Lethal Investments (17 page)

Queueing always made Frank Frølich go soporific. It was like sitting on the tram. Your brain latched on to a thought you had filed away, you withdrew into yourself and patiently watched the world go by waiting until it was all over.

Not Eva-Britt. She thrived in queues, construed them as a social event and was already in conversation with two bald-headed guys from Oslo West. Both on top form. Loud young men with a strong need to tell everyone around them what they felt.

Eva-Britt screeched with laughter at the boys’ corny jokes, was treated to swigs of the beer they had brought along and an all-out charm attack. Clinging on to his arm, as if fearful she might get into deep water.

Frank listened with half an ear, gazing patiently into the distance. The red wine in his stomach dulled the inane chat of the society boys. He preferred to concentrate on the door ahead of them, which kept opening and closing without making any impression on the length of the queue. Some customers seemed to be more popular than others, he mused. Watched a couple who fitted in that category. A babe in tart costume inched her way out of a taxi, revealingly, legs first. Grabbed the outstretched hand of her escort with highlights in his hair. Both wriggled their way sideways through the queue, the woman with bashful, downcast eyes, as though she were walking topless on the beach. Both struggled in through the glass door where a self-assured bouncer with a tattoo on the back of his hand took care of them.

When Frank and Eva-Britt finally forced their way inside they had been waiting for three-quarters of an hour. The West End boys left them for two scantily clad girls beckoning and gesturing from a table by the dance floor. Frank and Eva-Britt found themselves a table at the back, a long way from the bar, but with a good view of the dance floor and the entrance. A free table cluttered with dead glasses and dirty plates.

It was difficult to talk. The music was so loud. Frank looked around and let Eva-Britt do the ordering from the menu. The room was dark, the dance floor spacious. A lot of attractive people. Men and women who could tell the difference between a backhand and a forehand on the centre court.

Eva-Britt wanted to know what he was going to drink.

‘Well, let’s see,’ he smiled, at a loss. ‘Anything that costs less than a thousand kroner a bottle.’

Eventually the table was cleared by a girl who rationed her eye-contact. She appeared to take their orders without being aware anyone was sitting there. However, the drinks came faster than expected.

Frank held the glass and considered whether to make a fuss. There was definitely not more than four decilitres of beer in the half-litre glass. Perhaps you would notice me if I chucked the beer in your face, he reflected, sending her a happy smile. At that moment something happened at the table with the West End kids. The boys got up and waggled their backsides as if they had just scored the winning goal in a final. The girls waved and shouted. It was a kind of ceremony. The group was welcoming a guest. Frank leaned back against the wall and sipped his beer. There was something familiar about this guest. The glittery suit. A middle-aged, bloated man on skinny legs. Grey suit that glittered when he moved.

He followed the man with his eyes. Moist, slightly wan face with a rigid smile. Strong voice that carried. The waitress was on the spot at once with champagne. Frank watched the man giving people around high fives. This person was well known. Very well known. He even got a hug from the waitress with the niggardly eyes.

Frank Frølich was in no doubt.

The West End table had become a cheery party. The new arrival was the focus of everyone’s attention and gesticulated as he spoke. He was so drunk he didn’t even notice when he knocked a glass off the table. After he came to the punch-line he tucked his lower lip under his teeth, raised his cheeks and guffawed. Everyone laughed. Fell over the table laughing.

The idiot seemed to be amusing, Frank thought, and started playing footsie with Eva-Britt. She was eating spaghetti with lots of sauce. Glanced up, winked and sucked pasta. Sexy lips. She looked down again. Kicked off a shoe under the table and put her foot in his lap. He looked down in his glass. Empty. He waved to the waitress who was still acting as if there weren’t any customers sitting around.

‘Another half-litre please!’

She was gone.

‘Hey!’

He caught her arm.

She stopped, half-turned.

‘The guy you hugged before, is that Terje Engelsviken?’

She turned right round. Viewed him with more interest. Nodded.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he smiled. ‘I just wasn’t sure.’

Eva-Britt’s eyes questioned him.

‘The guy taking off his jacket over there,’ Frank explained.

Both watched him struggle with his jacket, stagger backwards and knock over another glass. It was funny. The whole group howled with laughter again. Engelsviken laughed loudest. Raised the empty bottle and roared. The sound carried across the room. The waitress, who was now behind the bar, gave a nod of the head.

‘That’s how the big boys order drinks,’ Frank said.

‘Has he killed someone?’

Eva-Britt was sitting with her back to the group again and rotating her fork.

‘I don’t know.’

He studied Engelsviken as he lurched between tables. Slapped people’s backs on the way. Stopped and spoke to a man. Straightened up, threw back his head and laughed. Lurched onwards, round the corner to the gentlemen’s toilet.

Frank carefully removed the foot that was still resting on his thigh. ‘Just going to the loo,’ he mumbled and followed.

The toilet was large and light. There were white tiles on the floor and the air was perfumed with the faint smell of vomit.

The man in the silk suit stood combing his hair in front of a mirror. His knees were bent and he was going to a lot of trouble to comb his hair back with the right flick. Concentrated expression. Frank went to the urinal. He thought about Reidun Rosendal with the nice mouth. The man by the sink was sweaty and a bit too fat round the belly. Not exactly good-looking. But sociable. Obviously had a lot of friends. Could tell jokes and laugh out loud. So, someone who could dominate social groups. Like now. The dude was warbling a tune.

‘I’m just a gigolo,’ he crooned. ‘Just a gigolo.’

Out of key.

Someone flushed in one of the cubicles, unlocked the door, went to the sink to wet their hands. And was gone.

They were alone.

The policeman washed. Stood beside Engelsviken who was finally happy with the flick of his hair, put the comb in his back pocket and found his eyes in the mirror.

‘Engelsviken?’

The man nodded. Turned. The swollen face still had the vestiges of a forced smile hanging there.

‘Frank Frølich.’ Frank passed him his hand. ‘I’m investigating the murder of Reidun Rosendal.’

It was late at night. Already well into Saturday, officially a free day. He should have gone to bed hours ago, but had kept postponing it. Knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. His brain was churning.

Gunnarstranda sat at the living room table flicking half-heartedly through Emil Korsmo’s illustrated plates of weeds. Sometimes botany helped his brain to focus on other things. So he had snatched sporadic looks throughout the evening. The mint problem. Last year’s garden pest at the cabin. It could have been corn mint or cat mint. Determining which wasn’t crucial. But it was annoying that he couldn’t establish which it was.

The thing was, it threatened a rare
Clematis sibirica
that he and Edel had planted, and it had survived until now.

The plant was more than ten years old. The seeds were harvested one summer eleven years ago when they still had the old VW Beetle. They had come from collecting plants in Jotunheimen. Stopped at Fåberg and found where the clematis grew wild. The white bells had withered long ago, but the fine tassels of the seed pods alongside the mountain were unmistakable. He thumbed through the weed book, turning over the pages with the back of his hand. Looking from the dried example in the herbarium and down to the book’s neat drawings. Notwithstanding the artist’s fabulous lines, the task was impossible without fresh material. He sipped at a half-empty bottle of low-alcohol beer, uninspired. Emil Korsmo and Volume Two of Fægri’s
Norwegian Plants
lay on the table with sheets of dried plants from his own herbarium.

Sod this knife-wielding murderer. The unfeeling bastard who could not be smoked out because his crimes weren’t visible from the outside. It was just in films that murderers shuffled around like escaped inmates from a nut-house.

He rolled the bottle between his hands, sighed and raised a dry, wrinkled Petterøe from the ashtray. Didn’t light it. Reached for the remote control for the TV and switched it on. There was a blue gleam from the opposite corner of the room where a man with pocked skin, hollow cheeks and sunglasses walked unannounced into the sitting room of a naked woman with an angelic white face. The scene was so stupid he was annoyed. The weak point in the case. Reidun Rosendal had not made any noise. Infernal riddle. Anyway, he wouldn’t find the answer in this film. He got up. Glanced at his watch. Past two o’clock in the morning. He ought to go to bed. Stood ruminating and staring into the air while the man with the sunglasses on TV was making the woman scream.

He yawned. Turned. Christ, the racket she was making! He switched off, held his right hand against his sciatic nerve while stretching. Went over to the window and looked out.

That, too. Films always have screaming victims. What sounds had there been in Reidun’s flat?

Violence. Of course violence leaves traces in a man’s character. The point is that they aren’t immediately obvious. At least not to him. But it had happened. In the dock. Long, pale clerical fingers. And a look. Eyes: two small slits behind thick lenses. Then he had finally known what she had seen, the victim the man had strangled with his pale fingers.

Two windows in the block across the street shone warm and yellow against the dark wall. Inside, the man got up. String vest and loose braces today. The old boy opened the window and blew out cigarette smoke while talking to his wife who appeared behind him.
Soon be in tears again,
thought Gunnarstranda when he saw her. The tight black brassière squeezed her flesh into rolls all the way down her body.

A marriage can become damned restrictive within two rooms and a kitchen. Gunnarstranda could not count all the times she had sworn at the man as he strolled off on Friday evenings. Routine. The man had had someone else for years.

She joined him where he stood smoking. Stroked his back.
I don’t know what’s worse
, the policeman philosophized.
The thought that he’s deceiving her, or the thought that everyone knows. She can take it anyway,
he thought with a grin.
She hasn’t killed him yet.

He felt the smile stiffen on his lips as he turned from the window and tugged at his tie.

Turned back. Watched the unfaithful husband putting his arms around his plump spouse. She hadn’t killed him yet. Gunnarstranda gave a malicious grin. Not him. Why on earth would she kill him?

The tie fell over the back of the chair and slipped down on to the cushion.

Of course she wouldn’t do anything to him!

Gunnarstranda watched as the light in the couple’s flat was switched off. Tried to organize his thoughts as a taxi with a yellow roof light splashed through the rain on its way to the city-centre night clubs that were still open.

He unbuttoned his shirt. Had got halfway when the telephone rang. Inhaled, deep, but didn’t answer. Started to button up his shirt again. They would ring for a long time. They always did when something important happened at night.

The first thing Frank noticed was the dregs of Gunder’s moonshine fizzing somewhere in his head. Then, far away, he heard the telephone, like in a bad dream. He moved his head and got a nose full of hair. Lifted his hand, stroked the hair to the side. Almost woke up. Rolled on to his side. Let her slide off. The telephone droned on. But Eva-Britt was still fast asleep. Her head was just blonde hair and her nipples two dark blue beacons in the dark. He writhed backwards, groped for the telephone. Stretched. Grabbed the receiver, lifted it up and put it back down.

Silence at last. A gentle breeze wafted through the partly open window. Her perfume sweetened the air. By some happy chance he had had only one glass of home brew. To hell with Gunder. The mechanic always managed to saddle Eva-Britt with a bottle. As a rule she emptied it down the pan. Yesterday she had spared it, and he had been foolish enough to sample it when they came home.

He felt her turning on to her side. Her heart-shaped bottom smiled at him. He stroked her hip. She stirred and grunted from miles away. Carefully he spread the duvet over both of them and turned on his side to continue sleeping.

Then the telephone rang again.

He opened his eyes wide and stared into the dark. Examined the crack between the mattress and the wooden frame of the damaged bed. Had to get up on his knees. Grabbed the receiver. Crackles. Boss on the line. Gunnarstranda’s abrupt voice injected energy into the room.

Frank drew down the arm with the receiver. ‘Are you aware this is the middle of the night?’ he whispered groggily.

‘Yes,’ the line crackled. ‘Get dressed.’

He tripped over the bedstead. Wasn’t used to having the mattress on the floor. That hurt! He rolled across the floor. Bloody phone. Working at this hour! Why the hell didn’t I pull out the jack-plug?

He was upright. On all fours anyway. Less enthusiastic than a mediator in pay discussions. Brain hiding behind the sofa like a tortoise. Dreaded thought of standing on two legs. Did it. Dizzy. Thank you, Lord. No nausea. His mouth tasted of beer, garlic and Christmas cake.

Staggered into the bathroom. Threw water over his face. Head felt like it was under a pile of wooden boards. Cleaned his teeth. Held a hand in front of his mouth afterwards, tested his breath without fainting. Got clothes on, trudged into the kitchen and wrote a note to Eva-Britt on a corner of the loaf paper. Tore it off. Dithered outside the bedroom door.

The bed framed the mattress and her. She lay on her side facing him, no duvet. Lying in a box. Dark nipples. Smooth tummy, rounded legs and a thin line of hair curling towards her groin.

And I can’t even put this down as bloody overtime
, he thought bitterly. Folded the note in the middle and placed it on the bedside table by the telephone like a tent. Quietly closed the door after him.

Felt dizzy on his way down the stairs. Rain outside. Paused for a moment before unlocking his car. Looked at his watch. A quarter to three. Pangs of conscience, which he instantly dismissed. Found some chewing gum in his jacket pocket and unwrapped it. It tasted like a sheet of A4.

The car shot across the Ring Road. It was night and it was raining. The windscreen wipers beat a steady rhythm, and Sinsen intersection was reflected in the glistening wet tarmac, vast and empty. A husky woman’s voice was speaking on the radio. She was gone, played ‘When the Night Comes’ with Joe Cocker, after the obligatory howl the guitar solo that made his spine tingle. The traffic lights on amber in deserted Hans Nielsen Hauges gate. A blonde bird rubbing up against a guy in the telephone booth on the corner of Sandakerveien. It must have been cold. Middle of April. The gleam of the lights seemed dark in the rain, almost orange.

Frank drove into the taxi rank in advokat Dehlis plass and parked. Got out of the car, stood inhaling the fresh air in the drizzle. The paving stones in the turnaround glistened and the light from the jeweller’s made everything sparkle.

He could feel his jaws aching and spat the chewing gum into the conveniently nearby litter bin. A stooped figure was coming down Bergensgata. It was Gunnarstranda. Without an umbrella, with a wet coat. The grey material had begun to darken over the shoulders.

‘You’d better drive,’ Frank said in welcome and occupied the passenger seat.

Gunnarstranda pulled up at the red lights in the crossing with Arendalsgata. Frank yawned aloud, unembarrassed. Gunnarstranda glared to his right. ‘Weren’t you working last night?’

‘Can’t sit for four to five hours drinking coffee in a place like that!’

‘There is such a thing as moderation! You smell of vomit.’

‘That’s why I asked you to drive.’

‘Did you find anything?’

Frank indicated the lights. ‘It’s green.’

The inspector gunned the engine and set off with a kangaroo hop.

‘I met Engelsviken.’

Gunnarstranda drove in silence.

‘Silk suit and Italian shoes. Pretty plastered. We met by the urinals.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Bit. He boasted he had screwed her.’

‘Whom?’

‘Reidun. And in fact that was all he said.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘He started to shout his mouth off. Asked what the fuck the cops were doing following him to the toilet.’ Frank sighed. ‘He was already drunk when he arrived. Joined a group of younger socialites he must have known. Two men and two women who put on one hell of a show when he appeared in the doorway. The guy was pouring champagne down them.’

He yawned and went on: ‘The guy’s face was drenched with sweat, he was loud and waving his arms about. Dragged the girls on to the dance floor. Where he tried to stuff his fingers down the knickers of one of them. With people watching.’

Gunnarstranda nodded slowly to himself, slowed down and looked right before crossing on amber. The wipers scraped across the window. He pushed in the cigarette
lighter
.

Frank resumed:

‘That happened right after he and I had been talking in the toilet. But the girl wouldn’t stand for it. She made quite a scene. Slapped him so hard you could hear it over the disco music.’

The lighter clicked and jumped out. Frank rolled down the window as his boss lit up.

‘Then Engelsviken spotted me,’ Frank continued. ‘It was quite embarrassing. The girls left, so Engelsviken was alone on the dance floor. Legs akimbo, spine arched backwards. A sick smile on his mug. Suddenly he started slapping himself in the face. Ten, eleven, twelve real stingers. With the red and green disco lights flashing above his head and the music pounding. And he wasn’t holding back, his head shook from the slaps. Crazy stuff!’

Frank yawned aloud. ‘After he had finished slapping himself his nose was bleeding. But the man didn’t notice; he just teetered back to the table with his shirt tail hanging out and the same sick smile on his face. He looked dreadful. Blood from his nose was running into his mouth, discolouring his teeth. Then he finished off the bottle of champagne, jumped up on the table and yelled.’

Gunnarstranda smoked with a dry smile on his lips.

‘Then Eva-Britt couldn’t take any more.’

‘Eva-Britt?’

‘Girlfriend came along. She reckoned this madness was because of me, and began to feel uncomfortable. So we left. In fact, that’s not long ago.’

‘And was the madness because of you?’

‘He looked over between slaps.’ Frank grinned, and stifled another yawn.

‘The conversation in the toilet . . .’

‘Yes?’

Gunnarstranda tapped the ash off the cigarette through the rolled-down window.

‘The drunken chat?’

‘He wasn’t confused, if that’s what you think. He seemed jovial at first. I followed him in to make contact. Told him who I was, told him I’d spoken to his wife during the investigation.’

Frank yawned. ‘He got pretty upset, didn’t give me time to finish what I was saying. He called Reidun a mattress. Nerdspeak.’

Frank sighed. ‘Afterwards he turned and began to have a leak, then he suddenly screamed: ‘What sort of fucking whisky do they sell here? My piss smells like lager!’

Frank adjusted his jacket. ‘And so on,’ he groaned. ‘Then he calmed down and commented to me over his shoulder: “Yeah, I gave her a seeing-to now and again. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it.” I didn’t answer, and he zipped up. Then leaned back and hollered: “I’m just a gigolo!” I just watched. Then he kicked the condom machine, shook it and laughed out loud before going all personal, as if we were old friends. Put his arm round my shoulders, eyes went all gooey. Good and pissed he was. He was going to let me into some secrets. “Do you know what I remember best of all,” he said. “Well, when she came she twittered like a little canary!” “You don’t say,” I said. But he didn’t like that. Lost his rag and yelled at me: “What the hell do you think this is, following me into the piss house, you bloody perv. Are you a homo?” And with that he was gone.’

Gunnarstranda chewed his lower lip. ‘And that was before the performance on the dance floor?’

‘Yes, immediately before. He rolled straight from the toilet to the yuppie table, dragged both girls on to the floor and there was no stopping him.’

‘And he didn’t have to queue to get in?’

‘That’s right. Scarlet has a so-called club for the more regular guests, and I suppose he’s a member.’

‘Was he celebrating something last night?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

Gunnarstranda pulled in and came to a halt. ‘You’ll have to go to Scarlet again.’

‘I had planned to.’

‘But during the day when the bar’s closed.’

Frank smiled quietly, turned his head, glanced across the road and recognized where they were. ‘Why are we here?’

‘There’s been another burglary in Reidun Rosendal’s flat,’ answered his boss, opening the door his side.

‘Tonight?’

Gunnarstranda nodded. ‘And it seems this masochist, the MD of Software Partners, has found himself an alibi for this particular number,’ he added drily.