Authors: Hans Olav Lahlum
I read the note containing Tor Johansen’s last words to the world over and over again, until an out-of-breath doctor arrived and immediately declared the patient dead.
I had no idea where the words on the note came from – or whether indeed it was something he had read or come up with himself. Whatever the case, his note only increased my puzzlement as to
who Tor Johansen had been and what he had been thinking.
Number 36 Tøyenbekken was at the very end of the street. The Grønland neighbourhood was far from one of the best in town, the street was far from one of the best
in the neighbourhood and the building was far from one of the best in the street. The paint was flaking from the walls, the steps were worn down and what had once been a medium-sized basement flat
was now divided into two much smaller homes.
The woman who was waiting for me in the basement also seemed a little worn down. Her dark hair had started to grey, and her cheeks were wet with tears. I guessed that she was closer to fifty
than sixty, but it did strike me that not so many decades ago she could well have been an attractive young woman. She was around five foot six and her body appeared slim yet shapely even under her
old threadbare dress. The skin on her hands was creased and she was trembling with emotion.
‘Come in,’ she said quickly, and then closed the door behind us.
We went in and sat down in a room that was barely 150 square feet and appeared to be a combined kitchen, living room and bedroom. There was a table and a couple of chairs in the middle of the
room, a made-up bed along one wall and a kitchen counter and cooker along the other.
It was half past two. The priest had been there before me. Lene Johansen knew why I was there. I, on the other hand, could still not see a connection.
The room gave me no clues whatsoever. The flat was clean and tidy, if incredibly small. The things I could see were somehow less striking than the things I could not see. I had not expected
there to be a television in a basement flat in Grønland, but nor was there a radio or even any newspapers. There was no telephone or wall clock of any kind.
Above the bed, there was a simple old photograph of a couple in their thirties with a small child. The child was too young to be recognizable as Tor Johansen, but the woman was definitely his
mother and she had indeed once been beautiful. The man beside her did not make much of an impression. He was just a clean-shaven, thin, dark-haired man. There was no striking resemblance to Tor
Johansen, but nor were there any great differences. His smile was unusually broad, and he had his hand on the baby’s head.
The woman followed my eyes to the picture. ‘That was in 1957,’ she said quietly. ‘I was thirty-five, but felt younger and more optimistic than I had done for a long time. We
had been married for twelve years without any children, and then all of a sudden, I was going to have one. It was a difficult pregnancy and a complicated birth. We never had any more children. So
everything was focused on Tor. In the early days, when he was first born, we thought that everything was fine. But when he started to crawl, we noticed that he dragged one foot behind, and he
struggled with words when finally he started to talk. So I had to give all my time to a child who would never learn to walk or talk properly. They were happy days all the same, while my husband was
still healthy and alive. He had a good job at the steel works and spent practically everything he earned on the family. But then he fell ill and that same day lost any control over the bottle.
Things went downhill with frightening speed. When my husband died three years ago, he left us seventy kroner in cash and twenty-three thousand, two hundred in debt. Since then, Tor and I have moved
every year to smaller and smaller flats. And we can’t even manage to stay here now the rent has gone up.’
She pulled from her pocket a folded sheet of paper and placed it on the table in front of me.
The letter was short, formal and brutal. The tenancy agreement had been terminated as the rent had not been paid. If they did not move out voluntarily within ten days from the date on the
letter, they would be evicted. It was signed by Odd Jørgensen, office manager at Per Johan Fredriksen Ltd.
I immediately thought that here was the link I should have seen. And then I thought that Patricia would have seen it.
Lene Johansen seemed to have aged even more during this conversation, and she buried her head in her hands before carrying on.
‘Tor was sitting here with the letter when I came home on Thursday, and was beside himself. He couldn’t bear the thought of moving yet again and asked where we were going to go now.
I told him the truth, which was that I had no idea. Tor wanted to go and talk to Per Johan Fredriksen personally. I said that he must never do anything of the kind. Then I went down to the office
myself the next morning. I begged on behalf of my sick child, I cried and even got down on my knees in front of them. But there was no sympathy and no hope. I left when they threatened to call the
police if I stayed on their floor any longer. So I went to visit my sister in Ski to see if she could perhaps find a corner for us in the meantime. The evening before I went, Tor said again that he
would go and see Fredriksen himself. I told him it would only make things worse. And that seemed to make him change his mind. So it’s not such a surprise that he might have tried to find
Fredriksen. But I would never have thought that he would kill him. No matter how much Tor has suffered, he has never broken the law before. He was always kind and good like that.’
I took out a sealed bag with the murder weapon inside and put it down on the table. She quickly understood what it was, but looked at it with little interest.
‘That’s not from this kitchen, but there are plenty of other ways he could have got hold of it.’
I nodded thoughtfully. It was a piece that did not quite fit the puzzle, but it was in no way decisive.
‘There is still one thing I don’t quite understand . . . It is perhaps not so strange that he wanted to talk to Fredriksen. But it seems rather odd that he knew how to find
Fredriksen in Majorstuen, and also knew the way from there to my flat.’
She let out a heavy sigh. ‘Sadly, it is perhaps not as strange as it might seem. Tor never had any money, still couldn’t walk properly or talk clearly. So there wasn’t much he
could do with the others after school. I had to work a lot in the evenings and he didn’t like it here on his own. So he’d normally go to the library after school and sit there until it
closed. Then he would cycle around in town for a few hours. He liked cycling more than walking, as then people couldn’t see his limp. He called his bike Andreas, and used to say that it was
his best friend. When I asked him where he’d been he’d say “I’ve been out with Andreas”. They went all over Oslo, the two of them. Tor had a map of practically the
whole town in his head. He never dared to talk to famous people, but could always remember where he’d seen them. He sometimes called himself a little spy. So Tor might have followed
Fredriksen, if he’d come from the Storting, or waited for him at Majorstuen, if he’d seen him there several Saturdays before.’
That made sense. According to his mistress, Fredriksen had often been there on Saturdays.
I no longer doubted that Tor Johansen had killed Per Johan Fredriksen, but asked his mother all the same if she thought her son was capable of committing such a serious crime.
‘To be honest, I don’t know what to believe any more. Tor was my only child. I loved him, but I never really understood him. He was clever with books and things like that. He often
understood much more than I did, and sometimes I just had no idea what was going on in his head. He’s never done anything wrong before, but I just don’t know what he might be capable of
any more.’
We sat in silence briefly, before she gave a sombre nod and continued. ‘If he has, it’s because we’re so poor. If my son really has killed someone, it’s another tragic
example of what poverty can do to a good person.’
Her voice had an edge of bitterness and accusation against society. It soon disappeared, though, when she carried on speaking.
‘It’s my fault as well, of course. I grew up in a poor family myself, but was quite smart when I was young. Got the best grades in middle school. A rich uncle of my father was
impressed and wanted to lend me the money to carry on with school. And I have bitterly regretted every day for the past ten years not taking it. Instead, I got married young, to the wrong man. And
stayed with him for as long as he was alive. Despite knowing that he drank a lot and even though for many years we didn’t have children. So it was partly poverty and partly the fact that I
made the wrong choices that ruined the life of the only child I eventually managed to have.’
There was another silence. I racked my brains for something to say. Fortunately, she got there first.
‘If you want to talk to someone other than me about Tor . . . None of the other boys at school knew him well, which is a shame. But he really liked his teacher; Eveline Kolberg, I think
she was called. It’s possible she might be able to help you, if you need someone smarter than me who might understand how my son thought.’
I wrote down the name. She asked me to take a note of her sister’s address in Ski as well. ‘In case you come back here and I’ve been thrown out, that’s where you’ll
find me. Either there or at one of the schools where I’m a cleaner,’ she said, her voice breaking.
The atmosphere was heavy and I suddenly longed to get out of the flat, away from this street. I felt a great deal of sympathy for the poor cleaning lady, who had now, along with everything else,
lost her only son, but I was unable to see what on earth I could do to help her. It seemed inevitable that her son’s story would sooner or later find its way into the press. And he would only
ever be remembered as the person who murdered Fredriksen, the politician.
I took great care to assure her that it was never easy to see what the consequences of our choices might be in years to come, and that her son’s tragedy was mostly due to poverty rather
than her choices.
She brightened a little when I said this and gave a fleeting smile as she stood up and insisted that I see her son’s room before I leave.
All I really wanted to do was get away as quickly as I could, but I realized that I should look at his room, now that I was here.
The late Tor Johansen’s room was like the rest of the flat: tidy, small and sparse. For a boy who had enjoyed reading so much, he had no bookshelves. There was a shelf’s worth of
books lined up on the floor against the wall. None of them looked like they had been published after the war, and they all seemed well-thumbed.
There was not a single picture of the boy who had lived here on any of the walls. There were, however, some other pictures of a person I had not expected to see here. Namely, myself. Three
newspaper clippings and photographs about my previous investigations were hanging on the wall. It was an unexpected and almost moving sight.
His mother’s voice sounded brighter when she spoke. ‘It’s so strange to have you standing here now, and such a shame that Tor is not here to see it. He read a lot about
criminal cases in newspapers and books. He read everything he could about your cases. When you were investigating, he was outside the library first thing Saturday morning to read about the latest
developments. It’s not so strange really that he’d found out where you lived.’
She was right about this and no doubt meant well in saying it. But it felt rather uncomfortable all the same. The boy on the red bicycle had almost instinctively sought me out in his hour of
need and trusted that I would solve the case. Now he was dead and if he was innocent, I had not been able to help him in time.
I tried to push the thought to one side. I now had the answers I had needed from his mother. The boy had a connection to Per Johan Fredriksen and a motive, and the reason why he had known where
I lived was obvious. It all added up with a double line under the name of the murderer.
Tor Johansen had slept on a mattress on the floor. The only furniture in his room was a small, old desk and a wooden chair. The desk was empty. A worn brown satchel stood by the chair.
I quickly looked through the satchel, but found no more than the usual schoolbooks. The only surprise was when I leafed through the one titled ‘Introduction to Science’. His writing
was clear and succinct, and his knowledge was evidently not far behind my own. Tor Johansen had obviously had a good head on him, despite his problems with his tongue and foot.
I shared my thoughts with his mother. That her son had been extremely unlucky and had had a difficult life, but that he had been very intelligent in many ways. However, as the case stood now and
based on what she had told me, there was little reason to doubt that he had in fact killed Fredriksen.
She wrung her hands, looked down and said that she saw no grounds to contradict me. To the extent that it could make any difference, she asked me to convey her condolences and apologies to the
family. I had been extremely understanding, but unless there was anything else I wanted to know, she would now like to be left in peace to grieve.
When she said this, I feared that she might be harbouring thoughts of suicide. However, I had no more questions to ask and nothing more to say. So once again I expressed my condolences and
wished her all the best.
Our eyes met briefly as I turned to go, and I was impressed by the steadiness of her gaze and her firm handshake.
I left without looking back. But all the while I saw the boy’s bare room in my mind’s eye, the satchel on the floor and the pictures of me on the wall.
Outside the building in Tøyenbekken, only a few yards from my car, my thoughts were interrupted by an unexpected little incident.
As I glanced over my shoulder, I saw a man around my age, who I at first mistook for someone I had gone to school with. He was around five foot nine and of slim build, with the same oval-shaped
face and brown hair as one of my old classmates. He was also wearing the same kind of wide-brimmed hat that my friend often did.