‘He is everything that I have ever dreamed of in a man. There is the physical aspect, obviously. I have always been attracted to blond men of my height, and he has just the right physique and is so elegant. So I thought he was the most handsome man I had ever seen the first time I saw him. But I still would not have fallen for him if he had not also proved to be the nicest man in the world. He is intelligent, hardworking and kind. The fact that he has a wife and son in a way makes him even more reliable and trustworthy. He is the first person that I feel has truly understood me. Of course, we are very different in many ways, but we still understand each other so well. Probably due to our similar backgrounds from the war, I think. He has grown up without a father, and I have grown up without either of my parents.’
I understood what she meant. I actually felt my sympathies torn between the mistress and the wife living as they did, side by side on the first floor of 25 Krebs’ Street. The latter appeared to have few admirers here, other than her young son. The same was apparently true of the next person I was going to visit.
As I walked down the stairs, I pondered whether the ever more mysterious Sara Sundqvist had been aware of the fact that I too was a blond and well-built man of about her height.
IV
It took about ninety seconds from the time that I rang the bell at 1B until the door was opened. And I was soon to discover why. If the former member of the NS Konrad Jensen had been disillusioned and morose when I first visited him, he was now fearful, if not terrified. To begin with, he only opened the door a crack to ask who it was, and on hearing my voice, it took another whole minute before two scared eyes appeared. He rushed to lock the door behind me, putting on the safety chain before following me into the sitting room. Here he sank down heavily onto the sofa and hid his face in his hands.
‘Did you see Petter?’ he asked suddenly, in a choked voice.
I shook my head, having no idea what he meant. Konrad Jensen took his hands from his face, but stared blindly into space before continuing.
‘He’s parked on the second street to the right, and last night someone wrote, “Nazi murderer,” all over him, the caretaker’s wife told me. And this morning…’
His voice broke and he needed a minute to compose himself.
‘This morning, she came and told me that someone had battered him with a sledgehammer! All the windows have been smashed and the body bashed. This is the end for Petter. It would cost more to repair him than to buy a new car. You’ll have to have a look at him this evening, if you think there’s anything to be gained by it, because as soon as the insurance folk get here, it’ll be the scrapyard for him. I can’t bear to see him like that.’
The tears welled up in Konrad Jensen’s eyes. It seemed that the damage to his car was more of a shock than the death of Harald Olesen.
‘I know it’s pathetic for a grown man to cry over his car, but Petter was the only person I could trust, if you see what I mean. When he goes to the scrapyard, I won’t have any friends. I’ll wait to get a new car until this is all over, otherwise the same thing will just happen again. And I daren’t go out at the moment. I’ve been shopping at the Co-op for twenty years now, but on Saturday, the caretaker’s wife came and told me that they didn’t want to see me in the shop anymore. A number of customers had threatened to go elsewhere if they saw me there. My life is crashing around my ears, just when I had finally managed to get some kind of control!’
I promised to take a look at the car before I left and ask a constable to look into this act of vandalism. Konrad Jensen nodded with resignation, and sounded a touch calmer when he continued.
‘Thank you. I only hope that you find the murderer before the Resistance people or some young louts find me, or before life in here simply becomes unbearable!’
I tried to calm him more by saying that there was surely no reason to fear for his life and body. At which Konrad Jensen hauled himself up from the sofa. He dragged his feet out into the kitchen and came back with a small bundle of letters.
‘Well, I haven’t received any private letters since the card my sister sent for my fiftieth birthday, but yesterday, I suddenly got seven, and they’re not pleasant reading.’
He was absolutely right. The letters were not pleasant reading. The senders of all seven remained anonymous, without signature, and they all took for granted that Konrad Jensen had murdered Harald Olesen. Four of them could qualify as aggravated harassment, and the other three were plain murder threats. Having seen them, it was not hard to understand why Konrad Jensen did not dare to show himself on the street.
I immediately offered to post a constable by the front door, if that would make him feel safer. This prompted an unexpected moment of emotion. Konrad Jensen started to cry when he took my hand.
‘Thank you so much. I never thought that I would hear a policeman offer to guard Konrad Jensen, or imply that Konrad Jensen’s life was worth anything. But it’s the way things are. I’ll have to make sure not to go outdoors and be very careful about who I let in. If my time is up, it will stop, with or without a policeman standing guard at the front door. But it is not a very nice feeling. I always thought that Petter and I would go together, so now that he’s gone, I feel that I’m close to the end too.’
I felt an overwhelming urge to cheer him up a bit – and to get on with the investigation. So I used the opportunity to tell him about our breakthroughs in the investigation and the mystery surrounding the stereo player. Konrad Jensen congratulated me, but found it unsettling that such a calculating murderer was on the loose. He repeated three times that it was definitely not him who had planned it, but recognized that the adjusted time of murder meant that he too was now without an alibi.
To my question regarding his bank account, he replied with a fleeting, humiliated smile that he had nothing to hide. He had inherited little more than 2,000 kroner from his parents and had scrimped and saved the rest from his earnings of around 1,000 kroner a year. Konrad Jensen’s post-office savings book showed a total balance of 12,162 kroner.
‘Given the rise in prices, most of that will now go on a new car. So there goes my dream of watching the football on television one day,’ he added with a heavy sigh.
The question of what Konrad Jensen was actually doing out in the hallway when he met Darrell Williams on the evening of the murder was apparently more complicated. He chewed his lip before finally answering.
‘Nothing at all. I just popped out into the hall because I saw through the window that the American was coming in and hoped that he would stop to chat about the football if I was there. Pathetic perhaps, but true.’
And I believed him. Konrad Jensen was a sorry figure of a man, but he told the truth – as far as I could tell thus far.
Then suddenly he became bashful and hesitated a few times before he said something that I had not expected in the least.
‘When you asked if I had met Harald Olesen during the war or earlier… I may possibly have answered incorrectly.’
I fixed him with gimlet eyes. He held up his hands in defence.
‘It was through no fault of my own. I thought you wouldn’t believe me if I told you what I saw, and it’s hard to be certain. It might sound strange, but I thought you would just laugh.’
I had started to get used to the fact that Konrad Jensen both thought and spoke slowly and awkwardly, but once again he came round to the matter at hand without prompting.
‘I said that I had never met Harald Olesen during the war, which is true, but I think that I did meet him once just before the war. And if that is the case, it was at an NS meeting, of all places.’