Satellite People

by Hans Olav Lahlum

  ‘Ask for this to be read out on the radio tomorrow, and I would be very surprised if you do not hear from the person in question pretty soon thereafter. The person will no doubt be following news of the case closely.’

  I looked at Patricia with some scepticism and pensively stroked my finger over the last sentence.

  ‘But, my dear Patricia, the person who visited Leonard Schelderup yesterday will naturally not contact us if he or she was, despite what we think, party to the murder. The opposite is more likely to happen. The person will not contact us for fear of being unfairly suspected of being involved in the murder. And possibly for fear of a public scandal.’

  When I said the latter, my head finally started to clear.

  ‘Because we are talking about some secret lady love, are we not?’

  Patricia sighed.

  ‘I thought the situation would be clear to any intelligent person under forty. But apparently that is not the case. Secret lady love or something of the sort is certainly an acceptable general description, yes. But that is only down to luck, really.’

  I was not entirely sure what age or luck had to do with it, but nodded in agreement and took it to mean that we were talking about a lover. How Leonard Schelderup had met this lady was interesting enough in itself.

  ‘But how can you be so certain that this outsider, who left proof of their presence in the flat yesterday, did not murder Leonard Schelderup?’

  Patricia sighed again.

  ‘Theoretically it is not impossible. But the very reason that Leonard Schelderup did not want police protection was clearly that he was expecting a visit from this person, and wanted it to go ahead as planned. He would hardly have done that if it was someone who might have a motive for killing him. It is of course possible to make mistakes. If any theory that it was an outsider with no connection to Schelderup Hall was to hold water, however, it would, to put it mildly, be hard to explain how this person managed to get hold of the revolver from the gun cabinet at Schelderup Hall.’

  I had known that, just forgotten it – or so I hoped. Fortunately, Patricia was on a roll and promptly carried on.

  ‘Here is something to cheer you up: the investigation may in fact uncover a criminal alliance. But if that were the case, it would not in any way be linked to the murder, and would not be something that you or anyone else at the police station would wish to pursue through the courts in the given situation. And if we return to things that are of greater interest, in terms of the murder, the most striking thing in this case is in fact the murder weapon,’ she added, swiftly.

  I felt somewhat at sea, but still made a feeble attempt to protest.

  ‘But surely that is the most obvious fact? You yourself just said that the revolver found at the scene of the crime was the murder weapon and that someone had taken it there from Schelderup Hall?’

  Patricia nodded.

  ‘So far so good. But why on earth did the murderer leave the gun lying on the floor by the front door? If you can give me one credible reason for that, I am almost certain that I could promise to find out who it was within twenty-four hours.’

  Unfortunately, I could not. I had not given the position of the revolver much thought until Patricia mentioned it now, whereas she clearly had.

  ‘This was in no way a crime of passion. It would seem that the murderer stole the gun from Schelderup Hall with the intention of using it to shoot Leonard Schelderup. It might of course be smart to take the murder weapon away with you in order to avoid leaving any clues. Or, one could leave the weapon beside Leonard Schelderup’s dead body, which would also open up the possibility of suicide. But why on earth did the murderer take the gun out of the room, only to leave it by the front door of the flat? Say, for a moment, that the murderer was very absent-minded and forgot to leave the gun behind and only realized this on reaching the front door, the most logical thing would then be to go back and leave it by the body. There are of course several possible motives here, that one or other of the inheritors wants to increase their share, or that there is an avenger out there who, having killed Magdalon Schelderup, has now started on his children. But neither of these alternatives give any reason to leave the murder weapon in such a peculiar place. So I simply do not have a clue what to make of the murder of Leonard Schelderup.’

  The maid came into the room at this point and Patricia demonstratively kept her lips closed.

  ‘Excuse me, but are you Beate or Benedikte?’ I asked the maid as she approached with the dessert. I should not have done that. She looked questioningly at Patricia, who chose to answer on her behalf.

  ‘That is most definitely Beate. And, may I add, she is the only one you will see here now, because if Benedikte was here you would have no problem telling them apart.’

  Patricia sighed and shook her head in exasperation, while the colour drained from Beate’s face and she looked as though she wished she was anywhere other than here. I could of course not help but ask what had happened to Benedikte. And I should not have done that either. Patricia immediately transformed into a gossiping teenage girl. And a rather self-centred and unbearable one at that.

  ‘Well, would you believe what the ninny has managed to do now? She let the latest of her halfwit boyfriends get her pregnant and so will now be busy with the preparations, delivery and consequences of childbirth for the entire summer. It is very tempting to say that she made the bed so she could lie in it. But it is Beate and I who have to bear the brunt of it, Beate because she now has to work every day for the whole summer, and me because the help I get will not be so good!’

  Sometimes I seriously doubted whether Patricia was actually joking or not. This was one such time. I sat there, waiting for the laughter that never came. Patricia composed herself and apologized for her outburst. But she still looked more irritated than self-deprecating when she added: ‘It is all very inconvenient for me, just before summer. And I could never bear little children, not even when I was one myself. Excessive IQ is really not a problem in that family. Let us hope that Beate is smarter than her sister, though she barely knows what IQ is, all the same.’

  Beate’s face blanched even more and she made a hasty exit as soon as she had gathered up the plates.

  There were times when I wondered whether Patricia was serious, but knew that she could be truly horrible. And this was certainly such an occasion. But at such a critical stage in a murder investigation, it would perhaps not be prudent to raise the issue. So I took the episode as another example of how self-centred Patricia could be, and how vulnerable she became when the order in her domestic universe was threatened. In order to lighten the situation as swiftly as possible, I quickly asked how she knew the Wendelboes’ telephone number off by heart.

  ‘I have memorized the numbers of all those involved. You have nothing to fear, though, I will most definitely leave all direct contact with them to you. I have always found it easy to remember numbers, and being able to keep telephone numbers in my head has proved – as just demonstrated – to be very practical.’

  I had to agree with her, yet again.

  XIII

  Around nine o’clock I went back to the police station to finish my report. Once I had done this I wrote out Patricia’s suggested wording for a police bulletin. In the absence of any new findings, I could think of no other means of solving the murder of Leonard Schelderup. It was still a mystery to me who of the possible suspects might want to kill Leonard Schelderup and how it had come to pass. Even though I did not place as much weight on the position of the murder weapon as Patricia did, I had to admit that it was yet another puzzling piece within the greater mystery.

  The police bulletin that Patricia had written was relayed to the national broadcaster at Marienlyst by phone, and they promised to read it out on the morning news. I was still somewhat sceptical as to whether Leonard Schelderup’s unidentified guest would contact us voluntarily, but saw no reason not to try.

  The switchboard informed me that the newspapers had shown far
more interest in Leonard Schelderup’s death than they had in his father’s. Both news desks and sports desks were on the story now. I hastily wrote a short press release to confirm that Leonard Schelderup had been found shot in his own home, and that the police were working on the premise that there might be a direct connection with his father’s death two days earlier. I also left a message that I would like to receive the census files for Arild Bratberg and Mona Varden as soon as possible the following day.

  I finally drove home at around ten o’clock. Tuesday, 13 May 1969 had been a long and demanding day. After having watched a short report about Leonard Schelderup’s death on the evening news, I went to bed with one more murder investigation than I had had at the start of the day. Despite this, I went to sleep that night with a growing belief that the case would be solved within a few days.

  For some reason, I fell asleep with the image of two young ladies playing on my mind. One was not surprisingly Patricia Louise Borchmann, and the other was Maria Irene Schelderup. It bothered me that both the possible motives for the Schelderup murders that Patricia had mentioned could also constitute a danger to Maria Irene’s life.

  DAY FIVE

  On Overgrown Paths

  I

  When I sat down to breakfast on Wednesday, 14 May 1969, the only thing I could say with any certainty was that the anonymity with which Leonard Schelderup had lived his life, despite being the heir to millions and an athletics star, contrasted dramatically with the fame he achieved in death. The main story of the day was a major fire in the centre of Tromsø, but all the big newspapers reported on Leonard Schelderup’s death in the sports pages, and most of them ran a headline on the front page. ‘Olympic Flame Snuffed Out’ was the headline across the top of Dagbladet’s front page. The papers all wrote that at the time of his death, Leonard Schelderup had been one of Norway’s greatest hopes for the Summer Olympics in 1972, something I could not recall any of them having written before.

  All the newspapers had pulled out photographs from last year’s national championships. I was struck by how unruffled and earnest he looked both before and after he crossed the finishing line, and when he stood on the podium to receive his medal. Petter Johannes Wendelboe was not the only person involved in this case who never smiled. I had never actually seen Leonard Schelderup smile, in a photograph or in real life. With the exception of the carefree, partying older son, any smiles from Magdalon Schelderup’s supper guests were few and far between. I thought to myself that what Patricia had said about how terrible the case was, and how cold and bleak it was out there in the spheres of the surviving satellite people, was entirely appropriate.

  I opened the door to my office at nine o’clock on the dot, just as the telephone started to ring.

  ‘Detective Inspector Kolbjørn Kristiansen,’ I rattled off when I picked up the phone. The first thing I heard was a relieved sigh, followed by an unidentified man’s voice.

  ‘Thank goodness that I have managed to get hold of you. I have nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Leonard Schelderup, but I am the person who visited him last night between ten o’clock and midnight. I would be more than happy to tell you what little I know, if that can help solve the murder. I would rather not come to the police station if at all possible. Could I meet you somewhere else later on today?’

  It was my turn to be silent for a while. As he spoke, I finally understood the circumstances.

  Just to make sure, I asked if he had by any chance visited the flat on other occasions through the spring, and if so, what he had been wearing. He replied immediately that he had been there several times and that he had been wearing a hat and a coat with the collar turned up. It occurred to me that I had heard his voice somewhere before, but I was not able to place it without seeing him.

  I heard myself saying that I was a liberal young man under forty too, and did not wish to cause any problems for him. So I suggested that we meet in a cafe on one of the side streets off Karl Johan, the main shopping street, at midday, and added that there was a reasonable chance that his name could be kept out of the public eye if he answered all my questions. He assured me that he would do as much as he could to help solve the murder and promised to be waiting at a table at the back of the cafe at midday. Then he put down the phone.

  Left alone with the dialling tone, I decided that I had managed to clear up some of the mystery surrounding Leonard Schelderup, but that I was still far from solving his murder. I sat there and speculated idly about where on earth I had heard his guest’s voice before. But that was a mystery that would hopefully be solved soon enough. So in the meantime I let it go, having first gone through a quick elimination round to make sure that it did not belong to anyone I had met in the course of the investigation.

  II

  As there were no better clues to follow up in the Leonard Schelderup case, I turned to the overgrown paths from the Second World War for the rest of the morning.

  The first thing I encountered was a setback. The census records for Arild Bratberg stopped with the note that he was registered dead on 14 March 1969. He was recorded as living at an address in Rodeløkka, but according to his file had also spent substantial periods in Gaustad Mental Hospital. He was last registered as leaving there in December 1968, following a sojourn of one year.

  I finally managed to get hold of the head doctor who had been responsible for the ward where Arild Bratberg had stayed during his last periods there.

  The doctor’s voice on the other end of the phone was deep-frozen to begin with. Fortunately it then thawed somewhat when he realized that I was ‘that well-known detective inspector from the newspapers’, and that the case might also be connected to the ‘much-talked-about and very interesting Schelderup murders’. By this stage he was almost friendly.

  The doctor was willing, ‘between you and me’, not to make too much fuss about confidentiality, given that the person in question was dead and had no family. He could therefore tell me that Arild Bratberg’s death had been long anticipated. He had for many years been a ‘committed chain-smoker and heavy drinker’, and had developed lung cancer. At his own wish, he had been discharged so that he could celebrate Christmas at home and then die. The doctor added that there might well have been a celebration at Bratberg’s home in Rodeløkka, but it was not likely that there had been many guests. Both his parents were dead and his siblings had not been in touch for years. The doctor said, by way of explanation, that seeing Bratberg was often not a pleasant experience.

  The only person who had visited Arild Bratberg in recent years was a ‘very caring’ elderly neighbour from Rodeløkka, a widow by the name of Maja Karstensen. She had no doubt looked after him when he got home. His answer to my question whether Arild Bratberg had been seriously and chronically mentally ill was a definitive yes. His answer to my question whether the war had contributed to this was also yes, though it was very likely that there was something there from birth or childhood. The staff all knew about the judgement after the war and he had ‘maintained repeatedly on many occasions and often with great intensity’ that he had never killed anyone. However, all he could do was regurgitate his ridiculous explanation over and over again. In recent years it seemed that he had become less violent, though he could still be threatening if anyone mentioned the case or challenged him in this connection.

  I thanked the doctor and then picked up the telephone directory. And sure enough, there was a Maja Karstensen listed who lived on the same street in Rodeløkka as Arild Bratberg. She was at home and would be happy to talk to me if it was of any help. It might perhaps be best if I could come to her, she said, with a small sigh. Her legs were not what they used to be and she had sold her bicycle. I suggested that I could be there at half past one, and she promised to have the coffee ready when I got there.

  The next mystery from the war was in connection with the Dark Prince. According to the census records, Mona Varden was very much alive and still listed in the telephone directory as living at 32B Grønne S
treet. She picked up the telephone on the second ring, saying: ‘Mona Varden, can I help you?’

  I introduced myself as Detective Inspector Kolbjørn Kristiansen and apologized for disturbing her. I would be very grateful, however, if she could answer some questions regarding the unsolved murder of her husband.

  ‘Finally,’ she said slowly, her voice trembling.

  After a couple of moments’ silence, she continued.

  ‘Please don’t put the phone down. Every day for the past twenty-eight years I have waited for the police to call and ask about the murder of my husband. You can come here or I can come down to the police station, whichever suits best. I will answer all your questions.’

  I felt a vague sense of guilt on behalf of the police. So I mumbled that perhaps someone should have called her before, but that I would very much like to meet her today, and that I was more than happy to come to her house if that was easier for her. She did not hesitate.

  ‘I would gladly walk barefoot from here to the police station if it would help to clear up the murder of my husband. But it is perhaps best if you come here. Then at least you can see the room where he was killed. I have left it untouched for all these years, in case someone should ask about it one day. So you are more than welcome whenever you want to come.’

  I heard myself asking if three o’clock would be suitable. She replied immediately that it would be fine and that she looked forward to meeting me.

  I sat holding the receiver for a while after she had hung up. The feeling that I had had before ringing Mona Varden was now stronger than ever. It was true that Magdalon Schelderup’s death was unearthing more and more interesting stories involving other people’s lives.