It did not last long. The smudge of a person soon moved back from the edge and out of my sight. And at the same time I heard a loud, painful moan. I realized that it must be Falko Reinhardt, who was lying where he had fallen without being able to move. I felt a stirring of hope and rushed over to him.
Any hope of survival soon vanished. His body and legs had been mangled in the fall, and he was bleeding from the chest and neck. But the hope that he might be able to tell me the little I needed to know still lived as I bent down over him. Blood was dribbling from his mouth, but his eyes were still alive.
Falko Reinhardt whispered a word as soon as I reached him. His voice gave way at the end of the word, but I heard it loud and clear all the same.
‘The window.’
We stared into each other’s eyes for an intense moment. I gripped his shoulders without it making things any better. His shoulder had obviously been broken or dislocated. His body was heavy, burning hot, and limp.
‘What about the window? Which window?’ I almost shouted at him.
I thought for a moment that he could no longer hear me. His eyes slid closed as I spoke and a terrible shudder ran through his body.
‘Look out for the window!’ Falko Reinhardt whispered in a barely audible voice, his eyes shut.
Then he died.
XII
It was a miracle that Falko Reinhardt had managed to stay alive as long as he did. Not only was he injured from the fall, he also had two bullet wounds: one in the foot and the other in his chest. He was wearing jeans, a shirt and boots, but no jacket.
I found only one thing in his pockets, but it was all the more sensational for that. In his right trouser pocket was a Walther pistol with three bullets missing from the magazine. It was an unexpected find which left me even more baffled and anxious about the situation.
I had no choice other than to leave the body where it was on the scree. I ran to the car and drove to a telephone box just over a mile back down the road. From there I alerted the local police and hospital, having first got their numbers from the operator.
I then called Patricia. To my relief, she was obviously ready and waiting, and answered the phone on the second ring. I told her quick as a flash what had happened.
I had expected a pensive silence, but instead I got a swift and hard command.
‘You cannot do anything more for Falko now. Leave him where he is and drive to the top of the cliff straight away. But drive via Henry Alfred Lien’s farm – and drive fast. I think you may get there too late to talk to him, but there is still a slight chance. If Henry Alfred Lien can and wants to tell you what he knows, we may be able to solve this tonight. If not, we still have absolutely no idea what tomorrow might bring!’
As Patricia talked, I realized that this was the only sensible thing to do. By the time she stopped, I was almost frightened by the gravity and alarm in her voice. So I drove back up the mountain at well over the speed limit.
XIII
I vaguely registered that it was ten past seven when I swung into the drive up to Henry Alfred Lien’s farm. I hoped that no one had ever driven so fast up to the house. But in the last few minutes I had started to get the same feeling that Patricia had had. Even if Henry Alfred Lien was the person I had seen at the top of the cliff, I would still get there too late to meet him. I had a strong feeling that he had vanished, without knowing where he had gone or why.
As soon as I got to the farm, I saw the first warning that something was amiss: a car that had not been there the last time I visited. It was a blue Peugeot which looked like it had more years behind it than it had to come. It was a direct link to the now dead Falko Reinhardt, and made it even more unlikely that Henry Alfred Lien was still there.
Henry Alfred Lien was not out in the yard waiting to greet me, as he had been the last time. In fact, there was no one to be seen or heard on the farm.
With Falko Reinhardt’s final words etched in my mind, I quickly surveyed all the windows before going up to the front door. There was no sign of any danger. All the windows were closed, with the curtains drawn.
I rang the old-fashioned doorbell and waited for a minute or two without any response. This only served to heighten the feeling that the bird had flown the nest. I rang the bell again and rapped hard on the door, without expecting an answer. There was still no reaction from inside.
That was when I noticed the second warning: the door was not locked.
The lights were on in the hallway and living room. This reinforced the impression that Henry Alfred Lien had left his home in a hurry. I nodded when I went into the living room and saw that the table where I had sat a couple of days ago was again set for coffee and cake for two. Either the expected guest had not come, or the person in question had shared such dramatic news that the party was over before it began. The cups, the plates and the cakes were all untouched.
It was only when I popped my head round the door into the kitchen as a matter of routine that I understood I had totally misinterpreted and underestimated the situation.
Henry Alfred Lien had not left his home in a hurry. He was still there.
There was no mistaking his broad body, even though he was lying face down. I put my fingers to his neck and could quickly confirm that there was no pulse, and that all life had left his body. It was already getting cold. I did not need to look long for the cause. When I turned him over, the bullet hole in his forehead resembled an accusing third eye.
I let go of the second victim of the evening and hid my face in my hands for a moment. The whole situation felt like a surreal nightmare, and I sincerely hoped it was. But I did not wake up. So once I had established that there were no weapons or other people on the ground floor, I went over to the late Henry Alfred Lien’s living-room table to use his phone.
XIV
As expected, the sheriff was out on a call, but his wife answered the phone and promised to give him the message about a second suspicious death as soon as possible. She almost burst into tears when I told her where he should come and who it involved. Even though Henry Alfred Lien’s story during the war was well known, and even though he had kept a low profile as a widower in recent years, he had been a highly respected man and no one in the local community had a bad word to say about him. He had been a good man who had done some unfortunate things during the war, but it was hard to imagine who would want to kill him now.
I replied that it was in truth a very odd and tragic case, and that I had to get on with the investigation. She thanked me. When I put down the telephone, I felt even more uncertain about who Henry Alfred Lien actually was and what had happened to him.
My conversation with the hospital was less friendly. The operator recognized my voice, and suspected that I was a morbid prankster when I called to tell them about a second murder in the space of an hour. Fortunately, I managed to convince him, and he finally agreed to send the ambulance over as soon as it returned from the last callout.
And then, once again, I called Patricia. This time she answered after one ring, with an impatient: ‘Well, what is going on?’
I told her that I had found Henry Alfred Lien and that I was now sitting alone in his house. Patricia let out a deep sigh.
‘That’s just as I thought – and feared. The number of murders is rising, and the danger that it might continue to rise over the next few days is high. Come here as soon as you get back to Oslo, and I will have dinner waiting for you, no matter how late it is. In the meantime, check to see if Henry Alfred Lien has the local history yearbook for Valdres, 1955 in his bookshelf. But more importantly, search for a diary, a note or any other document that might tell us a bit more about what happened – and about what might happen!’
There was a moment’s silence as I contemplated what this meant. Patricia took a deep breath and continued.
‘The identity of the fourth person in that photograph is now perhaps the most pressing question in Norway. Christian Magnus Eggen and Frans Heidenberg know, but I doubt that anyon
e could get it out of them in time. Judging by what has happened, Falko Reinhardt and Henry Alfred Lien also knew, but were killed before they had a chance to tell you. I have no idea who this is or where he or she is; it could be almost anyone out there. But I am increasingly fearful of the consequences if we do not soon find out. And these two murders can leave no one in any doubt that this is something major!’
On hearing Patricia’s words, I felt fear tugging at me, not least because it was more audible in her voice towards the end than I had ever heard it before. So I thanked her, put down the receiver and set about investigating the scene of the crime.
XV
Patricia had of course been right. In the largest bookshelf, Henry Alfred Lien had a series of local history yearbooks for Valdres. The 1955 edition was also there. And even though a rubber had been used in the margins of the article in question about Karl and his dramatic death in the mountains, it was impossible to hide the fact there had once been notes there and parts of the text had been underlined.
Finding any diaries or other notes proved to be a bit harder. Henry Alfred Lien was not a writer by nature. He did not appear to own a typewriter. Other than a shopping list on the kitchen counter, I found no handwritten notes in the living room or kitchen.
He had, however, made himself a simple office on the first floor, and in the desk drawer I found several books filled with his elegant, old-fashioned handwriting. They mostly involved bookkeeping and taxes, but also production figures for the farm, and they showed that he had been doing well even in the last year. According to his post office savings book, Henry Alfred Lien had over three hundred thousand kroner in his bank account when he died. But I found no photographs or notes that might shed light on his dramatic death.
In the bottom drawer was a notebook with handwritten diary entries from 1967 to the present day. Henry Alfred Lien’s entries were short, often just keywords, and he seldom wrote more than four or five pages a year. I quickly read through what he had written in previous years, but found nothing of interest. In connection with the disappearance of Falko Reinhardt in summer 1968, Henry Alfred Lien had noted that he had been questioned and taken a lie detector test in Oslo, but there was no new information.
By far the most interesting thing in Henry Alfred Lien’s diary was a page that was not there.
The diary ended suddenly in April 1970, and the next page had been torn out.
I stood pondering for a long time when it might have been torn out and by whom. It could of course have been torn out and destroyed by Henry Alfred Lien himself. But it was also possible that it had been removed earlier in the day by the person who had shot him. In which case, I sorely wanted to know where the missing page was now, and what secrets it might reveal.
XVI
The sheriff arrived with the ambulance at ten past eight. He was a sombre older man who gave an impression of solidity, and seemed more than willing to cooperate with a detective inspector from Oslo. We called for a forensics team from Lillehammer, but were told that we should not expect them until tomorrow morning.
I left the sheriff in charge of the farm and then walked the few hundred yards to the top of the cliff to see if I could find anything there. Rain was forecast overnight, and I had no illusions as to what the technicians would then be able to find in the morning.
The Morgenstiernes’ cabin was locked. I opened it with my key, but found nothing to indicate that Falko or anyone else had been inside.
It was a very strange feeling to stand alone afterwards at the top of the cliff in the evening breeze. There had obviously been a violent struggle up here earlier in the day that had ended with Falko Reinhardt’s fall and death. It would appear that Falko Reinhardt had first parked his car at Henry Alfred Lien’s farm and then, for some unknown reason, either run or walked here to the edge of the cliff.
I found a couple of footprints on the path that went past the cabin and on to the edge of the cliff, which were very similar to Falko Reinhardt’s in size and shape. And I found some other footprints which were also of men’s shoes, but slightly smaller than Falko’s. I found more of these footprints in the moss a couple of yards away from the cliff. But there were no clear prints from Falko’s large feet there.
It seemed reasonable to assume that the other prints belonged to the person I had seen standing at the edge of the cliff after Falko Reinhardt’s fall. But there was no way of being certain, and even if it was the case, it gave no pointer as to that person’s identity.
I wandered around at the top of the cliff, without really knowing what I was looking for. In an otherwise clean landscape devoid of human traces, the small piece of paper fluttering in the breeze behind a boulder immediately caught my eye.
My mind naturally jumped to the missing page from Henry Alfred Lien’s diary. However, it transpired that this piece of paper was smaller and of a different type. It was a plain white sheet, of the sort I had found in the late Falko Reinhardt’s hotel room. And the writing was his too, and once again was extremely brief, written in keywords that were a mixture of numbers and letters:
1108
Heftye 66
Professor Johannes Heftye’s face immediately popped up in my mind. Given the rare surname and the fact that the number 66 coincided with his age, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that Falko Reinhardt was alluding to his supervisor here. And 1108, according to Falko’s usual shorthand for dates, was then 11 August – which was tomorrow. But the link between the date, the supervisor and the note were still a mystery to me.
As I walked around on my own up there by the edge of the cliff, it started to drizzle. This quickly developed into proper rain, and I was soaked to the skin by the time I got back down to the car and Henry Alfred Lien’s farm. This did not help to lift my spirits. I drove back to Oslo in wet clothes and a grim mood.
As I drove, the theory that Falko Reinhardt had shot Henry Alfred Lien developed in, and occupied, my mind. He had parked his car there, and the pistol in his pocket had been three bullets short when he fell down the cliff a few hundred yards away. The three fired shots would be two to Falko Reinhardt’s own body, and one to Henry Alfred Lien’s head. But somehow the idea of suicide did not seem right. Falko Reinhardt had certainly not struck me as a suicide candidate when I had spoken to him the evening before. On the contrary, he had seemed to be bursting with a powerful will to carry out an important mission for his nation and then reap the honour. It seemed highly unlikely that he would ask me to come to Valdres only to take his own life by jumping over a cliff; and it was also very impractical to shoot yourself in the foot before such a jump. In any case, the presence of the person I had seen standing there more or less ruled out the possibility of suicide.
So the most likely scenario remained that Falko had first intended to meet Henry Alfred Lien, and then me. He had, for unknown reasons, ended up killing Henry Alfred Lien. But who had then shot Falko Reinhardt? And why had Falko Reinhardt gone with that person to the edge of the cliff? What secret was so great that both Henry Alfred Lien and Falko Reinhardt had to be murdered today, in order to keep it from getting out?
The questions about what had happened, and why, were starting to mount up. And on top of them came the question of what I should do now. I stopped at a telephone box in Hønefoss and managed to get hold of a priest in Grünerløkka via the operator. I told him what had happened, and asked if he could break the tragic news to Falko Reinhardt’s parents. However, he turned out to be the conservative and categorical type, and he firmly refused to have anything to do with the case. The whole Reinhardt family had left the state church, and the priest himself had had a serious argument with the parents when they refused to let their son be confirmed. They had asked him to leave and made it very clear that they would not open the door should he knock on it again. Before he left, he had warned them that their son might go straight to hell as a result, so it would be impossible to lie and say anything else to them now. And certainly not so late at night. I ended the call, an
d drove on.
For the rest of the trip, I dreaded being the messenger of death – to Falko’s parents as well as to Kristine Larsen. The world would quite possibly collapse for all three of them.
The fact that it was so late was my excuse: it was past eleven o’clock when I finally drove into town. I would have to tell them in the morning, and use the rest of the evening on the investigation. I drove straight to 104 –108 Erling Skjalgsson’s Street.
XVII
Patricia had kept her word, and was waiting patiently. The maid Beate opened the door immediately when I rang the bell, and assured me that she would serve dinner as soon as it had been heated. It was only then I realized that I had not eaten for nearly ten hours. And then, on top of all my other worries, I was suddenly beset with anxiety about how Patricia’s father might view my late visit. Professor Director Ragnar Sverre Borchmann was still someone I would not care to provoke or get on the wrong side of.
I cautiously asked the maid if the professor had already gone to bed. She replied that the professor was away, then added with a shrewd little smile that the director would certainly not object to my visit, however late it was, had he been here. This was a token of encouragement and recognition from a childhood hero that I still held in high esteem. I asked Beate to pass on my greetings the next time he rang home. With another smile, she promised to do this.
The dinner that later appeared on the table was a superb roast pork. But this time, it was only for me. Patricia had obviously eaten already. She took careful sips from a cup of black coffee, but otherwise remained motionless in her wheelchair. I could not remember having seen her so serious before. Her concentration was intense.
‘There is much to indicate that Falko Reinhardt killed Henry Alfred Lien. But who then killed Falko afterwards? It could hardly be suicide?’ I said, eventually.
Patricia choked on her coffee and only made things worse by trying to speak before she had properly cleared her throat. It seemed to me that her nerves were on edge. Her voice, however, was just as sharp and confident as usual when she managed to use it.
The Catalyst Killing (K2 and Patricia series Book 3) Page 23