He automatically tapped in the sender’s number and sent it off to enquiries. His phone bleeped again. Another message. This time with the sender’s name and address: Elisabeth Faremo.
Frank Frølich sat down. His body was tingling. He lifted his hand. It wasn’t shaking. Nevertheless, this woman had thrown a switch. He had assumed he was symptom-free and unaffected, assumed he had come to terms with the intoxication. But no. Bang. Feverish. Unable to think. A bundle of pent-up energy. He was charged up. As a result of one solitary word!
He sat looking at the small phone with its illuminated display. It began to vibrate in his hand. The phone rang. The same number.
‘Hi, Elisabeth,’ he said and was surprised at the clarity of his voice.
Two seconds of silence. Long enough for him to think: Now she knows I have looked up her telephone number. She knows the effect she has on me, she knows she can throw a switch and raise my temperature to fever pitch by keying in a message. But then came the gentle voice he had not heard for several days: ‘Where are you?’
‘At work.’
‘Where?’
‘Police HQ, Grønland.’
‘Oh.’
It was his turn to speak. He cleared his throat, but he had hardly drawn breath before she interrupted: ‘Don’t you have a break soon?’
‘What’s the time?’ he asked, looking at the place where the clock had been that had hung over the door until a few weeks ago but was no longer there. Just two wires protruding from the wall.
‘No idea. Around lunchtime.’
‘Where shall I pick you up?’
‘Are you driving?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be at Lisa Kristoffersens plass, near Voldsløkka.’
‘In ten minutes.’
He couldn’t think. No room in his head for anything but images: the curve of her back, the roundness of her hips, the black hair flowing across the pillow – the sapphire-blue stare.
He threw on his jacket and left. Down the stairs and into the street. He started the car and drove off. What was the time? He didn’t have a clue. He didn’t give a shit about anything in the world, concentrated simply on not hitting pedestrians. Accelerated. As he was driving down Stavangergata she appeared from nowhere, came walking towards him on the pavement. With her came the scent of late autumn, perfume and throat lozenges. She took a seat without uttering a word.
He fixed his eyes on the wing mirror. Breathing normally, despite her sweet fragrance. Cold, controlled check of the mirror. He waited until the road was clear, then signalled and drove off – conscious of her constant gaze, directed at his impassive profile. She wriggled out of her lined brown leather jacket.
Finally, after passing the turn-off for Nydalen, she broke the silence: ‘Aren’t you happy to see me?’
He stole a furtive glance at her. She was feline. Two huge blue eyes with large pupils, the look of a cat. He could feel his pulse racing. Temples pounding. But he maintained his mask. ‘Of course I am.’
‘You don’t say anything.’
Her hand over his, on the gear stick. He glanced down at the hand – the fingers, glanced at her again. ‘Hi. Nice to see you again.’ The words stuck in his throat. He was driving towards Kjelsås, Brekke and Maridalen.
What am I doing?
Lips stroking his cheek. The hand that slipped off his and under his jacket. It was as if she had filled a recently tuned engine with high-octane fuel and pressed START. His heart was beating so fast and so hard that the blood in his ears was thumping. Trees on both sides. He slowed down, drove into the lay-by, over to the copse, away from the road. Came to a halt. Put the car in neutral and let the engine idle. As he snatched another sidelong glimpse, she covered his lips with hers.
When she spoke, it was the first time for an hour: ‘Would you mind driving me somewhere?’
‘Where?’
‘Blindern.’
‘What are you going to do there?’
Wrong question. Her eyes narrowed.
The atmosphere melted away.
He breathed in and stared at the trees outside – collected himself to look at her again. The daggers in her eyes had changed into a kind of preoccupied sheen – she regarded him from inside a private room where she did not want to share anything with him. The voice from a cool, smiling mouth: ‘I’m going to look for a job.’ He pulled into the kerb and dropped her off in Moltke Moes vei. He sat watching her. A tiny amount of snow had fallen overnight; he noticed it now for the first time. The snow had melted into a slush in which her footsteps left large puddles. The woman who until a short time ago had been a very part of him was now reduced to a slight figure lifting her feet much like a cat not wanting to get its paws wet. Is it possible? Is this small stooped figure, a mere nobody wrapped in cotton, wool and skin, is this the creature who has me totally in her power, who makes my heart pound so hard that I feel my chest will explode?
Drive! Far away! After a couple of weeks she will be forgotten, airbrushed out. But as the slender form disappeared into the Niels Henrik Abel building he switched off the engine, opened the car door and got out. He followed her. Why I am doing this?
Because I want to know more about her.
She had continued through the building to the other side. He followed fifty metres behind her. A mini-tractor came across the snow-covered flagstones. He moved to the side and walked past students conversing in low voices in twos and threes. She went into the Sophus Bugge building. He stopped a good way behind her, observing her through the high windows as she disappeared into an auditorium.
If she was a student, what was she studying? He entered the building through the heavy doors.
He walked towards the broad door leading into the auditorium. Reidun Vestli’s name dominated the timetable. It was she who was now giving the lecture.
He took a seat outside and picked up a newspaper lying there. He was plagued by doubt. What would he do if she came out and saw him?
He closed his eyes. I’ll tell her straight. I’ll tell her it isn’t enough to have casual sex in a parked car – I want to know who she is, what is going on in her mind, why she does what she does…
Do you yourself know why you do what you do?
Frank Frølich sat staring blindly at the front page of the newspaper. A photograph of a military vehicle. Civilians murdered. An incident which engaged people’s attention all over the world. Dagsavisen had given it front-page status believing that he would care, would be lured into immersing himself in all the verbiage they managed to spawn about this incident. But he didn’t care. Nothing at all was of any significance now, nothing, except for Elisabeth, this – from where he stood – completely anonymous and rather delicate woman with the pale face, red lips and eyes of a blue he had never seen before. Her existence meant something, meant a great deal. He had no idea why. He only knew that she did something to him – physically, but also mentally, something which aroused a craving in him he had only read about, heard about, something he had never given credence to – and now he was spying on her.
He had met her three times.
That phone message: Come! His brain was immediately empty of all other images except those of her body – her lips, her eyes. And barely half an hour later they were caught up in a sexual intensity he had seldom experienced the like of before. The word – did she know what she had set in motion? Was she doing it on purpose?
At last the door opened. Out streamed a faceless mass of students. Most wearing their outdoor clothes. He looked at his watch. It was four o’clock. The lecture was over. He had butterflies in his stomach. What if she sees me?