Lethal Investments (20 page)

It was early Sunday morning. The industrial areas of Tøyen and Enerhaug lay deserted. Now, without people, the noise of machinery and the sound of metal on metal, the place seemed completely forlorn. Like a film set after the shooting, Frank thought.

They walked arm in arm along Jens Bjelkes gate. Eva-Britt, who had never got over Frankie ending up as a police officer, still came back to how strange this was. Now she had an opportunity to revisit the topic. Twice they had walked up and down the footpath between Beier bridge and Foss, where the old man had been dragged ashore. Eva-Britt hung on Frank’s arm, strode out and swung her hips with every step. ‘Becoming a cop is the last thing you should have done,’ she informed him yet again.

They were on their way back to Eva-Britt’s. One of the girls in the collective was looking after Julie while Mummy was on a Sunday walk trying to find slide marks on the slope down to the Akerselva.

He nodded, in another world. Still thinking about their walk. Along the footpath to and fro between the two waterfalls where the old man might have slipped. No one so far had uncovered anything that might explain Johansen’s death. Not even they had.

‘I would never have believed it,’ repeated Eva-Britt, musing aloud.

‘Why not?’ he said to show he was mentally present.

‘Don’t know. You’re not the type.’ She smiled. ‘Can’t see you beating people up.’

He sighed.

She rolled her eyes when she heard his sigh. ‘Now, don’t you tell me the cops don’t beat people up!’

Frank grunted and threw his arms in the air. ‘The job’s all right. It’s like all jobs, I suppose. You want to be thorough, see results. And for that I definitely have world-class opportunities. The find-the-murderer scenario.’

He fell quiet. Noticed her staring at him. ‘The problem is all the night work on poor pay,’ he added. ‘The only difference from other jobs is in fact the opportunity to fail, to be part of a fiasco. It’s immense. The whole time.’

‘Are you thinking about the dead girl?’

They had reached the busy road they had to cross. So they stood waiting to dash over when there was a gap in the traffic.

‘You meet the world in a different way,’ he shouted over the noise of vehicles, pulling her on to the other side. ‘It’s difficult to grasp that you’re still on the same planet as you were before you joined the police. People’s madness is in your face. Just the fact that anyone can be so bonkers as to visit a girl and stab her with a bread knife! Just imagine it! A bread knife! And then she falls down dead!’

He paused. Moved aside to let a man in a leather jacket scoot past. Went on: ‘To clear up a case like this you have to be totally involved.’ He stopped. ‘Like Gunnarstranda last night!’

They resumed walking. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he added. Remembered Gunnarstranda with the coffee cup between his hands, the feverish face with the sharp eyes. His tongue going like a clapper regardless of external conditions, circumstantial evidence, assumptions or a hung-over colleague.

‘The man’s always on form at all times of day or night! Take this case. All along we’ve thought that a man forced his way into the girl’s flat, turned it upside down, got caught, stabbed her and legged it. However, Gunnarstranda realized that there must have been two people. Two perps who may not have known about each other. First, this girl has a visitor who kills her and buggers off. Then someone else comes, and searches the flat. This turkey has broken into her workplace earlier. He does what he has to do around the body, ransacks the entire place, but presumably doesn’t find whatever it is he’s after. So he breaks in a second time, two nights ago, to do a more thorough search.’

‘Why should it be the same person who broke into her workplace and her flat?’

‘We don’t know. We reckon it is, but we have no way of checking.’

‘What about if you’re wrong?’

‘That’s the point. Then everything collapses. The opportunity to fail is immense.’

They walked on in silence.

She stopped and laughed, revealing the gap between her front teeth.

‘What is it?’

‘I was just thinking about the time you and Dikke used to share a crate of beer at all the parties. There you were, without fail, sitting on the sofa, boozing away and grooving to Pink Floyd and . . .’

She frowned, racked her brain. ‘And . . . ?’

Frank glanced at her. ‘Van der Graaf Generator!’

‘What a name! No one else would have liked them.’

‘Van der Graaf were great! Shit-hot!’

‘Of course! It’s just so odd to think that you joined the police. What’s happened to Dikke by the way?’

‘He’s in clink.’

She became serious. ‘What for?’

‘Dope.’

He and Dikke had drifted apart. Gradually, slowly but surely. They had met once in two years. One summer evening. Warm air in the streets. Restaurant terraces full to overflowing. Stunning women on the go, taxis with open sun roofs and wild music. People congregating in groups. Dikke was alone in a corner of the square outside the railway station. A portable stereo at his feet. Twitchy head, tapping feet and hands that ran up and down his body without cease. ‘I get so nervous if I have to stand in the same place,’ he had said, talking to a point somewhere among the stars.

Now he always sat in the same place, cooped up in a prison cell, unless he was strapped down.

He became aware of her silence. Coughed. ‘I suppose I was not exactly your dream-boy at that time?’

She didn’t answer.

‘What I remember best is the night on the Danish ferry.’ He laughed and felt her grip on his arm tighten.

‘Do you know why I fell in love with you?’ she asked, giving him a view of the gap between her teeth again. ‘Your woollen socks.’

‘Oh?’

‘Grey woollen socks and an erect willy.’

She smiled. ‘You were completely naked apart from the grey socks which you had half-taken off. You were frantically searching for a condom, knocking things on to the floor.’

He grinned. Stopped. They had passed Gunder’s garage. He turned and pointed up to the windows where Brick the solicitor had his premises. ‘That solicitor’, he pointed, ‘is tied up in this mystery we’re sweating over, by the way.’

They peered up at the panes where BRICK was written in large letters.

‘Gunnarstranda found out the man had his office here.’

‘Is he a suspect?’

‘No. The solicitor is the business manager of the dead girl’s employer. Software Partners.

‘And a swindler, I suppose,’ he added.

She leaned towards him. ‘The solicitor is working on a Sunday,’ she said.

‘Eh?’

‘Yes, I’m sure I saw someone there. Look! The neon tube in the ceiling’s on.’

Yes, it was true, they could both see it. There was a light in the window. She squeezed up against him. Bored her chin into his chest and stroked his cheek with a begloved finger.

‘If you were a proper cop,’ she whispered, ‘you would go up there now!’

He smirked. ‘With you here? Dame waiting in the street while Dirty Harry straightens his jacket and goes to work?’

She sneaked her gloved hand up under his shirt.

He was a bit nervous with her hands around. With that look in her eyes she was capable of anything.

‘I know something nicer we could do,’ she whispered to the shirt button. ‘Little bonk?’

His eyes twinkled. ‘At your place, with the gang of cheerleaders in the common room?’

‘If we go to yours we’ll have to take the little one.’

Frank kicked the tyre of a fat BMW parked by the kerb. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘This crate must belong to the solicitor by the way. It’s expensive enough.’

At that moment a man in a blue coat strode quickly through the gate and over to the car.

‘Young solicitor,’ whispered Eva-Britt.

They had to move and make room for the man. He fumbled with the alarm system. Soon there was a brief peep as the alarm went off. The man opened the boot lid and threw in a red briefcase. Then a stout elderly lady rushed through the gate. She attracted everyone’s attention. Waving a piece of paper in her hand. Face red with exertion. Wearing a woollen jacket and tasselled slippers on her feet, she shuffled out to the parked car.

‘Bjerke,’ she called. ‘Joachim Bjerke!’

Gunnarstranda could feel the coffee going down his throat and leaving a thin, unhealthy coating reminiscent of glue over his tongue and the inside of his mouth. It was getting late. He should be on his way home.

The whole of the Sunday had been spent on futile crap. Now it was the evening. Tomorrow was Monday. Things should be starting to happen. The thought of going home to the television failed to attract. He could do some reading, but he knew it would be difficult to concentrate. The pieces of the puzzle were churning round his head. The pieces that refused to fit. There was a piece missing. An important one. His brain was in a high gear, pushing pieces all ways to form a picture that made sense.

In front of him on the desk there was an open newspaper and the autopsy report for Sigurd Klavestad. Lots of mumbo-jumbo in Latin, rigor mortis etc, and other medical jargon. Gunnarstranda was informed that the man had once had jaundice. In addition, his last meal had consisted of bread, milk and red wine, of all things. A sharp object had sliced his carotid artery and damaged the medulla oblongata, the lower half of the brainstem. There was also bruising to the body, caused, it was assumed, by falling down the narrow stairs. Klavestad had died somewhere between three and four o’clock in the morning, before he had been called out.

Gunnarstranda glanced at his watch once more, lit another cigarette and chewed his thumb nail. Then he glowered at the newspaper lying open at the TV pages. He could take the car and go to Hoffsjefveien and collar Engelsviken, or perhaps the maid, give both of them a course on buttoning blouses and see what happens. But the thought of the drive at such a late hour also failed to attract.

The telephone rang.

‘Gunnarstranda.’

‘S’me,’ growled Frølich in a beery bass tone. In the background someone was giggling. The sound reminded him of how tired he was. ‘What is it?’ he asked wearily.

‘I’ve been for a walk.’

Frølich hiccupped.

‘A couple of hours ago, along the banks of the Akerselva.’

Another hiccup.

Gunnarstranda’s brow began to crease. He could hear Frølich whispering something, probably telling the lady to let him phone.

‘I was looking for some signs of where the old boy fell in the river. Between Foss and the bridge.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Nothing!’

Bloody hell. Is that what he’d rung to say?

‘Afterwards we went to Eva-Britt’s place, the friend I was with at Scarlet, you remember, she lives in a collective with, among others, Gunder who repaired your car.’

‘Get to the point. I’m not in a good mood!’

‘They live in this house by Gunder’s workshop, roughly where you noticed Brick’s office. That solicitor.’

‘To the point!’

‘I saw a young fella coming out. And after him a woman, a secretary. She ran out waving a piece of paper. Shouting his name: Joachim Bjerke.’

Gunnarstranda’s brain jerked into action.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Go on!’

‘The woman wanted to give him this bit of paper, but he wouldn’t take it. Just jumped into a fat BMW and shot off burning rubber. Could this be the Bjerke you’ve met?’

‘Description?’

‘Round thirty-five. One metre eighty, more or less. Slim. Prim features with a straight nose, piercing eyes and long fringe. Layered hair at the back. Made to measure, blue coat. Hollow back. Drives a dark blue BMW 528.’

‘That’s him,’ croaked Gunnarstranda, had to clear his throat to make his voice carry. A deep furrow was dissecting his forehead.

‘I just wanted to tell you.’

‘Good work, Frølich. You have no idea how damned good! Where are you?’

‘Home.’

‘OK. I’ll ring if there is anything.’

He rang off and sat for a few seconds staring into middle distance. Then got up. Walked slowly like a somnambulant to the hat shelf, to the coat rack. Removed his wallet. Opened it. Searched. Fingers trembling. He cursed. Wallet crammed with paper, old receipts, stamps and shopping lists. Where the hell was it? There. Red edge. Yellow and red writing. The business card he had been given by Joachim Bjerke, the self-important shit, Reidun Rosendal’s neighbour. He read aloud: ‘Ludo.’

Stopped. Eyes rose. ‘Ludo?’

He read the line underneath:
Finance. Audits . . . Joachim Bjerke . . . Manager.

Lingered for a moment flicking a corner of the card.

Turned slowly. Made a beeline for the shelf above his desk. Pulled out a box file marked Reidun Rosendal, moistened his index finger and slowly leafed through, sheet by sheet. Reports and appendices. He knew what he wanted. The pile to the left was becoming fatter. At last. Not any old sheet, but greyish photocopy paper folded several times. Stuffed into his wallet the first time he was in the courthouse and had been overcome by hunger after sifting through paper for hours.

A list of Software Partners’ legal adversaries for last year. Seven names. But only one name shone up at him. The fourth. Scribbled in blue biro.

A/S Ludo
.

Beside a small hand-drawn square. The square that indicated this was the company which had withdrawn its lawsuit against Software Partners.

He studied the list. Could feel himself smiling. The last piece. The picture was beginning to take shape. He sat down and stared out of the window, puzzled. A hazy grey veil shrouded the night sky. Why was Joachim Bjerke in conflict with Software Partners? Why had he kept this quiet from the police? And why had he withdrawn proceedings against Software Partners?’

After a while he fought to lift both legs on to the desk and lit a cigarette. Smoked and considered three questions, without coming to an answer. There was only one thing to do: visit Joachim and ask him. Gunnarstranda looked at his watch. No reason for his conscience to bother him. In a way he had promised them he would be returning.