The Ice Swimmer

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  ‘What?’ Lena screamed. She jumped up in alarm.

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing Rindal’s face when he reads this,’ Gunnarstranda said.

  ‘Has Vestgård made a comment?’

  ‘Vestgård’s declined to comment on the article. Ditto the Finance Committee and the Ethics Council. By the way, there’s a nice photo of you here, taken on City Hall Quay.’

  Lena looked out of the window. Daylight was slowly making inroads into the December day and she already felt tired, like after a long overtime shift.

  The case she was working on had been dragged out of her dusty desk drawers into an arena of camera flashes and shouting and yelling. Actually, though, that didn’t bother her.

  Steffen had lied.

  He had known about the third person at the restaurant that Wednesday night. He had not only known about the guy, he had photos and they had been printed in the newspaper.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lena said. ‘I’m just thinking.’

  ‘Then think about this,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘The photos in the paper prove there was a third man at the table with Adeler and Vestgård. Now we have photos of the guy. Once again there is proof that Vestgård lied to you. But there’s also someone who knows more than we do: the photographer who took the pictures.’

  After he had hung up, Gunnarstranda lifted the receiver and dialled Rindal’s number.

  ‘Gunnarstranda here,’ he said when Rindal answered. ‘Usually I ask you stupid questions, Rindal, so I’m asking if you’ve read today’s DN.’ He winked to Emil Yttergjerde and held the receiver away from his ear so that his eardrum wouldn’t be damaged by the noise level of Rindal’s explosion.

  When Rindal paused for breath, Gunnarstranda asked: ‘The deadline you set for the Adeler case, does that still apply?’

  There was a bang as the receiver was slammed down.

  ‘What was the answer?’ Yttergjerde asked. ‘Has the deadline been dropped?’

  ‘It has been dropped,’ Gunnarstranda said.

  2

  Lena drove down to the city centre and gazed at the traffic as if she had a plastic filter in front of her eyes. Why did Steffen write the article? Why hadn’t he said anything last night? All she could remember now was the puzzled figure waving a phone as she fought to gain her breath. Why had he just stood there?

  Her spiral of thoughts grew wider and more paranoid with every turn.

  She pulled into a parking space in front of a Spar supermarket. Switched off the engine and remained staring into the distance.

  Should she, shouldn’t she?

  There was no question. She had to.

  Her hand on the phone trembled as she tapped in his number.

  She dreaded every dialling tone.

  ‘Hi, Lena.’

  ‘You know why I’m ringing, don’t you.’

  ‘I have a hunch.’

  She said nothing. He was the one who should be talking. He was the one who kept quiet about this last night.

  The silence on the line grew, became heavy and awkward. But she wasn’t going to break it. Not now.

  ‘I’d been thinking of calling you late last night,’ he said at length. ‘But the atmosphere was so strange when we parted…’

  ‘You quoted me, Steffen, without permission. What’s more the quote was inaccurate. I’ve never said anything of the kind and you know that.’

  He went quiet again.

  She waited for him to speak. But he didn’t say any more. ‘Are you there?’ she asked.

  ‘I apologise unreservedly,’ he said. ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘You knew all the time about the meeting between the three of them and you said nothing to me?’

  ‘Lena, listen. This is important. I only saw the photos last night. I found out about the third person in the restaurant last night. My source was there on Wednesday, that ninth of December and took photos. Before I saw them I had no reason to believe anything other than that Adeler met Vestgård on his own. I didn’t know about a third person, not until late last night. I left you for a meeting with my source. When I was given the photos you were asleep in bed.’

  ‘I’m investigating this case,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s best for everyone if you’re more open with me than you’re being now.’

  There was a silence at the other end.

  She closed her eyes. Hating what she was going to say, but she had to: ‘You and I cannot continue like this, sorry. Last night was the last time, Steffen.’

  Total silence. He said nothing. Was he going to hang up? It was bad enough to break up with a man, but to do it in this way was worse. Why didn’t he say anything?

  ‘If it should become necessary to take an official statement from you, I cannot be present,’ Lena said, feeling a mixture of sadness and anger growing in her chest.

  ‘Taking a statement? Lena, calm down.’

  What a tone! Lena wasn’t sad any more, she was furious. ‘I don’t want to be taken off a case just because you and I slept together, you know.’

  In the ensuing silence, she was able to count slowly to five.

  ‘Lena, I don’t want things to be like this between us.’

  Didn’t he understand anything? She had told him it was over!

  ‘We each work in our own worlds,’ Steffen persisted doggedly. ‘Right now these two worlds are clashing, so we have to be careful what we say. We have to discuss, tidy things up. I don’t want my banal job to ruin what we have or indeed any part of my private life. I’m sure you don’t either.’

  ‘You and I cannot carry on,’ she said. ‘And I think you’ll realise that if you give it some thought.’

  ‘Don’t break up with me over the phone,’ he said. ‘Give me a chance. Let’s meet and have this out.’

  ‘The problem is that you’re not open with me,’ she said. ‘We’re not communicating. You write things about me you’re not entitled to write. That’s no good.’

  The phone crackled in the silence.

  ‘Please, Lena. Let’s meet and sort this out.’

  ‘Answer me one thing,’ she said. ‘How could you not inform me?’

  ‘It was late,’ Steffen said softly. ‘I was under pressure and had a deadline. The paper wanted us to go public. You were in bed asleep. I made a decision. Maybe it was a mistake. All I can do is offer you my apologies. But it’s precisely because of situations like this that we have to talk and clear away any obstacles that our work puts in our way.’

  ‘Who took the photos?’

  ‘Don’t ask, Lena. He’s my deep throat. I can’t tell you. If we meet this evening, face to face, we can work out what information we can share.’

  She couldn’t be bothered with this any more. ‘The photographer was there and might be sitting on important information about where Adeler went afterwards. I work for the police. You have to understand that I cannot accept you withholding such information. Bye.’

  Immediately after she hung up, the phone rang again. She switched it off.

  3

  ‘Things are on the boil here,’ Gunnarstranda said as Lena came into the R&R room. ‘And all the press are asking to talk to you. They want to know more about Adeler’s death.’

  Lena hung up her coat. Thinking distractedly that she ought to go and look for the one she lost yesterday.

  The phone rang.

  Axel Rise, who came through the door at that moment, took the call. He listened, silent and patient. Then handed the receiver to Lena with an inquisitive expression.

  She shook her head.

  Rise put the receiver back to his ear and said: ‘I can put you through to the Press Office.’ With which he hung up. ‘Verdens Gang,’ he said to the other two, turned round and went out again.

  Gunnarstranda watched, then shook his head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Lena asked.

  Gunnarstranda opened his palms. ‘Can’t make that guy out. He seems to clock in and then he’s off.’

  He turned.
‘I suppose it’s none of my business though.’ He took the newspaper. ‘There’s something about the timing of these photos,’ he said. ‘If they were taken on Wednesday night, why have they only come out now?’

  Lena didn’t want to go into this speculation. Her focus was elsewhere. May as well get it over with, she thought, and braced herself: ‘I’ve spoken to the journalist.’

  Gunnarstranda looked up.

  ‘Apparently Dagens Næringsliv got the photos last night, but they refuse to release the name of the photographer.’

  ‘It can’t be a coincidence that this is coming out now,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘Someone’s burst the dam and the person who did it must be profiting in some way.’

  Lena had no more to add. She went to her own office.

  4

  She logged on. And googled MacFarrell Ltd. The hits she found told her more or less the same as what Steffen had told her, plus a little more. Mac-Farrell was a huge multi-national concern with many irons in the fire. Phosphate was just one of the concern’s investments. One article showed pictures of planned fertiliser production plants. No articles about the shortage of phosphate in the world, no doomsday prophets. Just dry facts, and photos of workers in red overalls and red safety helmets. A smiling man clambering into a big vehicle with immense wheels.

  So that’s what it looked like, Lena thought, when you depleted the world of its most important resource.

  Could the issue be as simple as Steffen had portrayed it? Why would the world go under if it ran out of fertiliser? Hadn’t the world lived for several thousand years with natural agriculture, with the use of natural muck from animals or compost from plant fibre? This was basic life-cycle knowledge that children learned at school. Farmers produced food from animals that returned nutrition in the form of manure and where there was insufficient manure they supplemented it with other forms of natural compost.

  On the other hand, the fertiliser industry was enormous. One of the biggest producers was the multi-national Yara, previously known as Norsk Hydro. This producer was in turn dependent on a supplier like MacFarrell.

  This was also basic school learning: the intensive use of fertiliser made agriculture more efficient, increased capacity and facilitated food production in areas that otherwise wouldn’t be able to produce food.

  She gave herself time to read Steffen’s article thoroughly.

  Then she noticed something she hadn’t picked up on when Gunnarstranda read her the excerpts on the phone: Steffen didn’t write the name of the relevant company. She read the text through again. She was right. MacFarrell Ltd wasn’t mentioned in the article.

  Steffen’s piece suggested a political conspiracy. The paper was saying that a politically suspect foreigner and a democratically elected Norwegian were cooking up some jiggery-pokery with a Norwegian official who might subsequently have been murdered.

  She fell into a reverie. Rose to her feet. Took a few steps, walked back. Sat down. Fumbled with the keyboard. Why hadn’t Steffen written the name of the company? He was an investigative journalist after all!

  She googled the organisation Polisario and skimmed through articles and reference material. The organisation was founded when the Spanish colonists withdrew from Western Sahara in 1973. There was warfare in the 1970s. Morocco held power in the towns while the independence movement controlled the desert and attacked the Moroccan army from bases in Algeria. Since then Morocco – to control the rebels – had built a long wall that divided the country lengthwise.

  Most internet sites told the same story: Morocco and Moroccan immigrants plundered Western Sahara’s natural resources while the local population was forced to live on barren terrain in poverty.

  Lena went onto the CIA’s websites and searched for organisations labelled terrorists. She couldn’t find the name Polisario and concluded it wasn’t on their lists.

  She repeated the search in various forms, putting ‘Polisario’ with ‘terrorism’, but there were no hits.

  Why did Steffen Gjerstad write that in some circles the organisation were regarded as terrorists?

  No one regarded Polisario as terrorists, it appeared.

  If Gunnarstranda was right, she thought, if someone had a particular interest in having these photos published, was Steffen allowing himself to be used?

  Lena doubted it. The photos were of general public interest. The journalist who wrote the article knew the MP was lying to the police about her presence at the meeting. Lena had told him that.

  So the question was: Was she being used by Steffen?

  She ruminated. Regretting the phone conversation. If she and Steffen had met face to face she would have confronted him with this.

  Lena turned to scanning the online newspapers. Most had run Adeler’s death as the main story. But the articles referred mostly to Steffen’s column; the journalists made them their own by adding comments from some opposition Storting MP.

  A couple of the newspapers had tried to get comments from Polisario, without success, however.

  Lena closed her laptop and got up. She glanced at her watch. Today she would get the results of her test. What would be worse: talking to the doctors or to Rindal? She dismissed the thought. That’s not how you should be thinking, she told herself. This is just a variant of the Birkebeiner. It is a long race with a variety of challenges. But you have to finish. She went into the corridor and knocked on Rindal’s door.

  5

  She opened the door and went in.

  Rindal was sitting behind his desk. He looked up, his eyes dark. ‘There’s a photo of you in the papers,’ he said grumpily.

  Lena closed the door behind her. She cleared her throat. ‘Apparently the photos at the restaurant were taken by a secret source – an informer.’

  Rindal continued to eye her darkly, without speaking.

  Lena coughed and continued. ‘As the informer was outside the restaurant and took the photos before they ate, he might know what happened after they ate as well. It may be worth the effort of finding him.’

  Rindal’s eyes were still cold. ‘How do you know this?’

  She nodded towards the newspaper. ‘I know the journalist a bit.’

  Rindal lifted his head, like a dog when it scents blood. ‘A bit? You know the journalist … a bit?’

  ‘Yes, a bit.’ Lena refrained from elaborating.

  ‘How well do you know the guy?’

  Lena didn’t answer.

  ‘Is he a childhood pal?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Is he a sweethea—?’

  She cut him off. ‘Don’t take this any further than necessary. I’ve told you I know the guy. Let’s move on.’

  Rindal watched Lena with a sarcastic smile, as though he could read her mind.

  She looked down.

  He sighed and shook his head in resignation. ‘Have you discussed the whole or parts of the investigation with the journalist?’

  ‘No. The photo of me was taken when we lifted Adeler from the harbour on Thursday morning. Steffen Gjerstad was one of the journalists by the cordon trying to get a comment.’

  ‘Beyond that you haven’t discussed this case with Gjerstad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s quoted you. You say the police consider Adeler’s death suspicious.’

  ‘I don’t remember having expressed anything of the kind. I rang him early today and discussed this point with him. I also asked him who took the photos at Flamingo Bar & Restaurant – to get the name. But Steffen wouldn’t tell me. And justified himself by saying he protected his sources.’ She coughed again. ‘I had the impression this was a special source. He referred to him as a type of deep throat.’

  ‘Steffen, eh?’ Rindal said, eyeing her more closely. ‘So you’re on first-name terms, are you?’

  She nodded.

  Rindal subjected her to an equally cold stare.

  She glared back defiantly. She blinked, but she held his eye.

  ‘I think we should do this by the boo
k,’ he said at length and lifted the phone. He rang Dagens Næringsliv and asked to speak to the editor concerned.

  Rindal introduced himself in authoritative fashion and asked for the name of the person who had taken the photos of Adeler and Vestgård.

  Why did he want it?

  Rindal sighed condescendingly. Because the police were in the middle of an investigation and apparently the photographer was one of the last people to see Adeler alive.

  Rindal listened to the editor’s response with his brows knitted in irritation.

  He put down the receiver, furious.

  ‘He didn’t want to say?’

  ‘Talked about press ethics and protecting their sources. We’re investigating murder for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘I have a suggestion,’ Lena said.

  Rindal arched his eyebrows.

  ‘A press conference,’ Lena said. ‘That’ll take some pressure out of the situation.’

  Rindal was silent, but he didn’t make an objection.

  ‘This case is Steffen Gjerstad’s scoop,’ Lena said. ‘He refers to his source as a kind of deep throat – so he’s working in a team with one or several other persons who will necessarily have an agenda. This newspaper doesn’t generally cover crime. I don’t think they’re particularly interested in Adeler’s death or our investigation. This is a newspaper that focuses on general politics and specifically the international role of the Oil Fund.’

  ‘If you know the journalist, couldn’t you get him to whisper the name of his source in your ear?’

  She chose not to answer. Looking him in the eye without saying a word.

  Rindal averted his gaze. ‘You’ve suggested a press conference. Why?’