Faithless, page 10
Rindal yelled. ‘Now. Go, go, go!’
When they arrived the forecourt was crawling with cops. Lena jumped out. She wanted to see this. Three men were accompanied to a waiting Black Maria. She didn’t know any of them. They were wearing jogging trousers and dated anoraks; one had ragged shoes on, the other two wore slip-ons without socks. From Poland or Lithuania, she thought, Eastern Europeans anyway, a provenance that made her see this raid with fresh eyes.
She walked around the delivery van. The shutters that had been closed last time were open now. Narrow room, like a long garage. Flatscreen TVs, gaming machines and computers were stacked on top of each other. Cardboard boxes full of digital cameras, mobile phones, big boxes full of silver cutlery. There was no doubt that this was stolen goods. Nevertheless, an uneasy feeling had grown stronger and stronger.
Rindal turned to her. ‘Bingo, Lena. Nice work.’
She shook her head. ‘Got a nasty feeling. Think we should have let them load up and drive off.’
Rindal eyed her for two brief seconds. He understood, but used his argument: ‘The pallet truck. It belongs to Zahid.’
Lena surveyed the scene. Emil Yttergjerde was talking to one of the three men in anoraks. The latter was waving papers. It seemed to be a long discussion.
Rindal jumped onto the lift gate at the back of the van. He towered half a metre above everyone now.
‘OK,’ he shouted. ‘Empty the place. Seize the stolen goods. Come on!’
Lena turned to take in the residential area a hundred metres away. He, Zahid, was probably training his binoculars on them now. She raised her arm in an act of defiance and gave the finger to the whole district.
16
The sun had retreated behind a veil of mist in the sky, which had a dampening effect on the intense heat. Afternoon was turning into evening. Frank Frølich was standing in front of the fireplace staring at the beer can Karl Anders had left behind. It had caused him to reflect. When he looked at the can and remembered the conversation the words jarred. He turned his back on the can and concentrated on the rack of DVDs instead. He skimmed the titles in case he felt like watching one of the films again: Heat, Once Upon a Time in America, Departed, Casino. None of them tempted him. He was restless and wouldn’t have the patience to watch a film right through. Should he just sit down on the veranda with a cold beer and pretend he was sitting on the edge of a harbour? Should he eat something? No, he wasn’t hungry. Listen to music? He couldn’t even be bothered to switch on the stereo.
There was a ring at the door.
For some reason he stared at the bell. Why did he stare at the bell when there was a ring at the door? He strolled into the hall. Lifted the intercom receiver with a ‘Yes?’ while pressing the switch to open the door below. There was no response from whoever it was. He heard only the buzz of the lock and the bang of the door as the visitor came in.
He waited in the doorway while the lift rose between the floors. The lift stopped. The door opened.
Out of the lift came Janne Smith.
‘I have to talk to you,’ she said.
‘Of course. Come in.’
He tried frantically to tidy the worst of the mess. No underwear or dirty towels out. Thank God! He bent over the coffee table and removed the old newspapers. ‘Can I offer you anything?’
‘No, thank you.’
The intonation made him straighten up. She was still in the doorway. Yellow top, shorts, sandals, red toenails. Small shoulder bag and hands in her pockets. Her eyes roamed around the walls.
The silence was palpable. She was the one who broke it.
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Putting Karl Anders in prison.’
In his heart, he had known what this was all about. Nevertheless, his disappointment was hard to hide when she revealed the purpose of her visit. He heaved a heavy sigh and slumped down into a chair. ‘You know this is hopeless, don’t you?’
She was angry. Her lips quivered as she said: ‘Karl Anders might have been lying when he said he was with me when Veronika was killed. But you’re his friend. You have to know he can’t have killed her. You must know him well enough! And then you end up putting him in prison.’
‘I didn’t.’
Her eyes were cold and hard. ‘Really? Is he on holiday inside, then?’
‘He’s being questioned. Afterwards perhaps he’ll be held in remand. If so, it’s a court, in other words the judge, who will decide whether he’ll be imprisoned or not.’
‘But you must know he’s innocent.’
‘I had nothing to do with the arrest.’
‘Didn’t you? Who cast doubt on what he said about the night Veronika was killed, then?’
‘I had to say that.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
‘It was an ethical dilemma. But I concluded it wasn’t right to withhold information in a case.’
She regarded him with eyes filled with contempt. ‘My goodness, how pathetic you are,’ she said in a low voice.
He was getting sick of this hassle, but decided to control himself: ‘Karl Anders can change his statement at any point, but he hasn’t done. Take a step back and try to see what this case is actually about…’
‘I know what it’s about,’ she interrupted shrilly.
‘There’s only one victim,’ he continued in an equally controlled manner. ‘Veronika suffered a brutal death. It’s the police’s job to find the perpetrator and take him to court so that he gets the punishment he deserves. Whoever lies in such a serious matter has to take responsibility for his actions.’
‘But you’re his friend!’
‘That has nothing to do with him telling the truth.’
‘What’s the point of friends if they don’t support each other in situations like this?’
‘I do support him. That goes without saying!’
‘Oh, really?’ Her eyes were still cold and hard, her lips thin and venomous. ‘If what you’re doing is friendship, what do you do to your enemies? He’s not allowed any visitors. If this is the treatment handed out for his ridiculous white lie, then I can easily change my statement. Call me in. I can say I’d forgotten. Of course he and I were together. You haven’t got much of a case then, have you. Eh?’
‘I’m afraid that won’t help much.’
‘See, you admit it. This is not about lies and the truth. It’s about your revenge on someone who regards you as a friend.’
‘Revenge? What do you mean by that?’
Janne looked away and said: ‘I know what happened.’
Frank Frølich stiffened. His chest felt like a block of ice. He wasn’t sure he had heard correctly and chose his words with care: ‘What do you mean?’
‘I know what happened between you two, why you broke contact.’
‘So you know, do you? Now I’m really interested. Come on, tell me!’
His attitude surprised her. Her eyes revealed uncertainty. ‘You don’t need to be like that,’ she said quickly.
‘I’m not being like anything. I find it hard to believe that Karl Anders would tell anyone what happened then.’
She gave him a worried glance, but he was tired of her now. He was angry. This was his home. He didn’t want to be plagued with work or gossip here.
‘What do you mean?’ she retorted.
‘Nothing. I have nothing to say. And now I’m tired of being shouted at in my own home!’
Janne Smith plumped down on the sofa. Hid her face in her hands.
‘Go home,’ he said sternly. ‘As soon as Karl Anders gives an honest answer to a couple of questions he’ll be out and you can celebrate with waffles and champagne. If you trust him, everything’ll be fine. Go home to your son. I presume Karl Anders will be along in the course of the day.’
She stood up. Seemingly having sloughed off a skin from her delicate body. She ran a hand under her eyes. Looked at the make-up. ‘I’m going, but I just have to use the bathroom.’
She went in and left the door open behind her. She washed her face and looked into the mirror. Fetched some mascara from her bag, put it on and spoke at the same time. ‘I spoke to a neighbour who’s a lawyer. He said that if Karl Anders isn’t out already he’ll be held on remand.’
‘I know nothing about that. Nor do lawyers from the street.’
She studied her reflection.
‘Janne,’ he said.
He got up and followed her. Met her eyes in the mirror.
‘Why did you break up with Karl Anders – actually?’
‘Actually? I said we went through a bad patch. He and Kristoffer didn’t get on well. I felt forced to choose. So I finished it … or … you know how it is. You ask for a break and so on.’
‘Nothing happened?’
She turned and looked at him, uneasy. ‘What do you mean?’
The silence hung in the air for a few seconds. His self-assurance grew in that moment. Whatever Karl Anders had told her about the past, it wasn’t the truth anyway. He looked into her eyes and said coldly: ‘I don’t mean anything. I was only asking if there was a specific incident that lay behind the break-up, but now I know there wasn’t. You moved away from each other, as in novels.’
He could see the answer made her uneasy, but he didn’t dare follow up.
She said: ‘We didn’t meet for several months, maybe six. When we did it seemed hopeless. We dated once or twice, but it felt as if there was no point starting afresh. We still stayed in contact though, at parties and such like. That was how he met Veronika, at a party.’
She stared vacantly into space. All of a sudden an arm shot out and she leaned against the wall.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘Now Kristoffer’s grown up,’ she said, regaining her composure, ‘things are different.’
‘What about Veronika?’
She closed her eyes.
He turned away and left her in peace.
When she came out of the bathroom she seemed more composed and assured. She stood with her arms crossed. ‘I know this will sound cold and cynical,’ she said. ‘But Veronika’s dead. She’s gone. Neither I nor Karl Anders can stop living … because she’s dead.’
She considered carefully before continuing: ‘I might’ve had a different view if I hadn’t known Karl Anders so well from before. When we got together again it felt so right. A profound sense of loss disappeared for us both. We would’ve got together again sooner or later anyway. I know that. He knows that. That’s why it’s so important for us that Veronika’s fate isn’t allowed to destroy everything for us as we start up again. I loved Veronika. Karl Anders loved her too. But they didn’t love each other. I know it sounds odd for me to claim that, but it’s true. I know it is. Deep inside, I know it is. And after she died I made one mistake. It was wrong of me to tell you the truth. If I’d known what Karl Anders had told you, I’d have happily lied. I’d have said Karl Anders and I were together the night she was killed. Then no one would’ve had any reason to suspect him, no one would’ve had any reason to arrest him. That’s why I have no option but to blame you. You tricked me. When you tricked me you let down Karl Anders. By doing so you sullied the few remnants of love he and I have tried to cling to for a fresh start. I’ll never forgive you … and nor will Karl Anders. You’ve played your part so neatly, you’ve even dragged Kristoffer into this and deprived me of the chance to lie, deprived me of the chance to save Karl Anders. But you know as well as I do that Karl Anders can’t have killed Veronika. We don’t believe that for a second – neither of us.’
He walked past her. Opened the front door and held it there.
She didn’t move.
‘Out,’ he said.
She hesitated for a few seconds, but then walked past him and out.
Frølich closed the door without looking at her. Stood on the same spot when the lift stirred from somewhere higher up the building. Stood on the same spot when it stopped, the door opened, closed again and took Janne Smith down to the ground floor.
Then he went into the sitting room and collapsed on the sofa, leaned his head back and observed the can of beer on the mantelpiece above the fire. It was as though the can was the image of his old friend. It had seen and heard everything, on behalf of Karl Anders.
17
‘And what are you doing?’ Gunnarstranda asked from the doorway.
Frank Frølich peered up from the table guiltily. ‘Rosalind M’Taya,’ he explained. ‘I’m trying to reconstruct her movements before she disappeared.’
‘Isn’t the Veronika case more important?’
‘You made an arrest,’ Frølich commented.
Gunnarstranda didn’t answer at once. He closed the door behind him. ‘CCTV,’ he sighed, lifting a DVD and shaking his head. ‘I hate CCTV cameras. All these hi-tech things are crap. Electronic trails, they say, trying to make me believe the world is different from what it was yesterday. It isn’t. People are the same. Twenty years ago there weren’t any base stations registering people’s mobile phones, no toll gates or stationary radar devices recording where people drove, nor did we have any surveillance cameras on every street corner. But we nabbed the criminals who committed murders anyway. We did police work. We used our training and our experience. Now you have to sit at a desk with a magnifying glass like some bloody stamp collector, studying lists of who’s logged on to the internet or texted someone at such and such a time. That’s not how I want to spend the working day. That’s not police work. Police work is talking to people, questioning them, interpreting their reactions, recognising psychological mechanisms…’
‘Or sitting on your arse in a car half the night while the main suspect’s nicely tucked up in bed,’ interrupted Frølich, piqued because Gunnarstranda was stopping him work. ‘You don’t need to be so frightened of progress,’ he said. ‘I’m sure veteran sleuths used to whinge like you when fingerprinting became police work. When they began to search for skin under the fingernails of rape victims there was the same outcry and even more when DNA was accepted as evidence and—’
‘Are you calling me a veteran? Do you see me as old?’
Frølich closed his eyes, not wishing to be sidetracked. ‘I don’t think it’s the office work you dislike. You’re just allergic to progress. New technology means training, and training means changing your mindset.’
Gunnarstranda rolled his eyes heavenwards.
Frølich continued undaunted: ‘With respect to Rosalind M’Taya, I’m not even sure a crime has been committed. But I can’t rule out the possibility. If she’s lying croaked somewhere I have to find out who had the motive and the opportunity. The same job they did a hundred years ago. The difference is only that I have a better chance of proving who could have carried out the crime. My intuition tells me Andreas Langeland knows what’s happened to Rosalind. So, he’s lying to me. Looks me in the eye and says he hasn’t seen the woman. But the camera at Gardermoen proves he’s lying. He works there, he loads and unloads suitcases. When he finishes work he sees her there in the arrivals hall. He follows her down to the train platform and persuades her to go with him. Two days later she’s with his brother at a student pub in Blindern. How come it’s his brother she talks to the night she disappears? The answer’s logical enough. One brother has introduced her to the other. My gut instinct tells me Andreas Langeland met Rosalind at the pub. He knows she’s new to the country and wants to meet people. He got to know her in the car. On Friday he contacts her: come to the pub. Meet Norwegians, my brother and all our friends. She goes there. There’s a girl at the bar who’s head over heels in love with Mattis Langeland. He’s a charmer. He’s got a scar by the side of his mouth and blah blah blah. The girl at the bar doesn’t see Andreas, but he’s there, one hundred per cent. It has to be like that. Mattis doesn’t try to pick up Rosalind. She’s his brother’s girl that night. Mattis goes and the other two stay. I’m sure Andreas made a move on her. Yet he’s the one who denies having seen her.
‘Imagine: this girl takes part in the summer school for two days. Then she goes to the pub and disappears. Just like that!’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Not one of the other students knows what’s happened. Not one of the teachers knows. So my question is: why does Andreas Langeland deny having seen her? What’s the point? There are two days between the Gardermoen CCTV shots and her disappearance. He didn’t need to deny that he’d seen her and driven her in his car. There’s only one reason for his denial: he knows what’s happened to her.
‘I can’t prove she’s been murdered, but my instinct is that she has been. She leaves behind her money, her toiletries and clothes. Has she disappeared of her own volition? No. Has she been kidnapped for a ransom? A poor woman from a poor country in Africa who’s given money by the Norwegian Foreign Office for her plane ticket? Hardly. After this evening could she have killed herself? A girl getting the opportunity of a lifetime, travelling to affluent Norway for a prestigious course – a girl about to spend forty-two inspiring days in an international setting, with highly qualified teachers, new friends, new networks abroad and at home, a wealth of opportunities. No, she couldn’t. Rosalind M’Taya was new to Norway and met the wrong man at the wrong time. Andreas Langeland killed her. My sixth sense – if I have one – is screaming at me. I’m furious he’s killed her. I’ll catch the sack of shit and lock him up. I know everything stands and falls on one thing: I have to find the body. I don’t know where it is, but I can work out what he was doing that night by examining his electronic trail. I’ll get an idea of where his car went, which toll gates he passed. Then I’ll find out where his phone was at any time afterwards, where he spent money and took out money on his card. In that way I’ll be able to circle a geographical area. Once that’s done I’ll get the bloodhounds out if I have to. I’ll find the body and get the bastard sentenced!’
‘Amen,’ said Gunnarstranda. ‘If she’s poor enough and attractive enough she might be in some hotel right now performing blowjobs. She wouldn’t be the first African girl in this country to earn her kroner that way.’
