Sister

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  Frølich walked up to the terrace. Beneath the half-roof there was a suite of wicker furniture around a low table with a glass top.

  Suddenly the veranda door opened and a thin man with a bent back appeared.

  ‘Right, Bernt,’ said the stooped man in a squeaky voice. ‘I’ll be off then. Thanks for breakfast.’

  The man stumped across the terrace and peered up at Frølich with the lifeless eyes of a serious drug addict.

  ‘Take care of yourself, Rikard,’ Bernt Weddevåg shouted after him.

  The man called Rikard carefully walked down from the terrace, gripping the banister with a shaky hand.

  Frølich watched him leave, convinced he had seen this person before. Must have been when I was a cop, he thought, on some patrol to pick up creatures of the night. The man was so skinny and his face so ravaged he resembled the living dead.

  Both of them watched him slowly plod in the direction of the ferry quay.

  ‘There goes a hard-working drudge,’ Weddevåg said in a low voice so as not to be heard.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Frølich said, not so convinced.

  ‘Rikard was once a very competent studio musician,’ Weddevåg said. ‘He was multi-talented – played with all the greats. Until 1988. Then he had to bury his whole family. His wife, two daughters, his mother and both in-laws. They died on the Sea Breeze. Perhaps you remember it. The ferry catastrophe.’

  ‘That’s what I came here to talk to you about,’ Frølich said.

  The thin figure with the bent back above two pipe-cleaner legs was now out of sight.

  ‘Since then Rikard has clung to life – with the help of drugs,’ Weddevåg said. ‘He has nothing else. No home. No family. When society wants something from him, it’s to offer him a prison cell or detox. It’s a miracle he’s still hanging in there. Do you remember being twenty-eight?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Imagine you’re sitting in a church, the only surviving relative, with six coffins in the aisle. Everyone you care about has been snatched from you and you’re left all on your own. That’s no small challenge,’ Weddevåg said. ‘It’s a miracle Rikard’s still alive. Feel free,’ he said, pointing to the suite.

  On the glass table there was a tumbler with something green in it.

  The man raised his glass. ‘Fancy a taste?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘Why not?’ he said, taking a seat.

  Weddevåg went through the veranda door and returned with a shot glass and a bottle containing the green drink. He poured.

  ‘Skål.’

  It tasted sweet, bitter and sticky, all at the same time. Frølich was unable to control his grimaces and smacked his lips before putting down the glass.

  ‘Had it before?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Curaçao. A liqueur. Comes from the island of that name.’

  Frank took another sip, but the taste was no better.

  ‘I got to like it when I was at sea. In Willemstad. We took on water there. Water and booze. And you’ve come here to talk about the Sea Breeze? Why?’

  ‘I was hired by Fredrik Andersen shortly before he was killed. Now I’m working for his uncle.’

  ‘Fredrik Andersen, yes, tragic story,’ the man said, peering into his tumbler. Looked up again with the suggestion of a grin playing on his lips. ‘You wouldn’t be the ex-cop who grilled Tick-Tock by any chance, would you?’

  ‘That’s very possible.’

  Weddevåg’s grin grew wider.

  ‘I see he’s good at telling stories.’

  ‘You can imagine,’ Weddevåg said, casting his eyes down. ‘You can imagine how good he is. But if you want to know something about the Sea Breeze, in all modesty, you’ve hit the jackpot.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘I sailed the seas for almost thirty years, first as an engineer and then as a chief engineer – on lots of passenger ferries too, even a sister-ship of the Sea Breeze, built at the same shipyard. So I know that boat inside out. After I signed off, I worked as a surveyor until I retired. I certified ships, everything from passenger ferries to supertankers, first for Veritas, the ship classification group, and afterwards for Lloyd’s Register of Ships. So you can say I know quite a bit about fire, fire protection and safety at sea. The Sea Breeze was a terrible story. But the biggest problem was that the police didn’t know what they were doing in their investigation. Since then everything they’ve done has been marked by their fear of having to go back on their conclusions.’

  ‘And you were contacted by Fredrik Andersen?’

  ‘Yes, fortunately for him.’

  57

  ‘Fortunately?’

  Weddevåg nodded. ‘Fredrik first rang me when he was writing the book about the catastrophe. You might say it was a useful strategy. It gave his book the tech-savvy lift it needed. Most of the technical detail in the book came from here.’

  He tapped his chest.

  Frank Frølich sipped some more of the green liquid and concluded once again that the bitter-sweet, green liqueur was not his favourite.

  ‘Fredrik was already well under way with following the money, but after a while he realised he also had to focus on the technical side.’

  ‘Was the other bit useful?’

  ‘Which bit?’

  ‘Following the money.’

  Weddevåg shrugged. ‘What he realised was that the Sea Breeze was a pawn in a scam.’

  Weddevåg leaned forward as if to share a secret. ‘The American shipping line sold the boat to a Danish shipping line for three times its market price.’

  He held three fingers in the air. ‘Three times. So the insurance fee was sky-high. But the buyer hadn’t started paying at the time of the blaze. Therefore the seller was entitled to any pay-out there might be. Once the wrecked ship had burned out, solicitors from the three parties got round a table and negotiated a percentage pay-out. The insurance company then paid up. That’s what I call a scam. They pretended it was a ship sale and the American shipping line earned millions.’

  ‘And Fredrik Andersen believed this?’

  ‘Did he believe it? The only people who refuse to see what happened is the police, because if they accept the evidence they’ll be admitting they did everything wrong when they investigated the case thirty years ago. They refuse to do that.’

  Weddevåg fell quiet when footsteps were heard on the gravel path.

  They turned to the noise, both of them. A woman in a green bikini approached. She had her hair in dreads. A tattooed sun glittered on her stomach and a mobile phone was tucked inside the bikini elastic.

  Weddevåg poured himself some more green liquid.

  Frølich held a hand over his glass.

  ‘That seems very speculative,’ he said.

  Actually he was more focused on the woman in the bikini than on Weddevåg or the Sea Breeze. She seemed to have slowed down. She walked in a leisurely fashion; it was impossible not to follow her and her swinging hips with your eyes.

  ‘A plot and mass murder for a pot of gold, as it were. Doesn’t sound very likely.’

  Frank studied the body in the green bikini. Weddevåg studied the green liquid in his glass.

  ‘I don’t think the plan had been to kill people,’ Weddevåg said.

  Frølich glanced over at him.

  ‘In this instance I’m not speculating,’ Weddevåg said in great earnest. ‘I’m sticking exclusively to the facts, the laws of physics and the resultant conclusions.’

  ‘Unlike Fredrik Andersen?’

  Weddevåg shook his head. ‘Fredrik did, too. He kept to physics and things that could be documented. Nothing else.’

  58

  Frank Frølich watched the woman in the green bikini again. She was almost past them now. She noticed his gaze, turned her head and looked him in the eye as she passed.

  ‘Andersen found out that the American seller was in desperate need of money,’ Weddevåg said. ‘They owed huge amounts of tax – going back years – to the American
authorities. In addition, they owed enormous sums in harbour charges in Miami. The American shipping line was on the verge of bankruptcy. To make things worse, they’d bought the ship purely to sell it on. And to buy it they’d taken out a sizeable loan. That debt added to all the money they already owed. You might say they had good reason to pump up the price. They needed the money. Fredrik Andersen thought, like me, that a gang of crew members – those who were on board and still worked for the American company – sabotaged the boat. They wanted to wreak as much destruction as possible so that their employer would hit the jackpot and get a gigantic insurance pay-out – but the damage to the ship needed to be serious enough.’

  ‘But companies are always going bankrupt,’ Frank Frølich said. ‘Owners don’t commit mass murder for that reason.’

  ‘Of course not. But some can afford to go bankrupt – others can’t. This seller was no normal shipping line, with grandad sitting on his Chesterfield, smoking cigars he bought with money salted away in Switzerland. This shipping line was financed by shady investors who used cruises in Miami to launder gambling money.’

  Frølich cut a dubious grimace.

  Weddevåg looked back at him, equally serious. ‘The fact is that strange things happened on board after the fire broke out,’ he said. ‘And there’s only one explanation for the ship burning for such a long time: someone was stoking the fires and starting new ones while unsuspecting firemen were doing what they could to extinguish them.’

  Weddevåg poured himself some more green liquid.

  ‘The ship is evacuated at half past three in the morning. One hour later, at half past four, firefighters are lowered to the deck from helicopters. They put out the remaining flames pretty quickly. While they’re doing this, three crewmen who still work for the American company return to the ship. When these three board the wreck, the teams of firefighters suddenly find inexplicable conflagrations breaking out and blazing for hours.

  ‘But the police reject that time line,’ Weddevåg continued. ‘They’re sticking to their 1988 version and insist the boat is set alight by a drunken passenger and what happens over the following thirty-eight hours are “natural flare-ups” from an already existing fire. They say that the boat “burns by itself” for thirty-eight hours. That’s absolute tosh. There’s not enough combustible material in the corridors or the restaurant sections to keep the fire burning for longer than minutes. It’s proven. What’s worse is that Fredrik Andersen could’ve persuaded the police to change their minds, but now it’s too late.’

  ‘How could he have made the police do a U-turn?’

  ‘With the help of Ole Berg.’

  Frølich gazed at his host with renewed energy. ‘Ole Berg?’

  ‘Do you know him?’ Weddevåg said.

  ‘No. But I have an assignment concerning a person by the name of Ole Berg. I’d like to meet him.’

  Weddevåg grinned. ‘Join the queue.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There are lots of us who’d like a word with Ole Berg.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  Weddevåg shrugged. ‘A witness. I don’t know the man’s real name, but Fredrik did. He gave the man an alias: Ole Berg. According to Fredrik, this man was on board the whole time. Ole Berg saw everything. This guy read Fredrik’s book and contacted him.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘Because he was an eyewitness.’

  ‘An eyewitness to what exactly?’

  ‘That’s something I and many others would love to know. Ole Berg was never interviewed by the police. There are many of us who want to know what he has to say. But Fredrik was killed before Ole Berg’s story came out.’

  Frølich was silent, thinking. Could the murder of Andersen be linked with the story of the Sea Breeze? Could Jørgen Svinland be right after all?

  He got up and went to the veranda balustrade. He gripped the handrail and closed his eyes. Andersen had appeared from nowhere at his office. Afterwards Andersen had been visited by Guri Sekkelsten. Andersen had met Guri twice that day – first in the afternoon at the House of Literature and afterwards at the restaurant in the evening. Andersen had also spent his last evening with Guri and Sheyma Bashur. These events – the conversations and the meals – were all innocuous activities and it appeared highly unlikely that any motive for murder could be found there.

  The other story, however – the mass murder, the huge sums of money, the fight for truth – that was a scenario with a lot at stake.

  Jørgen Svinland might be right. Andersen’s murder could be linked with the Sea Breeze mystery.

  But if the murder of Andersen was connected with the Sea Breeze, what about the murder of Guri? Why would this thirty-year-old story about arson on a passenger ferry lead to her death? As far as he knew, there was no connection between Guri Sekkelsten and the Sea Breeze. If there was, it must have come to light when she met Andersen. But was that likely?

  Guri had become nervous when she found out that Andersen was dead. But why had she panicked? It had to be something that happened the night they met. And that night was not linked with the Sea Breeze – as far as he could ascertain.

  He inhaled. Told himself there were two distinct cases here.

  He turned to Weddevåg, who was calmly surveying him.

  ‘What do you think?’ Frank Frølich asked. ‘Why was Andersen killed?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘Do you think it has something to do with this case? The Sea Breeze and the secret witness, Ole Berg?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m ruling nothing out.’

  Silence prevailed again.

  ‘There’s one thing I don’t quite understand,’ Frølich said at length: ‘Why did Andersen invent a cover name for this source? Why call him Ole Berg instead of using the man’s real name?’

  59

  Weddevåg shrugged his shoulders at first. ‘It’s hard to say why, but the most obvious reason is that Berg’s testimony is dynamite. If Berg knows who’s behind the mass murder on the Sea Breeze, his safety will clearly be jeopardised if it comes out.’

  ‘Tell me more…’

  ‘I think those behind the mass murder may be willing to go to great lengths not to be unmasked.’

  ‘Murder, for example?’

  ‘As I said, I rule nothing out. A hundred and fifty-nine people were killed on the ferry.’

  They exchanged glances.

  Frank Frølich thought: Was that likely?

  Possibly, he concluded. Someone killed Andersen. No one knew why as yet. Someone killed Guri Sekkelsten. Assessing the probabilities wasn’t going to resolve who committed these acts and why. Murder investigation wasn’t a game of chess.

  ‘Another possible reason for Andersen making up an alias for the witness is the press,’ Weddevåg said. ‘The Sea Breeze is a massive case and has always been like a magnet for them. But newspaper interest has good and bad sides. It’s positive that the press hasn’t dropped the case over the years. And negative that their interest is superficial. Editors are more interested in the number of readers the news attracts than the consequences the coverage has for the public. You have to remember that we don’t know what Berg actually saw. It’s not certain that he witnessed people lighting fires or sabotaging the ship. But he may’ve seen things that could cast some light on the facts of the case. Andersen knew that if a journalist got hold of Ole Berg, the information he was sitting on would be made public in seconds. Verdens Gang or Dagbladet would print Berg’s statement in order to cause a sensation. And no one would be able to guarantee that the real impact Berg’s testimony could have on the case would come out. And his information wouldn’t be fact-checked before it was published. The news wouldn’t be properly contextualised, either. In fact most of the coverage about the Sea Breeze case has been neither fact-checked nor properly contextualised over the years. So any statements that refute the police version of events can easily be dismissed as conspiracy theories.’

  ‘Surely you can
protect a source in other ways than giving the man a cover name?’

  Weddevåg shrugged. ‘I know that Fredrik wanted to keep his source secret until he was a hundred per cent sure of him. Then he wanted to use him in any way he saw fit.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not a writer. But it’s too late now anyway. Fredrik’s gone. He can’t do anything about the case anymore.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to a journalist who’s taken a lot of interest in the Sea Breeze. Nicolai Smith Falck.’

  ‘Right,’ Weddevåg said with a snort. ‘He’s also known as “Nick, Smile and Fake”.’

  ‘You know him?’

  Weddevåg shook his head. ‘He rang me, asked questions, did some digging and got what he wanted. But what he ended up writing was absolute rubbish. He’s a crime reporter and wants to keep in with the police. He needs them as a source for other cases. That’s why he chose to tread on eggshells on this one.’

  Frank had to smile.

  ‘What are you grinning about?’

  ‘He might’ve wanted to write objectively, with subtlety, and not just be your mouthpiece.’

  ‘Nicolai doesn’t bother with subtleties. He’s obsessed with himself and his career. That’s why he adjusts to whichever way the wind blows, and in this particular case that means writing what the police want.’

  60

  Frank Frølich turned and looked out. The woman in the green bikini was nowhere to be seen. All he could see from the veranda was the trees above Lindøya, Oslo Harbour and the mountains around. Holmenkollen hill looked like an over-sized shoe with a stiletto heel, abandoned in the forest. Two Nesodden ferries met in front of the entrance to Frogner Bay, hiding the Kongen clubhouse for a few seconds. The ferries were like two dung beetles on a shiny surface. A flock of cormorants had settled on the islets in the sound towards Lindøya, one had stretched out its wings to dry.

  ‘Fredrik spoke to Ole Berg and was killed immediately afterwards,’ Weddevåg said.

  ‘Fredrik Andersen spoke to a lot of people before he was killed,’ Frølich said.