VII
I was back in my office by half past eleven, where I filled in and submitted the necessary form for carrying a service gun.
Then I made the first of several urgent telephone calls. I had not been looking forward to it. It was to a woman who had lost her husband and then her daughter within the space of three days.
The telephone rang and rang, but was eventually answered on the eighth ring. ‘Fredriksen’, said the voice, very quietly and quickly this time.
Once again I offered my condolences on her family’s great loss. Then I assured her that the investigation into the two murders had been given top priority and that there had been some new developments. I did, however, need to ask her some more questions as soon as she felt able to answer them.
There was a few seconds’ silence before she answered.
‘I have been thinking a lot about something I once read by an American writer. When she lost her husband, she said: the life we shared is over, I walk on alone – but I am still walking. That is what I have to do now. I may be weeping, but I am alive. Otherwise, I am just rattling around in this home of mine and wondering what on earth has happened. So please come whenever you can or like. I had actually thought of calling you about some documents left by my husband.’
I was impressed by the strength of this apparently delicate and slightly theatrical lady. I was also very curious as to what kind of documents she had found. So I said that it was admirable of her and that I would be there as soon as I could.
I picked up my service pistol on the way out. My application had clearly been processed at record speed. I was not entirely sure how reassuring I found that. The situation felt unsafe and what Bryne had said, about Svasnikov never going to a country without someone being killed within the week, was still echoing in my ears.
VIII
The sea of flowers on the drawing-room table in Bygdøy was even bigger today. But the woman on the sofa beside them was, to an impressive extent, the same, only a day after she had been told of her younger daughter’s death.
‘The children were here all yesterday evening. We agreed to grieve alone today,’ she said slowly. It was as if she had read my thoughts and seen my surprise that the family was not together.
‘It still feels unreal, that the priest came yesterday. And yet, it was not entirely unexpected that I would outlive my youngest child. Vera has always been too good for this world, really. So small when she arrived, much smaller than the other two. So much more delicate and fragile as a child. Vera was a beautiful, fair little girl as long as the sun shone, but as soon as the clouds gathered she cried or ran and hid. She was always more distant with me and her older brother and sister, but was very close to Per Johan. So, in an odd way, when he died I thought, well, now I am sure to lose Vera as well.’
She did not look at me when she was talking, she gazed out of the window instead. It struck me that she was looking out at the big garden where no doubt Vera had played as a child and cried when it rained.
The situation felt uncomfortable. But I understood her grief and gave her time. It helped. She turned back to me, an odd look in her dark brown eyes: at once focused and distant.
‘There were several periods when she was growing up that Vera simply refused to eat food. She tried to take her own life by swallowing a whole lot of pills when she was nineteen and unhappily in love. That is possibly when we all accepted the idea that we might lose her one day. But my little Vera did not take her own life yesterday, did she?’
I shook my head and told her briefly what we knew about the cause of death. Her whole body trembled and she held her hands to her eyes as I spoke.
‘My sweet Vera, who was so frightened of water and was thirteen before she even dared to swim – and she drowned in the end. But you are not able to tell me who killed her yet, are you?’
Her voice was weak, yet tense. I had to tell her that I could not at present, but that we were working as fast as we could on the case and that I had some questions to ask her concerning it.
‘Yes, of course. Ask away, and I will answer,’ she said, and once again she looked at me with oddly ambivalent eyes.
I started by asking when she had last seen or spoken to her daughter. Her face did not relax any for my question.
‘Sadly, the truth is that I did not even speak to my daughter on the day she died. I slept late yesterday. She had already gone out when I got up at half past ten. She had left a note on the kitchen table to say that she had gone out and would probably not be home until the evening. I thought she had gone to see a friend or to the university. And I did not hear anything from her until the priest came to tell me she was dead. The last time I saw my younger daughter was the evening before. We sat here in the drawing room, all four of us, talking about the future now that Per Johan had died. Vera thought we should sell the businesses to Ramdal, and came out with a couple of confused sentences about how important art and her boyfriend were to her now. Otherwise she did not say much.’
My next question for Oda Fredriksen was naturally whether she believed that her daughter’s boyfriend might have anything to do with the case. This provoked a scornful smile.
‘You will have to rule him out, I’m afraid. He travelled to Paris last Thursday to see a friend’s exhibition, and is still there. I actually sent him a telegram yesterday to let him know about Vera’s death in a respectable manner. Just a moment, I will show you the reply I got today.’
She got up and walked across the floor on light feet, almost without a sound, to the bookshelves. Then she came back with a telegram that she passed to me without even looking at it.
I could understand her irritation when I read the telegram myself. The text was short and still managed to be shocking.
‘Devastated by the news and loss of my true love. Hope I will receive inheritance to realize our great dream. Know she would want that.’
‘But that is not going to happen, is it?’ I said and looked at her.
She shook her head angrily. Her displeasure with her daughter’s boyfriend had pulled her back and she was now fully present in the room.
‘Absolutely not. They were not even engaged, and Vera had not written any kind of will. Her share of the inheritance will be divided between her brother and sister, and neither of them will give her charlatan of a boyfriend so much as a krone. We have already discussed this.’
The picture was clear. Vera Fredriksen’s boyfriend had not been in the country, and what is more, did not have a motive. His motive for falling in love appeared to have been a financial gain that he would not now get as his girlfriend had died.
I noted down the name so that I could confirm with the French police that he was in France, but did not hope for much help from those quarters.
Then I said, as tactfully as I could, that at this point I had to check the alibis of all the members of the family.
She took this unexpectedly well.
‘If you think that I first killed my husband to hide the forty-year-old murder of my sister, and have then murdered my daughter to hide the murder of my husband – well, I hope you understand that that feels rather absurd and unjust. I know that you have to ask, and as far as my husband is concerned, the answer is easy. I was at a party at my cousin’s in Holmenkollen when I received the telephone call about his death, and had been there for several hours. As far as my daughter’s death is concerned, I was here yesterday. It might not be so easy to prove. It depends on when my daughter died. Can you tell me?’
I of course knew that it must have happened between half past three and half past four, but said that we were still waiting for the final autopsy report to confirm the time of death. In the meantime, I asked her to tell me as precisely as