‘I know about the chalet,’ Gunnarstranda said, immediately regretting his interruption. The line went quiet and he knew he would have to bring the silence to an end. He said: ‘It was in Vestre Slidre.’
‘It was?’
‘It burned down a few days ago.’
‘Burned?’
‘I happened to be in the area by chance.’
‘And which chance was that?’
Gunnarstranda stretched back in his chair. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and stuck it between his lips. He was silent.
‘Hello,’ Frølich yelled impatiently. ‘Are you there?’
‘Frank Frølich, have you got a chair to hand?’
‘Out with it! Tell me!’
‘Perhaps you’d better sit down. I received a report yesterday, addressed to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and I wouldn’t have taken any notice, had it not been for the land registry document. A property burned to the ground, a chalet belonging to Reidun Vestli. The Nord-Aural police report talks about finding long bones in the ashes of the chalet.’
Silence again.
‘Long bones, Frølich. Do you know what that means?’
‘It doesn’t have to be her.’
‘Of course not.’
Silence again.
‘But Reidun Vestli’s chalet burned down a few days ago. What is special about this is that someone was in the chalet at the time of the fire. If Reidun Vestli hadn’t lent the chalet to Elisabeth Faremo, it might have been a thief who broke in, went to sleep with a fag in his mouth and caused the fire. But that’s not what we thought, is it? We both thought there was a chance she might have let Elisabeth use the chalet, didn’t we?’
Frølich’s voice, clearly strained: ‘How are you going to approach this case?’
‘Standard procedure. Look for DNA to establish the identity of the remains.’
‘How?’
‘We’ve been to the Faremo flat.’
‘Find anything?’
‘A hairbrush. On her bed. I’ve requested a DNA profile and I’ll match it with that of the bones in the chalet.’
This time there was a longer pause before Frølich’s question: ‘When are you expecting an answer?’
‘Any time now.’
After Gunnarstranda had put down the receiver he sat looking glumly at the telephone. Yttergjerde turned to him. ‘How did he take it?’
Gunnarstranda lounged back and said: ‘How do you think he took it?’
20
That night Frank Frølich didn’t sleep. The duvet was drenched with sweat, as if he’d had a fever. When he tried to get out of bed, his legs almost gave way. His head was buzzing. He was thinking: I have to go there, have to find the chalet. He had no idea where it was, no idea where he should start searching. Yet he couldn’t just lie there doing nothing.
He had to find out where the chalet was. There was only one person he could ask.
So he got dressed and left the house. It was freezing, although he didn’t feel the cold. The ice on the car windscreen was as hard as the road surface. He found a scraper, but it had no purchase. He banged on the ice with his fist, hammered away, but that didn’t help. In no time at all he was out of breath and tired, to no effect. He got into the car, started it up and put the defroster on full. He waited apathetically behind the wheel until the ice had melted. Then he drove off. He went through the city to Vækerø and took a right turning into Vækerøveien.
He parked alongside one of the many picket fences. Oslo West lay in the dark, apart from the odd lamp posts casting yellow-grey cones of light between the terraced houses. After getting out of his car, he went over to Reidun Vestli’s house. It was night, but he couldn’t care less. He regarded his hands for a few seconds. They were shaking. Would it be right or wrong to talk to her now? He had no idea and continued on his way, passing a couple of cars with iced-up windows. Shortly afterwards he banged the door knocker. Nothing happened. He listened, but couldn’t hear any sounds inside. Went back down the steps and walked slowly around the house. The night frost had scattered crystals of ice over the soil in the flower beds. He retreated and stood back a few metres, studying the house. It was the last in the row. He walked back onto the frozen lawn, leaving clear footprints in the hoar frost. He went to the veranda – it was poorly maintained, a kind of decking made with pressure-impregnated wood. The railing had been put together with stained slats which were going rotten. A couple of withered potted plants had been shoved into the corner. In the centre of the veranda there was a green pot half full of sand and old cigarette ends. Long bones in the ashes. He walked to the window and spied through a crack between the curtains. Came face to face with two white feet sticking up in the air. The nail of one big toe was varnished. He knocked on the door. No reaction. The feet didn’t move. He tried the veranda door. It was unlocked.
She was lying on her back with her mouth in a rigid grimace, her eyes staring up and behind her as if trying to catch eye contact with someone residing in the wall. She was dead. He didn’t need any doctor or forensic scientist to confirm that side of the matter. But he did feel tired all of a sudden. Who will mourn you? he thought and felt the nausea rising. Long bones in the ashes of the fire. Sleeping pills scattered around the upturned glass on the bedside table. Some had fallen on the floor; some were in the pool of vomit on the pillow. Cause of death: poisoning or suffocation as a result of vomit produced by the body’s reaction to poisoning. The odds? 1: 2. He guessed suffocation. However, the nausea he felt could not be attributed to her, to the stench of the dead body, the stench of dried vomit or the stench of stale air and old cigarettes. Nausea was his body’s reaction to this universe of death, of mutilation; the absence of grief, the absence of normality. Where was Elisabeth’s grief when she lost her brother? He sank back against the wall. Who will grieve over you? he thought again, contemplating the pitiful feet protruding from under the blanket. Your ex-husband? Who will presumably hate you more now that the chalet you quarrelled over has burned down.
He wanted to be sick. Long bones. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. Breathed in deeply. Where was the suicide note? No envelope, no shaky writing on a piece of paper, no indication of any leave-taking in the immediate vicinity. He cast a glance at the computer. It was switched off. But Gunnarstranda was bound to seize it. Nausea was rising in him again, but this time it was a reaction to himself. His own pitiful condition. Long bones. Here he was, next to a corpse and fearing for the life of another. And what if it was Elisabeth who had died in the fire? Could that explain why Reidun Vestli would kill herself? He swallowed his queasiness, stood up, went out onto the veranda and gulped lungfuls of fresh air. Supporting himself on the rotten railing, he sat down on the edge of the veranda and phoned Gunnarstranda.
PART THREE: The Key
21
Frank Frølich sat up in his all too spacious double bed, looking at the pillow and duvet beside him. No one had been there since Elisabeth – the night she vanished and Arnfinn Haga was murdered in Loenga. The bedding had not been changed; the creases in the sheet had been made by her body. She had left behind one single black hair, a line winding over the crumpled pillow like a path across mountainous terrain on a map. Next to the bed, on the bedside table, there was an empty wine bottle with a candle stump in the top. A makeshift light – her work, one night when there was a power cut. Afterwards the flickering light had cast dramatic shadows of their bodies on the wall.