It was the snow-clearer. The shaft had been wedged under the door handle and the blade had been forced down into an opening between two tables on the veranda. The door was effectively locked.
But whoever did this didn’t know how flimsy the door was, didn’t know what a skinflint his sister was, didn’t know that she had bought the door in a sale, a door with a plywood panel and not boards. Once his hand was through, the rest was easy. He felt around for the shaft, took hold, pulled it away and kicked the door open. He spilled out onto the veranda gasping for air. Ran off, rubbing smoke out of his eyes. He expected to be attacked. But no attack came. He looked around. The fire under the sauna had been made with old roofing felt and semi-rotten pieces of wood from the pile by the shed, all raked together. Frølich hurried over to his clothes and used them to smother the fire. He had to douse a fire singlehanded, naked, on a December day in the mountains. But he put out the fire and was helped by the rain. How could that rotten wood burn so fiercely? he wondered and then smelt paraffin. It took time for the cold to eat into the soles of his feet as he concentrated his energy on extinguishing the fire. The jacket, his large jacket suffocated the flames. He could feel time passing. His feet were numb. But when – bleeding, black from soot and naked – he finally gulped in air and was confident that the damned fire had done no more than scorch the outside wall of the sauna, blacken the window pane and destroy the floorboards, he was happy. He was trembling with cold and put on his wet clothes, aware that he had been the easiest target in the world for any ill-wishers for God knows how long.
He focused vigilant eyes on the area around him. However, all he could see was the outline of black trees in the dark. The job had been executed in such a terrible, amateurish way: deciding to burn someone alive, blocking the door to the sauna, making a fire from wood and paraffin, lighting it and running off before the job was complete. Instinctively he knew: the perpetrator had not run off. Someone was standing somewhere staring at me, right now.
Frozen and shivering in the dark he rotated on his own axis and yelled: ‘Come out! Show yourself, you fucking bastard!’
Silence. Black spruce trees, the patter of rain.
‘You spineless piece of shit, come out!’
Nothing.
Frank Frølich shook with cold. He forced his wet, swollen feet into the mountain boots which seemed much too tight. His fingers trembled and he listened. Then he heard the sound: a car engine. Then headlights shone through the screen of spruce trees.
He sprinted towards his own car, tripped over a root, fell headlong and scrambled up again. He tore open the door of the car. Bugger. The keys! Had he left them in the ignition? He had no idea, but ran off down the gravelled road. It was a bad road; the other person would be forced to drive slowly. But the hum of the engine faded in the distance, and the car lights behind the trees disappeared. He stumbled on the gravel, panting, a taste of blood in his mouth. Then he sensed the contours of the mobile phone in his trouser pocket. Who should he ring? He thrust his hand in his pocket for the phone. He held it in two trembling hands. The display showed: no coverage. His hands fell helplessly to the ground.
He lay like that for a long time, shaking, aching for warmth and dry clothes – for perhaps an hour, perhaps an hour and a half. He didn’t know. In the end he pulled himself together, sat up and searched his jacket pockets for the bottle of whisky. It was with his car keys.
33
The morning sun balanced on the edge of the ridge. It cast sharp meridians of light down the slopes to the bottom of the valley where he was driving home.
It was unreaclass="underline" a mixture of a hangover, the beginnings of a cold, insufficient sleep and a searing pain. At long last he was sitting in the queue of cars heading for Sandvika, observing men’s faces, freshly shaven, upper bodies sewn into finely tailored office clothes, eyes self-assured and secure, cheerfully confronting the morning, mysterious beauties behind tinted windows, sombre clusters of people waiting for buses along the main traffic artery, students and schoolchildren dawdling towards more tedium, long lessons with intolerable obligations and existential meaninglessness. And in the middle of all this was Frank Frølich, not awake, not tired, not ill, not well, none the wiser after his injuries, simply worn out, confused, sick of the whole business and frightened.
When the queue had finally started moving and he was driving up Ryenbergveien, his mobile rang. He drove into a bus lay-by. It was Gunnarstranda. ‘Are you coming to work today?’
‘That’s not on my list of things to do, no.’
‘You should come.’
‘Got a few formalities to complete first.’
‘Then we’ll see you tomorrow.’
Frølich glanced down at the piteous state of himself and said: ‘I’ll give it some thought.’
‘You want me to keep my mouth shut about the latest development?’
‘I’m tempted to start work again, but Lystad from Kripos has probably got something to say about this, hasn’t he?’
‘I gave him an ultimatum. If he considers you in any way blameworthy he should have asked Internal Investigations to set up a separate inquiry last night and that didn’t happen.’
Frank Frølich sucked in his breath. ‘OK, I’ll try tomorrow.’
‘I want you to think about it,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘I got in touch with DnB NOR in Askim. On a hunch. It turns out they have a procedure in place for every time someone with power of attorney wants to go down to the vault. The authorization is checked against the bank’s register.’
‘And?’
‘There are not many visits of this kind. But there are a lot of employees and they have different timetables. The manager talked to one of the shift workers. She says someone with power of attorney opened the safety-deposit box about a week ago.’
‘Who?’
‘Ilijaz Zupac.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Nothing’s impossible.’
‘Zupac’s serving time at Ullersmo and needs medical care. Prison leave is totally out of the question. It cannot have been him.’
‘Nevertheless he was there,’ Gunnarstranda said, deadpan. ‘So you can see you’re needed here with those of us who have to solve impossible problems. What I’m curious to know is whether the man left something in the box or took something out. Mull that one over and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
He didn’t drive home directly. After zipping through the Oslo Tunnel he made for the city centre and then out to Mosseveien. He took the Ulvøya turn-off and drove on to Måkeveien. Outside Narvesen’s house he came to a halt. No Porsche parked by the fence today – but in the drive, in front of the garage door, there was a Jeep Cherokee.
Frank Frølich sat and watched. It was a December morning. A woman in a winter coat with a large, brown scarf wrapped around her neck came round the corner pushing a pram. The child was wearing blue winterwear and sucking a dummy. They passed the car. He watched them getting smaller and smaller in the mirror as he thought about the evening two days ago when, through his binoculars, he spotted a car parked outside the entrance to his block of flats.