The Final Murder (37 page)

Vibeke Heinerback, yes. Everyone knows her. But Vegard Krogh?

A sham of an artist, a quasi-intellectual fool? Who practically no one had heard of? Johanne’s wrong and we’re back to square one.

We don’t know what we’re looking for. Where to look.’

‘Why don’t we just call the guy in?’ Sigmund was surly. He had short legs and had to jog to keep up with his colleague. ‘Why do we always have to visit people at home all the time? Bloody hell, Adam, we’re wasting taxpayers’ money by throwing away all this time.’

‘People’s tax money is used for far worse things than us trying to find a way out of the mess we’re in,’ Adam levelled. ‘Give over.

We’re nearly there.’

‘I don’t believe that Gjemselund boy. Rudolf Fjord’s not a poof, you know. He doesn’t look like one. Why the hell would he pay that runt for sex? Huh? A tall, good-looking guy who the ladies love! My wife reads all those magazines, you know, with pictures from premieres and parties and all that, and he’s definitely not a poof.’

Adam stopped. He took a deep breath. The air was so cold that it caught in his throat.

‘Sigmund,’ he said, calmly. ‘Sometimes I get the impression

that you’re just plain stupid. But as I know that you’re not, I must ask you to …’

He warmed his ears with his hands. Took another deep breath

and shouted, suddenly: ‘Shut up !

Then he set off again.

They passed through the heavily ornate gates onto Kirkeveien in silence. Two coaches were parked diagonally outside. Adam pulled his scarf tighter round his neck. A flock of traditionally dressed Africans in wide, colourful garments were boarding one of the coaches. It was hard to imagine why tourists came to Norway, Sigmund thought. And in February, when there was snow everywhere and you got slush all the way up your legs, it was

incomprehensible.

‘You’ve got to admit that those dresses are silly,’ he muttered.

‘You look pretty ridiculous too with leather patches on your arse, a red bolero and silver buckles on your shoes,’ Adam

retorted, ‘but that doesn’t seem to stop you wearing your national costume. It’s probably some sort of official gubbins. What time is it?’

‘Nearly six,’ Sigmund complained. ‘I’m cold as hell. And

anyway, it’s not a bol… bolero. It’s a woollen jacket.’

Eleven minutes later Adam’s finger ran up and down a list of names on a metal plate beside a grey door.

‘Rudolf Fjord,’ he murmured and pushed the bell.

No one answered. Sigmund banged his feet together to keep

warm and muttered under his breath. A young woman walked up

with a bag over her shoulder. She fished out a bunch of keys and smiled at Adam.

‘Hi’, she said, as if she knew him.

‘Hi,’ he replied.

‘Going in?’

She held the door open and he caught it. The woman had red

hair. She ran up the stairs, whistling like a girl, leaving behind a scent of fresh air and light perfume.

‘Have a good evening,’ she called. They heard a door open and close again.

‘So here we are,’ Sigmund said, and looked up the stairs.

‘Third floor,’ Adam said, and went over to an ancient lift with iron folding gates. ‘I’m not sure this will hold both of us.’

‘Max load 250 kilos,’ Sigmund read on an enamel sign. ‘We’ll risk it, eh?’

It worked. Just. The lift whined and groaned and stopped a

foot before the third floor. Adam struggled to get the door open.

The gates were jammed against the floor.

‘I’ll think I’ll take the stairs on the way down,’ groaned Adam, and finally managed to get out.

It was an impressive building, even if the lift was ancient. The stairwell was wide and carpeted. The windows out to the back had diamonds of red and blue glass that threw a play of colours on the walls. There were two front doors on the third floor. Between them hung a glass-framed painting of a golden-brown landscape somewhere in southern Europe.

Adam hadn’t even rung Rudolf Fjord’s bell before the door

opposite opened.

‘Hallo,’ said a woman in her seventies.

She was beautiful in a posh way, Sigmund noted. Slim and

quite small. Groomed hair. Skirt and sweater and a pair of neat leather slippers. She was wringing her hands and seemed to be distressed.

‘I’m terribly sorry to butt in, I know it’s none of my business,’

she said. Adam noticed now that despite her old-fashioned, almost subservient appearance, her eyes were sharp. The two men had been weighed up and measured at once.

‘Are you friends of Mr Fjord? Or colleagues, perhaps?’

Her smile was sincere enough and the worried furrow in her

brow was genuine.

‘I have to admit that I’ve been listening in case anyone came,’

she said before they had a chance to answer. ‘For once I was grateful to hear the noise of that thing.’

A thin finger with a manicured nail pointed to the lift.

‘You see, Rudolf is such a boon to us here. He looks after us Sorts everything out. When I broke my leg just before

Christmas …’ She modestly lifted her left leg. It was beautiful slim and whole. ‘… He popped by every day and did my shopping.

We’re good neighbours, Rudolf and I. But now I’m … oh, I do apologize.’

With practised hands, she undid the chain and came towards

the two men.

‘Halldis Helleland.’

She offered her hand. The two men mumbled their surnames.

‘I am so worried,’ said the woman. ‘Rudolf came home about

nine o’clock last night. I happened to come in at the same time.

He had been to the theatre with a lady friend. Rudolf and I always have a natter when we bump into each other. Sometimes he even comes in for coffee. Or a glass of something. He is always so…’

‘She’s like a weasel,’ Adam thought. ‘An energetic, curious

weasel, with playful hands and darting eyes that see everything.’

She patted her hair, coughed a little.

‘.. . Nice,’ she concluded.

‘But not last night,’ Adam suggested questioningly.

‘No! He barely answered when I spoke to him. Looked pale. I

asked if he was unwell, but he said he was fine. Be that as it may, when …’ Halldis Helleland’s smile took ten years off her. There was a flash of gold from her beautiful teeth and she had deep dimples.

‘He’s a man in his prime and I’m an old widow. I understand

perfectly that he may not always have time for me. But

She hesitated.

‘It was unusual behaviour,’ Adam contributed. ‘He behaved

very differently from normal.’

‘Exactly,’ said a grateful Mrs Helleland. ‘And since then, I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been keeping my ears open.’

She looked Adam straight in the eye.

‘Not very nice, I admit, but sound does carry easily in this building and I feel that we should all… look out for one another.’

‘I quite agree,’ Adam assured her. ‘And did you hear anything?’

‘Nothing,’ she said in obvious distress. ‘That is the problem. I usually hear footsteps from the flat. Music. Sometimes the TV.

The only…’ The furrow reappeared on her brow. ‘The telephone has rung,’ she said decisively. ‘Four times. Rung and rung.’

‘Maybe he went out again,’ Sigmund suggested.

Halldis Helleland gave him a reproachful look, as if he had

insinuated that she was asleep at her post. She pointed to two newspapers on the doormat.

‘The morning and evening edition,’ she said, meaningfully.

‘The man is a newspaper obsessive. Unless he sneaked out during the night when I was asleep, I say he’s at home. And he hasn’t even taken in the papers!’

‘He may well have done just that,’ Adam said. ‘He may have

gone out last night.’

‘I’ll ring the police,’ the woman said with some force. ‘If you won’t believe that I know Rudolf Fjord well enough to know that something is wrong, I shall phone the authorities.’

She turned around and walked back towards her own door.

‘Wait a moment,’ Adam said in a calm voice. ‘Mrs Helleland,

we are from the police.’

She spun round.

‘Excuse me?’

Her agile hands quickly brushed over her hair again before she smiled with relief and added:

‘Of course. It’s that awful business with Vibeke Heinerback.

Terrible. It did so affect poor Rudolf. Of course, you’re here to get more information. But then …’

She cocked her head to one side then the other - small, quick movements. Now she really did look like a weasel, with a pointed nose and small, darting eyes.

‘Then we should go in,’ she decided. ‘But first I must ask to see your ID. Just a moment, I’ll go and get the keys.’

Before the two policemen could say anything, she’d disappeared.

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Adam said.

‘Of what?’ Sigmund asked. ‘She’s got the key! And you can say what you like, the woman talks a lot of sense.’

‘I don’t want to think about what we might find.’

Halldis Helleland reappeared. She glanced at the ID cards that the two men held up and nodded.

‘Rudolf had his bathroom done up last autumn,’ she explained, and put the key in the lock. ‘It looks super now. But with the workmen coming in and out, it seemed best that I had a set of keys. You never know who you can trust. And I’ve just kept them.

There!’

The door was open.

Adam went in.

It was dark in the hallway. All the doors to the rooms were shut.

‘The drawing room is this way,’ Mrs Helleland said, meeker

now.

She slipped under Adam’s arm and walked to the end of the

hall. Then she stopped in front of a double door.

‘Perhaps it’s best…’ she started and nodded to Adam.

He opened the door.

A chandelier lay on the table. The prisms were tangled. One

lonely prism dangled over the edge of the table. Rudolf Fjord was hanging from a rope slung over a hook in the centre of an enormous ceiling rose, to which the chandelier had obviously until

recently been attached. His tongue was blue and swollen. His eyes were open. The body hung absolutely still.

‘I think you should go back to your own flat and wait there,’

Adam said. Mrs Helleland had not dared to look into the drawing room yet.

Without asking, without even so much as glancing into the

room, she obeyed. The front door was left open behind her. They heard her steps crossing the hall. Her door closing.

‘Shit,’ said Sigmund Berli, and walked over to the body.

He pulled up Rudolf Fjord’s trouser leg and touched the white skin.

‘Completely cold.’

‘Can you see a letter?’

Adam didn’t move. He just stood there, frozen, and watched

the movement that Sigmund had set in motion. The body turned incredibly slowly round its own axis.

An upturned chair lay on the floor.

‘Johanne was certainly right about one thing,’ Adam thought.

‘She was right about the price of this case. The cost is too high.

We’re stumbling around in the dark. Lifting up a corner of someone’s life here, pulling a thread there. Then it all goes to pieces.

We can’t find what we’re looking for, but we carry on. Obviously Rudolf Fjord couldn’t. Who told him? Was it Ulrik? Was it Ulrik who phoned to warn an old customer, to say that his secret was out? That there was no point in parading around with women any more, pretending to be a man of the world?’

‘No letter, not here anyway.’

‘Keep looking.’

‘But I have …’

‘Keep on looking. And call the duty officer. Straight away.’

Rudolf Fjord had not killed Vibeke Heinerback, Adam was

sure of that. He couldn’t bring himself to move. ‘He had dinner with some party colleagues in Baerum on the night that she was murdered. His alibi was good. He was never a suspect. But we still couldn’t let him be. We can never let anyone be,’ he thought to himself.

‘There’s no letter here.’ Sigmund Berli sounded irritated. ‘He hanged himself because he was frightened of being caught with his trousers down. Not much to write home about, maybe.’

‘And that,’ Adam said, and finally managed to walk over to the body, which had stopped turning.’… the fact that Rudolf Fjord may have paid for sex with Trond Arnesen’s lover, is something that we will keep to ourselves. There are limits to how much damage we can do to other people’s lives and …’ He looked up at Rudolf Fjord’s face. The broad, masculine chin seemed bigger now and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like a stranded deep water fish.’. .. reputation,’ Adam finished. ‘We’ll keep that to ourselves.

OK?’

‘OK,’ Sigmund agreed. ‘Fine by me. Oslo Police are on their

way. Ten minutes, they said.’

They got there in eight.

When Kari Mundal answered the phone four hours later, annoyed that someone should ring at half past ten on a Friday night, it only took a minute before she sank down on the chair by the little mahogany shelf in the hall. She listened to what the party secretary had to say and barely managed to answer his questions

adequately. When the conversation finally closed, she stayed sitting where she was. The chair was uncomfortable and it was dark

and cold in the hall. But she couldn’t get up.

She had rung Rudolf yesterday. There was nothing else she

could do. She had tossed and turned on Wednesday night, weighing up the pros and cons of blowing the whistle, and by Thursday morning she had made up her mind.

And it had been fatal, she realized that now.

Without having decided how she would pursue the matter, she

had phoned him. Without having thought about how the party,

and thereby Kjell Mundal, would cope with such a scandal, she had told him what she knew.

‘I was so angry,’ she thought, hearing only her own breathing, shallow and fast. ‘I was so disappointed and angry. Wasn’t thinking straight. I just wanted him to know that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He needed to know that his secret hadn’t gone to the grave with Vibeke. I was so angry. And so very disappointed.’