Lethal Investments

11

Frank walked slowly around the room. A frugally furnished office. Desk and various items of office equipment. Just one niche for meetings, two sofas and a couple of good chairs assembled around a table, broke the impression of workplace. Quite a large archive partition closed off the meeting area.

He took his time. Studied the brochures in the wall-mounted displays. Read the titles of the literature on the various shelves. Went over to the filing cabinet and tried a drawer. It was locked. Frank frowned. Tried another. Locked. All the drawers were locked. He examined the lock. It was new. Along the cracks between the metal and the drawers he could see marks. The drawers had been forced and someone had changed the lock. Why would anyone go to the trouble of locking up this filing cabinet? Five employees in a tiny company. Didn’t they trust one another?

The light from the windows fell on two other desks. On one there was a white strip of paper taped to the side of the telephone. Reidun Rosendal’s. Her name in neat blue writing. Small flattened loops between the curves. Her place, he thought, and sat down. Opened the drawers. Examined them without finding anything of interest. They were empty. No engagement diary. No personal papers. Just loose pens, a coloured ribbon for a printer and some files. An empty Coke bottle rolling around in the bottom drawer when he opened it. On top, under glass, a passport-size photograph. He lifted the sheet of glass, coaxed the picture out and studied it. Black and white photograph. Face in half-profile. A blonde leaning back, tossing her hair while looking in the mirror. Self-satisfied expression. A woman who liked what she saw in the mirror. But she was young.

He placed the photograph on the desktop. How old was it? It had been taken in a machine and he thought he detected a haze over her eyes. Bit tipsy perhaps. Permed curls and long hair. The girl he had seen dead on the floor had had spiky, relatively short hair. So the picture was not the latest.

She liked it from behind, Bregård had said. Frank discovered something he had not seen in that transparent dead face of hers. Something the photograph had succeeded in catching. Something special about the mouth, about the lips. It was this combination. The mouth, the eyes and teeth that made her face sensual.

Whoever adopted Bregård’s approach did not know what they were missing, Frank thought, putting the photo in his inside pocket.

At that moment the lift hydraulics sounded. The lift stopped on his floor and a woman emerged.