The feeling that something was wrong seemed to grow as I stood there in the otherwise empty, dim hotel corridor. And it did not improve when I pressed the light switch.
The light flashed on a small object that was lying on the floor outside Room 114. It was a key. And it said ‘Room 111’ on the tag.
In a strange way, it felt like I had travelled back to 1932, even when I carefully reached out for the keyring and picked up the key, then put it in the lock of Room 111.
I knocked on the door one last time, without hearing any reaction from within.
Then I turned the key and opened the door.
The situation felt slightly unreal. For a moment I expected to see Eva Bjølhaugen lying there dead on the sofa.
But the woman lying there was, of course, not her.
Vera Fredriksen looked more confident and calmer in death than I had ever seen her in life. All the nervousness had vanished from her face. She was lying with her eyes closed and her face relaxed, and there were no signs of violence or illness. It looked as though she was taking a peaceful afternoon nap on the sofa.
For the second time in two days, I was standing alone in a small room with the body of a young person. The woman on the sofa had been dead slightly longer than the boy on the red bicycle. There was still some warmth in her body, but the skin on her face was cold, and there was no pulse.
I stood there frozen for a few moments, staring at the young, dead Vera Fredriksen, before I managed to pull myself together and look around the room.
There was no sign that anyone else had been there, and there was no sign of a murder weapon or a suicide note of any kind. I sniffed at her mouth, but could not detect anything that smelt like poison. There were no needle marks on her arms either.
I went out into the corridor, which was still empty. Then I went back into Room 111, to make sure that it was not some bizarre dream. But Vera Fredriksen was still lying dead on the sofa. I was in total bewilderment as I walked back down the stairs to reception, in order to ring the station.
X
The head of reception was impressively calm and composed, even when he heard that there had been a suspicious death in the hotel in the past few hours. His statement was clear and to the point, and was taken while I waited for technical assistance from the main police station.
The hotel had very few guests at present, and the head of reception had been the only person on duty since breakfast. Four overnight guests had checked out in the morning and the hotel unfortunately had no further bookings for that night.
However, Vera Fredriksen had shown up without a prior booking around midday. And then at two o’clock or thereabouts, something even more unexpected had happened, when someone telephoned to book a room for the night with a voice that had been distorted. The person who called claimed to be suffering from nerves and was in need of peace and quiet and they were willing to pay for two nights in advance with a tip, if they could come and go without meeting anyone today.
The head of reception was willing to believe this story and agreed to withdraw from the reception area for a couple of minutes so that an envelope with the payment in cash could be left on the counter. The cash was left as agreed, so the head of reception then put out a key and again withdrew for a few minutes. When he came back, the key was gone. He had written the name ‘Hansen’ down in the guest book for the sake of appearances, but because the voice had been distorted he could not say if it had been a man or a woman who had called.
The head of reception wrung his hands and admitted that it was a deeply unfortunate breach of normal practice, but that the hotel needed more guests, and they had had guests with nerve problems before and there was, at that point, no reason to suspect something criminal.
I said rather impatiently that we would still need to check his story about the mysterious guest and take a statement from him or her.
He immediately agreed to this and took a universal key to Room 112 with him.
We let ourselves in, having knocked twice on the door with no response. The door was unlocked.
The key was lying on the table. It was the only sign that the very mysterious guest had even been in the room.
The head of reception had only seen Vera Fredriksen and myself pass through reception that afternoon. This did not necessarily mean that we two and the mysterious guest were the only people who had been in the hotel. One or more could have passed through in those few minutes when the reception was not manned. There was also a back door at the opposite end of the corridor, by Room 118. The lock meant that it should only be possible to open the door from the inside. However, anyone who was already inside could easily have let others in, and it was not unthinkable that a burglar who came prepared could pick the lock from outside.
Vera Fredriksen had rung my flat from a telephone booth by the hotel reception at around half past three. She had paid for the call in cash at reception, and for two other phone calls she had made earlier in the day – the first around one o’clock and the second around three. Both of the earlier phone calls could not have been longer than a few minutes, but the numbers she had called were not registered anywhere.
XI
I was able to give my boss an update from the telephone in my office at half past six. And it did little to lift spirits.
We had another dead person, and, until the results of an autopsy were clear, no idea of the cause of death.
We knew that there had been another guest in the neighbouring room, but had no idea of the person’s identity.
We knew that Vera Fredriksen had made two telephone calls a few hours before her death, but had no idea who she had called or what had been said.
My boss took it much better than I did. He remarked that we did not yet even know if something criminal had occurred. According to what I had said myself, Vera Fredriksen suffered from nerves and her father’s death may have triggered suicidal thoughts. Young ladies with a nervous disposition had been known to commit suicide in the most spectacular ways at times, so it was not unthinkable that she had chosen a dramatic replay of the tragedy that her parents had experienced in 1932.
He did, however, concede that the situation was highly suspicious, especially as the mysterious guest from Room 112 had disappeared. If there was any connection to Per Johan Fredriksen’s death, this only strengthened the assumption that the explanation was to be found in Fredriksen’s private life.
I said that I agreed, and in return he accepted that a priest should be allowed to talk to the three remaining members of the family first, before the police contacted them again.
We also agreed that a forensic investigation should be launched, and that we would talk again as soon as the preliminary autopsy report was ready. I immediately said yes when he suggested ten o’clock the following morning.
I put the telephone down at a quarter to seven, and sat there pondering, looking at it for a few minutes more.
I thought that Miriam would by now have gone to her meetings, and would not be back until late this evening. Then I thought that she would surely be happy for me to ring Patricia now, as yet another young person had lost her life. I concluded that the situation was now so critical that I could not not phone Patricia, regardless of what Miriam might think.
At ten to seven, I took the plunge. I lifted the receiver and dialled Patricia’s number from memory.
The telephone was answered after two rings.
The woman’s voice at the other end simply said: ‘Yes?’ But I recognized it straightaway all the same and felt a surge of relief and hope that the deaths from 1932 and 1972 could all be solved before a scandal ensued. It all depended on whether or not I was now able to persuade Patricia to help me.