The Last Pilgrim (57 page)

Without thinking about what she was doing, Agnes picked up the footstool from in front of the desk and carried it over to the wardrobe. She opened the middle door.

The Welrod was still there, untouched, just where she’d left it, behind the piles of old toys on the top shelf. Quickly she unwrapped it from the towel and stuck it in the left sleeve of her coat.

At the door she paused and cast one last look around. In a few strides she crossed the room, picked up the photo album with pictures of Cecilia’s mother, and stuck it under her arm.

In the doorway she paused once again. The album suddenly felt too heavy. What was she thinking? She opened it and turned the pages until she came to the photograph of the young Gustav Lande and his wife, smiling and pregnant, sitting on the rock. It felt like the world split apart when she tore the picture from the page and stuffed it in the inside pocket of her coat.

CHAPTER 71

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Hotel Berlin

Lützowplatz

Berlin, Germany

Tommy Bergmann felt like he’d been through all this before. But this time he really did think that he’d been awakened by an air-raid siren. The remnants of a dream abruptly vanished from his mind. For a fleeting second he remembered everything, and then it was gone.

It took him a minute to realize it wasn’t an air-raid siren after all. It was his cell phone vibrating on the nightstand. Swearing under his breath, he fumbled for his watch.

“How’s it going with that guy?” said Fredrik Reuter in his ear. “Did you oversleep?”

“You know me too well,” said Bergmann. He sat up in bed and pulled up the covers. An image flashed through his mind of Hege coming out of the bathroom, dripping wet, to kiss him on the forehead and say she loved him. For a moment he imagined that he’d never done anything wrong.

“Have you made any progress?” asked Reuter.

“He admitted that Carl Oscar Krogh worked for him during the war, but that’s all. Maybe it was old Waldhorst himself who hacked him up,” said Bergmann, putting a cigarette to his lips. “If Krogh killed Agnes Gerner and Waldhorst loved her, he at least has a motive, even though the murder happened so long ago. I’m going back out there today to get his fingerprints.”

“Maybe I can spare you the trouble,” said Reuter.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve got a guy sitting right here in front of me in the office.”

Bergmann dropped some cigarette ash on the sheets. He swore and then brushed it onto the floor.

“A guy?”

“A suntanned roofer from Poland.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He was working on the roof of the house next door to Krogh’s place when Krogh was killed. He left for Poland the next day,” said Reuter. “Anyway, he saw a car drive away from Krogh’s house.”

Bergmann stopped smoking and held the cigarette distractedly between his fingers.

“Why hasn’t he mentioned this until now?”

“I told you. He was in Poland. They don’t have
Dagbladet
over there, Tommy. They just have crucifixes above their beds and outhouses in the yard. So he hasn’t read any of the Norwegian newspapers. In fact, he doesn’t even speak Norwegian. But when he came back home, he saw the pictures from the case in the papers and recognized the neighboring house.”

“Let me talk to him,” said Bergmann.

After a short pause he heard the man say on the phone in heavily accented English, “A car.”

“A car?”

“A car, for rent.”

“A rental car,” Bergmann murmured to himself. There might be bloodstains in the car. “What sort of car?”

“Red.”

“Red?”

The man on the phone fell silent. Bergmann felt his pulse pounding in his temples and noticed that he was more tense than he wanted to be.

“Newspaper,” said the Pole, using the Norwegian word,
avis
.

“Newspaper? What newspaper?”

“Avis . . . car.”

It took Bergmann a few seconds to realize the Pole meant the Avis rental-car company.

“What type of car?”

“A small Ford or Opel.”

“Why that car? There must have been other cars on the street.”

“Not many cars,” said the man on the phone. “Not many. This one drove very slow, almost not moving. Like the driver not paying attention. I don’t know . . .”

“An old man?” said Bergmann. “Was the driver an old man?”

Silence for a moment.

“I don’t know. I was up on roof. I couldn’t see, but I think two people.”

“Two?” said Bergman. “Two people?”

“Yes, two people.”

Bergmann closed his eyes for a moment. “Shit,” he murmured between clenched teeth. “Great. That’s all I need,” he said to the man. “Please give the phone back to Inspector Reuter.”

Reuter came back on the line.

“Call all the Avis rental-car offices,” said Bergmann, “and get copies of the driver contracts issued for all cars that were turned in on Sunday, June 8. Start with the office at the train station, then Oslo Airport and Lillestrøm.”

Reuter paused, as if for effect, before he said, “Do you think we’re complete idiots up here?”

Bergmann considered replying in the affirmative but decided not to.

“And fax everything to me here in Berlin.”

“Tommy, now that . . .”

But Bergmann had already picked up the information booklet on the nightstand and was rattling off the hotel’s fax number. Reuter reluctantly wrote it down. Bergmann could picture him: his face flushed, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose, his shirttail untucked, writing down the number on an old scrap of paper at his desk.

“And you’re not to do anything at all without Fritz,” said Reuter.

In the end, Bergmann grudgingly had to agree.

He was sitting in a shady sidewalk café on a side street off Kurfürstendamm when Reuter called again. Without making a move to pick up his phone, Bergmann downed the rest of his schnapps and studied the light shining through the golden beer in the other glass. After Reuter gave up, he lit another cigarette, thinking that the case was over. One way or another, it would be over in less than an hour. Then his phone rang again.

“Are you at the hotel?” asked Reuter.

“No.”

“Well, there’s a big stack of papers waiting for you when you get back, since you insisted on having copies.” Reuter’s voice sounded so resigned that Bergmann felt a growing disappointment replace the tension of the past few hours. It seemed that instead of wrapping this case up, the only thing he had to look forward to was more weeks of groping in the dark. Maybe it was too good to be true for a Polish roofer to provide the ultimate breakthrough in the case. An old drunkard, a crazy woman, and now a Polish roofer were all they had so far.

“So,” said Bergmann. “No Waldhorst? No Peter Ward?”

“No.”

“He may have used another ID, or taken the car back to another Avis office.”

“Possibly,” said Reuter. “Or taken it back the next day. I’ll do a hotel search too.” It didn’t sound like he thought that would prove fruitful. If someone committed a murder in a foreign country, there was only one important rule: to get across the border as quickly as possible. “Take a look yourself,” Reuter said. “But I can’t see anyone in those papers who bears any resemblance to an almost ninety-year-old German.”

CHAPTER 72

Sunday, September 27, 1942

Nordmarka

Oslo, Norway

After they’d been walking in Nordmarka for ten or fifteen minutes, the sky overhead turned almost black.

Cecilia was leading the way, a few steps ahead of Johanne Caspersen. Agnes Gerner walked a few paces behind the maid. She had her eyes fixed on the back of Johanne’s anorak. Then she turned around to see if anyone was following them. Had Johanne really said that about Waldhorst back at the house? She must have imagined it.

“I’m tired,” said Cecilia.

“A little exercise will do you good, Cecilia,” said Agnes. She glanced down at her boots to avoid tripping on the wet, slippery tree roots. At one point, the muddy path gave way beneath her feet and sucked her right boot into the ground—she had a fleeting fear that the earth was trying to pull her down into it. It took all her strength to yank her foot back out. The knapsack she had insisted on bringing felt as if it were filled with rocks and not with the waffles they’d made with the last of the butter Gustav had obtained from his German contacts.

Agnes stopped and stared down at the mud, looking for her boot. The ground was bubbling and soon filled up with murky water. She kept picturing herself shouting in the dark library of Waldhorst’s apartment.

How could she have lost her head like that?

Well, I just did,
she thought.

A stabbing sensation pierced her stomach, way down, close to her pelvis. Then the pain shot up to her left breast. Only now, deep inside this silent forest, did she grasp the truth. Maybe it was the baby inside of her kicking—as if the child knew everything about her.

She turned around again, as she’d already done countless times since they’d started on the path near Frognerseteren. She studied the woods, convinced the dark eyes of Peter Waldhorst were following them.

No,
she told herself.
There’s no one else here.
Not on the path and not among the trees. Not a soul. She turned once more to inspect the slope they had just descended, peering into the dark trees. A couple of raindrops struck the tip of her nose. She closed her eyes, which stung from exhaustion. She needed to stop thinking like this. She needed to calm down and accept that Waldhorst wasn’t following them. She reminded herself that only three cars had been parked near the trail, and they’d only run into two other people on the path, an elderly couple carrying empty berry buckets. No one wanted to go out walking in weather like this. And because so many people had been frantically picking berries because of this insane war, the woods were virtually stripped of them.

By now both Cecilia and Johanne were a good twenty yards ahead. Agnes stopped and watched them continue along the path.

What had once seemed impossible was now inevitable.

Would they notice if she suddenly turned around and began running back to Frognerseteren? Of course. And Johanne would report her at once. And where could she go? Where? She’d be arrested before the day was out.

She forced herself to start walking again. After a few steps she stopped to glance over her shoulder.

Was that a sound?

Was someone following them? In the shadows? Among the trees?

“No,” she whispered to herself. Three cars and two people. That was all. She started walking faster and soon caught up with the others. Because of Cecilia’s injured hip, it was easy to reach them. Much too easy.

Agnes stroked the child’s wet hair several times. Each time her hand shook harder.

They soon reached a small area that had been cleared of timber. Agnes stopped. At the end of the clearing she saw a narrow path; the forest around it appeared even more dense than it was along the main path.

“Over there,” she said, pointing in the direction of the path before she could change her mind. All three looked at each other in silence.

“We need to go home before it gets dark,” said Johanne. Her green anorak looked almost black, soaked through with rain. “Cecilia won’t be able to walk much farther.”

Agnes glanced up at the sky. In an hour or so it would be so dark that they’d have trouble getting home if they took the narrow path.

“Sure she can,” said Agnes. “Right, Cecilia? Doesn’t that look like an exciting path?”

Cecilia looked up at Agnes and gave her that special smile that only the two of them shared. Agnes turned away. She didn’t want the child to see that she couldn’t bear to smile back.

Without waiting for the maid, Agnes and Cecilia crossed the clearing and started down the path. After only a few steps, Agnes heard Johanne behind them, taking short, hurried steps. She slowed down and placed her hand on Cecilia’s shoulder. The girl had a secret little smile on her face, her determination clearly evident under Agnes’s hand. The stupidest thing the maid could have said was that Cecilia couldn’t go on. They should have done this more often; it would have made the child strong and healthy and happy.

Agnes suddenly felt that if she turned around now, she wouldn’t see Johanne’s face but instead all the greenery down by Westerham Ponds. Then she regretted thinking about that. Bess’s shattered skull flashed through her mind and then merged with the soundless scream of Torfinn Rolborg’s private secretary. Agnes tightened her grip on Cecilia’s shoulder. Overhead the black spruce trees seemed to be reaching for the sky, blocking out the last of the daylight.

After they’d walked for about ten minutes, the path seemed to be leading them toward another clearing. Agnes thought she could see a grove far ahead. She paused to let the maid walk past. Her boots sank into the ground as she watched Cecilia lead the way, with Johanne just a few steps behind her. Then she directed her gaze to the clearing up ahead.