Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen looked up briefly from her pile of paper, waved and flashed me a crooked smile as I left the office. For want of any other leads, I interpreted it as a good omen for my investigation. I found it reassuring and credible, and not in the least suspect, that she was the only one who had remained calm on the night that Falko Reinhardt had disappeared. And for my own personal record, I noted that the sole dissenter in the group was rather beautiful as she sat there alone, smiling, even if it was by a desk in the SPP office.
XV
It was ten past six by the time I rang the doorbell of Martin Morgenstierne’s house in Frogner.
The house was even larger than I had expected, and the host more correct. He was standing waiting at the door, gave me a firm handshake and immediately accepted my apology that I was a few minutes late owing to other commitments relating to the case.
Martin Morgenstierne was as impeccably dressed as I had imagined, in a black suit and tie. But he was unexpectedly tall and unexpectedly youthful. His hair was still black and his face was free of wrinkles, so he did not look a day over fifty, and his movements were still vigorous and dynamic. He seemed remarkably fit for a bank manager.
Martin Morgenstierne showed me into the drawing room and we sat down opposite each other on very generous sofas. I politely declined his offer of a drink. He poured himself a small glass of cognac from a large drinks cabinet, but left it untouched to begin with. I waited to see if he would say anything first. In the meantime, I glanced swiftly around the room.
The contrast with the Reinhardts’ flat in Seilduk Street was striking, and it was not difficult to understand why the meeting of the two families had been such a collision both politically and culturally. The walls here were at least twice as big as the Reinhardts’, but with the exception of three impressive bookcases, they were panelled and remarkably empty. There were a couple of plaques honouring Martin Morgenstierne himself, and two pictures of him with an attractive, elegant dark-haired woman, who was obviously his wife. The first was an old black and white wedding photograph, the second a more recent colour photograph from their silver wedding anniversary or some such celebration. Martin Morgenstierne was easily recognizable. However, there was a stark contrast between his broad, apparently genuine smile in the pictures on the wall and his very grave expression now.
The drawing room almost gave the impression that Martin Morgenstierne had had a happy but childless marriage. There was no trace of his daughter, though I suspected that at some point there had been. Below the photographs of himself and his wife were two lighter squares on the wooden panelling, telling of photographs that had been removed.
Martin Morgenstierne was clearly an intelligent man with good social skills. He followed my gaze around the room for the first thirty seconds or so, before breaking the silence.
‘You are no doubt somewhat surprised that I do not have any photographs of my only daughter here, and that I carried on working as usual after I had received the news of her death.’
I nodded my confirmation. He continued, still without a shadow of a smile.
‘My family has always had a strong sense of duty and work ethic. I have not missed a single day of work, other than trade holidays, for more than a decade. I have worked extremely hard all my life and my compulsion to work became even stronger after the death of my wife. I realized very quickly that I would go mad if I stayed at home on my own too much. So instead, I worked my way through the greatest sorrow I have ever experienced. And now I will do the same.’
He took a nip from the glass of cognac, and sat for a moment lost in thought. I was relieved to hear that Martin Morgenstierne did feel some grief at his daughter’s death, and I hoped that we were getting closer to something.
‘There were of course pictures of her on the walls for all the years she lived at home. And I left them there even though she rebelled and turned her back on all the values we held. But in the last few months that my wife was alive, her lack of respect was too much. I phoned Marie one Wednesday in September 1967 to say that her mother was deteriorating rapidly, and that my wife would like to meet her to see if they could be reconciled. Marie replied that it was highly unlikely that a meeting could lead to reconciliation at this stage, and that she in any case had a meeting that evening. She would see if she had the time to come by at the weekend. But by the time the weekend came, Margrete was dead. So there was a tragic end to a sad chapter in my family story. I hope that you understand and judge my reactions accordingly.’
I nodded. Even though I had only heard one side of the final chapter in the Morgenstierne family history, it was easy to understand that this would have made a deep impression on an old-school family man. The sudden use of her first name reinforced my impression that he had been deeply attached to his wife.
‘I continued to treat my daughter with the utmost respect, even though she perhaps did not deserve it. She inherited a quarter of million from her mother, fifty thousand more than was in the estate. But I could no longer bear to see her picture alongside that of her mother. So I put away all the photographs of Marie. I hoped that there would be better times ahead and that we would eventually find our way back to each other. But it seemed, as she said herself, highly unlikely. I sent her a Christmas card and received a card in response for New Year. Other than that, we have had no contact for more than a year now.’
He shook his head sadly and emptied the rest of the glass of cognac.
‘In retrospect, I have realized that the situation is in part fate and in part our own fault. Both Margrete and I came from conservative families with strong traditions. I followed in my father’s footsteps, serving as an officer in the army in my younger years, then going on to become a successful bank manager. I had great hopes for a large family and a son to carry on the family name. But Marie’s birth was difficult, and as a result, my wife could have no more children. So all our hopes and aspirations rested on Marie. It was perhaps too much for her. I have often thought about it in recent years.’
Martin Morgenstierne stood up and poured himself another glass of cognac. He was on a roll now, and carried on without any prompts from me.
‘She was the dream daughter throughout most of her childhood. She did everything we asked her to, was kind and polite to everyone, and did well at school. But then suddenly everything changed when she turned eighteen and went to university. I cannot forgive him for leading her astray.’
‘By him, you mean Falko Reinhardt?’
He nodded, and an almost aggressive edge sparked in his eye.
‘Of course. Though we had noticed some changes before he came on the scene. She was much harder on both me and her mother, and the atmosphere around the table was often not particularly pleasant in the months before she graduated from high school. But it was when she started university and met him that it became unbearable for me to eat supper in my own home. I am fully aware that he is in all likelihood dead, but I have nothing positive to say about him, all the same.’
I asked whether he had ever met Falko Reinhardt in person. He nodded, almost reluctantly.
‘We met a couple of times when they first fell in love, and then I met him again at my daughter’s request just after they got engaged. He made an admirable attempt to embrace me and even tried to call me father-in-law, instead of his usual sarcastic ‘Super Pater’, the last time we met. He was intelligent enough not to mention any of the anti-establishment theories he spouted so readily in other social contexts. But we were of course diametrically opposed in terms of politics and status, so any real contact was impossible. I prayed to God on several occasions that my daughter might break off the engagement and had debated vigorously with myself as to whether I would go to the wedding or not. And in the end, I did not have to make that choice.’
He sighed, took a sip from his glass, and then carried on.
‘For me, it was a huge relief when my daughter’s fiancé disappeared, and I had no desire whatsoever for him to come back. It is u
nderstandable that the detective inspector leading the investigation into Reinhardt’s disappearance had to ask me where I was on the night that he disappeared. Fortunately, it could be confirmed that I was at an anniversary dinner in Oslo until well past midnight, so it would have been impossible for me to get to my cabin in Vestre Slidre.’
I could not gauge the extent to which this positive reference to Detective Inspector Danielsen was a dig at me or not. I could imagine that the two of them had quickly become chums, but something else that the bank manager said immediately caught my attention.
‘So the cabin in Valdres is yours?’
He nodded.
‘Paradoxically, yes. I inherited it from my father. I had spent family holidays there since I was a boy, a tradition that Marie had also grown up with and enjoyed. But the cabin had not been used since Margrete died. I could not face going there alone, and Marie knew this. Which is why she took the chance of inviting her friends there without even asking me. I was completely unaware that the group were in my property and at first thought it was a misunderstanding when the police called to say that a person had been reported missing from my cabin.’
‘So your daughter had her own key to the cabin, and you still have your own key?’
‘Yes, I do still have it, but don’t use it any more. I have not been to the cabin since all this happened and definitely have no intention of going there alone now. The police are welcome to borrow the key, if that would be of any help to the investigation.’
I accepted this offer and thanked him, popping the key he gave me into my pocket. It could well be useful to have the key to the cabin where Falko Reinhardt had disappeared.
But right now, I was more interested in the deceased’s flat. According to her father, she had lived in a rented two-bedroom flat in Kjelsås for the past three years. He had only been there once and was never offered a key. He could therefore only advise that I contact the owner or caretaker of the building if I wanted to get in. As far as inheritance was concerned, he had no idea whether his daughter had a will or not, or if so, where it might be. If she had not left a will, he would, as her closest living relative, get back all the money she had received following her mother’s death. Which was certainly not what he had hoped for, he added hastily.
I viewed Martin Morgenstierne in a more positive light following this conversation. It now seemed that he had said all that he wanted to for today. He looked at me questioningly over his glass of cognac, with a hint of anticipation.
I still had one unanswered question – which I really did not want to ask, but knew I had to.
‘As a matter of procedure, I have to ask where you were at ten o’clock yesterday evening?’
I was prepared for a violent reaction. There was none. Martin Morgenstierne was obviously an impressively controlled man. He emptied what was left of his cognac before answering, but when he did, his voice was measured but not unfriendly.
‘I have been a law-abiding man all my life. And I had not given up hope that my daughter would at some point change her views, and that we would be reconciled. In fact, it was my fervent wish for the future. The thought that I might hurt my daughter in any way is absurd. But I fully understand that you have to ask. Fortunately, I can tell you that I was at a colleague’s fiftieth birthday celebrations yesterday evening at ten o’clock, and that can be confirmed by about ten reliable witnesses.’
When he said the word ‘absurd’ it struck me that Martin Morgenstierne the bank manager and Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen the SPP activist, despite all other apparent differences, shared a remarkable sense of rationality. But even though Morgenstierne had risen in my esteem during our conversation, I was in no doubt which of the two I liked best.
I had no more questions to ask then and there. I thanked him for his time and once more gave my condolences, then stood up. Martin Morgenstierne was a very proper host, and he followed me out to the front door.
In the hallway, he said that he would be grateful if he could be informed of any conclusions the investigation might reach concerning his daughter’s murder before they appeared in the newspapers. Then he added that he was more than happy to answer any more questions, should that be necessary, but did not think that he had much more to add. He had no idea what his daughter had been up to in the past year. He would guess that the possible motive was to be found in the radical circles she frequented, some of whose members were not averse to the idea of terrorism and illegal activity. But he did not know any of the others involved, and so could not point anyone out as a suspect.
As I was leaving, he suddenly remarked that it would no doubt be some time before his daughter could be buried due to the ongoing investigation, but that when the time came he supposed it would be he who had to do it. I confirmed this assumption: Marie Morgenstierne had at the time of her death been unmarried, and her father was her closest relative. He said he would have to consider the situation, but thought that perhaps she should be buried beside her mother in the family grave.
I pointed out that that had nothing to do with me or the police, but that personally I thought it was a good idea. And in some way in that moment, it felt as though Marie Morgenstierne was one step closer to reconciliation with her parents, albeit after her own and her mother’s death. Her father and I shook hands and parted on almost friendly terms.
When I left the house in Frogner at ten past seven, I had still only seen Martin Morgenstierne’s smile on old photographs. But little else was to be expected, given what I now knew about the family history. And given the father’s alibis it seemed very unlikely that he had anything to do with his daughter’s death, or with her fiancé’s disappearance.
XVI
I had plenty of new information to worry about on my short drive to the grand Borchmann residence at 104 –8 Erling Skjalgsson’s Street. The case was becoming increasingly complex, and a solution was no closer than it had been this morning. However, as I parked the car, it was the thought of how it would be to see Patricia again that bothered me most. My last visit there had been some fifteen months earlier, on the Norwegian national day, and that 17 May had ended dramatically when I more or less fled the house just before midnight.
To my relief, the impressive white building was just as I remembered. To step through the door was still like taking a step back in time to the 1930s. It was Patricia’s father, the professor and company director Ragnar Sverre Borchmann, who had contacted me in connection with my first murder investigation two years ago. This time, he was nowhere to be seen. But I was still graciously received. I was, just as before, unable to tell whether the maid was Beate or Benedikte, as they were identical twins. But I assumed that Benedikte would not be back at work yet as she had had a baby the year before, so I guessed it was Beate, and did not ask. She was standing at the ready as soon as I rang the doorbell, and whispered: ‘Don’t say that I told you, but she’s been looking forward to this and waiting impatiently for you all day.’
I gave her a friendly smile and took this as a sign that our complicity from the two previous investigations had been re-established.
The library – where the now twenty-year-old Patricia Louise I. E. Borchmann had spent most of her waking hours since a car accident had killed her mother and left her paralysed from the waist down – was still the same, too. And there she was, surrounded by all her books, sitting back in her wheelchair, apparently relaxed, with a thick notebook and three ballpoint pens at the ready on the large table.
The new decade had heralded few changes in here. The twenty-year-old Patricia I met in summer 1970 looked more or less the same as the nineteen-year-old Patricia I had fled from in spring 1969. I was convinced that she remembered my hasty retreat, but she did nothing to show it if that was the case. The starter to a delicious three-course meal was already on the table.
It did not feel natural for me to shake her hand, or to initiate any form of physical contact, and fortunately she did not appear to feel inclined either. But it did feel absolutely na
tural that I should come back here to seek her advice, now that I was once again in the middle of a demanding investigation. It had become part of the world order that we both took for granted; I needed her help to solve my murders, and she needed my help to give her life meaning. So we sat down without shaking hands and this time without any small talk either.
‘Tell me everything,’ she said, the very second that the door closed behind the maid.
Patricia noted down the odd key word as a reminder, but otherwise listened in silence while we consumed the oxtail soup and most of the duck breast. I myself had my work cut out trying to finish both the starter and the first course and still deliver my report of the day’s hearings fast enough to prevent any impatient furrows appearing on Patricia’s brow. It was half past eight by the time I had gone through all the day’s events and reached the end of my visit to the victim’s father.
‘So, what does the genius have to say about Falko Reinhardt’s disappearance and Marie Morgenstierne’s murder so far?’ I asked, before throwing myself with gusto into what remained of my first course.
Patricia smiled.
‘The genius is certainly intelligent enough to see that we still lack too much information to be able to conclude anything about these two rather complicated cases. And at the same time warns that it may take time and energy to solve them. The universes we have dealt with in both our previous cases have been clearly defined, and we have had to separate the truth from lies, and the murderer from the innocent within a limited group of known players. Here we face the curse of public space. Practically the whole of Oslo could in theory have shot Marie Morgenstierne at Smestad yesterday, with the exception of her father and anyone else with a clear alibi. And practically the whole world could, in one way or another, have played a part in Falko Reinhardt’s disappearance in Valdres two years ago. However, bearing in mind the dates, it seems likely that there is some kind of connection between these two events. And I think that we can safely say that the person who shot Marie Morgenstierne is someone she already knew.’
The Catalyst Killing (K2 and Patricia series Book 3) Page 6
