‘Yes,’ he said, knowing who it was. ‘Yes,’ he repeated.
‘I’m on my way.’
She lay on her back in the sunshine. Rested her head on her arms and languidly kicked at the foot of the bed.
‘Who was it?’ she asked sleepily.
‘Gunnarstranda.’
‘You’d better go then.’
‘Yup.’
‘Your willy doesn’t seem to want to go.’
He grinned.
‘In all the novels I’ve read all the boys have limp willies after a bonk,’ she said, pointing an accusatory finger at the thing stubbornly pointing back at her.
‘In all the books I read the boys have three or four bonks in a row.’
‘That’s because you read such bad books.’
He peered out. Blue sky and the top of the neighbouring block of flats. Windows.
‘Anyway, you’ve broken the bed,’ she added as he left for a shower.
He and Eva-Britt had once been in the same class at school. They had then lost contact until they met again three years ago. On the number twenty-three bus. A woman with an hour-glass figure and a pram struggling to manoeuvre it on to the bus; he had recognized her as he jumped out to help.
Two hours later they were in bed together in his student room recalling the old days, while sixteen-month Julie was asleep in the turbo-pram in the communal kitchen. They lived in their own flat, Julie and her mother did; Eva-Britt had had bad experiences with close relationships.
‘Will you get a bottle of red?’ she shouted from the kitchen when he switched off the water.
He came out. Her breasts were screaming to be fondled as she threw a dressing gown over herself. She could read his thoughts, and grinned.
‘Fine,’ he mumbled, enjoying the slight gasp that escaped her lips before she slipped into the bathroom. ‘I’ll get a bottle of red.’
7
He stopped at Manglerud and did his booze shopping at the vinmonopol there. His head still buzzing with nosy neighbours. Did Reidun Rosendal know what kind of neighbours she had, he mused in the queue, trying to imagine her type. OK, the old pig could be as mad as a hatter and actually believe that the woman was letting him see what he wanted that night. But could that really be the truth? That number was mostly for married couples in a mid-life crisis, spicing up their sex lives with the excitement of being seen by others, wasn’t it?
The thought would not let him rest. After all, there had been two of them that night. The boy and the girl. Under normal circumstances, with eyes only for each other. Perhaps so madly in love that curtains on the windows were of secondary importance. But that was the point. The woman had been killed. Was the man she had invited into her flat in love? Did that type exist, someone so crazy he would stab a woman to death after making love to her all night?
Frank picked up Gunnarstranda in the Grønland district of Oslo and headed for the Institute of Forensic Medicine, where they were met by Professor Schwenke who then powered ahead of them. The man’s white coat fluttering behind him. His thin legs making his office trousers look like flares.
The professor led them into his office. Here he proceeded to hold an illustrated lecture with photographs of the dead girl. The man’s combed-back greyish-white hair had such a will of its own that a strand at the back refused to stay in position and rebounded forward over his forehead. His square glasses were gold-rimmed, and his complexion was dry and yellowy. The professor put the top photograph on the desk, bent forward eagerly and analysed the sequence of events.
‘The angles of the various cuts reveal that the murderer stabbed her in the chest even when she was down on the floor,’ he explained with professional dispassion. ‘No fewer than three times in fact. Incredibly, the knife didn’t strike a bone and didn’t get lodged until the final blow.’
Schwenke’s voice was thick; he seemed to be speaking with toffees in his mouth.
Frank Frølich let the other two converse. He observed Gunnarstranda, whose arms were resting against the back of his hips with his fingers interlaced. His piscine eyes fixed on Schwenke’s face, the police inspector looked like a hooked fish: his bent-back arms raised his shoulders a smidgeon, his head hung slightly and his eyes were focused upwards on the professor’s face.
‘She died in a relatively short time,’ Schwenke said, pointing to the picture. ‘In fact, she was stabbed nine times. This,’ he indicated to clarify the point, pulling out another photograph in which the woman’s lacerated chest was magnified. ‘This stab on its own would have been enough to kill her. The incision has not only punctured the lung but brushed the heart.’
He paused and stroked his chin with two long, bony fingers, the yellowing nails untrimmed. ‘There was clear evidence of sperm in the vagina, so she must have been sexually active before she was killed, hard to say exactly how long before. The results of our tests may tell us more.’
Schwenke passed the stack of photographs to Frølich. Gunnarstranda did not move.
‘Was she on drugs?’ he barked.
‘Definitely not,’ Schwenke established with total assurance.
‘Rape?’
Schwenke wavered. ‘From a physiological point of view there is no damage to the central organs,’ he concluded at length. ‘But she had clearly had sexual contact at some point before the murder. What is rape though? Hypothetically speaking, a rapist may have forced her…’
‘So you can’t rule out rape?’
Schwenke stroked his chin again, ruminating. Made a decision.
‘Rape cannot be ruled out,’ he stated in an official tone. ‘But I assume it has to be regarded as a legal question, dependent on the circumstances surrounding the sexual act.’
He smacked his lips thoughtfully and added:
‘If you can find out what happened leading up to the murder.’
They left the office and went to the lab. Inside, the walls were covered with shelves of glass tubes, flasks and sundry varieties of small boxes. A strong aroma of formalin filled the whole room and Frank prepared himself mentally to snatch any cigarettes from his boss’s hands, for fear of an explosion. In the background, fans whirred vainly trying to dispel the thick chemical atmosphere that enveloped them. In the middle of the floor there was a steel table on castors, enshrouded in a sheet. Beneath which you could clearly see the outline of a body. The cover seemed to have been cast over the body in a hurry and there were bloodstains in the corner. A couple of stained plastic gloves lay on the lid of a sinister-looking plastic bucket beside the table.
‘No, no, that’s not her!’
Professor Schwenke followed Frank’s gaze. A sudden thoughtful expression crossed his face. ‘Suicide,’ he sighed, mostly to the corpse. ‘Two bottles of sleeping tablets, all in one go.’
All three of them stared at the table in silence.
‘What time of the day did she die?’
Schwenke regarded the policeman with bewilderment. ‘Did who die?’
‘The girl with the stab wounds!’
‘We’re checking her stomach contents right now. All the tests are being done routinely, as I have made clear. In general, there is quite a bit I am unable to say as of yet.’
He nodded towards the table and added a couple of toffees to his voice. ‘I know the fluctuations, the state of the market, you might say. And now it’s the peak season for this kind of…’
‘Would she have screamed?’
There was an irritated expression in Schwenke’s eyes as he turned back to Gunnarstranda. ‘Would who have screamed?’
‘How likely is it that the knife wounds would have made her scream?’
‘She might have screamed, but she could also have been paralysed. The stab that punctured her lung might well have been the first.’