Anders Pettersen was a childhood friend who had been in and out of the flat since he was ten. They had of course also seen a lot of Marie Morgenstierne in the two years before Falko disappeared. They only knew the others in the group by name, and their son had unfortunately not talked much about them or the group’s work. They could not remember having met Trond Ibsen, Kristine Larsen or Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen.
With regard to Marie Morgenstierne, Falko’s parents, like most other people their age, hoped that their son would have his own family and they would become grandparents. They had been very happy when he came home one day in autumn 1966 and told them that he had a girlfriend. They admitted they had been less positive when they heard about her upper-class background, but were then pleasantly surprised by her character and opinions. They were delighted when Falko and Marie announced their engagement in autumn 1967. They had talked about a wedding in late autumn 1968 or early spring 1969, but no date had been set.
The Reinhardts had never had any direct contact with Marie Morgenstierne’s family. They had not made any moves themselves, nor had they felt there was any interest from the other side. Marie Morgenstierne spoke very little about her family, but they had understood that she was an only child and that she had had very little contact with her father since her mother died. Whether the father or other family members might come to the wedding or not was a question that had been discussed at their last meal together, which took place here, on 29 July 1968. Marie Morgenstierne had shrugged and commented that her father could come if he wanted, as could her uncles and aunts. Falko’s parents had thought this was a good answer.
Falko Reinhardt had disappeared a week later. And now, two years on, his fiancée had been shot and killed. It seemed to be as inexplicable to Falko’s parents as it was to me. They thought that she had perhaps been murdered by someone who wanted to stop the group, but had nothing to back up this theory.
I thanked them warmly for all they had told me and promised to get in touch immediately should I discover anything that might cast more light on their son’s fate. They, in turn, thanked me and promised to contact me if they thought of anything else that might be of interest. It felt as though we had become closer somehow in the course of my visit.
I asked, almost in passing, where they had been the day before. They both nodded in understanding and said that they had been together at home yesterday evening, as they were most evenings. One of them was always at home, in case Falko or anyone else who knew something about what had happened to him got in touch. They were generally to be found here. Arno Reinhardt had sold his photography business shortly before his son’s disappearance. They had not been active in politics since they were excluded from the NCP along with other Furubotn followers in 1949. So they seldom went out unless it was to go shopping or some other necessary errand.
It struck me that the Reinhardts fitted perfectly with two of Patricia’s concepts from our previous murder investigations. Both parents had orbited Falko like satellites from the day he was born in 1944 until his disappearance in 1968. And since his disappearance they had become human flies who circled round and round what had happened, without being able to move on.
I felt a deep sympathy for them, and was increasingly puzzled by what had happened to their son. And yet my visit had in no way brought me closer to a solution. I still lacked anything that might resemble a theory about either what had happened when Falko Reinhardt disappeared, or what had happened when Marie Morgenstierne was killed.
XIV
When I left the Reinhardts’ museum of photographs in Seilduk Street, there was still an hour left until my meeting with Marie Morgenstierne’s father. But there was now a reasonable hope that I might find Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen at the SPP office in Pilestredet.
I would never have dreamed that I would ever want to go there. And my first attempt was a bit of a fiasco. The door was locked and the lights were off, and there was no response to my rather aggressive use of the doorbell.
I was standing outside on the pavement wondering if I should drive to the address I had in Sogn Halls of Residence, when a bus stopped a short way down the street.
Even on this otherwise sad day, I almost burst out laughing when I saw the only passenger who got off. It was the first time I had ever recognized someone because I could not see their face. This was because she was reading an unusually large and thick book as she got off the bus and crossed the road. All that was visible below the book covers was a pair of blue jeans and a multicoloured sweatshirt, and above, some fair hair.
Judging from the front cover, the book was a single-volume work on nineteenth-century English literature. It certainly looked as though it contained most of what could be written about the subject.
When she was only a few feet away, I could not resist saying: ‘Miss Filtvedt Bentsen, I presume?’
She came to an abrupt halt, lowered the book and looked at me, more than a little bewildered. The twinkle in her eye rapidly changed to curiosity when I produced my police ID. The first thing I heard her say was a surprise nonetheless.
‘How exciting. Am I about to be arrested? In which case, what for?’
She looked up at me with a teasing smile, but was serious again as soon as I said that I unfortunately had to ask her some questions regarding the investigation into the death of Marie Morgenstierne.
‘Oh, so it was poor Marie? I heard that a young woman had been murdered at Smestad on the radio while I was eating my lunch today. They didn’t give her name, but I was anxious to know whether it could have been her or Kristine Larsen. Then I reasoned that the chances of that were very slim. What a terrible thing to happen, and I will of course answer any questions you might have about the case.’
I stared at her, fascinated, and then shook the hand she held out towards me. Her handshake was firm and her expression somehow both concentrated and relaxed at the same time. I was surprised to notice a necklace with a small cross around her neck. I had heard that there were Christian socialists in the SPP, but had never encountered one before.
It occurred to me that she also disproved the claim that one of my colleagues had made that if there were attractive women in the SPP, he had certainly never seen one. Her fair hair fluttered in the wind. It seemed to me that there was something refreshing and free-spirited about Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen, something that made me more interested in her than the other three members of the group.
I nodded my agreement as soon as she pulled a key from her jacket pocket and suggested that we should go and sit down in the party office.
The SPP office was even smaller, dustier, more overflowing with paper and more deserted than I had imagined. There was no danger of us being interrupted as we sat on our chairs by a desk that looked like it was about to collapse.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen had now very definitely closed her book and given me all her attention. She leaned across the desk with obvious interest and concentration. I of course could not be seen to be any different. So five minutes after meeting for the first time, we were thus suddenly sitting in deep and focused conversation, our faces only inches from each other.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen quickly proved to have a considerably more nuanced view of Falko Reinhardt than the others who had been at the cabin when he disappeared. She agreed that he was an extremely intelligent and charismatic person, and obviously also very well read. He was perhaps one of the best linguists she had ever met. As a socialist, however, he was both too simplistic and too egoistic, and the group had acted too much like a personal fan club and too little like a political work group. The leader of the group was, according to Miriam, ‘one of those people who believed that the road was built because he started his car’.
Also, if Falko Reinhardt was a genius, he was a very distracted genius, according to Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen. She commented with a more sadistic than sympathetic tinkle of laughter that he often wrote lists about things, but the problems were rarely solved as he then forgot where he had put the lis
ts.
In addition, Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen thought that when they were at the cabin, and in the weeks leading up to the trip, Falko had been troubled by something, but she did not know whether it was political or personal. She had on one occasion asked him outright, but he had not wanted to answer.
As for Marie Morgenstierne, Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen considered her a sensible and philosophical young woman who, ‘like far too many other young women today’, had lived in the shadow of her boyfriend. However, she thought that the relationship between Falko and Marie had been good up to the point of his disappearance. Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen had never met Marie Morgenstierne’s parents, nor Falko Reinhardt’s – or certainly not as far as she knew, she added with a mildly ironic smile. She had had regular contact with Marie herself until the split in spring 1969, after which they had never spoken again.
Marie Morgenstierne was, in Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen’s opinion, generally careful and considerate in what she said about others. She had, however, on one occasion after a couple of glasses of wine, intimated that she suspected that one of the other members of the group knew something about Falko’s disappearance. But when Miriam tried to follow this up, Marie had swiftly backtracked, and neither of them ever mentioned it again.
All contact was broken after spring 1969. Miriam knew nothing about what Marie had done in the intervening eighteen months, and she therefore feared that she would not be of much help to the murder investigation.
She looked a little sad when she said this; the case had obviously piqued her curiosity. I personally had absolutely no wish to finish our conversation, and so asked how Miriam had interpreted the events leading up to her leaving the group. She looked at me and asked what importance that might have to me or the murder investigation, but then jokingly added that she no doubt remembered things very differently from the rest of the group.
As she remembered it, Anders Pettersen had held one of his ‘long, passionate and nebulous’ lectures. His argument, in short, was that everything the USA did was wrong and that President Nixon’s hands were stained with human blood. China, on the other hand, was the new Soviet and a land of opportunity, and Mao was the greatest leader of our time. The SPP, with its half-hearted support, had proved to be a class traitor both in terms of the working class in Norway and the hundreds of millions of liberated workers in the Soviet and China. Anders’ conclusion, therefore – and he believed that Falko would have wanted the same – was that the group should split from the SPP.
As she remembered it, Miriam herself had replied that politics were more about making things right than being right. They should therefore join with the SPP and take part in the election campaign rather than splintering into an unaffiliated group which was not even a party, and which had no realistic chance of winning representation in that year’s election. Then she had added that there should be no doubt about the democratic stance of Norwegian socialists, and that if one used one’s eyes, it was easy to see that China and the Soviet were one-party systems and that both Mao and Brezhnev also had blood on their hands. She admitted that this was somewhat provocative, but that it was undeniably both true and important. I had no problem in agreeing with her.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen gave a crooked smile and assured me that she had not expected to win over the majority of the group. She had nurtured a faint hope that Marie Morgenstierne might come with her, but was not surprised when she left alone. And she had never regretted her decision to leave. She had come into contact with the group through her anti-Vietnam activities, and still agreed with them on that point. But she could not follow the group in their support of dictatorship, and had become increasingly provoked by their simplifications and partiality following the disappearance of Falko Reinhardt.
As far as surveillance was concerned, Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen thought it was overwhelmingly likely that ‘the group in general and Falko in particular’ were being watched, even though she had no direct evidence of this. In response to my question as to whether she thought there had been a mole in the group, she replied that she found that hard to believe and therefore did not want to speculate who it might have been if that were the case.
The temptation to ask if she was aware that the others suspected her of being the police security service’s informant was too great.
I was interested to see whether this might lead to a sudden outburst of emotion. But it would obviously take a lot more than accusations of treachery to knock Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen off balance. She leaned forward a touch and answered that she had not heard anything like that before, but that she should perhaps not be surprised. Then she asked, with noticeable curiosity, who had said that – only to answer her own question by saying that it was no doubt Anders or Trond, and that it really didn’t matter anyway. The accusation was, in her own words, absurd. For the sake of formality, she added that she had of course never had any form of contact with the intelligence services, and would not have answered any questions about the group, or anything else for that matter, had they contacted her.
My instinct was to believe her, and in any case, I saw no reason to pursue the idea any further here and now. So I turned instead to the stormy night in Valdres when Falko Reinhardt had disappeared, and asked whether any explanation had ever occurred to her.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen answered that she had of course given it much thought, but much to her frustration had not come up with any answers. She had herself also been awake for a long time that night, and had heard nothing. She had gone to sleep around midnight, so trusted her ‘roommate’ Kristine Larsen’s statement that Falko had not been out in the hall at any point.
I asked if she still stood by her statement about having seen a face at the window, as well as a person out in the storm that night. Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen nodded, more serious now. She understood, she said, that her account of a face looking in through the window that night sounded absurd, and the fact that the upper part of the face had been hidden by a mask made it even more far-fetched. But that was exactly what she had seen, and she would never have tried to deceive the police with such an unlikely story.
She looked me straight in the eye when she said this, and I had to agree with Detective Inspector Danielsen’s notes from 1968, despite my antipathy towards him. The witness appeared to be reliable, even if her story was rather bizarre.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen added that it was a man who had looked in, and that he had a mole on his chin, which she would recognize if she ever saw him again. But otherwise it was not possible to describe him in any more detail, because of the mask and the weather.
She was even more cautious about describing the person she had seen out in the storm, as the visibility was so poor. She had been a short distance away from the others, but was sure enough of what she had seen to shout to them and point at the shadow in the dark. However, it was quite far away and no one else had been able to see it clearly.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen looked at me directly again and repeated that she had seen something upright moving through the storm, and that it was too tall, too slim and not the right colour to be an animal. For want of any alternative, she could say with ninety per cent certainty that she had seen a person. She believed that it was a person who was not only walking away from the students, but from the cabin as well. But she added with a disarming and self-deprecatory smile that although her younger brother had inherited the family’s sense of direction, she had not, so she could not be sure.
I looked at my watch and discovered to my surprise that it was a quarter to six. I had been sitting here in the SPP office for more than half an hour, in an interview situation, with my face alarmingly close to that of Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen. And at no point had I been anywhere close to catching her off balance. There was perhaps more interest and curiosity in her eyes now than when we first met, but they were still just as calm and confident when they met mine. I was strongly inclined to believe everything she had said, even though I had several times told myself that this appeared
to be a case in which no one could be trusted.
Whatever the case, I was now in danger of being late for my important meeting with the victim’s father. So I promptly thanked Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen for her answers and asked if I could contact her again should any relevant questions arise. She brightened up and said that she had a busy week ahead, what with her studies and party commitments, but that she would of course make time if it was necessary for the investigation. She unfortunately did not have a telephone in her student room, but for the next few days would be at the university library between nine and five, and at the party office between a quarter past five and ten in the evening.
I managed to swallow my laughter. Instead I commented with a smile that she clearly took her studies very seriously – given that she also obviously read on her way from the university to the party office. Her reply was open-hearted and highly unexpected: ‘Before, I even read books in the shower!’
Fortunately, I managed to refrain from blurting out my spontaneous response: ‘Now that I would like to see!’ At the last moment I realized that it might be misconstrued and insulting. So instead I permitted myself a short burst of friendly laughter. She gave an ironic smile and added that she had stopped when it proved to be impractical. The books were fine as long as you kept them out of the water, but it took so much longer to shower when reading, so it was not rational. Another rather unfortunate consequence was that there was rarely enough warm water left for her parents and little brother.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen explained that she believed you had to be a rational idealist to make the world a better place in this day and age. And in order to demonstrate the point, she took out a large pile of papers as she said this and started to sort through them.
I watched the obviously very rational idealist for a few seconds with a mixture of surprise and fascination. She sorted with alarming speed. I thanked her once again for the information and wished her a good evening – and was only too well aware that I would be late for my meeting with the deceased’s father.
The Catalyst Killing (K2 and Patricia series Book 3) Page 5