Authors: Hans Olav Lahlum
I hesitated again for a fraction of a second. Then I looked out of the window and saw the car.
It was a big car with no lights, and it sped up the hill through the dark in an almost aggressive manner towards the abandoned bike.
The sight of the car made me spontaneously press the door-opener, and over the intercom system I heard my unexpected guest tumbling in downstairs.
Seconds later, I had opened the door to my flat. The boy on the red bicycle was by then clattering up the stairs towards me. He tripped on the last step and ended up prostrate and panting on the
landing. I as good as dragged him into the flat and slammed the door shut.
It never occurred to me that my uninvited visitor might be dangerous. The boy was empty-handed, thin, just over five foot, and on top of that, completely done in by his frantic flight. He lay on
the floor by my doormat for a few seconds, gasping for breath.
‘Who is after you?’ I asked.
Just then there was another ring on the bell.
I looked down at him and hastily repeated my question. His answer was a shock.
‘The police.’
I asked him if he knew that I was a policeman.
He gave a feeble nod and a sheepish smile.
There was yet another ring on the doorbell. It was longer and louder this time.
I kept my eyes trained on my young guest, as I picked up the intercom.
This time I recognized the familiar voice of a constable. He said that a suspect had disappeared into my building and asked if everything was under control inside.
I answered yes and once again pressed the door-opener.
My guest remained seated on the floor, but had now managed to catch his breath again.
‘I had to speak to you before they caught me,’ he said.
His voice was almost a whisper and was drowned out by heavy steps on the stairs.
‘And what did you want to tell me?’ I asked.
‘That I’m innocent,’ he whispered.
And then it was as if he had said all he wanted to say. He sat there quietly on the floor by the doormat, without another word.
I opened the door when they knocked and assured them that everything was under control. ‘They’ being three slightly puffed policemen, who briefly shook my hand.
I watched them put handcuffs around my guest’s skinny wrists. He did not resist in any way, and suddenly seemed utterly disinterested in what was going on.
The young man had one striking physical feature: a reddish-brown birthmark that covered the greater part of the right-hand side of his neck. Of course, that could not help us identity him there
and then. And there was nothing in the boy’s pockets that could tell us who he was. In fact, we found very little of interest. But the one thing we did find was both damning and alarming.
The boy on the red bicycle had a sharp kitchen knife in the left pocket of his jacket and both the handle and the blade were sticky with blood.
I realized then that the situation was serious indeed, but still did not join up the dots until one of the policemen heaved a sigh of relief and remarked: ‘You’ve truly outdone
yourself this time, DI Kolbjørn Kristiansen. You have single-handedly caught Fredriksen’s murderer without even leaving your flat!’
I spun round and asked the policeman if Per Johan Fredriksen had died. He looked at me gravely and replied that the politician had been declared dead at the scene. He had been stabbed straight
through the heart. It was done efficiently and apparently with a good deal of hate.
Given this information, I looked at the boy on my floor with some scepticism. He did not avert his eyes or blink.
‘I didn’t kill him. He was dead when I went back,’ was the only thing he said.
And he then repeated this three times.
After the third, one of the policemen commented laconically that they could categorically dismiss his statement that Fredriksen had been dead when he got there. Two witnesses who were passing
had seen the young man standing at a street corner in Majorstuen as the politician walked by. The young man had been visibly agitated, whereas Fredriksen had calmly exchanged a few words with him,
and then carried on.
A few minutes later, the young man had been seen bending over Fredriksen further down the same block, with the knife in his hand. He then fled when three further witnesses rounded the corner. It
had taken them a few minutes to contact the police and alert any patrol cars in the area. However, one of them had then spotted the fleeing cyclist in the quieter roads around Hegdehaugen.
We all looked sharply at the young arrestee.
‘I didn’t kill him. He was already dead when I went back,’ he said yet again in a staccato voice.
He fixed me with a remarkably steady and piercing look when he said this.
Then he closed his lips tight and turned his dark eyes to stare pointedly at the wall.
It occurred to me that I had never come across such a clear-cut murder case. And yet the adrenalin was pumping given the evening’s unexpected and dramatic turn in my own home, and the case
was not closed yet, as the murderer’s identity and motive were unknown. It struck me as rather odd that the young man had known where I lived. And it was quite simply mystifying that he had
chosen to flee here, having murdered a top politician. Consequently, I accompanied them in the car down to the main police station.
It did not take long to drive there. The arrestee sat squashed between myself and a constable in the back seat, small and silent. In contrast to the explosive energy and will he
had demonstrated only half an hour earlier, he now seemed not only resigned, but as good as disinterested in everything. As we drove past his bicycle, he asked if someone would look after it, then
gave a curt nod when I said that it would of course be taken down to the police station. After that, he said nothing more.
I sat and looked at our prisoner for the first part of the journey. The conspicuous birthmark on his neck was close to my shoulder and drew my attention again. I had a strong intuition that this
birthmark would in some way be significant to the case, without having a clue of how, what or why.
Just as we stopped outside the police station, I turned to the arrestee and again asked why he had come to my door. A glimmer of interest sparked in his eyes.
‘You were the only person in the world I hoped might believe me,’ he stammered in a quiet voice.
Then he seemed to lose both his voice and interest again. He had nothing more to say about the case. All the questions he was asked later that evening remained unanswered, including any about
his name. And he shook his head feebly when asked if he would like a lawyer or to contact his family.
The suspect’s identity was not confirmed that first evening. It was perfectly clear that he came from a very different background from the multi-millionaire Per Johan Fredriksen. But where
the mysterious boy actually came from was not established. He did not say a single word more and no one called in to say that their teenage son was missing.
Once the arrestee had been locked up in a cell, I stood for a couple of minutes and looked at the red Coop bike, marked ‘Item of Evidence 2’. The bicycle, like its owner, was not a
particularly impressive sight. Several spokes were broken, the seat was loose and the tyres were worn down. If I had a teenage son, I would certainly not let him out on the streets of Oslo on such
a rickety old thing.
One could hardly expect a murderer to have ID with him. But my curiosity regarding the boy’s name, background and motive was further piqued by the fact that he did not have so much as a
penny in his pocket, or anything else other than a bloody kitchen knife.
I called my boss, and was immediately given the necessary authorization to continue investigating the case. He expressed his relief that the culprit had already been caught.
I wrote a press release to confirm that the politician Per Johan Fredriksen had been stabbed and killed on the street, and that the case was as good as solved now, following the arrest of a
young man with a knife who had fled the scene of the crime. I chose to say ‘as good as’ as something felt awry, but for want of more information, I could not put my finger on what
exactly it was.
At a quarter to eleven, I ventured back out into the night. I took with me the young suspect’s puzzling statement that I was the only one in the world he hoped might believe him.
I was at home in my flat again by five past eleven. I got hold of Miriam, thanks to the newly installed telephone at the student halls of residence, and quickly updated her on my unexpected
visitor. She was naturally very curious and asked about the boy on the bicycle, but did not know him either. For a moment it almost sounded as though she regretted going to the demonstration, as it
meant that she had missed the evening’s drama.
‘That does not sound good for the poor young boy. And his explanation “when I went back” is linguistically rather odd, as well,’ she remarked pensively.
It was by no means the first time I had heard Miriam comment on a linguistic detail. This time, however, I understood what she meant, and was immediately interested.
The young arrestee’s use of the word ‘back’ meant that he had, in fact, left the spot after an earlier meeting with Fredriksen, only to then return and find the body. There was
nothing at present to disprove that this was what had happened, and that he had then taken the knife with him in his confusion when he left the scene of the crime. If this was the case and
Fredriksen had passed the young cyclist there and carried on, then it was odd that, only minutes later, he was lying in almost precisely the same place.
I wished Miriam a good night and put down the phone, then stood there deep in thought, my hand still on the receiver.
I had remembered by heart the number of the telephone on the desk of Patricia Louise I. E. Borchmann, my invaluable advisor. I seriously considered ringing to tell her about what had happened,
but then decided that it was a little too late in the evening and the case was more or less concluded.
But underlying this was also the fear of how she might react if I called. At the end of our third murder investigation together in the summer of 1970, the drama of Miriam’s near-death
experience had coincided most unfortunately with the death of Patricia’s father. She had only helped me by phone during my fourth murder investigation, and we had met a few times in the
course of my fifth and sixth investigations over Christmas 1971. As I understood it, Patricia had then hoped to hear very different news about my relationship with Miriam, and certainly not the
announcement of our engagement on New Year’s Eve. I had not spoken to Patricia since then.
The uncertainty as to where Patricia and I now stood had hung over my otherwise charmed existence like a dark cloud. But a situation had not yet arisen that made it necessary to find out –
I had had no good reason to contact her again.
However, now that a good reason had, quite literally, come knocking at my door, I chose to delay the matter. I still felt not only deeply uncertain, but also alarmed at the thought of what
Patricia’s reaction might be. I could not imagine that she would in any way wish to be more public about anything. But it had struck me more than once that the consequences for my career
would be catastrophic, should anything unintentionally provoke Patricia to say just how much I had told her about my murder cases, and the extent to which she was responsible for solving them.
I would have ample opportunity over the course of the next eight days to regret the fact that I had not immediately phoned Patricia following the events of Saturday, 18 March 1972. But I was as
yet unaware of this. I fell asleep around midnight, having pondered some more on the boy with the red bicycle and his almost manic wish to talk to me, and somewhat odd use of the word
‘back’.
It was ten past nine on Sunday, 19 March 1972. Following an early breakfast, I was now sitting in an interview room at the main police station, opposite the young lad we all
presumed was the murderer.
I asked for a third time if he wanted a lawyer or to talk to someone from social services.
Again, he dismissed my question with a flap of his thin hand, which otherwise remained flat on the table between us.
The first two times I asked what he was called, he just gave me a condescending look and did not answer. The third time he replied with a heavy lisp: ‘You’ll find out soon
enough.’
We still had no idea who the mysterious boy was. He had nothing with him to give any indication of his identity. No parents, or anyone else, had called to enquire after him. His fingerprints had
not been recognized in any records.
It was clear that the boy on the red bicycle heard my questions and could make himself understood, despite his speech impediment. His attitude to me seemed to be positive. And yet he just sat
there and stared at me, his face completely blank. And he continued to do this when I asked, yet again, where he lived and what his parents’ names were.
I went a step further and asked: ‘You said yesterday that he was dead when you came back. Does that mean that you spoke to him, then went away, only to return and find him dying with a
knife in his chest?’
The boy nodded. There was a faint glow in his eyes.
‘In which case, why did you take the knife with you? And why did you then come to me?’ I asked.
The glow in his eyes went out. He looked at me with a resigned, almost patronizing expression. There was something reprimanding in his look, but I could not understand why. I started to wonder
whether I was dealing with an imbecile, or if this was an intelligent person who, for some unknown reason, did not want to say anything.
I told him that if he was innocent, being so uncooperative and unforthcoming was not making it any easier for us to help him.
‘You’ll work it out anyway,’ was his curt reply.
Then he demonstratively averted his gaze and looked out of the barred window. He nodded almost imperceptibly when I told him that he would be taken back to his cell now, but that he should
reckon on more questioning in the course of the day. He did not even flinch when I said that his situation was very serious indeed, and that it would be in his own interest to be more cooperative
next time we met.