‘Why did you apply?’
It was a while since he had asked himself the same question. He tried to think. ‘Bit of status,’ he concluded.
‘Only status?’
‘And idealism. A vague concept of justice and the value of law and order.’
‘A vague concept?’
‘Think I got it as a boy, reading books about children who help the police to catch criminals. The Hardy Boys and Bill Bergson, Master Detective.’
He smiled at himself.
‘But you don’t have your concept of justice any longer?’
He didn’t answer. Not wishing to be confronted with this. At least not here and now.
The silence persisted, and he was trying to conjure up a phrase that would restore the harmony when she spoke again:
‘So you started in the police; why did you continue?’
He glanced across at her again. ‘It can be a rewarding job. Exciting. No two days are the same. Time passes quickly. Why did you become an engineer?’
‘You don’t like talking about yourself. Maybe that’s why you became a cop. You want to know everything about everyone else, but you don’t give anything away personally.’
That put him in his place. He had to smile.
‘I can tell you why I started to build bridges. Do you want to hear?’
He didn’t answer.
‘It came about on a boat called MS Hvaler, which in those days plied between Fredrikstad and the Hvaler islands. It happened during the holidays.’
Guri’s aunt told him she grew up in Fredrikstad. Once she had a summer job in the Flora kiosk by Kråkerøy bridge. One weekend, travelling to visit her mother and father at their holiday cabin on Nordre Sandøy, she was sitting on the foredeck of a little ferry beside a nice man with a rucksack on his back. They struck up a conversation. The man said his family had had a cabin on Hvaler for many years. His grandfather had built it. He had just been home to fetch some kitchen equipment and do some food shopping. He patted his rucksack, which was very heavy. Then he began to talk about his interest in seagulls. Folk see a white bird and think it’s any old gull, he said. But there are more than twenty types of seagull in Norway, he pointed out.
She had asked him if seagulls were migratory birds and he had answered yes and no. As the boat approached the quay where the man would go ashore, he stood up. He put the rucksack on the bench where he had been sitting and tamped his pipe. He put the pipe in the corner of his mouth and said that only the herring gulls travel to and from Norway every summer and autumn. The ferry was approaching land and the passengers pressed forward and queued by the break in the railing where the gangway – a kind of board or broad plank – would be placed on the quay for disembarkation. The man hoisted the rucksack on his back. It was so heavy that he teetered and had to hold the railing so as not to fall backwards. A boy in knee-length shorts stood in the bow and threw a rope ashore as the ferry glided the last few metres alongside the quay. The passengers rushed ashore. The man with the rucksack wobbled as he puffed to keep his pipe lit. Guri’s aunt, who was travelling further with the boat, stood at the railing as the man with the rucksack on his back and the pipe in his mouth stepped ashore. He turned his head and waved to her. At that moment he lost his balance and fell into the water.
The water under the wharf was very clear and green. Snail shells grew on the wharf poles, some clusters of seaweed clung to the rock face and the seaweed waved to her in the water as the man with the rucksack broke the surface of the water and sank like a stone. At first she was surprised by how deep the water was so close to land. The man sank in a froth of bubbles and continued to sink and become smaller and smaller. Another man in dark trousers and a white shirt with stripes on the sleeves dived in, clouding the view. He shouted and swam on the surface, and splashed with his arms and legs as passengers pointed, and he ducked his head under the water to see and came up again gasping for air without having seen anything at all. Guri’s aunt couldn’t understand how the man could have imagined he would be able to grab the man with the heavy rucksack so far down. She had seen a little red-and-black piece of wood floating on the surface under the wharf. It was the man’s pipe.
‘That’s how quickly it can happen,’ she said. ‘One minute he’s there and the next he’s gone. Everything is as it was for everyone. Just not for those standing close to the respective person. For us the world stops. But there’s nothing we can do. That’s the worst about grief, realising that you can’t change anything.’
They drove on in silence. The sun was shining from a clear sky, green corn fields stretched across the landscape, and on a grassy mound a tractor lowered the blades of a mower.
‘Did the ferry incident take on a special importance for you?’
‘If only you knew. When I got to the cabin, I started designing a gangway. The man would have got ashore without any problems if the plank had had a railing. It was the same incident that made me apply to Trondheim and become an engineer. One thing led to another, and since then I’ve designed bridges, and there have been quite a few of them over the years. But now I wish only that I could’ve gone instead of Guri.’
He glanced over at her. Again her eyes had welled up.
Silence had them in its grip once more. Until he cleared his throat to ask what had been on his mind since they left the chapel.
‘Why did you really want me to drive you?’
‘I want to go home. I can’t bear memorial gatherings. They’re hypocritical.’
‘But why me?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ she said, lighting another cigarette. She inhaled and slowly blew out the smoke. ‘Why did you stop? Working for the police.’
They had caught up with a semi-trailer and he moved into the left lane. As he did so, they passed a sign saying it was fifteen kilometres to Ørje.
27
She lived in Elveveien, which for some distance ran parallel to the Ørje river. They had to drive past the sluice gate and into a long drive up to a white, chalet-style house.
He parked beside some steps leading up to a modest entrance. He fetched the rollator from the boot. Unfolded it and held it out for her.
‘Can you manage from here?’
‘I want you to come inside,’ she said. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you.’
She pushed the rollator up to the entrance, and he followed her. The door opened.
He had seen the man in the doorway before. On a trip in the Oslo fjord and at a refugee centre. It was the man Guri called Shamal.
They stood eyeballing each other. This must have been how it was for Henry Stanley, Frølich thought. When the man he had been searching for was suddenly there.
‘So this is where you are,’ Frank said to him in Norwegian.
‘You’ll have to speak English,’ Guri’s aunt said. She grabbed the stair railing and pulled herself up the first step. ‘This is Frank, dear. Would you please put the kettle on? It’s time for tea.’
28
‘I was at Guri’s,’ Shamal said. ‘The night she died,’ he added.
He admits it, Frank Frølich thought, saying nothing. He wanted to hear more.
They were sitting around a white kitchen table, each with a mug of aromatic chai that Shamal had brewed with great earnestness and a large number of spices.
‘I waited for her for hours,’ Shamal said. ‘I watched House of Cards while I was waiting. I called her. But she didn’t answer. I went to bed quite late. I’d just fallen asleep when my phone rang and woke me. It was Guri. She said I had to leave; I had to get away from the house at once. I said: “Why?” She said: “Promise me you’ll do as I say. You have to leave at once. Go to Ørje, to my aunt.” She said: “We’ll meet there.” I said: “How do I get there?” She explained where it was.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I did as she said. I got dressed, went out and drove here.’
And which car did you take when you left? Frølich wondered, but first a
sked: ‘Did she say why you had to get away?’
‘She said I was in danger. That’s all I know. And she was right, of course. She came home and died herself.’
‘Why were you there, at Guri’s house?’
‘The previous day she wasn’t at work. She called me. She said she had to talk to me. She told me to go to hers and wait for her there. I said: “Can’t you come here?” – to the refugee centre, I meant. She said: “No. Something’s happened. I have to talk to you, alone.”’
‘Something’s happened? Did she say what?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ask?’
‘Yes. She didn’t answer. She just repeated that I had to go to hers.’
‘And how did you get there, to hers?’
‘I drove.’
‘In what car?’
‘It’s in the garage,’ Guri’s aunt said. ‘An Opel. It’s a miracle it got through the test.’
Right, he thought, turning to Shamal again. ‘But she didn’t show up?’
‘No.’
‘Guri was here,’ her aunt said. ‘She asked if she could stay with me for a few days, and that was fine by me.’
Frank Frølich tried to summarise: ‘You’re at the refugee centre. Guri doesn’t come to work, but calls you and tells you to go to hers so that she can talk to you?’
Shamal nodded.
‘You drive there in an Opel. But when you arrive she’s not there and she doesn’t come home while you’re there?’
Shamal shook his head. ‘No, the house was empty. I rang her. She didn’t answer her phone, so I decided to wait until she came. After all, she’d said she would come.’
‘You had a key to the house?’
‘The key’s on a board inside the porch by the front door. It’s always there. I got there at five in the afternoon, then I waited all evening. In the end I went to bed in a room on the first floor where I’d slept before. But then she rang and woke me up. It was night. It may’ve been two or half past. She asked me where I was. I said: “I’m at yours, as we agreed.” She said: “You can’t stay there now. You have to go. Right now.” I said: “Why do I have to go?” She said: “You’re in danger there.” I said: “In danger of what?” She said: “I’ll tell you, but now you have to trust me. Leave the house at once. Your life’s in danger.”’
‘Did she use those words?’
‘Yes,’ Shamal said, and repeated them. ‘“Your life’s in danger.”’
‘Shamal came here,’ Guri’s aunt said, and added: ‘Later that day the priest came to the door and told us that Guri was dead.’
‘Why did Guri think you were in danger, do you think?’
Shamal shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have no idea.’
Frank Frølich tried to interpret Shamal’s eyes and expression. For some reason he didn’t trust his answer. He sensed that Shamal knew.
As though Shamal had read his mind, he repeated the shrug and the answer. ‘It’s true. I have no idea.’
What had he himself been doing while this was going on? Guri had rung him during the night. He had just seen Bjørn Thyness drive off with the refugee girl. Guri had wanted to meet him at hers. She had said she wanted to meet him there because she was going to pick up some fresh clothes. If Shamal was telling the truth, Guri must have been lying. Either she had lied or she had planned something by asking him to go there. If so, it was a plan that went horribly wrong.
‘I spoke to the manager at the refugee centre,’ he said. ‘She said your appeal was rejected and you took flight.’
‘I didn’t. Guri rang me and told me to go to hers.’
‘Why would Guri tell you to go there and then not meet you?’
Again Shamal shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Whose is the Opel you drove?’
‘A brother’s.’
‘Brother?’
‘A compatriot. He lives in Oslo.’
‘I drove to Guri’s that same night,’ Frølich said. ‘It was me who discovered her body. I got there at about four in the morning. A couple of hours after you say she called you and told you to leave at once. While I was driving there I passed a red Volvo estate. It was her car. The person in the car must’ve driven from the place where she died.’
‘I knew it,’ Guri’s aunt said, resigned. ‘I knew it couldn’t have been as the police said.’
‘That’s why it’s so important to identify who drove away in her car,’ Frølich said, keeping eye contact with Shamal.
Shamal shook his head. ‘I drove my friend’s Opel. I did as she instructed on the phone.’
‘He woke me up,’ Guri’s aunt said. ‘And he asked me where Guri was when he arrived. It wasn’t quite four o’clock.’
‘You’re sure of the time?’
‘Yes, he woke me up, as I said. I was frightened to death. The doorbell rang and it was almost four in the morning.’
‘I shouldn’t have left,’ Shamal said. ‘I should’ve stayed there and waited for her. I could’ve stopped what happened.’
Frank Frølich calculated. It was over an hour’s drive from Guri’s house to here. If Shamal had arrived here just before four in the morning, it couldn’t have been Shamal who drove Guri’s Volvo. Someone else had taken her car. Guri must have first driven back to her house. Alone or with this other person? They must have travelled together. How would this person have got there otherwise? By bus? Not in the middle of the night. But who could it be? Why did she take the killer back with her?
‘You have to tell the police this,’ he said.
‘I can’t talk to the police.’
‘Why not?’
‘As you said, my appeal was turned down. I’ll be arrested. I’ll be transported to Turkey or Baghdad. I’d rather die here in Norway.’
Frølich couldn’t counter such arguments. But the police should act upon Shamal’s information. The police regarded Guri’s case as suicide. Shamal’s statement could change that. The police based their conclusion on Guri already being in the house – without a car. The police thought she killed herself in a bout of depression. Shamal’s statement would pull the rug from under that theory. It would also focus the investigation on her car. Shamal confirmed she was on her way home in her own car that night, so someone must have driven off in her Volvo later, as he had also told the police.
‘But for Guri’s sake you have to talk to the police,’ he said.
‘Guri’s dead. She won’t be coming back,’ Shamal said.
‘If you tell the police this, they’ll realise she was murdered. They’ll reopen the investigation.’
‘I’m not talking to the police,’ Shamal said. ‘I’m talking to you.’
‘Me? Why me?’
‘Guri trusted you. I trust you.’
Trust? What did that mean? He was reminded of what Gunnarstranda used to say: I have yet to see a witness visit me voluntarily without a personal agenda.
Shamal wanted to achieve something by contacting him. But what?
‘You were following me on the Oslo ferry,’ he said.
29
Shamal cast down his eyes. ‘I wanted to talk to you. I thought you might understand what was going on. Why Guri died. But I didn’t dare speak when I had the chance.’
Now Shamal was lying. It wasn’t a shy man following him that day but one needing to talk.
‘How did you find me?’
‘We talked about you after you came to the refugee centre. Guri said who you were. What work you did. We found your address online.’
‘You followed me from my flat that day?’
Shamal nodded.
‘You followed me to the metro, down to City Hall quay, onto the boat, and further, while I talked to people on the islands.’
Shamal nodded again.
‘You spent a whole day shadowing me without approaching me?’
Shamal nodded.
‘Why that day in particular?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why did yo
u follow me on precisely that day?’
Shamal seemed confused by the question. ‘Because I was in Oslo.’
‘What about the other days?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What other days did you follow me?’
Shamal looked at Guri’s aunt as if for help. She shrugged.
Could Shamal have followed him over several days? Of course he had. Shamal’s strange interest in me leads us back to the core of the matter, he thought. The meeting between Guri, him and Shamal the first time at the refugee centre.
‘What’s your relationship with Sheyma Bashur?’ he asked.
Shamal looked up. His eyes had hardened.
Frank Frølich repeated the question.
‘None,’ Shamal said. ‘I have no relationship with that woman.’
Frank Frølich looked him in the eye. Shamal stared back defiantly.
‘But you know who she is,’ he said.
Shamal’s eyes didn’t deviate. But he didn’t answer.
In the end, Shamal turned to his hostess and said:
‘I’m tired. I have to rest.’
With that, he was off his chair and out of the room.
The other two were left in the slightly unpleasant atmosphere that always arises when someone suddenly departs, leaving the impression they are offended.
‘He’s a good boy,’ she said at length. ‘He is that,’ she said again, as though to convince herself.
‘Why didn’t he go to the funeral?’
She shrugged. ‘I think he’s still afraid for his own safety.’
‘Are the police after him?’
‘He says so.’
‘He should report to the police. He’s holding important information.’
‘He daren’t. Besides, they’re not interested in what you call information. They didn’t want to talk to me, either. I rang them. I was put through to a woman who said she was investigating the case. I said I was Guri and Ivar’s next of kin. I told the police Guri came here and wanted to stay with me because she was afraid and felt threatened. The policewoman thanked me for the information. That was all. They didn’t come here. They didn’t ask me to make a statement. They’re sure she took her own life.’
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