window. It was early, but still dark outside. In the streets down in Grønland there were long lines of car lights, white and red. Stig Eriksen was out there somewhere, freezing. Well, OK, thought Gunnarstranda. Stig didn’t fancy a conversation wit
h the police.

  Was it Stig who had followed Nina into the tunnel? And if it was, why had he done so?

  Gunnarstranda turned away from the window and looked straight at Emil Yttergjerde.

  ‘Have you seen anything of Axel Rise?’ Gunnarstranda asked.

  Emil shook his head. ‘I saw him yesterday afternoon, when he was on his way to check out a death threat on an MP.’

  Gunnarstranda went into the corridor.

  Rindal was in the doorway of his office waving a bit of paper. ‘Are you free?’

  2

  In Rindal’s office the department head closed the door and passed Gunnarstranda the piece of paper.

  It was a copy. The original was written on a perforated sheet of lined paper from a pad. It was a quite a clumsy letter, addressed to Aud Helen Vestgård, Storting: Vestgård had better wise up. She should know that as a woman she had a historic duty to oppose men’s repression of women. If she continued as she was doing, subjecting herself to society’s male values, it would be to her cost.

  The letter was signed with a name and address.

  ‘The parliamentary admin chief sent the letter to PST in Nydalen,’ Rindal said, ‘and they sent it on to us. They’ve concluded that the letter was written by a confused person, so the case does not concern national security or the counter-terrorist forces.’

  Gunnarstranda raised both eyebrows. ‘Terrorism?’ He read aloud from the letter:

  ‘“…it would be to her cost”.’ He looked at Rindal enquiringly: ‘What bright spark thinks that line is a terrorist threat?’

  Rindal ignored the question. He said: ‘PST doesn’t want to take on the case. On the other hand, the parliamentary security takes the view that an MP has been threatened and wants an investigation into what might lie behind it. I agree with PST. The woman who sent this letter is probably out of it. But parliament has raised the issue and wants an answer. Can you check this matter out ASAP?’