The Man in the Window (37 page)

    'My mother's dead,' Kirkenær broke in angrily. 'Why are you trying to blacken my mother's name?'

    'On no account would I dream of talking ill of your mother,' the policeman reassured him. 'I'm sure she was an exceptional woman. I believe, for example, that Reidar yearned for her all his life.'

    Kirkenær was breathing heavily down the line.

    'Did I say something wrong?' the policeman asked.

    Silence at the other end for a few seconds. Gunnarstranda stared with growing unease at the telephone. Then, in a dry, staccato voice, Kirkenær began to speak: 'At the crack of dawn on 8th May 1945 Reidar Folke Jespersen kicked in the door to my mother's house and dragged her out of bed. Her husband had been led away after the Germans surrendered and was being held in prison. I was two years old, lying in a cot in the same bedroom. But the Norwegian heroes ignored me. It was four o'clock in the morning when Reidar Folke Jespersen and five other men drove my mother out of town to a lay-by in Maridalen. There they cut off her hair. My mother described it to me, several times. There were six of them. Three of them raped her, one after the other. Two held her down and one - I'm sure you can guess who - stood watching. Afterwards she was left to get back to town on her own, wearing a torn nightdress and with a shorn head. Her child was alone in an empty, ravaged flat in Oslo. It was a hike of almost ten kilometres. And every time she met people on the road, she was given a blow to the back or they spat in her face. But she walked tall. She was bleeding down below, her body was soiled by the sperm of unknown men, there were cuts all over her face and body, but she marched the ten kilometres back to town with a straight back, because she had no intention of accepting, she had no intention of using the same human concepts of guilt. Her love was defined as treason. As a woman she had broken her oath of allégiance to Norway during the German occupation; she had given her love and her body to a German soldier. Thus she had insulted her country and those who were insulted presumed the right to beat her with sticks, spit at her, defile her and humiliate her.'

    'I understand both your mother's and your father's feelings in this matter,' Gunnarstranda began when Kirkenær paused.

    'Thank you, but you are in no position to under- stand,' Kirkenær interrupted again. 'Historical facts have two sides. Even the mob had feelings of honour at that time. Distinctions were made between people. Distinctions were made between those who lived in and out of wedlock. Women who were married to Germans and had children were transported out of the country, to Germany. But my mother never received this protection. Why not? Right. Because of Reidar Folke Jespersen. He could have turned a blind eye; he could have even used his influence to give me and my mother protection. After all, her husband was in prison.'

    'Don't you think your father received his punishment when he found out you were his son and that he had…'

    'You understand nothing, Gunnarstranda. These weren't anonymous men drunk on the intoxicating air of liberation who humiliated my mother. This was Reidar Follce Jespersen, the war hero, who came home to find his sex object taken by the occupying forces. For him it was not enough to win the war. He also had to destroy my mother. For him the war was not over until she was dead and publicly stigmatized.'

    'But he didn't take her life, did he?'

    'She died by her own hand when I was twelve years old. The doctors treating her diagnosed her illness as a psychosis. But they didn't know what I know. My mother was taken from me and killed on 8th May 1945. The person who should be blamed, Reidar Folke Jespersen, is dead now and is therefore no longer burdened with guilt.'

    'What are you going to do now?' the policeman asked with dread.

    'I'm going to finish off what I started. I want to take my revenge.'

    'I can't allow you to do that.'

    'I'm already beyond your authority. You can't do anything, nothing at all.'

    'You're forgetting that your actions affect others apart from you.'

    Kirkenær fell quiet, and Gunnarstranda went on: 'I'm here because I've been talking to your wife, Iselin. I've just come from her now. She is clearly innocent. Do not cause her any suffering. I'm asking you at least to take her into account. For the last time I demand that you come out with your hands above your head.' Gunnarstranda looked to his left. The unit leader had opened the door and got out of the car. He had had enough of listening to the conversation. He was leaning against the car door and giving orders over the radio. 'If you don't, you will be talking to someone else,' Gunnarstranda sighed. But Kirkenær had already rung off.

Chapter 48

Postlude

    Police Inspector Gunnarstranda looked very tired and drawn as he parked in the drive to Tove's house in Sæter. A stranger in a blue dressing gown opened the front door when he rang. She stared at him in confusion. He went in and walked past her. He continued up the stairs to the first floor. He paused because he could feel he was being observed. When he turned round, the woman in the dressing gown darted out of sight. Whispering voices came from downstairs as he put a hand on the door to Tove's flat. It wasn't locked.

    He stood with his back against the same door and met Tove's gaze from the armchair. Slowly she lowered the book she had been reading until it was in her lap.

    'Aren't you asleep?' he asked, looking at his watch.

    She rose to her feet. 'No, I was listening to the radio.'

    He nodded and hung up his coat and jacket.

    'Didn't you want to be there?' she asked.

    'No,' he said, rubbing his face with both hands. 'Police raids and guns are not my thing.'

    'They were saying on the radio…' she began.

    'Yes,' he broke in. 'I heard. He was shot.'

    Tove observed him and said nothing.

    Gunnarstranda slumped down onto a low sofa by the window and rolled himself a cigarette.

    Tove Granaas went to a corner cabinet beside the front door. It was brown and very old with small doors. She took out a bottle of whisky. 'You need a dram,' she said, filling a glass and passing it to him.

    'Have you got to go to work?' he asked.

    She filled her glass, then looked at her watch. 'In two hours.'

    He took a sip.

    'Now you can tell me,' she said.

    Gunnarstranda sat staring at his unlit cigarette. 'He sent his stepfather's uniform to Jespersen through the post. As a warning, or a threat, I suppose. The idea must have been to conjure up Klaus Fromm's ghost. But unfortunately for poor Kirkenær it wasn't Reidar who opened the parcel. His son, Karsten, did. The next step in the planned murder was to appear in front of his real father. To appear in the flesh - to be Nemesis in person. And that must have gone as planned. Reidar must have known that Amalie Bruun's son was his child, but he obviously thought that the boy didn't know. The Friday reunion went off as planned. Reidar recognized his son. That's the only explanation for him bringing forward the appointment with Amalie's lookalike that afternoon. And it also explains why he rang the solicitor and revoked his will - he had realized that Kirkenær knew and he would have to consider a further beneficiary. It also explains why he torpedoed the sale of the shop and agreed to a meeting with Hermann Kirkenær that same night without a murmur. For Kirkenær this was the third and decisive confrontation - a private meeting. Late Friday night the prodigal son returned. The two of the met downstairs in the shop, and revenge took its course.'

    'Revenge for what?'

    'His own wretched life.'

    'His life?'

    'Reidar committed a brutal assault on Kirkenær's mother when peace was declared. His mother suffered from depression as a result and committed suicide some years later. Kirkenazr was a war child without a home country, without a mother and father.' Gunnarstranda gazed into the distance. 'I don't think I have the energy for this roll-up,' he said and put it on the table.

    'Has he confessed?'

    Gunnarstranda raised his head. 'No.'

    The policeman sat rapt in thought. 'After killing his real father he must have put on his stepfather's uniform and put his blood-stained clothes in the box. Then he took the keys from Reidar's pockets and went to the flat…' Gunnarstranda paused.

    'Why did he break into Ingrid Jespersen's flat now, so long afterwards?' Tove asked.

    A thoughtful expression crossed Gunnarstranda's face. 'He said he was going to extract his revenge, but I don't understand why he wasn't already satisfied. If I have anything to reproach myself for, it is because I didn't press him harder on that point.'

    'He didn't say why?'

    'Not directly.'

    'Did he want to hurt her?'

    'It was a more grandiose plan than that.
I want my revenge,
he said. But he didn't say what he was avenging, apart from his mother's suicide. It's a bit odd, though, that stabbing his father wasn't enough for him. Ingrid Jespersen had nothing to do with what happened to his mother. What would he be avenging by hurting her?'

    'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,' Tove suggested.

    Gunnarstranda sighed: 'But he had his revenge when the old boy lay dead on the floor, didn't he?'

    'Where did Kirkenær go in the years after the war?' Tove asked.

    'Fromm went to Paraguay after the war, as lots of the top German Nazis did. He set up a newspaper.'

    'Amalie and the child?'

    'According to Iselin Varås, Kirkenær's wife, Kirkenær grew up in Paraguay, Germany and Norway.'

    'In Norway?'

    'Yes, Amalie's mother was from Tønsberg - the Kirkenær family.'

    The policeman's mobile phone hummed in the pocket of his coat in the hall.

    Gunnarstranda struggled to his feet. He exchanged looks with Tove as he took out the phone. 'Please be brief,' he said with a yawn.

    'Kirkenær will live,' Frølich informed him. 'His condition is stable and he's out of danger.'

    'Well, that's something.'

    'Do you think we've got our man, boss?'

    'We'll have to hope so. Why's that?'

    'Well, after the hostage drama went out on radio, a witness came forward and said he wanted to change his statement.'

Chapter 49

Rorschach

    Frank Frølich sat down in front of the computer screen and watched
Heat
on DVD - the long sequence where Val Kilmer and Robert de Niro shoot their way out of a police trap like commandos while Al Pacino, the cop, runs like a lame goat firing single shots from his automatic. He had the same feeling he always did when he watched the film; it had nothing to do with him not liking Pacino, but alongside de Niro and Kilmer he wasn't cool enough. At the same time it irritated Frølich that he supported the crooks every time he saw the film. He should have been writing a report on his interviews with Sjur Flateby and others, but he wasn't in the mood, and since he wouldn't be able to go home for another couple of hours yet, he made use of the computer's DVD player to give him the requisite sense of relaxation.

    Something in the atmosphere made him lift his head and glance towards the door. Gunnarstranda was standing in the doorway. Frølich paused the film. He shoved back his chair, away from the computer table.

    'There's light at the end of the tunnel, Frølich.'

    Frølich didn't answer.

    'Ingrid Jespersen says Kirkenazr was searching for something.'

    'In her flat? What?'

    'I have a suspicion I know what,' Gunnarstranda murmured. 'But it might take an hour or two,' he went on. 'We need a scanner and a good photo-editing program.'

    Frølich stood up.

    'This,' Gunnarstranda said, showing him the photograph of a German soirée towards the end of the war. 'The first time I saw this I knew there was something familiar about it.'

    'A face?' Frølich suggested.

    'Maybe. At any rate, there is something in this photo that a voice inside me tells me I should subject to a closer examination.'

    Two hours later Frølich had scanned in four photographs of a German party at Brydevilla during the war. He had printed them several times, rotated them on the screen, made them brighter, darker, improved the contrast and magnified them.

    'I can see it's the same woman,' Frølich said, pointing to Amalie Bruun. 'But what do you actually want me to do with this?'

    Gunnarstranda didn't answer straight away. He sat looking at the original photograph which showed Klaus Fromm in uniform, chatting casually to an unidentified person on a sofa.

    'I want you to magnify it one more time.'

    'To check out the lady?'

    'All of them. I want to have a closer look at the men,' Gunnarstranda explained, chewing his lower lip in consternation. 'Him in particular,' he added, pointing to Fromm.

    A further hour later they sat with a pile of prints in front of them. Some looked like non-figurative shadow painting and experimental art. Black mists and grey hues gave way to white expanses with scattered, tiny, black dots.

    'Reminds me of the Rorschach test,' Frølich said.

    'Hm,' Gunnarstranda brooded.

    'That's those inkblots forensic psychiatrists show their clients. They show one of these blots and if the guy thinks it looks like Queen Elizabeth's genitals, then he has got long-term impaired mental faculties and gets off.'

    'Exactly,' Gunnarstranda said, miles away.

    'The test's called Rorschach after some Swiss guy, I think…'

    'Him,' Gunnarstranda exclaimed, pointing to Klaus Fromm again. 'I want you to enlarge this fellow, as sharp as possible.'

    'What's the point? All you can see is grey porridge and inkblots.'

    'Try anyway.'

    'Ten more times,' Frølich said and moved the mouse up and across the image of Fromm.

    'Stop there,' Gunnarstranda said, excited. 'Back.'

    'What is it?'

    'Back, slowly.'

    Frølich obeyed. They saw an X-ray like silhouette of the man's shoes, trousers, his hands resting on his lap. 'There, yes,' said Gunnarstranda.

    Frølich was lost. They were looking at a mass of grey with dark shadows.

    'Can you enlarge it any more?'

    'I'll try.'

    The Windows hour-glass stayed on the screen until the greyish black mass of indefinable contours returned.

    'Yes!' Gunnarstranda said in a reverential whisper. He was shaking with excitement. He almost dropped the lighter as he lit his roll-up. 'Look,' he whispered, pointing to the screen.

    'I can't see anything.'

    'Yes, you can.

    'But what am I supposed to be looking at?'

    'At the picture.' Gunnarstranda held a quivering finger in front of one of the dark patches on the screen. 'Look at that, the medal. Can you remember seeing it before?'

    'No.'

    'Have a closer look.'

    Frølich stared. 'I give up,' he said at length.

    Gunnarstranda beamed. 'So near and yet so far,' he teased, not without arrogance. 'Print out what's on the screen anyway.'

    Frølich obeyed.

    Gunnarstranda stood up and held the paper as it slowly hummed its way out of the printer.

    'So, what do we do now?' Frølich asked.

    Gunnarstranda waved the print-out. 'Aren't you curious?'

    Frølich gave a measured nod.

    'If you have the inclination, and if you think you have the time, you can join me.'

    'Where?'

    'By the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.'