III
Silent and slightly puzzled, I followed Hauk Rebne Westgaard across the farmyard. We approached what from the outside looked like a very ordinary wooden cabin.
I realized that something was amiss when I saw that the door was locked from the outside; my host produced a key and unlocked the padlock before opening the door.
An even greater shock was waiting behind the door.
The wooden cabin was like any other modern home with a bedroom and a bathroom. The four walls were painted in four different colours – one red, one green, one yellow and one blue. There were no bookshelves or anything else on the walls. And on the floor, in the midst of building blocks and toy animals, sat a plump woman in her fifties.
I looked around for a child, but there was no one else in the room. It finally dawned on me when the woman jumped up, clapped her hands and shouted: ‘Food! Yum yum!’
I understood the full horror of my mistake when the woman turned towards us. Her face radiated a childlike joy, but her eyes were empty and uncomprehending. Her expression became fearful and her smile disappeared when she saw that her brother did not have food with him, but instead a man she didn’t know.
Fortunately, Hauk Rebne Westgaard dealt with the situation very calmly.
‘It’s too early for your morning snack, but you will get some food soon. In the meantime, this nice man has come to see us and would like to ask you some questions. His name is Kolbjørn,’ he said, in a friendly voice.
Her brother’s voice seemed to banish the child-woman’s fear straightaway. She clapped her hands again and said: ‘Visit! Hooray!’
She beamed up at me and held out her hand. Then she stood there looking at me expectantly as she rocked back and forth on her heels.
Having recognized my blunder, all I wanted to do was to turn around and run out. But that was not possible without frightening the fifty-year-old woman who it would seem had the mental capacity of a five-year-old. So I started by asking her what she was called.
She replied, delighted: ‘I’m called Inger!’
I thanked her and then asked dutifully if Hauk was a kind big brother.
She answered immediately: ‘Yes, Hauk is kind. He brings me yummy food.’
Her mouth smiled when she spoke, but in her eyes I could also see a deep, serious fear and uncertainty. And I thought to myself that this fear and uncertainty had lain hidden there for all these years. It had been there ever since the day in her lost childhood that she discovered that grown-ups she did not know asked questions she could not answer, more and more frequently. The day she understood that she would never be able to understand. As we stood there looking at each other now, she was back there again, the little girl who didn’t understand.
I tried to pull myself together and asked her if Hauk had brought her supper to her on Saturday evening, and if so, at what time. But as far as I could see there was no clock in the room, and the woman who lived here was not likely to have any concept of time. And I knew that a court would never place any importance on her testimony even if she could answer. The whole exercise felt pointless.
Suddenly she pointed down at the floor and said: ‘Look – I’ve built a tower of eight blocks!’
Her brother said it was a great tower and looked at me expectantly.
I said that it was very good and that I was grateful that she had been able to answer all my questions so well.
She nodded and waved gratefully as we left. The fear and uncertainty in her eyes had vanished. Once again, it was clear that she lived a good life here, without a care, in her eternal playroom.
Hauk’s hand was trembling slightly as he locked the door behind him. We walked together across the yard back to my car, without looking back.
‘I apologize for my blunder,’ I said, when we got to the car.
‘I perfectly understand. You had a duty to ask, and she was having one of her good, happy days,’ he said.
After a brief pause, he carried on: ‘That was one of the hardest responsibilities in the years that I struggled to save the farm. As I see it, I managed to escape the madness in my father’s family and my sister inherited it all. Sweet Inger is as happy as can be here and she must be allowed to stay here until she dies. The thought that she might be forced to leave and hidden away in some asylum cubbyhole was too awful to bear.’
I told him I fully understood. And it struck me that Hauk Rebne Westgaard was the incarnation of a good family man, just without having his own family. Having met him and his sister, I wanted to believe that he was innocent, as regards to both the death of Eva Bjølhaugen in 1932 and the death of Per Johan Fredriksen in 1972. But I was still not certain. It seemed to me that he, too, was a complex man with many faces.
IV
It was already ten past one by the time I got back to Oslo. There was a visitor waiting in my office, who had been sent there by my boss when he had demanded to talk to the head of the investigation. I was at first curious about my guest, only to be disheartened when I met him.
The lawyer Edvard Rønning Junior was sitting comfortably on my visitor’s chair, dressed as usual in a black suit, with a lorgnette and his briefcase on the table in front of him. This could have been from the 1950s, but the rest of him looked as though he had stepped straight out of the 1920s. The impression was in no way diminished when he started to talk.
‘Ah, there you are, Detective Inspector Kristiansen. And not before time. It is far from satisfactory that I have wasted the past thirty minutes sitting here waiting for you. It is even more unsatisfactory, however, for a defence lawyer not to know the name of his client, who is furthermore a minor, before the said client is dead. And none of this is made any better by the fact that the client died in police custody. Indeed, police scandal might be an appropriate phrase, if it is later proved that he was entirely innocent of the crime for which he stood accused. This would be highly unfortunate for both you and the police in general, and I will be strongly recommending that the deceased’s mother seeks compensation.’
I listened to him talk with a rising sense of panic. I had to admit that he had a point – it could be a very difficult case indeed.
Out loud, I simply said that it was hard to protect clients from themselves if they wanted to commit suicide and that we had spent a day and a half trying to identify his client as he refused to give us his name and no one had reported him missing. The question of guilt remained unresolved, but we were currently investigating other possible suspects and hoped that the lawyer would appreciate this.
This helped a little, but not enough. The lawyer looked at me pointedly over the top of his spectacles and answered: ‘The latter is, of course, positive, but in the current situation also a given. The investigation and your good self shall be granted sufficient time to establish the facts regarding the matter of his guilt. I do, however, expect to be informed immediately if there is any new evidence relating to the question of guilt that is of significance to my late client’s case. Furthermore, I also expect to be contacted in advance should you wish to talk to the deceased’s mother again. Her situation is, as I am sure you are aware, extremely difficult.’
I caught a whiff of idealism behind the lawyer’s formal language when he mentioned the mother. So I replied that I knew about the mother’s difficult situation, and that he would of course be informed as soon as the question of guilt with regard to his late client had been resolved.
The lawyer could not say that he was anything other than happy with that and so, after a brief, formal handshake, he left.
Edvard Rønning Junior’s visit lasted no more than five minutes. But it was still an uncomfortable reminder of the seriousness of my situation in terms of the investigation into the murder of Per Johan Fredriksen, and the tragedy of the boy on the red bicycle.