Authors: K. O. Dahl
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural, #International Mystery & Crime, #Noir
'Have
you tried opening a letter with two pairs of tweezers and a knife?'
'How
come you only discovered the letter now?'
'Because
it was in your pigeonhole. When did you last empty it?'
'Yesterday
morning -1 think, anyway.'
'Thought
so,' mumbled Gunnarstranda. 'Are you ready?'
'As
ready as I usually am after half an hour's sleep. Bet you ten kroner it's the
suicide note.'
'The
odds were low, but you won. So that's it,' the inspector muttered. 'We'll have
to wait until tomorrow to have it confirmed, but it looks like the case is
closed.'
Frank
Frølich yawned.
'Our
reasoning is written here in its entirety. He raped the girl, killed her, stole
her jewellery and sent it in the post to Raymond Skau. Fair old confession.'
'Do
you believe it?'
'I
have my doubts.' Gunnarstranda whinnied.
'Why's
that?' Frank asked.
'Listen
to this last sentence:
I can't go on.
Hm?' Gunnarstranda seemed piqued.
'Would you have used such insipid language if you were going to kill yourself?'
'No
idea.' 'Bloody hell, this man was deep, thoughtful. Surely he wouldn't express
himself like that?'
'I
have no idea. Let a psychologist have a look at it.'
'Irritating,'
Gunnarstranda sighed from a distance.
'Does
the note mean we're off the case?'
'Not
for the time being. Kramer's autopsy report has come in. It says Kramer was
doped up when he died.'
'That's
not very surprising, is it?'
'I
don't know. It wasn't speed. According to the pathologist he was full of
sleeping tablets.'
'What
shall we do?'
'Do
you really want to go back to bed?'
'But
what can we do?'
'Every
single word in the letter has been typed. There's no signature.'
Frølich
pondered.
'Do
we believe in our heart of hearts that Henning Kramer wrote all this crap?' the
voice on the phone asked.
'It's
possible.'
'Is
it likely?'
Frølich
pondered once more. 'It's possible,' he concluded.
'Great
help it was ringing you up, young man.'
'We
have to do
something
!'
'I've
arranged a briefing with the public prosecutor about the whole of this case for
tomorrow. And unless this is going to end with a downgrading or a closing of
the case, we have to find proof that Kramer did not take his own life.'
'Hang
on,' Frølich said as his boss rang off. Too late. The engaged tone. He
stood contemplating the phone. In the end it was his brain that reacted. He
yawned. Oh well, he thought, scratching his stomach. He stood in the doorway to
the bedroom and looked straight ahead. Inside, Eva-Britt had kicked off the
duvet again. She was lying on her side with her face turned to his pillow, her
body in the shape of an elegant Z. Fascinated, he observed how her feet
beautifully rounded off and completed her body's imitation of a letter of the
alphabet.
He
had absolutely no wish to leave this woman. Not now at any rate. Not tonight.
Now and then Gunnarstranda was prone to winding himself up into a stressed,
hysterical condition. Of course the suicide letter would require the present
stage of the investigation to be summarized and evaluated. But why did that
have to be tonight? The man is obsessed, he thought. No, he's not obsessed. He
doesn't have enough people around him. He doesn't have enough to think about.
After working with the sourpuss for so long now, Frølich bore most of
the man's whims with great composure. Of course I could go to work now, he
thought. I could plunge into the darkness and sit and read reports. I could
spend the rest of the night with a headache and the taste of lead in my mouth
and reduce everything to a conclusion about how far it would have been possible
for Kramer to hang himself or not. Or I could lie down next to the beauty in
the bed, listen to her breathing, then think about Kramer, hope to sleep a bit
and dream about Kramer - until I wake up with her. He grinned at the thought of
how furious Gunnarstranda would be when he failed to turn up. He crept into the
bedroom, lay down with as little noise as he could and stretched out in bed.
Eva-Britt's regular breathing caressed his ear.
Fristad,
the public prosecutor, sat with his legs crossed and both hands folded over his
plump stomach. He was a man who cultivated his boyish image by letting his hair
grow into a thick fringe down to two finely formed eyebrows. He signalled his
intellectual side with a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses, to which he had
attached a black cord and which hung around his neck to ensure they didn't go
missing. His glasses sat astride the tip of his large nose while the cord
formed decorative loops on each of the clean-shaven cheeks. The public
prosecutor tried to prevent his glasses from falling off by stretching his
mouth sideways as far as he could. This grimace inflated both cheeks in such a
way that they pushed the glasses back a millimetre, only to slide forward two
millimetres. He continued like this until his glasses fell on to his chest,
which caused him to sigh aloud, then retrieve and re-position them.
Frølich
looked from him to Gunnarstranda, whose nocturnal exertions had left their
mark. The detective inspector had dark coffee stains on his lips, his lean
fingers trembled as he held the papers and the narrow rimless reading glasses -
doubtless bought by mail order - were unable to camouflage the dark shadows
under his eyes.
Gunnarstranda
cleared his throat. 'The body was found on the Sunday morning in a ditch
alongside Ljansbrukveien, just by the bathing area in Hvervenbukta. Presumably
dumped from a car. There had been no attempt to hide the body, which was found
by a pensioner out walking. His name is Jan Vegard Ellingsen and he has been
eliminated from our enquiries. There is some reason to believe that the body
was transported by car to where it was found. The victim had been stripped and
had very few external injuries apart from strangulation marks and the odd graze
or cut to the skin which, in the pathologist's view, were consistent with the
approximately two-metre fall down the slope - before the body came to rest.'
He
picked up the photographs of Katrine Bratterud's distorted and lifeless naked
body with the staring eyes.
The
public prosecutor lost his glasses and put them back. He peered at one of the
photographs.
Fristad
pointed to the picture. 'What's that around her navel?'
'A
tattoo,' Frølich intervened. 'A kind of flower.'
The
public prosecutor studied the photograph. 'Reminds me of Norwegian rose
painting.'
Gunnarstranda
coughed. 'Apart from the scratches, which must have been caused by the fall,
you can see…' He placed another photograph on the table - a close-up of the
head and shoulders. '… You can see the bruising to her neck which appeared
after the strangling, a wound where the cord -I presume it was the curtain cord
that was also found by the body - cut into the tissue during strangulation.'
'We've
got that, have we?' Fristad asked. 'The cord?'
Gunnarstranda
nodded. 'The victim had particles of skin under her nails, perhaps occurring
during the fight with the assailant. The DNA analyses confirm that the semen
found in the vagina of the victim belongs to Henning Kramer. Kramer himself
admitted to having sex with the girl before she was murdered. In his first
statement Kramer falsely stated what happened in the car after the victim left
the party in Voksenkollveien.'
'Just
a moment,' the public prosecutor interrupted: 'What about the particles of skin
under the nails?'
Gunnarstranda:
'I'll come back to that.' He cleared his throat.
'The
clothes?' the public prosecutor asked.
'A
bag was found in the ditch down by Ljansbrukveien by Lake Gjer. It must have
been thrown out of a car. It was found… well, I can start somewhere else first…
we know for certain that the victim left the party at the house of Gerhardsen
and As of her own free will. She was picked up by Henning Kramer close by, in
all probability, at around midnight. The two of them were seen in Aker Brygge
by several witnesses at some point between midnight and half past. They seemed
to be having fun and, according to Kramer, they drove to Lake Gjer to talk
about the stars and to… to…'
'…
have a romantic interlude?' the public prosecutor rounded off with raised
eyebrows.
'Yes…
at a car park by Lake Gjer between Tyrigrava and the amusement park… what's it
called?'
'Tusenfryd,'
Frølich answered.
'That's
it.' Gunnarstranda fumbled around with the paper. 'The woman's clothing, that
is, most of her clothing - a shoe we haven't been able to trace is still
missing - was found between the car park and the victim's body. This might
suggest she was killed close to the car park where she and Kramer had sex and
that the killer got rid of the clothes before the body. But I'll come back to
that, too…' He searched through the pile of papers. Frølich and the
public prosecutor said nothing while the police inspector flicked through his
paperwork.
'There
we are,' Gunnarstranda muttered. 'Lots of paper. And you've got to read through
the whole bloody lot yourself…
'…
Henning Kramer's version of events was that the two of them had a romantic
interlude in the car park, they drove off and he dropped the victim at the
roundabout over the El8 in Mastemyr at around three in the morning because she
had expressed a wish to walk to her boyfriend's flat at Holmlia senter vei 13.'
'Boyfriend?'
exclaimed the public prosecutor, grimacing.
The
detective inspector looked at him in silence. The silence persisted and the
public prosecutor pulled another grimace.
'Ole
Eidesen,' Frølich interposed. 'Katrine Bratterud left her boyfriend Ole
Eidesen at the party.'
Fristad's
glasses fell on to his chest.
Gunnarstranda
coughed. 'All right?' he asked.
Fristad
nodded and put his glasses back.
Gunnarstranda:
'Later we had reason to doubt Kramer's statement. A reliable witness had seen
the car Kramer was driving - it was a bit special, an Audi cabriolet - in the
same car park by Lake Gjer more than three hours after Kramer claimed he had
driven off. The sighting was made early in the morning at a time when Katrine
was in all probability already dead. We never managed to confront Kramer with
this witness's statement because Kramer died. However, in the course of our
enquiries we interviewed Kramer's mother. Kramer lived with his mother, but
spent occasional nights at his brother's flat when his brother was on his
travels. Kramer's mother told us that Henning came home at half past three on
the Sunday morning. He woke her up and was very perturbed. He told her he and
Katrine had been for a ride in the car, they had fallen asleep and when he woke
up - at about half past two - she had vanished without a trace.'
'He'd
been very perturbed?' the public prosecutor queried. 'There could be many
reasons for him to be perturbed. He may have been lying to his mother.'
'Of
course. But according to his mother Kramer is supposed to have said he had been
looking for Katrine, and afterwards he began to drive around to find her but
without success. In the end he drove home and told his mother everything.'
'Has
the time of death been established?'
'It's
difficult to determine the exact time. All we have to go on is the contents of
her stomach, a verified meal bought from McDonald's in Aker Brygge at around
midnight, the semen in her vagina and the state of rigor mortis. The
pathologist believes death occurred at somewhere between two and five o'clock
in the morning.'
'And
this Kramer went back to the car park. Is that right?'
'According
to the mother, he did, yes. She says he left home just before six that morning
to resume his search for Katrine and he returned at eight.