I then made a short call to the police security service to arrange a meeting with the head of division in connection with the murder investigation, before getting into my car and heading west.
VI
Frans Heidenberg’s house in Skøyen was the largest in the street, and it was not hard to see that it had been designed by an architect. No other houses had seven walls.
My meeting with Frans Heidenberg himself was a positive surprise. He was a slim, suited man with pale hands and greying brown hair, who wore patent leather shoes at home on a weekday. His steps were slow but steady. His handshake was soft and his voice pleasantly relaxed, with perfect grammar and no accent.
Frans Heidenberg explaned that his name came from his German father, but that he himself had been born to a Norwegian mother in Norway and had lived here all his life. He had had his own architecture firm in Oslo since completing his studies in 1928, and had been increasingly successful in recent years. A couple of nephews were in the process of taking over the business, but he still had an office and worked there one day a week. Otherwise, he spent most of his time here in his spacious and comfortable home.
Once installed in the living room, I declined the offer of alcohol or coffee, but said yes to a glass of water. I remained seated while I reflected that my host appeared to be the perfect diplomat, and about as far removed from a stereotypical Nazi traitor as I could imagine.
Paintings from Norway and Germany hung on the walls between the monumental bookshelves, as well as some photographs from Frans Heidenberg’s childhood and youth in the first decades of the century. I looked around discreetly for signs of other inhabitants in the vast house. My host obviously read my thoughts and shook his head apologetically.
‘I am afraid that only I live here, sadly. The house was built towards the end of the 1930s, when my firm had had its first real success. It was built for a larger family that failed to materialize. I never got married. So now I sit here by myself with plenty of space for my books and paintings.’
He took a pensive sip of coffee.
‘A woman did live here with me once upon a time, in the final months of the war. We were engaged and planned to get married in July 1945. So the war ended at what was a very inconvenient time for me and under very unfortunate circumstances. I was, as you no doubt know, absent for a year and a half. And when I came back, she and all her things were gone. I was forty-six years old and for reasons that I am sure you understand, I was not particularly active in the city’s social life in the years that followed. And there you have it. I gave up any hope of having a family and ceased to be politically active. All my time was given over to saving the firm, which was in a very precarious situation following my absence.’
I stared at him, fascinated. If Frans Heidenberg was still a Nazi, he struck me as being a Nazi with an extremely human face.
‘I know what you are thinking: how could I put myself in that situation? It was in part my strong German roots, but more my fear of Bolshevism that had been stoked by tales of horror from the Russian Revolution in my youth. In the 1930s, I thought that the alternative to a strong Germany ruled by the Nazis was a strong USSR ruled by the Bolsheviks. And I saw the latter as a far greater threat. And I might as well admit that I still do.’
He smiled and shrugged disarmingly.
‘But all that is now well in the past, and I hope that my life today is of little interest to you. I would of course be more than happy to help you to solve your crimes if I could, but I must say that I do not see how that is possible.’
I asked him whether he had heard of Marie Morgenstierne or Falko Reinhardt. He replied without any hesitation that Marie Morgenstierne was unknown to him, other than what he had read in the papers following her ‘unfortunate demise’.
He did, however, to my surprise, admit that the name Falko Reinhardt was familiar to him. He had received a letter from Falko a couple of years before, asking if he would be willing to answer some questions about his role during the Second World War. He had, however, not felt comfortable fraternizing with communists and for his part had no desire to rip open old wounds from the war. He had therefore sent a reply to say that he did not wish to be contacted about the matter. And he had repeated this in a firm and friendly manner when Falko Reinhardt later telephoned him all the same.
He had heard nothing more from the young man. But he did remember the unusual name, and had read about Reinhardt’s disappearance in the newspaper only a few months later. Frans Heidenberg had anticipated that the police might contact him, and therefore ensured that he had a written statement from his two nephews and two other employees to say that he had been at a party with them in Oslo on the night that Falko Reinhardt went missing in Valdres. He placed it on the table in front of me and said that rock-climbing had never been one of his strengths – even less so now than when he was younger, he added with an ironic smile.
When I asked him if he had an alibi for the evening of Marie Morgenstierne’s murder two days before, Frans Heidenberg could regrettably only say that he had been home alone. He found it very hard, however, to see why he would be suspected of killing a woman forty-five years younger than himself whom he had never heard of, let alone met.
I assured him that he was in no way a suspect, but that there were still some routine questions that I had to ask. First, I asked him what his reaction was to the fact that Falko Reinhardt had identified him as a member of a Nazi network during the war, in some papers that he had left behind.
Frans Heidenberg remained calm. He shook his head in exasperation and said that he had had a good deal of contact with like-minded people and friends during the war, of both German and Norwegian descent, but that he had never seen it as a network. And this was not indicated in any way in the police investigation after the war. He felt that his sentence had been harsh given that his only sins were being a member of the NS and other symbolic actions, but that he had long since forgiven his countrymen and put the matter behind him.
Frans Heidenberg had known both Marius Kofoed and Lars Roden, and was still on friendly terms with Christian Magnus Eggen. But he had not felt that he was part of any sort of political network during the war, and even less so afterwards. He did not recognize the description of a secret network, and was somewhat dubious that a young communist today would know better than he had at the time. When I mentioned Henry Alfred Lien, he thought about it for a while and then shook his head; no, he could not recall meeting anyone of that name.
In response to my question regarding his political views today, Frans Heidenberg replied that he had been a member of the Farmers’ Party for a few years after the war, but had then stopped his membership as he was not happy with the direction that the party was taking. He had not been politically active since the war, and in public he was now a man with no political views. Which party he voted for and any thoughts and opinions he might have on political issues were private matters, were they not?
I had to concede that the eloquent and relaxed Frans Heidenberg was right on this point, and did not ask any more questions. I thanked him for the information and reserved the right to contact him again later, should that be necessary. He continued to play the role of an exemplary host by assuring me that protectors of the law were of course welcome to contact him at any point, but he unfortunately doubted that he could be of any more help.
At the front door, Frans Heidenberg suddenly and unexpectedly asked me if Christian Magnus Eggen was also on my list of people to contact. I saw no reason to deny this, as Eggen had already been told that I was coming. Heidenberg nodded in understanding. He added that he should then warn me that my meeting with him might be rather different. He had been friends with Eggen since they were students, and thought of him as highly intelligent and a good person. But they were very different in both temperament and nature. Eggen undoubtedly felt more strongly that he had been treated unfairly after the war, and could ‘quickly become extremely frank and vehement’ when he spoke about it, he adde
d.
I thanked him for the warning and wished Frans Heidenberg a good day. He tipped the hat he was not wearing, and opened the door for me. I left him with the feeling that I had indeed met a humane Nazi. I could see no connection between him and Marie Morgenstierne’s death. I did, however, note that Frans Heidenberg did not have an alibi for the evening she was murdered. And that there was an elegant walking stick with a silver head just by his front door.
VII
Christian Magnus Eggen’s house was more traditional in style than Frans Heidenberg’s, but as good as equal in size. The difference between the two owners, however, could not have been greater.
The white-haired Christian Magnus Eggen was rounder in shape, but from the outset appeared to have much sharper edges. His hand was firm, bony and twitchy, and his voice tense. Judging by his spectacles, the man was very short-sighted, but his eyes felt like gimlets. I was invited into the living room, but not offered anything to drink. And Christian Magnus Eggen was giving his answers before I had asked a single question.
‘I am, of course, extremely curious to know what I have done to merit this unexpected visit from a keeper of law and order? Surely it cannot be in connection with the still unsolved murder of my old friend, Marius Kofoed, in which the police showed a remarkable lack of interest following liberation in 1945?’
I started by reassuring him that it was simply a matter of routine questions, and that he was not suspected of having done anything criminal. Christian Magnus Eggen proceeded to answer my questions succinctly, in a curt voice.
When he turned seventy, he had retired as director of his own company, which he had run for thirty-two years without any form of complaint. He now lived very comfortably on his pension and savings. His wife had died following an illness a few years earlier, and as his son had fallen in the fight against the Bolsheviks in Stalingrad, he was now a widower with no heirs. So his life was just fine, thank you very much, but his previous experience of the Norwegian police was not very pleasant and he now simply wanted to be able to live in peace for what time he had left. In short, he was still curious as to why I had now come to disturb a law-abiding and respectable citizen in his own home.
I took the liberty of reminding Christian Magnus Eggen that he had not always been a law-abiding citizen. He snorted in contempt and replied that he had never broken the law of the day – what happened in 1945 was that the law was amended with retrospective effect. He would never have believed that one could be punished in Norway for nothing more than being a member of a political party. And in order to avoid any chance of experiencing something similar again, he had not been politically active since. After all, he remarked snidely, it was impossible to know whether the socialists might suddenly decide tomorrow to ban any of the right-wing parties with retrospective effect.
We had not got off to a good start. And I did not make things any better by allowing myself to be provoked into asking if he denied any knowledge of the persecution of the Jews during the war.
‘What persecution of the Jews?’ he challenged, looking me straight in the eye.
‘The Holocaust – the genocide of six million Jews, organized by Hitler’s Germany and supported by Quisling’s NS,’ I replied, also with a certain antagonism.
He rolled his eyes.
‘So even senior civil servants have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the lies of their parents. What you call the Holocaust is an illusion based on exaggerated lies. A few Jewish criminals were executed, as more criminals and antisocial elements should be. But the Jews themselves are primarily to blame for their persecution in Germany. After all, they chose to stay there rather than give up their businesses, despite all the well-intentioned warnings. It was never a case of industrial genocide. I went there myself and saw the so-called annihilation camps – and they simply did not have the capacity to do anything like that. There are no documents signed by Hitler or members of his government to authorize anything of the sort. Some members of the German army may, at the height of the war, have overstepped their orders to tackle antisocial elements, but there was never an organized genocide.’
I stared at the man on the sofa with horrified fascination. His smile was bitter.
‘Next you’ll be saying that you believe the lie that Norway was occupied by the Germans. There was no German occupation; it was a rescue operation to save Norway from becoming part of the British Empire. There is evidence that the British had already started their invasion and had laid out mines in Norwegian territorial waters when the Germans arrived. And when the government and king decided to leave the country on 7 June 1940 rather than stay here to serve their people, Norway was no longer at war. In 1945, I and many other law-abiding citizens were convicted of being war criminals in a country that had not been at war, because we had used our given right to express our political views while obeying the laws that were current at the time.’
It was not easy to argue with the increasingly passionate Christian Magnus Eggen, partly because he was agitated and talking so fast, but also because I was at a bit of a loss and my knowledge of wartime Norway was obviously inferior to his. So I simply said that his understanding of the war was obviously very different from my own – and that given in Norwegian history books – but that that was not why I had come to see him. He gave an impatient nod, and then calmed down a bit and waited.
When we finally got down to business, Christian Magnus Eggen’s story was more or less the same in content as Frans Heidenberg’s, despite their outward differences. Marie Morgenstierne was just a name that he had read in the week’s newspapers. But he had first heard of Falko Reinhardt as a prominent young communist. When he then received a letter from him, with some questions about his experiences during the war, he had not wanted to waste ‘five minutes and a stamp’ on the answers. He had instead said exactly what he thought when Falko Reinhardt subsequently called him. He had thus spoken to Falko Reinhardt on the telephone for a couple of minutes, but had never seen the man.
As it was so long ago, Christian Magnus Eggen could no longer say what he had been doing on the night that Falko Reinhardt disappeared, but he could guarantee that he had not been in Valdres. He had been at home alone on the evening that Marie Morgenstierne was shot.
He did not, however, understand why he had to answer these questions about two people he had never met or had any significant contact with. He had no kind of motive whatsoever, and there was absolutely nothing to link him to the scene of the crime. And in any case, he added with a sarcastic smile, no one knew for certain that one of them had been the victim of a criminal act.
I was starting to feel very angry. I said that some information had come to light that could indicate that he had been a member of a Nazi network during the war.
Christian Magnus Eggen snorted with even more contempt than before. He had done nothing more than be involved with the lawful activities of a political party that was legal at the time, and was engaged in the fight to save Norway from the threat of communism. He had been a member of the NS and done business with the Germans, but had not played a central role or been part of any network. And in later years he had minded his own business, paid his tax and not been politically active in any way. In addition, his right to vote had been suspended for a decade after the war due to his political affiliations, and he had since chosen not to use it in protest. The Conservatives and Labour were all the same to him. He had, however, continued to have contact with Frans Heidenberg and a few other old friends, which, as far as he was aware, was still not illegal.
To this, I asked if Henry Alfred Lien from Valdres was one of the old friends with whom he had kept in touch.
He shook his head in irritation. He had only met Lien briefly a couple of times during the war, and he had never been in Valdres. And what was more, the government and police should stop wasting taxpayers’ money on recording who he kept in touch with or speculating about what he might think about social developments, so long as he paid over fifty thousand
kroner a year in tax and did not break the law.
And so I had to stop there for the time being. I had no problem whatsoever imagining Christian Magnus Eggen as a criminal and traitor. He seemed to be the prototype of a bitter old Nazi. Everything he said sounded like self-justification. He was certainly high on the list of people I had met in the course of this investigation who I would be more than happy to arrest. At the top, in fact.
But, unfortunately, he was right: at present, there was nothing whatsoever to link him to Falko Reinhardt’s disappearance, and any connection to the murder of Marie Morgenstierne was even more tenuous.
I did, however, take care to note that he did not have an alibi for the evening of the murder, and that he had a walking stick standing out in the hallway.
‘Age takes its toll, even for an Aryan,’ he remarked bitterly, when he saw me looking at the walking stick.
We parted a few moments later without either of us feeling the need to shake hands.
VIII
It was half past four when I got back to the office. There was a message lying there to say that the head of the police security service had gone home for the day and would be out on a secret mission the following day. If it was in connection with the murder investigation, however, he could give me fifteen minutes at the end of the day tomorrow, at six o’clock, to be precise.
I immediately confirmed this arrangement and silently hoped that the case would somehow resolve itself one way or another in the meantime. The last thing I wanted was a conflict of interest with the head of the police security service.
My last task for the official working day could be completed with the help of a telephone. It was answered by Astrid Reinhardt, at home in Grünerløkka, after the second ring. She was able to tell me straight away that her son’s passport had not been found, but that they did not in fact know where he had kept it before he disappeared. She added pointedly that the family did have a tradition of keeping their passports in secret places.
The Catalyst Killing (K2 and Patricia series Book 3) Page 9