The Final Murder (32 page)

‘You see,’ she clucked. ‘You’re overtired. Go to bed, dear, I’ll find what I need myself ‘I can… You can’t…’

‘I’ve reared two children. I’ve got my home economics exams.

I’ve looked after a house and home for as long as I remember. I can look after a baby for a night or two.’

Her mother’s heels clicked on the parquet as she turned and

walked resolutely towards the children’s room. Johanne wanted to follow, but couldn’t face it.

Sleep. Hours and hours of sleep.

She was almost ready to lie down on the floor. Instead she

grabbed a half-full bottle of water from the worktop and drank it.

Then she went into the bedroom. She barely had the energy to take off her clothes. The sheets felt cool and good to touch. The room was cold. The duvet was warm. She heard her mother

mumbling in the children’s room for a few minutes. Footsteps moving around, out into the bathroom, back to the kitchen, into Ragnhild’s room.

‘The cream,’ Johanne murmured. ‘Don’t forget the nappy rash

cream.’

But she was already asleep, and didn’t wake up until sixteen hours later.

‘I’m not like that,’ Trond Arnesen said in desperation. ‘I’m not really that way inclined!’

Five elegant envelopes lay on the table between him and

Detective Inspector Adam Stubo, tied together with an old hair band. They were all addressed to Ulrik Gjemselund. The writing slanted to the left, just as it did in the Filofax that was lying beside them.

‘Trond Arnesen,’ Adam Stubo read, tapping his finger on the

page. ‘You’ve got very distinct handwriting. I think we can agree that there’s no need to analyse the writing. Are you left-handed?’

‘I’m not like that! You have to believe me!’

Adam tipped his chair back. He clasped his hands behind his

neck, ran his thumbs over the folds of skin. His cropped hair brushed against his fingers. The back of the chair hit the wall rhythmically. He looked at the boy without saying a word. His face was blank and neutral, as if he was bored and waiting for someone or something.

‘You have to believe me,’ Trond insisted. ‘I’ve never been

with … any other guys. I swear to you! And that night, that night, was the very last time. I was going to get married and

Big tears spilled over down his cheeks. His nose was running.

He used his sleeve to wipe his face, but couldn’t stop crying. His sobbing sounded like a small child. Adam rocked on his chair and carried on rocking. The back of the chair hit the wall. Thump.

Thump. Thump.

‘Can’t you stop that?’ Trond pleaded. ‘Please!’

Adam carried on rocking. He still didn’t say anything.

‘I was so drunk,’ Trond said. ‘I was already pissed by nine. It was a long time since I’d seen Ulrik, so … Then about half ten I went out to get some air. I went outside to clear my head. And he didn’t live that far away. Huitfeldtsgate. So I …’

Adam’s chair slammed back down to the floor. The young man

jumped. The plastic cup from which he had just drunk some

water was knocked over. The policeman retrieved the letters. He pulled off the hairband and looked at the envelopes again without opening any of them. Then he put the hairband back round them and dropped the pile into a grey file. There was nothing to remind Trond of the friendly policeman from the reconstruction. It was impossible to read his eyes and he said so little.

‘It’s been really hard,’ he whined, and sobbed as he drew

breath. ‘Ulrik has been … He said he … I meant to tell. I wanted to tell the truth, but when I realized that you thought I’d been at Smuget the whole evening, I’m not sure why … I thought…’

He suddenly put his head back.

‘Can’t you say something?’ he appealed. He pulled his head

back up and slammed his palms down on the table. ‘Can’t you at least say something?’

‘You’re the one who’s got something to say.’

‘But I’ve got nothing more to say! I’m really sorry that I didn’t tell you straight away, but I … I loved Vibeke! I miss her so much. We were going to get married and I was so … You don’t believe me!’

‘Right now it’s not important whether I believe you or not,’

Adam said, and pulled on his ear lobe. ‘But I am very interested to know exactly how long you were away from the nightclub.’

‘One and a half hours, I told you. From half past ten until

twelve. Midnight. I swear. Just ask the others, just ask my

brother.’

‘They obviously made a mistake last time we questioned them.

Or lied, all of them. They swore that you were there all night.’

‘They thought I was there! Jesus, it was chaos and I was only away for a while. I should have told you straight away, but I was … embarrassed. I was about to get married.’

‘Yes, we know,’ Adam said, unrelenting. ‘So you keep saying.’

‘I should have told you,’ the young man moaned again. ‘It was just so … I thought…’

‘You thought you could get away with it,’ Adam Stubo said. His voice had an unfamiliar edge to it. ‘Didn’t you?’

He got up, put his hands behind his back and walked slowly

round the room. Trond shrunk, he lowered his head and hunched his shoulders, as if he was afraid of being hit.

‘What’s interesting,’ Adam said - his voice now had an exaggerated fatherly tone to it, both strict and friendly at the same

time. ‘What’s interesting is that you just told me something we didn’t know.’

The boy had stopped crying. He dried the snot and tears with a corner of his shirt and for a moment looked more confused than desperate.

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ he said, and looked the policeman in the eye. ‘You’ve obviously spoken to Ulrik and that

night…’

‘You’re wrong,’ Adam said. ‘Ulrik refused to talk to us. He’s sitting in a cell in Gr0nland station and keeping schtum. And he has every right to. Not talk, that is. So we actually didn’t know that you’d lied about your alibi. Not until now.’

‘In a cell? What’s he done? Ulrik?’

Adam stopped about a metre away from the young man. He put

his right elbow in his left hand and stroked his nose, thoughtfully.

‘You’re not that stupid, Trond.’

‘I…’

‘You what?’

‘I really don’t know what it’s about.’

‘Hmm. Fine. You want me to believe that you’ve had a relationship with Ulrik… you know him, well, intimately, as they

say …’

Adam nodded at the file. The letters were sticking out from the top. Trond’s face blushed red.

‘… Without knowing that Ulrik was involved with illegal substances,’

Adam continued. ‘With all due respect, I find that very

hard to believe.’

Trond looked like he’d seen the devil himself, with horns on his forehead and a burning tail. Wide eyes, open mouth and running nose, which he didn’t wipe. He made nonsensical noises.

Adam chewed his knuckles but made no attempt to help.

‘Drugs,’ Trond finally managed to say. ‘I knew nothing about that. I promise!’

‘I have a little girl at home,’ Adam said, and started to walk again, taking long, slow strides backwards and forwards across the small interview room. ‘She’s nearly ten and has an enviable imagination.’

He

stopped and smiled.

‘She lies all the time. You say “I swear” more than she does. It doesn’t exactly make you more believable.’

‘I give up,’ Trond muttered, and it looked like he really meant it. He leant back in the chair and repeated: ‘I bloody give up.’

His arms hung loose by his body. His head fell back. He closed his eyes. His legs were apart. He looked like an overgrown

teenager.

‘Then you didn’t know, either, that Ulrik was a rent boy?’ Adam said calmly. His eyes did not leave the sprawling young man’s face, so that he could catch every emotion.

Nothing happened. Trond Arnesen just sat there, his mouth

half open, his knees wide apart, his hands moving in rhythm.

‘Of the more exclusive type,’ Adam added. ‘But of course you didn’t know that. Because I’m sure you never paid.’

The young man still didn’t react. For a long time he didn’t

move at all. Even his hands were still. Just a twitch in his eyelids showed that he had heard at all. The only noise in the stuffy interview room was of Adam’s even breathing and the barely audible

buzz of the air conditioning.

‘You shouldn’t have written those letters,’ Adam said quietly and maliciously, though he didn’t know why. ‘If you hadn’t written those letters, everything would be fine now. You’d be sitting at home. In your house. You’d have everyone’s sympathy. Life would have normalized again eventually. You’re young. In six months or so the worst would be over and you could move on. But you had to write those letters. Not very smart, Trond.’

‘Now I’m being mean,’ Adam thought to himself and pulled a

big aluminium cigar case out of his breast pocket. ‘I’m punishing him for my own disappointment. What am I disappointed about?

That he lied? That he had secrets? Everyone lies. Everyone has secrets. No one has a streamlined life without shame, without faults and stains. I’m not punishing him for being immoral, I’ve seen and understood too much for that. I’m disappointed that I’ve been fooled. For once I chose to believe. My whole working life depends on other people’s lies and deceit, cowardice and betrayal.

There was something about this boy, this immature man.

Something innocent. Genuine. But I was wrong, and I’m punishing him for it.’

He could smell the cigar. Opened the case a little and inhaled.

Slowly, Trond straightened up on his chair. His eyes were full of tears. A fine dribble of spit hung from the left-hand corner of his mouth. He caught his breath in gasps.

‘I never paid,’ he said and put his face in his hands. ‘I didn’t know he took money from others. I didn’t know that there were others … apart from me.’

Then he was overcome by tears. He was inconsolable. He

didn’t stop crying when Adam gently put a hand on his shoulder, when his mother hugged him after she had been called in, agitated and terrified, half an hour later, nor when his brother gave him an awkward brotherly embrace in the car park before helping him into the back of the car.

‘He’s well over the age of consent,’ Adam replied to his

mother’s many questions. ‘You’ll have to ask him what it’s about.’

‘But… you must tell… is he … was it him who…’

‘Trond didn’t kill Vibeke. You can be sure of that. But he’s a troubled man. Take good care of him.’

Adam stayed in the car park long after the red tail lights of Bard Arnesen’s car had disappeared. The temperature fell a degree or two while he stood there, without a coat. It started to snow. He stood quite still, without acknowledging people who left the building and called out goodbye before getting into their cars, shivering, and driving home to their families and their own

skewed lives.

It was times like these that he was reminded why the passion he once felt for his work was now no more than an occasional and subdued feeling of satisfaction. He still believed that what he was doing was important. His job still challenged him every day. He could draw on a wealth of experience and knew that it was valuable. His intuition had also become stronger and more precise over the years.

Adam Stubo was a great old-fashioned champion of what is good and just and he knew he could never be anything other than a policeman. But he no longer felt a sense of triumph or overwhelming joy when he solved a case, as he had when he was younger.

Over the years it had grown harder and harder to live with the destruction that every investigation involved. He turned other people’s lives upside down, changed destinies. Revealed secrets.

Hidden parts of people’s lives were pulled out of drawers and forgotten cupboards.

Next summer, Adam Stubo would turn fifty. He had been a

policeman for twenty-eight years and he knew that Trond

Arnesen was not guilty of murdering his fiancee. Adam had met many Trond Arnesens before, with all their weaknesses and

foibles; ordinary people who unfortunately suddenly had floodlights trained on every dark corner of their lives.

Trond Arnesen had lied when he felt threatened and was

deceptive when he thought it would help. He was just like everyone else.

The snow was getting thicker and the temperature was falling steadily.

Adam stood there and enjoyed the feeling of being bareheaded and thinly clad in an open space in bad weather.

Enjoyed the sensation of being cold.

Kari Mundal, the party’s former first lady, stood for a moment, as she usually did, and looked up at the facade, before climbing the stone steps. She was proud of the party headquarters. Unlike her husband, who thought that he would be the stranger at the wedding if he didn’t stay away, Mrs Mundal popped in several times

a week. Generally she didn’t have any particular errand and sometimes she just came in to drop off some bags on one of her

frequent and extensive shopping trips in the centre of town. And she always paused for a few seconds to relish the sight of the newly renovated facade. She got great pleasure from all the

details, the corniced string courses at each level, the statues of saints in the niches above the windows. She was particularly fond of John the Baptist, who was closest to the door and looked down at her with a very realistic lamb in his arms. The steps were wide and dark and she was out of breath when she put her hand on the door handle, opened the door and went in.

‘It’s only me,’ she chirped. ‘I’m back.’

The receptionist smiled. She stood up so she could look over the high reception desk and nodded approvingly.

‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘But should you be wearing them in this weather?’

Kari Mundal looked at her new boots, held her foot out

provocatively in front of her, turned her ankle and clicked her tongue.

‘I’m sure I shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘But they’re so elegant. You’re here late tonight, my dear. You should get off home.’