Lethal Investments (3 page)

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes!’

‘When did he leave her?’

‘Five, maybe six.’

‘I know there were people coming and going between five and six, Johansen.’

Johansen didn’t answer.

‘Perhaps you just weren’t following very well, Johansen, eh?’

‘I’ve told you what I saw!’

‘Just not all of it?’

‘I’ve told you what I saw, for fuck’s sake!’

‘What did the guy do after he’d climbed over the fence?’

‘Do?’

‘Yes, did he run off or what?’

‘Yes, he legged it.’

‘The man with the pony tail?’

‘Yes.’

‘If I say I have two witnesses who swear they saw the man with the pony tail outside the gate between five and six . . . ?’

‘So?’

The inspector moved closer. ‘Are you sure about this fence business, Johansen?’

‘I’ve told you what I saw!’

‘But why didn’t you see the other two there?’

Johansen stared intently at Gunnarstranda. ‘Now I remember!’ he said coldly. ‘They arrived in a taxi. That’s right. Two of ’em. About the same time as he was climbing over the fence.’

Frank studied the old man’s closed face. It was impossible to say what was going on inside. His breathing gurgled, faint and rhythmical, as before.

‘Did you see anything else?’ Gunnarstranda fired at him.

‘I’ve told you what I saw.’

‘You didn’t see anyone else?’

The man shook his head, a closed expression on his face.

‘This is absolutely crucial, Johansen! Did you see anyone else go in the gate?’

‘I’ve told you what I saw!’ Johansen glared at Gunnarstranda. ‘He jumped down from the fence a quarter of an hour after she’d drawn the curtains!’

Gunnarstranda seemed not to hear, instead with his teeth bared in a smile he asked: ‘Did you see her shagging with anyone else?’

Johansen subjected him to a stare. A lingering stare.

‘But she waved to you before she drew the curtains, did she?’

Silence.

‘Why do you think she waved?’

The man smoked. Studied the ceiling.

‘You said she had a ginger pussy. You must have studied her pretty closely, mustn’t you?’

Johansen stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. Also had to extinguish some old tobacco that had started to glow.

‘How did she like it?’

The man’s breathing grew heavier.

‘On top or underneath?’

‘How long did they keep at it as a rule?’

He was breathing heavily. His breath crackled quietly.

Frank caught himself looking at his watch. Received a little nod from Gunnarstranda, then concentrated on the old man again.

‘So, you sat up here the whole of Saturday night, did you?’

‘I slept here.’

Johansen stirred in his chair. ‘I slept in the chair as I usually do. It’s so much bloody hassle making a bed on the sofa every night.

Frank followed his gaze towards the sofa and a pile of dirty clothes. Eventually he managed to identify the classic chequered pattern of a flannelette sheet.

Frank Frølich’s interest in salmon fishing had not had an easy birth. Born and bred in Oslo as he was, he had never rowed boats for rich folk with enough money to hire fishing rights on the river Namsen. The fishing adventures of his childhood were ice fishing in Østmarka and the odd pike in the nutrient-rich puddles nearest to the capital. But since fishing was his all-consuming hobby, it was not long before there was a fly-tying vice under the Christmas tree, a tool which at that time was kept stowed away in a cupboard. Until the event that was to change his attitude to fishing for ever.

A few years before, he and two pals in the Oslo Hunting and Fishing Association had gone on holiday in Frank’s old Taunus 17M, which that year was as yet free of big end trouble. They stopped at the Jazz Camp in Molde because Albert King was performing. From there they made their way up north, and one night they were fishing illegally on a quiet river bank where large silent pools lay gleaming beside a slow current. It had been damp and cold and their hands holding the rods itched from mosquito bites. The river had exuded the cool night atmosphere that bore within it the scent of water and nectar and summer, all at the same time. He had swung out a home-made telescopic rod and savoured the sight of the line lying on the skin-like surface of the stream. The large red moon hung in the night sky, with its magnified reflection on the crystal-clear water, casting a magical column of light from bank to bank.

Then it happened.

A tug on his arm. A line that tightened like a tent guy. The first moves in a struggle of which he would recall very little. Only the anxious paralysis of his thighs, the sensation in his legs vanishing in the icy river as he let the line run and shouted to his pals. Their white faces as they walked along the bank searching wildly for the fishing gaff and shouting advice. The strong rod that jerked and dipped towards the water. The powerful pull of the fish, the strain on his upper arm. The panic-stricken fear that the fly was not fastened securely enough to the line. The feeling of triumph for every metre reeled in. Until the moment when the black spine of the salmon slithered submissively towards his boot and allowed itself to be caught.

It took no more than a tug. And he was in thrall to a disease that would never relinquish its grip. Fly-fishing had become his great passion.

It was early morning now. While waiting to be received at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, he had been to Tanum bookshop and bought a weighty tome about insects. About the development from egg, larva, pupa to fully fledged flier of the majority of the insects known to flap their wings through a Norwegian summer. It was Gunnarstranda who had planted the idea. Frølich had mentioned he needed real models. And had ended up buying this book.

Afterwards he drove home with it, his stomach aching with hunger as he turned off the motorway, took the short cut past Manglerud Church and twisted his way down to Havreveien.

The street was littered with the spring’s No Parking signs as a yellow road-sweeper vehicle attempted to brush away the gravel strewn across the pavement. So he reversed up the entrance to the block and parked. Took the lift to the ninth floor. Let himself in.

As soon as he opened the door he could hear Eva-Britt humming in a loud, unconstrained voice, the way people do when they wear headphones and think they are alone. A smile broadened in his beard. He had not expected to see her back for a while. So, he put down the book and tiptoed in. Stopped in the doorway. She was reclining naked on the lounger. Her ample breasts spilled to each side and she was lying with her legs crossed. The room was lit up by the sun beaming in through the large panoramic windows. A large yellow square stretched across the white carpet covered with long blonde hairs and dust; dust that danced in the sunlight. Her toes splayed out to the rhythm of the music as if someone were tickling them with string. The movement caused her breasts, with the dark pink nipples, to wobble. But the face under the headphones was ugly and unreal. It looked like a sculpted plaster-of-Paris figure. A balloon with papier-mâché stuck on.

She sensed his presence from his stare, opened her eyes. They shone like two black stains in the porridge-like surface.

‘What the hell have you done to your face?’ he gasped as she removed the headphones.

‘Yoghurt,’ Porridge-face said. ‘Face mask.’

‘Sheesh!’

He went in and sat beside her. He couldn’t restrain his hand. Stroked the faint crease on her neck. ‘I thought you were at university.’

His hand followed his urge, down the taut abdomen.

‘Couldn’t be fagged.’

‘Your daughter?’

‘With her father.’

The eyes in the facial porridge had turned blacker. Her hand caressed his forearm, up and down. ‘Your fingers are a bit cold.’

Her voice sounded as if she didn’t have enough breath to say everything. He nodded and ran them lightly across her breasts. Bent down and licked off a bit of the face.

‘Good,’ he said, smacking his lips.

She giggled at the tickle of his tongue; he held her neck with one hand as he licked upwards and filled his mouth with yoghurt. Swallowed.

‘It’s only half past ten,’ he heard her say as his fingers strayed across her stomach, downwards. Licked. Swallowed. Licked. Ate the yoghurt. Soon her chin and one eye were clear. He stooped over her in the lounger. Trying to get undressed at the same time. Got one arm stuck in his sweater so that both arms were trapped behind his back.

Almost all the yoghurt daub was gone. Her red lips shone through the muck. He hopped on one leg with both arms behind his back. Fell to the floor, struggled up on to one knee. She grinned and helped him. Until he was as naked as she was.

‘My God, you’re so fat!’ she exclaimed with delight and escaped from his arms. He ran after her. His erect penis stirring and banging against his stomach. Into the bedroom, Frank launched himself, airborne. Gotcha. She screamed.

They hit the bed in the middle. The mattress sank to the floor as the bed gave way with an ear-deafening crack.

‘Are you alive?’ he asked solicitously.

She sniggered. ‘Think so.’

* * *

Afterwards they lay beside each other. The sun blazed a sharp whiteness on to her rump. She was asleep. The telephone rang. He tried to wriggle his thigh out without waking her. The bed frame towered like an abandoned theatre set above them. He had his hand around the receiver as she sighed softly in her sleep and rolled over and away. His pecker drooped and wilted as he got up.

‘Yes,’ he said, knowing who it was. ‘Yes,’ he repeated.

‘I’m on my way.’

She lay on her back in the sunshine. Rested her head on her arms and languidly kicked at the foot of the bed.

‘Who was it?’ she asked sleepily.

‘Gunnarstranda.’

‘You’d better go then.’

‘Yup.’

‘Your willy doesn’t seem to want to go.’

He grinned.

‘In all the novels I’ve read all the boys have limp willies after a bonk,’ she said, pointing an accusatory finger at the thing stubbornly pointing back at her.

‘In all the books I read the boys have three or four bonks in a row.’

‘That’s because you read such bad books.’

He peered out. Blue sky and the top of the neighbouring block of flats. Windows.

‘Anyway, you’ve broken the bed,’ she added as he left for a shower.

He and Eva-Britt had once been in the same class at school. They had then lost contact until they met again three years ago. On the number twenty-three bus. A woman with an hour-glass figure and a pram struggling to manoeuvre it on to the bus; he had recognized her as he jumped out to help.

Two hours later they were in bed together in his student room recalling the old days, while sixteen-month Julie was asleep in the turbo-pram in the communal kitchen. They lived in their own flat, Julie and her mother did; Eva-Britt had had bad experiences with close relationships.

‘Will you get a bottle of red?’ she shouted from the kitchen when he switched off the water.

He came out. Her breasts were screaming to be fondled as she threw a dressing gown over herself. She could read his thoughts, and grinned.

‘Fine,’ he mumbled, enjoying the slight gasp that escaped her lips before she slipped into the bathroom. ‘I’ll get a bottle of red.’

He stopped at Manglerud and did his booze shopping at the vinmonopol there. His head still buzzing with nosy neighbours.
Did Reidun Rosendal know what kind of neighbours she had,
he mused in the queue, trying to imagine her type.
OK, the old pig could be as mad as a hatter and actually believe that the woman was letting him see what he wanted that night. But could that really be the truth? That number was mostly for married couples in a mid-life crisis, spicing up their sex lives with the excitement of being seen by others, wasn’t it?

The thought would not let him rest. After all, there had been two of them that night. The boy and the girl. Under normal circumstances, with eyes only for each other. Perhaps so madly in love that curtains on the windows were of secondary importance. But that was the point. The woman had been killed. Was the man she had invited into her flat in love? Did that type exist, someone so crazy he would stab a woman to death after making love to her all night?

Frank picked up Gunnarstranda in the Grønland district of Oslo and headed for the Institute of Forensic Medicine, where they were met by Professor Schwenke who then powered ahead of them. The man’s white coat fluttering behind him. His thin legs making his office trousers look like flares.

The professor led them into his office. Here he proceeded to hold an illustrated lecture with photographs of the dead girl. The man’s combed-back greyish-white hair had such a will of its own that a strand at the back refused to stay in position and rebounded forward over his forehead. His square glasses were gold-rimmed, and his complexion was dry and yellowy. The professor put the top photograph on the desk, bent forward eagerly and analysed the sequence of events.

‘The angles of the various cuts reveal that the murderer stabbed her in the chest even when she was down on the floor,’ he explained with professional dispassion. ‘No fewer than three times in fact. Incredibly, the knife didn’t strike a bone and didn’t get lodged until the final blow.’

Schwenke’s voice was thick; he seemed to be speaking with toffees in his mouth.

Frank Frølich let the other two converse. He observed Gunnarstranda, whose arms were resting against the back of his hips with his fingers interlaced. His piscine eyes fixed on Schwenke’s face, the police inspector looked like a hooked fish: his bent-back arms raised his shoulders a smidgeon, his head hung slightly and his eyes were focused upwards on the professor’s face.

‘She died in a relatively short time,’ Schwenke said, pointing to the picture. ‘In fact, she was stabbed nine times. This,’ he indicated to clarify the point, pulling out another photograph in which the woman’s lacerated chest was magnified. ‘This stab on its own would have been enough to kill her. The incision has not only punctured the lung but brushed the heart.’

He paused and stroked his chin with two long, bony fingers, the yellowing nails untrimmed. ‘There was clear evidence of sperm in the vagina, so she must have been sexually active before she was killed, hard to say exactly how long before. The results of our tests may tell us more.’

Schwenke passed the stack of photographs to Frølich. Gunnarstranda did not move.

‘Was she on drugs?’ he barked.

‘Definitely not,’ Schwenke established with total assurance.

‘Rape?’

Schwenke wavered. ‘From a physiological point of view there is no damage to the central organs,’ he concluded at length. ‘But she had clearly had sexual contact at some point before the murder. What is rape though? Hypothetically speaking, a rapist may have forced her . . .’

‘So you can’t rule out rape?’

Schwenke stroked his chin again, ruminating. Made a decision.

‘Rape cannot be ruled out,’ he stated in an official tone. ‘But I assume it has to be regarded as a legal question, dependent on the circumstances surrounding the sexual act.’

He smacked his lips thoughtfully and added:

‘If you can find out what happened leading up to the murder.’

They left the office and went to the lab. Inside, the walls were covered with shelves of glass tubes, flasks and sundry varieties of small boxes. A strong aroma of formalin filled the whole room and Frank prepared himself mentally to snatch any cigarettes from his boss’s hands, for fear of an explosion. In the background, fans whirred vainly trying to dispel the thick chemical atmosphere that enveloped them. In the middle of the floor there was a steel table on castors, enshrouded in a sheet. Beneath which you could clearly see the outline of a body. The cover seemed to have been cast over the body in a hurry and there were bloodstains in the corner. A couple of stained plastic gloves lay on the lid of a sinister-looking plastic bucket beside the table.

‘No, no, that’s not her!’

Professor Schwenke followed Frank’s gaze. A sudden thoughtful expression crossed his face. ‘Suicide,’ he sighed, mostly to the corpse. ‘Two bottles of sleeping tablets, all in one go.’

All three of them stared at the table in silence.

‘What time of the day did she die?’

Schwenke regarded the policeman with bewilderment. ‘Did who die?’

‘The girl with the stab wounds!’

‘We’re checking her stomach contents right now. All the tests are being done routinely, as I have made clear. In general, there is quite a bit I am unable to say as of yet.’

He nodded towards the table and added a couple of toffees to his voice. ‘I know the fluctuations, the state of the market, you might say. And now it’s the peak season for this kind of . . .’

‘Would she have screamed?’

There was an irritated expression in Schwenke’s eyes as he turned back to Gunnarstranda. ‘Would who have screamed?’

‘How likely is it that the knife wounds would have made her scream?’

‘She might have screamed, but she could also have been paralysed. The stab that punctured her lung might well have been the first.’

He drew a deep breath and addressed Frank. ‘It’s the way it’s always been. I remember when I was the Regional Medical Officer in Troms. If someone had hanged themselves from a beam in the barn you could bet your life it happened on the night of a full moon.’

‘The stabber, did he get a lot of blood over him?’

Schwenke smiled unperturbed and winked at Frank before turning round again. He produced a photograph, which he passed to Gunnarstranda. ‘As you can see, the handle of the knife is drenched with blood. So the hands holding the knife would definitely have been soiled.’

He paused. ‘In fact, here it’s difficult to be precise,’ he concluded. ‘The murderer would have been covered with a fair amount of blood, but it’s impossible to say how much. As you saw, there wasn’t much blood on the floor. And from what I could glean there were very few signs of blood being sprayed around.’

The professor turned to address Frank again, but was prevented from continuing. A grey telephone on one of the work benches interrupted him.

‘It’s for you!’ he shouted to Gunnarstranda, who grabbed the receiver with a hurried ‘Yes!’

Frank and Schwenke hardly managed to exchange a word before the police inspector had banged down the receiver. ‘Frølich! We’ve got the man with the pony tail.’