The Man in the Window (5 page)

Chapter 8

A Nocturne

    When Ingrid Jespersen went to bed that evening, she was alone for the first time in many years. She lay thinking. She remembered how the low, cold, white January sun had also on this day pierced her lover's bedroom window and shone on an ornamental glass object, sending out the same multi-coloured fan of playful light - across the bed, across her lover's back and her thighs as she, supine with her hands around Eyolf's hips, had stared at the telephone ringing on his bedside table. That loathsome white telephone which moved to the beat of his rhythmical movements in and out of her, that telephone which never stopped ringing. And for some strange reason she had known, lying there with her head repeatedly banging against the bedstead, known it was Reidar ringing her. She thought of the hours afterwards, the nauseating and humiliating feeling of guilt, which had turned every minute of the day into suffering until the evening meal with Karsten, his wife and Reidar's two grandchildren. She thought of the change that had taken place when Reidar came home and everyone was sitting at the table. She thought of her own role during the meal, how she had succeeded in swallowing the shame, the nervousness, and at the same time how she had managed to grow herself a shell - not a single anxious glance at her husband, not a quiver of her hands. Her mind began to wander and she thought of her time together with Reidar, of twenty-five years of her life married to a man she knew she didn't truly understand. Reidar, who had been married before, who had been a widower when they met, a widower with a son who was not much younger than herself. She thought of the twenty-five years she had shared with her husband, and she concluded that these years had not in fact brought them any closer on an emotional level. The telephone conversation, his monologue, had been a demand for subordination. And the fact that she had dutifully played her role on that evening, converting the subordination into practice, meant that she now experienced a tiny, but very frightening, thought about her own life. For even though it was not the first time she had wondered if she had made a mistake accepting Reidar's proposal twenty-five years ago, this was the first time she had thought that the years had been a total waste. The very idea of choosing a wasted life was so scary that she rejected it outright. However, although she somehow managed to repress the notion, something followed in its wake and made her very nervous as she lay waiting for sleep to overtake her. It was the fact that she was becoming aware of how little she knew about herself. Lying there, listening to the sounds in the house, to Reidar passing to and fro outside her bedroom, and his distant mumble on the telephone, she had a panic attack. The attack brought on a cold sweat; she tossed around in bed and bit into the pillow in desperation. Her physical anxiety was so strong that she got out of bed straightaway, slunk into the bathroom and took an Apodorm sleeping tablet.

    Although the physical unease continued to bother her, at some point she fell asleep and heard nothing until she awoke with a start - she had no idea what woke her, just that there had been
something.

    It was night outside. The doziness caused by the sleeping pill lay like a heavy cloud over her temples while her body was tense with fear. The experience of two dissimilar states - crippling fear and wakefulness (she was not capable of experiencing either of them fully) - filled her with an oppressive feeling of nausea somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She lay still fearing
whatever it was
that had woken her. She lay rigid, stone still, not daring to move. She didn't dare to move her head because she sensed that
someone
was in the room.
Someone
might hear her breathing.
Someone
might hear the duvet rustle if she moved.

    If only it weren't so cold, she thought, and stiffened even more. The air she was inhaling was ice-cold. The air in the bedroom should not be so cold. With infinite care, trying not to make a sound, she turned her head. And then she saw two things: the bedroom door was open, and Reidar was not in his bed. The light from the room outside fell through the open doorway forming a broad, grey trapezium of shadow across the floor and the end of Reidar's bed; the eerie, shadowy light further revealed that Reidar's duvet was as neat and untouched as when she had fallen asleep.

    He had not been to bed at all. This had never happened before. If Ingrid had been paralysed with fear until now, from this moment she sank into an even worse, even more acute, physical state, a state which caused a cold sweat to break out and her fingers to feel like stiff, insensate lumps of wood. As her eyes feverishly scanned the room, there was a part of her hovering above her body. A part of her saw herself lying in bed, as rigid as a pole, with wild eyes. The same part of her observed her body beginning to sit up.
What are you doing?
said this part of her.
Are you crazy?
But her body was not listening. With infinite slowness she raised herself, petrified that she would make a sound, that
someone
would hear what she was doing. Her eyelids were heavy; her brain was still numb from the sleeping tablet. For two or three seconds this nightmare still felt dream-like. If her heart had not been pounding in her body, so out of control, she would have turned over and gone back to sleep, sedated. But that didn't happen. What happened was she that she sat up and swung her legs onto the floor. Despite her sluggish state, she felt the cool air in the room brush against her nightdress, penetrate the fibres of the material and spread a light shiver through her body. And the instant her feet met the wooden floorboards, she received a new shock. Her bare foot encountered something chill and damp. The floor was wet. And as though she were being charged with power from a generator - still outside herself - she saw her long forefinger reach for the switch on the bedside table lamp. A dry click and the lamp came on, casting a warm, yellow light over the brown, mahogany table and around the bed. There was a white patch on the floor, a small puddle of water with snow in the middle. It was the type of mess left by someone coming in from outdoors with snow on their shoes.

    The snow came off and after a while began to melt because the temperature was higher indoors. Now, at this moment, as her brain struggled because her senses were still dulled by the strong medication, she realized what must have woken her up.
Someone,
a person, had tiptoed in and stood over her bed, watching her as she slept. It must have been Reidar. But where was he now?

    She stood up and staggered through the doorway into the bathroom. She stared at the front door, which was wide open - an open door letting in the cold air from the stairs and making the flat cold. She closed the door. As the door clicked into place, the thought struck her that perhaps she was not alone.

    She scoured the darkened flat through the open door. The idea of venturing through the door and into the darkness was repellent.

    She turned uneasily to the telephone on the low table and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. A pale figure with lifeless eyes. She slumped down on the stool beside the mirror and allowed her fingers to tap in a number she knew by heart. It rang and rang. In the end it was Susanne who answered.

    She whispered into the mouthpiece: 'Could you ask Karsten to come over? Reidar is not here and I think there has been a break-in.'

    'Is there anyone in your flat?'

    'Not sure, but the doors are open. I was woken up. You must ask Karsten to come!'

    'But Karsten isn't here!'

    'Isn't he?'

    'No.' The silence hung in the air. She didn't know what to say. It was Susanne who ought to say something, who ought to explain why Karsten wasn't at home in bed with his wife. But Susanne said nothing, and Ingrid couldn't bring herself to ask about that of all things. She was confused. The numbing tiredness caused by the pill was making her mind function in slow motion. 'Can you come then, Susanne? I'm so scared.'

    'The children are sleeping.'

    The silence that persisted now, after the woman's answer, oppressed Ingrid still further. She raised her head and looked round at the darkened flat where danger lurked. She cleared her throat and whispered: 'Can't you wake them up and come here?'

    'Ingrid.' Susanne's voice was more awake now. 'What are you going on about? A break-in? Have you been having nightmares?'

    'No,' Ingrid snapped, peering over her shoulder in panic - because this conversation was unpleasant and because someone might be listening to her.
Someone…
'I have not been having nightmares. Would you wake Karsten so that I can talk to him?'

    'Karsten's not here, I said.'

    'You're lying.'

    Ingrid instantly regretted her outburst. But it was too late. Susanne's voice was as cold as ice as she articulated her response with slow emphasis: 'No, I'm not, you hysterical old bag. I am not lying and Karsten is not here. I cannot run around like a flunkey for you. I have two children here and they need all the sleep they can get. If you're so frightened, get dressed, switch on the radio and make yourself a cup of tea which you…'

    'Susanne, don't ring off!'

    '… which you can drink until Reidar gets back. Goodbye.'

    She was standing with her back to the wall and the receiver in her hand. Annoying engaged signals were coming from it. Her eyes glazed over and she took a step forward so as not to lose her balance.

    At that moment there was a bang.

    It was a door slamming on the floor below.

    It had to be Reidar. He was downstairs in the shop. She took another step and listened. There were footsteps downstairs. It had to be Reidar. Then there were footsteps on the staircase. Slow, heavy footsteps. She concentrated. Was his walk that heavy?
Dear God,
she thought.
Let it be Reidar.
And now someone was coming up the stairs. The footsteps came closer and stopped. Outside her door.

PART TWO

A Man in a Window

Chapter 9

Frozen in Motion

    'It's me.' The loud, clear telephone voice of Police Inspector Gunnarstranda cut through the quiet winter- morning air. There was that hint of tetchiness that Frank Frølich had learned to treat with forbearance.

    'Right,' he answered, pressing the mobile phone to his ear and tightening his scarf as the cold snow swept across the bridge and held him in its grip again. 'Frogner Park,' he explained. His fingers were frozen. He squeezed the phone tight and buried both it and his hand deeper in the scarf. 'I've just crossed the bridge over the lake,' he added, walking down the last avenue, leading to the metal gate and Kirkeveien. He blinked. The contrasts became clear in the light of the morning sun which hung low and was blinding. In the park, where Oslo Highways' salting lorries never came, the snow was still white, not greyish-brown and compressed as it was everywhere else in town.

    'I'm on foot, of course,' Frølich continued laconically. He knew that at this very minute his boss would be fidgeting with a cigarette, walking around in circles out of agitation because Gunnarstranda never knew how to control the stream of energy that was surging through his limbs. Frølich knew that Gunnarstranda would not be in the slightest bit interested in the fact that he had slept at Eva-Britt's - yesterday was Friday and after a huge, painful row he had felt obliged to spend the night with her - or that he had accepted a wager with Eva- Britt's daughter, Julie, that he would lose five kilos before the winter holidays, a bet that he intended to win, for the simple reason that he was sick of the girl's bullying. He had also decided to walk to work every day in the belief that walking in the freezing cold accelerated calorie consumption, so the colder the better. Frølich's personal experience of Vigeland's sculptures in the morning sun would have not have interested his boss, either. Frank liked to contemplate the rigid statues that seemed to have been frozen in motion, either throwing or wrestling. He seemed to be moving in a surrealistic landscape of forms, particularly because the low temperatures gave the frozen-metaphor an extra subtlety on a day like this.

    'We have a body,' Gunnarstranda said.

    'Where?'

    'Turn right at the metal gate, toddle down Thomas Heftyes gate and you'll see us.'

    And then the line went dead. It was so cold that his nostrils were stuck together. Frølich buried the lower half of his face under the thick woollen scarf; his breath formed condensation and left tiny beads of ice on the wool. He felt like a wandering tree trunk in his thick woollen jumper, thick jacket and long johns under his trousers. On his feet he wore army boots which squeaked at every step he took on the hard-packed snow.

    Ten minutes later, after turning down Thomas Heftyes gate, he found the road almost deserted. There were very few curious onlookers, which could have been for a number of reasons: the cold; the late onset of daylight in January; or the fact that a swarm of police cars in front of a building does not necessarily interest the better inhabitants of West Oslo early on a Saturday morning.

    Frank Frølich walked past Inspector Gunnarstranda's new Skoda Octavia and wriggled his way through the road blocks, but came to an involuntary halt at the sight of the body in the shop window. The dead man was naked, a white body sitting in an armchair - between an old wooden globe and a light blue chest covered with faded decorative flowers. A woman in white overalls was busy covering the window with grey paper. Through a covered section of the window Frank could make out the outline of Inspector Gunnarstranda's face. They nodded to each other and Gunnarstranda's glasses caught the morning sun.

    The front door was still closed. A sign with yellowish- white plastic letters on a blue felt background gave the opening times. The shop was closed on Saturdays.

    Frølich followed the flow of forensics officers towards the staircase, where he found the back door into the shop open. The room inside was no longer warm. The constant traffic in and out caused the breath of all those inside to freeze. Uniformed police and forensics officers in white nylon suits were going through the premises with a fine-tooth comb. Gunnarstranda was crouched in front of the low shop window studying the body in the chair.

    A woman was briefing him: 'The chair hasn't moved,' she said, pointing. 'It's been on display for a good while, I suppose. Someone dragged the body from over there…' She pointed to the back of the room… and put him on show here.'

    'One or more?' Gunnarstranda asked.

    'Impossible to say.'

    'But could a single person have done this?'

    The woman just shrugged. 'Haven't the slightest.'

    The woman and Frank Frølich exchanged looks. He hadn't seen her for three weeks when she had slept at his place.

    They lowered their eyes, both of them, at the same time.

    'But you must have an idea,' grunted Gunnarstranda with irritation.

    She stared into space, giving herself time to think.

    'Hi, Anna,' Frank said. She looked up, and again they had eye contact for two seconds, which was at once picked up by Gunnarstranda and occasioned an angry shake of the head.

    'Yes, I do,' Anna said quickly, and added: 'It could have been one person, could have been more. In fact, it is impossible to say much more than that at the present moment.'

    Gunnarstranda got to his feet.

    A dramatic lock of Anna's hair stuck out from under the white hood, bisecting her forehead and giving her a passionate, Mediterranean appearance.

    Fr0lich looked away and concentrated on the corpse, the shop window, the coagulated blood down the chair leg and the dark stain on the carpet. He tried to imagine the shock he himself would have had if he had been passing by at daybreak. But for the blood, the dead man would have looked like a papier mâché figure. His skin was white, and something akin to frost had settled in the wrinkles and hollows of the body. 'Well, a decent age,' Frølich mumbled, studying the dead man's mask-like face.

    'Seventy-nine years old - according to his bank card,' Anna said, a hundred per cent formal now.

    'A cut?' Frølich asked, pointing to a red stripe around the dead man's neck.

    'Took me in, too,' Gunnarstranda said. 'But it's thread.'

    Frank realized at that moment: red cotton tightened around the man's neck.

    'Graffiti on the forehead?' Frølich asked.

    'Crosses,' Anna said. 'Put there with a pen.' She turned around and indicated a small cylindrical object on the shop floor. 'Probably that one - it's an indelible pen and the right colour.'

    Gunnarstranda nodded and once again turned to the corpse, pointing. Frølich followed his boss's gaze, to the blood-stained chest area. Someone had written numbers and letters in blue on the dead man's chest - in the middle between the nipples, which were both covered in bushy hair.

    Gunnarstranda stood up. 'That's what we need to look at when they do the autopsy.'

    Frølich's eye fell on the wooden globe and the misshapen carving of Africa. Large swathes of the African continent were unlabelled.

    Gunnarstranda walked between the tables and chairs with Frølich behind him. 'Antiques,' Frølich muttered, pointing to a red upholstered chair, and called out to Anna: 'Can I touch this?'

    She looked up. 'Nice to see you again,' she whispered and disappeared through the door to the little office.

    Frølich couldn't think of anything to say.

    Gunnarstranda yawned out loud. 'I'm tired now,' he mumbled. 'Yttergjerde,' he shouted to a uniformed officer leaning against a door frame at the back of the shop. Yttergjerde shuffled over.

    'Tell Frølich our thoughts about a break-in,' Gunnarstranda said.

    Yttergjerde shook his head. 'No alarm activated, no window panes smashed, not a single mark on the woodwork around the doors - on top of that, nothing seems to have been stolen.' He nodded towards the counter by the door leading to the street. 'Wallet intact in his jacket, cash till untouched.'

    Frølich went over to the cash till. It was one of the antique variety with a pattern hammered into the metal and a jungle of buttons and levers at the front.

    Yttergjerde was a man with unusually long arms and large hands. He pointed a big, fat finger: 'Two doors,' he went on. 'The front door beside the shop window over there is pretty secure. There's a security grille in front.' Yttergjerde pointed to the second door: 'That way leads to the staircase. It was unlocked when we arrived.'

    Gunnarstranda pulled out a roll-up from his coat pocket and began to fiddle with it. Frølich noticed that it had been fiddled with before; it was disintegrating.

    Yttergjerde went towards them. 'There was one thing I forgot to say,' he mumbled. 'A woman who delivers newspapers discovered the body. She's wondering if she can go.'

    Yttergjerde indicated a motionless figure with spikey hair and a fringe above a pair of glasses as round as saucers. She was standing with her hands buried deep in the pockets of a ski suit.

    'Take her name and address,' Gunnarstranda said curtly.

    'The old boy - the corpse - Reidar Folke Jespersen owned the shop,' Yttergjerde whispered. 'He and the woman… his missus…' he gestured to the ceiling. 'They live in the flat.' He flicked his head back. 'The floor above.'

    Gunnarstranda nodded pensively. 'Priest?'

    'Came half an hour ago and is still up there,' Yttergjerde nodded.

    'The woman…' Yttergjerde continued to whisper; '… Her face went grey with shock. She had to lie down, but that was before the priest came.'

    Yttergjerde joined the woman who had found the body.

    Frølich yawned and went for a walk to look for Anna. Eventually he found her. She was coming out of the little office at the back of the shop.

    'Yes?' she said.

    'Nice to see you again, too,' Frank said, feeling foolish.

    She looked at him askance. 'Interested in the crime scene?' she asked with a faint smile.

    'Yes, of course.'

    'Keep your ears open,' she grinned, and grimaced as Gunnarstranda's brusque voice carried from the little office. 'Frølich!'

    'Yes?'

    'Here,' Gunnarstranda muttered with annoyance, pointing to the floor in front of the desk. The carpet had soaked up a lot of blood. Beside the blood lay a bayonet with red stains on the blade.

    Frank Frølich exchanged glances with Anna before looking down at the bayonet. Not long afterwards they were interrupted by a solemn-looking uniformed police officer standing in the doorway and motioning towards Gunnarstranda. 'We have a Karsten Jespersen here,' the policeman gabbled. 'And he insists on coming in.'

    The man who met them on the stairs was pale and his chin twitched; they were tics, obvious signs of a nervous affliction. He seemed to be trying to shake tiny insects off his cheek.

    'Gunnarstranda,' the policeman said by way of introduction, leaning his head back to survey the man. 'Police Inspector, Murder Squad.'

    Karsten Jespersen was wearing a corduroy suit under a winter coat. He was tall and lean, thinning on top, with a small, narrow mouth and an obvious receding chin, which seemed to disappear in a concertina of wrinkles and folds of skin every time his body recoiled from the periodic convulsions of his lower face.

    'Well,' the policeman said, looking around the harrow stairwell. 'Is there somewhere we can sit?' he asked.

    Karsten Jespersen composed himself and nodded towards the office door in the shop. 'We have an office in there.'

    Inspector Gunnarstranda sadly shook his head. 'I'm afraid we cannot allow anyone to enter the crime scene.'

    Jespersen stood staring at him, puzzled.

    'I understand your father lived in this building?'

    Karsten Jespersen looked up at the stairs, as though considering something. 'I suppose you can come with me,' he said at last, and forged ahead. The footsteps of the three men marching upstairs resounded between the walls. On reaching the landing, Jespersen ransacked his pockets for keys. 'Just a moment,' he murmured. 'You see…' At last he found a bunch of keys, pulled them out and fumbled for the right key: 'Ingrid, my father's wife - I've had a few words with her on the phone.'

    Frølich sent an understanding nod to Jespersen, who disappeared into the flat, closing the door behind him with care. The landing was about three metres broad. Originally there had been two doors leading into two flats, but door number two had been closed off. There was no door handle and it was painted the same colour as the walls. An ailing green plant in a terracotta pot had been placed in the recess in front of the door.

    'The whole floor to themselves,' Frølich mumbled.

    'The widow - Ingrid - must have broken down,' Gunnarstranda mumbled in a low voice.

    Then Karsten Jespersen appeared in the doorway. 'Come in,' he mumbled softly, as though frightened someone would hear him. 'There's a lady from the medical centre here, and the priest. But we won't be disturbed in my old room.' He held the door open and gave an embarrassed cough. 'Would you mind taking off your boots?'