Lethal Investments

43

It was early Sunday morning. The industrial areas of Tøyen and Enerhaug lay deserted. Now, without people, the noise of machinery and the sound of metal on metal, the place seemed completely forlorn. Like a film set after the shooting, Frank thought.

They walked arm in arm along Jens Bjelkes gate. Eva-Britt, who had never got over Frankie ending up as a police officer, still came back to how strange this was. Now she had an opportunity to revisit the topic. Twice they had walked up and down the footpath between Beier bridge and Foss, where the old man had been dragged ashore. Eva-Britt hung on Frank’s arm, strode out and swung her hips with every step. ‘Becoming a cop is the last thing you should have done,’ she informed him yet again.

They were on their way back to Eva-Britt’s. One of the girls in the collective was looking after Julie while Mummy was on a Sunday walk trying to find slide marks on the slope down to the Akerselva.

He nodded, in another world. Still thinking about their walk. Along the footpath to and fro between the two waterfalls where the old man might have slipped. No one so far had uncovered anything that might explain Johansen’s death. Not even they had.

‘I would never have believed it,’ repeated Eva-Britt, musing aloud.

‘Why not?’ he said to show he was mentally present.

‘Don’t know. You’re not the type.’ She smiled. ‘Can’t see you beating people up.’

He sighed.

She rolled her eyes when she heard his sigh. ‘Now, don’t you tell me the cops don’t beat people up!’

Frank grunted and threw his arms in the air. ‘The job’s all right. It’s like all jobs, I suppose. You want to be thorough, see results. And for that I definitely have world-class opportunities. The find-the-murderer scenario.’

He fell quiet. Noticed her staring at him. ‘The problem is all the night work on poor pay,’ he added. ‘The only difference from other jobs is in fact the opportunity to fail, to be part of a fiasco. It’s immense. The whole time.’

‘Are you thinking about the dead girl?’

They had reached the busy road they had to cross. So they stood waiting to dash over when there was a gap in the traffic.

‘You meet the world in a different way,’ he shouted over the noise of vehicles, pulling her on to the other side. ‘It’s difficult to grasp that you’re still on the same planet as you were before you joined the police. People’s madness is in your face. Just the fact that anyone can be so bonkers as to visit a girl and stab her with a bread knife! Just imagine it! A bread knife! And then she falls down dead!’

He paused. Moved aside to let a man in a leather jacket scoot past. Went on: ‘To clear up a case like this you have to be totally involved.’ He stopped. ‘Like Gunnarstranda last night!’

They resumed walking. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he added. Remembered Gunnarstranda with the coffee cup between his hands, the feverish face with the sharp eyes. His tongue going like a clapper regardless of external conditions, circumstantial evidence, assumptions or a hung-over colleague.

‘The man’s always on form at all times of day or night! Take this case. All along we’ve thought that a man forced his way into the girl’s flat, turned it upside down, got caught, stabbed her and legged it. However, Gunnarstranda realized that there must have been two people. Two perps who may not have known about each other. First, this girl has a visitor who kills her and buggers off. Then someone else comes, and searches the flat. This turkey has broken into her workplace earlier. He does what he has to do around the body, ransacks the entire place, but presumably doesn’t find whatever it is he’s after. So he breaks in a second time, two nights ago, to do a more thorough search.’

‘Why should it be the same person who broke into her workplace and her flat?’

‘We don’t know. We reckon it is, but we have no way of checking.’

‘What about if you’re wrong?’

‘That’s the point. Then everything collapses. The opportunity to fail is immense.’

They walked on in silence.

She stopped and laughed, revealing the gap between her front teeth.

‘What is it?’

‘I was just thinking about the time you and Dikke used to share a crate of beer at all the parties. There you were, without fail, sitting on the sofa, boozing away and grooving to Pink Floyd and…’

She frowned, racked her brain. ‘And…?’

Frank glanced at her. ‘Van der Graaf Generator!’

‘What a name! No one else would have liked them.’

‘Van der Graaf were great! Shit-hot!’

‘Of course! It’s just so odd to think that you joined the police. What’s happened to Dikke by the way?’

‘He’s in clink.’

She became serious. ‘What for?’

‘Dope.’

He and Dikke had drifted apart. Gradually, slowly but surely. They had met once in two years. One summer evening. Warm air in the streets. Restaurant terraces full to overflowing. Stunning women on the go, taxis with open sun roofs and wild music. People congregating in groups. Dikke was alone in a corner of the square outside the railway station. A portable stereo at his feet. Twitchy head, tapping feet and hands that ran up and down his body without cease. ‘I get so nervous if I have to stand in the same place,’ he had said, talking to a point somewhere among the stars.

Now he always sat in the same place, cooped up in a prison cell, unless he was strapped down.

He became aware of her silence. Coughed. ‘I suppose I was not exactly your dream-boy at that time?’

She didn’t answer.

‘What I remember best is the night on the Danish ferry.’ He laughed and felt her grip on his arm tighten.

‘Do you know why I fell in love with you?’ she asked, giving him a view of the gap between her teeth again. ‘Your woollen socks.’

‘Oh?’

‘Grey woollen socks and an erect willy.’

She smiled. ‘You were completely naked apart from the grey socks which you had half-taken off. You were frantically searching for a condom, knocking things on to the floor.’

He grinned. Stopped. They had passed Gunder’s garage. He turned and pointed up to the windows where Brick the solicitor had his premises. ‘That solicitor’, he pointed, ‘is tied up in this mystery we’re sweating over, by the way.’

They peered up at the panes where BRICK was written in large letters.

‘Gunnarstranda found out the man had his office here.’

‘Is he a suspect?’

‘No. The solicitor is the business manager of the dead girl’s employer. Software Partners.

‘And a swindler, I suppose,’ he added.

She leaned towards him. ‘The solicitor is working on a Sunday,’ she said.

‘Eh?’

‘Yes, I’m sure I saw someone there. Look! The neon tube in the ceiling’s on.’

Yes, it was true, they could both see it. There was a light in the window. She squeezed up against him. Bored her chin into his chest and stroked his cheek with a begloved finger.

‘If you were a proper cop,’ she whispered, ‘you would go up there now!’

He smirked. ‘With you here? Dame waiting in the street while Dirty Harry straightens his jacket and goes to work?’

She sneaked her gloved hand up under his shirt.

He was a bit nervous with her hands around. With that look in her eyes she was capable of anything.

‘I know something nicer we could do,’ she whispered to the shirt button. ‘Little bonk?’

His eyes twinkled. ‘At your place, with the gang of cheerleaders in the common room?’

‘If we go to yours we’ll have to take the little one.’

Frank kicked the tyre of a fat BMW parked by the kerb. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘This crate must belong to the solicitor by the way. It’s expensive enough.’

At that moment a man in a blue coat strode quickly through the gate and over to the car.

‘Young solicitor,’ whispered Eva-Britt.

They had to move and make room for the man. He fumbled with the alarm system. Soon there was a brief peep as the alarm went off. The man opened the boot lid and threw in a red briefcase. Then a stout elderly lady rushed through the gate. She attracted everyone’s attention. Waving a piece of paper in her hand. Face red with exertion. Wearing a woollen jacket and tasselled slippers on her feet, she shuffled out to the parked car.

‘Bjerke,’ she called. ‘Joachim Bjerke!’