Free Lethal Investments by Kjell Ola Dahl Page B

The lift stopped on his floor and a woman emerged.

12
     
     
    A woman, also in her best years. Attractive full lips and discreet make-up. An elegant shoulder bag banged against her hip as she panted along, laden with her shopping, before she collapsed in an office chair and noticed the policeman, who got to his feet. Then she stood up and swayed over to him while removing a pair of black leather gloves. Hands: slim, elegant, not too much gold. The metal was limited to a row of thin bracelets that jangled as he shook her hand. It was dry and nice to hold.
    ‘Morning,’ she said. ‘I’m Sonja Hager.’
    With her she brought a breath of fresh air from outside. Stared him in the eye with a curious little smile as he introduced himself.
    ‘Then we’ve already spoken to each other,’ she exclaimed in recognition, and continued in a hushed tone:
    ‘It was a terrible shock. It’s one thing having a person you see so much of die and quite another to hear she has been killed in such an awful manner.’
    She turned and hung up the furry animals she was wearing on a small hook behind the lift doors. Then she appeared in lady-like culottes and a flowery waistcoat over a loose blouse. Dark, thick hair in free fall over her shoulders. An affluent lady. Someone who drove an expensive car and almost certainly collected Royal Danish porcelain.
    ‘Some men should be castrated, that’s my opinion,’ she opined airily, adjusting her blouse.
    Frank observed two chains around her neck. A short one in gold and a longer one with the pendant hidden, along with her breasts which rippled somewhere beneath her clothes.
    ‘It has not yet been established whether she was sexually molested or not.’
    ‘But it’s patently obvious she was!’
    She burrowed in a cabinet drawer and pulled out a packet of biscuits which she waved around. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’
    ‘Please.’
    She was already by the telephone, dialling a short number and speaking.
    ‘It’s better like that,’ she told him afterwards. ‘I wouldn’t like to be interrogated in the canteen.’
    ‘This is not an interrogation.’
    ‘Call it what you will.’
    She took a seat on the sofa on the opposite side of the table. ‘We owe it to Reidun to help so that you can apprehend whoever took her life.’
    Frank lifted his notepad with an apologetic expression.
    ‘How well did you know her?’
    ‘Barely at all. She was new here, wasn’t she. But very . . .’
    She searched for the word. For a moment she seemed absent.
    ‘Positive,’ she concluded after a spell of gazing inward.
    ‘We communicated well,’ she added. ‘An intelligent girl able to conduct herself would have friends everywhere. But there was nothing of any depth between us.’
    Frank nodded. There was probably quite some distance between the bed-sit in Grünerløkka and the palace where this woman resided.
    ‘Definitely a good sales person,’ she stated.
    They were interrupted by a middle-aged lady carrying two cups of coffee on a tray, which she placed on a box by the door. Sonja got up to bring the tray over. Flicked her curls into place before swaying back. Sat down, crossed one leg over the other and tore a little hole in a cardboard carton of cream.
    Frank refused politely – he drank his coffee black – sipped warily at the cup and asked: ‘A good sales person in what way?’
    ‘In what way are people supposed to be good at sales?’
    No flies on this lady. Answers questions with a question. ‘Well . . .’
    He dragged out his pause.
    ‘Slick,’ she suggested with the same unchanging smile. ‘Sales staff are slick, slippery and it’s never easy to know where you are with them.’
    Was she telling him something? He couldn’t quite get a handle on her smile. It was a bit too set. And at the back of her eyes there were two piercing arrows.
    ‘Did Reidun Rosendal have such attributes?’
    ‘Reidun was intelligent, attractive and . . . young.’
    ‘Did she have any enemies