‘I had parked the car and was about to help Mother in. She coughed and coughed and hung round my neck like a sick child. We were on our way up the stairs when suddenly I noticed her face freeze in a look of surprise and devotion I had never seen before. I looked up and discovered that we had bumped into Harald Olesen, but I barely had time to recognize him as he more or less stormed back up the stairs and into his flat. I immediately thought it very odd, as he had been on his way out when we met on the stairs. I did not manage to see his face. My mother said nothing and I did not like to ask. But she seemed distant and strange for the rest of the day, and my suspicions that there was some kind of connection between her and Harald Olesen only grew stronger.’
Kristian Lund blew some smoke rings out into the room as he pondered, but then picked up the story again.
‘And so once more I spent a considerable amount of time pondering the great mystery of my childhood. One day, I went to the library and found some books with pictures of him from the war. I look more like my mother, so our faces were not that similar, but the eyes and ears were so alike that it seemed to confirm what I thought. It was a difficult dilemma. My mother was hovering between life and death, and I did not want to do anything that would make the burden heavier for her. But at the same time, the uncertainty surrounding my father’s identity burned inside with increasing intensity the closer Mother came to death. Then they called from the hospital in Drammen one evening to say that Mother was not likely to live through the night and I made up my mind. I drove straight there and sat by her side from eight in the evening until she finally let go of the pain at around six o’clock in the morning. That night, she nodded in answer when I asked if Harald Olesen was my father. She had thought that no one would believe us and that everything would just get worse if she said anything, she told me. Those were her last words. I said that I forgave her and held her hand tight until all the warmth had left it. Then I walked through the empty hospital corridors alone, feeling a deep love for my mother, and a passionate hatred for my father because he had let us both down for all those years.’
My impression was that Kristian Lund’s love for his mother was deep and sincere, in a life that was guided by few other values and an otherwise cynical attitude to women. This impression was strengthened when he continued.
‘It was a hectic and difficult time. I became a father three days after I lost my mother, and buried her four days after that. I was anxious to see whether Harald Olesen would at least do her the honour of coming to her funeral, but he did not make an appearance. So I went up to the second floor and knocked on his door. He blanched when I confronted him, giving me the confirmation that I needed. But my first meeting with my father was not as I had hoped. He still managed to say some nice things about my mother – that she had accepted the consequences of her errors during the war and had not talked about it later. But me, his only son, he addressed scornfully simply as “NS boy”. I pointed out that I had never had anything to do with the NS and asked how he, if he was so morally pure himself, had ended up in bed with an NS woman after the outbreak of war. At that, he asked me never to speak to him again and slammed the door in my face.’
Kristian Lund shook his head in exasperation, and to be fair, it was easy to understand why.
‘This insult made me even more determined. I sent him a letter in which I wrote that I could not force him to see me, but I did have the right, as his only child, to an inheritance – and that I intended to get what was mine, even if it meant I had to go to the national papers and the supreme court. I had grown up poor because he had never cared about me, his only son, and did not want to risk that either I or my young son would ever be in that position again. He told me that he had burned the letter, the next time I knocked on his door. But he was calmer this time, no doubt as he was now ill himself. He would be more than happy to give me some money on the quiet if I would be satisfied with that and not make any more demands. In the end, he gave me two payments of a hundred thousand kroner, one last autumn and one in February just past. But he would not promise me anything in terms of his will. So there you have it: I pressured him to give me my well-deserved inheritance, but still do not know whether I succeeded. If you asked me whether I feel like a good son, the answer would be no, but my father did not deserve a good son either.’
Given that the story that Kristian Lund had just told was close to the full truth, then it was hard to disagree with his conclusion. I made a quick note that ‘N’ in the diary in all likelihood stood for ‘NS boy’ and that the explanation given by Kristian Lund was in line with what Harald Olesen had written in his diary. I then asked if he had anything more to add in relation to the murder. He repeated that he had an absolutely clear conscience. He sounded convincing enough, but my trust in Kristian Lund had been steadily eroded. So I said that it would have been more credible if he had told us straightaway, but that we would of course take his story seriously and keep all options open. In response to my final question, whether he was still in touch with Sara Sundqvist, he replied that he had broken off all contact and had no intention of renewing it. The murder now stood between them like a wall.
I left the sports shop at half past ten on Tuesday, 9 April with the feeling that I had more than enough to deal with at the moment. The weight of expectation increased further when my secretary back at the main station beamed and told me that she had indeed arranged two meetings, one with Jesper Christopher Haraldsen at eleven o’clock and one with Haavard Linde at midday. I had to scramble in order not to be late for the meeting with one of my childhood idols.
II
It can be a strange experience suddenly to stand face to face as an adult with one of the great heroes of your childhood and youth. Which is precisely how I felt when I was shown into Jesper Christopher Haraldsen’s office on Youngstorget on 9 April 1968. In my youth, I had been interested in his work both as one of the country’s leading lawyers and as a cabinet minister who had held several important posts for various governments. However, my youthful fascination with him had been spawned by the heroic stories of his efforts as a leader of the Home Front during the occupation. And I have to admit I was now excited not only about what he would have to tell me about Harald Olesen, but also about being able to see a living legend in the flesh.
The man who stood up behind the vast, orderly desk was just as I had imagined: upright, powerful and dynamic in his movements, with a firm handshake and a brightness in his eye. Patience did not appear to be one of his strengths, even though he was now well over fifty. He interrupted my attempt to give a brief outline of the case after only two minutes, with the comment that he still read the papers and could I please get to the point.
In his reply to my question regarding Harald Olesen’s contribution and importance during the war, Jesper Christopher Haraldsen briskly said that both were great, but not quite in the national league to which he himself belonged. Harald Olesen had been involved in various actions, as well as smuggling refugees across the border, and for a time functioned as the regional leader for the Resistance in Hedmark and Oppland. Jesper Christopher Haraldsen mentioned intelligence, self-control and luck as his best qualities in his work for the Home Front. I was taken aback by the last, but just had to take note of the supreme court justice’s very firm opinion that luck was a good quality that some people had – and Olesen had it in ample supply.
Haraldsen dismissed the suggestion that there may have been some form of internal strife in the Home Front that may have resulted in someone bearing a grudge against Harald Olesen. He had far more belief in the theory that it might be a somewhat postponed revenge killing by the Nazis, without linking it to any particular event or person. Haraldsen frowned for a minute or two in response to my question about a man who worked for the Resistance and went under the code name Deerfoot. He then answered that he had never heard of this person and that it sounded like a rather unlikely code name for a Norwegian Resistance fighter. Haraldsen was visibly rattled, but I found it difficult to discern whether this was due to something he knew or something he felt he ought to know. According to Jesper Christopher Haraldsen, Olesen had been a sound and well-intentioned cabinet minister, but never one of the leading lights. He had rarely dealt with the most important issues in government.