‘Anything there?’ Gunnarstranda asked.
‘Possible – he doesn’t have an alibi for the Saturday. Claimed he went to bed early to go walking on the Sunday. Which he also did alone.’
The inspector nodded slowly.
‘The Marketing Manager’s called Svennebye. Apparently he’s vanished into thin air. His wife rang and was very animated while I was there. Her husband hadn’t come home from the office after news of the murder was announced. Wife hasn’t seen him since.’
Gunnarstranda whistled. Fingers groped for the butt in the ashtray.
‘I promised the secretary I would follow this up,’ Frank said with some hesitation. ‘She seems pretty run-of-the-mill. Oldest one there. Just a bit jumpy.’
He waited until the inspector had lit up.
‘Then there’s this other woman, Sonja Hager. I mentioned Bregård’s fling with the dead girl, and she got all het up.’
‘Jealous?’
‘Far from it. The woman’s married to Engelsviken, the MD. No, not jealous.’
He walked to the sink in the corner. Drank some water. ‘But she gets pretty aerated about marriage as an institution,’ he concluded. Wiped the back of his hands on his beard.
Gunnarstranda was smoking. ‘Anything there?’
‘Something I can’t put my finger on,’ Frank said, walking back to his place. ‘She thought Reidun Rosendal was using other people.’
‘How so?’
Frank shrugged. ‘Think it’s all wrapped up with sex.’
‘Using men?’
‘Don’t know. The woman was generally very vague.’
Gunnarstranda patted his pockets and gripped the door handle.
‘You’ll have to put that in your report. Take the evening off when you’ve finished.’
Frank sat staring at the door as it closed, then turned back to his computer. When I’ve finished, he thought, downhearted, and made a start.
14
Gunnarstranda parked his car at the very top of the ridge, where the gravel road stopped and widened into a turnaround. An hour and a quarter’s drive from Oslo, to Hurumlandet, the peninsula to the south. If the gods were with you, that is, because the traffic lights had to be green at various strategic points and Oslo Tunnel free of congestion.
The gods weren’t today. He checked his watch with a grim expression. He had been forced to stop the Skoda at least seven or eight times on the road out of Oslo. The engine had been playing up. It died if he did more than seventy. Started spluttering and coughing, and he lost speed, with the result that he had drivers up his backside angrily flashing their lights and honking their horns. Until he felt duty-bound to pull in, to park, nose pointing into the ditch, and to let the worst of the traffic drone past, nervous all the time that the car wouldn’t start again. He had gone through the repertoire. Pulled out the choke, put his foot down on the accelerator, hoping that it would manage a few more kilometres until the same thing happened. A dreadful trip. But now at long last he was at his journey’s end.
His annoyance at the rigours of the drive had not yet subsided. So he sat calmly looking out of the car window until the familiar feeling announced its arrival. That wonderful feeling of being at home. Private. He thought about Edel. She had managed to make a kind of garden out here. Now, since she was no longer alive, he continued where she had left off. Her whole life she had wanted a place like this and got it in the end. Gunnarstranda did what she could not. Took over. Half his life he had lived not knowing the difference between an ash leaf and a maple leaf. Now he knew a great deal more besides. And four years had passed since she died.
He as good as lived here for six months of the year, from late April till well into October. This was his private haven. Yet he was unable to see the brown pine trunk in front of his cabin without feeling a prickling up his spine. The tingling and the image of Edel in rubber boots with the woven basket over her arm, back from mushrooming. He mused on why it was always that image. Why there were no others and why he got this simultaneous tingling.
From the large pine a little path led twenty-five metres to the cabin which was concealed behind two large rocks. It was at the front that the miracle revealed itself. Spring, summer and autumn. Here she had produced whatever there was to produce in this climate. And he had maintained it. Already now, as he was unloading the files and papers from the car, a worried frown was carved into his forehead. The problem of watering during the summer. You never knew, a case like the murder of Reidun Rosendal could be a protracted affair. For the next few weeks he would not be able to live here at any rate, but what would it be like in May, when perhaps the spring drought would come?
This line of thought was interrupted by heavy steps and the crack of twigs. From the undergrowth by the road came a man dressed in a faded Icelandic sweater and raggedy trousers. Gunnarstranda recognized his neighbour Sørby, who saluted him with a hand to his forehead and a nervous smile.
Gunnarstranda mumbled something incomprehensible in response and concentrated on his luggage.
Sørby belonged to the coterie of pensioners who stuck together out here, partied, played accordion and dressed in rags. The policeman did not like him. The man was an old windbag. Talked about his kids as if he were confiding state secrets.
Gunnarstranda couldn’t give a flying fart about people’s children or grandchildren. Least of all those this fat bastard was responsible for begetting. Besides, he suspected that the gang of pensioners was talking behind his back at accordion evenings.
Inasmuch as Sørby considered it appropriate to stand there, irresolute and docile, the man could not be on an honest errand.
Gunnarstranda squinted with distaste in the man’s direction. Wondered what the fat scarecrow had been doing in the area. Snooping probably. Him and the others.
United, they were such a powerful force. Until they sneaked up one after the other to ask about cuttings and roots. The ones who didn’t dare went nosing around when the ‘cop’ was in Oslo. Gunnarstranda always found evidence of their movements afterwards. Later there were often a few new stalks among the trees by Sørby’s plot, before they all died. For neither the wife nor the idiot himself knew what a spade was, or manure, or lime, or anything.
‘That’s looking good,’ the pensioner fawned, waggling his head towards what was visible of a planned extension to the cabin.
Gunnarstranda shrugged and lifted a bag in each hand.
‘Cost a bit, won’t it?’ Fatso chatted.
‘It will indeed. A bloody packet. You wouldn’t be able to afford it.’
Don’t think you’re used to being insulted, Gunnarstranda thought, revelling for a moment in the sight of the other man’s fallen face before curtly bidding him goodbye and turning his back.
Afterwards he walked along the mountain looking at the tendrils lying across the cliff face, checking the buds and stems. Went on towards the west of the cabin where a five-by-one-metre hole had been scraped out down to the rock, away from the wall, and a line of poles had been cemented in. The footprints from Sørby’s tramping around were clearly visible in the wet gravel. Good thing I haven’t bought the materials yet, he thought. So the man won’t be tempted. Anyway, there won’t be time for any building for a while.
He straightened the plastic sheet covering the small cement mixer and walked back. Lit a cigarette on the stool in front of the outside fireplace.
Edel had been the one to attend to social matters. As for him, he met enough people in the course of his job. Too many to waste his free time chatting. Edel would certainly have taken pity on Fatso in the raggedy trousers. Would probably have strolled down to his place with plants and handy tips. Although the advice would have been a waste of breath, anyway.
The air was still. But then you were shielded from the wind up here. It could come only from the south, and that was rare. The lake in the valley lay smooth and shiny and emphasized the silence with its reflections of the bare trees. He stood up. The characteristic squeal of the telephone penetrated the timber walls.