Atthat moment there was a bang.
Itwas a door slamming on the floor below.
Ithad to be Reidar. He was downstairs in the shop. She took another step andlistened. There were footsteps downstairs. It had to be Reidar. Then there werefootsteps on the staircase. Slow, heavy footsteps. She concentrated. Was hiswalk that heavy? Dear God, she thought. Let it be Reidar. And nowsomeone was coming up the stairs. The footsteps came closer and stopped.Outside her door.
PART TWO: A Man in a Window
Chapter 9
'It'sme.' The loud, clear telephone voice of Police Inspector Gunnarstranda cutthrough the quiet winter- morning air. There was that hint of tetchiness thatFrank Frølich had learned to treat with forbearance.
'Right,'he answered, pressing the mobile phone to his ear and tightening his scarf asthe cold snow swept across the bridge and held him in its grip again. 'FrognerPark,' he explained. His fingers were frozen. He squeezed the phone tight andburied both it and his hand deeper in the scarf. 'I've just crossed the bridgeover the lake,' he added, walking down the last avenue, leading to the metalgate and Kirkeveien. He blinked. The contrasts became clear in the light of themorning sun which hung low and was blinding. In the park, where Oslo Highways'salting lorries never came, the snow was still white, not greyish-brown andcompressed as it was everywhere else in town.
'I'mon foot, of course,' Frølich continued laconically. He knew that at this veryminute his boss would be fidgeting with a cigarette, walking around in circlesout of agitation because Gunnarstranda never knew how to control the stream ofenergy that was surging through his limbs. Frølich knew that Gunnarstrandawould not be in the slightest bit interested in the fact that he had slept atEva-Britt's – yesterday was Friday and after a huge, painful row he had feltobliged to spend the night with her – or that he had accepted a wager with Eva-Britt's daughter, Julie, that he would lose five kilos before the winterholidays, a bet that he intended to win, for the simple reason that he was sickof the girl's bullying. He had also decided to walk to work every day in thebelief that walking in the freezing cold accelerated calorie consumption, sothe colder the better. Frølich's personal experience of Vigeland's sculpturesin the morning sun would have not have interested his boss, either. Frank likedto contemplate the rigid statues that seemed to have been frozen in motion,either throwing or wrestling. He seemed to be moving in a surrealisticlandscape of forms, particularly because the low temperatures gave thefrozen-metaphor an extra subtlety on a day like this.
'Wehave a body,' Gunnarstranda said.
'Where?'
'Turnright at the metal gate, toddle down Thomas Heftyes gate and you'll see us.'
Andthen the line went dead. It was so cold that his nostrils were stuck together.Frølich buried the lower half of his face under the thick woollen scarf; hisbreath formed condensation and left tiny beads of ice on the wool. He felt likea wandering tree trunk in his thick woollen jumper, thick jacket and long johnsunder his trousers. On his feet he wore army boots which squeaked at every stephe took on the hard-packed snow.
Tenminutes later, after turning down Thomas Heftyes gate, he found the road almostdeserted. There were very few curious onlookers, which could have been for anumber of reasons: the cold; the late onset of daylight in January; or the factthat a swarm of police cars in front of a building does not necessarilyinterest the better inhabitants of West Oslo early on a Saturday morning.
FrankFrølich walked past Inspector Gunnarstranda's new Skoda Octavia and wriggledhis way through the road blocks, but came to an involuntary halt at the sightof the body in the shop window. The dead man was naked, a white body sitting inan armchair – between an old wooden globe and a light blue chest covered withfaded decorative flowers. A woman in white overalls was busy covering thewindow with grey paper. Through a covered section of the window Frank couldmake out the outline of Inspector Gunnarstranda's face. They nodded to eachother and Gunnarstranda's glasses caught the morning sun.
Thefront door was still closed. A sign with yellowish- white plastic letters on ablue felt background gave the opening times. The shop was closed on Saturdays.
Frølichfollowed the flow of forensics officers towards the staircase, where he foundthe back door into the shop open. The room inside was no longer warm. Theconstant traffic in and out caused the breath of all those inside to freeze.Uniformed police and forensics officers in white nylon suits were going throughthe premises with a fine-tooth comb. Gunnarstranda was crouched in front of thelow shop window studying the body in the chair.
Awoman was briefing him: 'The chair hasn't moved,' she said, pointing. 'It'sbeen on display for a good while, I suppose. Someone dragged the body from overthere…' She pointed to the back of the room… and put him on show here.'
'Oneor more?' Gunnarstranda asked.
'Impossibleto say.'
'Butcould a single person have done this?'
Thewoman just shrugged. 'Haven't the slightest.'
The womanand Frank Frølich exchanged looks. He hadn't seen her for three weeks when shehad slept at his place.
Theylowered their eyes, both of them, at the same time.
'Butyou must have an idea,' grunted Gunnarstranda with irritation.
Shestared into space, giving herself time to think.
'Hi,Anna,' Frank said. She looked up, and again they had eye contact for twoseconds, which was at once picked up by Gunnarstranda and occasioned an angryshake of the head.
'Yes,I do,' Anna said quickly, and added: 'It could have been one person, could havebeen more. In fact, it is impossible to say much more than that at the presentmoment.'
Gunnarstrandagot to his feet.
Adramatic lock of Anna's hair stuck out from under the white hood, bisecting herforehead and giving her a passionate, Mediterranean appearance.
Fr0lichlooked away and concentrated on the corpse, the shop window, the coagulatedblood down the chair leg and the dark stain on the carpet. He tried to imaginethe shock he himself would have had if he had been passing by at daybreak. Butfor the blood, the dead man would have looked like a papier mâché figure. Hisskin was white, and something akin to frost had settled in the wrinkles andhollows of the body. 'Well, a decent age,' Frølich mumbled, studying the deadman's mask-like face.
'Seventy-nineyears old – according to his bank card,' Anna said, a hundred per cent formalnow.
'Acut?' Frølich asked, pointing to a red stripe around the dead man's neck.
'Tookme in, too,' Gunnarstranda said. 'But it's thread.'
Frankrealized at that moment: red cotton tightened around the man's neck.
'Graffition the forehead?' Frølich asked.
'Crosses,'Anna said. 'Put there with a pen.' She turned around and indicated a smallcylindrical object on the shop floor. 'Probably that one – it's an indeliblepen and the right colour.'
Gunnarstrandanodded and once again turned to the corpse, pointing. Frølich followed hisboss's gaze, to the blood-stained chest area. Someone had written numbers andletters in blue on the dead man's chest – in the middle between the nipples,which were both covered in bushy hair.
Gunnarstrandastood up. 'That's what we need to look at when they do the autopsy.'
Frølich'seye fell on the wooden globe and the misshapen carving of Africa. Large swathesof the African continent were unlabelled.
Gunnarstrandawalked between the tables and chairs with Frølich behind him. 'Antiques,'Frølich muttered, pointing to a red upholstered chair, and called out to Anna:'Can I touch this?'
Shelooked up. 'Nice to see you again,' she whispered and disappeared through thedoor to the little office.
Frølichcouldn't think of anything to say.