They looked each other in the eye. Frølich had never been able to read what went on in the other man’s head. And he didn’t want to try now, either.
‘Strange business, this, Frølich. There’s only a tip-off connecting Jonny Faremo to the murder of the security man in Loenga, and let’s be honest, that tip-off isn’t worth a lot.’
Frølich squinted up at the sky. The day wasn’t many hours old, yet the sun had already set up a flamboyant farewell spectacle behind the mountain ridge. Vermilion tongues of cloud licked between ochre-yellow flames above the azure-blue aura over the trees. He asked: ‘How little is the tip-off actually worth?’
Gunnarstranda took his time to answer. ‘Private initiatives from you are likely to be misunderstood. If you don’t take it easy, you’ll be suspended.’
‘Tell me about the tip-off,’ Frølich persisted obstinately.
‘A woman, twenty-nine years old, a freelance model who gets most of her jobs working as a waitress in a so-called Go-Go bar.’
‘Prostitute?’
‘Doubt it. She calls herself a model and appears in Aftenposten in lingerie adverts and that sort of thing. On top of that, she’s the girlfriend of one of the boys in the gang we banged up.’
‘Whose girlfriend?’
Gunnarstranda hesitated.
‘Which one of them?’ Frølich repeated.
‘Jonny Faremo.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Forget it, Frølich.’
‘The only thing I’m interested in is her name. It’s ridiculous that you won’t tell me.’
‘Merethe Sandmo.’
‘Is she a suspect?’
‘No idea. This case is being dealt with by Kripos, not me.’
‘Why would Faremo’s woman blow the whistle on him?’
‘No idea. But the relationship must have been stormy. The tip-off reeks of revenge, which makes her statement worth very little. It wouldn’t take much to break the link between these boys and the murdered security man. If it does break, we’ll have to look elsewhere for someone with a score to settle with Faremo. And, obviously, one of those people is you.’
‘The woman whose name you just mentioned, who shopped them, she could have given him a shove from behind.’ Frølich stood admiring the sky.
‘By the way…’ he said finally.
‘By the way what?’
‘Do you think I’m a few bricks short of a load?’
‘I don’t think you’re a few bricks short of a load, no. But I don’t think anything about anyone in an investigation. And you know that very well.’
‘But that means you would bust me if there was enough evidence to support such a hypothesis?’
Gunnarstranda smiled mirthlessly. ‘Would you blame me?’
Frølich sighed. ‘Probably not.’
‘Why do you want me to talk to this academic, Reidun Vestli?’ Gunnarstranda said in a gentler tone.
‘Because, for some reason or other, Elisabeth Faremo has gone into hiding. Lying low. She must have panicked. At any rate, she packed a rucksack on the same day her brother and his pals were set free at the hearing. I haven’t a clue where she went or why she disappeared. She hasn’t turned up again now that her brother is dead and that’s a little strange, isn’t it? On top of that, Reidun Vestli went off sick at the same time as Elisabeth packed her rucksack and went on the run. And Reidun Vestli wasn’t at home when I rang her a few hours later. She was driving somewhere. When I did eventually get hold of her, I was left with the impression she knew where Elisabeth was. I somehow feel the two of them are complicit.’
‘Perhaps Elisabeth Faremo has run away from you?’
Now it was Frølich’s turn to sigh heavily. ‘Her brother’s dead. She’s still in hiding.’
The silence hung in the air between them. Gunnarstranda broke it: ‘Why would Elisabeth Faremo ally herself with Reidun Vestli?’
‘She and Elisabeth are, or have been, an item. This Reidun Vestli sees me as a masculine avenger from the heterosexual world. And the woman can’t see anything wrong with Elisabeth disappearing, despite the fact that Elisabeth has a key role in this murder case and her brother is dead. The woman cannot connect her relationship with reality. I feel she’s Elisabeth’s willing collaborator right now.’
‘What would your interest in this be – if I talk to Vestli?’
‘Mine?’ Frølich shrugged his shoulders. ‘As you can see, I’m in a bit of a cleft stick. Obviously, it would be fascinating to know what Reidun Vestli has to say when you flash your police badge and take a hard line with her.’
14
After Gunnarstranda had got into his car and driven off, Frank Frølich waited for a while and looked at the weather. He thought about physical intimacy on dark autumn evenings, when car head-lamps struggle to penetrate the mist, when frost quivers like a circular rainbow for a brief instant in the light of street lamps. He thought about knitted gloves and intertwined fingers.
He tore himself away, went back to his car and drove until he came to the afore-mentioned side road just before Askim. There he turned and followed the winding gravel road, searching for a tractor track leading to the river and imagining how natural it would have been to park. In the end, he gave up and pulled over onto the gravel verge just before a copse. On the right-hand side of the road, there was a large field with straw stubble in neat rows protruding through the hoar frost. The field ended in a dark hillside overlooking the river. He wandered across the field. The frost crunched beneath his shoes. He reached the trees and stopped in front of a birch. The branches were covered with tiny ice-thorns; each bough resembled a carefully designed decoration. He looked down and ran his shoe along a branch of a raspberry bush; the ice-thorns came off with a dry rasping sound. The ice covering the spruce trees transformed the mountain ridge into a matt light-green surface. Further into the wood, there was the same formation of ice on withered stems, dead fern leaves and cranberry heath. Every cranberry leaf was wreathed in small ball-shaped ice crystals. A birch caught by the sun had been forced to relinquish its ice costume, which lay like granular snow on the forest floor.
He went on, across the blueberry heath and moss blanket, down towards the river. Soon he could hear the water. The noise increased in volume and became an impenetrable roar. He walked out onto a crag and stared down into the foaming water. This had to be the horizontal waterfall Gunnarstranda had been talking about. The water in the ravine coiled into a green-grey spume, smashed against the mountainside with enormous power, was hurled back and thundered on. Further down, the heavy mass of water pitched around like the backbone of a ferocious animal, laying bare fierce, capricious back eddies, which flowed away and swept lazily along a river bank of rocks and protruding branches snagged on ice-encased, tangled roots. He could see that a body would not stand a chance in this inferno. He felt giddy and sat down on the roots of a fallen tree. The rock ledge, which was a protection against the ravages of the water, was covered with ice and seemed perilously smooth. Anyone could slip on this if they were unlucky. But that begged the question: what would anyone be doing on this icy river bank on a cold November day?
He sat on a tree trunk in the dusk thinking that Elisabeth would be sitting somewhere too, and if she wasn’t terribly busy, perhaps she was thinking about him. Once again Frølich took his mobile phone and called her number. The signal didn’t get through. No ring tone, nothing. Pathetic creature, he thought contemptuously about himself. It was beginning to get dark. He rose and went back to his car.
15
When Gunnarstranda drove into Oslo, he turned off as usual at the raised intersection known as the Traffic Machine, continued up to Bispelokket to cross the bridge over Grønland and then took Maridalsveien, heading for Tåsen. Waiting for green at the traffic lights in Hausmannsgate, he caught sight of a familiar figure in the doorway to Café Sara. Vidar Ballo was holding the door open for a young woman – he recognized her too: their tip-off. Merethe Sandmo.