‘Was his drowning an accident?’
‘Of course! What did you think?’
‘Who suggested going for a walk by the river?’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘To calm him down.’
‘I’m not sure if I believe you.’
‘You can believe what you like. No one will ever come between me and my brother.’
‘But you didn’t ring emergency services when he fell in – although the river has a strong current and the water was damned cold. Jonny would have had hypothermia, but he could still have been rescued. The air ambulance would have been there in minutes.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You just focus on yourself and your own self-pity.’
‘Maybe I don’t know what happened on the river bank, but I know you went back to his car alone, drove off, contacted Reidun Vestli and asked for help. You met her after getting rid of Jonny’s car, you hid in her chalet. I know you got in touch with Narvesen, made him go to Fagernes and meet Merethe Sandmo. I know he paid her five million in cash to get the painting back. The thing I’m curious about is what triggered the whole process. Was it me?’
She smiled with disdain at the last word. The wind played with her long hair and the waves lapped over her feet.
‘You always have to be the centre of attention, don’t you?’ she said. ‘I’m not like that. I did what I did because I never think about myself. It’s all Merethe’s fault. She started everything. She blew the whistle. I had no option but to stand firm behind Jonny …’
‘You never think about yourself? Merethe Sandmo did what
you
told her to. She took the picture to Narvesen, got the money and then went to Reidun Vestli’s chalet. There, you took the money before killing her and setting fire to the chalet. You appropriated her identity and used her ticket to Athens. To plan this and execute it, you must have been absolutely furious with her. Anyone who is that furious with another person does not focus on anyone except themselves.’
‘I haven’t killed anyone. And you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘On the contrary, I know very well what I’m talking about. I’ve been round the whole circuit. Starting the night I had to go down and look at the murdered security man, a young man, a student doing a part-time job. Clubbed to death.’
‘Jim Rognstad killed the man. He’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘But you gave Rognstad an alibi for the murder. Isn’t that playing on the same team as him?’
She didn’t answer; she looked across the sea. On the horizon there were two enormous tankers sailing in a line.
‘You didn’t have to give the men an alibi for that night,’ Frank Frølich said.
‘Frank,’ she said gently. ‘Why don’t you believe me?’
‘I’m not saying what I believe; I’m saying what I know. For example, I know you recognized me in Torggata before the stakeout on Badir’s shop. You doubled back, placed yourself in my field of vision, you wanted my attention.’
‘I had no idea what was going to happen. I just wanted you to see me. But it was you who threw yourself on me.’ She snatched a sidelong glance and smiled wanly. ‘Do you remember?’
‘What I remember best is that you sat beside me in bed that night, waiting for me to go back to sleep so that you could sneak out and start the whole nightmare.’
They stood still, without speaking. The wind was pulling at her clothes. The waves crashed onto the shore.
He was startled by the touch of her fingers on the back of his hand.
‘Do you sometimes think that the earth looks blue?’ she whispered. ‘Seen from afar?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Everything that has happened between you and me depends on where you’re standing, Frank. I know you’re bitter because I didn’t say anything to you that night, but I’d been told Jonny was going to be arrested for killing a man he hadn’t even touched. You were a policeman. I kept you out of it and I did what I thought was right.’
He looked down at her hand. It was the first thing he had noticed: her hands. Her black gloved fingers putting packs of cigarettes into her rucksack. The same fingers which were stroking him now closed around his hand. The warmth from her hand shot up his forearm. He closed his eyes for a second, feeling her touch. Then he put his hand in his pocket and said: ‘Did you do what you thought was right when you went back to your flat and cleaned it thoroughly? When you planted Merethe’s hairbrush on your bed for the police to find? So that they would use Merethe’s DNA profile to identify the bones in Reidun Vestli’s chalet? When you made Merethe spread rumours about her having a job in Athens? When you made her buy a plane ticket?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Was it right to kill her?’
‘If anyone killed Merethe it must have been Vidar Ballo. I don’t know anything about Merethe or what happened to her.’
‘Jim Rognstad may have killed the guard in Loenga. Your brother may have slipped into the river by accident. Reidun Vestli did take her own life. But Vidar Ballo cannot have killed Merethe. He was dead from an overdose when the chalet burned down.’
Frølich put his hand in his inside pocket and passed her a sheet of paper. ‘Another copy.’
She read the copy of Reidun Vestli’s suicide note and began to tear up this letter into small pieces too.
‘I read through the letter again on the plane coming here,’ Frølich said. ‘And I wondered for the umpteenth time what it was that Reidun was asking forgiveness for. Were you supposed to forgive her for leading some nasty brutes to your bolthole? Who were these brutes? When her chalet was on fire, Jim Rognstad was with a woman in Oslo and Vidar Ballo was dead, so if those two didn’t set fire to the chalet, who beat up Reidun Vestli? And why was she only beaten up
after
the fire? The answer to that was difficult to unearth, precisely because no one beat her up. She faked the attack. She wanted the police to believe that
someone
beat the information out of her to track you down. If necessary she would
claim
the assault was carried out by Rognstad and Ballo. She would be believed because she was a respected academic. But while she was simulating the attack she must have known about parts of your plan. She must have sacrificed the chalet. But if there weren’t any attackers, the one single, large, in fact the real, issue remains unresolved: Why is she asking for forgiveness?’
‘A few minutes ago you said this was about us, Frank. Why did you say that?’
‘If you won’t answer, let me do it for you. Reidun is asking for forgiveness because she’s dropping out. She couldn’t stand being part of your blood-stained steeplechase. She didn’t have your motivation. All she had was love for you. But that only went as far as an appeal for forgiveness.
You
were the one who planned the fake attack.
You
wanted the police to believe someone had beaten her up and she’d betrayed where
you
were hiding. To suggest that
someone
wanted to find you and take your life. In this way you would be able to divert the blame for the fire and your murder. But Reidun Vestli didn’t want to be an accessory to murder. She therefore opted out of your insanity – and begs your forgiveness.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s the craziest story I’ve ever heard.’
He smiled; his lips were dry. ‘It’s not over yet. You were enraged by Merethe, I know that. And perhaps you blamed her for Jonny’s death. Wherever you stand on this, whatever fantasies you have, the fact is that you overlooked a couple of tiny details when you planned your revenge. You forgot, for example, that you should have worn a hairnet when you slept in my bed. You left one long hair on my pillow the night you left me. The DNA profile did
not
tally with the hair on Merethe Sandmo’s hairbrush and it did
not
tally with the bones in the ashes of the chalet. Your story, Elisabeth, hung on a hair. I have an irritating terrier of a boss and when I brought in your hair and forensics found there was a mismatch, he had to go to Merethe Sandmo’s flat and get further samples there. Guess what? The samples matched.’
She stood still, looking at the hotel. The wind was still ruffling her dress.
‘Merethe Sandmo was on a plane to Athens. Although, according to the evidence, she was dead,’ he said. ‘The same woman who called herself Merethe Sandmo got off the plane and hired a car which she drove to Patras where the car and the keys were handed over to the Hertz agent. And this is where Merethe Sandmo vanishes. Into thin air. At the ferry quay, though, in the same town another woman turns up: Elisabeth Faremo. She buys a ferry ticket to Bari, on the Italian side of the Adriatic Sea. Elisabeth Faremo disappears here, but a woman by the name of Merethe Sandmo turns up two days later in Ancona on the coast. She buys a ticket to Zadar in Croatia. The woman who bought the hotel there is unknown. It was a long detour, but your problem is that the woman who owns the hotel paid her bills with Norwegian currency, the numbers of which are recorded with Eco-Crime. Elisabeth, there is a whole team of policemen who know that Narvesen’s money is financing your stay here.’
‘Have you come all the way here, have you tracked me down, just to tell me these things?’
He stood looking at her. Suddenly the situation seemed unimportant. He thought about the collection of poems he had found. The conversation in bed when she had told him the name of this island.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she continued. ‘But I wanted you to be driven here by longing, not negative emotions.’ She placed her hand on his arm, stretched up on her toes and brushed his cheek with her lips. He remembered her touch.
‘I knew,’ she whispered, ‘that you would come here and find me.’
He tore himself free. ‘It’s too late.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing is too late.’
‘Why did you do it?’ he whispered, despising his own wretchedness. ‘At least you can give me this. You can tell me what the sense of it all was.’
‘I have nothing without Jonny.’
He thought about what she said. ‘Do you mean that nothing would have happened, that life would have been normal if Jonny
‘Now I have only you,’ she interrupted.
‘That’s not true, Elisabeth. You left me behind.’
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she repeated.
‘But we can never belong to each other.’
A minor eternity passed. Only the sound of waves murmuring. Two metres between them. When they finally looked into each other’s eyes, he could read that something had happened. She was in a different place.
‘You’ve forgotten one thing,’ she said roughly.
‘Remind me.’
‘Inge Narvesen will keep his mouth shut. He will never say anything in public about having a stolen painting in his possession. You have nothing on me. Without the painting your story is so much thin air. Without the painting, there would have been nothing to collect from the bank vault. Without the painting, there was nothing to sell to Inge. You were quite right, I used Merethe’s name and ticket to get away, but I had to, I feared for my life. Someone had killed my brother and then Merethe.’
‘The painting?’ Frank Frølich asked in surprise. ‘What sort of painting are you talking about?’
‘You know very well which painting I’m talking about.’
‘If you mean the study of the mother and child which disappeared from an Italian church in 1993, the painting has disappeared, just as it did in 1993. No one has seen it since. If anyone claims they have seen it in Norway, they must be having delusions. The painting is not there, you see. Sorry, Elisabeth. What is important in this case is the human remains in the ashes of the chalet. Back home in Norway, the police have proof that the woman received five million kroner in cash from Inge Narvesen. He has finished making a statement about this. At first he tried to make Kripos believe that Merethe was selling him sex. But five million for sex is a bit on the steep side, so they didn’t believe him. In the end, he admitted that Merethe Sandmo had told him some cock-and-bull story about a Renaissance painting he could have for five million. He was foolish enough to believe her and stumped up. The painting never showed up. He paid her and received nothing. He was swindled. And attractive women who dupe idiots with pots of money are the sort of thing to make Norwegian judges yawn. Unless the painting turns up, that part of the story is of no interest. What will interest judges are the cleverly worked-out plans behind your new life down here. You used Reidun Vestli to underpin the enactment of your own death. You used Merethe Sandmo as a go-between to barter for the money. It is proved that you took the money from Merethe – since you’ve been spending it every day — and killed her — since you have assumed her identity and escaped using her name.’
When he finished she was standing as before with her gaze directed towards the sea.
He gestured with his head towards the hotel. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Are you in such a hurry?’ Different intonation yet again. Almost cheerful.