The Man in the Window (33 page)

Chapter 41

The Ladies Speak

    Once again Police Inspector Gunnarstranda drove to Haslum and the well-maintained suburban terraced houses to pay Emmanuel Folke Jespersen a visit. This time he had not warned him of his impending arrival. Hence the reaction when he rang the doorbell was a little slow in coming. He looked up at the frosty, blue sky which presaged another cold snap. He breathed in and at length heard the sounds of an elderly man tottering painfully to the front door. 'You again,' Emmanuel Folke Jespersen said when at long last he opened the door. 'Don't you ever get tired?'

    He turned and trudged ahead of the policeman into the flat. Panting, he paused in the doorway to the living room as the detective slipped off his over-shoes.

    Emmanuel slumped back into his wide armchair and looked around. 'Don't have any coffee,' he mumbled. 'Don't have any biscuits…' He took the remote control from the coffee table and raised it. 'We'll have to make do with Schubert.'

    'How did they meet?' Gunnarstranda asked as the first sweet violin tones spilled into the room. 'Do you have any idea?'

    'Who?' Emmanuel asked. 'Amalie and her husband Klaus Fromm.'

    Jespersen threw his arms into the air. 'My God, you're persistent, and efficient.' He let out a deep sigh. 'Klaus Fromm was his name, that's right. And Amalie…'

    'I'm annoyed that you have withheld this information from us,' Gunnarstranda interrupted with severity.

    Emmanuel shook his head. 'Withheld? No. I know almost nothing about Fromm. And the name had completely escaped me. I know a little more about Amalie. She was Reidar's childhood sweetheart.'

    He pointed the remote control at the stereo and lowered the volume. 'Reidar and Amalie were always together from very young. They were the same age. And they didn't live very far from each other - in St Hanshaugen. Arvid and Reidar and I - we lived over a shop in Geitmyrsveien, next to the sharp bend, you know the one, above Diakonhjemmet, the hospital. Amalie's family lived in a block closer to Ullevål. And they became lovers.' Emmanuel splayed his hands. 'It happens nowadays, too. But I don't know that we used the word
lovers.
Things change over time. What is certain is that Reidar spent more time with Amalie than with his friends. Amalie was Reidar's great love. They were inseparable. Like two magnets, they attracted each other and there was nothing they could do about it, it seemed.'

    Emmanuel folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back. 'When you were leaving last time, I wondered whether I should tell you what I'm going to tell you now. But I decided you would have to make some progress first, at least winkle out the name of her husband. In a nutshell, if what I'm going to tell you should turn out to be relevant to your case, I thought you would first have to prove its relevance. Perhaps that can't be done - proving relevance. But at least you have proved how hard-working you are. I can't help you much with the story of Amalie's marriage. But I do know how they met. Amalie's family had connections in Germany. Her father may have studied there or they may have had distant relatives. I have no idea. Our family always went to Tjøme in the summer; Amalie and family went to Germany. She met her husband-to-be one summer, either '38 or '39. He was mature - much older than her. You can imagine it. I suppose Fromm had more to offer her than Reidar. And after that summer things were never the same between Amalie and Reidar. She finished it. But then there were those opposite poles, they were fatally attracted, and she was engaged to another man from another country.'

    'Klaus Fromm?'

    'Of course. The love between Amalie and this man was my brother's great torment during his younger years.'

    Gunnarstranda writhed with annoyance. 'And you just kept your mouth shut about this?'

    Emmanuel stared at the policeman with disdain: 'When she returned after the summer holiday - I think it must have been in '38 - the tragedy was, you see, that Amalie and Reidar continued to be a kind of couple. While she couldn't quite let go of him, it was clear that things were not as they had been once. She even wore a ring - can you imagine! Engaged to an older man living in Germany. Well, I don't know what to say. It was this magnetism between them that destroyed everything. Instead of two of them there were now three.'

    'This lady betrayed your brother and got engaged to a German, whom she later married. Your brother risked his life fighting against the Germans.'

    'Life can be like that,' Emmanuel said diplomatically.

    'It's incomprehensible.'

    'Mozart died a pauper. A lot of things are incomprehensible, Inspector.'

    'Some things can be explained too.'

    'Like what?'

    'Yesterday I had an officer go through the files in Bertrand Narvesens vei. He found a strange document. It's an invoice issued in 1953. It was made out to a newspaper in Buenos Aires and addressed to a gentleman by the name of Klaus Fromm.'

    Emmanuel frowned. 'Why is that so incomprehensible?'

    The detective took a deep breath. 'I cannot comprehend how your brother could do business with Amalie's husband after the war!'

    Emmanuel was breathing heavily. 'There's nothing to comprehend. Reidar was a down-to-earth pragmatist, through and through. He was no uncompromising Hamlet! He was Reidar Folke Jespersen. The war was over. There was no one to kill any more, nothing to fear any longer. What sense was there in remaining enemies - least of all with Klaus Fromm? What was the point of continuing hostilities after the war?'

    'I can't make what you are telling me add up,' Gunnarstranda interrupted obstinately.

    Emmanuel pursed his lips with exasperation. 'And why not?'

    'Klaus Fromm was not just anyone. He was part of the German Occupation Forces in Norway. He signed the death certificates of innocent men - in retaliation against your brother's actions. This man was the personification of every man's hatred for the occupying power. Amalie Bruun chose this man. Your brother must have perceived this as offensive.'

    'And how can you claim that?'

    'It's obvious. She betrayed your brother and instead chose someone who represented everything he was fighting against, everything he put his life at risk to crush. She couldn't have done anything worse to him.'

    'And you have the audacity to express an opinion about this?' Emmanuel's eyes were flashing with anger. 'You have the audacity to set yourself up as a judge over two people's love for each other, people you don't know?'

    Gunnarstranda sat down and crossed his legs, struggling to keep his composure. 'But am I mistaken in anything I have said?' he asked in a gentler tone. 'Didn't she do what I said? Didn't she choose to marry Klaus Fromm? Wasn't he a judge during the war, in the most hated building in Norway, second only to the Nazi prison, Mollergata 19?'

    'Yes,' Emmanuel said. 'She did all that. But does that mean you have a right to judge her?'

    'Maybe I don't, but your brother must have felt he had that right.'

    Emmanuel stared blankly at the policeman for a few moments. 'You're forgetting that Amalie and Klaus

    Fromm loved each other. What do you think they should have done?'

    The policeman fell quiet.

    'Should she have taken my brother when she loved someone else? Have you ever thought what view of humanity you are defending? Should Amalie Bruun have lived on her own - gone into a nunnery just because she loved a German, a man who was born in the wrong place on the planet'

    'Klaus Fromm was a murderer.'

    'No, he was no murderer.' Emmanuel shook his head with vigour. 'My brother was a murderer. Klaus Fromm was a German soldier doing an office job.'

    'He was a judge, not an office worker, and he could have chosen different work.'

    'Could he? The post in Norway was the job he was given - a job he chose to be near the woman he loved, to whom he was engaged.' Emmanuel leaned forward across the table. 'I understand your frustration. But the world is not always easy to understand. Sometimes things happen as they happen. The marriage between Amalie and Fromm would have been nothing out of the ordinary - had it not been for the war. Fates and dramas such as those Amalie, Fromm and Reidar experienced are enacted all over the world a hundred times every day. But on this occasion it went wrong. It was the war that destroyed Amalie and Fromm and Reidar. You can't blame any of them. There is no dishonour in love. People who fall in love are innocent, whoever they love and for whatever reason they love.'

    Gunnarstranda clenched his teeth in annoyance: 'You say she met Fromm in 1938. At that time Fromm had been a member of the NSDAP for four or five years. I know he has an SS record from at least 1934. The rosy idealized picture you were painting does not stand up. Amalie Bruun was, it is true, seventeen or eighteen when they met, but she threw herself into the arms of a man who in all probability was already a murderer, at the very least an avowed fascist!'

    'But are you going to blame this young girl for that?' Emmanuel threw his arms into the air in desperation. 'Even Chamberlain had a naive view of the German Nazis. And he was the English Prime Minister. How can you demand political awareness from a woman in love - a teenager? In Norway we had a free press and not just that - the general public refused to accept the true nature of the Nazis' aggressive expansionism and demands for Lebensraum in the 1930s. Amalie was a young girl who fell in love with a man; that was all. What do you expect of a teenager? You know that Reidar began his resistance work by printing an illegal newspaper, down at old Hammerborg, don't you? Well, do you know who wrote in that newspaper?'

    Emmanuel paused for theatrical effect. 'You don't,' he said in triumph. 'You don't know who clattered away on the typewriter - the King's appeals, news from London - who crept down in the evenings, risking life and limb to write in the rag? You don't know. It was Amalie Bruun. She worked in the German administration, but she was a patriot. She risked her life for her country. It wasn't her bloody fault she was in love with a man who was not my brother!'

    Emmanuel banged a clenched fist down on the table and sat gasping for air after his outburst.

    Police Inspector Gunnarstranda gazed thoughtfully at the plump man leaning against the table and struggling to wipe away the sweat. 'Well, I'll give you that,' he said. 'I'm sure you're right, and as for what Amalie Bruun and the German felt for each other, it's neither my job nor anyone else's to pass judgement. But I do know that your brother never forgot Amalie Bruun.'

    'No one would ever be able to forget Amalie Bruun. I haven't forgotten her either - even though I never had a relationship with the woman. You have to remember one thing,' Emmanuel said with solemnity. 'Amalie was an unusual woman, with regards to both beauty and intelligence. It's not so strange to yearn, is it? What about yourself? I've heard you lost your wife and you're a widower. Don't you yearn?'

    'Keep me out of this!' Gunnarstranda snarled.

    Emmanuel shook his head gravely. 'Well,' he said. 'Since you're not mature enough on that score, let me give you an instance from the drama of my own life instead. On 4th October 1951 I observed a dark-haired beauty on platform 4 of the old 0stbane station. I walked past and we had eye-contact for four seconds. Not a week has gone by since then, not a single week in fifty years, when I haven't thought about the woman - on platform 4 - but I have never seen her again. The memory of the dark-haired woman is one of many instances when I took the wrong decision and allowed fate to lead me astray. I'm sorry, Inspector Gunnar- stranda. The fact that my brother still had yearnings for

    Amalie Bruun is of no importance. It's neither here nor there.'

    'Last time you told me that Reidar was obsessed with ownership.'

    'Owning things, not people.'

    'Do you think he was always able to distinguish?'

    'Yes.'

    'I think you're hiding something.'

    'Dear Inspector, have you ever heard the expression: let sleeping dogs lie?'

    'I know you're holding back a matter of vital importance!'

    Emmanuel wiped away more sweat. 'I'm holding back nothing.'

    'Yes, you are,' the policeman said. 'The events in this love triangle must have been quite exceptional. Fromm came to Norway in 1940. Reidar was betrayed and fled the country in 1943. Amalie and Fromm got married in the autumn of 1944. In the period from 1940 to 1943 the eternal triangle is played out, a drama which you in your detachment flick onto the floor like a dollop of butter. But what are you actually saying? Yes, you do imply elements of jealousy, lies, grudges, envy, illegal activities, silence, secrets, deception - a whole cauldron of turbulence and passions which according to you stop bubbling and boiling as soon as peace is announced. For me this is totally incomprehensible. But why does it fail to make sense up here?' The policeman tapped his temple and went on to answer his own question: 'Because I have the feeling some information is missing, the information that would allow me to understand what actually happened.

    But you were there. You saw them. You talked to them. There's something you're holding back. There's something you know that I don't.'