E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten
Michelet The Frozen Woman
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-84344-775-7
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-84344-775-7
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Jon Michelet was one of the foremost Norwegian writers with a large body of literary work behind him; novels, plays, children's books, crime novels and debate books. He is also renowned in Norway for his strong commitment to a number of political and cultural causes. He has worked as a journalist, publisher, sailor and editor. He twice won the Riverton Prize for Best Norwegian Crime Novel. Sadly Jon passed away in April 2018.
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1
‘What was your first reaction when you found her, Thygesen?’ Stribolt asks.
Vilhelm Thygesen doesn’t answer. He has his eyes fixed on a point behind Stribolt, who observes the distracted look on Thygesen’s face and repeats the question in a sharper tone: ‘How did you react when you found the frozen body of the dead woman?’
‘There’s a woman trying to get in,’ Thygesen says, pointing with the stem of his pipe to the point he has been staring at. Stribolt wriggles on the leather sofa and catches sight of Vaage. She is standing on the glass veranda and fumbling with the handle of the door to Thygesen’s living room cum office. The low sun in the middle of the day, which is the second in February, a Friday, causes the frost patterns on the veranda window to glitter. Through the windows of the large log-house in Bestum the light angles in, giving the burlap wallpaper a warm glow, and is reflected by the golden letters on the spine of Norway’s Laws and other books on the shelves, causing the wisps of pipe smoke to become visible.
‘It’s not locked, but it’s awkward,’ Thygesen says, getting up and walking to the door.
Stribolt struggles to deal with the unreality of the situation. He is sitting here on official business in the home of a man whose sun he had thought had long since set. A murky legend who, it transpires, is a living legend.
Thygesen has a slight limp. His ponytail, which makes him look like an old hippie, swings back and forth. It doesn’t go with the Italian-tailored charcoal suit which Thygesen is wearing and definitely not the white shirt and grey-striped silk tie which matches the man’s hair almost too perfectly.
To Stribolt it is unimaginable that Thygesen should comb his mane into a ponytail and wear a fashionable suit on a daily basis. He had expected a scruffier turnout. Leaving to meet Thygesen, he had assumed he would be confronted by a wreck, a shipwrecked mariner washed ashore on the sea of life.
Stribolt makes a note on his pad lying on the coffee table: T has tarted himself up for us.
Thygesen kicks the door as he twists the handle.
A cold blast of air enters from the veranda. It is freezer temperature outside: minus 18 degrees. Ruddy-faced Vaage has frost on her dark fringe. She looks even more apple-cheeked and attractive than usual, Stribolt muses. Every time he works with Vaage he thinks he will have to have his hair cut as short as hers, take up squash again and get himself into shape. When he was last out on the town a slip of a girl told him he looked like a Buddha with a Beatles wig sliding off the back of his head. Not hard to say something like that when you are in the Buddha Bar, but he took it to heart and the sight of the clientele made him bristle with anger, all those tossers on financial steroids. Now it annoys him that Vaage is wearing an almost identical shiny blue pilot’s jacket to his. They aren’t in uniform. Although they look as if they are, just not a police uniform.
‘More like taxi drivers,’ Stribolt mumbles.
Vaage removes her gloves, shakes Thygesen’s hand and introduces herself.
‘I’m also a Kripos detective,’ she says. ‘A chief inspector like my colleague Stribolt here.’
‘Coffee?’ Thygesen asks. ‘I’ve put a pot on.’
‘No, thanks,’ Vaage says.
Stribolt accepts.
While Thygesen goes out, Vaage examines the room, clearly with some disapproval. Perhaps she thinks it is repugnant that a couple of logs are crackling away on the fire while a very cold woman is lying under a tarpaulin in a corner of Thygesen’s large, overgrown garden.
‘I thought this bugger Thygesen didn’t have two øre to rub together,’ Vaage says under her breath. ‘He’d gone to the dogs. Done for murder in the seventies, petty fraud in the nineties. Alkie and all-round dick. And then here he is, poncing around in this million-dollar pad in the West End of Oslo.’
‘It’s just a rambling old house,’ Stribolt says.
‘Imagine what he can get for this place, the plot alone. Why’s he trying to trick old dears out of the odd krone when he has all this?’
‘It’s dangerous to give credence to rumours,’ Stribolt answers, turning down the volume of the stereo, which is playing a jazz CD, possibly Miles Davis. ‘Our friends at Grønland Police HQ are not always well informed. The two fraud charges against Thygesen were dropped for lack of evidence.’
‘What we have in the garden is murder,’ Vaage says. ‘Premeditated murder, I would think. The poor girl has been hacked about in every conceivable way.’
Vaage roams around restlessly and scrutinises a new, green transparent iMac on a computer desk, a thick book beside it, next to a south-facing window overlooking the garden.
‘Is Thygesen a member of some morose sect?’ she asks, lifting up the book.
Lichtturm is written on the cover in big letters.
‘I think it’s a stamp catalogue,’ Stribolt says, trying not to let his voice sound too cutting. He has never got used to the sudden changes in Vaage’s temperament and deals with her forthrightness badly every time. She can be as capricious as the weather on his childhood coast.
‘Right, I thought it might be one of those sect books,’ Vaage says. ‘Lighthouse or whatever it’s called. You’ve heard about Watchtower, haven’t you, Smartie Pants?’
Stribolt has no time to respond. Thygesen makes his entry carrying a jug of espresso coffee and three small, brushed-steel cups on a tray.
‘We want permission to carry out a detailed inspection of the site,’ Vaage says.
‘Aren’t you doing that already?’ Thygesen answers, nodding towards the windows. Stribolt looks in the same direction. Down in the south-east corner of the snow-covered garden, where the bushes and scrub appear like frost-ridden trolls, the SOC team, wearing white overalls over thermal suits, are inspecting the area around the spruce tree where the woman was found. Three Kripos officers are busy in Skogveien. They are crouched down by the wire fence that borders Thygesen’s property from the road. Presumably they are looking for tyre marks in the snow. Two police cars are parked further up the road behind a cordon. One of them has a rotating blue light. Behind it there is a red Saab which Stribolt thinks he recognises – a press car from Akersgata, the Norwegian Fleet Street. A little crowd of curious onlookers has gathered by the cars, mostly schoolchildren by the look of it.
‘I’m referring to an inspection of the house,’ Vaage says.
Thygesen places the tray on the coffee table. He fills all three cups and sits down in the Stressless, which clearly belongs to the man of the house, rests his right foot on a stool and lifts his cup.
Stribolt notices Thygesen’s hands trembling. He has small hands, surprisingly brown for the middle of the winter, with a number of conspicuous liver spots.
‘The house,’ Thygesen repeats. ‘Is that really necessary?’
‘The officers in charge of this investigation have stated we definitely have to search your house,’ Vaage answers.
‘I see. I have a couple of legal objections. But I don’t want to be difficult. Odd that you’re both Nordlanders, by the way,’ Thygesen says. He lights his pipe with a match. Picks an imaginary crumb from his beard, which is the same colour as the espresso cups and as well brushed.
Stribolt and Vaage exchange glances. Stribolt’s Finnmark dialect has faded so much, in his own opinion, that you would have to be a Linguistics Professor to hear that he is from Hammerfest. Even a professor would be deceived by his Oslo-acquired ‘a’ endings. It is easier for a layman to hear that Vaage is from Helgeland, the most southerly district of northern Norway.
‘You take the room at the end,’ Stribolt says to Vaage. ‘I’d like to finish this interview without any interruptions.’
‘Cool worktop,’ Vaage says, running her hand along the polished surface, which is made of a large piece of shiny black marble, three fingers thick. ‘Must have cost a fortune?’
‘It’s home-made,’ Thygesen answers. ‘I used to work with stone once upon a time.’
Vaage must have forgotten she didn’t want any coffee. She takes a cup, drains it in two or three quick sips, goes out on to the veranda and starts talking on her phone.
‘Where were we?’ Stribolt asks.
‘You were asking me what my reaction was when I found her.’
‘Let me rewind a bit. I need more accurate personal details.’
Stribolt checks his notes.
‘It’s correct that you’re 63 and on disability benefit, is it?’
‘Soon 64, and I prefer to call it a disability pension,’ Thygesen says. He pulls a face which Stribolt finds hard to interpret: is he offended or is he acting offended?
‘You have standards which do not seem to correspond to the image I have of people living on disability benefit.’
Thygesen leans forward, knocks the ash out of his pipe and splays his palms.
‘The house and furniture are inherited. I have no debts. I have some rental income and I earn a fair bit buying and selling stamps over the internet.’
‘Like those on the screen?’ Stribolt asks, pointing to the iMac.
‘Yes, they’re African stamps from colonial times. Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Tanganyika.’
Thygesen reaches over a...
