‘The guy you hugged before, is that Terje Engelsviken?’
She turned right round. Viewed him with more interest. Nodded.
‘That’s what I thought,’ he smiled. ‘I just wasn’t sure.’
Eva-Britt’s eyes questioned him.
‘The guy taking off his jacket over there,’ Frank explained.
Both watched him struggle with his jacket, stagger backwards and knock over another glass. It was funny. The whole group howled with laughter again. Engelsviken laughed loudest. Raised the empty bottle and roared. The sound carried across the room. The waitress, who was now behind the bar, gave a nod of the head.
‘That’s how the big boys order drinks,’ Frank said.
‘Has he killed someone?’
Eva-Britt was sitting with her back to the group again and rotating her fork.
‘I don’t know.’
He studied Engelsviken as he lurched between tables. Slapped people’s backs on the way. Stopped and spoke to a man. Straightened up, threw back his head and laughed. Lurched onwards, round the corner to the gentlemen’s toilet.
Frank carefully removed the foot that was still resting on his thigh. ‘Just going to the loo,’ he mumbled and followed.
The toilet was large and light. There were white tiles on the floor and the air was perfumed with the faint smell of vomit.
The man in the silk suit stood combing his hair in front of a mirror. His knees were bent and he was going to a lot of trouble to comb his hair back with the right flick. Concentrated expression. Frank went to the urinal. He thought about Reidun Rosendal with the nice mouth. The man by the sink was sweaty and a bit too fat round the belly. Not exactly good-looking. But sociable. Obviously had a lot of friends. Could tell jokes and laugh out loud. So, someone who could dominate social groups. Like now. The dude was warbling a tune.
‘I’m just a gigolo,’ he crooned. ‘Just a gigolo.’
Out of key.
Someone flushed in one of the cubicles, unlocked the door, went to the sink to wet their hands. And was gone.
They were alone.
The policeman washed. Stood beside Engelsviken who was finally happy with the flick of his hair, put the comb in his back pocket and found his eyes in the mirror.
‘Engelsviken?’
The man nodded. Turned. The swollen face still had the vestiges of a forced smile hanging there.
‘Frank Frølich.’ Frank passed him his hand. ‘I’m investigating the murder of Reidun Rosendal.’
37
It was late at night. Already well into Saturday, officially a free day. He should have gone to bed hours ago, but had kept postponing it. Knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. His brain was churning.
Gunnarstranda sat at the living room table flicking half-heartedly through Emil Korsmo’s illustrated plates of weeds. Sometimes botany helped his brain to focus on other things. So he had snatched sporadic looks throughout the evening. The mint problem. Last year’s garden pest at the cabin. It could have been corn mint or cat mint. Determining which wasn’t crucial. But it was annoying that he couldn’t establish which it was.
The thing was, it threatened a rare Clematis sibirica that he and Edel had planted, and it had survived until now.
The plant was more than ten years old. The seeds were harvested one summer eleven years ago when they still had the old VW Beetle. They had come from collecting plants in Jotunheimen. Stopped at Fåberg and found where the clematis grew wild. The white bells had withered long ago, but the fine tassels of the seed pods alongside the mountain were unmistakable. He thumbed through the weed book, turning over the pages with the back of his hand. Looking from the dried example in the herbarium and down to the book’s neat drawings. Notwithstanding the artist’s fabulous lines, the task was impossible without fresh material. He sipped at a half-empty bottle of low-alcohol beer, uninspired. Emil Korsmo and Volume Two of Fægri’s Norwegian Plants lay on the table with sheets of dried plants from his own herbarium.
Sod this knife-wielding murderer. The unfeeling bastard who could not be smoked out because his crimes weren’t visible from the outside. It was just in films that murderers shuffled around like escaped inmates from a nut-house.
He rolled the bottle between his hands, sighed and raised a dry, wrinkled Petterøe from the ashtray. Didn’t light it. Reached for the remote control for the TV and switched it on. There was a blue gleam from the opposite corner of the room where a man with pocked skin, hollow cheeks and sunglasses walked unannounced into the sitting room of a naked woman with an angelic white face. The scene was so stupid he was annoyed. The weak point in the case. Reidun Rosendal had not made any noise. Infernal riddle. Anyway, he wouldn’t find the answer in this film. He got up. Glanced at his watch. Past two o’clock in the morning. He ought to go to bed. Stood ruminating and staring into the air while the man with the sunglasses on TV was making the woman scream.
He yawned. Turned. Christ, the racket she was making! He switched off, held his right hand against his sciatic nerve while stretching. Went over to the window and looked out.
That, too. Films always have screaming victims. What sounds had there been in Reidun’s flat?
Violence. Of course violence leaves traces in a man’s character. The point is that they aren’t immediately obvious. At least not to him. But it had happened. In the dock. Long, pale clerical fingers. And a look. Eyes: two small slits behind thick lenses. Then he had finally known what she had seen, the victim the man had strangled with his pale fingers.
Two windows in the block across the street shone warm and yellow against the dark wall. Inside, the man got up. String vest and loose braces today. The old boy opened the window and blew out cigarette smoke while talking to his wife who appeared behind him. Soon be in tears again, thought Gunnarstranda when he saw her. The tight black brassière squeezed her flesh into rolls all the way down her body.
A marriage can become damned restrictive within two rooms and a kitchen. Gunnarstranda could not count all the times she had sworn at the man as he strolled off on Friday evenings. Routine. The man had had someone else for years.
She joined him where he stood smoking. Stroked his back. I don’t know what’s worse, the policeman philosophized. The thought that he’s deceiving her, or the thought that everyone knows. She can take it anyway, he thought with a grin. She hasn’t killed him yet.
He felt the smile stiffen on his lips as he turned from the window and tugged at his tie.
Turned back. Watched the unfaithful husband putting his arms around his plump spouse. She hadn’t killed him yet. Gunnarstranda gave a malicious grin. Not him. Why on earth would she kill him?
The tie fell over the back of the chair and slipped down on to the cushion.
Of course she wouldn’t do anything to him!
Gunnarstranda watched as the light in the couple’s flat was switched off. Tried to organize his thoughts as a taxi with a yellow roof light splashed through the rain on its way to the city-centre night clubs that were still open.
He unbuttoned his shirt. Had got halfway when the telephone rang. Inhaled, deep, but didn’t answer. Started to button up his shirt again. They would ring for a long time. They always did when something important happened at night.
38
The first thing Frank noticed was the dregs of Gunder’s moonshine fizzing somewhere in his head. Then, far away, he heard the telephone, like in a bad dream. He moved his head and got a nose full of hair. Lifted his hand, stroked the hair to the side. Almost woke up. Rolled on to his side. Let her slide off. The telephone droned on. But Eva-Britt was still fast asleep. Her head was just blonde hair and her nipples two dark blue beacons in the dark. He writhed backwards, groped for the telephone. Stretched. Grabbed the receiver, lifted it up and put it back down.