Free The Man in the Window by K. O. Dahl Page A

what was new was Dad doing his occasional round of inspection.'
        'No alarm went off last night.'
        'No,' Jespersen said after some hesitation.
        'Where do you think your father was when Ingrid woke up alone?'
        'That's pretty obvious, isn't it? He was downstairs.' Jespersen tapped the tip of his forefinger on the table. 'Downstairs, in the shop.'
        'In the middle of the night?'
        'Of course.'
        'But wouldn't it be unusual for your father to be rushing around downstairs in the middle of the night. After all, he was almost eighty.'
        'My father was an unusual person.'
        Gunnarstranda nodded, deep in thought. At length he looked over at Karsten Jespersen, who was staring blankly into the air. 'Where were you?' the policeman enquired.
        'Hm?'
        'Where were you when Ingrid phoned last night?'
        Jespersen was still staring blankly into the air. 'It's quite odd,' he said in a soft voice. 'My father's dead in the room beneath us. Not easy to disentangle, my feelings I mean, grief and bereavement…' He went quiet, took a deep breath, then heaved a sigh and continued: 'Ingrid, my father's wife, here with a priest. Me, sitting here with the police - round the table where we had dinner yesterday, having a nice time, and now sitting here and trying - not just to recall the image of my father, but to pass this image on to you.'
        He folded his hands on the table. 'I can feel an atmosphere here now - a feeling of… perhaps it's not hostility as such, perhaps it's more a business-like efficiency. But what is dawning on me now is that while I have been trying to determine what it is I feel deep down, in the chaos I have within me, what I have been dreading, as long as we have been talking is precisely that question: Where were you? Where was I? All of a sudden the answer to that question has taken on a sort of meaning, a significance, the impact of which I had never imagined.'
        He went quiet. The policemen exchanged glances. Jespersen sat chewing his lower lip and thinking. He didn't give the impression that he was going to continue.
        Gunnarstranda broke the silence. He coughed, which caused the other man to raise his head. 'Where were you?' the policeman repeated, looking him straight in the eye.
        'I was at home. It wasn't the first time we had received calls of this kind. Susanne knew that Ingrid would have nagged and nagged to haul me out of bed and come here. Ingrid is a little highly strung and besides she has a morbid fear of something happening to my father.'
        'Did you hear the phone?'
        'No. I was asleep.'
        'So you didn't discuss Ingrid's call then - afterwards?'
        'No, that is, we talked about it early this morning.'
        'But, your wife, she wasn't alarmed by Ingrid's fears when she called last night. Did she dismiss them as nonsense?'
        'Of course not, but Ingrid was… Ingrid is… she's a little hysterical at times.'
        Gunnarstranda nodded. 'Do you know if your father had been receiving threats from anyone of late?'
        'No, that is…'
        'Yes?'
        Jespersen laid both hands flat on the table. 'It's a somewhat delicate matter,' he started.
        Gunnarstranda nodded politely.
        'We had a man in Ensja - who worked at the warehouse. A man who was with us for as long as I can remember - Jonny.'
        'Jonny - what?'
        'His name is Jonny Stokmo. Something happened a few weeks ago. I don't know what it was. Something happened which led to my father dismissing him on the spot.'
        'He was given the boot?'
        'Jonny had to leave that day, after being employed, well, for years.'
        'So this antagonism is quite recent?'
        'I've no idea. Neither of them would talk about it. But I assume it must have been very serious and very private. Otherwise, I would have known what happened.'
        'Did Stokmo come to you