He looked out at the violet sky, at the contours of the mountains. Glanced across at Matilde. The light from the dashboard framed her head. Red lipstick, red hair and a visible black strap on her round shoulder. Her profile could have been a motif for a film poster.
She had been waiting for his attention and lowered the music. ‘Do you believe in God?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I believe in co-operation with God.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Perhaps it has something to do with the job I had. Discovering that there’s a lot of evil in the world. A lot.’
‘I believe in God,’ she said. ‘Usually,’ she added after a pause for thought.
‘So you’re a bit like me?’
‘I suppose so. What about fairness?’
‘Do I believe in it?’
She nodded.
‘Is it possible to believe in it?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘The English use the word ‘justice’ as well – something to do with law and order.’
‘Wasn’t it the Brits who coined the expression “fair play”?’ he said.
‘Yes, but “fair”. That’s an adjective.’
‘Where are you going with this?’
‘I think good existed long before language,’ she said.
He remembered that John the Evangelist had had quite a different opinion. But he didn’t say so. Her hand found his in the darkness. She squeezed it.
22
In all, it took them a bit more than seven hours to get from Ulsteinvik to Havreveien. After parking the car they took the dog for a walk. The first traffic was on its way to the city centre. There was so little that the clanking of an early tram carried across the noise barriers. They met paper boys on bikes and the odd single-minded jogger, who lurched to the side when Petter showed them some interest.
They got out of bed at two o’clock in the afternoon. When Matilde went for a shower he jumped on his bike to go and buy some eggs, juice, coffee, fresh rolls and something to put on them.
The radio was on low in the background as they had a breakfast that gave them the feeling they were still travelling without a set destination or time frame.
Later he caught the metro to town and his office. He was nervous as he let himself in. The cleaner had done her job. He sat down, rolled the swivel chair back against the wall, pulled out the lowest drawer with the tip of his shoe and rested his foot inside. Then he called Jørgen Svinland.
He answered the telephone only after it had been ringing for a long time.
‘Frølich here.’
‘Hello,’ Svinland said in a measured tone.
‘I’ve met Ole Berg.’
Svinland didn’t say anything.
Frank Frølich hesitated. His client’s lack of enthusiasm made him unsure. He said:
‘Ole Berg turned out to be a woman. She worked on the Sea Breeze. Her name’s Oda Borgersrud. She doesn’t wish to stand as a witness. That’s probably why Andersen referred to her under another name. But I’m afraid Oda Borgersrud has nothing new to tell us.’
‘I see. I’m still pleased with the work you’ve done, Frølich. Do I owe you anything?’
‘Far from it.’
He went quiet.
Svinland was silence itself.
It was unusual enough that Svinland didn’t seem interested in what Oda Borgersrud had to say. But there was also the atmosphere. Something he couldn’t quite grasp and didn’t particularly appreciate. Svinland’s distance made the conversation disagreeable.
‘Are you interested in what she had to say?’
Svinland was still silent.
‘It’s clear that a lifeboat didn’t go missing from the Sea Breeze as it was being evacuated. The police documented that in 1988 and she could confirm the same. She was an eyewitness and had told Fredrik Andersen that no lifeboat went missing, in other words, no crewmen fled the boat. She has her suspicions, but did not observe any criminal activity while she was on board.’
This was still a monologue. ‘Are you there?’
‘I’m here,’ Svinland said.
‘It’s a number of weeks now since she met Fredrik Andersen. She lives in a completely different part of the country and hasn’t been to Oslo for many months. The meeting between her and Andersen can’t have had anything to do with his death.’
Frølich paused.
Svinland stayed silent.
‘As far as the advance I received from Andersen is concerned, it’s far too much. I can transfer half to your account if you give me the number.’
‘No, no. We’re happy. Thank you for all your help, Frølich, and good luck with everything.’
Svinland rang off.
Frølich sat staring at the phone in his hand. Svinland had just hung up. As though he were pleased to be rid of him. As though the news he brought him was boring. As though he were a nuisance.
Svinland was the man who had insisted Fredrik Andersen’s death was a link in a larger conspiracy and that conversation with Ole Berg, alias Oda Borgersrud, would provide an answer and solve his long crisis. Now he wasn’t interested.
Something must have happened. Something Svinland had no desire to let him in on.
Should he ring the man again?
Well, the guy had hired him to carry out an assignment. He had done it. It was fundamental in a profession like his that you don’t become personally involved – in the job or with clients.
But he didn’t want to keep Andersen’s money. He had decided to give half to Jørgen Svinland or Andersen’s mother – whatever his erstwhile client might think. But he didn’t have an account number for a bank transfer.
Reluctantly, he grasped the phone and tapped in Svinland’s number. It rang for a long time.
No one answered.
He put down the phone and wondered about the meeting with the Svinland family at the supermarket a few days before. Something had happened then.
He tried to remember details of the incident. He hadn’t said hello to the young man. Svinland had been off before they’d had a chance to be introduced. A man reacts when you say you have met his wife before. Jealousy? No. It had to be something else.
23
The service was supposed to take place in Askim parish hall. Funerals are not occasions on which you want to attract attention. So they took his Mini Cooper. Petter found himself a comfortable spot on the rear seat.
Matilde connected her phone to the car’s system. From the speakers came ‘Sierra’ by Boz Scaggs.
‘I called Ivar last night,’ she said.
‘Ivar?’
‘Her brother.’
Frølich turned down the music. He still hadn’t told Matilde about his dealings with Guri’s brother. He should have done so long ago. But was this the right moment?
‘He’s in prison for petty theft, isn’t he?’ he said, feeling like a fraud. After all, he had testified in court.
‘He was on a suspended sentence when he was arrested,’ Matilde said. ‘So he was put in the clink. It’s a kind of open prison term. He does some sort of gardening in Bastøy. But now he’s been given leave. So he’s been able to see to the practical arrangements of the burial. Their parents aren’t alive. By the way, I asked him if he’d heard Guri talk about someone called Shamal. He wasn’t sure, but said Guri was heavily into her job and asylum seekers. I knew that already, of course. But he also said there was a foreigner who occasionally slept over at hers. He didn’t know the guy’s name. I asked what he looked like. He was a bit older than her apparently. I tried to visualise the Shamal we met at the refugee centre. But I couldn’t give a very good description. Think I was too caught up with Aisha.’
‘Shamal had a ring in his ear,’ Frank said, and added: ‘Were they in a relationship?’
She shrugged. ‘Hard to say.’
‘But what do you think?’
She glanced over at him, and gave the matter some thought. ‘Actually I doubt it.’
‘But as
he stayed at hers occasionally, doesn’t that mean there may have been something between them?’
Matilde ruminated. ‘Perhaps. But she didn’t say anything about it.’
‘Did she usually confide in you about that kind of stuff?’
Matilde smiled. ‘If it was serious I think she’d have said something, yes. Why are you so curious?’
He didn’t answer. It was no business of his who Guri went to bed with. But there was something about Guri’s commitment that he had reacted to the first time they met. He had a sense that Guri had had problems setting clear boundaries. As close relationships between staff and clients were considered unprofessional and undesired at the centre, she might well have kept quiet about this one – to everyone. But so what? was his next thought. What business was it of his?
He looked around. They were driving past a huge field of barley. A playful gust of wind sent a shadow across the billowing crop.
24
The bright sun bathed the chapel and surrounding land in a wonderful light. The car park between the parish hall and the church was full, and the road to the chapel was lined with cars parked bumper to bumper. There was a gap on the bend to the car park. He squeezed the Mini Cooper into it. The car was in the shade of a birch tree. They let the dog stay in the car and rolled down the windows a fraction before leaving for the chapel.
Matilde knew some of the latecomers heading for the front door. She waved to them.
In the doorway a man from the funeral parlour was distributing a booklet with a picture of Guri on horseback on the front cover.
They took one each and went inside. The room was packed to the rafters. They found a place almost at the very back, with a large throng of younger people and a variety of foreigners.
Guri must have been as popular at work as she was in her private life, he thought, and studied the photograph of the blonde on the horse. She was wearing national costume. The skirt was black and the waistcoat green damask. Draped over her shoulders was a black shawl embroidered with roses. Her blonde hair hung loose, falling in waves across her shoulders. Her shoes were black with shiny buckles. Her stockings black. The horse was black and muscular and its coat glistened. Guri was smiling in the photograph. She seemed proud, and perhaps a little embarrassed? There was something about the undisguised happiness in her eyes above the slightly embarrassed grimace on her sensitive lips. Perhaps she was thinking that wearing a national costume while riding a horse was a little too much, although she did appear to enjoy being dressed like that. He could understand it. Guri had been an attractive woman. He thought about her. About the moment she went into Oslo Central Station, turned back and waved to him. He remembered the last conversation they’d had on the phone. Such a short time before he found her. He speculated on how it had happened and where. He wondered if she’d had time to be afraid. He wondered if her family asked themselves the same questions. Or if they were reassured by the police statement.
A group of three girls opened the service by singing the beautiful ‘Tir n’a Noir’. The priest told the congregation afterwards that Guri had had a happy childhood and she was a thoroughly pure and kind creature, a helper, someone who was always compassionate to others. Someone who would react at once if she came across injustice. Someone who made friends wherever she went, which the big turn-out at the funeral clearly demonstrated. The family had lived not far from Kykkelsrud power station when she was small. It had been a happy time, filled with animals, and Guri had started riding horses at an early age. Her mother and father passed away far too young, in a head-on collision outside Rakkestad during the night of 1st January on their way home after a New Year’s party. Guri and her brother had gone to live with their mother’s aunt near the Swedish border.
Guri trained as a nurse after school and had done a specialist course in psychiatry later.
It was clear that mentioning suicide was a difficult way for the priest to conclude his speech, as he immediately switched to talking about how hard life could be for some people, about mountains that had to be climbed and how some didn’t manage all the hills.
25
The coffin was borne outside and the congregation slowly trooped out. Frank Frølich and Matilde followed the procession, down the steps and to the hearse, which would be driven to the crematorium. Here, behind the hearse, stood a tall, lean figure receiving condolences. Frølich recognised Ivar Sekkelsten from the trial. Now he was intrigued to know whether Guri’s brother would recognise him.
Standing there in a black suit with an unfashionable cut, he seemed out of his comfort zone. His hair was as dark as his sister’s had been blonde. He had combed it back with wax. He had a sunken chin, which he tried to compensate for with a sparse beard. Even though he wore a helpless expression on his face, Frølich knew he could be a tough nut if the conditions were right.
‘That’s Ivar, her brother,’ Matilde whispered.
It was their turn.
He grasped Ivar Sekkelsten’s hand and expressed his condolences. Guri’s brother looked at him. His eyes were grey, like his sister’s. He continued to look at his face, even after they had stopped shaking hands. Ivar had obviously recognised him.
Matilde fell around Ivar’s neck. They hugged each other for a long time.
The hearse drove off with the coffin.
Matilde went to collect the dog, which was panting and dribbling in the hot weather. She held Petter tightly on the lead.
Ivar Sekkelsten shouted from the steps that close relatives were invited to a memorial gathering after the funeral.
‘Presumably that’s not us,’ Matilde said.
They stayed anyway, like most of the other guests, hanging around, doing nothing and waiting, as people often do when they have just been through a deeply gripping experience and don’t know what to do.
That was when he felt someone watching him. An elderly woman nodded to him. She was alone, leaning on a rollator frame. She had a circular face adorned with round glasses and wreathed by grey, curly hair.
At that moment Guri’s brother forced his way through. He came towards them and asked Matilde if she would like to join the memorial. Matilde nodded.
‘My aunt’s tired out,’ Ivar Sekkelsten said. He looked Frank in the eye. ‘You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?’
Frank had no option but to nod.
‘My aunt’s wondering if you could drive her home.’
He looked across at the woman with the rollator.
‘Happy to,’ he said.
26
Guri’s aunt was wearing dark trousers and a grey cardigan. She seemed shrunken by age as she walked slowly beside him, pushing the rollator.
Frank struggled to find a topic for conversation, but as he was folding the rollator and putting it into the car boot, he asked if she was the aunt Guri and her brother lived with after the death of their parents.
She nodded. ‘I’m actually Guri’s mother’s aunt. But the children always call me Auntie.’
He opened the passenger door. She got in. He closed the door behind her, turned and saw that Matilde had climbed into the passenger seat of a pick-up. She manoeuvred the dog onto the rear seat, noticed him and waved.
Guri’s brother got behind the wheel. They drove off.
He stood for a few seconds watching the pick-up, then got in, too. It felt like standing by a river and watching a valuable possession drift away with the current. Matilde would be told about his relationship with Guri’s brother – by someone else. And he was the one who had managed to put them both in this humiliating position.
He sat with his hands on the wheel, still paralysed by the consequences of his own actions.
Eventually he felt his passenger’s eyes on him.
‘You live in Ørje, don’t you?’
Guri’s aunt nodded.
He started the engine.
Guri’s aunt waved to people still standing by the chapel as they drove past.
‘How well did you know her?’ she ask
ed.
‘We only met twice.’
He was lost in a reverie as he tried to find his bearings. Finally discovered a signpost pointing to the motorway and added: ‘Lovely woman. Attractive, decent, committed. Especially in her work.’
He fell quiet and glanced across at her. She was clearly moved: her eyes were moist, and she was squeezing a handkerchief in one hand.
They sat in silence until he accelerated onto the motorway.
She rummaged in a little bag, pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
He pressed a button to open the window on her side a few centimetres.
‘You’re a detective,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘And you?’
‘I used to be an engineer. I’ve been retired for a long time now. I built bridges.’
He nodded again. This situation reminded him of his time in the police. Gunnarstranda chain-smoking in the passenger seat.
‘I don’t think she took her own life,’ she said.
He didn’t answer.
‘No, I definitely don’t think she did,’ she said, looking at him. ‘You’re a detective. You can find out what really happened, can’t you?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Why does one actually become a detective?’
He shrugged. ‘I worked in the force for a long time. Investigating is a job I persuade myself I can do.’
‘Why did you join the police?’
He glanced over at her again.
She returned his glance, cigarette bobbing in her mouth.
‘It happened quite by chance. I started with law, but stopped when I was accepted at police college. And started there instead.’
Sister Page 24
