‘See you!’ Frank said briefly and hauled himself out of the narrow seat and was gone.
16
Gunnarstranda sat staring after them. The mist had lifted enough for Klavestad to be still visible. A slightly built young man in a black reefer jacket with a stiff, somewhat awkward gait. Frølich a way behind. Large, legs astride, rolling gait with both hands in his jacket pockets.
Soon Klavestad was carried along in the stream of passengers hurrying towards the underground. And when the long red worm of a train finally pulled into the station not even Frølich’s big body could be distinguished from the others in the throng.
Gunnarstranda waited. The train would have left by now. He got out of the car, went to the front door and up the stairs.
When he rang her doorbell nothing happened. The anger rose to his temples. The exhaustion after hours without sleep provoked him into a terrible rage which he took out on the bell. The bell ding-donged like a pinball flipper. When he finally let go of the button small steps could clearly be heard from indoors.
‘Open the door,’ he barked with irritation, banging his fist.
‘Who is it?’
The voice didn’t carry well through the woodwork.
‘Police! Open up!’
Again total silence. The policeman, glaring impatiently at the brown wood in front of him, sighed. Raised his hand to pound the door. Refrained. Breathed out with relief as the lock clicked and the door opened a fraction.
‘What is it?’
Her face was pale and her skin twitched. The policeman brandished his ID. ‘Let me in,’ he barked, pushing the door open.
She stepped back, dressed in only her underwear.
‘Go and get some clothes on,’ he ordered and marched ahead into the flat.
His glare took in the room. Noted lots of little objects, ornaments and figurines in cases and on shelves. Subdued colours. Woven tapestries on the walls. A closed door, presumably to a bedroom. A large loom took up half the sitting room, and a sofa-bed underneath an impressively large weeping fig was unmade. The air was quite stale. The room had obviously been slept in.
She came in, having pulled on some jeans and a short-sleeved jersey, still barefoot but no longer confused.
‘Sit down!’
She obeyed. Stared up at him in expectation, no longer afraid. Gunnarstranda’s eyes bored into her.
‘Who slept here?’
‘A friend.’
He seized her arm. Her eyes widened.
‘I’m not dangerous,’ he assured her in a gentler, husky voice. The words fell on deaf ears.
His headache announced its return, worse than before. The pain made him grimace, then he asked in a gentle voice: ‘How well do you know this man you had staying here last night?’
‘Know?’
Jesus! He was not in the mood for this. He sat down with a bump on the unmade sofa-bed. ‘Sigurd Klavestad. He was with you last night. Are you aware of his involvement in the murder of Reidun Rosendal?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Since yesterday.’
Good-looking girl. Tall and slim. But eyes a bit bovine. Large, brown and very moist. He remembered the chubby stomach around her navel when she jumped back from the door. Caught himself staring at the black birthmark on her face. Her lips moved. ‘He needed someone to talk to. I needed someone to talk to. We… talked about… Reidun.’
Calm voice. Intense gaze, he assumed she was being honest.
Gunnarstranda bent forwards. ‘We cannot rule him out as a suspect.’
She stared back, still calm. ‘I know.’
‘Yet you bring him back here and let him sleep over?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
A new gleam took its place in her cow-like expression. Now she was eyeballing him effortlessly.
Gunnarstranda chanced to observe that there were two pillows next to each other on the sofa. Two pillows but only one duvet.
‘And you had never met him before yesterday afternoon,’ he remarked sarcastically.
She gave a nod of defiance and he felt his headache return.
‘This guest of yours must be a Casanova.’
She held her tongue. But she was on her guard; she had picked up the intonation.
The policeman noted that he liked her decision to remain silent.
‘How did you react when you saw him yesterday?’
‘React?’
Gunnarstranda tightened his lips in a show of cynicism. ‘It must have made some impression on you that the man who was with your deceased friend until minutes before she was murdered was suddenly standing in front of you.’
‘I wasn’t fazed.’
Her face was pale, expression committed. ‘It was nice to be able to talk about her!’
He patted the pillow. ‘You must have been very happy,’ he said with a cold smile.
She was tight-lipped, but her eyes mocked him.
So that’s where you are, he thought. There. In the brown eyes. Condescending disdain for his pathetic attempts to draw her out. He liked that. Liked the strength in her as she appraised him. They glared at each other. She had almost made up her mind to come clean. The pursed lips made her face very beautiful.
‘I believe you,’ he declared with a hand to his brow. ‘Why haven’t you gone to work?’
‘I didn’t feel like it.’
Didn’t you, he thought, with a nod. ‘You got on with her?’
‘I was probably the person she had most in common with, yes.’
‘Why were you afraid to open the door just now?’
‘I thought someone was there. The telephone rang. Like at Reidun’s, and then they put down the phone, and then there was a ring this morning, so early…’
‘Like at Reidun’s?’
‘The phone. Sigurd told me someone called her just before he left, someone who rang off on her.’
Gunnarstranda’s face went contemplative and he chewed his lower lip. ‘Do you know where she lived?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever been there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she like it there?’
‘Yes and no.’
He scented something. ‘What was wrong?’
She hesitated.
‘Come on.’
‘A guy with binoculars.’
The detective nodded. ‘Older man? Neighbour?’
‘Yes. An old grunter, a peeping tom, so she was forever keeping an eye on the curtains.’
Kristin Sommerstedt paused. Considered. ‘I think it tormented her at first. But then she decided she would ignore it.’
‘In what way?’
The woman paused again. As if the answer would be hard for him to grasp.
‘Go for it,’ he urged and winked at the decision-maker in her eyes.
Kristin Sommerstedt lifted her legs on to the chair and crossed them. Red toenails.
‘This might sound weird. But she was so fed up with the old pig. Really pissed off.’
The woman searched for words. ‘I think she decided this bastard was not going to make her live according to his rules! All the time checking the curtains and what he could see and so on. She had made up her mind to ignore him.’
‘In what way?’
The woman shrugged. ‘By ignoring him. Letting him peep as much as he liked, to incite him. Opening the curtains every so often. Provoking him, and it must have driven him mad, by all accounts.’
She went into herself again. ‘Once he had stood up in the window and…’
She studied the floor. ‘He had stood masturbating in the window. Reidun had taken a few clothes off… and then… well… opened the curtains after a while.’
Gunnarstranda nodded, his mind elsewhere.
‘That was last week. He had rung her up afterwards. Threatening her and being obscene.’
‘How did she take that?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘His call.’
‘She just laughed.’
Gunnarstranda frowned, puzzled.
‘She did,’ the woman on the sofa assured him. ‘The old boy oozed with filth. Drivelling on about how he would rape her and cut her into chunks, and he was pretty coarse. But she just laughed at it. I think it had become a kind of war. She was always in an aggressive mood when she talked about it. In fact, it was quite… awful.’