Faithless, page 21
He got up and hurried down the corridor to the R&R room where Emil Yttergjerde was engrossed in a car magazine.
‘Lena?’
‘Working at home today, I think. At least that was what she said when she left.’
‘Seen Frølich?’
Yttergjerde shook his head. ‘How come?’
‘An arrest.’
Yttergjerde jumped up from his chair. ‘Who?’
‘The psychologist,’ Gunnarstranda said.
42
They sat through three hours of authentic recordings of rape and abuse carried out by the accused. Frølich also had a statement from the victim. As soon as Mattis Langeland was confronted with the evidence he confessed to kidnapping, but not abuse and rape. His solicitor wanted to bargain. A dark-haired lady in her mid-forties, she played hardball and suggested two outcomes: either they would claim Rosalind agreed to have sex with Mattis and fight it out through the legal system or there would be a full confession and the full package. She wanted a reduced sentence and hinted at some irregularities in the arrest – presumably to put the skids under Frølich. He ignored the hints and left Rindal and the lawyers to get their hands dirty.
Rosalind M’Taya was discharged from Ullevål University Hospital. The students at the summer school had formed a support group which appointed a representative to take care of the information flow – Monica Johansson, a Swedish Ph.D. student who messaged the police about what Rosalind did and didn’t want.
A photo of Andreas Langeland was sent to all police districts. He could hardly be labelled dangerous, so that was enough. He was a wanted man, suspected of kidnapping, rape and aggravated GBH.
Frølich himself knew little about Andreas. Iselin Grav wouldn’t divulge specific details about the boy’s childhood, except to suggest abuse. The boy was almost twenty, had been neglected by his father and mother and was now under the unfortunate influence of his elder brother Mattis. On the other hand, the recordings showed Andreas performing acts of his own volition. With evidence of this kind he could hardly blame his brother.
*
The evening was summery with low rays of sunshine appearing between high walls and turning people into dark silhouettes in the streets. A few shops were still open. Frølich wound his way past hordes of young people outside Oslo City, a shopping centre. Those with the most experience of prison identified him at once, and the groups dissolved as he passed. He crossed Biskop Gunnerus’ gate and headed for Oslo Station. He counted maybe sixty junkies in the square called Plata: ageing drug addicts in wheelchairs and other shrunken, toothless rubber faces. A one-legged guy wearing a cap hobbled along on crutches, one trouser leg tied in a knot. Two slightly younger women with elasticated knee supports struggled to stay upright. He passed the bronze tiger in Jernbanetorget, its tail rubbed smooth, like its balls.
By the fountain on the seaward side stood a man in his twenties with his trousers around his knees openly injecting heroin into his thigh.
Frølich nodded to the man, who pulled his trousers up. They’d had their run-ins. His head changed its dangle position, indicating that he was planning to say something. Frølich got in first. ‘Off you go, Walter. I’m skint!’
Walter ‘dangled’ off. Soon out of sight among the other junkies.
Frank Frølich leaned back against the fountain wall. The ground was strewn with used needles. Why had he thought he would find Andreas Langeland here?
He walked back and through the red-light area to Dronningens gate. Streetwalkers from Eastern Europe and West Africa hung around on the corners pretending they weren’t streetwalkers from Eastern Europe and West Africa.
He spotted a police car on the corner of Rådhusgata. He waved. It was Abid Iqbal waving an arm out of the window. Abid was looking cool: three-day beard, dreads and seventies’ sunglasses.
‘How about a lift to the City Hall square?’
Abid reached back and opened the door. Frølich got in.
They caught the green wave in Rådhusgata, but before they reached Brasserie Hansken in Kontraskjæret, Abid received a message.
‘Sorry, Frankie. Gotta turn. Can you jump off here?’
Frølich shook his head. ‘I’ll go with you. I was only checking to see if he was with the skateboarders in the centre. Don’t think it’s likely.’
Abid accelerated. Took a short cut through the tunnels in Henrik Ibsens gate.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To Mono.’
They stopped in Pløens gate, at the back of Youngstorget. A small group of youths were going their separate ways outside the entrance of the bar lower down.
Abid didn’t move. Nor Frølich.
‘Tell me if you think I can get out of the car without ruining everything,’ he said.
‘Let’s just see what’s happening.’
A figure crossed the street and exchanged a few words with two girls still standing outside the bar. They were wearing short skirts and had their legs crossed in smoker pose. Both shook their heads and turned their backs on the figure now heading towards the unmarked police car. ‘He’s mine,’ said Abid.
‘I’ll wait a while,’ Frølich said.
Abid looked at him.
‘I know him,’ Frølich said. ‘What’s he done?’
‘He pushes cocaine at places like this – the Mono, Cosmopolite…’
The figure approached. A beanpole of a boy came up in the light from the low sun. He was wearing black clothes, leather jacket and jeans, had long hair dyed black and a little goatee. It was Janne Smith’s son – Kristoffer.
Abid grabbed the door handle, but Frølich held him back. ‘Please let him go.’
Abid freed his arm with an annoyed expression.
‘Please,’ Frølich insisted.
The boy passed them and Frølich followed him with his eyes. Both watched him around the corner and disappear from view down Møllegata.
Abid was not best pleased. ‘You’d better have a bloody good explanation, Frankie.’
‘I have.’
Frølich took his phone. Before he could dial Gunnarstranda’s number, he was rung by his boss.
‘Where are you?’
‘City centre,’ Frølich said. ‘Youngstorget. I think we can say we have a little breakthrough in the investigation. Perhaps you could buckle up and meet me somewhere.’
‘The psychologist killed Signe Strand,’ replied Gunnarstranda. ‘DNA match. But Erik Valeur isn’t at home. If he killed Veronika as well, it could have happened in his office – in Hortengata. Meet us there.’
43
There was no warmth in the low evening sun any more. Sporadic gusts of wind blew away the heat that had been so oppressive earlier in the day. Children’s laughter drifted between the light, rhythmic lapping of waves on the shore. The wind played in her hair. Lena gathered some strands in one hand and tried to put them behind one ear.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.
She didn’t answer. No one could know what she was thinking.
‘You’re wondering why I’ve visited you privately,’ he said.
She looked up at him, still uncommunicative. They ambled along slowly. Wavelets licked over wet sand, which glistened when the water receded. The rocks were almost bare. Strips of beautiful marmorised stone undulated across the mountainside.
‘What you told me about your boyfriend and the relationship you wanted to leave did something to me,’ he said.
She undid her trainers and carried them in her hands. Her feet left faint prints in the sand.
He stopped.
She stopped, too.
At last he removed his sunglasses. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, Lena.’
She met his gaze and at once felt undressed.
She swallowed and thought carefully before she chose her words: ‘Why do you say that?’
Valeur looked down and smiled. ‘I’ve been there myself. Once I hit someone I loved. It was a terrible thing to do. I’ve never suffered so much as I did afterwards, but I learned something, too.’
He started to walk again, without speaking. She stayed a distance of two strides behind him, wary of the heavy man who seemed engrossed in his own thoughts as he walked.
Suddenly he stopped, turned and said in an ice-cold voice: ‘What are you doing?’
‘Me?’
‘I don’t like you lagging behind.’
She met his cold eyes and looked away. Around her. The man was on edge, that much was obvious. There were people near by, though. There was nothing to fear, not for the moment. Nevertheless, he had to be pacified. But she had no idea how and chose silence as her strategy. She spotted a plane gliding soundlessly across the sky. Whether it was on its way up or down was impossible to know from this angle.
‘I want you to understand this,’ Valeur started in a gentler voice. He was standing very close to her now.
Instinctively, she wanted to back away. But she forced herself to stand still.
‘I realised I’d neglected myself,’ he continued. ‘Yes, it sounds strange, I know. I hit a person I love … and think I’ve neglected myself. But these were feelings I couldn’t control, Lena. I had neglected my therapy. Had neglected to dive down inside myself – analyse my tensions, my feelings, my wounds.’
Lena watched the dry lips moving. Braced herself and met his eyes. They were ice-cold.
Then she understood. His dry lips and face were only a mask. Beneath this façade sat another person looking out at her. And, as if this stranger had understood what she was thinking, the steely gaze departed to leave a face full of reflection and searching.
She couldn’t bear the nearness any more and had to walk.
Valeur walked too, still provocatively close to her.
There were a few resolute sun worshippers on blankets in the sand, wearing trunks or bikinis, bathers who didn’t want to let the summer’s day go until it was over. A little girl was eating a sandwich, shivering under a towel decorated with a portrait of Michael Jackson.
There was no one swimming any longer.
The man’s unpleasant proximity was making her sweat. She had to clear her throat to make her voice carry. ‘Shall we find a bench and sit down?’ she asked, pointing to the path.
When they reached the gravel she had to slow down. The stones were hurting her feet. ‘It’s such a long time since I’ve walked barefoot,’ she apologised.
Valeur walked right past the closest bench.
Lena hesitated.
He turned and pointed: ‘Let’s take that one.’
He grabbed her arm.
She tore it free.
They stood sizing each other up. There they were again, the ice-cold eyes, for a tiny second before his face softened and he said: ‘Sorry, that was inconsiderate of me.’
She still didn’t move. Held eye contact thinking: this is a public place with witnesses. Relax.
They started walking again. He didn’t say a word. The silence poisoned the air around them; it became so dense and heavy that walking, breathing, became difficult.
They reached the edge of the forest. Valeur rushed towards a bench screened by tall bushes and two rocks.
He was walking two paces in front of her now.
The forest closed around them.
She found the pocket on her bumbag with her right hand, fumbled for the zip slider.
He walked faster. She also increased her speed. Where was the bloody zip?
She stopped, found it and opened the pocket. Her fingers wrapped around the phone.
Valeur turned. They exchanged glances.
He flicked his head. ‘Come on!’
She shook her head.
‘I said come on!’
She thought to herself: you keep hold of the phone. You’re trained. Nothing can go wrong, and you’re near the goal now, very near.
When he flicked his head a second time she looked down and walked towards him.
‘It’s frightening,’ he said softly, tailing off into a mumble.
‘Pardon?’
‘It’s frightening!’ Valeur repeated in a loud, sharp voice, as though he were angry or aggrieved. She searched for his eyes without finding them while his voice continued to grate away. ‘It’s not the deception that’s frightening. Being deceived is one side of the coin, betrayal always weighs heavy, but deep down everyone can see nothing can be done about the betrayal – it’s done.’
‘You don’t need to shout,’ Lena said.
‘When the person you love deceives you it’s not your responsibility,’ he went on in the same sharp falsetto. ‘It’s the deceiver who makes the decisions.’ She met his gaze. The eyes in the mask had changed character again. She knew she had to get away. As if he automatically sensed what she felt, he moderated his voice and carried on in a gentler pitch: ‘Remember the man you want to leave is making his own decisions. But he couldn’t have made these without you, Lena. You’re part of his decision, the basis of his decision – have you thought about what that means?’
‘No.’ The hand holding her phone was clammy. She had her hand behind her back and she realised he must have noticed that long ago, but he hadn’t made any comment.
Then he stopped and said: ‘Now you’ll see…’
He knelt down, pushed at a rock and looked up at her.
What is he doing?
His face smiled, but as before it wasn’t a smile. It was the cruel stranger who was grinning with the lips of a mask.
‘What frightened me about myself was the fury I struggled to control and how I wanted to punish Ragnhild. Well, I’ve worked on myself for long enough now. Of course, it was a projection. Ragnhild’s betrayal was a repetition of my mother’s betrayal of me.’
When he stopped talking, there was total silence.
Lena looked around her. They were completely alone in the forest. Grey and white tree trunks muted all sounds. The remains of the day’s sunlight penetrated the foliage in narrow strips. Far away, between the trees, she saw the sea and behind it a dark mountainside where the sunshine glinted on windows like stars – as though a piece of sky had fallen to earth.
‘Come here, Lena! Come on!’
She backed away from the kneeling figure.
At that second he stood up and yelled: ‘What are you doing?’
He rushed towards her.
She spun around to make her escape.
The next second she saw her phone flying through the air as she screamed with pain.
She held her hand.
A white slash mark across the back of it. A stripe that turned red. He cut me, she managed to think before her head hit the ground.
The next moment he was pressing something against her face. She wanted to free herself but her body wouldn’t obey.
His voice came from a long, long way away.
‘I make the decisions now. Do you understand? You do what I tell you!’
44
Gunnarstranda sat in the car waiting for Frølich and the others. With closed eyes, he listened to Bobby Darin singing ‘Fly Me to the Moon’. He liked Bobby Darin’s version; Tove preferred Sinatra’s. She even allowed herself to compare them, never having understood that Darin and Sinatra were two planets on different orbits. Liking one planet didn’t mean you had to dislike the other. Gunnarstranda enjoyed both versions, but it was Bobby Darin’s voice and drive that succeeded in lifting him into the absolutely timeless zone of complete calm. Consciousness moved with the notes as though following the melody in a weightless state.
Gunnarstranda still had his eyes closed when the locksmith knocked on the window. He gave a start.
*
Frølich turned into Hortengata as two forensic officers were coming through the door.
He jogged up the stairs. A door on the second floor was open.
The waiting room was small – and, not least, different. The interior was expensive. Two big wing chairs either side of a low table with a round top and crooked legs. Probably antique.
Frølich had to try one of the chairs. He sank down in bliss. A footstool shot out from under the seat as he leaned backward. He was unable to resist the temptation to try the stool and lifted both feet. Wonderful. He had always wanted a chair like this. He would have to remember to ask the psychologist where he had bought it.
The magazines on the little table were Mental Health and a pile of well-thumbed comics from the seventies and eighties: Asterix, Lucky Luke and Sprint. Frølich’s favourite was Sprint. He loved the unpredictability of the animal with the long tail.
Gunnarstranda poked his head in. ‘And what are you doing?’
Frølich dropped the comic he’d picked up as if he had been burned, put his feet on the floor and stood up guiltily.
Valeur’s office consisted, apart from the waiting room, of a small kitchen, an even smaller toilet and a big room with a sofa placed opposite a Stressless. Nothing else, no computer, no desk. Frølich went into the kitchen.
When Gunnarstranda received a phone call, Frølich turned and saw a filing cabinet in the corner. Four drawers. He made a beeline for it. The lowest drawer was empty. The next lowest was too. The two top drawers were full of hanging files.
‘Leave it to us,’ said the forensic officer, who looked up.
Frølich ignored him. He flicked through the files, didn’t find what he was looking for and opened the next drawer.
Gunnarstranda put the phone in his pocket. ‘Yttergjerde and the others are keeping an eye on the flat in Bærum. Valeur hasn’t shown his face.’
Frølich didn’t answer.
‘But there’s one thing I don’t like,’ Gunnarstranda continued. ‘I can’t get hold of Lena.’
‘So? She’s probably at aerobics or the cinema. She’s free.’
Gunnarstranda tapped in a number and put the phone to his ear. It rang. He lowered his hand and sighed: ‘She’s not answering.’ In a louder voice he said to the others:
‘If Valeur killed Veronika Undset, he did it here. Bård, I want you to examine every wooden joint in the kitchen and toilet. Take off the mouldings and check every millimetre. If there was any blood spilled in this place, we’ll find traces of it.’
