‘Yes,’ came the gruff voice from behind him. ‘In fact it was just us. Reidun, Lisa and I.’
‘Had the filing cabinet been opened?’
‘Yes. It had been broken into and everything was scattered on the floor. Sonja flipped. I suppose she must have been… frightened of something.’
‘So you don’t know if anything was stolen from the cabinet?’
‘No.’
Gunnarstranda sat down again. ‘Why is the cabinet always locked?’ he asked.
‘Don’t ask me. I didn’t have permission to use the cabinet. All the filing went through Sonja Hager. If I needed any material it had to be ordered in good time via her. The fusspot!’
He sighed, ruminated. ‘Nope,’ he continued. ‘Sonja’s all right, too. But she should have dealt with her husband. That’s perhaps the nub of the matter. She pranced around dispensing vacuous phrases. I was fed up with her.
‘I suppose she deserves some sympathy,’ he added without much generosity in his voice. ‘The husband hits the town every single weekend while she stays at home. Reigning from the hill like a queen, with her house help.’
‘Servant?’
‘Yes. A young Filipina or Thai poppet who helps Sonja to wash, tidy and cook.’
A quiet grin spread across his cracked lips. ‘The woman’s a laughing stock!’
Gunnarstranda watched him release a sequence of small smoke rings from his mouth.
A laughing stock, he mused, and asked:
‘Have you got anything specific in mind when you say she’s a laughing stock?’
Svennebye grinned again. ‘No, in fact, now that you’re asking me she has always seemed a laughing stock to me. Pathetic. Stupid. Don’t ask me why.’
Gunnarstranda changed subject: ‘How did Bregård get on after your trip?’
Svennebye shrugged. ‘Think he calmed down. He’d got it out of his system. Sent her the goo-goo look whenever she flashed her legs.’
He chuckled. ‘And that was not so infrequent.’
‘Bregård’s a bit of a hothead, is he?’
The man considered that. ‘Can’t really say he is. He’s a great guy, head mostly full of hunting and sport. I saw him lose control that one time, but he had a hangover.’
‘I’ve heard he drives around with a rifle in the ski box on top of his car.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why does he do that?’
‘He goes off into the country after work, shooting wood pigeons and crows. Hoping to hit a grouse or a hare.’
‘What do you think about that?’
Svennebye took his time to answer. ‘Lots of people are like that, aren’t they? Hunting and outdoor freaks.’
‘But this rifle’s in the car ski box the whole time.’
The man nodded.
‘Is the box locked?’
‘No idea. In fact, I’ve never given it a moment’s thought. That’s just the way Bregård is. He’s got a rifle on the car roof. He’s always going on about his nature experiences. Sunsets and coffee round the campfire. That sort of thing.’
The inspector leaned back in his chair, watching the man withdraw into himself, his head bowed. Svennebye was struggling with a problem. When, at last, he raised his head, his eyes were hard and implacable. ‘Now I’ll tell you something that ought to interest you preservers of law and order,’ he announced. ‘After we returned from London I was tasked with making a catalogue for a product I do not begin to understand.’
He left an eloquent pause, then continued: ‘The others partied for days over there.’
The man tapped a white index finger on his chest. ‘I went to the fair. Not the others. Yet Engelsviken claimed afterwards he had returned with a contract!’
The finger tapped faster. ‘I’m the Marketing Manager! The person responsible for sales. And Engelsviken demanded that I sell this concept of his in a brochure to be distributed country-wide. But he didn’t bloody tell me what it was based on. He just gave me a load of computer chit-chat I didn’t understand. As a result I couldn’t sell the products properly in the catalogue, either. So I wrote a lot of meaningless twaddle.’
The finger came to a rest in the man’s pocket, then he leaned across the table and formed his sore lips into a smirk. ‘For seven weeks Reidun Rosendal and Engelsviken and Bregård went around selling something they didn’t understand.’
‘Which means what exactly?’ the policeman snapped.
Svennebye smirked again. His dry lips had cracked in several places and now he was licking blood off his top lip.
‘Just what I say.’
‘But some people have actually invested!’
‘Possibly. I don’t know. But have you seen a registered trade mark anywhere?’
‘No,’ Gunnarstranda was forced to concede. Reclining, sunk in thought. Intake of breath. ‘I’ve read a lot of fancy words.’
‘I wrote those words.’
The inspector studied him, watched him smoking, but he didn’t pursue the matter.
‘From now on Software Partners don’t have a Marketing Manager. Since Reidun’s dead, officially they don’t have any sales staff, either,’ Svennebye continued. ‘But I doubt that will stop them selling. It’s the emperor’s new clothes.’
They sat in silence for a while. Until the policeman pulled out the drawer and switched off the tape recorder. ‘Now I just need your signature on this,’ he said, still lost in thought, and got up. ‘Not much more and you can go.’
32
It was early morning. Gunnarstranda had got up at half past six. In the usual sequence he had quickly devoured his portion of porridge, drunk two glasses of skimmed milk and consumed half a jug of hot coffee. Now he was sitting in a taxi on his way to Kampen, a suburb of Oslo. The driver’s tongue was going nineteen to the dozen. They had been through the whole repertoire. From the Olympic Winter Sports committee in Lillehammer to the Government, EU opposition in the Centre Party to the old dears who hadn’t twigged that they should be lying in bed gasping for air instead of trying to cross Vogtsgate on green.
Not that the police inspector cared. He just stared out of the window with his mind elsewhere.
Gunnarstranda asked the driver to pull over by the church in Kampen main square. He wanted to walk the last few metres. It was still early. Gunnarstranda liked the sleepy tranquillity that settled over the timber houses in Kampen. He liked to walk there, to breathe in the idyll of brightly coloured houses and the wooden fences that enclosed small gardens. An article he had read about Oslo came to mind as he strolled down towards the blocks of flats in Kjølberggata. It had been written by some dusty bureaucrat whose considered opinion was that it was possible to influence politicians’ decisions with sensible discussion. At any rate, the main gist was that Oslo’s most striking hallmark was its painted houses. Gunnarstranda had to concede the bright spark was right. Kampen was like a bouquet of flowers, even in April before the grass had turned green.
He was soon at his destination. Ambled in through the gate. The Skoda was nowhere to be seen. But there was a strong smell of paint coming from the yard. And shrill whining sounds from the garage. He walked round the garage and opened the little door at the back where the padlock hung open.
It wasn’t possible to see anything clearly. The outline of a light blue van could be glimpsed through a grey mist of paint and solvents. Something moved in the mist. Soon a black, oil-stained face appeared. The man bared a row of white teeth. Gunder.
‘Come in,’ he bawled.
The policeman instinctively retreated. Stepped back over the half-metre-high threshold and into the open air.
‘You can’t go in there without a mask,’ he gasped to the man who followed him out. The same friendly smile. Gunder’s eyes were large and white. Four flat wrinkles bedecked his forehead.
‘It’s the purest mountain air in there now,’ he claimed. ‘You should have been here an hour ago, then you might have had to cut your way through the fog!’