The Fourth Man Page 4

  ‘The rumour’s true,’ Frølich said abruptly.

  Yttergjerde, who didn’t know what he was talking about, said: ‘What rumour?’

  ‘About me and this woman, Jonny Faremo’s sister.’

  Yttergjerde’s face was in flux, a laughing mask stiffening into a gentle gape. Yttergjerde was shaken, as they say in boxing circles. He was at that stage when the shock has had its physical effect, but he still hasn’t begun to comprehend that he has been struck.

  ‘So now you know,’ said Frølich grimly. ‘Everything the lads say is true. I’ve got together with Jonny Faremo’s sister — the same Jonny Faremo who served three years for armed robbery.’

  He grabbed hold of his jacket and left.

  5

  Simple Minds were on the stereo. The voice was singing ‘You Turned Me On’ and a little later ‘Alive and Kicking’. As soon as the voice finished, the CD player went back to the beginning and a song called ‘Hypnotized’.

  She wanted to have music on when they made love. She wanted precisely this music. But that was fine by him. There were two of them now; he was in her and she was in him. Her eyes betrayed no uncertainty, no pretence, no dissimulation. So the noise around them was of no significance; the music simply completed the picture, in the same way that on-shore breezes emphasize that air is something you breathe, that moisture states that water is matter in which you can swim. But he wasn’t listening to the words of the songs, he didn’t hear the drum rolls, or the backing vocals; his body was simply dancing with hers, he was focused on two lights quite close and at the same time far away, her blue eyes.

  When he came in from the bathroom, she was lying on the bed reading. ‘Is that the same book?’ he asked.

  ‘The same?’

  ‘You always seem to be reading the same book.’

  She put it down on the bedside table. ‘Have you ever heard anyone say that you can never go into the same river twice?’

  ‘Greek philosophy?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe. But I don’t believe it’s possible to read the same book twice.’

  She made room for him under the duvet.

  A little later she asked him: ‘Why did you become a cop?’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘You don’t even believe that yourself.’

  He turned his head and looked into her face. Smiled instead of answering.

  ‘Are we in a private domain?’ she asked. ‘Keep off! Danger! Beware of the dog?’

  ‘I applied to Police College when I finished studying law and I got in.’

  ‘After law? You could have started in a solicitor’s office. You could have been a practising solicitor and earned millions. Instead of that, you run around snooping into other people’s business.’

  ‘Snooping into other people’s business?’

  The intonation. It had been the tiniest bit sharp. But it was too late to moderate it after it was said. He cast her a glance. She was resting her head on his chest while the fingers of his left hand were following the pattern of the wallpaper. He stroked her hair with the other hand, knowing that she was trying to appraise the atmosphere.

  ‘It does happen, doesn’t it? You do snoop?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Are you annoyed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At least you aren’t a judge, that’s good.’

  ‘What’s the matter with judges?’

  ‘I have a few problems with judges, either because of the job they do or because they’re just so – judgemental.’

  They lay in silence. Her head on his stomach. He lay there, playing with a lock of her black hair.

  She said: ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That actually I could have become a judge. Perhaps from a career point of view I should have done.’ He was still playing with her hair. She was lying still. He said: ‘I like my job.’

  She raised her head: ‘But why?’

  ‘I meet people. I met you.’

  ‘But there must have been something that made you consider becoming a cop. At some point, you must have wanted to become one, a long time ago.’

  ‘But why do you want to know?’

  ‘I like secrets.’

  ‘I guessed that.’

  Her head went down again.

  ‘There was a policeman living in our street,’ he said. ‘The father of a nice girl in my class, Beate. He drove a Ford Cortina. The old model with the round rear lights – in the sixties.’

  ‘I have no idea what car you’re talking about,’ she said, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘In the flat above me there was a girl called Vivian who went on the game, even though she was only eighteen or nineteen.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Ten maybe. I didn’t have a clue what a prostitute was. Didn’t have a clue about sex. The other boys talked about Vivian and showed me pornographic magazines with women baring their sexual parts. I thought the pictures were revolting.’

  ‘Were there pictures of her, of Vivian?’

  ‘No, but the boys wanted me to see what she did, or it gave them a hard-on, who knows? I was a late developer in this area. When I was ten, I was only interested in fishing, my bike and things like that. I remember Vivian as a rather drained, dark-haired girl with lots of thin, blue blood vessels on her legs. And her legs were always quite pale. She often sat on the steps smoking. Anyway, one day two men came along. One was wearing a coat and had slick, greasy hair. The other one, with a fringe, wore glasses and a short leather jacket. His face kept twitching. I was playing rounders with the other boys in the street and Vivian was sitting in her hot pants on the steps, smoking. When the two men came, she got up and went inside. Just sloped off.’

  Frølich went quiet when the telephone rang.

  She peered up at him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to answer the phone now.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ he said and watched the telephone without moving a muscle.

  They lay listening to the ring tones until they stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Two men and Vivian went off.’

  ‘One of the boys was called Yngve. He had a Tomahawk bicycle, one of those with a long saddle. Yngve picked up a stone and threw it at the two men. And we joined in immediately. The two men were the enemy, sort of. Then we picked up a couple of stones too.’

  ‘Two ten-year-olds?’

  ‘There were probably five or six of us. Yngve was the oldest, he was fourteen. My friends were thirteen and twelve. I was the youngest and I remember I was shit scared. I’d never been so frightened. The man with the twitch went for Yngve and he lay on the road bleeding. He had to go in the ambulance afterwards. I remember I ran behind the block of flats, panic-stricken. I hid between the rubbish bins and was sick, I was so scared.’

  He looked down at his chest and met her eyes. He grinned.

  She whispered: ‘Go on.’

  ‘Beate’s father sorted everything out. He was the undisputed king, he didn’t say a word, he didn’t flash police ID or a badge, he wasn’t in uniform, he just came and put the world back to rights. I suppose it all started there. His character – a symbol.’

  ‘Bruce Willis,’ she grinned.

  ‘He wasn’t a particularly nice man.’

  ‘Bruce Willis?’

  ‘Beate’s father.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Beate became a heroin addict and died a few years ago. At the class reunion she was the only one who didn’t turn up and all the girls talked about how she had been mistreated, screwed by her father for years.’ He stretched. ‘Illusions fade and die,’ he said drily.

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘It’s inherent in the word. Illusion, something which isn’t real.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘What do I like?’ He lay on his back thinking. ‘I like playing air guitar to ‘LA Woman’ by The Doors.’

/>   ‘You’re so boring. Come on. Say what you like doing.’

  He stretched under the duvet and said: ‘I like looking out of the window when I wake up in bed in the morning.’

  ‘More,’ she said.

  ‘More what?’

  ‘More of what you like.’

  ‘You first.’

  ‘I like lying on the grass in the summer and seeing what images the clouds form.’

  ‘More.’

  ‘Cycling down a mountain on a mild summer’s evening.’

  ‘More.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘I like copying down the titles of my records and organizing them alphabetically.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right.’ She snuggled down under the duvet. ‘It’s your turn,’ she whispered.

  ‘I like being on my own in a special place.’

  ‘So do I.’

  She lifted her head from his chest and looked up. ‘A beach,’ she said. ‘In the evening when I sit there, eventually all I can hear is the lapping of the waves on the shore. If anyone comes and talks, you don’t hear it.’

  ‘Water’s like that,’ he said. ‘I have the same experience when I go fishing, by rivers or streams with rapids.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  He looked at her again. She seemed slightly offended. ‘OK, I give in. It’s not like that.’

  ‘When you say things like that I don’t feel like saying any more,’ she said.

  ‘You!’ He sat up until they had eye contact again. ‘Don’t be cross.’

  ‘I’m not cross.’

  ‘So what’s the name of your beach?’

  She smiled. ‘Hvar.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The name. Hvar.’

  ‘Of the beach?’

  ‘It’s an island.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  She rested her head without answering.

  He caressed her hair and yawned. Soon he would be asleep, he could sense that and he was happy. ‘By the way,’ he mumbled and yawned again. ‘I like the smell of bonfires in spring.’

  At one point during the night he opened his eyes and the weight of her head was gone. He heard a soft voice speaking. She was sitting on the chair by the window with her mobile phone to her ear. ‘Aren’t you asleep?’ he asked. ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘I’m coming now,’ she whispered. ‘Just go to sleep.’

  His eyes were closed and he felt her crawl in under the duvet. Before drifting off again he looked at her black hair cascading over the pillow.

  PART TWO

  The Fourth Man

  6

  ‘We have a customer.’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘A man. Cold and stiff as a Christmas anchovy,’ Gunnarstranda went on. ‘In Loenga.’

  The line was cut. There was nothing to discuss. There was never anything to discuss. Frank Frølich turned over in bed. ‘I have to be off,’ he whispered with a croak and stopped short.

  She wasn’t there. The duvet she had wrapped herself in a few hours ago was half on the floor. He sat up in bed, massaged his cheeks and cautiously called out: ‘Elisabeth?’

  Not a sound.

  He looked at his watch. It was half past four. It was night. He got up and sauntered into the living room. Dark and quiet. The kitchen – dark. The bathroom – dark and empty. He switched on the light, splashed water over his face and met his tired eyes in the mirror. Why does she do this? Why does she run away? When did she go? Why?

  Exactly six minutes later, he was sitting in his car and driving down Ryenberg mountain. It had turned colder. A sliver of a moon shone in a starry sky. The temperature gauge in the car showed – 5 ° C. And he thought about Elisabeth in her skin-tight skirt and skimpy underwear walking down the road in this cold. Out of bed, out of the house, gone. Inside the car, he was so cold that he was hunched over the wheel, holding it with both hands. The studded tyres made a metallic sound on the tarmac and the bends in the road were frozen. Mist steamed over the water in the harbour basin. The right atmosphere for a murder, he thought, as he swung into Gamlebyen.

  A patrol car stood outside the fence with its blue light flashing. Gunnarstranda’s Skoda Octavia was parked across the pavement. And behind the wire fence a small circle of people was standing around a shape on the ground.

  Frølich closed the car door behind him and went through the gate with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. He was frozen and pangs of hunger for breakfast were stabbing at his stomach. The figure of Gunnarstranda came towards him. With the shirt under his autumn coat buttoned up wrong. An unlit cigarette bobbed up and down in his mouth.

  ‘Guard for Securitas. Found at 3.43 by a workmate. Obvious signs of an attempt to break into containers.’ Gunnarstranda pointed. The doors of a green metal container gaped wide open. ‘The container is owned by something called A. S. Jupro. It’s not clear what they took – but presumably it was some kind of electronic equipment.’

  From a distance the dead man resembled an unconscious slalom skier. He was lying in a so-called stable lateral position. Wearing a boiler suit. Frank Frølich winced when he saw the man’s disfigured head and all the blood.

  ‘Pathologists call it “injuries inflicted by a blunt weapon”,’ Gunnarstranda said formally. ‘The back of his head has been stoved in. Finding the cause of death shouldn’t be the most difficult task on earth for the boys. Most probably that’s the murder weapon.’ He pointed towards a blood-stained plastic bag beside the corpse. ‘Baseball bat, aluminium.’

  A sudden crackle came from one of the uniformed policemen’s short-wave radios. The man passed it to Gunnarstranda, who barked formally into it.

  Frølich was unable to decode the message which came crackling back. But a grinning Gunnarstranda could. ‘Lock them up.’

  He turned and checked his watch. ‘We’ve got them and now we can grab a bit more shut-eye. Sorry to wake you at such an ungodly hour, but that’s the job, isn’t it? No two cases are the same. I’ll catch another couple of hours myself,’ Gunnarstranda added. ‘Then we’ll do the interrogation at a more godly time. It’ll be wonderful to hit the sack.’

  ‘Who have we got?’ Frølich asked, bewildered.

  ‘A gang of bruisers,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘A tip-off. Not worth a great deal perhaps, but on the other hand there is a clear sequence of events.’ He pointed to the open container. ‘These boys were breaking in when the security guard arrived in his car.’ He pointed to a small Ford van a few metres away. The security company’s logo was printed on the side. ‘The guard saw something, stopped and went to check.’ Gunnarstranda pointed to an object next to the open container. ‘His torch – a Maglite – is over there. The men were caught red-handed, and a struggle ensued. One of them has a baseball bat and wallop. The guard falls there. Unfortunately for these three, he’s dead now.’

  ‘And we know who did it?’ Frank Frølich said with a yawn.

  Gunnarstranda nodded. ‘As I said, a tip-off, and I would be very surprised if it wasn’t spot on.’ Gunnarstranda took a scrap of paper out of his coat pocket and read aloud: ‘Jim Rognstad, Vidar Ballo and …’ Gunnarstranda held the scrap up to the light. ‘Sometimes I can’t read my own writing … Jim Rognstad, Vidar Ballo and … can you read the name of the third man?’ he asked, straightening his glasses.

  Frølich read it first to himself before reading out aloud: ‘It says Jonny Faremo.’

  7

  Frølich had felt the beast gnawing at his stomach all morning and decided to find out what had happened at the court hearing. However, as he was running down the steps between the court and Kafé Gabler he felt a growing reluctance to go on. So he retreated to Kristian Augusts gate to stand and wait on the pavement. Soon a group of people gathered in front of the court entrance. A little later the door opened. Elisabeth came out. He followed her movements. She left alone, taking small quick steps, without looking to the left or th
e right. He stood watching her slender back until she had rounded the corner and was gone.

  The moment Gunnarstranda came through the wide doors, Frølich showed himself and stepped out onto the tramlines to cross the street. Gunnarstranda detached himself from the crowd on the steps, strode down to the pavement and also crossed the tramlines. Frølich joined him.

  Gunnarstranda, uncommunicative, continued along the pavement at a brisk pace.

  Frølich cleared his throat: ‘How did it go?’

  ‘How did what go?’

  ‘The hearing.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Which means?’

  Gunnarstranda stopped, let his glasses glide down over the bridge of his nose and scowled sharply over the top. ‘Are you wondering whether her brother will have to go to prison? Or whether all of them will have to go? Or are you wondering about your own future prospects?’

  ‘Just say how it went.’

  ‘Elvis has left the building.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Jonny Faremo gave me the finger and walked out a free man. Because his sister, the little bit of fluff you’ve fallen for, alleges she was with her brother and the others in the flat at the time Arnfinn Haga was killed.’ The last word was delivered with a yell to drown the tram as it rumbled past.

  Frølich waited for the din to subside. ‘She said she was in the flat with her brother and two others – after she was with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She sneaks out of my flat while I’m asleep, wanders off in the middle of the night, to her place where her brother, Rognstad and this Ballo are, then they party until dawn?’

  ‘Don’t you two talk to each other, Frølich?’

  Frølich didn’t know what to say.

  Gunnarstranda continued: ‘Jonny Faremo, Jim Rognstad and Vidar Ballo and your … sweetheart … were playing poker in their flat. She also mentioned your name.’