The Ice Swimmer

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  ‘Mean?’

  Lena was sweating feverishly.

  ‘You’re wondering if we…’ His grin spread wider and he winked at her. ‘If you and I … Wish I could say yes,’ he said, ‘but you were in no state.’ He looked at her with the same mischievous eyes.

  She didn’t want to hear any more. She held her ears as her cheeks burned.

  ‘I had to carry you in here, and I slept on the sitting-room sofa.’

  She was sweating, still blushing, but she ventured a smile. ‘Now you’re joking,’ she said tentatively, searching for something in his eyes that could confirm what he had said.

  He shook his head and coughed. ‘If you’re feeling better and the offer’s still on the table…’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Go away. I have to get dressed.’

  He turned to go.

  ‘Frankie,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did I say anything about myself of a private nature?’

  He wrinkled his brow. ‘You were off on your usual number – your father dying etc etc etc. Sorry, but I always close my ears when you start on that one.’

  ‘Did we talk about illness?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He went and closed the door behind him.

  She sat up in bed. Her hands were shaking. What had actually happened that morning? Why had it happened to her?

  She closed her eyes. Remembered the car trip, which was as fragmented as the previous evening and night. The fist that hit her. She had seen him before. He had ripped open the door and flexed his muscles. Stuffed a gun in his trousers and charged after her. Stian Rømer.

  He had recognised her when she opened the door. He had wanted to drag her into the flat. And yesterday morning he had been waiting for her in Steffen’s flat.

  Frankie knocked on the door. ‘Are you coming? Shall we eat?’

  ‘Coming,’ Lena said, starting to get dressed.

  2

  The sight of Frankie Frølich with egg yolk in his beard was too much for her. Lena couldn’t think about food and left without eating. She had listened patiently to Frankie’s directions – which Metro station and where to change. His words were forgotten as soon as she stepped out of the lift. But there were three taxis in a line outside. She walked straight over and got in the back seat of the front one. The car was driven by a lean man smelling strongly of perfume and talking Arabic on his phone the whole time.

  She was at her desk by twelve, but still couldn’t bear the thought of food.

  It’s like being in a plane, she thought. You sit by the window as the plane goes in to land in thick cloud. Now and again you see green fields and houses on the ground, then you see nothing but white cloud, and when it clears you see other houses, roads and streets.

  The swish of windscreen wipers. The beating of waves before he keeled over and was gone.

  And yesterday: on the razzle and talking nonsense. She was embarrassed by her behaviour. The mere thought of drowning your sorrows in alcohol was wrong. She had to focus.

  What shall I focus on?

  The mysterious L. The tangible clue in the Adeler case.

  Telenor had emailed her to say that the unregistered mobile Adeler had rung was located in Frogner, Oslo. We-ell, Lena thought, Frogner was a big area. If the mysterious L was the owner of the phone she was a woman in one of Oslo’s most populated districts, stretching from Majorstua to Bygdøy. If the phone was on the peninsula, Telenor’s base stations would pick it up. Lena decided to try the second name, a Lisbet Enderud. Address: Bygdøy allé.

  What had she found out? Adeler had rung the duty-free shops at the airport. A woman who worked there went by the name of Lisbet and lived in West Oslo. But Lena knew nothing about this Lisbet. It could be a dead end.

  Lena looked up the name anyway. Lisbet Enderud, who lived in Bygdøy allé, was also registered as having a landline.

  Lena rang the number and got an answerphone: ‘Hi, this is Lisbet. As you can see, I’m not at home right now. Leave a message and I’ll call back.’

  Lena waited for the tone, then left her name and telephone number.

  As soon as she put down the phone the fax began to chunter. She turned her head and watched it. A sheet of paper rose slowly from the machine. Dutifully, Lena got up. Walked over and took the first sheet. Immediately she broke into a sweat. She looked into the corridor. No one around. Nevertheless, she closed the door.

  She had hung onto the man’s leg. She had caused him to fall into the sea. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, not yet.

  Several more sheets followed. Lena collected them as they came out and rolled them up.

  The machine continued: it spewed out a series of photos.

  They were photos of a body, a man who had drowned. Unidentified. There was a message with them:

  Could anyone offer any information to help identify the deceased?

  The dead man’s face was beaten and bloodstained. His clothes were in tatters. His skin was cut and grazed. Both eyes were splodges of red. Pecked at by seabirds, Lena guessed. The body lay distorted between rocks at low tide. Ice on the ground.

  Stian Rømer’s dead body had been found.

  That could have been me, Lena thought. She swayed and had to hold onto the wall. The moment was back. Numb fingertips on the cold, icy rock face. Waves beating below. Her hanging onto his leg and feeling him lose his balance.

  She took a deep breath. Breathed out. Breathed in again.

  This is not my fault! This is what he was trying to do to me!

  But then he lost his footing and fell.

  Lena relived the moment. She was clinging to the man’s leg.

  She heard footsteps in the corridor. Straightened up, took a deep breath. Held the fax machine with both hands.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Lena, sweating, didn’t move. Go away, she thought, panic-stricken. Don’t try the door, just leave! Go away! Now!

  The machine spewed out sheet after sheet.

  Lena stared blindly at the accompanying text to the photos: the body had been found by two small boys playing in the rocks in Kadettangen. The photos were sent by Asker and Bærum Police District.

  Should she take a peek, see if the person outside had left.

  At last! The final sheet. The machine fell quiet.

  There. The fading sound of footsteps. For safety’s sake, she waited a few seconds, in case another fax came.

  When she was sure there were no more sheets to come, she put on her outdoor clothes.

  She had to talk about this man and there was one person in particular she wanted to confront.

  Lena set off for the headquarters of the Police Security Services in Nydalen.

  3

  At the reception desk of PST she asked to speak to Ingrid Kobro. The man behind the glass partition lifted the phone and swung round on his chair. Then he stuck out his head and told her to deposit her phone in one of the wall lockers.

  Lena said she didn’t need to go inside or hand in anything. She waited.

  Ingrid came down in the lift to meet her.

  Now there were a lot of people in the reception area. A group of visitors had arrived for a tour. A lot of commotion regarding lockers and mobile phones.

  Lena asked Ingrid to wait until they were alone. As soon as the barrier closed behind the visitors, Lena passed the wad of photos to Ingrid, who flicked through them quickly.

  ‘This is the man you claimed was out of the country. His body’s been washed ashore at Kadettangen in Sandvika.’

  Ingrid Kobro flicked through with renewed energy. Studying the face of the dead man.

  ‘Two small boys were playing there earlier today. They noticed a lot of seabirds pecking at a bundle by the water’s edge. Asker and Bærum have just faxed over the photos in the hope that other police districts can identify the body. I think you might be able to help them.’

  Ingrid glanced wordlessly from the photo
s to Lena and back again.

  The doors opened. A chubby woman in her fifties came in, nodded to Ingrid and stopped by the electronic barrier.

  Ingrid and Lena stood silently watching as she produced a smart card and bustled through.

  Ingrid met Lena’s gaze and said with great earnestness in her voice: ‘He can’t hurt you any longer, Lena.’

  Lena took a deep breath. For a second she was tempted to tell her about the mock fire, the attack in Steffen’s flat, the journey in the car to Asker, the nightmare at the edge of the cliff and the man who fell into the sea. But she restrained herself.

  However, Lena was unable to restrain her fury. ‘Are you married to your bloody job or what?’ she snarled. Then continued in a whisper: ‘You lied to me, Ingrid. Fine, I lie sometimes too; everyone does. But you let the job take priority and you lied to my face. That wouldn’t’ve mattered much either, had it not affected my personal safety. The guy continued to walk around with a gun in his back pocket after he’d tried to use it on me once already. What is it about your job that makes all the cloak-and-dagger-stuff you do more important than my safety? Have you thought about that? Eh?’

  Lena turned on her heel and left.

  Ingrid followed her. ‘Lena, wait!’

  ‘I know he checked onto the flight!’

  ‘But did you check the passenger list afterwards?’ Lena asked, and read the answer in Ingrid’s pensive expression.

  ‘The easiest trick in the world,’ Lena carried on angrily. ‘Check onto a flight with no luggage and take the train back instead of boarding. And you lot boast you have competent undercover agents!’

  Ingrid grabbed Lena’s arm, but she shook her off.

  They stood face to face. ‘He’s dead,’ Ingrid Kobro said. ‘He can’t hurt you. And now I want you to hear what I have to say. And you’d better obey: I’m ordering you not to say a word about this person. I’m ordering you not to say a word to Asker and Bærum.’

  ‘Are you going to hush it up? Asker and Bærum have already faxed the photos all over the country.’

  ‘Be quiet for two seconds and listen,’ Ingrid snapped. ‘I’m ordering you not to say a word about Stian Rømer, to forget him. Have you got that?’

  Lena was speechless. She turned and started to walk away.

  Ingrid followed.

  Lena stopped.

  ‘Have you understood what I’m ordering you to do,’ Ingrid asked with a stony expression.

  The seconds ticked by.

  Ingrid waited. Her eyes still flashed as she lightly smacked Lena’s shoulder with the roll of documents.

  ‘Yes,’ Lena said, and breathed in, out, then in again and sensed she was finding her balance.

  She left Ingrid Kobro without a backward glance. She walked down the road slowly, thinking at every step:

  Ingrid knows.

  Ingrid knows I know what happened to Stian Rømer. But I don’t care. I can’t do anything about Ingrid Kobro’s thoughts or conclusions.

  In her heart she knew Ingrid had already turned round and taken the lift back up to the offices behind closed blinds.

  She marched down to the city centre. Warm from the exercise, she caught a bus to Bygdøy allé.

  4

  She got off at Frogner Church. The bus stop was like a young forest with all the Christmas trees for sale. Imported blue spruces, silver firs, Norwegian spruces – even the odd pine – stacked against one another.

  Lena searched for the address of the woman Adeler had rung on his mobile phone during working hours. She lived in one of the art nouveau blocks with curved balcony fronts about fifty metres down from the bus stop.

  Lena went to the front entrance.

  She checked the nameplates by the bells. Lisbet Enderud’s name was by the bell at the top right.

  She pressed the button.

  Nothing happened.

  She pressed again.

  The door stayed locked.

  Lena crossed the street, leaned against the wall and peered up at the windows of the top floor.

  As she had nothing else to do, she decided to wait.

  She waited for two uneventful hours. On the other hand, she did learn quite a bit about Norwegian rituals when buying a Christmas tree. Some busy men grabbed a tree at full speed and hurried away with stooped backs and their eyes on the ground as though they were ashamed of the purchase and wanted to go into hiding as soon as they could. Others, generally older women, were good friends with the Christmas-tree seller, asked him how he was, and his family, listened to his recommendations and what he thought about so many trees being imported from Denmark … and there’s us in Norway, surrounded on all sides by forest. Sometimes couples came pulling their children on toboggans. These customers took their time, examining tree after tree while the young ones played between the spruces. An older woman in a mink coat complained about the price and reminisced about the old days when she and her husband went into the fields to pick up loose spruce branches, which they pressed into holes they had drilled into the trunk of a pathetic specimen this seller’s predecessor had tricked them into buying one Christmas Eve when he was almost sold out and couldn’t be bothered to drive back to the farm for more trees.

  Lena told herself she would have to remember to buy a Christmas tree one of these days, drive by her mother’s afterwards and put it on the veranda. Do it tomorrow, she thought, well in time for Christmas Eve, anyway.

  Well in time? Christmas Eve was around the corner and she hadn’t finished getting presents yet.

  While she was thinking this, it struck her she didn’t have the energy to rack her brains for presents. She had too much else on her mind.

  After two hours the windows on the top floor were still dark.

  On her way home she popped by the bookshop at the bottom of Bygdøy allé. She went to the back of the shop, to the shelves to which books that didn’t make it onto the front display tables were consigned. This was where Lena found the books she liked. She found several this time, too. But she wanted them for herself. So she gave them a miss and drove home to change into warmer clothes.

  It was past five in the afternoon when she got into her car and drove back, found a free parking space by Gimle terrasse and strolled towards Bygdøy allé. A little later she nodded to the Christmas-tree seller, who was busy pulling the trees through the funnel that enclosed the trees in netting. Lena had dressed like the seller, in blue nylon overalls, moonboots and a leather hat with earflaps.

  It was an ordeal doing surveillance in sub-zero temperatures. Lena kept warm by moving. For variation she leaned against the wall, went for brisk walks up and down the pavement or jumped up and down, hidden by the Christmas trees.

  ‘Anything in particular you’re after?’

  Lena gave a start. It was the tree seller. His light-blue eyes flashed under the fur cap. His cheeks were as red as apples and his wry smile revealed that one front tooth was a crown that was much whiter than the rest. In his hand he was holding a tall, slim tree with shiny needles.

  ‘This one would suit you,’ he said with a wink. ‘It matches your personality.’

  ‘It’s a bit too big,’ Lena said, embarrassed, and uncertain as to how she should tackle this advance. ‘I’m celebrating Christmas with my mother, and she has a low ceiling.’

  The tree-seller nodded and turned to find alternatives.

  ‘The tree’s nice,’ Lena said quickly, ‘but actually I’m not after a tree now. I’m working.’

  ‘Working?’ the tree-seller said, mystified.

  ‘Counting cars,’ Lena answered. ‘I’m checking the traffic here in Bygdøy.’

  A young couple came along the pavement and started moving between the trees. ‘Customers,’ the tree-seller said with an apologetic expression and walked away.

  He’s going to come back, Lena thought, and crossed the street in case he did.

  Just before seven a shadow waved from the driver’s seat of a black BMW. It drove past and pulled in to the bus stop.
It was Iqbal from the undercover section. He buzzed down the window.

  ‘You’ve got an hour,’ he shouted.

  ‘Two,’ Lena shouted back. ‘I haven’t eaten and I’m dying for the loo.’

  ‘One and a half,’ Iqbal said.

  She took two hours. Balkan Kebab had the best food, but at Bislett Kebabhouse the service was faster. Lena was handed the food at once. She was starving and wolfed it down with a Coke. But it wasn’t enough. She fancied something sweet.

  I’m ill, she told herself. I can allow myself to push the boat out. So she set a course for Pascal’s in Drammensveien and bought two cream sponges covered with marzipan and decorated with, among other things, red and green flowers that doubtless contained artificial sugar and unhealthy preservatives. She made short work of them, licked her fingers and concluded that cake-making was a profoundly unacknowledged art form. The taste of rum cream, vanilla, chocolate, almonds, marzipan and strawberry exploded in her mouth, causing the freezing temperatures to recede and morph into a sensual tingle on her skin. Afterwards she felt like more and wondered what was happening to the body she inhabited. It never used to behave like this. The sweet things she normally indulged in were fruit and yoghurt.

  It wasn’t only her body that was behaving differently. Her beloved Micra was starting to be affected by the cold too. At first she noticed danger signs from the interior light, which was dimmer than normal when she opened the door. On turning the ignition key a grating moan came from the starter motor. She tried again. Same result. Nervous, Lena let it rest for a few seconds, then turned the key for a third time. The engine started and she patted the Micra’s dashboard as though it were an old friend. ‘Good ol’ boy!’

  She drove back to Bygdøy allé, waved to Iqbal and searched for a parking space. Finally she found one in Gabels gate.

  When she was back on her plot she saw the Christmas-tree seller was packing up. Nevertheless, he offered her a coffee from a steel Thermos. Lena accepted and took a paper cup half full of what resembled liquid asphalt. She couldn’t even swallow it. Anyway, she was ill and was supposed to stay off coffee and alcohol and drink vegetable juices bursting with antioxidants.