On my way down the stairs, I thought how Per Johan Fredriksen really had been a very complex person with many faces, as his childhood friend Hauk Rebne Westgaard had said. And then I got something else to think about.
VI
It was as I opened the main door and stepped out onto Roald Amundsen’s Street that I saw him for the second time.
Just a brief glimpse, and he was doing nothing alarming. But, all the same, I felt a stab of fear when I saw him.
The man in the hat was dressed in a lighter suit and had no tie today. But he was wearing that same hat and he looked straight at me from where he was on the other side of the street.
He was standing still when I opened the door, but started to walk away as soon as he registered that I had seen him. I took three strides out into the road, but then stopped again without making any attempt to catch up with him.
The man in the hat was already about to disappear into the early afternoon crowds on the main street, Karl Johan. Even if I did catch up with him, I had no reason to demand an explanation. He had not done anything wrong, other than be in the same place as me twice within as many days – in two very different parts of town.
It could still be a coincidence, but I no longer thought it was. So I stayed standing where I was for a couple of minutes and racked my brains as to who the man in the hat might be and why he was interested in me. There was something alarmingly cold and calculating about him.
I wondered whether I should mention the man in the hat to Miriam or whether to spare her this for the moment. And then thought to myself that I would give my eye teeth to know what Patricia would make of this part of the story.
VII
At ten past two, the school bell rang to mark the end of the day at Tøyen School. As I walked through the gates I had to push against a stream of boys aged around fifteen. I wondered if they were the classmates of the dead boy on the red bicycle. If they were, they did not appear to be affected by the news of his death. Most of them had eager bodies and happy faces. Some of them were smiling, others kept their heads down. Some were in groups, others in twos and only a few alone.
The boy on the red bicycle would almost certainly have been one of those walking alone. I imagined that when the bell rang last Friday, he had walked by himself at the back of the crowd, with his worn satchel and limp. And now, on Tuesday, he was gone forever. There would be an empty desk in a classroom somewhere in this four-storey brick building.
According to a plaque by the entrance, Tøyen School had celebrated its ninetieth anniversary this year. And I thought about all the young people who had burst out through the gates over the years – many to a better life, and many to various forms of human tragedy
I met her leaving the staffroom on the first floor. She was a blonde woman of around thirty, about five foot two, and was hurrying towards the exit.
‘How can I help you?’ she said with a curious smile when I stopped her. I asked if Eveline Kolberg was around.
‘Yes, I’m Eveline Kolberg. But I have to collect my one-year-old from the babysitter before three,’ she added quickly, before I had a chance to say anything.
When I explained that I was a detective and that I wanted to ask her some questions about her now dead pupil, Tor Johansen, her immediate response was: ‘Well, the babysitter will have to wait a few minutes, then.’
She led me down the corridor and opened the door to a big classroom.
‘We have plenty of space now as the number of pupils has fallen,’ Eveline Kolberg commented with a wry smile as we sat down on either side of a brown desk.
The desk resembled its owner: small, tidy and in good condition. Exercise books for social studies lay in a neat, almost perfectly right-angled stack, parallel with the edge of the desk, ready for tomorrow.
‘There will always be a number of children with very sad fates in such a big school. But Tor Johansen was one of the saddest.’
She said this before I had even had time to ask a question, and there was a zeal about her that was inspiring. I promptly asked what she meant.
‘He was possibly one of the pupils with the least friends. I always feel sorry for those who have learning difficulties, but even more so for those who have difficulties making friends. He and his mother had had to move a number of times, so he only started here last spring. All the other pupils knew each other and he knew no one. He was not able to play football with them in the breaks, and even though he always gave the right answer when I asked him a question, the others inevitably laughed at his speech impediment. Teenagers are heartless. Last year, he would often stand and watch the others playing football in the break and then try to talk to some of them about football afterwards. But then he seemed to give up. He generally stayed at his desk with a book during the breaks. He was the only pupil we ever saw reading in breaks and the only boy who ever took library books to school.’
I asked whether she thought that he suffered because of his physical handicaps, and if he was also retarded in any way. She thought for a moment or two before she shook her head.
‘Still waters run deep, as they say. Tor was quiet on the surface, but no one bothered to find out what went on underneath. His written work was consistently some of the best in the class and he nearly always gave the right answer on the rare occasions that he put up his hand. Once when I passed him as he was watching the others play football, I said that he should consider taking the university entrance exam. “It’s a long way off. But a nice thought. Thank you,” he stammered with a shy smile. I never thought that he had any impediments, other than an inferiority complex driven by poverty. And he was not alone in that, only his complex was perhaps stronger than it is for most.’
Eveline Kolberg was now on a roll. She paused briefly and then carried on.
‘I read a biography of the British politician Bevin last week. In the introduction about his childhood, it said that two poorer people than he and his mother have never lived. It made me think of Tor and his mother. His father died long before they moved here, so I never met him. Tor only had his mother and she had practically nothing to give him. He adored his mother – she was his rock and perhaps the only person he believed had ever done anything for him. But he was a teenager now and could also see his mother’s weaknesses. “Mum drinks too much and thinks too little,” he said once when I asked him how things were at home. So that part of his life was also tragic. He had more reason than most to feel excluded and rail against society. And yet-’ She stopped all of a sudden and looked at me intensely.
‘And yet – you don’t think…’ I prompted.
She gave me a fleeting, tight-lipped smile and carried on with renewed passion.
‘And yet I do not think he murdered anyone, no. It would be so out of character. He always handed things in on time, and never protested if we said he had to go out in the breaks. He would just take his book with him and limp out. If you had come here last Friday and told me that one of our pupils would commit a violent crime over the weekend, he is the last person I would have thought of. It’s true, he was very interested in old court cases and the like, but I don’t remember him showing any interest in weapons or ever laying a hand on one of his classmates. Physically, he was very reserved. So no, unless you have come to show me photographs and evidence, I do not believe that my pupil killed that politician Fredriksen.’
She said this in a quiet, intense voice. Eveline Kolberg sat fidgeting in her chair, and then leaned forwards over her desk.