Chameleon People (24 page)

‘You will have to rule him out, I’m afraid. He travelled to Paris last Thursday to see a friend’s exhibition, and is still there. I actually sent him a telegram yesterday to
let him know about Vera’s death in a respectable manner. Just a moment, I will show you the reply I got today.’

She got up and walked across the floor on light feet, almost without a sound, to the bookshelves. Then she came back with a telegram that she passed to me without even looking at it.

I could understand her irritation when I read the telegram myself. The text was short and still managed to be shocking.

‘Devastated by the news and loss of my true love. Hope I will receive inheritance to realize our great dream. Know she would want that.’

‘But that is not going to happen, is it?’ I said and looked at her.

She shook her head angrily. Her displeasure with her daughter’s boyfriend had pulled her back and she was now fully present in the room.

‘Absolutely not. They were not even engaged, and Vera had not written any kind of will. Her share of the inheritance will be divided between her brother and sister, and neither of them
will give her charlatan of a boyfriend so much as a krone. We have already discussed this.’

The picture was clear. Vera Fredriksen’s boyfriend had not been in the country, and what is more, did not have a motive. His motive for falling in love appeared to have been a financial
gain that he would not now get as his girlfriend had died.

I noted down the name so that I could confirm with the French police that he was in France, but did not hope for much help from those quarters.

Then I said, as tactfully as I could, that at this point I had to check the alibis of all the members of the family.

She took this unexpectedly well.

‘If you think that I first killed my husband to hide the forty-year-old murder of my sister, and have then murdered my daughter to hide the murder of my husband – well, I hope you
understand that that feels rather absurd and unjust. I know that you have to ask, and as far as my husband is concerned, the answer is easy. I was at a party at my cousin’s in Holmenkollen
when I received the telephone call about his death, and had been there for several hours. As far as my daughter’s death is concerned, I was here yesterday. It might not be so easy to prove.
It depends on when my daughter died. Can you tell me?’

I of course knew that it must have happened between half past three and half past four, but said that we were still waiting for the final autopsy report to confirm the time of death. In the
meantime, I asked her to tell me as precisely as

possible the times in the afternoon for which she had an alibi.

‘Well, let me see . . . there were several flower deliveries that I had to sign for, the first came around midday and the last was delivered just after three. I rang my eldest daughter at
around half past three and then again at five.’

I quickly noted that, based on this, the mother seemed to be an unlikely murderer and that she could not have been the mysterious hotel guest, but that she did still lack an alibi for the time
frame in which her youngest daughter was murdered.

I asked if she had also tried to ring her son. She nodded thoughtfully.

‘Yes. I rang my son three times – the first time after I had called my eldest daughter at half past three, then around four, and then again at half past four. But there was no answer
until around half past five. I can guarantee that he is also innocent. Johan could never do such a thing. But I understand that you are obliged to check his movements too as a matter of
procedure.’

I felt a tension rising in my body. There might be many good reasons why Johan Fredriksen had not answered the telephone. But it was certainly worth finding out, especially in a situation where
his little sister’s death had earned him roughly ten million kroner.

I said to his mother that no doubt there was a natural explanation, but that I was duty-bound to enquire.

I then added quickly that I was also obliged to check out whether any of Per Johan Fredriksen’s former mistresses might have anything to do with the case, and so I had to ask if she knew
who some of them were.

She let out a heavy sigh. ‘Not really. I wanted to know as little as possible about them. My greatest fear has always been that he has an illegitimate child somewhere, but so far there has
been no evidence of that. His mistresses were not exactly something we discussed at the dinner table. But I could always see it in my husband. He was more distant and less interested in me for
periods. There was a period in the mid-fifties, just after Vera had been born, when he acted this way for a long, long time, and I was worried that I might actually be losing him to another woman.
But it passed and faded towards the end of 1956 and the start of 1957. I never found out who it was. But I do have a dreadful suspicion . . .’

She suddenly pursed her lips and sat in silence for a while. I asked her to please finish what she was saying, and to let me decide whether it was of importance to the case or not.

‘Well, I would rather not spread rumours about others. My husband was not loose-tongued and wasn’t usually a sleep-talker. But one night in the autumn of 1955, when he had a fever,
he suddenly started uttering words in his sleep. I couldn’t make out much of it, but several times he clearly said my name and the name of a woman I know. It may of course be a coincidence,
but it was strange all the same.’

She fell silent again, then took a deep breath. It was clear that it was difficult for her to talk about this. It was while I sat there watching her struggle to find the words that I understood
the connection.

‘Can I hazard a guess that the name he said was Solveig?’

Oda Fredriksen sighed heavily – grimly, in fact. Suddenly she looked old and bitter.

‘Yes, it was. It was as though a ghost from the distant past had appeared in our bedroom. I remember that it felt like the bed under me froze to ice when he said her name, and it was still
hard to sit beside her at the dinner nearly two years later. If it really was her he was dreaming about, I never heard anything more. And then things returned to normal a year or so later, and
everything was better. Until the one in Majorstuen appeared a couple of years ago, like a snake in paradise, just when I thought my husband was finally done with other women.’

I saw the outline of another face when Oda Fredriksen talked about her late husband’s mistresses, even though she remained remarkably controlled.

‘You have met my husband’s last mistress, haven’t you?’

I replied in short that I had gone to see her to get her statement. I gave no more details and Oda Fredriksen did not ask. Instead, she stood up again, walked over to the bookcase and came back
with an envelope, on which was written ‘strictly confidential’. It had been sealed, but the seal was now broken.

‘I went through my husband’s office here at home yesterday, and found this in the bottom drawer of his desk. I could not resist opening it, and found three separate documents that
might all be of interest to you. One of them is about his mistress.’

I had a quick look and had to agree with her. All three were of interest to me and one was clearly to his mistress.

The first was an undated, typed document, which stated: ‘I, Odd Jørgensen, admit that I am guilty of embezzling 30,000 kroner from my employer’s company, Per Johan Fredriksen
A/S, in the autumn of 1965.’

It was signed by the office manager; I had seen his signature on the notice of termination sent to the mother of the boy on the red bicycle. To see it again here was unexpected, to say the
least. I added the office manager’s name to the list of people I needed to talk to again, and moved on to the next document.

The second document was in an envelope and I did not recognize the handwriting on the front.

‘That is my husband’s handwriting,’ Oda Fredriksen said, over my shoulder. Judging by the text, that was the case. The letter was dated 18 March 1972 and read as follows:

I read the letter twice, thinking how hard it must be for his widow to read this. When Per Johan Fredriksen broke up with his mistress, he mentioned the children, but did not say a word about
his wife of nearly forty years.

I looked at Oda Fredriksen. She looked at me, but not the letter. At that moment, it was as if she could read my thoughts.

‘It was not easy to read that three days after my husband’s death. But regardless of whether the letter was delivered or not, it was a relief all the same to find out that in his
final days he had planned to end the relationship with his mistress and come back to me.’

She swallowed deeply a few times as she said this. I had to admire her courage in facing one challenge after another, even after her husband’s and daughter’s deaths. I felt that I
could read her thoughts, too, and that in that moment that she was thinking the same as me; that this gave the mistress the possible motives of jealousy and revenge.

I carried on reading. The third document was written in the same hand as the previous one. It was more keywords than notes, but no less interesting for that. The date was also sensationally
recent: 5 March 1972. And I found the rest of the text of even more interest.

Oda Fredriksen was still standing beside me, and this time she was reading over my shoulder.

I half turned around and asked what she thought about it. Her voice was distant again when she answered.

‘Nothing. That is to say, when I read it, I had lots of thoughts, but I know nothing more than I did before. It was just so long ago, and after losing my husband and then my daughter, my
sister’s death feels even more distant.’

It was hard not to say that I understood. So I did just that. She smiled faintly.

‘Thank you for your kind thoughts. I hope you can continue with your investigation without having to worry about me. After forty years of peace, my life has been rocked by two explosions
in just four days. But despite now being the widow of a landowner, I still come from farming stock. My great-grandmother’s sister survived her three children and her husband, and barely had
clothes and food in her old age. I have more than enough of both, and two grown-up children and a grandchild. So don’t worry about me. Just do what you can, and let me know as soon as you
find out who killed my husband and my child.’

There was a faint glow in her eyes as she spoke. I thought to myself that Oda Fredriksen was to a certain extent what Patricia had in a past investigation called a satellite person. For decades
she had circled her husband and children. Now her husband was suddenly gone. She was visibly shaken, but could still stand on her own two feet in the middle of the vast room. And I believed that
she would stay standing after I had left, and that with time, she would find herself a new orbit.

So I solemnly thanked her for her help and took the envelope containing the three documents with me out to the car.

I left with three new clues, all of which could lead me to a murderer. I felt an intense need to discuss the case with someone. An image of Patricia in her wheelchair squeezed its way into my
mind, between Miriam and my boss, as I sat in the car and flicked back and forth between the three documents. Each time, I stopped at the third document, with the notes about 1932. I was only a
couple of miles away from the Ramdals’ house in Frognerkilen, so after debating it for a few minutes, I drove straight there.

I stood and looked out over the water at Frognerkilen before I turned and walked to the Ramdals’ front door. The view of the fjord below with the sailing boats rocking
gently on the waves was idyllic. I had grown up with a father who mockingly called Frognerkilen the Black Sea. By this he was referring to all the black money that he believed the rich upper
classes had squirrelled away in the form of unnecessary yachts. I suspected that my father might be exaggerating a little. But as I took the final steps up to the house, I did think that the
idyllic scene felt false and could be hiding something darker.

I did not need to ring the bell. Solveig Ramdal saw me from her watch post on the first floor. She waved and then disappeared from the window, clearly with the intention of opening the door.
When she did, she said that her husband was unfortunately still at work, but that she would be happy to oblige if there was anything she could help me with.

Solveig Ramdal did not smile today, not when she waved to me from the window, nor when we stood there face to face at the door. I could understand that. There had been another death since we
last met. And perhaps she also had a personal reason to be upset. My misgivings followed me into the living room. She sank down into her husband’s chair more heavily than the last time,
before starting to speak.

‘It was so awfully sad to hear about Vera’s death. We sent flowers today. These must be terrible days for poor Oda.’