There was still not a sound to be heard from inside the room. The receptionist’s hand was shaking a little, her eyes darting between me and the door. A strange understanding had developed between two people who had never met before. It struck me I did not even know the young receptionist’s name – and that she might in fact be in danger if she followed me into the room. I did think, however, that the risk was microscopic. And I was extremely curious as to who or what was hiding in the hotel room. She was now visibly trembling, but pulled herself together and gave me an encouraging smile. I took a deep breath and hesitated one more time. Then I changed my focus and knocked on the door.
The knocking produced no reaction. All remained quiet in Room 27.
My voice sounded like a peal of thunder in the tense silence.
‘We know that you are there, Falko Reinhardt. Open the door immediately. This is Detective Inspector Kolbjørn Kristiansen, and I need to speak to you about the planned attack!’
The receptionist let out a small gasp and looked up at me with large blue eyes, as if I really were James Bond in a film. But the situation was real enough. And all was still quiet in Room 27.
The idea that I had arrived a few hours too late and that the room was now empty was increasingly convincing. However, the tension ratcheted up a further notch when I tried the door handle. The door was locked. And it was not possible to see anything through the keyhole, because the key had been inserted from the inside.
I waved my hand for the spare key. It was with some relief that she put it between my fingers. I pushed it into the lock and heard the key on the inside fall out. At the same time, I also heard more noises from inside the room.
The receptionist instinctively gripped my arm, but nothing dramatic happened. The sounds from inside the room were not easy to identify. It could have been drawers and wardrobes being opened and closed again. I was suddenly seized by a fear that the receptionist might get injured when the door opened. So I as good as lifted her to one side and out of sight of the door. Then I turned the key.
The light in Room 27 had been switched off. But it was easy enough to look around the room, which was a good hundred square feet, in the light from the corridor. And the room was empty. There were no personal belongings to be seen on the bed, chairs or desk by the window, and there was no trace of Falko Reinhardt or any other person.
My eyes turned instinctively to the bathroom door. I pulled it open. But there was no trace of anyone either on the floor or in the bathtub. The only sign that a guest had been there was a red toothbrush and a half-used tube of toothpaste. A forgotten electric shaver indicated that it was a man who had left the room in such a hurry. But the man himself was nowhere to be seen.
When I went back out into the room I almost collided with another person, but quickly regained my composure when it proved to be the receptionist. She pointed at the balcony door with a trembling hand.
I was so annoyed with myself at having overlooked this possible escape route that I almost swore out loud. The balcony door was ajar. I rushed over and looked out. The drop down to the lawn below was barely nine feet. I leaped over the railing and ran across the lawn down to the street.
I caught a glimpse of the fleeing hotel guest from Room 27 on the road outside the hotel. He was just turning into a side street about fifty yards away, and he was running fast. But he turned to look back for a moment, and I recognized him straight away. He was a tall, dark and muscular man, with long, curly hair that made him easy to recognize.
I ran after him down to the side road, but quickly had to face up to the fact that pursuing him any further was hopeless. Falko Reinhardt had a head start of at least fifty yards, and was not to be seen anywhere. He could have run in any direction.
I carried on running, but now heading back to the car to alert police patrols in the area via the radio. I quickly made contact and could give them a description, but had to accept that the chances were slim. There were only four patrols out on a Sunday evening, and I had a strong suspicion that Falko Reinhardt had planned his escape route. Whether he was in any way responsible for his fiancée’s death or not was still unclear, but what was clear was that he had been ready to escape from his hotel room at short notice if necessary.
I went back into the hotel by the main entrance and found the receptionist still standing, bewildered, in the middle of the room. She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw me and put a trembling arm round me. I was touched by her care in the midst of all the chaos. I took time to explain the situation and added that it would appear that the guest had not been armed, so there had been no immediate danger to her or myself. On hearing this, she calmed down impressively quickly and asked for permission to go back to the reception desk. There might be someone waiting there, and if not, she would try to contact the manager by phone. I thanked her for her help, asked her to send my greetings to the manager, and then turned my attention back to the hotel room.
Falko Reinhardt had either had very few belongings in the room, or had been very good at taking them with him. There was nothing to be found in the wardrobe or the two desk drawers. But under the pillow of his unmade bed, I found two things that immediately piqued my interest.
The first was a handwritten note with the following cryptic text:
1008: KK. Warn of attack and that SP is the murderer!
The tiny note gave me an enormous shock. I stood there looking at it for several minutes. I remembered what Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen had said about Falko’s to-do lists, and could confirm it to be true. He had written a to-do list in order to remember something important, and had forgotten where he had put it in the rush.
I could not get the initials SP to tally with any known suspect; but they could of course refer to someone unknown to me. And if not, it was alarmingly obvious to think of Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen herself, as the only person in the case who was a member of the SPP. It made me even more anxious to note that it did not say ‘the hitman’, simply ‘the murderer’. That meant that the person in question might also be a woman.
The other object that lay hidden under the pillow in Room 27 provided a degree of relief, but also a new mystery. It was a black and white photograph, dated ‘07.06.1970’, and there was no trace of Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen in the picture. It showed what was clearly a meeting, with four people round a table at one of Oslo’s finer restaurants. But only three faces were visible, and all three were known to me.
As soon as I saw the photograph, I felt a strange sympathy for a man I had never met or spoken to – and that was Henry Alfred Lien’s son in Trondheim. His father had obviously not only cooperated with the occupying forces during the war, but had also told me barefaced lies only two days ago about his contact with other Nazis after the war. In the photograph, Henry Alfred Lien was sitting squarely, with a wary smile on his face, between Frans Heidenberg and Christian Magnus Eggen.
Another person in a grey suit was sitting beside Eggen, to the far left of the photograph. Judging by appearances, the fourth person was also a man. But his bare hand, without any rings or markings of any sort, gave no indication as to his identity. His face was not in the picture. The corner had been torn off, so the fourth man remained faceless.
I stood and studied the picture for a few minutes.
Then I took both it and Falko’s forgotten to-do list, and wandered deep in thought back down the hotel corridor.
The receptionist stopped me to say that she had spoken to the hotel manager, who looked forward to hearing more details about the day’s drama and its significance for the country when he returned home. She then thanked me for the ‘day’s action film’ and added in a quiet voice that she would be delighted to talk more to me once the case was solved and closed.