The Final Murder (16 page)

‘OK,’ Bernt Helle said and coughed. ‘I was actually just on my way out…’

Scraping. A loud cough.

‘Fire away,’ he said eventually. ‘What’s it about?’

His cigar tube had dents in it.

‘I don’t really know whether it’s of any significance or not,’

Adam said, and tried to remember how long he’d been carrying the same tube around. ‘But could you tell me… Was Fiona ever an exchange student?’

‘Exchange student?’

‘Yes, you know, programmes where…’

‘Yes, I know what an exchange student is,’ Bernt Helle said

indignantly, and coughed again. ‘Fiona didn’t go abroad in secondary school. I’m fairly sure of that. Even though I didn’t know

her particularly well at the time. She was at secondary school and I was at poly. But, you know…’

Adam knew.

And he felt like an idiot. If he had waited until the next day, he would know why he was phoning him. But Johanne had insisted.

With great care, he pulled the cigar out of its aluminium tube.

‘Yes,’ Adam said. ‘If she had spent any time studying abroad, she would of course have talked about it later.’

‘Yeah, I’m certain she would.’

There were some silver scissors on the shelf behind Adam, a

miniature guillotine. When he cut the end of the cigar the noise made his mouth water. He took his lighter and rotated the cigar slowly over the flame.

‘Not abroad at all,’ he summed up. ‘No language schools in

England? Summer holidays? Long stays with friends or family

abroad?’

‘No … listen …’ A terrible coughing fit rattled in the receiver.

‘Sorry,’ Bernt Helle sniffed.

The cigar tasted better than Adam had ever dreamt it could.

The smoke was blue and dry on his tongue and not too hot. The smell stung his nose. Bernt Helle continued:

‘Obviously I can’t know everything Fiona did when she was at school, in detail that is. Like I said, we didn’t hang around together then. We only really met later, after …’ A loud sneeze. ‘Sorry.’

‘No problem. You should get to bed,’ Adam said.

‘I run a business. And I’ve got a little girl who has just lost her mother. I don’t really have time to go to bed.’

‘Now it’s my turn to say sorry,’ Adam apologized. ‘I won’t keep you any longer. Hope you feel better soon.’

Adam hung up. A delicate, light-grey fog was starting to fill the room. He smoked slowly. A drag every half-minute or so allowed the taste to settle and stopped the cigar from getting too hot.

He would never manage to stop. He had breaks, long periods

when he didn’t enjoy a good cigar, the taste of pepper and leather, with perhaps an undertone of sweet cocoa. He often wondered

whether the masculine aroma on the odd Friday night would

really do the children any harm. Cuban cigars were best, of course, but he could also enjoy a mild Sumatra, after dinner on a Friday evening, with his cognac or preferably a good calvados.

But those days were over.

He ran his finger over his lower lip. The cigar was a bit dry after lying in his breast pocket for weeks. It didn’t matter. He already felt lighter and leant back in his chair and blew out three perfect smoke rings. They floated slowly up to the ceiling and then vanished.

‘Weren’t

you going to go home early?’

Adam’s feet, which had been crossed on his desk, now

slammed to the floor.

‘What’s the time?’ he asked, putting out the cigar out carefully in a mug with some coffee still in it.

‘Half past two.’

‘Shit.’

‘It smells all the way down the corridor,’ Sigmund Berli commented, and sniffed the air disapprovingly. ‘The boss’ll be pissed

off, Adam. Didn’t you read the last circular about—’

‘Yeah. Have to dash.’

He felled the coat stand as he tried to get his coat off the hook.

‘I should’ve been home by now,’ he said, and rushed past

Sigmund without bothering to pick the coat stand back up. ‘Far too late.’

‘Wait,’ shouted Sigmund.

Adam slowed down and stopped as he tried to get his arm into a twisted sleeve.

‘This just came in,’ Sigmund said, and handed him an envelope.

‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ hissed Adam between clenched teeth,

his coat half on while he fumbled with the rest. ‘Has this bloody thing gone to pieces?’

Sigmund laughed. He patiently straightened the sleeve, as if he was helping a stroppy, overgrown schoolboy, then he held the coat by the collar and helped Adam put in his arm.

‘There,’ Sigmund chuckled, and thrust the envelope under

Adam’s nose. ‘You said it was urgent.’

‘You can say that. Express delivery’

Adam gave a fleeting smile, stuffed the envelope in his pocket and made a dash. Sigmund could feel the floor heaving under his heavy steps.

‘One day you’ll get into trouble about all these papers you keep dragging backwards and forwards,’ Sigmund said to himself. ‘It’s not right.’

The smell of Adam’s cigar hung heavy in the air, sour and

unpleasant.

Vegard Krogh drank the flat beer and felt happy.

There must be something wrong with the taps at Coma, the

only decent lunch restaurant in Griinerl0kka. He held the glass up towards the window. The froth was thin and pathetic. The afternoon light barely managed to filter through the tepid beer. Golden brown reflections played on the table in front of him, and he grinned before taking another drink.

The bungee-jump stunt had been a disaster.

The film was fine until about halfway through the jump. Then Vegard Krogh disappeared from the picture. The lens wavered

around up to the sky. Slipped past a crane. Tipped back towards the ground. Suddenly, for a split second, it caught Vegard Krogh on the rebound. Straight up. With the background music of sirens and the photographer’s desperate attempt to get away from the place, the rest of the film showed only earth, stones and building materials.

But it didn’t matter now.

The invitation arrived yesterday.

Vegard Krogh had hoped and waited. At times he was

absolutely certain. It would come. He thought about the invitation in the evenings. His last conscious image before he fell asleep was of a beautiful card with a monogram and his name, written in neat calligraphy.

Then it came.

His hands were shaking as he opened the envelope, thick, stiff egg-shell coloured paper. The card was just as he’d imagined it. A dream card waiting for him in his post box, just when he needed it most.

Vegard Krogh had finally arrived.

He was now someone who mattered. From now on he would

be one of them. One of the chosen few who answered, ‘No comment’

when the tabloids rang, as they did, to the couple’s friends, relentlessly.

‘I’m going to be hounded,’ he mumbled to himself, drowning

his euphoric grin in the pint glass.

The young royals in Sweden surrounded themselves with the

upper classes, aristocracy and decadence. It was completely different in Norway. In Norway, it was culture that mattered. Music.

Literature. Art.

It was six years now since he had first bought wine for a dandy young man with doe eyes and feminine clothes. The boy was sitting in a corner, surrounded by girls. Vegard was shitfaced, but had always had a nose for where the girls were. The man thanked him politely and chatted away, until Vegard pulled a brunette and left.

They bumped into each other, every now and then. Had a

drink. Shared stories. Until his circle of friends was purged a couple of years ago, for obvious reasons, and Vegard was dropped. Bungee Jump must have made an impression.

He had sent a signed copy. Not one review of the book had

been written yet, eight days after publication. But it had had an impact on the most important critic of all.

From one bungee jumper to another To dare! From your friend, Vegard.

It had taken him an hour to find the right words. It was important not to be too pushy.

Vegard Krogh downed the rest of his beer in one, a great satisfied draught.

The glass of cheap Merlot was finally starting to kick in.

Dress: casual & sharp, it said on the invite.

He would have to swallow his pride and borrow money from his mum.

She wouldn’t be angry this time.

‘You say this Stubo guy’s OK.’

Bard Arnesen leant over the table and gave his brother an

encouraging slap on the shoulder. Then he scratched his head, before saving a lettuce leaf from drowning in dressing at the bottom of the glass bowl.

‘Lying to the cops isn’t very clever, Trond.’

Trond didn’t answer. He just stared straight ahead without

looking at anything. His plate was half empty. He moved the leftovers from side to side, meat and fried potatoes. He listlessly

picked up a piece of asparagus and put it in his mouth, then chewed it slowly without swallowing.

‘Hallo, planet earth calling. You look like a cow’

Bard waved a hand in front of his brother’s face.

‘It’ll be much worse if they find out themselves,’ he said

earnestly. ‘In fact, it’s pretty strange that they haven’t

‘Don’t you understand?’ Trond exclaimed. ‘… I can’t say anything to Stubo. For a start, I’d blow a hole in my alibi. And then I’m in shit up to here…’ His hand made an aggressive cut across his forehead. ‘… Just for having lied. They’d pull me in straight away, Bard. Straight away’

‘Yeah, but you said that they knew that you were innocent.

That Stubo bloke said you were the first one they struck from the list. You said that…’

‘Said! What the fuck does it matter what I said}” His fist hit the table. He was struggling to hold it together, his lower lip was trembled, his nostrils flared and his eyes had nearly receded into his skull. He pushed the plate away, then pulled it back, balanced his knife on the fork and folded the serviette so many times that he couldn’t fold it any more.

Bard kept quiet. The smell of his brother’s fear added a sweet edge to the greasy, heavy fried potato air that filled the kitchen. Bard had never seen his brother like this before. He had been a scaredy cat as long as Bard could remember. Wary of everything. A real Mummy’s boy. Cried whenever he got hurt, which he seldom did.

But now he wasn’t worried or nervous.

His brother was terrified and he couldn’t swallow the piece of asparagus.

‘Hey,’ Bard said in a friendly voice, and gave him another

gentle push. ‘There’s no one who would seriously believe you murdered Vibeke. For Christ’s sake, she was a real catch. Good looking, fun, with money and a house and things like that. Can’t you just … hallo, Trond!’ He clicked his fingers in resignation.

‘Listen to me at least!’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Spit out that bloody stuff.’

Trond spat it out. A grey-green lump of mulch dropped onto

the leftovers on his plate.

‘You trust me, don’t you, Trond?’

The question got no reaction.

‘You’re my brother, Trond.’

Still no reaction.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’

Bard got up suddenly and the chair fell back. It slammed into the fridge door and scraped off some of the paint. Perplexed, he put his finger on the green patch in the middle of all the white.

‘I’ll sort that out,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘I’ll paint it later, sometime.’

His

brother still didn’t react. He just brushed his hand over his eyes quickly.

‘What did you do in those hours?’ Bard asked. ‘Can’t you at

least tell me? Eh? I’m your brother, for fuck’s sake!’

‘It was an hour and half.’

‘Whatever.’

‘You said hours. It wasn’t several hours. It was an hour and a half. Barely one and a half hours.’

Trond Arnesen had managed to forget that tiny bit of secret

time. It had been easier than he’d expected. Surprisingly easy. He left the whole episode behind on the way home. When the taxi that picked him up from the bus stop at twenty past six in the morning on Saturday the 7th of February stopped so he could

throw up by the roadside, he’d tried to focus on the vomit in the snow. Bent double, with his hands on his knees, he recognized an undigested peanut in all the red-wine redness. When he saw the shreds of meat, he threw up again. The taxi driver shouted impatiently.

Trond stood there. That was the last time, he thought to

himself in a haze. He studied his own spew, fascinated, the revolting remains of everything he had consumed in the past

twenty-four hours. And it was out now. Gone. Done with.

Never again.

He scraped the snow with the tip of his boots, wanting to cover the puke, but he lost his balance. The taxi driver helped him into the car. Took him home. Everything was forgotten and it was the last time ever.

Since then, no one had asked.

The stag night, from which he eventually crawled home, had

grown during the course of the night. At six o’clock on Friday evening, nineteen men dressed immaculately in tuxedos had

headed into town. Then they met Bard’s football team, with dirty red shirts and a victory to celebrate. The party grew a tail. Things started to warm up. Ten or twelve of Bard’s colleagues appeared at around eight o’clock, when the bridegroom was selling French kisses from a stall on Karl Johan for fifty krone a shot. By the time his brother slurred that Trond had to help him to the toilet to release the pressure at around half past ten, the stag night had turned into a blind drunk, random, rowdy bunch of men: the

Skeid team, some economists from Telenor, a gang of bowlers

from Hokksund that had tagged along since about nine, and the odd drunk who they didn’t know from Adam.

At least fifty people, Trond thought.

And no one had noticed.

No one had told the police anything other than that Trond was at his brother’s stag night from six o’clock on Friday evening until someone put him on the first bus to L0renskog the next morning.

Everyone had said that. Everything was forgotten.