The Ice Swimmer

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  Lena felt faint.

  Gunnarstranda chuckled. ‘The girl lives in Bygdøy allé, eh? Sweet blonde with lots of textbooks lying around?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That’s her,’ Gunnarstranda said.

  Lena gulped. The trail she followed on Saturday night was growing warmer.

  The silence on the line told Lena that Gunnarstranda was thinking the same.

  ‘I’ll ring you back,’ Lena said, looking at her watch. ‘No, I’ll see you in ten minutes.’

  Lena hung up and tapped in the number of Lisbet Enderud. The phone rang twice before she picked up.

  ‘It’s me again, Stigersand,’ Lena said.

  ‘Hi,’ Lisbet said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m ringing because I have to ask you something. Last Friday you were contacted by a short bald cop wearing rubber overshoes who asked you about a threatening letter. Is that correct?’

  Lisbet was able to confirm this.

  ‘Has anyone else asked you about the letter?’

  ‘No. My jaw dropped when I heard. Mostly because of the letter, but also because the strange guy said he was a police officer.’

  Lena thanked her.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Lisbet said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Olaf?’

  ‘When we do, we’ll inform you.’

  Lena rang off and concentrated on establishing a chain of events:

  Gunnarstranda had visited Lisbet on Friday, 11th December. Axel Rise should have done it the Thursday before, but he hadn’t. So Rindal must have been given the threatening letter job by PST a few hours after Adeler was found drowned.

  When could the letter have been received at parliament? As the letter contained a threat against an MP it was quickly handed onto PST, who presumably did a speedy assessment and sent the letter on to Rindal who…

  The letter must have been delivered to parliament on Thursday morning – the same day that Adeler was found dead. This wasn’t just probable. It had to be like this. If the letter had been received the day before, on Wednesday, someone in the department would have gone to see Lisbet that same evening or night.

  Lena concentrated on recapitulating the order of events:

  Sveinung Adeler is out with Aud Helen Vestgård and Asim Shamoun on Wednesday evening. They part company at eleven. Half an hour later Adeler arrives at Lisbet’s flat. They’re together all night, and he leaves her at around five in the morning. Half an hour later, at the latest, he is pushed into the harbour and held down with a plank and drowns. The killer pursues the eyewitness, Nina Stenshagen, to the Metro, onto the train, off the train and into a tunnel. He shoots Nina, camouflages the murder as an accident and disappears without trace.

  Shortly afterwards, presumably at about nine, the morning post is opened at parliament and Vestgård receives a death threat signed by Lisbet Enderud.

  Gunnarstranda didn’t think the letter could have been written by Lisbet. His theory was that the death threat was a pointer – a letter sent to Vestgård from an unknown person, to discredit Lisbet.

  In other words, someone – the letter-writer – wanted to lead the police to Lisbet Enderud. Why? And why her? And why threaten Aud Helen Vestgård?

  Three questions. Lena didn’t know the answers. However, she knew what the questions and the answers had to mean: the death threat must have had something to do with Adeler’s death.

  Of course, they had to check out Lisbet’s boyfriend. That was a job for Emil Yttergjerde, she thought, and rang him at once.

  With the phone to her ear, she let her gaze wander over the advertisements in the bus. The driver stopped. Several more passengers got on.

  On the seat in front of her a man was reading a newspaper with pink pages.

  Lena craned her neck and looked over his shoulder. She saw a photo of Aud Helen Vestgård and Asim Shamoun.

  He turned over the page.

  Immediately Lena broke into a sweat. What was in today’s paper?

  2

  Lena jumped off at Jerbanetorg and walked against the flow, into the concourse of the old Oslo East Station, looking for a newspaper kiosk.

  The story was hinted at with a little teaser in the margin on the front page: ‘Vestgård Dismisses Controversial Meeting’.

  Lena was taken aback by Steffen’s toned-down vocabulary. What had previously been put forward as a political conspiracy was now reduced to a controversial meeting. Lena bought the newspaper and flipped through to the article. The teaser turned out to be inaccurate. Vestgård didn’t dismiss anything. She hadn’t been interviewed or asked about anything. It was the journalist, Steffen Gjerstad, who was doing the dismissing with – in Lena’s eyes – an unusually unpleasant revelation: Dagens Næringsliv had discovered that MP Aud Helen Vestgård had had a child with the man responsible in Scandinavia for fronting the civilian façade of a military and very controversial resistance movement. Here Steffen had moderated his language as well. The word ‘terrorist’ was eliminated.

  What irked Lena was the fact that Steffen had been told about Vestgård’s highly confidential statement. That was anything but good news. There was a leak in their group. No doubt about it. Someone was telling Steffen what was going on. Lena had a fairly clear idea who. She knew the people Steffen knew and who would willingly give him information. But it was one thing knowing and quite another having tangible proof.

  Lena rang Steffen as she was striding up the hill to Police HQ.

  ‘Hi Lena. Thought you would ring.’

  Lena got straight to the point: ‘Who told you about Vestgård and the child she had with Asim Shamoun?’

  ‘You know I’m a journalist, Lena. I don’t reveal my sources.’

  Fuck you, Lena thought.

  ‘I wanted to ask you quite a different question,’ Steffen said.

  Lena hung up before he had finished talking.

  She went in and ran up the stairs.

  On the fifth step Steffen called her back.

  She switched off her phone.

  She continued to the third floor and went straight into Rindal’s office.

  The newspaper lay on his desk.

  Rindal was standing by the window. He glanced at her. ‘I suppose it’s obvious, but I have to ask you anyway,’ he said. ‘Are you the source?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I want to hear an answer,’ Rindal said coldly.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t said a word.’

  ‘Someone has,’ he said. ‘Someone has passed on information given to you and me in the strictest confidence to this journalist. You know him personally. You admitted that earlier.’

  Lena was startled by his choice of words: admitted? Was this an interrogation?

  She steeled herself and answered calmly: ‘Admitted is the wrong word. I told you in confidence that I know the journalist. But you can be sure of one thing: I am not his source.’

  Rindal fixed her with a stare. Eventually he cleared his throat. ‘You and I had a private conversation with Irgens and Vestgård. We guaranteed them discretion as we left.’

  ‘Everyone in the investigation team was informed afterwards,’ Lena countered. ‘There are many of us who know, many of us who might’ve spoken to Steffen Gjerstad and—’

  He raised a hand to stop her.

  She fell silent. She was talking nonsense. There weren’t many people who had contact with Steffen. There were two. Her and Axel Rise. As Lena wasn’t the source, Axel had to be Steffen’s source. But she couldn’t bring herself to say that aloud. She was no squealer. She would have to take this up with Axel personally.

  Rindal took a piece of paper from the desk.

  ‘We’ve been accused of a dereliction of duty. You have been accused.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Irgens.’

  ‘Irgens?’

  ‘He says Vestgård made her statement on condition there was total discretion. He’s demanding an investigation into the l
eak and has informed our internal committee, SEFO, that you have an intimate relationship with the journalist who penned this article. They’ve decided you need to be investigated.’

  ‘And what do you say?’ Lena exclaimed in disbelief.

  ‘Lena, you’re right. There are many people who could be the journalist’s source. But you’re leading the investigation. You were present in Irgens’s office when the information was given and you know the journalist. You’re in a relationship with him, isn’t that right?’

  ‘A relationship?’

  ‘Wake up, girl. Tongues wag. It’s well known here that you’re in a relationship with the journalist. Even Irgens knows!’

  Lena was silent. She was thinking: How can Irgens know?

  ‘I’m going to have to suspend you while you’re being investigated,’ Rindal said.

  She closed her eyes and braced herself to ensure her voice carried. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, concentrating. ‘We’re making progress. I was doing surveillance work until midnight on Saturday. I now know where Adeler was after the dinner with Vestgård and all Thursday night. I just need a little more time.’

  ‘You can put this in a report. You can inform Gunnarstranda.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ she repeated.

  ‘I can’t, Lena. There’s a complaint. At this moment you’re being investigated for possible dereliction of duty. There’s nothing else I can do but suspend you while the investigation’s ongoing. It has to be like this. If you give it some thought, you’ll understand!’

  Lena didn’t want to hear any more. She went to the door. Stopped. Turned on her heel and said: ‘You were present too.’

  Rindal eyed her without speaking. She looked down.

  The silence lasted. She inhaled and met his eyes again. He said nothing. It was impossible to read his expression. But he wasn’t going to answer, that much was clear.

  ‘What will you do,’ she asked, ‘if the leaks persist after I’m suspended?’

  He shook his head, as though coming round after intense reflection. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Who are you going to give the boot if the leaks persist?’ she asked in a firm voice.

  Wrong formulation, she thought instantly. Now he could talk his way out of it.

  Rindal breathed in. ‘You aren’t being given the boot, you’re being suspended because you’re under investigation. No one’s passing sentence on you!’

  Without another word, she left the office.

  She marched down the corridor, looking neither left nor right. She had cancer. She had to focus on things she could do something about. What the ‘Gene Hackman’ Rindal did or didn’t do was beyond her control.

  Lena pulled up sharply as she came face to face with Axel Rise. He stopped, too.

  They stared at each other. Rise’s eyes wandered.

  ‘Steffen says hi,’ she said.

  ‘Right. Say hi back.’

  ‘Actually I think you see more of Steffen than I do,’ she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Yesterday, for example. Do you know I’ve been given the blame?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Axel Rise asked in a measured tone.

  Lena went up close to him. ‘You’re his source here. I know that,’ she said in a low voice. ‘If you were a man, you’d admit it to me,’ she went on. ‘I’ll have to take the blame anyway. Was it you?’

  He shook his head condescendingly. ‘Me? Was it me? Have you gone crazy? Take a look at yourself before you try to drag others into your own personal mayhem. Keep me well out of this.’

  She couldn’t be bothered to argue and squeezed past him without dignifying him with a further look.

  ‘You’ve got problems,’ he shouted after her. She didn’t hear the rest. His words drowned in the chaos of her mind.

  A few weeks before, being suspended would have been synonymous with a catastrophe. She wouldn’t have been able to cope for a second. Now she couldn’t care less.

  Her thoughts churned around the conversation with Rindal. It’s well known here that you’re in a relationship with the journalist. Steffen had not contacted her after their meeting at the Asylet. Instead he had written an article that had led to her losing her job, which would make her a leper in the eyes of many of her colleagues. The so-called Hanger-On wrote in such a way that others lost their jobs.

  But Steffen couldn’t know that. After all, she wasn’t his source.

  But now? I’m suspended. I’ll never get the killer behind bars.

  Yes, I will, she decided. This goes beyond a job. I’ll get to the bottom of it!

  What she had to go on was that Sveinung Adeler spent his last night with a woman. Someone had issued a threat to an MP and pointed a finger at this woman. What was the logic behind these events?

  Lena had done this before. Looked at events separately – as though they were scattered across a board – it was like studying a teeming mass of stars in the sky. It was like looking at dots that weren’t actually dots. It was simply a question of looking long enough, focusing on one individual element at a time. In this way the correct picture, the links and the system to the chaos would appear. She knew that deep inside her. She had all the information. It was just a matter of sifting through it.

  The suspension – what happened in Rindal’s office – was part of the unknown logic that drove the events in this case. A feigned threat on Aud Helen Vestgård’s life.

  Press coverage that placed her – a detective – in a poor light, to put it mildly.

  That was it. The answer lay there. The big what-was-it-all-about. All she had to do was tease it out.

  3

  She jumped off the bus by Frogner Church. An unending stream of noisy vehicles went past as she waited for the green man at the lights. He was taking his time. When she turned she looked straight into the face of the Christmas-tree seller.

  ‘How’s the traffic?’ he shouted.

  She didn’t understand what he meant and tilted her head.

  ‘Weren’t you counting cars?’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course.’ Lena pointed to the cars racing past. ‘It’s not going too badly,’ she shouted back. ‘Traffic’s on the increase.’

  The tree-seller grinned and lifted his Thermos with an enquiring look.

  She smiled back and shook her head.

  The green man. Lena crossed the street and stood outside the block of flats where Adeler must have emerged on Thursday morning, half an hour before he was killed.

  If Adeler walked from here, how long would it have taken him to City Hall Quay?

  She decided to walk the same stretch and time herself.

  After checking her watch, she set off at a cracking pace down Bygdøy allé. It had been freezing cold that night and Adeler had been wearing no more than a white shirt and a suit. No coat, no long johns, no woollen underwear, not even winter boots. He must have walked very fast in the hope of building up some heat.

  Why had he gone on foot? Presumably he had been hoping to catch an early tram or bus in Solli plass.

  Lena glanced to the right as she crossed Gabels gate. Her car was still there. Another yellow fine under the windscreen wiper. She couldn’t care less about the fine, but she would have to call for help to get the car started.

  Seven minutes at a fast pace and she was in Lapsetorvet. She went left along the tramlines, but stopped after a few metres.

  This wasn’t the shortest way to the harbour. The quickest way from here would have been to walk straight on.

  Why had she decided to turn left?

  The answer was obvious: she had turned left because that would be the logical route if Adeler was walking home. If a tram rattled by he would only have had to jump on. But most importantly: going via the harbour would be a detour.

  Lena stopped and thought.

  It wasn’t logical for Adeler to choose the route via the harbour. It had been so cold that morning that anyone with their wits about them would have tried to flag down a taxi or ge
t on a tram or bus – even if he was fit and sporty.

  Why had Adeler chosen a route that was absolutely illogical?

  The answer was equally obvious: Adeler wasn’t on his way home.

  Lena stood motionless, picturing the scene:

  It is somewhere between five and six o’clock in the morning. The crack of dawn. Adeler has eaten, drunk and made love. It is the middle of the week. He will be going to work in two or three hours. The logical option would be to go home and change his clothes.

  Then the certainty hit home: Sveinung Adeler was on his way to work!

  She was on the right track now. She knew it in her bones. The secretariat was in Rådhusgata. It wasn’t far from from Lisbet’s flat in Bygdøy allé. He just needed to go to Solli plass, carry on a few hundred metres and then cross past the City Hall Quays. There was no point taking a taxi. Adeler was fit and focused after a night out on the town.

  He went straight to work – of course! He would be early for work, but so what? The state operated on flexi-time. If Adeler turned up a couple of hours early he could then go home early.

  But Adeler never arrived. He met someone on the way, ended up in the sea and drowned.

  Lena concentrated. Adeler had been walking alone in Bygdøy allé. On the way he either met his killer or the killer caught up with him.

  A meeting? That was unlikely. A casual encounter that resulted in murder? Probably after a robbery. But they had found a wallet, bank cards, more than two thousand kroner and a valuable wrist watch on the body.

  The killer had caught up with Adeler. Someone had been waiting outside the block of flats in Bygdøy allé, someone had followed him and carried out an attack on the quay, the same way someone had been waiting for her, she thought darkly.

  Her pocket vibrated. The phone. She took it out. The display showed it was Gunnarstranda.

  ‘First of all, my condolences,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘I know Rindal has made a big mistake, so you don’t need to tell me he’s a sack of shite. But I’m going to be taking over your work while you’re sucking your thumb, so I need a briefing.’

  4

  She found Gunnarstranda at Kafé Justisen with a cup of black coffee in front of him.