Lene Johansen listened attentively. She nodded gratefully when I said that I had been in contact with the company and that she need not worry about being evicted until the case had been solved.
‘Well, we will have to accept that as a provisional account and hope to hear better news in the coming days. What are your questions for my client?’
I looked at Lene Johansen and said that as a matter of procedure we now had to follow all leads and all possible links. I therefore had to ask her to explain why she had not previously mentioned that she had any connection with Fredriksen and his company.
The lawyer looked a little taken aback, but his client quickly rose to the challenge.
‘Yes, I realized afterwards that I should have mentioned that I cleaned there a couple of evenings a week for two years. But that was ages ago now, and I never really saw much of Fredriksen. It was the office manager I spoke to when I was employed and when I resigned.’
The lawyer looked pointedly at me and asked if the matter was now clarified.
I trusted Patricia and was bolstered by my success with Solveig Ramdal. So I carried on unperturbed.
‘I am afraid we can’t give up that quickly. It is true that Fredriksen himself was not often in the office. But you were a beautiful young woman, and according to the staff, he showed great interest in you. Indeed, the staff speculated on whether or not you might be meeting elsewhere as well. Not least when you resigned because you were going to have a child, after having been married for many years without children.’
Rønning dropped his lorgnette and stared aghast at his client, making no attempt to pick it up. And she sat there, frantically shaking her head.
‘Are you sitting there saying that Fredriksen and I – that’s crazy. We were from completely different worlds. Do you really think that I would let my son live in poverty, as he did, if his father was a multi-millionaire?’
She looked at me indignantly. It was a simple counter-question that I had not considered and I almost found myself blaming Patricia because she had not thought it through.
I was on the defensive now. Lene Johansen looked more and more indignant and then carried on without my asking.
‘A poor widow from the east end certainly has to put up with a lot in this town. First I lose my only son, and now you’re sitting there saying that he might have killed the rich father he never had. It’s all lies, and I can prove it, if you just give me a moment.’
Both Rønning and I sat as if paralysed and stared at her as she quickly pulled from her coat pocket an old purse. I could not see any notes in it, only a few coins. But her trembling fingers fished out an old black-and-white photograph which she held up for me.
‘This is my husband,’ she said.
I recognized him from the photograph in the flat. And I understood straightaway what she meant to say with it.
The birthmark on her husband’s neck was far smaller than the one on the neck of the boy on the red bicycle. But it was on the same side and was the same shape. It could not be a coincidence.
The situation was uncomfortable enough already, before Rønning Junior’s voice filled the room.
‘We understand that you have to investigate all possible leads in the investigation. However, we hope that you now recognize that this is a wild goose chase and that you will apologize immediately to my client. If you do not have any further questions, we will take our leave and hope that you will be able to give us some better news over the next few days. If not, this could turn into a rather unfortunate matter for both you and the force in general. I had not expected you to stoop so low, Kristiansen.’
Lene Johansen nodded in agreement, put the photograph back in her purse, and stood up abruptly. ‘This has been a rather nasty experience. I want to go home,’ she said, her voice shaking.
I felt humiliated and in a very vulnerable position. So I did what I could to save the situation, I apologized and told them that I sincerely hoped that I would have better news next time.
I heard Rønning say the words ‘… recommend filing a…’ to his client as the door slammed behind them.
Another shock followed when my boss knocked on my door and did not wait for an answer before coming in. I was worried that he had come to reprimand me for my unwarranted allegations against one of the parties involved in the case – or for the continued lack of results in the investigation.
But my boss had not come to reprimand me at all. He had come to say that the Soviet Embassy had rather unexpectedly requested a meeting with the head of the investigation. But before that we would need to go to the prime minister’s office to give him a report.
X
I had met the leader of the Labour Party, Trond Bratten, a couple of years earlier in connection with another murder investigation, and I had been to the prime minister’s office. But I had never met Trond Bratten in the prime minister’s office. He had only moved in there the year before, when disagreement about the EEC had ripped apart the blue coalition government, which had been led by the Centre Party’s Peder Borgen. In terms of my political preferences, this was an improvement, even though my personal meeting with Peder Borgen here had been very nice.
I was curious to see if Mrs Ragna Bratten had also been included in the move from Young’s Square to the prime minister’s office. I soon had my answer. She was sitting on a chair in the reception area and jumped up as soon as she saw me. She embraced me and thanked me warmly for all I had done a couple of years earlier. The prime minister’s wife assured me that both she and her husband were deeply grateful and that her husband was looking forward to meeting me again. She added hastily that she was here so that she could drive him home after the meeting, but did not know what the meeting was about. So she asked me to look after her husband in the meantime, and then pointed to the door to his office.
My boss and I had been told that it would be a highly confidential briefing. Just how confidential it was became apparent when we entered the prime minister’s office and saw that Trond Bratten was there alone, sitting behind a large desk.
If Trond Bratten really had been looking forward to meeting me, it was not clear to see. He said a brisk ‘Good afternoon’ and shook our hands.
My boss took care to close the door behind us, and then we settled into two chairs that were on the other side of the desk. I noticed that the desk was larger than when I had been here before, and the chairs pulled slightly further back.
Trond Bratten stayed sitting behind the desk and looked at us expectantly.
My boss cleared his throat and said that the prime minster had requested a strictly confidential briefing on the part of the investigation into the murder of Per Johan Fredriksen that might affect the oil agreement and the Soviet Union, as we had now been asked to a meeting at the embassy.
Bratten replied: ‘Yes, a short and confidential account.’ Then he looked me and said no more.
A short and confidential accounted suited me well. So I reported, without going into any details, that the murder of Per Johan Fredriksen was still unsolved, but that Fredriksen had been suspected of being a spy and was killed, apparently, only a matter of hours before he was due to be arrested. It was not clear whether he was guilty or not, and we had no grounds for claiming that he had been assassinated. The timing was, however, striking, and in the course of the investigation, I had been followed by a man, whom we had now identified as a Soviet agent, who probably had many deaths on his conscience, in a number of countries. He was officially linked to the Soviet Embassy in Oslo and had diplomatic immunity.