I had to admit that this chimed well with my own gut feeling.
‘So, what do we do now?’ I asked.
Patricia looked determined.
‘Well, we can hope that if she has some time on her own to think, things might improve. She is terrified of something. I am tempted to say that it is either something she has done herself or something she has seen. But she is so frightened and tense that we need more information before we can push her any further. And perhaps we will find that where we are going now.’
It sounded so convincing that I just nodded and asked where we were going.
‘To the second floor,’ Patricia said, and impatiently stretched out her arm and pressed the lift button.
Patricia looked so small and thin in her wheelchair in the confines of the lift, but her voice was just as clear and firm as at home in the big library in the White House.
‘Start by welcoming him back and be nice, then ask him if he was at all sad when Harald Olesen was murdered. Remind him of his old conflict with Olesen and suggest that he moved here because of it, and that he had more than one gun in the flat when he first arrived. And finally, ask him who he saw coming towards Harald Olesen’s flat on the evening of the murder. My hope is that this will prompt some new and interesting information. Now, remember where to position me!’
Patricia’s mood was constantly switching from serious to sardonic. Suddenly she smiled and chuckled quietly.
‘To a certain extent, I understand why Kristian Lund was tempted into an affair – I felt almost jealous of her natural beauty and consummate technique. And by the way, she is, if nothing else, definitely guilty of being unhappily in love.’
My heart beat a little faster when she said that, but I did not want to be distracted by the topic for all manner of reasons. Fortunately, the lift stopped at that moment on the second floor. I pushed Patricia out and rang on the bell of the flat next door to Harald Olesen’s.
IV
Darrell Williams was truly a diplomat through and through. He smiled as soon as he saw me, shook my hand and apologized that his work had forced him to leave the country temporarily. He looked at my companion with greater scepticism, but reluctantly accepted my explanation about an injured secretary. It helped when I assured him that nothing from our conversation would be recorded in the official reports and that the notes were for internal use only.
I parked Patricia in the middle of the floor, while Darrell and I sat down on the same armchairs that we had sat in a few days before. This time, the gravity of the situation was clear. Our host was sober, and there was a large carafe of water on the table between us. I noted a tense nervousness behind our host’s smile that I had not experienced on previous occasions.
‘Welcome back. You no doubt understand that your disappearance, which was contrary to my orders, almost caused a very unfortunate situation.’
He looked at me without answering, waiting for me to carry on. Which I quickly did.
‘That being said, it is a pleasure to see you again, and we all hope that the case can now be concluded without any further complications. But that rather depends on you now giving us, better late than never, complete and truthful answers to our final questions.’
Darrell Williams nodded and leaned forward in concentration. I did not have the feeling that I was sitting opposite a human fly, but rather a lion or a bear or some other beast.
‘First question: did you feel any sorrow whatsoever when you heard that Harald Olesen had been murdered?’
Darrell Williams laughed briefly, then shook his head.
‘Absolutely not. He was a great man but not a good man. The story of his will, his son and his relatives only goes to show that. But I was surprised that he had been murdered. I have no idea who shot him and was definitely not there when it happened.’
He hesitated for a moment, but said nothing more. It gave me no choice other than to push him a little further.
‘But you were accommodated here in the flat next door to Harald Olesen in order to ensure that certain names and information did not get out. In the first months that you lived here, you kept two guns in the flat. Did you or your employer at any point consider murdering him as an option?’
Darrell Williams smiled bitterly and I got the impression that he almost nodded before he answered.
‘I am afraid that I can neither confirm nor deny that kind of question. I would like to reiterate that my accounts with Harald Olesen, both personal and professional, had been settled by the time he died. As you yourself saw when you searched my flat, the guns were no longer here at that point. And from what I understand, neither of them would be compatible with the bullet that killed Olesen in any case.’
I gave a cursory nod.
‘But if I am now to believe that you are innocent, and that you and the embassy had nothing to do with the murder… could you please think carefully through the evening of the murder one more time and inform us if there is anything you may have forgotten to tell us that might help to track down the real murderer.’
He gave an apologetic shrug.
‘Yes, there is, and I should have thought about it earlier. I saw one of my neighbours heading towards Harald Olesen’s flat shortly before the murder. There are several reasons why I have not mentioned this before. The first was that I did not want myself or the embassy to become any more involved than necessary, and I could of course not be sure that the person I saw passing was in fact the murderer. And later my antipathy towards Harald Olesen intensified. The palaver with the will must have been deeply upsetting for the son.’
My patience was dangerously close to breaking.
‘We want the truth on the table now. So this person whom you saw going towards Harald Olesen’s flat shortly before he was murdered was…’
He nodded and picked up the thread.
‘His son, Kristian Lund. It was very unusual to see him up here on the second floor, so I remembered it. It was not long before I went for my evening stroll. I cannot say the exact time, and of course do not know whether he was the one who fired the shot or not. As far as I could tell, he was not carrying a weapon, but he was wearing a winter overcoat that could hide pretty much anything.’
I swiftly glanced over at Patricia, whose eyebrows were knitted so tight that it was clear she was thinking furiously. Then she gently tapped her pad with her pen twice.
On the way out, I mentioned in passing that an old friend of his was down on the ground floor and that she would no doubt be very happy if he went to see her. This triggered first a smile and then a final defence – said with pure American pathos.
‘Despite the unfortunate circumstances surrounding our first meeting, please do not judge me too harshly. I have lived all my adult life fighting dictatorship – first against the Nazis during the war and then against communism after the war. And in all these years, I have carried a great loneliness after losing my first love. It can make you a bit of a loner, even though you might at heart be a good person.’
He hesitated for a moment, then took out his wallet and from a pocket at the front produced a white folded sheet that he held out towards me.
‘This is the letter that you asked about. You can read it if you like,’ he said abruptly.
I looked over at Patricia, who quickly shook her head and tapped her pen on her notebook. I got the very strong feeling that Darrell Williams had carried the letter wherever he went for the twenty years since he received it – and that it possibly was the first time that he had asked someone else to read it. But I no longer had any reason to doubt his word that there was nothing more in his past that was of any significance to Harald Olesen’s murder. He seemed to both understand and appreciate this. We shook each other by the hand before the door closed behind Patricia and me.