'Mm,' Harry said. 'I'm impressed by your knowledge, but these two people are involved in high drama.'
'Yes, but that's what's so fascinating!' Beate burst out, holding on to the arm of the chair so that she wouldn't take off. 'If they're not supposed to, people don't cross the boundaries that Edward Hall talks about. And the Expeditor and Stine Grette are not supposed to.'
Harry rubbed his chin. 'OK, let's follow that line of thought.'
'I think the Expeditor knew Stine Grette,' Beate said. 'Well.'
'Good, good.' Harry rested his face on his hands and spoke through his fingers. 'So Stine knew a professional bank robber who performs a perfect heist before shooting her. You know where this reasoning is taking us, don't you.'
Beate nodded. 'I'll see what we can find out about Stine Grette right away.'
'Great. And afterwards let's have a chat with someone who's frequently been inside her intimate space.'
18
A Wonderful Day
'T his place gives me the creeps,' Beate said.
'They had a famous patient here called Arnold Juklerod,' Harry
said. 'He said this place was the brain of the sick beast known as
psychiatry. So you didn't find anything about Stine Grette?' 'No. Unblemished record, and her bank accounts don't suggest
financial irregularities. No shopping sprees in clothes shops or at
restaurants. No payments to Bjerke trotting stadium or any other
symptoms of gambling. The only extravagance I could turn up was a
trip to Sao Paulo this summer.'
'And her husband?'
'Exactly the same. Solid and sober.'
They passed under the gateway to Gaustad hospital and came into
a square surrounded by large red-brick buildings.
'Reminiscent of a prison,' Beate said.
'Heinrich Schirmer,' Harry said. 'Nineteenth-century German
architect. Also designed Botsen prison.'
A carer came to pick them up from reception. He had dyed black
hair and looked as though he should be playing in a band or doing
design work. Which, in fact, he did.
'Trond Grette has mostly been sitting and staring out of the
window,' he said as they trotted down the corridor to section G2. 'Is he ready to speak?' Harry asked.
'Yes, he can talk alright . . .' The carer had paid six hundred kroner
to have his black hair look unkempt, and now he was adjusting one
of the tufts and blinking at Harry through a pair of black hornrimmed glasses, which made him look like a nerd, in exactly the right
way, that is, so that the cognoscenti could see he wasn't a nerd but
hip.
'My colleague is wondering if Grette is well enough to talk about
his wife,' Beate said.
'You'll find out,' said the carer and put the tuft of hair back in
front of his glasses. 'If he gets psychotic again, he's not ready.' Harry didn't ask how they could tell when a person was psychotic.
They came to the end of the corridor and the carer unlocked a door
with a circular window.
'Does he have to be locked in?' Beate asked, looking around the
bright reception room.
'No,' the carer said, without giving any further explanation, and
pointed to the back of a white dressing gown on a chair which had
been pulled over to the window. 'I'm in the duty office on the left on
your way out.'
They walked over to the man in the chair. He was staring out of the
window and the only thing that stirred was his right hand, which was
slowly moving a pen over a notepad, jerkily and mechanically like a
robotic arm.
'Trond Grette?' Harry asked.
He didn't recognise the person who turned round. Grette had cut
off all his hair, his face was leaner and the wild expression in his eyes
from the evening on the tennis court was replaced by a calm, vacant
thousand-metre stare which went right through them. Harry had
seen it before. They looked like that after the first weeks behind bars
when they started doing their penance. Harry knew instinctively this
man was doing the same. He was doing penance.
'We're police,' Harry said.
Grette shifted his stare towards them.
'It's about the bank raid and your wife.'
Grette half-closed his eyes, as if he had to concentrate to
understand what Harry was saying.
'We were wondering if we could ask you some questions,' Beate
said in a loud voice.
Grette nodded slowly. Beate pulled a chair closer and sat down. 'Can you tell us about her?' she asked.
'Tell you?' His voice creaked like a badly oiled door.
'Yes,' Beate said with a gentle smile. 'We would like to know who
Stine was. What she did. What she liked. What plans you had. That
sort of thing.'
'That sort of thing?' Grette looked at Beate. Then he put down the
pen. 'We were going to have children. That was the plan. Test-tube
babies. She hoped for twins. Two plus two, she always said. Two plus
two. We were just about to start. Right now.' Tears welled in his eyes. 'You'd been married for a long time, hadn't you?'
'Ten years,' Grette said. 'If they hadn't played tennis, I wouldn't
have minded. You can't force children to like the same things as
parents, can you. Perhaps they would have preferred horse riding.
Horse riding is wonderful.'
'What sort of person was she?'
'Ten years,' Grette repeated, facing the window again. 'We met in
1988. I had started at Management School in Oslo and she was in her
last year at Nissen High School. She was the best-looking girl I'd ever
seen. I know everyone says the good-looking one is the one you never
got and have perhaps forgotten, but with Stine it was true. And I
never stopped thinking she was the best-looking. We moved in
together after a month and were together for every single day and
night for three years. Yet I still couldn't believe that she had said yes
to becoming Stine Grette. Isn't it strange? When you love someone
enough, you find it incomprehensible that they can love you. It
should be the opposite, shouldn't it?'
A tear fell on the arm of the chair.
'She was kind. There are not so many people who value that
quality any more. She was reliable, loyal and always gentle. And
brave. If she thought she heard noises downstairs and I was asleep,
she got up herself and went down. I said she should wake me because
what if one day burglars really were downstairs? But she just laughed
and said: Then I'll offer them waffles and the waffle smell will wake you . The smell of waffles was supposed to wake
up, because it always does
me up when . . . yes.'
He snorted air through his nose. The bare branches of the birch
trees outside waved to them in the gusting wind. 'You should have
made waffles,' he whispered. Then he tried to laugh, but it sounded
like crying.
'What were her friends like?' Beate asked.
Grette hadn't finished laughing and she had to repeat the
question.
'She liked being on her own,' he said. 'Perhaps because she was an
only child. She had a lot of contact with her parents. And then we had
each other. We didn't need anyone else.'
'She could have had contact with others you didn't know about,
couldn't she?' Beate said.
Grette looked at her. 'W
hat do you mean?'
Beate's cheeks went a flustered red and she gave a quick smile. 'I
mean that your wife may not necessarily have passed on the conversations she had with all the people she met.'
'Why not? What are you trying to say?'
Beate swallowed and exchanged glances with Harry. He took over.
'In our investigations we always have to examine all the possibilities,
however unlikely they may seem. And one of them is that some of the
bank employees may be in league with the robber. Sometimes there is
inside help with both the planning and the execution of the job. There
is little doubt, for example, that the robber knew when the ATM
would be refilled.' Harry studied Grette's face for signs of how he took
that. But his eyes told him that he had left them again. 'We've been
through the same questions with all the other employees,' he lied. A magpie shrieked from the tree outside. Plaintive, lonely. Grette
nodded. At first slowly, then faster.
'Aha,' he said. 'I understand. You think that's why Stine was shot.
You think she knew the robber. And when he had finished using her,
he shot her to remove any possible leads. Isn't that right?' 'Well, at least it's a theoretical possibility,' Harry said. Grette shook his head and laughed again: sad, hollow laughter.
'It's clear you didn't know my Stine. She could never do anything like
that. And why should she? If she'd lived a little longer, she would
have been a millionaire.'
'Oh?'
'Walle Bodtker, her grandfather. Eighty-five years old and owner
of three blocks of flats in the city centre. He was diagnosed with lung
cancer this summer and since then there has been only one way it was
going to go. His grandchildren would have received a block each.' Harry's question was purely a reflex action: 'Who will get Stine's
block now?'
'The other grandchildren,' Grette answered with revulsion in his
voice. 'And now you're going to check their alibis, aren't you?' 'Do you think we should?' Harry asked.
Grette was about to answer, but paused when his eyes met Harry's.
He bit his lower lip.
'I apologise,' he said, running a hand across his unshaven face. 'Of
course I ought to be glad that you're examining every possibility. It
all just seems so hopeless. And meaningless. Even if you catch him,
I'll never get back what he's taken from me. Not even the death
penalty would do that. Losing your life is not the worst thing that can
happen.' Harry already knew how he would continue. 'The worst
thing is to lose your reason for living.'
'Yes,' Harry said, standing up. 'This is my card. Ring me if
anything occurs to you. You can also ask to speak to Beate Lonn.' Grette had turned to face the window again and didn't see Harry
holding out his card, so he left it on the table. Outside, it was becoming darker and they were seeing semi-transparent reflections
in the window, like ghosts.
'I have a feeling I've seen him,' Grette said. 'On Fridays I usually
go straight from work to play squash at the Focus centre in
Sporveisgata. I didn't have a partner and so I went into the fitness
room instead. Lifted weights, cycled, that sort of thing. There are so
many people at that time you often have to queue.'
'That's right,' Harry said.
'When Stine was killed, I was in there. Three hundred metres
down from the bank. Looking forward to a shower and going home
and starting to cook. I always cooked the meal on Fridays. I liked
waiting for her. Liked . . . waiting. Not all men do.'
'What do you mean you saw him?' Beate asked.
'I saw someone walk past me into the changing room. He was
wearing baggy, black clothes. Like overalls.'
'Balaclava?'
Grette shook his head.
'Cap with a peak maybe?' Harry asked.
'He was holding some headgear in his hand. It might have been a
balaclava. Or a peaked cap.'
'Did you see his fa--?' Harry began, but was interrupted by Beate. 'Height?'
'Don't know,' Grette said. 'Average height. What's average
though? 1.80?'
'Why didn't you tell us this before?' Harry asked.
'Because,' Grette said, pressing his fingers against the glass, 'it's
just a feeling. I know it wasn't him.'
'How can you be so sure?' Harry asked.
'Because two of your colleagues were here a few days ago. They
were both called Li.' He swivelled round and looked at Harry. 'Are
they related?'
'No. What did they want?'
Grette took his hand away. The window had misted up around the
greasy marks.
'They wanted to check if Stine might have been involved in some
way with the bank robber. And they showed me photos of the
robbery.'
'And?'
'The overalls were black without any markings. Those I saw at the
Focus centre had large white letters on the back.'
'What letters?' Beate asked.
'PO-L-I-T-I,' Grette said, rubbing the greasy marks off. 'When I
was in the street afterwards, I could hear police sirens in Majorstuen.
The first thing I thought was how strange it was that thieves could
escape with such a large police presence.'
'Yes, indeed. What made you think that?'
'I don't know. Perhaps because someone had just stolen my
squash racquet from the changing room while I was training. My
next thought was that Stine's bank was being robbed. That's how
your mind works when your imagination runs wild, isn't it. Then I
went home and made lasagne. Stine loved lasagne.' Grette made an
attempt at a smile. Then the tears began to flow.
Harry fixed his eyes on the piece of paper Grette had written on so
as not to see the grown man crying.
'I saw from your six-monthly bank statement there had been a
large withdrawal.' Beate's voice sounded harsh and metallic. 'Thirty
thousand kroner in Sao Paulo. What did you spend it on?' Harry looked up at her in surprise. She seemed quite untouched
by the situation.
Grette smiled through his tears. 'Stine and I celebrated our tenth
wedding anniversary there. She had some holiday due and went a
week before me. That was the longest we had ever been apart.' 'I asked you what you spent the thirty thousand in Brazilian
currency on,' Beate said.
Grette turned to the window. 'That's a private matter.' 'And this is a murder case, herr Grette.'
Grette fixed her with a long, hard look. 'You've obviously never
been in love with anyone, have you.'
Beate's brow darkened.
'The German jewellers in Sao Paulo are reckoned to be among the
best in the world,' Grette said. 'I bought the diamond ring Stine was
wearing when she died.'
Two carers came for Grette. Lunch. Harry and Beate stood by the window watching him while they waited for the carer to show them the way out.
'I'm sorry,' Beate said. 'I made a fool of myself. I . . .' 'It was fine,' Harry said.
'We always check the finances of suspects in bank cases, but I
probably went too far this time . . .'
'I said it was fine, Beate. Never apologise for the questions you
asked; apologise for the ones you didn't ask.'
The carer arrived and unlocked the door.
'How long will
he be here?' Harry asked.
'He's being sent home on Wednesday,' the carer said. In the car on the way to the city centre Harry asked Beate why
carers always 'send patients home'. After all, they didn't provide the
transport, did they. And the patients decided themselves if they
wanted to go home, or anywhere else, didn't they. So why couldn't
they say 'were going home'? Or 'were being discharged'? Beate didn't have a view on this, and Harry focused on the grey
weather, thinking he had begun to sound like a grumpy old man.
Before, he had only been grumpy.
'He's changed his hair,' Beate said. 'And he's wearing glasses.' 'Who's that?'
'The carer.'
'Oh, I didn't know you knew each other.'
'We don't. I saw him on the beach in Huk once. And in Eldorado.
And in Stortingsgata. I think it was Stortingsgata . . . must be five
years ago.'
Harry studied her. 'I didn't realise he was your type.' 'It's not that,' she said.
'Ah,' Harry said. 'I forgot. It's that brain defect of yours.' She smiled. 'Oslo's a small town.'
'Oh yes? How many times had you seen me before you came to
Police HQ?'
'Once. Five years ago.'
'Where was that?'
'On TV. You had solved that case in Sydney.'
'Mm. I guess that must have made an impression.'
'I only remember it irritated me that you came over as a hero even
though you had failed.'
'Oh.'
'You never brought the murderer to court, you shot him dead.' Harry closed his eyes and thought about how good the first drag of
his next cigarette would be. He patted his chest to feel if the packet
was in his inside pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper to
show to Beate.
'What's that?' Beate asked.
'The page Grette was scribbling on.'
'A Wonderful Day,' she read.
'He's written it thirteen times. A bit like The Shining, isn't it.' 'The Shining?'
'You know, the horror film. Stanley Kubrick.' He shot her a glance
from the corner of his eye. 'The one where Jack Nicholson is sitting
in a hotel writing the same sentence again and again.'
'I don't like horror films,' she said quietly.
Harry faced her. He was on the point of saying something, but
then felt it was best to leave it.