Ester opens her eyes and looks at Markus in surprise.
‘Let me see…’ He runs his index finger down the sheet, turns over the page. ‘Lots of valuables here. A couple of Munch lithographs, a somewhat controversial Monet and a miniature by Anne Marie Grimdalen, plus a Steinway grand piano. A chandelier … furniture … Of these items you say only the piano has been located since?’
‘What sort of investigation?’
‘Break-in. Property owned by Lemkow. Jewish. Footnote on how few valuables there are among the kitchen utensils – such as silverware. It’s assumed that whatever valuables of this nature there may have been were removed during the burglary.’
Ester goes ice cold at once. ‘A break-in,’ she says in measured tones, and leans back in the chair again. Markus removes his glasses, rubs his eyes, opens a drawer in the desk and takes out a black cloth. He begins to clean his glasses with it.
‘Do you think it wasn’t Quisling’s Hirden who broke into our flat?’
‘I’m not saying that. But I doubt there are any papers regarding the burglary. Otherwise there would’ve been references to them in this file. I assume the police put these things at the bottom of the pile back then. But yes, I’m sure it was the Hirden scum who broke in, stole items of value and sold them on the black market.’
Ester is back in Ada Vinje’s hallway. When they clung to each other while the Hirden paramilitaries talked outside and pointed to the splintered wood in the door.
‘This sort of thing went on,’ the rabbi says. ‘The Nazis removed gold fillings from the teeth of corpses in the gas chambers.’
‘Thank you, I know what they were capable of doing,’ Ester says in a hard voice. She springs to her feet.
‘I’m sorry, Ester.’
At the door, Ester breathes in. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘Can I offer you anything?’
She shakes her head at first, but then changes her mind. ‘I’d like to use your telephone.’
4
Markus pushes the telephone towards her.
She walks back to the chair and sits down. ‘May I be on my own?’
‘Naturally.’ He gets up. ‘Dial zero first.’
She waits until he has closed the door behind him. Then she dials the number for Information.
‘I’d like the number of Supreme Court Advocate Sverre Fenstad’s office please.’
Markus has left his biro on the file. She takes note of the number, says thank you and cradles the telephone. Dials zero, gets a different dialling tone and calls again. Asks for Fenstad. As soon as she hears Sverre say his name, she says: ‘Ester here. You said Gerhard has a return ticket. When does his plane leave?’
Sverre says he doesn’t know.
‘But the police checked his ticket, didn’t they?’
‘Sorry, but I didn’t ask. I was just pleased he was going.’
‘Could you find out?’
‘Perhaps you’d like us to break into his room again?’
‘I’m not joking, Sverre. I’d like you to stop him leaving.’
‘I can’t refuse to let anyone leave the country. Especially not if I don’t know when the respective individual’s leaving.’
‘You can use the police.’
‘Believe me. I can’t.’
‘This is all about Åse’s murder. Gerhard could clear the case up in an interview. That must be reason enough to stop him leaving the country.’
‘No, Ester. The statute of limitations has expired on that case. The Norwegian prosecuting authorities are unable to charge anyone with the murder of Åse. If you want to stop Gerhard leaving the country, you’ll have to dig up a better reason.’
‘Statute of limitations? When did it expire?’
‘Åse was killed on 30th October twenty-five years ago. The case was dismissed forever on 30th October this year.’
Ester looks at her reflection in the window. She can’t be bothered with polite phrases. She rings off.
She calls Hotel Continental and asks to be put through to Gary Larson’s room.
The answer she receives is short and neutral. ‘He’s checked out.’
‘When?’
‘Today.’
Ester presses the plunger.
So Gerhard is possibly on his way already. He has slipped away this time too, like a lump of slime. Admit it, she tells herself. There was no final reckoning. All that is left is the truth. Accept it. Forget Gerhard. He doesn’t exist. He died many years ago. He died long before you gave his body a new name.
Oslo, November 1967
1
Two workmen from Oslo Parks and Gardens are taking in the benches from Studenterlunden park. They grab hold of either side of one and lift it onto the back of a small lorry. It is a good day to do this, Gerhard thinks. Bare branches stand out against the sky. Sticky leaves meld with the tarmac and make walking unsafe for hurrying city folk with slippery soles. A third workman in rubber boots and a sou’wester trundles along with a square wheelbarrow. On top are a shovel and a piassava broom. He takes the broom, sweeps up the remaining leaves and shovels the heap into the wheelbarrow, then carries on. The two men with the benches shout to him. The man grunts something incomprehensible back. He drops the wheelbarrow beside Gerhard, who is leaning against a tree. Gerhard moves out of the way when the workman starts sweeping. Gerhard tucks a newspaper under his arm and focuses on the portico of the university. A caretaker in a blue smock is walking up the steps with a wad of letters under his arm. He stops and gives way to a young woman coming down. She exits between the columns and crosses the university square.
He watches Turid as he waits until there is a pause in the traffic, then he crosses Karl Johans gate and goes to meet her.
They stop and look at each other, and he is unable to conceal his emotion as he says: ‘Every time I think it’s your mother coming towards me.’
She gives him a hug.
They start walking.
She asks what he feels like doing. They have reached the corner of Domus Academica, and Gerhard looks up at the clock in the window. He checks the time against his own watch.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Not since breakfast.’
He asks where she would like to eat.
She havers and shrugs.
He asks if she is in a hurry.
She says she has the whole day if necessary.
Then he suggests they drive somewhere he hasn’t been for years.
2
Leafless branches from huge birch trees hang over the road. It is like going down an avenue, but there is only a single line of trees. On the opposite side there is a steep rock face. Soon the terrain opens and the road winds through farmyards with sloping fields on either side. There are still rows of hay racks scattered across the meadows, which in some places gleam with the golden hue of autumn. A white church comes into view on a hillside. Ester pulls over and stops the car when she reaches the side-road to the church. There is a milk ramp here and beside it stand a group of farmhands, chatting. That is, she assumes they are farmhands because of the boots, overalls and peaked caps. They all turn to look at her as she approaches. She asks for directions. One of the men doffs his cap. The others grin. The one who doffed his cap points up at the church and draws a map in the gravel with a stick. The others joke and criticise the map.
‘Don’t listen to what he’s saying. He’s full of lies.’
The map-drawer ripostes in dialect. Ester understands neither the dialect nor the humour, but smiles politely, gets in her car and drives up the hillside. The road goes through a few hairpin bends; the view of the lake is impressive. She branches off the gravel road and continues along a narrow tractor track. The deep ruts lead under a barn bridge, just as she was told. The track ends in another farmyard.
Ester stops the car and gets out. The grass is wet and the ground is covered with puddles. She tries as best she can to reach the white house with dry shoes. Wooden steps lead up to a porch and a grey door. S
he knocks. Steps back two paces and glimpses a face peering at her from behind a curtain in the window. She knocks again. She hears a door open inside. A man in his seventies opens.
‘Sveen?’ she says.
The man nods.
She proffers a hand. ‘Ester Lemkov. I rang you.’
In the kitchen it is as hot as a sauna. Providing the heat is a wood-fired stove in the corner. A blackened coffee pot stands between two hotplates. Above the stove are three strips of fly paper, thick with dead flies.
Ester greets his sister. She seems to have a back problem because it is bent and she squints up at Ester from an angle.
She and Sveen sit down at the table. His sister is busy by the worktop. She unpacks a large wholewheat loaf from a cloth bag, cuts some slices, butters them and adds brown cheese. The lid of the coffee pot rises and Sveen’s sister shuffles over to the stove and saves the pot from boiling over. She asks Ester if she wants any coffee. Ester doesn’t want to upset her by asking for tea, so she nods.
At that moment a fly collides with her forehead and she recoils.
As if it were going for my eyes, she thinks, and raises a hand to wave it away. But the fly is long gone. Above the table hang more strips of fly paper, covered in insects.
Ester asks Sveen whether it is correct that he used to be a pathologist. He answers that it is. She asks if he considers it strange that someone should call him about an autopsy that he carried out on a young mother more than twenty years ago.
He ponders the question. ‘It doesn’t happen often,’ he admits finally.
His sister has her say. It never happens. She is the one at home during the day. She is the one who answers the telephone. She points to the wall telephone. An old model with a hand crank at the side.
‘So you have some questions about Åse,’ the man says at length.
‘You remember her, sir?’
‘We can drop the formality,’ he says. ‘You’re in the country now. I can tell you this: I’ll never forget Åse.’
‘What are you talking about now, Father,’ his sister says, putting a plate of wholewheat sandwiches on the table. She pours the coffee. It is black and there are some light-brown grains floating on the surface. She leans back and looks up at Ester. She has curly grey hair and most of it is tied in a bun behind her head. ‘Eat up now,’ she says. ‘You look as if you could do with it.’
‘Could do with it?’
‘Don’t listen to her,’ Sveen says. ‘She just blathers.’
Ester takes a sandwich and tries it. Wholewheat with currants, butter and sweet brown cheese. She suddenly realises it is a long time since she last ate. ‘Lovely,’ she says, and she means it. She wolfs the rest down. Unable to stop herself, she reaches out for another.
The sister smiles with satisfaction. She has two top teeth missing. Ester melts when she sees the gappy smile amid all the wrinkles in her face. ‘Now have a drink,’ she says, motioning towards the coffee cup.
Ester raises the cup and pretends to take a sip. ‘Lovely,’ she says, setting down the cup.
‘Now you can go, Mother, and leave us to talk in peace.’
Ester wonders whether there are other siblings who call each other Mother and Father.
The sister takes some knitting from the worktop and lifts a fly swat from a hook on the wall. She says she will go to the little room. She closes the door behind her.
Now the roar of the flames in the stove is all that can be heard.
Ester lifts the cup and sets it down again. Finally, she asks him why he can’t forget Åse.
He hesitates. ‘What do you want to know?’ he says at length. ‘And why?’
‘Åse Lajord was my best friend,’ she says. ‘I had to flee to Sweden only a few days before she was killed. I couldn’t go to her funeral and never found out what had happened.’
‘The police weren’t interested in the body,’ he says. ‘They didn’t give a damn about the dead woman. They were only interested in what she represented. What they liked to call terrorism. I rang them and reminded them, and they asked me what I was nagging them for. I asked where I should send the report. They said I could file it. I rang because the poor girl’s mother was waiting. She wanted the body so that she could bury her daughter. She was a simple woman from the country. Her daughter lay on the zinc table with her stomach open, and I couldn’t show the body to the mother in that state. I remember telling the policeman that the deceased’s mother was there and wanted to bury her. So he said to me: “Why are you bothering me with this? Can’t you just do what she asks?” It was a scandal. Nothing less.’
A couple of flies have started taking an interest in the plate of food and Ester is no longer hungry. The heat inside the kitchen is becoming unbearable. They must have animals on this farm. Sveen’s woollen jumper smells of cowshed, and now Ester is finding the odour unpleasant and acrid.
‘So she couldn’t have the body until I’d finished. When you rang you talked about a piece of jewellery.’
Ester looks up.
‘I found a bracelet. Gold chain and a precious gemstone. I gave it to her mother.’
‘You found a bracelet. In her stomach? Had she eaten it?’
‘No.’
He gets up. Crosses the floor and opens a blue wooden box by the door. From it he takes two narrow birch skis. Opens the stove door and adds them to the red glow. He straightens up. ‘That’s how she died. She was choked to death. But the police weren’t in the slightest bit interested.’
Ester nods and coughs. ‘I heard she was suffocated. That’s what they wrote in the press.’
He stares into the air. ‘But they didn’t say how she died.’
The man sits down, takes a sugar cube from the bowl on the table, puts it in his mouth and sips some coffee. Smacks his lips. ‘The murderer forced the bracelet down her throat. The hyoid bone was broken and the larynx was badly damaged. She couldn’t get any oxygen.’ He takes another sugar cube and sips coffee again. Smacks his lips and glances at Ester. ‘But he must’ve been holding her down. I presume she was struggling violently. It must’ve taken her quite a time to die. We’re talking premeditation here. He had the opportunity to let her go. He had more than enough time to change his mind. That was what made this case so repulsive. I examined her nails. We pathologists like to reconstruct the crime. But there was no skin under her nails. I remember there were clothing fibres, ordinary wool. It must’ve been from his clothes because the bedding in the flat was linen. The strange thing was that the victim was naked while the murderer was fully dressed. Well, I didn’t get any further. I didn’t say anything to her mother. I just gave her the bracelet. Said her daughter had been wearing it. It was hers.’
Ester leans back against the wall. The stove is roaring. She is sweating and thinking this cannot be possible. She says: ‘In her throat. Surely it’s impossible to do something like that?’
‘If someone’s strong enough and angry enough, they can do it. A couple of her teeth got a battering. They were cracked.’
They look at each other. He carries on talking. ‘A beautiful young woman is killed in her bed by a man wearing a woollen jumper or woollen fabrics, maybe knee stockings. She’s naked, apparently in bed asleep. Then she’s murdered like this? How could it have happened? If she – excuse my frankness – if she’d been sexually attacked and the murderer wanted to conceal the crime, wouldn’t he have been undressed as well? I saw no signs of rape. The sole indication of sexual violence was the fact that she was naked. So what led to the murder? I couldn’t imagine it, but the scandal was that the police couldn’t give a damn. They’d made up their minds. They went after the husband and they did so because he was a resistance man. He was their lead. In my eyes the case could never be cleared up because the police weren’t interested in reconstructing the sequence of events – what actually happened before she died.’
3
Despite the grey cloud cover, Oslofjord lies like a huge photograph behind the glass window. The islan
ds are called Hovedøya, Lindøya and Nakholmen. Gerhard is impressed by his own memory. The two islands to the left are more difficult. He can’t remember whether Bleikøya or Gressholmen is closer to the shore. The Nesodden headland is like a green tongue, he thinks, forest green, and catches a movement in the glass on the table. The reflection is Turid coming back after powdering her nose, as some women say in the States. She sits down and he asks if she wants any dessert. She says she has to watch her weight. He roars with laughter and says she doesn’t weigh a gram too much.
She says perhaps a vanilla slice then with her coffee. ‘I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth.’
‘Your mother to a T,’ Gerhard says, beckoning the waiter. After the man has left Turid says she has met one of her mother’s friends. Ester. They got on well and she can understand how her mother liked her.
He says it isn’t hard to like Ester. ‘We knew each other then, many years ago. That is, Åse and she were close. They almost grew up together.’
The waiter came with the vanilla slice.
He says it looks delicious.
She tastes it. Nods her approval. Asks him if he would like to try a bit. He shakes his head. Instead he tells her about how he waited in a corridor at Aker hospital when Turid was born.
She asks where he and her mother first met.
He says at Fagerlund Hotel in Fagernes. Åse was working in the reception area.
‘She was as blonde as you. She also wore her hair in a big plait over one shoulder. We both talked at once, and stopped, and started again. Three times in succession. Then we burst into laughter.’
Turid laughs and he smiles at the memory.
He says he travelled around selling advertising for a newspaper. He stayed at Fagerlund Hotel whenever he was in Valdres, even if he, strictly speaking, didn’t need to stop over. He did it so that he could talk to Åse. And even though the chemistry was there he had to ask her out four whole times before she would agree. She thought it wasn’t done for staff to go out and eat with guests.
The Courier Page 31
