He could feel he liked her tastes and the contrasts they created. In addition, he was happy she hadn’t broached the subject of swimming. And he appreciated the way they didn’t have to say everything to each other, which was the same feeling he’d had when they spoke for the first time in the café.
A photograph on the wall showed two ungainly figures on skis, both wearing jeans and anoraks. Both were covered in snow, as if they’d just had a fall.
Matilde turned away from the stove. ‘That’s me and my mum. Neither of us is very good at skiing, but we have such a lot of fun together.’
He sat down on the low sofa.
‘What’s your dog’s name?’
‘Petter,’ she said. ‘It’s actually my mother’s dog, but she has a new partner and he’s allergic.’
Petter rose to his feet and pinned back his ears when he heard his name. Matilde knelt down and stroked him. ‘So that’s why he lives with me.’ She looked up. ‘Hope you’re not allergic to dogs.’
They exchanged glances with an energy that was fuelled by all the layers of the question. ‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘Not as far as I know.’
She came over and sat beside him. ‘There’s some coffee on the go,’ she said. ‘Just have to wait a bit.’
The dog laid his head on the floor and looked up at them. Frank leaned back with his eyes closed and took in all the sounds of the room. Water boiling, the noise of the kitchen extractor fan and the faint quiver of a pan lid, the muted C&W music, the crackling of logs in the stove.
He opened his eyes and gazed straight at her, she was resting her head on the back of the sofa, too. They sat looking into each other’s faces. Matilde smiled gently as he took her hand and her sweater crackled with electricity as she moved closer.
4
He visited Matilde the following weekend as well. And the following one, and the one after that. The fourth weekend she caught a train to Oslo. They went out in the city centre and she stayed over until Monday morning.
Matilde thought it was good that he had stopped working for the police. She was unwilling to say why, but considered it absolutely fine that he was working as a private investigator. The reason came out on the last day of May. They were sitting in garden chairs on her terrace in the sun. Matilde’s mobile was quietly playing Lyle Lovett on the portable speaker. She said she had loved books about Nancy Drew when she was a child. She had dreamed about becoming a detective herself.
‘Then I got myself a detective buddy instead.’
‘The question is: how long will it last?’
She sat bolt upright.
‘The work, I mean,’ he added quickly. ‘I haven’t got any commissions at the moment and I’m living off savings. When they come to an end, I’ll have to get a different job.’
Matilde stretched for the Marlboro pack on the floor, tapped out a cigarette and lit it using a white lighter. She inhaled deeply and said she had a friend who needed a detective.
‘Her name’s Guri, and she works at a refugee centre in Hobøl. What’s the matter with you?’
‘She needs a private investigator?’
‘Someone’s gone missing, from what I can gather. I’m not absolutely sure. I wasn’t really following when she was talking about it. But when I told her the guy I was dating was a detective she went wild.’
‘OK,’ he said, closing his eyes again and continuing to enjoy the atmosphere, the mild weather and all the post-coital peace.
Later, when the sun disappeared behind the trees and it became cooler, Matilde went in and fetched two blankets. After a while she asked him if he felt up to driving her somewhere.
‘Of course.’
It wasn’t a long trip. They drove away from the holiday cottages and turned north onto the motorway. Came off by Moss, continued along the R120 eastward and after a while took the Dillingøy exit. Here they drove on muddy gravel tracks as Matilde fed him instructions:
‘Right here … carry straight on … There,’ she said, pointing to a padlocked, ramshackle shed. ‘I’ve got a summer car.’
Matilde smiled mischievously as she inserted the key into the lock. The hinges creaked as she opened one broad door.
‘Same model as the one Thelma and Louise drove around in. It’s even the same colour.’
As the crooked doors revealed metre after metre of chrome and steel, he was reminded of something from a film. The flashy convertible was turquoise and had white leather seats. The wings were incorporated into the bodywork. The wheels had whitewall tyres and the long bonnet set off associations with the spaceship in Star Trek.
‘Ford Thunderbird, 1966, convertible,’ Matilde said, unable now to hold back the smile. ‘Whenever I say that, it sounds as unreal as ever.’
She got in, adjusted levers. Moved the column gear shift back and forth. Then pulled another lever. The bonnet opened a few centimetres. She clambered out again. Lifted the bonnet, bent over the engine. ‘We need some electricity,’ she mumbled and attached the earth cable to the battery, dropped the bonnet and climbed back in. Waved another key and said: ‘Cover your ears.’
It sounded like a landslide as the V8 engine started up. It almost choked. She put her foot on the accelerator. The engine roared and grey exhaust fumes filled the space between the timber walls. ‘It’s a bit out of sorts at the moment,’ she shouted.
He could barely see the car through the fumes. But when she finally eased the pressure on the accelerator the engine idled comfortably.
He asked her how she had managed to land such a treasure and was told she and an ex had been on holiday in the US. They had bought the T-bird when they had to drive from San Francisco to New York. On reaching the east coast her ex wanted to sell the car, but Matilde had grown to love it. So she costed the price of transport to Norway. It was freighted across the Atlantic in a container ship. When the relationship finished she bought his share of the car.
‘It runs on ninety-eight octane leaded petrol. I have to put lead substitute in the tank whenever I fill up.’
There was one downside though, she said. There was a faint smell of mould inside the car. Matilde put the smell down to the hard winter and the poor state of the garage. The soft-top over the car couldn’t keep out the damp on its own, she said. But a good run-out would help. The smell would go with the fresh air and the heating system working.
‘It was the same problem last summer, but it resolved itself.’
5
If Matilde was a competent cook she was at least as competent a mechanic, he quickly gathered. At the back of the garage there was a socket set and some flexible box wrenches. On their way back they drove in convoy and popped into a Biltema warehouse. The oil, filters and antifreeze had to be changed. At home she had new fan belts and other parts that frequently needed replacing. The rest of the weekend they spent getting the T-bird ready, punctuated only by bouts of passion in Matilde’s double bed.
To suppress the smell of mould they went to work with two rounds of water, soap and disinfectant. And still they had to hang four Wunderbaum air fresheners to dull the odour when on Sunday they went on a kind of maiden voyage and cruised northwards to Moss, turned down through the town and crossed the channel to the island of Jeløya. They went past the Sjøhaug naturist centre, which didn’t appear to have opened for the summer. Matilde told him that she and her mother had gone on holiday there every summer, in a caravan. She remained a naturist herself, but had dropped the caravan holiday.
‘It’s too crowded when you can hear your neighbour fart in the morning as he gets up. Not to mention all the rest.’
They continued towards Refsnes Gods hotel. Matilde said she had worked there in the summer as a waitress.
They walked down to the shore. The sea was dead calm and the sun hung high in the sky. One of the Bastøy ferries was on its way over.
The beach was full of tiny pebbles. Matilde picked the ones that she considered appealing, either because they felt good in her hand or because they had nice patterns.<
br />
Frank sat down and watched the sea absorb the light from the sky. He suddenly thought about his father. Saw him in his mind’s eye with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, walking in the mountains.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Matilde said, sitting down beside him.
‘My father.’
‘I’ve never seen mine,’ she said. ‘He and my mother lived together before they had me. That’s all I know.’
‘Did they split up?’
‘I don’t know. My mother doesn’t like to talk about him.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Haven’t you ever had any contact with him?’
‘I have a few letters and a couple of photographs.’
At the end of the beach a boy in an anorak and windproof trousers was walking with a spinning rod in his hand. He jumped up onto a sea-smoothed rock and began to cast his line.
This sight reminded Frank of his own boyhood. Some summers his family had rented a cabin in Tjøme. When they weren’t fishing from the rowing boat that came with the cabin, he used to cast a line from a hill behind the outside toilet, hoping to catch mackerel and small saithe.
He watched the boy as he set one foot behind the other, brought the rod back, threw, and let go of the finger holding the line. Heard the sound of the line spinning out of the reel and the little plop as the lure broke the surface of the water. The boy stood still, waiting for the lure to sink before he reeled in.
After the third or fourth throw, the rod bent in classic fashion.
The fish tossed around. It might have been a sea trout. They were usually pretty frisky when they bit.
Frank lay back, felt a breath of wind caress his eyelashes and heard the undulating drone of a passenger plane in the distance.
Matilde’s mobile rang. She answered it. He opened his eyes and watched her.
‘Of course,’ she said, put down her phone and looked at him. ‘Do you remember me talking about Guri?’
Frank didn’t.
‘The woman who works at the refugee centre and needs a detective.’
He nodded.
She put the phone to her ear again. ‘We’ll be there in an hour.’
She rang off and stood up. ‘Let’s get going,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a drive.’
‘A missing person, wasn’t that the story?’
‘A woman from the Middle East. She’s searching for her sister. Apparently this girl travelled to Norway because her sister had travelled ahead of her several years before. The detective’s job is to find the sister.’
He fell silent, concerned.
‘What’s the matter?’ Matilde said. ‘Are you going to turn down work?’
‘I fear this lady may not necessarily have any money to pay with.’
Matilde didn’t say anything for a while.
‘You could talk to her, couldn’t you?’ she said, slightly disgruntled.
Frank was still silent.
‘I can give you some money. I get paid on Wednesday.’
‘Out of the question.’
‘What’s wrong with my money?’
‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to her and you’re not paying for anything.’
Matilde stretched out a hand and squeezed his forearm.
‘The main thing is you listen to what she has to say. They don’t have an easy time of it, these poor people, and this girl’s sister means everything to her.’
6
Matilde said she had met Guri for the first time after a gig at the Down on the Farm festival in Halden four years before. They had been travelling on the same train home when it hit an elk, which affected the electricity supply and left them stuck between two stations. It had been the last train that day, so NSB had organised buses instead. She and Guri had struck up a conversation as they stood waiting for a bus that showed no signs of ever appearing. Then Guri had rung her brother and he had come to drive them home. Afterwards they had often been together. Guri was a trained psychiatric nurse. She was crazy about everything to do with horses and had long had her own horse stabled on a farm not far from Svinndal. There she used to practise showjumping. But the previous winter the horse had baulked at a fence. Guri had dug in her heels, but this startled the stallion; it kicked out its rear legs, or something like that, and Guri fell off.
‘An Arab. It must’ve been on edge.’
Guri had fallen badly. Fortunately she had been wearing a helmet, but it didn’t protect her back. So, no more showjumping for a good while. However, the prognosis was better than expected. She had retrained her body by paddling a kayak.
As they approached Spydeberg they turned off the main road and continued towards Lyseren. Matilde drove right down to a grassy slope, which must have been a kind of beach, and parked beneath a huge pine tree. She texted a message and received an answer at once. They strolled down to the water’s edge to wait.
Frank sat down on a stump and gazed across as Matilde took off her sandals, folded up her trousers and waded in. A swarm of midges danced above her head; they looked like a little cloud.
After a while a kayak approached at great speed. The sun glinted on the paddle blades with every stroke that Guri took. The kayak glided up onto the grass, then she lifted herself out: a lithe woman in her thirties, wearing a wetsuit down to mid-thigh, long, blonde hair in a plait over her shoulder.
She and Matilde hugged.
Afterwards she turned to him: a face with limpid blue eyes and a narrow, slightly crooked nose above attractive but vulnerable lips that made her seem shy when she smiled. Like now, as they exchanged looks, a ‘hi’ and a handshake.
Guri told him that the refugee centre where she worked had what they called a ‘dedicated area’ for asylum seekers with psychological or other illnesses requiring special treatment. This was where she met the girl who was searching for her sister.
‘She’s in a bad way,’ Guri said. ‘The doctors can’t agree on whether this is post-traumatic stress syndrome or a deeper psychological issue. But she’s had an awful time. She’s fled from war and abuse into more abuse here in the west. And now they’ve decided she has to leave again. They’re kicking her out on her arse. The bloody government. It’s so cynical. She can barely look after herself, but out she goes. She has one last hope: her sister, who travelled the same road a few years ago. Her sister came here, to Norway. But no one has a clue where she’s living or what she’s doing. Now Aisha’s stuck in the refugee centre and desperately needs to be reunited with her sister while the police just can’t wait to fly her to Turkey. She’ll never stand it. If she’s sent to Istanbul she’ll die or take her own life, I’m sure of that.’
Guri’s kayak must have been very light because she carried it under her arm, to a red Volvo estate parked under the trees, and hoisted it onto the roof. She took a couple of rollers with straps from the car and attached the kayak firmly, with sharp yanks, glanced across at Frølich and said: ‘Turn around.’
He didn’t understand what she meant. ‘I’m going to change my clothes,’ she said.
He wandered down to the water as the women sorted out Guri’s outfit. On his return Guri was wearing a flowery top, light-blue jeans and sandals.
They got into their cars. Guri led the way while they followed in the convertible. Guri’s Volvo had only one rear light working.
7
It wasn’t a long journey. Soon they were driving into the refugee centre by Elvestad. Guri parked by what appeared to be the main building. Matilde pulled up beside her.
The doors slammed as they got out.
‘This is where I work,’ Guri said.
‘One of your rear lights isn’t working,’ Frank said.
‘He used to be in the police,’ Matilde said.
‘Good job you aren’t anymore,’ Guri said. ‘There’s a lot more than the rear lights that doesn’t work on the car.’
A group of tall, lean Africans were playing basketball on a court. They waved to Guri, who sho
wed Frank and Matilde the way in.
The place felt like an institution. The residents sat in small groups, chatting, playing cards or Chinese chequers, or simply trying to kill time.
A man in jeans and a sweater grabbed Guri. All three of them stopped. Guri gave him a quick hug and asked him, in English, to fetch Aisha. But the man said Guri should come with him, so she showed Frank and Matilde into a small room and said, ‘Wait here and I’ll bring her to you.’
The waiting room also smacked of an institution. Second-hand tables, second-hand chairs and by the windows hung stiff, yellow curtains that could well have been the originals from the time when the house was built many decades before.
The woman who followed Guri into the room a few minutes later seemed very young. She wore brown trousers and an acrylic sweater with a roll neck, probably a survivor of the 1970s. Her black hair was gathered in a thick ponytail. It was clear from her facial features that she was unwell. When she talked, there was a white streak of saliva at the corner of her mouth, and she sat with a rigid, crooked grimace on her lips as her eyes flickered nervously between Frølich, Matilde, Guri and the interpreter, a buxom woman in a dark dress, her hair covered by a white hijab. She introduced herself as Havin and told them in good Norwegian that she had lived in the country since the early nineties.
The woman spoke to the interpreter, who spoke to Frølich. The woman’s name was Aisha. The interpreter took the trouble to explain that Aisha was also the name of the prophet’s youngest wife.
Aisha said that her sister had left Iraq in the autumn of 2005 and had come to Norway. The family had been in touch via the telephone. She had been working and had earned money and was happy.
Frølich remembered the time of the Bush administration’s bombing raids on what they called the Axis of Evil. He remembered the immense anti-war demonstration in Oslo in which he’d taken part.
Sister Page 2
