Irgens stood up and went to the door. He opened it and stood aside. The audience was over.
10
Rindal was silent behind the wheel on their way back. As he turned into Mosseveien to head towards the city centre Lena could wait no longer and broke the silence. ‘Who is that guy actually?’
‘Irgens goes way back,’ Rindal said. ‘He’s an institution.’
Once again they fell into silence.
Lena decided she would drop the lawyer. There were other topics she would rather pursue.
‘I just can’t get it to tally,’ she said at length. ‘Why would Vestgård lie to me twice just because she was young and wild in the eighties and had a child with an African? What was she risking by telling me that? It’s much worse to lie to the police than it is to confess she’s had a child out of wedlock!’
Rindal said nothing. He just stared in front of him.
‘Why was it so bloody important for Shamoun to meet Adeler?’
‘You heard why. He wanted to have some influence. It was Adeler’s job to listen to people like Shamoun. Incidentally, I couldn’t care less why the woman lied,’ Rindal said. ‘And nor should you. This meeting was initiated by the top boss. The fact that Irgens had Vestgård come to his house and condescended to open his door to you and me means Vestgård isn’t lying any more. You can bet your ass on that.’
Lena looked out. It was dark already.
This time Rindal broke the silence. ‘Stian Rømer – what was that about?’
‘His name came up.’
Rindal pulled in and stopped. He turned in his seat and looked at her. ‘Wrong answer, Lena. The name didn’t come up. You dug it up. Do you think I’m a complete idiot? Lena, listen to me. Aud Helen Vestgård is involved in Polisario through this Asim Shamoun, whom she can’t escape because the guy’s the father of her child. What’s more, the police interest in Stian Rømer is hush-hush. Our job is to find a gunman. We’ll do that; you and I and Gunnarstranda will do that because it’s our job. And our job has nothing to do with the Secret Services, do you understand? Have you got that straight?’
‘When Ingrid Kobro briefed you about Stian Rømer, did she tell you the guy ran after me with a gun?’
‘Of course. But he isn’t after you any more.’
‘Nina Stenshagen and Stig Eriksen were shot and killed,’ Lena said. ‘Stian Rømer’s the nearest I’ve been to a gun – after we fished Adeler out of the harbour.’
Rindal breathed in before continuing in a low voice. ‘This job’s like being a bullfighter. Think corrida, Lena. It’s a fight. But to win the fight you have to pass, to feint and sense the right moment. Charging over and killing everything in your path is a tactic you should leave to the bull. Let the bull try to gore you, let the bull charge forwards, you perform a pass and wait for the moment with your sword because you’ll win. Actually I have this imagery from Gunnarstranda,’ Rindal grinned. ‘You can play many a good tune on an old fiddle, isn’t that what they say? Anyway. We’ll crack this case. We’ll win. We’ll feint, Lena. So let’s leave Stian Rømer to the Secret Services – at least as long as he’s out of the country. You and I can rely on Ingrid Kobro, for the time being. Anything else isn’t worthy of a matador.’
Rindal handed her the statement he had been given by Vestgård.
‘What shall I do with this?’ Lena asked.
‘This is evidence. File it away. You’re leading the investigation.’
Lena took the two sheets.
‘What about the guys in the team? Shouldn’t they be informed?’
‘Gunnarstranda, Rise and Yttergjerde,’ said Rindal, detailing the team. ‘I’ll ring each and every one of them.’
11
The first thing Lena did when she was back at Police HQ was to file Vestgård’s statement. First of all she categorised the statement with a stamp: CONFIDENTIAL in big blue letters on each side. Now it was official.
Afterwards she looked at her watch. She had several hours to kill. She drove to the apartment in Vogts gate.
It was the second time Lena had unlocked Adeler’s letter box. Bills, unsolicited advertising leaflets and a parcel from amazon.com, which appeared to contain a DVD. No personal letters. Not so much as a Christmas card.
The seal she had put across the door was untouched.
She broke the seal and went in.
She switched on the hall light, closed the door behind her and surveyed the flat. It was as quiet as a mausoleum.
Now Lena went to work, systematically opening drawers and examining their contents, object by object. She took out clothes from cabinets and went through trouser and jacket pockets, took out all the trainers and returned them. The laundry bin was a woven basket. She removed the lid and emptied it. Two pairs of jeans. Three track suits, a number of pairs of boxer shorts, two pairs of long johns and a little pile of socks. She went through everything, item by item, checking pockets.
She found nothing.
But what was she looking for? Mostly she was looking for Sveinung Adeler. She visualised the tall, fair-haired man he must have been, sitting on the sofa watching TV, getting up and going to the kitchenette to get some … sweets?
She opened the kitchen drawers, no sweets. So Adeler was not the kind of person to have a stock of chili nuts or goodies to munch while watching a film. He had been a fitness junkie with an iron will.
The Sveinung Adeler Lena visualised was also a tidiness junkie – a person of punctilious habits; someone who didn’t leave notes everywhere and didn’t save old newspapers; someone who put everything in its place, who spent time and energy on keeping the place neat.
Such characteristics are often carefully thought through, Lena reflected. Many such pedants have an annoying effect on others and their fastidiousness is commented on. Tidiness freaks will tend to justify their sense of order by pointing to their efficiency and the results they achieve. But this absence of a personal touch in such a private space as a flat could go one of two ways, she reasoned, it might either appear frightening or it was a symptom of vulnerability.
Lena concluded that Sveinung Adeler lived and operated on at least two fundamentally different levels. He had a job during the day and he had a home without the tiniest trace of his job. In his flat there were no notes, circulars, documents or books that revealed what this guy did for a living. Not even a payslip.
Sveinung Adeler trained, he did the Birkebeiner. Where were his skis?
He had a storage room, thought Lena, a cellar room for skis, poles and boxes full of old diplomas, Asterix magazines and discarded computer games. But, she reminded herself, before I look there I have to go through everything here with a fine-tooth comb.
In the bedroom she opened the drawer in the bedside table next to the double bed. Three glossy magazines. One copy of Sports Illustrated and two copies of Playboy.
Lena flicked through the pages with glossy photos of women in corsets, stockings and stiletto heels reclining on sheepskins in front of fires.
She put the magazines back and looked under the bed. No shoebox of old love letters or pictures of barrack life during military service, nothing.
She went into the sitting room. Surveyed the wall of films. Carefully pulled out the odd DVD box, all of which were Hollywood’s version of reality: muscular men running through streets or throwing themselves from rooftops with guns in their hands.
She went to the window and looked out onto a shopping mall. That’s where reality was, she thought, watching customers trudging along the pavements behind lines of parked cars. An elderly man in a long winter coat and an unfashionable hat schlepping two bulging carrier bags had to rest and put down the bags. He carried on, met a bank of cleared snow and managed with some difficulty to get over it, first with one bag, then he went back for the other.
Lena turned her back on the window. She sat down on the leather sofa and stared at the widescreen TV. Lifted the remote and switched it on.
A head appeared, a CNN news anchor.
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Lena switched it off. Would she really have to leave this flat without discovering one single tiny secret?
The most revealing side of sticklers for tidiness is what they tidy away. She looked at the kitchenette. The somewhat rotten smell of rubbish told her there was a bin bag under the worktop.
Lena got up and found a half-full bag in the cupboard under the sink.
She emptied the contents onto the worktop.
Disgusting coffee grounds and the stinking leftovers of food, packaging and two ballpoint pen tops.
Lena poked through the rubbish with a fork from the kitchen drawer and found some scrunched-up paper. Most of it was advertising. But between the colourful leaflets there shone a corner of something white: a folded envelope. It was addressed to Sveinung Adeler, but there was no stamp.
To find a private letter in this clinically impersonal abode made her hands tremble.
She fumbled as she opened the envelope. Inside was a small, folded note. A short message written in blue ink:
Got your message, but couldn’t reach you on the phone. Wednesday after 11 pm is fine. Look forward to seeing you.
L
Lena clenched her fist in triumph. This was a lead – a concrete lead.
The person who had written this note might be a girlfriend, someone his parents knew nothing about.
Or was she a date? Or maybe just a good friend?
Where was the line between a friend and a girlfriend?
Would a good friend have written ‘Look forward to seeing you’? Would a good friend have looked forward to meeting Sveinung Adeler at eleven at night?
First Adeler goes to a work dinner. Then he says goodbye to work and duty.
The mysterious L had to be Adeler’s date, but what kind of date?
Lena re-read the note: ‘Got your message’. The choice of words suggested they had met several times before.
The three people had parted outside the restaurant in Grefsen. The taxi pulled up beside them. Adeler turned down the offer of a lift. He was going on a date with the mysterious L.
Vestgård had no idea about Adeler’s arrangement, so Adeler couldn’t have said anything – but might that mean his relationship with the unknown L was secret? For all Lena knew, L might be an acquaintance from his home patch of Jølster. If so, the Chief of Police in Jølster would be able to find out.
Lena remembered the reports sent from Jølster. Sveinung Adeler’s family had made no mention of any girlfriend. Nor had they listed anyone whose name started with an L.
Lena tried to imagine Adeler after a good dinner, late at night, wanting to take a taxi alone because he was going to see L, who was looking forward to seeing him.
If the mysterious L was a kind of girlfriend, it was, to put it mildly, strange that she hadn’t contacted the police. Adeler was supposed to meet her after eleven and ended up drowning before day had dawned.
This mysterious L must have something to hide.
What if L had some dangerous friends?
Who has dangerous friends?
Could L be a prostitute?
No, hardly likely. Adeler had two thousand two hundred kroner in his pockets when he was found. He had withdrawn three thousand from a cashpoint the same day. So Adeler’s expenses in the course of the evening had been eight hundred, give or take, depending on how much cash he’d had before the withdrawal. The dinner had been reasonably priced; they hadn’t drunk much. According to the woman who served them Adeler had paid his share of the bill and he had done so in cash.
Presumably Adeler hadn’t bought any sex during the night. In all probability the mysterious L was not a prostitute.
Lena read the message again: Got your message, but couldn’t reach you on the phone…
Lena had contacted Telenor and asked for a print-out of the activity on Adeler’s mobile phone. She still didn’t have it. High time she reminded them. She looked at her watch. She had an engagement and needed to get home.
12
Lena reckoned it would take her about twenty minutes to drive from home and through the town. She planned to leave so that she would arrive around ten minutes late.
The car was freezing cold as she got in. She let the engine idle, wriggled out and scraped the ice from the windscreen. She had to lean over the bonnet and got snow and road salt on her trousers. With a handful of clean snow she rubbed off the salt stain. The cold soon penetrated through her clothes. Shivering, she got back in behind the wheel, turned the heater on full and set off.
Was it wrong to give in to Steffen, to meet him so that they could ‘discuss’? She had no idea. All she knew was that if they found any common ground she would have to tell him, loud and clear, that she had cancer. What would happen then? Would he be afraid? Would he beat a retreat? Would he think – I don’t want to be involved with a sick woman!?
Fine. Then it was clear. Nothing more to discuss. They would go their separate ways. It had been nice for as long as it had lasted. So long. Farewell.
Or would he react in the opposite way?
What if he did? Would that be alright or not? What did she actually want?
Wrong, she thought at once. You mustn’t expect anything. You have no right to expect specific reactions. He has his own life to lead and must be allowed to react in his own way. You and he…
She braked for the red lights and turned the heater down. Unzipped her jacket.
What have I got myself into with this man?
How many times had they met? First, a nice evening. Then, next morning, she is misquoted in the newspaper. When she says adios he immediately offers an apology and says they have to talk, disentangle their private lives from work.
He was dead right about that. They each had their own jobs, but they had become entangled because of Sveinung Adeler.
She gave a start when the car behind her hooted. The lights had changed to green. The car leapt forwards when she let out the clutch and moved off.
He was the one who had asked to meet to sort out their differences, to tidy up the grey zone between the relationship and work. That had to be the top priority now. Define the circles they moved in: this much is job, this much is shared…
In which case, she thought, slightly dejected, this was not the right moment to tell Steffen about the tumour.
But if it wasn’t, when was?
If, if, if!
Admit it! You’ve finished with a guy over the phone and now you’re running back into his arms.
We’ve known each other … how long? I’ve had my life turned upside down in that time, but have I the right to involve him in it?
Would it be right to include illness in the upcoming conversation? To be kind of asking for sympathy? To lay it on the line: Listen up, I’m ill, I might die in a year or two, what do you say? Are you going to stick it out with me or are you going to do a runner?
Wouldn’t it be equally inhuman not to tell him about the illness?
So what shall I do?
She was reminded of what the nurse had said: ‘Illness never comes at the right time’.
She spotted a gap in the line of cars on the opposite side of Hegdehaugsveien, parked, her mind elsewhere, and sat for a few minutes thinking before she got out. They had never met at Steffen’s. She had never seen how he lived, his private world.
When she rang the bell on the door it was opened at once. She went inside, feeling a little embarrassed. They stood for a few silent seconds checking each other out. He’s embarrassed too, she thought.
On the wall by the entrance there was a 1950s film poster. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. And the film title: Notorious. The poster was framed, but there were creases and marks to suggest it had been folded. In fact, it looked like the genuine article.
‘Is that an original?’ she asked, hanging up her jacket and looking around. Warm colours, two big hooks for outdoor clothes, a shelf for shoes on the floor.
He nodded. ‘You’re late,’ he said.
‘I had to work,’ she s
aid. ‘Top-secret stuff. Mustn’t tell outsiders what I’m working on. Professional ethics, you know.’
He took the jibes with downcast eyes. It couldn’t be helped. It felt wonderful to say what she felt.
She kicked off her boots.
‘What are you staring at?’ she said.
‘You. You look great. You are a—’
She pressed her forefinger against his lips. ‘Don’t say any more. If you exaggerate I’ll stop believing you.’
He removed her hand. Pulled her close to him.
She gently pushed him away. ‘Now you’re going a bit too fast.’
He smiled.
It was contagious. She smiled back. ‘I thought I was setting the agenda.’
He splayed his hands.
‘I have to ask you something,’ she said, going into the sitting room. It was spacious with a broad white sofa down one wall. There were posters with pictures of old film stars above the sofa. Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth, more attractive men and glamorous women whose names she didn’t know.
‘Do you collect them?’
‘Collect may be going a bit too far. I think some old film posters have style.’
He had set a table in the kitchenette. Pink prawns in a large bowl on the table. White bread, lemon and a green bottle of Riesling. White serviettes, even lit candles.
She stepped closer to the glass-framed posters. There were titles like The Strawberry Blonde, The Devil Thumbs a Ride, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.
She turned to him. ‘I’ve got a question for you and I want an honest answer. Do you truly believe, upon mature reflection, that members of the parliamentary Finance Committee are conspiring with a foreign resistance movement to use a low-ranking official to manipulate the Oil Fund?’
The Ice Swimmer Page 19
