Gunnarstranda pulled up his jacket sleeve and counted the time.
Rise eyed him from the bed. ‘You’re a strange bugger, you are,’ Rise said.
‘Time’s up,’ Gunnarstranda said, and headed for the door.
‘Alright then,’ Rise yelled.
Gunnarstranda turned.
Rise switched off the television. He sat collecting himself for a few seconds. ‘I went there, to where she lived – by Frogner Church. While I was ringing her bell an old pal of mine – Steffen Gjerstad – came along. He patted me on the shoulder. He’d been waiting for someone from the police to show up. He asked if I was going to take the statement of a woman who’d sent an MP a threatening letter. I asked him how he knew. Steffen told me he knew the woman. They go out a bit and have fun. He wrote the letter and signed it using her name. The threat was just messing around. He’d done it for a joke.’
‘Steffen Gjerstad? The journalist? And he was waiting outside her flat, waiting for the police?’
‘Yes,’ Rise said. ‘He was waiting there to clear up a misunderstanding! He regretted writing the letter. It had been a stupid idea. He assumed the police would react and was waiting outside to sort it out with them.’
Gunnarstranda had to grin. ‘Imagine how happy he must’ve been to see you turn up. A policeman he knew. Do you live in Nesodden or Notodden, Rise?’
Rise got up from the bed. His eyes flashed. ‘It was a minor matter. Steffen had written the threatening letter and signed her name as a prank. But after putting it in the Storting postbox he regretted his actions. He realised she could get into a lot of trouble. So he stood outside the door so that he could clear up the misunderstanding when the police came. When I showed up he asked me for a favour: if I’d drop all the fuss with statements and testimonies and so on, which wouldn’t do any good. The case was solved. He admitted to writing it. The letter was a jape. They were always playing jokes on each other. I dropped the case there and then.’
‘But he lied to you. The woman has no idea who Gjerstad is. You could’ve found that out for yourself, if you’d bothered to do your job and talk to her.’
Rise didn’t answer. He blinked with heavy eyelids.
Gunnarstranda shook his head. ‘Where’s the policeman in you? After all, you’re holding a letter that threatens an MP’s life. And you don’t even bother to talk to the woman?’
‘Steffen’s my friend.’
Gunnarstranda turned his back on him and walked to the front door.
Rise followed him into the stairwell. Gunnarstranda pressed the lift button.
‘Why do you want information from me when you’ve got nothing to give me in return?’ asked Rise.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘You said you were close to a breakthrough. What breakthrough? When? Where?’
‘Shouldn’t you be more interested in finding out why Steffen Gjerstad lied to your face?’
Rise blinked.
Gunnarstranda said nothing.
‘Tell me what the breakthrough is,’ Rise repeated, his eyes burning.
The stooped figure in the doorway at that moment seemed so tragic that Gunnarstranda took pity on him. He cleared his throat and spoke in a low voice so as not to disturb the neighbours. ‘Lena received a telephone call. A guy told her he had information about the Adeler case. The guy said he was near City Hall Quay 2 and saw what happened on the night of Wednesday, the ninth of December. Lena kept her cool, thinking we’d got some media-hungry bastard who’d spotted a chance of getting into the papers. She told him to come to Grønland HQ and tell her all he knows. Then he rang off. Lena thought “what the hell”. But then I was talking to another junkie. And he told me a pal of Stig Eriksen’s used to hang around with the two of them – Stig and Nina – and that this guy had rabbited on about knowing something about the man who was lifted out of the water by the quay and the cops weren’t doing their job properly. That changed things a bit. We may well have a living witness to the murder of Sveinung Adeler. As soon as we can haul the man in, we’ve got the case solved. We just have to find him. Apparently he lives in a hostel when he isn’t sleeping rough. I might be counting our chickens, but we intend to nab him tomorrow, and as soon as we do, we’ve got an eyewitness. With the info we have already, plus an eyewitness, I’m a hundred per cent certain we can make an arrest tomorrow.’
The lift pinged.
Gunnarstranda grabbed the handle, but didn’t open the door.
‘Who is it? What’s his name?’
‘His name’s Dag Enoksen.’
As Gunnarstranda told him, Rise was already heading back into his bedsit.
Gunnarstranda raised his voice: ‘Take it easy. Plata’s a small area. Lena’ll find Dag Enoksen, maybe even tonight.’
Axel Rise turned in the doorway.
Gunnarstranda opened the lift door. ‘If you really want to do yourself a favour,’ he said, trying to catch Rise’s eye, ‘ask your journalist pal why he lied to your face. Ask him why he wrote the threatening letter. Ask him why he threatened Aud Helen Vestgård in particular, and ask him why he signed the letter with the name of a woman he didn’t know and had never met!’
Rise didn’t answer. He closed the door.
Yep, Gunnnarstranda thought to himself. Sick child or no sick child. It really is a shame about that man.
Wednesday, 23rd December
1
Lena lifted her plastic cup and sipped the mulled wine. It tasted of end-of-term celebrations: a lukewarm mixture of spices with some chopped almonds and raisins floating on the surface. Everyone had to drink mulled wine before Christmas. In kindergartens, at schools, in the workplace, in shops. You couldn’t move in one of Oslo’s festive streets for people trying to force this tepid, sweet plonk on you.
I suppose I’m being very negative, she thought. But there was something about the almonds that made her throat go dry. Or perhaps she was just allergic?
The guy with the Sinatra hat and baggy pirate pants obviously found the silence a torment. He sat with his head down and was taking deep breaths, as if searching for something to say. He seemed a little delicate to be running a hostel for drug addicts. But Lena didn’t know him. He was probably very competent at his job.
Lena slurped down some more of the sickly sweet drink and politely said no when the guy straightened up and told her to help herself to a cinnamon biscuit.
The taste of bought cinnamon biscuits also reminded her of school. Rehearsing a play, feeling stupid acting, being dressed up in a home-made costume that didn’t fit, reeling off daft lines, knowing someone you really like is loyally watching from the darkness of the auditorium. The demands of family conventions: turn up at the end-of-term party, drink lukewarm mulled wine and take a photo of your promising child playing the part of Joseph or Mary or the Angel Gabriel.
Lena was never given the role of Mary or the angel. Red hair and freckles were a bad start for the audition. On her CV she didn’t even have the role of wise man visiting the baby Jesus in the stable. Usually she was Shepherd 1 or Shepherd 2. She had been the innkeeper who turned away Joseph and Mary. More often than not she was in a flock of non-speaking angels, wearing a halo made of pipe-cleaners on her head and singing ‘A Child is Born in Bethlehem’.
When she asked her mother about this, she couldn’t remember anything; generally it was her father who had attended and taken a photo of her.
Was that the mystery behind her unease? The loss of her father? Not being able to share memories with him? She dismissed these thoughts.
The fact was simple enough. It was now 23rd December. She had bought presents for most people, but not yet for her mother.
If she managed it this afternoon, she would pop up with the Christmas tree so that Mum could decorate it in time – before the big day.
Tomorrow the two of them would be together from early afternoon. They would go to the cemetery together and light candles on Dad’s grave. Afterwards they would go back to her mother’s and fini
sh the mutton ribs. She had remembered to buy them, fortunately – smoked and salted, from a lamb that had definitely grazed in the mountains. Now she had only to soak the meat in water this evening. She mustn’t forget.
Lena looked at her watch. She also had to buy swede for the mash. She could do that tomorrow as well. But there was some peeling and slicing to do before Sølvguttene, the choirboys, rang in Christmas tomorrow – otherwise Mum would get the screaming abdabs.
There was a radio on the windowsill. Modern. It had a digital clock. Lena could see it still wasn’t five o’clock. So she still had enough time. The shops would be open till late this evening, on the 23rd.
The guy with the Frank Sinatra hat couldn’t stand the silence any longer. He switched on the radio.
Bells chimed. Violins, then Jussi Björling’s velvet voice filled the room. He was singing ‘Silent Night’.
She couldn’t stop herself.
The young man with the Sinatra hat gave such a start he almost fell off the chair. ‘What’s the matter?’
Lena didn’t answer. She was unable to say a word.
‘Are you in pain?’
Lena shook her head. It poured out. Tears, snot. She stood up and went over to the radio. Switched it off. She was sobbing with her forehead pressed against the wall.
She heard the young man pacing back and forth. She turned. He looked pale and upset.
She straightened up. ‘Have you got a serviette or something?’ she managed to stammer out.
‘Yes, of course.’ The young man whirled around and and left the office. Came back. With a kitchen roll in his hand.
Lena took it. Wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She could never listen to Jussi Björling singing her father’s song. That was how it was. But she didn’t have to explain that to anyone.
She sat down.
The man sat down too and looked at her warily. ‘I’ve heard about people who burst into tears. For no reason, like. Must be terrible.’
Lena said nothing. She sniffled. And cast a glance at her watch.
This inspired the man in the Frank Sinatra hat and pirate trousers to change the subject.
‘Time flies,’ he said.
Silence invaded the room once again.
‘Yes, it does,’ said the man with the Sinatra hat. There was a nervy side to him now and he kept shooting glances across at her. Not knowing what to do with his hands. He took his hat and fidgeted with it.
Lena was beginning to recover. ‘Cool hat,’ she said, wiping under her eyes again. ‘Where did you buy it?’
‘Kiel, in the mall there. Karstadt.’
Lena nodded. The choirboys, she thought. She could manage them. ‘Silent Night’, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, even the song about the Christmas star that shines above the midwife’s house. But not ‘O Holy Night’.
He had sung it, in church, with the full choir behind him. The thought and memory drew forth a sob. Tears sprang into her eyes.
A nervous twitch went through the man’s body.
She was unable to stop the next sob. Then she filled her lungs with air.
Think of something else! Think of a less emotional subject. Think about the incident in Steffen’s flat. The feeling you had when you were fastening your watch strap and you saw the floor coming towards you.
She leaned back and stared at the chair the man was sitting on. Over the back hung a shoulder bag.
Lena’s mother liked bags with a lot of pockets. That’s what I’ll buy her, she thought, closed her eyes and breathed out, relieved to have found an idea for a present at last.
A bell above their heads rang, loud and shrill.
Lena and the man with the Sinatra hat exchanged glances.
‘Client?’ Lena said.
The man looked up at the bell high on the wall. ‘Bit early,’ he said.
It rang again.
‘Don’t think this is a client. It seems too energetic.’
The man stood up and went into the corridor. Lena finished her plastic cup of tepid mulled wine and grimaced.
Soon afterwards the man came back. His face wreathed in smiles.
‘What is it?’ Lena asked.
‘The guy asked after Dag Enoksen.’
Lena got up, went to the window and pushed the curtain aside a fraction. She peered out. ‘And you said what we’d agreed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you,’ Lena said, and took out her phone. She stopped in the doorway and turned.
‘Right, have a good Christmas,’ she said.
‘And you, too,’ he said.
Lena hurried out of the hostel.
No one to be seen in Waldemars gate, only the red lights of a car on its way up the hill towards St. Hanshaugen.
She stood watching it for a few seconds, then turned and hurried down the pavement. Things were happening. They had set the line and now the fish was biting. She rang Gunnarstranda.
2
Gunnnarstranda roared out of town, northwards, along the E6. He thanked Lena and wished her good luck.
‘Where are you?’ Lena asked, clearly surprised.
‘In my car,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘I’ll give you a call later.’
He passed Skedsmovollen and took a right at the next turning, to Sørum. After a couple of kilometres he left the main road and went down a narrow but snow-cleared road leading to a tiny village of low prefabricated houses. As the road became narrower, the distance between the houses increased. Soon he passed an old timber house where a small red tractor with a mounted snowplough was parked in front of a dilapidated garage. Gunnarstranda had come here many times and knew the way. He made for the next house on the left. It was lit up, as it was every Christmas, like an American Coke advert. Loads of red, green and yellow chains of lights adorned the ridge of the roof and the house entrance.
Gunnarstranda turned into the farmyard.
He reversed the car and pulled into the side. Switched off the engine. The lights went out. Through the large windows he could see inside the house. Preparations were being made for a party. A teenage girl was setting a dining table. A teenage boy was walking around with a box of matches, lighting candles. The match was burning dangerously close to his fingertips. The next candle was one too many. The boy burned himself, dropped the match and feverishly blew at his fingers, then lit a new match.
Gunnarstranda took the phone lying on the passenger seat. He found a number he had saved. It was Ingrid Kobro’s private number.
Before tapping in the number he glanced again at the house. Through the windows, now, he could see Ingrid Kobro coming out of the kitchen and saying something to her daughter. Ingrid was wearing a purple dress.
She turned away from the window.
Immediately afterwards he heard her voice in his ear.
‘I’m outside,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘I can see you aren’t alone. So it would be much easier if you came out, rather than me going in.’
‘You can probably see I’m busy,’ Ingrid Kobro said, hesitantly.
‘We’re very close to an arrest,’ Gunnarstranda said.
‘Just give me a few minutes,’ Ingrid Kobro said.
3
All the Christmas illuminations cast a yellow, almost orange, glare over the street. A Father Christmas with a sack on his back came walking towards her. Lena passed the Father Christmas. She stopped and stared.
He had disappeared. Which way could he have gone?
Well, there was no doubt where he was going.
She walked briskly towards Kiellands plass. Knowing she needed back-up. She had a bad feeling.
A handful of pedestrians were waiting at the traffic lights. A family. The mother in a black niqab. The father was struggling with a pram on the snow-covered pavement. A little girl was holding her mother’s hand and looking up at Lena, who was still on the lookout for a man in a reefer jacket. The traffic was getting heavier, buses and taxis were passing.
She rang Emil Yttergjerde.
‘Nothing doing here,�
�� Emil said. ‘Just freezing my arse off.’
‘He’s wearing a navy-blue reefer jacket,’ Lena said. ‘He’s on his way, dead certain, but I’ve lost sight of him.’
Green. Lena crossed the street.
‘Where are you?’
Lena shouted over the din of the traffic. ‘Kiellands plass. I’ve just passed the Ila block.’
‘Should show up soon then,’ Emil said.
‘Pass the message on to Frankie,’ Lena shouted, and hesitated.
‘Already have done.’
‘Say…’
‘Say what?’
‘Say it’s fine if he wants to pull out.’
Yttergjerde’s laughter was almost drowned in the roar of a diesel bus. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes, I do. I don’t like this guy going missing. It’s not a good sign.’
She didn’t want a discussion with Emil. She hung up and shot off down Maridalsveien.
The thought that Frølich was sitting alone at this moment made her increase her speed. It had looked like a piece of cake. Nothing could go wrong. But before you could say Jack Frost, there was a sudden glitch.
She jogged on down. The fresh snow was heavy underfoot. Of course, the snowploughs didn’t bother with the pavements. Lena looked over her shoulder. The cars behind were stopped on red. She jumped over the pile of snow along the kerb and into the road. While she was running, her mind went over what had happened a few minutes before.
She had seen the back of a man through a window in the block of bedsits.
Less than a minute later she was in the street, but she couldn’t see anyone.
Why hadn’t she seen him outside the block?
What had she seen?
A car! Of course. She ran faster. A car hooted. She jumped over the snow back onto the pavement. It was a taxi. She waved. It stopped. She threw herself onto the rear seat. ‘Oslo Station,’ she gasped. ‘The multi-storey car park.’
The Ice Swimmer Page 30
