The Last Fix (40 page)

    Gunnarstranda
ignored him. 'You didn't get the money that night either, so you took her
jewellery. Whether it covered your debts or not, I don't know, but your
desperation was real enough. You were so frantic for cash that you robbed
Sagene Video for the till takings. We know what your temperament's like and can
just imagine what happened as she walked towards you without any money that
night.'

    'I
didn't see her that night.'

    'You
shut up and listen now,' Gunnarstranda barked. 'If you didn't do this you'll
have to understand one thing and that is that we, or rather I…' Gunnarstranda
pointed to his chest with a bony, nicotine-stained finger. 'I am the one person
who can do the legwork to establish that you didn't do it. And if you want me
to take the heat off you, off the petty crime you're sitting up to your neck
in, then you have to give me something, even if it's all you have, at least
give me something, a straw, anything - just something that suggests it wasn't
you who killed Katrine.' He took a pile of papers from his bag on the floor,
banged it on the table and said, 'Here! This is your first statement. You are
unable to account for your movements all Saturday night and Sunday.'

    'I
was asleep.'

    'Where?'

    'At
home.'

    'And
again you're giving me circumstantial evidence that you put the parcel of
jewellery in your own postbox.'

    'How
do you work that out?'

    'If
you say you were sleeping on Saturday night you're admitting you were at home.
You had strangled Katrine and taken her jewellery. You were at home, but you
couldn't keep the jewellery in your house. You were seen attacking Katrine at
the travel agency and you knew we could come visiting at any time at all.'

    'Are
you hard of hearing or something? It wasn't me!'

    'Shut
up, will you!' The policeman's spittle was white. 'You killed her and robbed
her. You had to know we would be knocking at your door and with the jewellery
in the house your position would not look good. At the same time, however, you
needed" something of value in case a debt collector came round. That's why
you put the jewellery in your postbox, because you thought we wouldn't think to
look there. You could easily have done that in the time between killing her and
being arrested on Sunday night.'

    'Use
your head. Why would I put jewellery in my own postbox, so near to my own
flat?'

    'You
needed quick access if one of your creditors came to the door. You were
planning a robbery. In fact you were arrested for a robbery that same
afternoon.'
^v

    'What
the fuck do you want me to say?'

    'Tell
me why you visited Katrine on Saturday.'

    'She
owed me money.'

    'What
for?'

    'Old
debts.'

    'But
what for?'

    'For
a name.'

    Gunnarstranda
sat down with a deep frown imbedded in his forehead. 'A name?'

    Raymond
Skau nodded.

    The
inspector waved his fingers at him in irritation, to move him on.

    'Tormod
Stamnes.'

    Gunnarstranda
was waving his fingers like a man obsessed.

    'Tormod
Stamnes was working for child welfare in the Nedre Eiker district when Katrine
was assigned new parents. He was responsible for her case.'

    'And
Katrine was interested in this?'

    'She
wasn't interested in anything else. That was all she had in her head. Finding
out about her past.'

    'And
what did this man say?'

    'No
idea.'

    Gunnarstranda
was sceptical. 'You have no idea?'

    'I
never asked him about things like that. I found out quite by chance…Skau glared
across the table. 'What will you give me?'

    'I
don't understand what you mean.'

    'You
just said you would do me for sex with a minor. What will you give me in
exchange for what I can tell you?'

    Gunnarstranda
stared at him.

    'What
about dropping the charge against me?'

    Gunnarstranda's
eyes darkened. 'Don't play games with me, boy. I'm giving you your only chance.
Tell me what you know!'

    Skau
looked up through his fine eyebrows. He was thinking. Thinking and swallowing.
At last he took a decision. 'I used to drink with an old dipso who's been on
the social for ever.'

    'Who?'

    'His
name's Arne and he's in a wheelchair. He told me who was working at the office
when Katrine was placed with Beate and Fredrik Bratterud at the age of two.'

    'Where
does this Arne come from?'

    'Krokstadelva.'

    'But
how do you know it was this Stamnes who dealt with the case?'

    'Arne
told me that child welfare and social security were under the same roof in
those days. And in those days Tormod Stamnes did everything, but he's pretty
old now. He stopped work several years ago. What happened was that, out of the
blue, my pal Arne remembered his name. And, eventually, I found out where he
lived. He said he remembered the case when I spoke to him about it.'

    And
how much did Katrine pay you for the name?'

    'She
owed me ten thousand.'

    'Ten
thousand?'

    'Ten
thousand spondulicks isn't much to find out the truth about yourself, is it?'

    Gunnarstranda
rose and walked towards the door.

    'You
can't leave me sitting here until the morning,' Skau yelled.

    The
policeman closed the door behind him without another word.

    Frølich
went on foot because it turned out that Tormod Stamnes lived close by in
Uranienborgveien, a four-storey brick-built block with fine balconies and a
secure front door. He rang down below but without attracting a reaction of any
kind, no buzz and no one on the stairs. In the reflection of the glass door he
glimpsed a thin, young woman in her mid- twenties walking across the road. She
was accompanied by two thin hounds. All three had the same bouncing gait. Frølich
moved to the side. The woman unlocked the door and threw him an appraising
glance before letting in her two dogs, which skipped in through the narrow
opening without a sound. The woman followed and made sure the door was locked
properly.

    Frølich
took a decision, turned round and ambled down Uranienborgveien. An electric
wheelchair was moving down the middle of the road driven at a crawl by a man
wearing a hat. Cars were queuing behind the vehicle, which had yellow blinkers
and indicated left at the crossing with Parkveien. It was strange to see the
erect back of the man in the chair turning left. He seemed to be leaning
backwards against a whole procession of cars and holding them up.

    Frølich
turned left, too. It was drizzling and there was a chill in the wind. The
streets were empty, hemmed in by shiny, hostile, impenetrable windows. An
occasional black-clad silhouette drifted out of sight between the tree trunks
in the park behind the palace. It was morning in Oslo. Frølich wandered
aimlessly up Parkveien passing an opulent art gallery and finding himself
outside the old Lorry restaurant. Frølich sniffed. His nose for beer had
led him to the source. He cast around, went up the staircase to the front door
in two strides and grabbed the door handle. It was open.

    Henning
Kramer's mother lived in a semi-detached house in Stasjonsveien. There were
beautiful shrubs in the garden, with a trim sibiraea hedge growing alongside
the fence and preventing passing motorists from prying. The nameplate on the
door was made of copper and had turned green. Kramer was engraved in the same
Gothic type as the logo of the
Aftenposten
newspaper. Police Inspector
Gunnarstranda rang the bell beside the sign. From deep inside he heard a hollow
ring. A shadow behind the kitchen curtain window told him he was being watched.
He stood with his back to the door and observed the traffic.

    There
was a rattling of chains on the inside and he slowly turned around.

    'Your
son,' Inspector Gunnarstranda started when both were standing in the small but
very tidy kitchen with the window facing the road. As he eyed up the woman
opposite him, he considered what he would say. She was around sixty years old
with a face that was worn and now marked with grief. Her eyes were red-tinged
and her cheeks bloated. She pulled a tiny grimace. Her quivering lips and a
twitch revealed that she was fighting to control her feelings. She returned his
gaze with vacant eyes, neither friendly nor unfriendly, nor curious, eyes that
kept going despite the pain and the stoical suffering. He cleared his throat.
'Your son didn't leave a letter.'

    She
continued to gaze with the same empty eyes, full of apathy. 'What letter?' she
asked after a while, bewildered.

    'Most
suicide victims leave a letter,' the detective explained in a neutral tone, his
eyes fixed on hers. He sensed a storm brewing inside her and was on his guard.

    She
grabbed the oven handle of the ceramic stove. Apart from that one movement, she
didn't react.

    'Letter,'
Gunnarstranda repeated with a slight nod.

    There
was no storm. Even though she wound herself up to speak, her intonation was
flat and languid. 'I can see that you might make mistakes,' she said. 'It's
easy to make mistakes when you judge someone you don't know. If you had known
Henning, you wouldn't think as you do.'

    She
was breathing through an open mouth, as though it had cost her a great effort
to say these words.

    'What
do you think?' Gunnarstranda asked at length.

    'About
what? What do you want me to think about?' Her temper seemed to flare up. 'I
don't feel as if I'm here. I know he's dead, but I still expect to see him
coming through the door. I thought it was Henning when you rang just now.'

    The
policeman stood on the same spot with his jacket open and his hands buried deep
in his trouser pockets, keeping his eyes fixed on her. She was taller than he
was. She had tears in her eyes, and was leaning against the stove now, which
made them the same height.

    He said:
'What do you think about the way he died?'

    'I
don't think he killed himself, if that's what you're asking.'

    'You
mean that this was a… murder?' He dragged the question out so that the last
word fell after a longish pause.

    She
straightened up in reaction to his choice of words and the way he said them.
She sensed the unspoken, quivering in the air now. She turned and looked out of
the window through which they both glimpsed the odd car passing the opening
where the wrought-iron gate had been left open.

    'You'll
have to find out, won't you,' she declared.

    Gunnarstranda
nodded. 'That's one of the reasons I'm standing here asking about a letter.
From what I understand Henning was not very communicative… about depression or
other troubles that may have afflicted him in recent months.'

    'No,
he wasn't.'

    'Nor
his feelings about Katrine Bratterud's death?'

    'He
grieved of course, but he didn't confide in me.'

    'Did
he talk about his relationship with her at all?'

    'Not
very much.' She faced him again, assessing her words, their meaning and
regarding him with renewed interest. Gunnarstranda, for his part, could see his
outline in the kitchen window, a thin figure with a round, almost bald head and
protruding eyes that appeared double in the reflection.

    'I
knew she meant an awful lot to Henning. He was in love with her.' She coughed
and repeated with a sigh: 'Love - Henning struggled with that sort of concept.
He always had to scrutinize everything from all sides. He made fun of words
like love; after all, love is based on spontaneous emotion and I suppose he was
frightened of that - talking about feelings. Henning was the intellectual
type.'