The ticket man said he also had a 1966 VW Beetle cabriolet, which he used for driving bridal couples to church. He added that he hired himself out as a chauffeur and wore a dinner jacket, before a ring of the ferry bell hurried him on to the next car in the queue.
13
Above them the clouds were beginning to open.
After they had driven on board, the sun came out. They left Petter in the car and went up onto the top deck. Below them a tourist coach rolled onto the ferry at the last minute. An army of Japanese tourists flocked around the T-bird and took selfies alongside it. Scenes like this used to put Matilde in a good mood. Now her chin was set and she seemed tense.
‘Shall I drive afterwards?’ he asked.
‘Why?’
‘You seem to have a lot on your mind.’
‘No. It’s fine.’
The ferry set off. They went into the saloon and bought a griddle cake each.
He poured himself a cup of coffee from the flask by the cash desk. The coffee was black and bitter. He surveyed the passengers around him. The coffee-drinkers were the older guard. They were laughing and gulping down coffee as if it were spring water.
The ferry put to at Molde. They drove on to Tingvoll. Matilde was becoming more and more nervous. Frank found a map on his mobile and gave instructions as best he could.
They passed the blue sign announcing their arrival in Tingvoll and branched off shortly afterwards by a shop. From here they carried on along a narrow road with a view of the fjord. Cars, a horse trailer and a number of caravans were parked along the verge.
‘There,’ he said, pointing.
Matilde seemed quite stiff as she stopped the car below a grey, prefabricated house with a veranda above a high cellar wall. A lawn with no plants stretched from the lower side of the house down to the cutting towards the road where thistles, mugwort and other weeds grew.
‘This is where he lives,’ said Matilde, as though she had to convince herself. ‘It’s the right number,’ she continued in the same flat tone. ‘Sure you don’t want to come in?’
He looked up at the sky, which was now quite blue and cloud-free. ‘I’ll wait until you’ve decided. If you can manage on your own, I’ll go to Kristiansund. It’ll take fifty minutes each way. That would mean you would have to put up with your family for three hours max.’
She nodded. ‘If it’s too much, I’ll go for a walk with the dog.’
She got out. The dog jumped after her. They walked side by side across the lawn.
Matilde was nervous, that was clear to see. And who wouldn’t be, he thought, as he watched the slight figure crossing the grass to the front door.
She rang the bell.
It took time. She turned to him and seemed more dispirited and anxious than ever.
Then the door opened. She turned round and walked in. He prepared for the wait. But was soon woken by a sharp whistle. He looked up. Matilde was on the veranda and waving him to go.
14
Driving this T-bird was like sitting in an armchair and steering a boat. The bonnet was like a ship’s bow, a long way off, and after setting off he caught himself wishing the narrow road alongside the fjord was one-way. It wasn’t. He first met a tractor pulling a trailer, then a car with a caravan. These incidents were baptisms of fire. By the time he swung out onto the main road he felt as at home with the car as he had as a passenger.
John Fogerty was on the stereo. Fogerty was a working man, a guy in a flannel shirt and jeans with a career full of adversity, a guy it was easy to root for and identify with.
The worst part of the route was a five-kilometre stretch in a tunnel beneath Kvernesfjord between the islands of Bergsøya and Flatsetøya. Fogerty sang ‘Lodi’ while Frank tried not to get claustrophobia – and consoled himself with the fact that the drive was faster than the ferry.
What bothered him most was the uncertainty about this whole venture. He didn’t know what he hoped to achieve by talking to the judge. This short trip was a long way from the assignment Jørgen Svinland had given him.
But it wouldn’t stop with finding Fredrik Andersen’s mysterious source, he thought by way of an excuse. It was about gaining the necessary perspective over something much bigger. Something that concerned him personally to a great degree. Two people are dead. They were killed and someone is after you. In this chaos the Sea Breeze tragedy has a role to play. You owe it to yourself to find out what that role is.
The courthouse in Kristiansund was in the same building as the police station, a square block by the shore of Storsundet with a view of the marina and a hotel on the other side.
He went in, with the clammy feeling he always had when there was a chance he might bump into ex-colleagues. He knew it was irrational, but it was tied to a deep sense of shame. He had been the subject of gossip in Oslo. Now he was five hundred kilometres away. But the police could be like some teachers. They moved around the national network. So there was a probability that he would meet ex-colleagues here. However, the probability calculation was proved wrong. He walked into the courthouse without meeting a single colleague.
He stood in front of the information board, searching for the name of the judge. At that moment a man came running down the stairs. He rounded Frølich and disappeared down the corridor, his jacket flying. Could that be Franzen? There was a certain similarity. The man was bald and he wore a dark suit and was obviously in a hurry.
A teenage boy was at the reception desk. He was passing the time playing an internet game on a tablet. The boy looked up. His fringe fell over his eyes and in a movement worthy of a diva he tossed it back. It stayed in place nicely.
Frølich asked after Franzen.
The receptionist put the tablet on his lap and rang the intercom.
Another toss of the head. ‘He isn’t answering.’
The receptionist put down the phone and went back to his computer game.
Should he give up so easily? After all, he had driven quite a few kilometres to speak to the judge. He could wait, and was about to inform the receptionist that he would, when the man in a hurry returned. Now he was carrying a paper plate with a waffle on it. On top there was a blob of cream with some red jam.
‘Franzen,’ the receptionist said.
The man stopped with one foot on the lowest step of the staircase.
‘Someone asking after you,’ the receptionist said.
Franzen, foot poised, looked from the waffle to Frølich and back. The plate bearing the waffle was the man’s main focus at this moment.
‘I’ll be brief,’ Frølich said.
Franzen asked him what he wanted.
Frølich tried to suggest a need for discretion with an eloquent glance at the boy and back again.
Franzen gave a sigh that came from the heart. ‘My office.’
15
He followed the judge up the stairs. The shadow at the back of his head and above his ears showed that the judge shaved his head to cover up his increasing hair loss.
Inside Franzen’s office there was a bare desk, apart from a photograph of himself and one of the committee he had chaired, all wearing broad smiles for the photographer.
Franzen placed the plate on the blotting pad. ‘Had to be out of the blocks quickly,’ he explained. ‘It’s waffles day today and they’re popular.’
He rubbed his hands. ‘In ten minutes the bowl in the canteen will be empty.’
‘Don’t mind me. It looks good.’
Franzen smiled stiffly. ‘What’s this about?’
Frank Frølich introduced himself. Private investigator, working for the surviving relatives of Fredrik Andersen.
Franzen couldn’t wait. He tore off one of the waffle hearts, dipped it in the jam and cream and put all of it in his mouth.
‘A writer who died recently.’
The man chewed and swallowed. ‘I know Andersen.’
Frølich felt the time was right to ask the judge if he had chaired the parliamentary committee investigating the S
ea Breeze.
Franzen grimaced as he swallowed. ‘Yes,’ he said at length, and after a cough to make his voice carry. He seemed genuinely surprised by the banality of the question. He gazed down at the plate, considered another waffle heart, but refrained. Instead, he said that the committee was authorised to examine how far Stortinget had been fully informed of the case.
Frølich nodded. He had read up on that. ‘Fredrik Andersen wrote a book about the catastrophe, as you know.’
The judge did know and nodded. He eyed the waffle again, succumbed and took another heart. Bit more cream this time. He chewed.
‘And you – the committee, that is – concluded that everything was fine and dandy the night fire broke out on the boat,’ Frølich said, knowing his words had come out wrong.
He tried to be more explicit: ‘I mean, the fire broke out of its own accord, people died as victims of unfortunate circumstances and nothing mysterious happened on board before the boat was ablaze or while the wreck was being towed later?’
The shape of Franzen’s masticating jaws changed as he listened. This was an irritated judge. He swallowed, coughed and swallowed again, then he spoke up.
‘You use different words from those I would’ve chosen, but essentially that is correct.’
‘You didn’t discuss the extent of the victims’ injuries?’
‘We discussed those that were relevant to discuss.’
Frølich raised both eyebrows, but the judge considered it unnecessary to add anything.
‘Weren’t the injuries relevant to the committee?’
Franzen took a deep breath. But no response was forthcoming.
‘Surely there’s little chance of discovering what happened if you don’t thoroughly examine the deceased?’
Frølich paused. But the judge had nothing to add.
‘You had three expert reports concerning the fire.’
‘That’s correct,’ Franzen said, pushing the waffle hearts to the side.
Frølich had his full attention.
‘You had one report commissioned by the DPP. This was carried out by the same two investigators who studied the fire in 1988.’
Franzen nodded.
‘So they investigated themselves?’
‘Those are your words.’
‘You commissioned an independent report afterwards. This report slammed the first. The new one concluded that someone carried out sabotage while the ferry was being towed.’
‘Sounds as if you’ve read up on the case,’ Franzen said.
‘But then you commissioned a third, which forms the basis of the committee’s review.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we were stuck with two reports that contradicted each other.’
‘So you regarded the two reports as of equal value? You didn’t have any doubts about the first?’
‘Why should we have?’
‘The writers of the report were, as I said, investigating themselves.’
Franzen didn’t answer. He contented himself with a shake of the head.
‘As I told you, I’m working for Fredrik Andersen’s relatives,’ Frølich said. ‘They maintain that the writers of the third report are unqualified to comment on ships or fires on ships.’
‘I find that hard to credit,’ Franzen said.
‘I did, too, so I went to the trouble of checking the company’s areas of expertise on their website. You can do the same yourself. The company has its own portal for its competencies. I’m not lying.’
Franzen looked from him to the waffle hearts and back again.
‘What could be the reason for your decision to base the committee’s conclusions on a report from individuals who do not have the expertise required to pen this report?’
Frank thought: I should have been a journalist.
‘The question is tendentious, and I see no reason to reply to tendentious questions.’
‘This company’s report is dated the twenty-fifth of May. You presented the committee’s findings a week later, on the first of June. The findings cover two hundred and fifty pages. Was all this written in six days?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So how was it possible to write such a comprehensive account based on a report that was only a week old?’
‘The committee worked for many months and we took a stance on much more than sabotage claims in our findings.’
‘Yes, but the reason the committee was appointed was that certain facts had come to light that suggested certain crew members had sabotaged the firefighting efforts and lit new fires. And when your committee rejected this, you based your rejection on a report that came out a week before the press conference.’
‘We based our findings on the best picture of events.’
‘How’s that possible?’
‘How is what possible?’
‘How’s it possible for a report to give the best picture of events when the authors don’t have the necessary expertise?’
Franzen gritted his teeth. When he did finally open his mouth it was to pose a question:
‘What is the mandate of your investigation?’
‘Mandate?’
‘Are you preparing an application for the case to be reopened on behalf of the survivors and bereaved?’
Frølich refrained from answering that question. He had no remit beyond finding a person who may not exist. He saw no reason to tell the judge that.
Franzen angrily pulled the waffle plate closer.
‘If so, it’s a waste of time,’ he said. ‘There’s no point. The police investigated the matter again after orders from the DPP. An enormous amount of resources was used to satisfy the survivors and the bereaved.’
He folded the last waffle hearts into a thick sponge cake with jam and cream oozing out from the sides. He took a mouthful. Smacked his lips and chewed. He was an efficient eater. Allowing nothing to go to waste, not the jam and not the cream. But his jaws had to work on the goodies. And while he was chewing, he clearly felt the need to defend himself. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and – still chomping – said:
‘The police shelved the case for the second time after extensive work, which went on for months.’ He swallowed. ‘Stortinget commissioned the Franzen committee, which also formulated its conclusions based on a thorough report with several thousand pages of enclosures. To take on the job you’re doing is cynical, brainless and almost dishonest.’
He took another mouthful. Leaned over the plate as the pink mixture of jam and cream dripped from the waffle.
Frølich watched the man finish eating. He had to smile.
‘What’s so funny?’ Franzen said, holding his fingers in the air and looking for something to wipe them on.
‘I don’t have any such mandate.’
Franzen fell quiet, somewhat bewildered. Only for a moment though. As he straightened his back he regained his judiciary authority. ‘I have a meeting in a few minutes.’
16
Frank Frølich understood. He nodded. ‘Good luck,’ he said, turning his back on the man and leaving.
Everyone seems to be agreed in this case, he thought on his way out of the building. Rita Torgersen was right. The press, the police and the investigators were playing on the same team. They had scaled down the catastrophe to a private matter, one which only concerned the survivors and the bereaved. And the same three authorities – the press, the police and the investigators – were sick to death of these survivors and bereaved.
How could this go so wrong? he thought, and could feel himself getting angry on Jørgen Svinland’s behalf.
But that was definitely a waste of time, it struck him at once. You are starting to feel some sympathy for Jørgen Svinland. It is pointless. Fredrik Andersen finished with the Sea Breeze when he wrote his book. The day before he was murdered he was with Sheyma Bashur and Guri Sekkelsten. The reason for his murder probably had nothing to do with this old ferry tragedy. Your assignment on
this trip is to talk to Oda Borgersrud. Jørgen Svinland is paying you to find her and talk to her. Do your job.
17
Tingvoll church turned out to be a towering twelfth-century stone structure set imposingly in the countryside behind a wall with a gate. Matilde was sitting on the wall beside the gate when he arrived. She was holding Petter on the lead. She and the church complemented each other. It was an attractive church. He got out of the car.
They stood with smiles on their faces.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’
‘He’s forty-six, twelve years older than me. He’s a musician. In real life he’s been a welder at a shipyard, but he got COPD three years ago. Then he stopped smoking, but now he’s on sick leave. He’s divorced and has a daughter of eight who lives with her mother. He lives alone and has a cat called Tormod. Even Petter and the cat liked each other.’
‘I infer you got on?’
‘Great guy. He’s a guitarist with a lot of jazz in his record collection. Biggest one I’ve ever seen. But when it comes to rock and pop I think he likes Elton John, the Eagles and that sort of stuff. Not exactly my style.’
‘Did he say if he has any more brothers or sisters?’
‘No. It’s just us two. He wanted to meet you, but he had to go to Sunndalsøra and pick up his daughter. Do you want to drive?’ she said, getting in.
They headed south. The wind tousled Matilde’s hair as she sat back in her seat, pensive. The sun vanished behind a hill, reappeared and hung above a dip in the terrain, dark red, like the crater of a volcano.
‘Did you make any plans?’
‘He’s coming with his daughter to visit in a few weeks.’
‘What did he say about your father?’
‘He couldn’t say much. They almost met four years ago.’
‘Almost?’
‘Simon discovered where our father lived. He’d been very discreet. Rang him and said who he was and that he didn’t want to bother him or anything. He just wanted to meet up. Said he had a daughter, in other words, our father had a grandchild. It’d been a very nice chat. And Dad had been interested and curious, and then they agreed to meet. This was in Gjøvik.’
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