And I certainly did not either. The only thing I felt fairly certain about was that I still had no grounds to arrest any of the suspects for anything.
I said to Kjell Arne Ramdal that it would have made things a little easier if he had told me all this the day before yesterday. He moved his head in a way that, with a bit of goodwill, could be interpreted as a nod. Then I asked if he had anything to add today and he replied succinctly: ‘No.’
His answer was the same when I asked if he had been in direct contact with Vera Fredriksen at any point after her father’s death. So the question as to who Vera had called remained unanswered.
I thanked him equally succinctly, then, taking these new thoughts with me, I headed for the door.
XI
I had that feeling of general unease when I got back to the station at twenty past four. Things were relatively calm there, though the switchboard had experienced an increase in calls from the media. I prepared a new press release which confirmed that the woman found dead in Ullern was Fredriksen’s youngest daughter and that any possible connections were now being investigated, but that no further comment could be made in light of the ongoing investigation.
My boss waved me into his office before I was even at the door. He listened attentively to what I had to tell him, and seemed almost relieved that nothing new had emerged regarding the espionage aspect of the case.
He had given considerable thought to the case and concluded that the investigation should of course continue, but as discreetly as possible for the moment in order not to attract public attention until it was strictly necessary.
In short, the conclusion was that I should continue to work on the case and would get whatever help I needed, but that I should report directly to my boss and not tell Danielsen anything about the possible spy implications.
It seemed that my boss was having second thoughts about our meeting with Asle Bryne at Victoria Terrace. He was unusually sombre and said twice that this was a very sensitive case and that I must not betray his trust, now that it was so important. I promised to do my utmost not to do this.
I made four telephone calls before I left work.
I reached Miriam at the party office and told her that I would have to work late with the murder investigation, but that we could meet around half past eight. She was very understanding and did not ask for any details – even though I could hear in her voice that she was dying to know more.
Then I rang Patricia and asked if we could meet sometime around seven o’clock. She replied positively to this and then hung up without wasting any more of her time or mine.
I still had two hours until I was due to meet Patricia so I called Fredriksen’s mistress in Majorstuen, and then his son at Sognsvann.
XII
The door was opened as soon as I rang on the bell at 53B Jacob Aall’s Street in Majorstuen. The woman who answered the door no longer had tears in her eyes, but she still had red cheeks and was wearing a black mourning dress. The photograph of Per Johan Fredriksen remained on the coffee table, with a lone candle burning beside it.
The clock on the wall in the hall had stopped at half past eleven, and had not been rewound since, which seemed rather symbolic to me. Time had stopped for the moment for both the flat and the woman who lived in it.
I had some critical questions to ask her and not very much time. But sitting here beside the candle and photograph of Per Johan Fredriksen, I found it hard to get straight to the point.
So I delayed by asking how she was.
‘Not good at all, but better than on the evening he died,’ she said.
I had to ask her something else, so I asked what her thoughts were about the flat and her future.
‘Thank you for asking. I have not been able to face moving the furniture or even a picture yet. It gets harder each day and will no doubt be very painful on Saturday. I just have so many memories of Per Johan here and am constantly finding myself expecting to see him coming round the corner whenever I look out of the window. So I’ve decided I’m going to go and stay with my mother’s family in France for a few months. If I am going to carry on without being weighed down by the past, I have to get away, both from this flat and from Oslo. My current dilemma is whether I should try to sneak into the back of the church for the funeral. It should be possible, as no one in the family has met me.’
I did not want to share my thoughts on whether Fredriksen’s mistress should attend the funeral or not. So instead I took the chance to ask her if she had ever been in touch with Vera Fredriksen. She shook her head.
‘No. He showed me pictures of his children when I asked, and talked about them a good deal – and particularly about Vera. His paternal urge to care and protect was strongest for her. Probably something to do with the fact that she was the youngest, but also, she had suffered more than the other two. I was not in the slightest bit jealous – in fact, I started to care for them because they meant so much to him. It was obvious that I could not meet them before his wife was either dead or they were divorced. So, sadly, I never saw his daughter except in a photograph, and I never heard her voice.’
I was happy with this answer. It was hard to imagine that Vera Fredriksen would ring her father’s mistress, no matter what she thought might have happened in 1932. Furthermore, it was even harder to imagine that his mistress would have gone to Haraldsen’s Hotel to murder her late lover’s daughter.
I had thought a little about who Per Johan Fredriksen would talk to if he wanted to discuss his Soviet contacts or his future political plans with someone. And I had come to the conclusion that the two most likely people would be his youngest daughter or his mistress. And what his mistress had to say would be even more interesting now that his daughter was dead.
So I asked if she had been aware of any ups and downs in her lover’s political life and if he had said anything about his future plans.
To my surprise, she replied without hesitation. ‘Yes, of course. I should have mentioned it last time you were here, but it seemed so unlikely that his death had anything to do with that. It was something he had been thinking about for a long time and soon he had to make a decision. He was increasingly unconvinced of his party’s scepticism towards membership of the EEC. To begin with, he only said that he could see that there were some advantages to be had with membership, but then through the course of the winter he started to think that there were, in fact, more advantages than disadvantages to joining. He believed that the EEC would grow with or without Norway, and that the terms and conditions would be less favourable if we waited to join. By the new year it was more a question of when, rather than if, he would make it public.’
I thanked her for this interesting piece of information and said that he must have been prepared for strong reactions from his own party. She immediately confirmed that that was the case.
‘But of course. He was preparing for death threats and comparisons with the devil. He initially thought about changing party, but then decided that it would be better to just let his new views on the EEC be known. The consequences would probably be that he was squeezed out of the party and into a new party, but he decided that that was a better way to leave.’
It sounded like Per Johan Fredriksen had had a reasonable plan, and some very bad news for his party and the no campaign in general. Something that could indeed be the cause of a politically motivated attack. The question was who else might have known about it.