She searched for the word. For a moment she seemed absent.
‘Positive,’ she concluded after a spell of gazing inward.
‘We communicated well,’ she added. ‘An intelligent girl able to conduct herself would have friends everywhere. But there was nothing of any depth between us.’
Frank nodded. There was probably quite some distance between the bed-sit in Grünerløkka and the palace where this woman resided.
‘Definitely a good sales person,’ she stated.
They were interrupted by a middle-aged lady carrying two cups of coffee on a tray, which she placed on a box by the door. Sonja got up to bring the tray over. Flicked her curls into place before swaying back. Sat down, crossed one leg over the other and tore a little hole in a cardboard carton of cream.
Frank refused politely – he drank his coffee black – sipped warily at the cup and asked: ‘A good sales person in what way?’
‘In what way are people supposed to be good at sales?’
No flies on this lady. Answers questions with a question. ‘Well…’
He dragged out his pause.
‘Slick,’ she suggested with the same unchanging smile. ‘Sales staff are slick, slippery and it’s never easy to know where you are with them.’
Was she telling him something? He couldn’t quite get a handle on her smile. It was a bit too set. And at the back of her eyes there were two piercing arrows.
‘Did Reidun Rosendal have such attributes?’
‘Reidun was intelligent, attractive and… young.’
‘Did she have any enemies here in the building?’ he asked calmly.
‘Far from it.’
‘Was there anyone she was particularly fond of?’
Sonja swallowed a mouthful of coffee. ‘No.’
Frank made a note before continuing: ‘Bregård said he was in a relationship with her.’
‘He said what?’
She stared down into her coffee cup.
‘Well, that was the impression I was given.’
‘Which impression?’
The reaction was a second too fast. The smile designed to take the edge off the question too rigid. Her lips quivered. Out of control.
Frank concentrated. Leaned forward and poured a bit of cream in his coffee as well, to gain time.
Thereafter he fixed his gaze on a point diagonally above her so as not to ruin whatever had caused the air to go electric. Forced an awkward smile. ‘Nowadays a relationship can mean anything from an engagement to…’
That was as far as he got.
She interrupted him with distended lips. ‘… a bonk, as some are wont to call it.’
Intense eyes. Taut jaw muscles in two unbecoming knots. As though someone were standing behind her pulling wire fastened to the corners of her mouth.
His eyes met hers. She didn’t appear to notice. Her voice carried towards him from afar, as though she were sitting in a boat on calm waters talking to someone he could not see:
‘As is well-known, some women choose to allow themselves to be used like rags.’
A bubble had burst. For a brief second she stared down into her cup. On raising her eyes again, she was as before. Controlled. Proper. Breasts camouflaged in a loose-fitting blouse. Long, slim legs under shapeless culottes, and her face made up in a cultivated manner to emphasize personality.
‘It’s been a few years since we burned pornographic magazines in the streets.’
Ironic smile.
Frank played along. Returned the smile. Led her off on a tangent, turned his head away, stared out of the window for a few seconds. She took the bait. He could feel her eyes on him, scrutinizing him. He looked back. ‘I apologize if I’ve been clumsy, but I honestly didn’t know that you and Bregård…’
‘That’s not how it is, though!’
She laughed, her mouth open wide. When she laughed she was good-looking. Good-looking and proper.
‘Goodness me! Am I so easily misunderstood?’
Not at all, he had not misunderstood anything. But there was something here, something he hadn’t grasped, but which he assumed was lying on the desk in front of him, gift-wrapped, he just couldn’t see it.
‘I run this business with my husband. He’s the Managing Director here.’
Frank peeped down at his notes. ‘I thought for a moment I had been tactless,’ he lied with a prepared smile for the exuberant woman who had taken up residence in her eyes.
She took the bait again. Billowing ripple under the blouse, slight flush of the cheeks.
‘So Terje Engelsviken’s your husband?’
She nodded tentatively. ‘My point is merely that…’
She cut herself off in mid-flow. Wrinkled her nose in contempt and looked down in her cup. ‘It makes me so angry! Things happen too easily! It’s not right that everything should revolve around sex!’
‘There is something called love,’ he ventured gently.
She raised her head, cautious. ‘Maybe’, she assented. ‘But what is it, love, I mean?’
Sticky question. ‘Well, I’m not exactly a great philosopher.’
‘But is it philosophy?’
Clearly, this was a matter that preoccupied her. Serious, carefully considered thought was engraved in her features. ‘Human relationships,’ she mused. ‘If two people find each other and build up an existence together, what is it all based upon?’
Sticky one, thought Frank, toffee paper sticking to your fingers.
‘Love,’ he suggested to evade the issue.
Smile came back. Patronizing. From somewhere high up, on a pedestal. Staring down at him, faraway look. ‘Love is a fickle term.’
Didactic tone. Her eyes said: make allowances for him. They were solicitous towards the idiot on the other side of the desk. She was weighing her words now, frightened that he wouldn’t be able to follow, the dim-wit.
‘Fickleness is unable to support anything at all. Certainly not anything as constant as two people’s shared life.’
Frank sighed, stirred his coffee and tentatively cleared his throat.
‘Shared life?’
‘Has it never occurred to you that a vow for some people is serious,’ she harangued. Her taut bloodless lips quivered in her face. Frank spilt coffee on himself. Snatched a serviette from the tray and wiped off the worst. But she was oblivious.
Bent forwards. Fingers as white and trembling as her top lip. ‘For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. What does it mean?’
‘For ever,’ he suggested.
The answer appeared to be correct. She composed herself. Not another word.
‘So it has come as a surprise to you that Bregård and Reidun had contact outside working hours?’
She didn’t answer. Just sat staring into the distance. Frank was unsure whether she had heard the question. He coughed.
‘She was thinking only of herself,’ she said all of a sudden.
Frank gawped.
‘Please don’t take that amiss! It’s just that the word relationship does not make sense. I would guess they were drawn to each other, but…’
He nodded. ‘They were two… good-looking, young people who found each other?’
She breathed in. Her voice a touch frosty. ‘I assume it can be expressed in that way.’
There it was again. I suppose they should have got married first, should they, he thought sarcastically, and made so bold: ‘You mean they coupled?’
Calm hands. Vacant, dead eyes. The hand put down the cup without a clink.
Game over.
He leaned back in his chair. Absorbed her. Her beautiful face, closed and impregnable, professional, behind an invisible glass wall.
Frank Frølich was in no hurry. He flicked through his notes without urgency. ‘I’ve spoken to Lisa Stenersen and Bregård.’
Cool nod.
‘What sort of loss will Reidun Rosendal be for the company?’
‘Marginal.’
He inclined his head. ‘Marginal?’
‘As soon as we heard about it we had a meeting. Terje has already found a solution.’
Terje, husband, Managing Director. ‘I haven’t seen Terje yet.’