XV
On Tuesday, 21 March, I lay awake tussling with my conscience, long after Miriam had gone to sleep.
Around half past midnight, I changed my mind and came to the conclusion that I should have told Miriam about going to see Patricia as soon as she arrived. But Miriam was already deep in sleep by then. So I kissed her tenderly on the cheek and whispered that we would have to talk about it tomorrow. Shortly after, I fell asleep too, finally at some kind of peace with myself.
I woke once, briefly, during the night, when the man in the hat visited me in my dreams. In my dream, he threw a knife at me on Karl Johan Street. I woke up with a start, but the man in the hat was nowhere to be seen, and the woman I was engaged to was asleep in the bed beside me. That calmed me. For the rest of the night I slept the dreamless sleep of an exhausted man – a deep, contented sleep, without the faintest idea of what dramas tomorrow would bring.
DAY FIVE: A New Dimension – and Some New Leads
I
On Wednesday, 22 March 1972, I woke when the alarm clock went off at half past seven. I was clearly so full of adrenalin from the case that my need for sleep had diminished. I was wide awake and ready to face the new day within seconds of the alarm clock ringing.
Miriam, on the other hand, continued to sleep undisturbed, having cast a quick glance at the clock first. I was about to wake her again, but remembered that she did not have a lecture until a quarter past ten on Wednesdays. And I knew from experience that it was a bad idea to wake her unnecessarily early. Furthermore, I still had a lot to think about and a smidgen of a bad conscience. So I left her to sleep on and tiptoed out into the kitchen.
I ate breakfast alone with the newspapers, which made for less pleasant reading than the day before. The headlines were dominated by a new opinion poll that showed a fall in support for the anti-EEC movement, as well as stories on the Barents Sea agreement. It seemed that the agreement would be passed by a majority in the Storting on Friday afternoon and would be ready for signing by Monday. And in between the articles on the significance of the agreement, the reports about my investigation of the murder were becoming more critical. My name was not mentioned today, but both papers noted that the investigation was still ongoing and that the police would not divulge why.
Aftenposten found it reassuring that the police were taking the time to carry out a thorough investigation, even though a young man ‘from the east end, with a difficult background’ had been arrested and subsequently had taken his own life. Arbeiderbladet, on the other hand, questioned if this meant that the presumed killer had, in fact, proved to be innocent. The answer was that this certainly seemed to be the situation, and as such it was ‘a very dramatic development’ in the case.
Both papers carried small notices that a young woman had been found dead at Haraldsen’s Hotel in mysterious circumstances. Neither of them had as yet discovered her relationship to Fredriksen, or the story from 1932. And there was clearly a risk of longer reports once this became known.
I left home at ten to eight, having set the table for Miriam and written a note which read: ‘Did not want to wake you. Enjoy your breakfast and have a good lecture!’
It felt like the pressure was mounting on all sides, and, in a way, it was good that Miriam had slept while I had breakfast. During the night, I had once again abandoned the idea of telling her about my renewed contact with Patricia. If Miriam should hear that I had been in touch with her, I prayed that it would not coincide with the press discovering that the boy who had taken his own life in prison was in all likelihood innocent.
II
My boss was not in his office when I got there at eight o’clock. Outside my office door, however, hopping around impatiently, was a pathologist I had met in connection with one of my earlier cases a couple of years ago.
‘The preliminary autopsy report is ready, and quite sensational…’ he started.
I waved my hand dismissively. ‘I don’t think you will manage to surprise me this time either. The cause of death was water in the lungs, is that right?’
He nodded swiftly and rolled his eyes to show he was impressed. ‘How on earth…?’ he said.
‘It is actually quite logical that she was drowned. You just need to let go of the fact that it is not a method normally used for murder in a hotel room. I am more interested in knowing if there were any other signs of violence, but I am assuming there were not?’ I said.
A little more colour drained from the pathologist’s face, and he shook his head.
‘No, or that is to say, she had some light bruising on her neck that may indicate that someone held her down as she was being drowned. But otherwise, we have found no other signs of violence.’
I thanked him for this confirmation. Then I quickly closed the door on the slightly bewildered and very impressed pathologist.
I sat down and rang the Centre Party office. The party leaders were not available, due to meetings in the Storting. However, the Secretary General, Petter Martin Arvidsen, was there and when I told him that I was calling from the police about the murder of Per Johan Fredriksen, he said that he would be happy to meet me. He told me that he had an important meeting at ten o’clock, but had time available before then. And I replied that I did too. We concluded that I should go to meet him in his office as soon as possible. So I walked the few hundred yards over to the party office in Arbeider Street as quickly as I could.
III
I eventually found the Centre Party office on the fifth floor of 4 Arbeider Street, having first climbed the stairs past four floors occupied by the newspaper, Nationen. The Secretary General, Petter Martin Arvidsen, turned out to be a slim, yet very jovial man in his mid-thirties, with remnants of a Trønderlag dialect. He was swift to shake my hand and then pointed to a chair, before closing the door behind me.
He looked at me in expectation. I chose a gentle start and asked him to give me his impression of Per Johan Fredriksen.
‘You know, over the past few days, I have reflected on how strange it is that in politics today you can see someone every day for years without ever actually knowing them. That was certainly the case with Fredriksen. He was always there – at all the important meetings: the parliamentary party group, the representative body, the party conference. He appeared to enjoy all social occasions, with or without his wife. He was well respected and a powerful man within the party and, in recent years, had become even more prominent thanks to his keen interest in foreign policy. But I don’t think I could say that I knew him as a person, and I am not sure that anyone else did. He was an extremely good politician. He was knowledgeable, to the point, and at times even humorous, both as a speaker and a debater, and he was always very active and interested in his dealings with voters and members of the public.’
I waited a few seconds for a ‘but’, which never came. So I asked where the problem lay.
‘The problem was that the Centre Party is the most united party on the Right and Per Johan Fredriksen was not really a team player. He was an excellent individualist, but always and only an individualist. To put it another way, Per Johan was a man who was respected by all and trusted by none. He was also a touch too pragmatic at times, even for a result-oriented party like ours. People got the feeling that, for Per Johan, politics was not so much about social engagement as personal gain. And that is also probably why he was never part of the party leadership or government, as he so wanted to be.’