The Last Pilgrim (7 page)

“Don’t tell me adieu. Only auf Wiedersehen.”

CHAPTER 8

Saturday, May 17, 2003

Nordmarka

Oslo, Norway

All the details were accentuated with a sharp clarity in the gray light. Tommy Bergmann cast a final glance at the three skeletons, which now lay in the daylight under the thin white fabric of the tent.
Is this all a human being is?
he wondered, gazing at the skulls’ gaping holes where the eyes, nose, and mouth should be. He felt uncertain and clumsy as he confronted this sight, but it seemed there was nothing more for him to do. It had been twenty-four hours since he’d last slept, and twelve hours of digging hadn’t given him and his colleagues anything more to go on other than the poor wedding ring. The only thing that was clear was that the two adults had been shot in the head; no immediate cause of death had been determined for the child. Bergmann leaned over the excavation and held his hand over the little brownish head. According to the forensic team the child must have been seven or eight years old. Its mother was undoubtedly the woman with the gold ring—which promised her the eternal fidelity of this Gustav—who lay beside the child and grimaced up at the roof of the tent. But as to the identity of the third person, nobody in the tent had any theory, except for vague assumptions that it might be Gustav himself, or maybe Gustav’s wife’s lover. Twelve hours of digging had yielded only one ring; if the third person was indeed Gustav, he should have had a ring too. Which was why Bergmann had proposed the theory of a lover.

But as the sun broke through the morning mist, Bergmann knew that he could no longer think clearly enough to solve this mystery. He should have gone home hours ago. And even though spending Independence Day all alone in a three-room apartment on Lambertseter might not have been what he was dreaming of, his only alternative was to spend his day off with three old skeletons deep in the forests of Nordmarka. And he certainly had no intention of doing that.

But the thought of the child bothers the hell out of me,
he mused as he stepped out of the tent. The clicking of a dozen cameras filled the air. Bergmann looked up, momentarily the subject of the insatiable and tireless press chasing a juicy murder story. He exchanged a few words with one of the reporters, who looked like he’d been freezing in the woods for a couple of hours. Bergmann offered a few vague clichés and referred all the reporters to the police spokesperson. Then he headed for home, taking the narrow path lined with huge spruce trees.

After a few minutes he stopped and turned around, peering through the forest. H
e thought he’d seen something move out of the corner of his eye.

No,
he told himself. The bright sunshine gave him a confidence that he’d lacked the night before.

“Gustav,” Bergmann murmured as he descended the main path. He stopped and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. What had happened up there?

CHAPTER 9

Wednesday, May 30, 1945

Rindögatan 42

Gärdet

Stockholm, Sweden

Detective Inspector Gösta Persson had sternly asked not to be disturbed as he ate lunch. But there was a knock on the kitchen door before he was even halfway through his sandwich. He got up. There was another knock, but Persson just stood there staring into space.
How can they play Zarah Leander?
he wondered, though he had long since turned off the radio in the living room, partly because he couldn’t stand that woman, and partly because he always ate his meals in silence.

There was a third knock on the door.

Persson stood by the kitchen window looking out at the backyard.

“Come in,” he said finally, but he didn’t turn around when the door opened. Instead he stared at a skinny birch tree out in the yard that looked just as dead as the Norwegian in the bedroom.

Someone behind him cleared his throat.

“This is Ms. Fredriksen from the Norwegian legation,” said the rookie officer.

“Next time don’t order a ham sandwich for me,” said Persson, wiping his fingers on a paper napkin. “If there is a next time.”

Slowly he turned around. The woman facing him was young, undoubtedly one of those who had escaped over the border a year or two ago, then rapidly found a job for herself at the legation, which apparently never had enough people. Her gaze was determined, almost challenging. She was the sort of woman Persson would have kept his distance from if he’d been younger.

“I’m actually not supposed to let you in here,” said Persson.

“This residence belongs to the Norwegian state,” said the young woman, cocking her head in such a way that he thought her hat might fall off.

“This is a crime scene,” said Persson.

There was a pause.

“So was he murdered?” she said at last, a bit too loudly, so that her words echoed in the empty corridor behind her.

Persson sighed.

“There are some indications that he was, yes.”
But I’m not going to confirm it until I’m certain I won’t be dragged into the case,
he thought.

He reached out his enormous hand and engulfed the woman’s pale little hand in his.

“Gösta Persson,” he said firmly. “Detective Inspector.”

The woman maintained her intense stare. Persson was the one who looked away first.

“Karen Eline Fredriksen. Secretary.”

He took his notebook out of his inside coat pocket and jotted down her personal information.

“Soon to be Krogh,” she said.

Persson looked up from his notebook.

“Excuse me?”

“Soon to be Krogh,” she said. “I’m getting married in a month.”

“Congratulations,” said Persson, studying her face for a moment. Strange how Karen Eline Fredriksen thought it important to stress that she was getting married. Her loose-fitting coat made him think she might be pregnant.

A future husband both blessed and damned,
Persson thought, putting his notebook and pen back in his pocket. With a hand lightly on her back, he ushered her out of the kitchen, down the dark hallway, through the sparsely furnished living room, and into the bedroom. He gave her no warning of what she would see when he opened the door.

Karen Fredriksen instantly covered her face with her hands as she murmured Kaj Holt’s name.

“Did you know him well?” asked the inspector after Karen had wiped her face with a handkerchief she took from her expensive handbag.

It was a long time before she answered. She stared out of the window, seemingly unaware that Persson had asked her a question.

He opened his mouth to ask her again, but she beat him to it.

“Yes. He . . . he was here several times. I mean, he lived here . . . the last year, year and a half . . . he . . . worked at the legation, I mean—”

“So you’re saying you knew him?”

“Yes.”

“And this is Kaj Holt?”

Persson pointed at the man on the bed, who by now had turned almost blue.

A single mascara-stained tear ran down her cheek. Then she pulled herself together and her expression changed, as though it were hardly unexpected that one of her colleagues had been found dead. Persson couldn’t put his finger on it, but something about her behavior gave him the feeling that she’d been prepared for something like this. It was as if she’d already known it when the phone rang at the Norwegian legation.

Persson gestured toward the door leading to the living room.

Then Karen did something entirely unexpected. She walked slowly over to Kaj Holt’s dead body, reached out her left hand, and stroked the hair on the right side of his head. Then she stroked the cheek that wasn’t covered with blood.

“I’m sorry,” she said as they walked back to the kitchen and sat down at the table. “He has . . . he recently had a daughter, and his wife . . .” She let the sentence ebb away.

“I understand,” said Persson. So he’d recently had a daughter. Why then would he take his life just now?

“Kaj was suicidal,” said Karen, as if reading his mind. She touched the kitchen table with her gloved right hand. Persson watched her, thinking how much more beautiful she was than his wife. Her corn-yellow hair and blue eyes made her look like an angel, or like a model who appeared in advertisements. Her black hat hid her eyes when she looked down for a moment.

“So you think he could have committed suicide?” Persson asked.

Karen Eline Fredriksen looked him in the eye. Her crimson lips parted.

“That’s for you to determine. I just wanted you to know that Kaj had been deeply . . . depressed this past year. The war took a great toll on him.”

She held his eyes with hers. Once again it was Persson who had to look away first. He nodded to himself. Her explanation sounded plausible.

“Tell me, does this look like his handwriting?”

Persson handed her the note.

Karen looked at the paper for a long while.

“It could be. But I can’t say for sure.”

A good thing you said that,
Persson thought.

“I’d like to take a look at something that we know is his handwriting . . . Do you have anything at the legation that Holt wrote? A letter or something?”

“I don’t really think . . .” Karen wiped her hand over her forehead, and her gaze slid toward the kitchen window, where a fly was bumping against the glass.

“I just want to be completely sure,” said Persson.

Karen nodded.

“I can assure you this will stay between the two of us. Have you notified Oslo that he was found dead?”

“I, or rather the legation, will let his wife know,” said Karen. “If that’s all . . .” She got up abruptly and straightened her beige coat.

“I’ll phone you about a letter or anything else you might have with Holt’s handwriting.”

“All right,” she said and extended her hand. He nodded when she asked if she could leave.

Persson underlined Ms. Karen Eline Fredriksen’s name twice in his notebook after he walked her to the front door. Then he wrote carefully, as if the paper were resisting the word
suicidal
. He thought,
Why didn’t you tell me the truth?

He stood and watched the ambulance personnel as they placed Kaj Holt on a stretcher. They had wrapped his head in a bandage. When they moved into the stairwell, Persson was still standing in the middle of the living room, looking through the doorway into the bedroom at the empty bed where the body had lain. The blood on the pillowcase had turned black.

He went through the apartment one more time. But there was nothing that might help him, no papers or folders, not even a newspaper. Only a set of sheets, some towels, and a Bible in the drawer of the nightstand, as if it were a hotel.

Persson finally ended up in the cramped, narrow kitchen. The fly buzzed over by the window, bumping repeatedly against the windowpane. Persson walked across the linoleum floor, took a dirty glass from the sink, and waited until the fly landed on the windowsill. Then he put the glass upside down over the fly. He closed his eyes. The blue irises of Karen Eline Fredriksen’s eyes were all he saw.

Who sent you here?
he wondered.

CHAPTER 10

Monday, May 19, 2003

Police Headquarters

Oslo, Norway

Tommy Bergmann pressed his forehead against the windowpane as he waited for a callback from Kripo. Far below on Åkebergveien the crowds looked like tiny Lego people, and the cars like the Matchbox versions he’d had as a child. He looked up toward the high-rises on Enerhaugen hill. They had always looked so misplaced in the center of town. He’d never been able to get used to the sight of them outside his office windows. The only thing he liked about them was that Hege had lived in a studio apartment there when he first met her. If there was one summer in his life he had nothing but good memories from, it was the summer when they met. The sweltering apartment, the light nights, a life that seemed as though it would never end, and the almost dreamlike feeling that everything was a little too good to be true.

That was many years ago now,
he told himself. Another life, another time. The image of him and Hege in that narrow bed of hers up on Enerhaugen was replaced by Hege lying on the bathroom floor at Lambertseter and whispering, “Please don’t kill me.” He mouthed the words to himself:
Don’t kill me, Tommy, please don’t kill me.

He slapped himself lightly on the cheeks and looked at his wristwatch to get his mind off Hege. He was counting down the hours until it was time for handball practice and hoping that Sara’s mother would show up. Her eyes, her laugh, and the joie de vivre she radiated always made him feel normal somehow. He imagined that she might be able to give him the peace of mind he seldom—or rather, never—felt. A sense of calm that might tell him it wasn’t dangerous to be loved. Wasn’t that what Hege had told him once? “You act as if you don’t want to be loved, as if it’s dangerous to let someone love you.” In recent weeks he had even begun to fantasize about whether something might work out between them.
Good Lord,
he thought now,
how naïve and pathetic.
He didn’t even know her name, or whether she was single. He’d barely spoken to her, just exchanged a few pleasantries a couple of times a week over the past six months. No doubt she believed he was just like other men. That was what Hege had believed.

He checked his watch one more time as he tried to recall the details of Sara’s nameless mother’s face. Then he forced himself to turn his attention back to his work. He enlarged the picture of the inside of the gold ring on his computer screen. He studied the engraving letter by letter for what must have been the tenth time that day, as though hoping to discover something new.

Y
OURS FOREVER
. G
USTAV
.

Who was Gustav?
Bergmann wondered.
And how long will it take before the guy at Kripo calls me back?