Gunnarstranda shrugged. ‘A bar. That’s the official reason she left at any rate – according to Frølich. Have you still got the passenger lists?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps we can find Ballo under an alias. Check for Ilijaz Zupac.’
‘Will do.’
38
Frank Frølich was searching for the note she had slipped into his hand. Finally he found it crumpled up in the back pocket of a pair of trousers in the dirty-linen basket in the bathroom. Her telephone number was written in large figures. The eight was two neatly drawn circles, one on top of the other. What does handwriting tell you about personality? He rang the number.
‘Hello, this is Vibeke and I’m a bit busy. Leave your number and I’ll ring you back in a moment.’
Now, at least, I know what your name is. He waited patiently for the tone. ‘Hello, Vibeke, this is me, Frank. Thank you for everything. Hope you have some time for…’
He didn’t get any further. She had picked up the receiver. ‘Hello, Frank. Nice of you to ring.’
‘I felt like talking to you,’ he said.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ he said.
She left the question unanswered and he let the silence drag on.
‘Are you there?’
‘Shall we meet up?’ he asked.
‘Right now I’m a bit busy. But otherwise any time. I usually get up at about twelve.’
He looked at his watch. It was afternoon. ‘What about one o‘clock tomorrow?’ he suggested. ‘Lunch?’
‘You can have lunch and I’ll have breakfast. Where?’
Frølich racked his brains for names of cafés and chose the first one that occurred to him: ‘At the Grand?’
‘Cool. I haven’t been to the Grand since I had a French vanilla slice with my grandmother there at least fifteen years ago.’
Lena Stigersand carried in a heavy pile of papers and asked: ‘Where can I put these?’
Absentmindedly, Gunnarstranda glanced up.
‘Where?’ she repeated.
He nodded towards the table in the corner. She staggered across.
At that moment the phone rang. Gunnarstranda took it. It was Yttergjerde.
‘Things are beginning to move, Gunnarstranda!’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Didn’t find a painting.’
‘You didn’t expect to, did you?’
‘Nope. I’ve just got back from searching the broker’s offices, Inar A/S. The five million in cash. He claimed he’d put it in a filing cabinet drawer, didn’t he?’
‘You mean to say he didn’t have the money in a drawer?’
‘Right.’
‘Well,’ Gunnarstranda said, looking at his watch. ‘He owes us an explanation.’
He put down the phone and rocked back on his chair.
Lena Stigersand, who had her back to him as she tidied the papers, glanced over her shoulder. ‘You look happy. Indictment on the way?’
Gunnarstranda pulled his fingers until the joints cracked. ‘Juicy grilled investor marinated in murder and seasoned with money-laundering!’ He grinned. ‘My goodness, there are times when I adore this job. It’s going to be bloody awful being retired!’
Gunnarstranda sat working into the evening. One by one, the others went home. He had a dinner date at home with Tove. She had asked him to come at eight and he had nothing else to do to kill the intervening time. When he finally craned his neck to check the clock, he saw Frølich’s jacket hanging over the back of a chair by the door. He stood up and opened the door.
‘Frølich?’
Frølich turned round from the photocopier and said: ‘Time to draw in my oars now. It’s late.’
Gunnarstranda put on his coat and said: ‘Thought you left ages ago.’
He observed his younger colleague as he went to collect his jacket and straightened the scarf round his neck. He said: ‘How long have we been working together, Frølich?’
The latter shrugged. ‘Ten years? Twelve? Thirteen? No, I can’t remember. Why?’
It was Gunnarstranda’s turn to shrug his shoulders.
Frølich said: ‘I’m off then.’
‘I’m off too.’
They stood looking at each other again. ‘Something up?’ Frølich enquired.
‘In your view, should we have done anything differently?’ Gunnarstranda asked.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Do you think we’ve left anything undone – in this case?’
‘Should have been more on our toes with regard to Narvesen maybe?
‘We’ve had him under surveillance for several days,’ Gunnarstranda said. ‘He hasn’t been for a leak without it being noted down. According to reports Narvesen does nothing in the evening. He stays at home. Sometimes goes into the cellar. That’s all.’
‘Carpentry?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘What about Emilie?’
‘Emilie?’
‘His partner, Vietnamese-looking, attractive girl.’
‘Her with the Porsche? She’s a spinning instructor and is rarely at home.’
‘What’s a spinning instructor?’
‘She drives to a fitness studio four nights a week, sits on an exercise bike in front of a load of other exercise bikes and then they pedal away to music while the floozy howls into the mike urging them on.’
‘Oh.’
They left the building together. Neither of them said anything. They stopped outside and looked at each other again.
Gunnarstranda cleared his chest. ‘Ri-ght,’ he said. ‘Have a good weekend.’
Frølich nodded in response. ‘Have a good weekend.’
Tove had made lamb stew. It was his favourite. The food had the aromas of his childhood. Sunday lunches when he was a boy and the whole block could smell what was being cooked. The quarrels between him and his brother for the best bits of meat when the pot was passed around for seconds. But he didn’t say that. He had said it before. Several times. The fact that she had cooked this meal was Tove’s homage to precisely that nostalgia.
They had eaten, washed the meal down with a red wine she had chosen, a strong spicy Italian number of the Barolo variety, and they were now sharing the remainder. Louis Armstrong was singing ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ on the stereo. Gunnarstranda observed Tove as she sat in the armchair deep in thought.
He said: ‘What are you thinking about?’
She said: ‘A patient. Vidar. He’s crazy… no, he probably isn’t out-and-out crazy, but he’s one of our residents at the nursing home, poor boy. Barely thirty. He’s so thin and his face is always twisted, staring diagonally up into the air, his mouth open, holding the lobe of his ear with one hand. His mother said he was listening to God’s voice.’
‘Terrible,’ Gunnarstranda said and took a sip.
‘If you close your eyes, does everything go black?’ she asked.
He closed his eyes: ‘No, there’s a yellow flicker and I can see stars.’
‘Not everyone sees stars, but many people can see a sort of yellow in the dark. However, if you concentrate, look straight ahead with closed eyes, the flicker you see focuses into a centre, a point of light somewhere between your eyes, and if you look harder, this point will be a part of a large black eye. That’s your third eye looking at you.’
Gunnarstranda closed his eyes, raised his glass and drank. ‘An eye? Who’s looking at me inside my head?’
‘It’s God.’
‘Who says it’s God?’
‘Vidar.’
‘The crazy young man?’
‘Mm.’
‘Maybe he has a point. Would you like some more wine?’
‘OK, if you tell me what you’re thinking about.’
‘Be bold, fair maiden, but not too bold.’
‘Doesn’t that come from a fairy tale?’
‘Probably.’
‘Come on, no wriggling out of it,’ Tove said, getting up, fetching another bottle from the cabinet and opening it.