‘I’ve mended my ways,’ Bregård said unconvincingly.
‘Doubtless.’
‘I’ve paid my debt to society!’
‘Of course you have.’
Gunnarstranda signalled to Frølich. Girded himself to go, then addressed the gentleman with the moustache one last time: ‘But you know as much about financial management as I know about fox-hunting in England!’
He smiled again. ‘Absolutely nothing.’
With that, he turned his back on Bregård and took Frølich along with him.
‘How’s Svennebye getting on in the drunk cell?’ Frølich asked as they got back into their car.
‘He’s probably sleeping,’ the inspector mumbled, disorientated, and the squeal of his pager made him start. He fumbled around trying to switch it off and grabbed his mobile phone. ‘We’ll talk to him afterwards,’ he said in a low voice with his hand over the speaker before bending down to hear the message.
‘Well?’
Gunnarstranda wondered whether to tell him right away. Decided to wait. Groped around for a roll-up.
‘Drive to Torshov,’ he said and could hear the agitation in his voice.
26
The two detectives had to enter where the staircase went round and round in long corkscrew spirals. It was tight. A uniformed policeman stood with his hands on his hips on the second-floor landing. He was trying to appear unruffled but was not succeeding. The Adam’s apple over the blue collar was bobbing up and down nervously. By the feet of his incredibly long thin legs lay a body beneath a stiff plastic sheet that bore the signs of having been used before. It was full of holes and dirty. A powerful floodlight cast sharply delineated shadows and emphasized all the brutal details. The streaks of blood on the wall turned black in the white light.
Gunnarstranda peered up at the uniformed officer. ‘Nausea?’ he asked.
The man with the Adam’s apple had placed his hands behind his back and focused his gaze somewhere ahead of him. The thin, pale face appeared unusually small under the cap. His answer was lost in the clatter of people on the stairs.
‘Who found him?’
‘Elise Engebregtsen, a pensioner, first floor.’
This time he had taken a run at it. His voice thundered and echoed off the walls. Everyone stopped, turned round and stared at him. His Adam’s apple accelerated. His nervous eyes, bird-like and small, looked to the right.
‘Any murder weapon?’
‘Sharp object. Not accounted for at the crime scene.’
The photographer who had wedged himself further up the stairs sniggered. Gunnarstranda glowered at him, turned back to the body. He sighed, nodding to himself. Peered up the stairs. Blood on the wall and steps. Like a fine spray, here and there a broad stripe as well, where a thicker jet had splashed.
He bent down, pulled a plastic glove off the roll standing upright on one of the steps, walked over to a pool of blood and lifted the plastic to look closer. It wasn’t easy. He had to hitch up his coat so as not to get it soiled while lifting the blood-stained plastic.
He cursed. Removed his coat. ‘Hold this, will you,’ he said to the uniformed officer who avoided looking at the floor. Gunnarstranda folded the sheet over to one side.
The face of Sigurd Klavestad was whiter than it had ever been. His eyes looked up, vacant and glassy. They were like marbles, Gunnarstranda thought as he met the gaze. He could hear loud gulps from the tin soldier behind him as he felt his stomach go queasy at the sight of the clean, deep cut that had almost beheaded the victim. Slowly he let go of the head and let it roll back to where it had been.
For a moment he surveyed the dead body. Bare feet. Bare arms. The dead man had put on light clothing in a hurry. The long pony tail was rigid and sticky.
He turned back to the tin soldier with the Adam’s apple. Collected his coat.
‘You can run along,’ he said under his breath. ‘Tell the boys to get the names of everyone who is in the block, or who was here from yesterday afternoon until now.’
Gunnarstranda stood still. Tried to absorb the atmosphere that was no longer there. Strode towards the floodlight and switched it off. Those who had been working busily until now stopped. No one said a word. Slowly their eyes got used to the new light. A yellowish-grey glimmer from a bare bulb on the staircase wall.
He had fallen here. Frightened.
Gunnarstranda closed his eyes. Opened them. The others had not moved. Just stared at him. Unrolled the plastic glove. Dropped it on to the floor. Put the roll under his arm. Buried both hands in his coat pockets and took a deep breath before walking past Frølich and leaving.
On the ground floor they were met by Bernt Kampenhaug, the Unit leader. Actually quite a likeable musician, Bernt was. Someone who played the squeezebox three nights a week for the whole of November and December and, not only that, he had a collection of vintage automobiles. Three old police saloon cars. Nice bloke provided that he was not at work. And that you weren’t discussing anything that resembled politics. Bernt was a man with strong opinions regarding stricter uniform regulations and weapons. Now he had slotted his sunglasses into his hair and was chewing gum, one hundred per cent tourist, and seemed happy with the fit of his overalls. A radio with a short aerial crackled in his hand. For the occasion the man had requisitioned a handgun that made his backside even broader than usual. Gunnarstranda could feel the sight of him beginning to get under his skin.
Kampenhaug stuffed the radio under his arm and accompanied them out with one hand on his belt. In the sun, he flicked the sunglasses on to his nose, nudged them into position with a finger, got the radio to crackle and tried to look his best for the press photographers outside the cordons.
One journalist shouted something to Gunnarstranda, who ignored him.
‘The body was found by an old dear on the first floor,’ Kampenhaug drawled, pointing with a thumb. ‘She seems pretty dazed.’
Then he was off to give a journalist who had strayed across the cordon an earful. Came strutting back with the sun on his face.
‘The old boiler was wittering on about the wrong person having been killed because the right one wasn’t there. Senile if you ask me! He lives on the floor above her. The door’s open!’
‘Great,’ said the police inspector.
The tin soldier with the bird-eyes crossed the rope.
‘You’re a police officer, man!’ Kampenhaug screamed as if he were in the army. ‘Wipe that vomit off your face before you talk to people!’
27
Gunnarstranda established that Sigurd Klavestad’s flat told him no more than he already knew. Two rooms, a kitchen and a combined toilet and shower with a door to the hall. Loads of mirrors in the hall. Funny ones. One made your nose look like a swede and another distorted your face into a figure eight, making it look like something from a cartoon.
Chaos. Comics, shoes and a variety of clothes, jackets and jumpers lay scattered across the floor. The man was not acquainted with the shelving principle, it struck Gunnarstranda. Or at least tidying up. He left the hall of mirrors to his intelligent colleague and studied the two posters on the wall. One a copy of a French poster from the nineteenth century. A can-can dancer with flapping clothes, a painting. The other was a bird’s-eye view of a short-sighted Marilyn Monroe. She lay reclined over a curtain, gloss lips slightly apart.
He continued into the bathroom and pulled up inside the door. The white washstand was spattered with blood on the inside. The floor was wet. Without a word, he stepped back into the sitting room.
Put on two thin plastic gloves from the roll he had in his pocket. Opened a window and called down to Klampenhaug.
There was something that bothered him about Klavestad’s death. He ransacked his brain. Realized it wasn’t Klavestad’s passage to the beyond that annoyed him but the new perspective. Something was niggling him at the back of his mind. A nagging doubt. The fear of having to change hypothesis.