The Last Fix (36 page)

    'No.'

    Frølich
peered down into his tankard. The remaining froth formed a spider pattern on
his glass. White bubbles rose in the brown liquid. Frank raised his glass to
his mouth and drank with great gusto.

    Gunnarstranda
walked through the wide veranda doors into the kitchen where he rummaged
around. Frank turned and gazed across the forest that ended in fields, which in
their turn led to the mouth of the blue Drammen fjord. In the distance there
was a cluster of yachts bunched together, presumably sailing in a regatta
around the marker buoy.

    Gunnarstranda
came out with plates and salad on a white wooden tray. He set the table and put
the meat on the grill, which soon began to smoke and spit.

    'Would
you have hanged yourself in your brother's flat?' Gunnarstranda asked, raising
the whisky bottle, twisting off the cap and smelling.

    'I
don't have a brother.'

    After
receiving a stern look from Gunnarstranda, and taking a seat, Frølich
amended his flippant remark: 'I wouldn't have hanged myself - not in a
relative's house, nor anywhere else.'

    'That's
the point,' Gunnarstranda said, pouring whisky into the cap, sampling it and,
with closed eyes, contorting his face. He went on: 'The typical suicide victim
tries several times, isolates himself socially, feels sorry for himself and
drops hints to everyone and everything about how awful life is, but Henning
Kramer didn't do that.'

    'Yes,
the brother was in total shock, but you saw that, didn't you. I dropped the man
off at his mother's. He's going to stay there a few days. There's just the two
of them now that Henning's dead. The father died some years ago. Car accident.'

    'Henning
Kramer was not a typical suicide victim,' the police inspector asserted with
conviction. 'The process of suicide is like an upturned funnel. It starts with
small signals that can go in several directions, but as the psychosis develops
suicide becomes a kind of obsession.'

    'We
know nothing about him of that nature. Although he may have been going for
regular psychiatric treatment.'

    'Very
unlikely. Anyone employed at the rehab centre has to go through a thorough
examination. A psychiatric patient would never have passed the test.'

    'The
tests can't be that bloody good,' Frølich grinned. 'Kramer smoked
home-grown marijuana. His window sill at his mother's house was like a
greenhouse.'

    Gunnarstranda
gave a sigh of desperation.

    'But
he may have been pretty depressed,' Frølich went on. 'If he killed her -
Katrine.'

    'That's
the point!' The two of them stood staring into a void, rapt in thought.

    'He
may have done it,' Frølich repeated, meekly folding his hands. 'He may
have killed her.'

    Gunnarstranda:
'How did her jewellery get into Skau's hands?'

    'No
idea.'

    'Raymond
Skau will have to come up with something very good to explain away the
jewellery.'

    The
younger policeman was not finished with Henning Kramer. 'From the evidence of
this taxi driver I spoke to, Kramer was lying through his teeth about what
happened that night.'

    'But
why would he kill himself?'

    'He
couldn't stand it any longer.'

    They
both grinned at the empty rhetoric.

    The
older policeman went to the grill and turned over the meat. Frølich
drank more beer and enjoyed the view.

    At
last Frølich spoke. 'We have some hard facts: the girl was killed and
Henning Kramer lied about what he was doing that night. So far we only know for
certain that Henning had a specific opportunity to take her jewellery. For all
I know he could have sold it to Skau.' He pointed to clouds gathering in the
south. 'Look,' he said. 'Storm clouds brewing again.'

    Gunnarstranda
peered at the sky for a few seconds, then produced a cigarette, lit up and held
it covered in his hand. 'It's the same clouds you always see over Nesodden when
we're in Oslo. It won't rain here; it follows the water - the fjord.'

    He
lifted a piece of meat to examine it before putting it back on the grill. 'The
question comes down to why Kramer would remove her jewellery,' he said at
length. 'Why would he remove her clothes and jewellery after killing her?'

    'To
remove clues,' Frølich said, but on seeing his colleague's critical
glare continued on the defensive: 'I have no idea what he was thinking, not an
inkling, but the fact of the matter is that he… I mean the person who killed
her… must have removed the jewellery. And why? Maybe he wanted a souvenir, or
perhaps he thought it would come in handy.'

    'Or
perhaps the person in question simply robbed her,' Gunnarstranda said in a
quiet voice. A coughing fit was on its way up his creased neck.

    While
Gunnarstranda wrestled with the paroxysm, Frank began to pick at the salad.
'Would Kramer rob Katrine?' he wondered.

    'Not
Henning. If robbery was the motive it must have been Skau.'

    Frølich
didn't think that was likely. He wrinkled his nose.

    Gunnarstranda
had his breath back and was thinking aloud. 'Raymond Skau is the perfect
perpetrator,' he decided. 'He's the brutal assailant we've been searching for,
the man who bumps into a semi-clad babe in the middle of the night, a girl with
whom he once had an intense relationship and whom he beat up in a bout of
jealousy. The fact that he is in possession of the jewellery makes perfect
sense. But then - our basic premises are no longer solid. The picture crumbles
because Kramer lied. Hell!' Gunnarstranda banged his fist on the table.

    'At
any rate, we have to find Skau,' Frølich said, composed. 'And now I
assume Gerhardsen is beyond suspicion.'

    'No
one is beyond suspicion,' Gunnarstranda barked with irritation.

    Frølich
sighed. 'All we know for certain is that Henning drove to this car park by the
lake. Observations of the car tally with what he told us.'

    'So?'

    'Suppose
Henning killed her,' Frølich reasoned calmly. 'Henning knew Katrine. He
may have known about Raymond Skau. He may have known about her problems with
the guy, and he may have known that Skau visited her at work earlier in the
day. After all, Katrine made a lot of phone calls and one of them may have been
to Henning. Imagine the two of them in the car. Her, a tasty looker,
semi-naked, happy. Him, aroused, turned on by her. Suppose they were not on the
same wavelength. He was lusting for sex; she was thinking about quality of
life. He put his arms around her. She tried to brush him off with a joke, but
he wouldn't relent. He lost control, raped Katrine and strangled her. According
to criminal logic, the natural thing for him to do would be to remove all her
clothes and jewellery, to hide any clues, but at the same time he knew the
police would find semen in the body. He's read about DNA testing. Henning must
have known that the semen would lead the trail back to him. So he devised a
plan. He sold us a line about the two of them having consensual sex in the car
and he kept her jewellery. Perhaps he sold it on afterwards.'

    'That's
a bit thin,' Gunnarstranda said.

    'OK,
you suggest something better.'

    'I
suggest we eat,' Gunnarstranda said, grabbing a plate and marching towards the
barbecue.

    They
ate in silence for a while. Salad, marinated steaks and fresh white bread. They
drank cold beer. Frank had in fact never believed that an afternoon with this
misery guts could turn out to be so promising.

    It
was Gunnarstranda who broke the silence. 'In the first place, Henning admitted
picking up Katrine outside Annabeth s's house. Raymond Skau might have been
there, standing outside the house waiting for Katrine. He turned up at her work
earlier in the day, didn't he. He might have followed her and Eidesen to the
party - we have no way of knowing. Suppose he stood waiting outside the house.
He saw Katrine jump into Henning's car, so he followed them. We know Henning
and Katrine drove down to Aker Brygge and bought food at McDonald's. They drove
off. According to Henning, a car followed them into the car park by
Ingierstrand.'

    Gunnarstranda
fell silent and ruminated on what he had said.

    Frølich
filled both their glasses.

    A
white wagtail landed on the veranda balustrade and wagged its tail. 'We have an
audience,' Frølich said. 'A spy.'

    'If
we focus and think logically,' Gunnarstranda resumed, 'it's clear we are
dealing with a casual assailant. Once we have Skau, we'll get the forensics
team to run a DNA test on him. That takes two weeks and then we'll know if the
skin under Katrine's nails belongs to Skau. Then it's just a question of time
before we find her hair on his clothing. By which point this damned business
will be an open-and- shut case.'

    'But
where is Skau?'

    'In
Sweden, I suppose,' growled Gunnarstranda, buttering a slice of bread. 'That's
typical too. I've caught two killers before who thought they could slip into
Denmark or Sweden to take the heat off themselves. In a couple of weeks Skau
will be back, and then he's ours.'

    The
two policemen sat gazing into the air. Gunnarstranda was chewing and thinking. Frølich
crossed his legs and turned his face to the sun - relaxed.

    'I
don't remember seeing any scratch marks on Kramer,' Gunnarstranda said at
length.

    Frølich
beamed. His boss still had not dropped the idea of Kramer as the killer. 'We
don't know where she scratched him,' he said. 'The pathologist will be able to
say whether there are any scars resulting from scratches.'

    Gunnarstranda
pulled a face, as though suddenly remembering his role as host and Frølich’s
as his guest. 'Nice to see you,' he grinned.

    'Thank
you. And thank you for the spread.'

    'Thank
you.
Do you play chess?'

    Frølich’s
heart sank. Chess. Just as he was feeling at home. Chess - the game with one
piece called a bishop, another a knight. One of them can jump over other pieces
in an L shape. He gained time by taking a good swig of beer. Chess, he thought.
The game where either the king or the queen has to stand on a square marked Dl.

    'I
knew it,' Gunnarstranda said, contented. 'A good policeman loves chess.'

    Frank
thought of how sometimes he hated chess. Always having to make strategic
decisions, always thinking three steps ahead before you made a move. 'It's a
rare occasion for me to play,' he said with care.

    'Come
on,' Gunnarstranda said, leading him into the cabin to a low table with a black
surface. 'Friday evening, out in the wilds, whisky, beer and chess,' he
continued with a smile. 'You've landed in paradise.'

    The
next morning Frølich left Gunnarstranda's mountain cabin for Drammen,
but instead of branching off to Oslo, he bore left for Kongsberg. He left the
motorway, continued for a good half an hour and didn't stop until he reached
the turn-off for the road through Nedre Eiker. He sat in the car looking across
the small valley. The housing estate must have been built at some time in the
seventies. The houses stood in neat lines. An attempt had been made to blend
them naturally into the terrain, but it had failed as the area consisted of two
large surfaces sloping downwards into a V-shaped hollow where a stream must
have flowed at one time. Along these surfaces ran rows of two-storey terraced
houses seasoned with the occasional low, single-storey, prefabricated house.
Everywhere shingle-covered flat roofs and unsympathetic, square double-glazed
windows prevailed. Here and there more ambitious buildings popped up, some with
huge verandas and walls with 'prosperity pustules' - bulges in the walls with a
small-paned window in the centre; others had more kitschy accessories:
imitation Greek pillars at the entrance or multi-coloured leaded windows. In
most of the gardens, however, bushes and fruit trees had succeeded in reaching
maturity.

    Frølich
got out of the car and walked into the estate. Somewhere a lawnmower motor
droned; a small girl was sitting alone and forlorn on a seesaw. She stuck a
finger in her mouth and stared at the passing policeman with big eyes. On a
veranda further away a boy sat astride a plastic tractor making
brum-brum
noises. Frank discovered the Bratterud house long before he saw the number on
the wall. A sense of hardship emanated from the fragile construction, from the
black holes in the roof, the stains on the flaking paintwork, the crooked
postbox, the overturned dustbin, the grass that had grown so long that wispy
flower stems dotted the lawn and the delicate front steps that threatened
imminent collapse.