The Last Pilgrim (19 page)

Bergman felt his pulse quicken at the thought that Kolstad might slip through his fingers. Maybe he was already dead.

“Do you keep a list of visitors?” he asked.

She reached for a blue folder.

Bergmann took the folder and sat down on one of the blue chairs lined up against the wall.

It only took him about five minutes to find Carl Oscar Krogh’s name.

On May 20, four days after the three skeletons were found, Krogh had paid a visit to Marius Kolstad, his old comrade in the Resistance.

CHAPTER 27

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Ullevål Hospital

Oslo, Norway

Sitting in the corridor outside the intensive care unit, Bergmann tried to keep his eyes on the newly waxed linoleum floor. Even though Hege worked in the Gastroenterological Surgery Department, he was still afraid that she might come around the corner at any moment. He didn’t want to run into her. He didn’t want to know anything about her new life. He should have come to grips with things by now, but he hadn’t.
Never again,
he thought.

A door clicked open and Bergmann jumped at the sound. A male nurse came out, turned left, and headed briskly down the corridor.

He stared at the white double doors ahead of him, each of which had a round window like a porthole. Finally he sighed loudly, glanced at his watch, and opened the case file he’d brought along.

Krogh had liquidated Gudbrand Svendstuen in March 1943. Did Svendstuen have any descendants? He was about to take his cell phone from his inside pocket when the doors opened again.

“Inspector Bergmann?” said a dark-haired woman in a white coat who now stood in the doorway. Two nurses were conversing quietly behind her. An elderly woman sat in a chair next to the wall. Judging by her body language, she seemed to be trying to hide the fact that she was crying. One of the nurses knelt down beside her.

Bergmann silently prayed that Marius Kolstad was still alive.

The woman in the white coat had a pleasantly firm handshake as she introduced herself as the attending physician.

“One of them, at any rate,” she said with a smile. She told Bergmann that he was in luck because Kolstad was awake.

The door closed behind them. Everything seemed to move twice as fast in the ICU than out in the hall. The nurses walked quickly, their faces somber, halfway on the path between life and death.

The old man was lying in bed, the only patient in a semiprivate room, with an oxygen mask on the pillow next to him. His face was more yellow than white, but his skin lacked the leathery texture that many other old people had when they were dying. His skin was stretched tight over his skull and cheekbones, thin as rice paper and just as transparent, though with a scattering of liver spots. His veins were thin and dark blue, and he had dark circles under his eyes. A tube in one nostril was supplying him with oxygen, and an IV had been inserted in his gaunt arm, which lay on top of the covers. Despite every indication that Marius Kolstad was on the verge of dying, his eyes gleamed bright blue, as if he were still a young boy with his whole life ahead of him.

Without moving his head, Kolstad looked up at Bergmann as he leaned over him.

“Do you smoke?” Kolstad asked Bergmann. His voice was raspy, and there was a gurgling sound from deep in his throat, as if dark tar were bubbling up.

Bergmann nodded.

“Keep on smoking,” said Kolstad. “It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as they say. They give you a lot of morphine. And it’s completely legal, even for a policeman.”

Kolstad gasped for breath and reached for the oxygen mask, but quickly gave up. Bergman moved to pick it up, but Kolstad waved him away.

Bergmann pulled up a chair and sat down.

“It’s about Carl Oscar. Am I right?” said Kolstad quietly.

Bergmann nodded. The old man turned his head so he could look him in the eye.

“A god-awful turn of events,” said Kolstad.

If you only knew,
Bergmann thought.

“Why would anyone kill Carl Oscar?” Kolstad said as he once again reached for the oxygen mask. Bergmann looked at his bony fingers, noting how similar they were to the skeletal hand of Agnes Gerner.

The old man took his time filling what was left of his lungs with oxygen. Bergmann hoped that Kolstad wouldn’t die right in front of him.

“The dead . . .” said Kolstad with his eyes closed. “The dead tell no tales.” He opened his eyes.

“No,” said Bergmann, not sure what he meant by his own response.

“So it was a bad scene up there? At his place?”

Kolstad coughed for a long time, his throat gurgling.

Bergmann hesitated. Was there any real risk? Kolstad could die at any moment.

“Krogh . . . was killed with a knife,” he said.

Kolstad closed his eyes again. He seemed exhausted. Maybe this was all too much for him.

“A knife?” he whispered, breathing harder.

“A Hitler Youth knife,” said Bergmann.

Marius Kolstad lay motionless, seeming not to comprehend what he’d just heard.

Bergmann was starting to think this was pointless. Kolstad had nothing to say. He looked around the room and then out the window. The sight of the green leaves of the birch tree gave him a sudden urge to be outside in the fresh air.

“So they finally got him, those bastards. They got him too,” said Kolstad, his eyes still closed.

“What do you mean?” asked Bergmann, leaning forward on his chair, but it was no use. Kolstad seemed to have dozed off again. Yet something was going on inside that head of his.

“The dead tell no tales,” Kolstad repeated. “Did you know that?”

Bergmann glanced discreetly at the clock on the wall. Kolstad was talking nonsense. That was all.

“Carl Oscar . . . fell apart after Karen died.”

“His wife?”

Kolstad nodded. Bergmann jotted something down in his notebook. Then neither of them spoke for a moment. The only sound in the room was the faint hissing of the ventilation system and a muted thud from out in the corridor.

“What did you mean when you said ‘those bastards’?” asked Bergmann. “The Germans?” He turned the page in his notebook and wrote down “bastards” followed by “Germans” and two exclamation marks.

Kolstad cautiously moved his arm with the IV. Then he tilted his head slightly in what looked like a nod.

The Germans,
thought Bergmann. That seemed a bit implausible. Anyone could have purchased a Hitler Youth knife on the Internet.

“I understand that Krogh came to visit you on May 20. Is that right?’ he said. “Did he mention anything about the three bodies that were discovered in Nordmarka?”

“What three bodies?” said Kolstad. Then, before Bergmann could say anything, “Oh, yes, right. Those three.” Those few words seemed to have cost him more effort than he possessed, and his head sank into the big white pillow. Kolstad lay there gasping for breath, but he didn’t reach for the extra oxygen that the mask would give him.

When the old man had regained control of his breathing, Bergmann asked, “So you don’t know anything about them?”

“No,” he rasped. “They might have been Germans, for all I know . . . They were capable of anything.”

Kolstad’s eyes fell shut. He lay so still that only the EKG monitor indicated that he was actually still alive. Bergmann didn’t understand Kolstad’s last remark. Why would the Germans have killed a woman who was engaged to a prominent Norwegian Nazi?

“What did the two of you talk about?” Bergmann asked. “You and Krogh.”

“The war,” whispered Kolstad. “What else would we talk about? We never talked about anything but the war.”

Bergmann was about to respond, but Kolstad spoke first.

“But it was just the same old stuff . . . Carl Oscar didn’t mention anything that might help you. I just don’t understand it. Why would anyone . . .”

Kolstad’s voice faded, and his head sank even deeper into the pillow. Bergmann watched the glucose drip from the bag on the stand next to the bed and flow through the tube into the arm of this living skeleton. He studied the man’s face. The steady heartbeat on the EKG indicated he was asleep.

Bergmann decided to leave. There wasn’t much more he could do here.

But before he could get up, he felt Kolstad’s cold hand on his arm. His grip was firm. There was still strength in the old man’s fingers.

“There’s only one thing about the war that still bothers me. I’ve made peace with all the rest.” Kolstad spoke so quietly that Bergmann had to lean forward to hear him.

“Kaj.”

“Kaj?”

“If only you could find out what happened to Kaj.”

Kolstad began coughing, and the EKG surged.

“The Germans got him. I think those bastards got him in the end. And now they got Carl Oscar too.” Kolstad gripped Bergmann’s arm with amazing force. “Kaj,” he said again.

“Kaj who?” asked Bergmann.

“Carl Oscar and I went to Stockholm when we heard that Kaj had been found dead.”

Bergmann nodded, keeping his gaze fixed on Kolstad, who now closed his eyes.

“We tried everything, but they stopped us at every turn.” His fingers released their hold on Bergmann’s arm, but the EKG was still beeping rapidly. Under the white hospital gown, Bergmann could see the sensor attached to the left side of Kolstad’s chest.

“What . . . ?”

Kolstad opened his eyes, gasped for breath, and motioned for the oxygen mask. Bergmann handed it to him.

“Who is Kaj?” he asked, his voice louder than he’d intended.

“Kaj spelled with a
j
, not an
i
,” said Kolstad. “Remember that. Kaj.”

“Okay. Kaj with a
j
.”

Kolstad put his hand on the oxygen mask, shook his head, and opened his eyes wide. The EKG emitted a shrill sound that Bergmann knew was a distress signal. He pulled the cord for the nurse, silently cursing.
Who is this Kaj?
he wondered.

Kolstad suddenly seemed to have taken in enough oxygen and removed the mask from his face. His eyes filled with tears, and he raised his hand to touch the solitary tear that spilled from his left eye.

“What makes me so sad,” Kolstad said, “is that nobody remembers Kaj anymore.” He held out his wrinkled hand toward Bergmann. “Nobody,” he repeated. “And he was the best, you know. No one was greater than Kaj. Not even Carl Oscar. Or Max.”

Bergmann was about to speak when the door opened.

“You’ll have to leave now. We can’t have him getting upset,” the nurse said sternly, as if Bergmann were trying to kill the old man.

Kolstad held up his hand toward her, tugging at the stand with the IV drip, and grimaced.

“Leave us alone,” he said to her. “Please.”

“I’m staying here,” said the nurse.

Kolstad motioned for Bergmann to lean close. His voice was now nearly inaudible.

“Those fucking Swedes made us drop the case. Carl Oscar said there was something fishy about the whole thing. Something didn’t seem right. We went to Stockholm a few days after Kaj’s body was found. We were strongly warned not to proceed any further. Carl Oscar took it hard. Kaj’s death, I mean. Very hard.”

Kolstad closed his eyes, and a whistling, gurgling sound came from his throat. It didn’t take a doctor to understand what the EKG was showing. The old man’s pulse was more rapid than his heart could stand. Another nurse came into the room.

“You need to leave now,” said the first nurse without even looking at him.

“But I have to find out what he’s talking about!” he practically shouted.

The doctor who had escorted Bergmann into the room earlier had now returned and was staring at him with wide eyes, as if she’d taken some sort of stimulant and was on her third shift.

“Out,” said the doctor. “Out. Now.”

There was hardly a soul in sight outside what was once the biggest hospital in northern Europe. Only one poor man in a wheelchair who was trying to roll a cigarette. Bergmann took out his own cigarettes and went over to sit on a bench in the little green park near the front entrance. After a couple of drags he felt calmer. His thoughts were consumed by one thing: the name he’d written down in his notebook. Kaj.

In the supermarket later that afternoon, Bergmann filled his cart with too many items, in an unconscious attempt to hide how lonely he felt. As he approached the checkout stand, he wondered who he was trying to fool—himself or the young cashier. Maybe he wanted her to think that he had more waiting for him at home than the little notebook burning a hole in his pocket.

Back at his apartment, he emptied a can of stew into a saucepan, set it on the stove, and turned on his PC. He left the rest of the groceries in the front hall. He’d bought more than he’d ever be able to eat, so what did it matter whether he put the food in the fridge, since he’d be throwing most of it out anyway. He wondered fleetingly who would sit at his bedside when he found himself on his deathbed like Marius Kolstad, but quickly dismissed the thought.

He typed “Kaj Second World War” into the search field.

The screen filled with hits.

“Kaj Holt, 1913–1945.” That had to be him.