Frozen Noir

        I never really knew what I’d wanted when I started up with this work. I knew what I expected; I thought there would be excitement, adventure, and yes, maybe even some romance. For a long, long time nothing of what I expected had shown up but everything I hadn’t had. I didn’t expect the papers. Sometimes it felt like miles of papers. Invoices, letters, job offers, notices, bills. So many were bills. All of that changed when she walked through those doors.

 

        I was sitting in the office, like any old Thursday, going through the ledgers and paper work. You’d think all the paper in the city was out on my desk that day. Mounds and mountains placed my writing pad in a little dell as snowdrifts of envelops slowly slid along the green leather plains of the payment ledgers. Chewing at the pencil in my hand I was trying to get the sums to work. But it seemed at least 1500 Krone was missing.

        “It can’t just be gone!” I said to the empty office, “We were paid! I know we were!” soon enough my rummaging through the papers again filled the place. It was a small office, two rooms, wooden floors, paneling waist high on the walls and ugly wall paper the rest of the way up. I say rooms but really it was more of a, what is it called? A partition? Waist high walls and frosted glass separated the main office from the outside, but the door seldom closed. Things needed doing, and the fastest way to get them done was to shout them from desk to desk.

        I’d extracted a glimmer of hope from a receipt for a new suit, some three hundred had been spent, it wasn’t everything but looking through the numbers it wasn’t something I had before. Things were adding up. I was never good with numbers but in this business you had to get better at them quick, otherwise you come to the end of the week and you end up owing people money. I’d found another bill, actually paid for the gas and electricity, another thousand had been found, when she walked through those doors.

        I looked up at the creak of the boards just outside, they’d done that for years, no one even snuck into the office. The hinges squeaked at the door opened, jingling a little bell I’d placed there out of the blind hope of making things a little brighter around here, and in she came, shoes delicately tapping as she made her way through the doorway. She was wearing a severely plain dress, except for the color. It was dark blue, with a jacket the same color with an off white trim gave her a bit of flair, but from her hair, all balled up at the back of her head, you could tell she might as well still have hay in her ears. There was one striking thing about her though. That hair. It was like if you mixed gold and silver and spun it into thread. What little hung over her forehead almost shined in the light that made it through the blinds behind me.

        “Can I help you, sister?” I finally asked.

        “Yes, I’m ah… I’m looking for Mister-“

        “Mister Bjorgman is out right now,” I interrupted. He had a case; a stolen necklace some well off shop owner had bought his wife. We’d both done some digging and found out from our usual ‘friends’ that some rat down by the docks just had a new shipment of fine jewelry come in. It seemed like a good place to stay, “My name is Anna, his secretary. Sit down.”

        Though I couldn’t see it, I waved haphazardly at where I was sure the chair was, my little mountain range of paperwork cut off the little nation of Tax Returns from the rest of the world. The young woman tentatively took a seat, she seemed like she was scared to even touch the thing.

        “So what do ya need miss…?”      

        “Elsa” she said. Her voice was just a little dusky, the kind of voice that you knew could set a man on his appetite, but it was colored with age. The girl’s voice was far older than she was, like she’d lived longer than she’d been alive, “I wanted to engage his services… I need someone found.”

        “Found? Who’s missing?”

        “I don’t know”

        She was nervous. I could understand that. I’d felt the same the first time I came into this office, with the words Private Investigator bolding printed on the door. Hah, but she hadn’t even met Bjorg’ yet. I stared at her as she fidgeted with her hands. She must have known how her request sounded.

        “I’m sorry, we can’t-“

        “Please, you have to find him!” she pleaded.

        “We can’t find someone if you don’t even-“

        “He killed him!”

It was like a sack of bricks had flown right into my chest, it had to have been the way she just blurted it out. ‘He killed him’ we’d never had a murder before. Sure one time a real devil of a man had beaten on his lady, but she knew Bjorg’ from way back and one visit later the man had become a perfect gentleman, even if he had to eat with a straw for a few weeks. But never a murder.

        “Killed who?” I asked, but Miss Elsa had gone quite after her outburst, huddled as far into her chair as she could. I couldn’t needle her for more, not like this, “Ah.. Elsa? Do you want a drink? Calm down a bit?”

        “N-no. No thank you.”

        She was practically shaking. I go up and went into Mister Bjorgman’s office. He always kept a good bottle in his bottom drawer. I’d decided the girl really meant yes. I carried two glasses and a bottle of golden brown back. The two tumblers clinked as I set them on what must have been the only bare part of my desk. The girl only needed a finger. I took two for myself. It had been a long day of numbers.

        “Why don’t you tell me about yourself,” I was trying to be as caring as I could. The necklace job was good but we’d been doing nickel and dime work for so long we needed big jobs. Putting a killer behind bars would get us the press we needed to get those in. This girl could be a golden little goose.

        She looked around the room, like making sure we were alone, “I’m from… out of town.” she looked like she was from out of town, but she didn’t sound like it. She was a townie for sure. Wouldn’t be the first time a client came to use with something less than the truth. I leaned against my desk and watched her as she wrapped both her gloved hands around the glass, taking little sips of the amber inside, like it was the only thing keeping her warm, “My friend and I, we. We just got to-to town. The other day we were celebrating and a… a man, came and he fought with my friend. Both of them left and, and… the next day I found him, my friend. He was in an alley…”

        Arendelle wasn’t exactly a hard town. There were plenty of places you were more likely to get mugged in, but still you heard about these kinds of things all the time. Two guys get drunk, some words are said, and they find some place to settle their differences. One gets dumped in the trash and the other eventually sobers up. Someone must have seen something, heard something.

        The way the girl talked about what had happened, the sullen voice the tinge of fear. This friend was important to her. Very important, “I think we might be able to help you,” I said, breaking the silence that had grown as Elsa sipped at her drink. I held out my hand and she looked up, “We’ll hash out payment when Mister Bjorgman gets back, but I’m sure I can get him to take you on,” I winked, “I’m pretty good at it.”

        “Thank you,” she said, looking at my hand. For a moment I thought she wouldn’t take it, but almost with caution she reached out.

        The door burst open then. I won’t know if it was the breeze from the entrance or me that sent my mountains tumbling down, but before I could even shriek there blocking any exit was a man that, in his brown and grey suit looked more like a tree than a person. Mister Bjorgman. Except his face looked more like brisket's than a man's.

        “Jesus Christ, Kristoff! What happened?”

        “It’s nothing, nothing,” he grumbled slamming the door behind him.

        “It’s not nothing, look at you!” I hurried to him. Jesus he was bleeding from his mouth and nose, and God, his ear too. A nasty cut over his eye wasn’t helping anything either. You’d think he’d have a broken nose but it always looked that way. He’d be black and blue in the morning. He’d be black and blue for weeks, “What happened?”

        He grabbed me and pushed me back, “I said, it’s nothing,” he glared down at me. It was stared that brooked no arguing. I was about to anyway when he looked up behind me, “Who’s the girl?”

        “Oh er, this is Miss Elsa,” I said, turning to look at the girl. She’d practically frozen in place at the example of ugly staring her down, “She’s asked us to help solve her friend’s murder.”

        I could see him looking her up and down. Her dress was rather plain, but I had to admit, it clung to just the right places, it left all the good bits to the imagination, “Alright. Tomorrow,” Bjorgman said, letting me go, “We’ll start tomorrow.”

        “It’s still early, I could go out now. Get an idea-“

        “Tomorrow.”

The door to his office closed, “Did you at least get any information?” I yelled at the glass. The door opened and out flew a little black cloth. It landed in front of me with a nice little jingle. The door slammed again and this time his bulk slowly faded. He had a cot in there; he slept in the office more often than not. With his face like that he’d be down for a while.

        I turned back to Elsa, the empty glass now a shield for her, “I guess we’ve got a deal, Miss Elsa,” I held out my hand again. You had to shake on it, I learned that first thing. Plenty of people in the world would rob you blind if you signed a paper, but a hand shake? That was iron clad. Again her hesitant hand made its short journey to mine and this time they met. She had a cold grip, even through those gloves of hers. I might have to put my hands in an ice box to warm them up.

        “Thank you,” she smiled like she wasn’t used to it, “You can just call me Elsa.”

        “Alright. Well, let’s go out, you can show me where this all happened.”  

        “But Mister Bjorgman-“

        “He’ll start tomorrow. I’ll start today,” I said, “So where to?”

        “Olaf was found between the library and the dormitories on 8th,” she said.

        “Olaf?”

“That’s his name,” she said, almost as if I should have known the name, “Olaf”