‘Look here!’
Gunnarstranda held up a magazine. ‘Look here, you,’ he mumbled. ‘You, Johansen!’
He turned. The inspector laid the magazine on the table in front of him. Frank peered over his shoulder, curious to see. It was a magazine with no text. The photographs were in black and white, a series of pictures, amateur judging by the quality, peculiar angles, bad lighting, blurred. Gunnarstranda thumbed through, slowly, page by page. The series illustrated the fate of a blonde woman. Bound to a chair at first, tied with rope and chains that dug into her skin. Helpless, undressed, with a cloth forced into her mouth. Frightened eyes, round as plates, swollen blood vessels down her neck, as if something was hurting a lot, Frank thought. He caught himself wondering what it was that could hurt so much. In the next picture she was hanging upside down, still chained, still undressed and still with this silent scream of pain etched into her face and neck. Then one man’s rough hand held her hair while another held a dagger against the skin of her throat stretched to the limit. Frank wondered if the black stain on the blade was the woman’s blood. Probably, he concluded.
Gunnarstranda peered up from the magazine. ‘Was this how it happened perhaps?’
Johansen didn’t answer.
Gunnarstranda turned over the page. Another woman. More rope. Black rope taut across her breasts, rope holding up her legs in an unnatural position. Two hands this time. Two hands trying to choke the woman with a rope tied tightly around her neck.
‘You like seeing women with rope around their necks, you do, don’t you, Johansen,’ Gunnarstranda whispered. ‘Perhaps you dream about pulling the rope yourself, perhaps that was what you were dreaming when you sat up here with your dick in your hand that night, about going down to the nice little girl and slowly putting the rope around her neck and pulling and pulling and feeling her tremble helplessly in your arms?’
Johansen’s eyes were dulled. Passive and expressionless. They stared at the little man, who had got up and gone back around the table.
‘You know better than that, you evil bastard,’ the old man spat with hatred at the vulpine head now only five centimetres from his own.
‘If it’s so damned obvious, Johansen, tell me, at your leisure, how the hell you saw anything at all in the flat if the curtains were drawn?’
‘She drew them afterwards. She drew them after he’d gone. She let me see everything until he left, then she drew them. She waved to me and drew the curtains!’
This last piece of information came in the same pained voice as before.
Frank frowned. Waved, did she indeed, he wondered.
Gunnarstranda had straightened up. The distance between him and the old man was about half a metre. ‘So he left, did he? Without killing anyone?’
‘He waited, waited until she had drawn the curtains, then he croaked her.’
‘You’re making this up as you go along!’
‘It’s obvious to anyone with any nous.’
Johansen’s normal complexion was back. The threatening tone was gone. His hand clutched at the pouch of tobacco.
Gunnarstranda walked over to the window and leaned back against the glass. ‘I want to know what you saw in precise detail,’ he explained calmly and he, too, lit a cigarette. ‘Nothing else, not what you imagine, not what you believe, simply what you could see.’
Johansen got to his feet. ‘I’ll give it to you straight then,’ he said suddenly. Upright, he towered over the policeman, even though he was resting his palms against the window sill and had not drawn himself up to his full height.
‘I’ll tell you,’ he mumbled with a haughty cackle and a triumphant smile around tight lips. Frank straightened up with excitement.
Johansen pointed downwards. ‘Can you see the wooden fence by the demolition site?’
The man pointed to a gaping hole at the front beside the murder victim’s block of flats. A tall wooden fence blocked off the demolition site.
‘That’s where he got out,’ Johansen said in a hoarse whisper. ‘After he’d killed my little rose.’
The old boy’s eyes were dimmed and turned inwards. For the most part he was speaking to someone who wasn’t there, to himself.
‘He couldn’t fool me because I saw ’im. I suppose he didn’t want to be seen, so he kept away from the gate and the main door, he sneaked out, over the fence. I saw ’im climbing over the fence. With blood all over his face! And when he got there at least a quarter of an hour had passed since she’d drawn the curtains!’
Gunnarstranda stared out of the window, lost in thought. Johansen gave a faint chuckle and his asthmatic coughing started again.
‘A quarter of an hour,’ he coughed behind his fist and sat down with the same triumphant expression on his face.
Gunnarstranda, doubtful, frowned. ‘You think first of all he went into the yard, climbed from there into the demolition site, then jumped over the wooden fence when he could have strolled through the gate into the street, do you?’
‘Christ knows how he got into the demo site, but I saw ’im climb over the fence!’
‘It didn’t occur to you that this was a hell of a lot of hassle to get to the street?’
Johansen sneered. ‘He’d have to expect a bit of hassle if he was going to kill ’er!’
Gunnarstranda stood mulling this over, then spun round. ‘What time was it when they arrived that night?’
Johansen shrugged.
‘What was it that attracted your attention? Noise in the street or what?’
‘No,’ mumbled Johansen, getting up again. ‘I just saw there was a light in her window. She had switched on the light. Must have been about one at night. I’d just been to the loo, saw there was a light down there, and well, since she had this guy with ’er then…’
In the ensuing eloquent pause he smiled that wet smile of his. ‘Now we’re gonna see something, gramps!’
Johansen’s laughter once again erupted into a fit of coughing. His hands shook as he tried to flick the lighter into life.
‘Did anyone go into the block after the young man had left in the morning?’
The man gave this some thought.
‘Did you see anyone go through the gate,’ the policeman calmly rephrased his question.
The man didn’t speak.
‘Did you see anyone go in?’
‘No,’ the man said at length, without meeting Gunnarstranda’s gaze.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes!’
‘When did he leave her?’
‘Five, maybe six.’
‘I know there were people coming and going between five and six, Johansen.’
Johansen didn’t answer.
‘Perhaps you just weren’t following very well, Johansen, eh?’
‘I’ve told you what I saw!’
‘Just not all of it?’
‘I’ve told you what I saw, for fuck’s sake!’
‘What did the guy do after he’d climbed over the fence?’
‘Do?’
‘Yes, did he run off or what?’
‘Yes, he legged it.’
‘The man with the pony tail?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I say I have two witnesses who swear they saw the man with the pony tail outside the gate between five and six…?’
‘So?’
The inspector moved closer. ‘Are you sure about this fence business, Johansen?’
‘I’ve told you what I saw!’
‘But why didn’t you see the other two there?’
Johansen stared intently at Gunnarstranda. ‘Now I remember!’ he said coldly. ‘They arrived in a taxi. That’s right. Two of ’em. About the same time as he was climbing over the fence.’
Frank studied the old man’s closed face. It was impossible to say what was going on inside. His breathing gurgled, faint and rhythmical, as before.
‘Did you see anything else?’ Gunnarstranda fired at him.
‘I’ve told you what I saw.’
‘You didn’t see anyone else?’
The man shook his head, a closed expression on his face.
‘This is absolutely crucial, Johansen! Did you see anyone else go in the gate?’