The Human Flies (K2 and Patricia series) (30 page)

‘There are several other theories that would imply other murderers that I, at present, find more plausible. But this one is still not impossible. Hopefully, we will be in a better position to judge this tomorrow evening – if you are able, in the meantime, to establish whether Deerfoot is Williams or not.’

Patricia pushed her plate out of the way and leaned over the table towards me.

‘Above all else, there are two things you must try to establish in Sweden, both of which may be decisive. First, note down all the known details regarding Sara Sundqvist and what may have happened to her parents. And second, everything you can find out about Deerfoot, which may help us to discover his identity. Now that we finally have confirmation of his existence and had found someone who has actually met him, it will be interesting to see where it leads.’

We raised our glasses to that and ate our rice cream in comfortable silence. Before I left, Patricia asked me to phone her from Sälen if she could be of any help and to come here as soon as I returned to Oslo. I promised to do so with a light heart. I did not like to say so, but thinking about where the investigation might have been today without Patricia’s vision was a terrifying thought. If I would ever have managed to work out how the murder was committed was an open question. A creeping minor worry was the extent to which Patricia might want her role to be highlighted, but thus far she had said nothing to indicate a desire for public recognition.

What had dominated until now was the increasing desire to find the murderer. I recaptured some of the excitement from my first hare hunt when I was a youth and felt an ever more obsessive drive to lock the handcuffs round the wrists of this mysterious person who had taken the lives of both Harald Olesen and Konrad Jensen without being noticed. Because Konrad Jensen had also been murdered, I no longer doubted that for a minute. In fact, it was almost shameful to think that I had resisted accepting Patricia’s reasoning for so long.

Before leaving, I said to her that I would do a final check of the building before driving to Sälen. She nodded her approval. It was perfectly reasonable to ask the residents to keep themselves available for questioning from Friday afternoon over the weekend. However, she strongly advised me not to tell them where I was going in the meantime. Any references to Sweden or Sälen might alarm one or more of the residents. We parted in high spirits, full of optimistic expectations for what tomorrow would bring.

V

The evening round at 25 Krebs’ Street was without drama. The building seemed to be poised in the calm before the storm, and now that there was life in only four of the seven flats, it did not take long. It was raining heavily outside, and the prevailing atmosphere was grey and heavy.

The caretaker’s wife was in her flat in the basement, and nodded with relief when she heard the news that Darrell Williams was on his way back, and promised to make a note of when he arrived. Otherwise, she largely answered yes to all my questions. Everything was tranquil in the building now.

Andreas Gullestad opened his door almost as soon as I rang the bell, with his usual smile and offer of coffee and cake. He said that he had registered, with some anxiety, my visit earlier on in the day and that the lights in Darrell Williams’s flat had not come on later in the evening. He thanked me when I told him that Williams would be back the next day and assured me that he would be here and waiting for the final interviews over the course of the weekend. ‘I seldom go anywhere at the weekend, anyway,’ he commented, with his jovial smile and a chuckle. This sounded very familiar, but it took a couple of minutes before I realized that Patricia had made exactly the same point a few days earlier.

Mr and Mrs Lund came to the door together when I rang the bell, and proclaimed more or less in chorus that they had nothing more to say. Both appeared to be relieved when I told them that it looked as if the investigation would soon be over, and they promised to be available over the weekend. They informed me that they no longer dared to have their young son at home in the building and had therefore sent him to his grandparents in Bærum for Easter. Kristian Lund was in relatively good humour, having found a lawyer who thought that he had a strong case in terms of the will. His wife nodded in agreement, but added that the most important thing was that they still had each other and their little boy. Kristian Lund then said in a loud, clear voice that he deeply regretted having betrayed his wife and that he would never see Sara Sundqvist again. His wife put an affectionate arm round his waist and kissed him on the cheek. They seemed to be happy, and I really wanted to believe them. Yet I could not, completely. They had lied too much and failed to tell too much early on in the investigation.

I saved my visit to Sara Sundqvist until last. She opened the door a crack, with the safety chain still on. But when she heard my voice, she opened up and embraced me warmly. Sara was visibly tense. Her hands were shaking, and her heart was beating quickly: I could feel it through the thin material of her dress. She promised to stay at home all weekend, and had nothing new to tell me. Again, I really wanted to believe her, but no longer dared to take anything for granted in her case either.

There was a dramatic end to my visit, though, when Sara Sundqvist suddenly grabbed me by the arm and pointed out of the window.

‘Do you see that person in a dark trench coat down there on the pavement?’ she asked.

I started and looked to where she was pointing, and true enough, in the shadow of the neighbouring building stood a figure in a raincoat with a hood. Even though the light was dim, the coat was undeniably blue. It was either a man or a tall woman, but it was difficult to tell through the dark and rain.

Sara Sundqvist was either frightfully nervous or extremely good at pretending. It was apparently a great relief to her that I could also see the mysterious street guest in a raincoat.

‘Thank goodness it is not just my imagination running wild. Maybe it is merely a coincidence. It does seem rather strange that . . . that person has been standing there for several hours this afternoon. It wasn’t wrong of me to mention it to you, was it?’

I gave a reassuring shake of the head. It was definitely worth checking out. It may simply be someone from the neighbouring building who happened to be waiting there, or a journalist, or an overzealous newspaper reader. But it was undoubtedly odd that the person had been standing there for several hours – and, above all, was wearing a blue raincoat.

The person in the raincoat was standing still by his or her post when I took a final look out of the window with Sara. But when I then swung out onto the street following a hasty goodbye, the entrance to the neighbouring building was suddenly empty. I glanced briefly either way and caught sight of a figure in a raincoat and hood heading briskly towards the nearest bus-stop. I thought to myself that it was either a woman or a very light-footed man. Egged on by the thought that I may have caught sight of Deerfoot, I gave chase. The person in front of me noticed and picked up pace into a sprint. Just then, the bus pulled into the stop. The person in the raincoat ran for the bus and I ran after the person in the raincoat. As I closed in, I became certain that it was a woman running in front of me. A couple of moments later, the pursuit ended in confusion when she ran into the bus and I ran into her.

The bus drove on without the woman in the blue raincoat. A moment before she pushed down the hood, apologizing profusely, I recognized her. The long, fair locks of Cecilia Olesen tumbled into view.

She apologized for running away, and then for standing outside 25 Krebs’ Street, but it was nothing to do with anything criminal, she assured me. The reading of the will and then our conversation yesterday had rekindled old feelings and memories. She could find no peace at home, so she had asked a friend to babysit for the evening. And had stood here alone on the pavement, despite the rain, and stared at the building in the hope of catching a glimpse of Darrell Williams. She became more and more anxious as the hours passed and the flat remained in darkness. Then she panicked when I came out and started to follow her. Because it was dark, she had only recognized me when we collided at the bus – she said. She assured me that she had not been inside the building, neither today nor previously this year, either with or without a blue raincoat, which she maintained she had had for many years.

I told her not to come again tomorrow and promised that I would ask Darrell Williams to contact her later if he was innocent. She gave me a spontaneous hug and waved to me with gratitude when she got on the next bus a couple of minutes later. My hair was dripping when I walked back to my car and drove home. I had a long drive and a very interesting conversation in store for the ninth day of the investigation. In anticipation of my expedition to Sweden, pictures of all the surviving residents were still on the cards, as well as a joker card for the ever-evasive Deerfoot.

DAY NINE

On the Trail of a Light-Footed War Ghost

I

My working day started earlier than usual on Good Friday, 12 April 1968. By ten to eight, I was at the office, where, to my relief, nothing of any note had happened. At eight o’clock on the dot, I got into my car, ready to start my solo expedition to Sweden. I went via 25 Krebs’ Street, where everything still seemed to be calm. But it definitely felt like something was brewing when I left Oslo.

My journey progressed at a steady pace. There was not much traffic, and the roads were clear of snow until I was well up into the mountains. Even though the snow was melting, I drove through a beautiful Norwegian winter landscape on my way up to Trysil. The border control with Sweden was symbolic. A customs officer saluted and waved me through without any further formality as soon as he saw the police car. There were no border guards to be seen on either the Norwegian or the Swedish side. It struck me that the control here would have been much stricter and far more frightening for those who fled occupied Norway in fear of their lives during the war. It was a strange feeling to be looking for tracks in the snow that had long since disappeared in pursuit of a mysterious border guide and two refugees who had vanished some twenty-four years earlier.

Once on the Swedish side, I drove for miles without seeing anyone. Then all of a sudden, the police station appeared, round a bend. It was just after one o’clock. The turnoff was marked with a police sign, and there were two unmistakable Swedish police cars parked outside. The station itself was more like a simple two-storey family house, and lay at the foot of one side of a long valley.

Chief of Police Hans Andersson had coffee and cakes waiting for me in his office. He was more or less as I had imagined: a slightly greying man in his sixties, about half a head shorter than me, but a bit heavier all the same. His back was still straight, his eyes still bright, his handshake firm and his smile friendly. But his voice was gentler than expected, and his first sentence even more unexpected.

‘Welcome. Always nice to get a visit from a fellow countryman!’

He chuckled at my surprise and explained.

‘Once upon a time, it was Hans Andersen from Norway – I started my training there. But then I met a beautiful young girl from these parts one Easter holiday and life turned out the way it did . . . I trained as a policeman in Gothenburg and have served here ever since.’

He quickly leaned over towards me and lowered his voice when he continued.

‘It has not always been easy. The dissolution of the union was only a couple of decades old and the older generation still harboured a good deal of prejudice against the Norwegians. My father-in-law said very early on that he could accept a Norwegian as his son-in-law, but he could not accept his grandchildren having a Norwegian surname. So Hans Andersen became Hans Andersson.’

He paused and chewed pensively on a bun.

‘Things got better for a while, but then the war broke out and it all got more complicated again. In the first two years of the war, there was considerable sympathy for the Germans, and a firm belief that they would win the war. You know, perhaps, that the Norwegian foreign minister Koht came to Sälen in 1940 only to be told that he was not welcome here and that the king could risk being imprisoned if he came to Sweden.’

I nodded and signalled that he should continue. I realized that this was going to be a long and interesting conversation.

‘Fortunately, the mood soon changed in 1942 to 1943. News of the executions and arrests in Norway drew more attention and it became increasingly obvious that the Germans were on the defensive. The orders from Stockholm came through that refugees coming from Norway should be welcomed and well looked after. We adopted a very pragmatic approach to the situation. The refugees were first registered properly here in the office on the ground floor. Then they were taken up to the living room in my flat upstairs to celebrate with coffee and food. More than once we put them up overnight in one of the guest rooms. There were many great moments, as I am sure you can imagine. I saw some of the happiest people I have ever seen in my life outside this building during the war.’

‘Do you remember when it was that you met Harald Olesen for the first time?’

He nodded and smiled happily.

‘I remember the date very well, because it was the day before Christmas Eve 1942. They had walked through the night and came down the side of the valley shortly after breakfast. We had just started decorating the Christmas tree when they came. I found out what his real name was much later. During the war, he was called Hawkeye here on the Swedish side. The name is from a Red Indian book and is very fitting. Harald Olesen’s profile resembled a hawk, and he had better eyesight than most. He was nearly fifty by then, but looked much younger. I have thought about it later – the code names were perhaps rather risky, even though we seldom used them. The name Hawkeye was well suited to Harald Olesen, and Deerfoot fitted his partner remarkably well. I once mentioned it to Harald Olesen, but he just laughed and said that no one would suspect Deerfoot of anything, and that in fact the name Catpaw would have been even better. Which was true. Deerfoot was in many ways a remarkable young man. He was incredibly light on his feet. In both summer and winter, Deerfoot seemed to float, and we often joked that he did not leave any tracks, not even in newly fallen snow. Never before or since have I seen a person dance so lightly over the snow as Deerfoot. It was always as if he was tightly sprung, ready to pounce. Like a featherweight boxer, if you see what I mean.’