Satellite People

by Hans Olav Lahlum

My feelings of revulsion at Maria Irene’s lack of humanity in no way diminished, but did have to give way to a reluctant admiration in the face of her renewed composure. It was she who held out her hand when we stood up to leave, and congratulated me on carrying out such a thorough investigation. She added quickly that she did not hold a personal grudge against me and that the pleasure would be hers entirely should we meet ‘under more favourable circumstances later in life’.

  Her hand felt dry, cold and hard in mine. I withdrew my hand rather sooner than usual and in a strange way found the cigarette smoke outside the interview room rather refreshing.

  VI

  ‘What a turniphead she turned out to be after all!’

  Patricia smiled her smuggest smile, and paused demonstratively before helping herself to some cauliflower. The clock on the wall had just struck eleven. It was late evening on 17 May, the day we celebrate Norway’s constitution, but more importantly now, the day we celebrated the conclusion of another successful murder investigation. The adrenaline was still pumping in our veins and we were now well into the main course of a truly celebratory meal.

  ‘Her critical mistake was to deny any knowledge of the necklace instead of the pistol. Had she instead admitted that she had taken the diamond necklace from the secret passage and worn it during the meeting with you, it would hardly have been possible to link her to the pistol and the murder. But I guessed that she was not that intelligent, and it had been luck so far.’

  I nodded. Tonight I would accept practically anything that Patricia said.

  ‘You should be very happy with what you have achieved, it really is quite remarkable. Not only did you solve three apparently inexplicable murders from the present day, you also solved three murders from the war,’ I told her.

  Patricia’s smile was even broader.

  ‘And, please do not forget an almost fossilized case of insurance fraud,’ she added. ‘The diamond case was so old that it is unlikely that anyone from the insurance company is alive to remember it, but the truth will always out, even if it takes decades.’

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘You do not seem to be overly happy, despite the fact that the investigation is now closed and all the murders are solved,’ she commented, after a pause.

  I shook my head.

  ‘When I do a headcount of the ten guests from Magdalon Schelderup’s last supper, there are now two dead, two in prison and two on the verge of a nervous breakdown . . . The host’s Machiavellian plan to spread fear and chaos amongst his guests has worked alarmingly well.’

  Patricia gave a pensive shrug and waggled her head at the same time.

  ‘Yes and no. It was a truly Machiavellian plan that took the lives of some of his guests and ruined the lives of other. It remains to be seen how Mrs Wendelboe and Ingrid Schelderup will cope with life after this. But the others from the war who are still alive, including Mona Varden and Maja Karstensen, did finally get an answer as to what actually happened. Herlofsen will certainly have a better life for however long remains, and that may also be the case for Magdalena Schelderup and the Wendelboes. Fredrik Schelderup perhaps does not deserve it, but he will have an even more carefree life than before. The Schelderup mother and daughter have to take full responsibility for their egoism and greed. So tragedy really only applies to the two young people who died. We were in the nick of time to save the useless Fredrik Schelderup’s life and inheritance, but not to save his far nicer brother, Leonard, or the hardworking and honest Synnøve Jensen. Unfortunately, the lot of a murder investigator is that one can do no more than solve frightful crimes and bring those responsible to justice. It is normally very difficult to solve a murder before it has happened.’

  I was well aware of that, but still could not force myself to be pleased. She realized this and continued quickly.

  ‘As for Magdalon Schelderup, it can only be said that he did to a certain extent succeed in his final great gamble, but he did not succeed in his great act. If Magdalon Schelderup, against all odds, could see us now, be it from heaven or hell, I can promise you that he would curse us from the bottom of his heart for having unmasked him. In a matter of days, the whole of Norway will know not only that Magdalon Schelderup committed suicide, but also that he was a criminal and a traitor during the war, and that he wanted to spread death and destruction amongst his family and friends. His true character will eventually be revealed and he will be publicly condemned as the callous man that he was. And as for you, you will hopefully get all the honour and recognition you deserve for your achievement.’

  I have to confess that the last thing Patricia said did manage to raise my spirits a little.

  ‘Yes, thank you, I have to say it is overwhelming. Congratulatory messages are flooding in already, despite the fact that it is a public holiday, and the weekend newspapers will no doubt make pleasant reading. But remember that for the past week I have been out there meeting these people, including Maria Irene. It frustrates me immensely that the person responsible for such a grotesque crime should get away so lightly. Synnøve Jensen and her unborn child are gone for ever, whereas Maria Irene will be released before she is twenty-five, and has earned tens of millions from the murder.’

  Patricia nodded in agreement, but smiled all the same.

  ‘Of course, it is a paradox. She will naturally be punished far too lightly in the end and will have far more money than she deserves. But you will have to comfort yourself with the knowledge that you did all that you could and she did not get away with it. I can assure you that every day in prison is hell for human predators like her, and she is not likely to enjoy the company in Breitvedt Women’s Prison. It will be a long and hard road should she ever want to find a good husband after the court case has been reported in the press. But, most importantly, her plans to inherit all the money and run the business single-handedly are in ruins because we prevented the murder of her half-brother.’

  I had to say that Patricia was right in her reasoning, but I was still not happy with the situation. She was not put off by this and carried on after a pause for thought.

  ‘In the midst of all this tragedy, it is actually quite amusing that Maria Irene fell victim to her own absurd ambition to such an extent. She tried to lay a trap for you, and ended up being trapped herself!’

  Patricia burst out laughing, then attacked her ice cream dessert with a healthy appetite. It struck me that she was a very complex young person. And behind the mask, she had invested some powerful emotions in this case.

  I personally was too relieved by the outcome of the case to want to pursue the topic any further. Instead I asked Patricia if she had found the answer to her question as to why I was still alive. She suddenly became very serious, but it did not last long, and soon a mischievous smile crept over her lips again.

  ‘That was in fact one of the things that convinced me that it was Maria Irene who had killed Synnøve Jensen. I saw no reason why Sandra Schelderup would not have shot you in that situation. On the other hand, there were two possible reasons why Maria Irene Schelderup instead put down the gun and ran. One was that she found you so handsome and attractive that she could not shoot you, and perhaps still even hoped that she would get all of the inheritance and all of you.’

  I nodded. The explanation was neither reasonable nor unreasonable.

  ‘And what was the second possible reason?’

  Patricia swallowed the last spoonful of ice cream and leant back.

  ‘I am tempted to say, don’t pretend to be more stupid than you are . . . The second reason is of course that she considered you to be so naive and gullible that she thought you would not understand what had happened and that she would manage to escape without being seen.’

  This was a far less attractive option, but sadly it was equally neither reasonable nor unreasonable; I had to admit that.

  ‘Which of those theories do you believe to be true?’

  Patricia shot me a delighted and teasing smile.

  ‘
My friend, when will you understand that more than anything I hate to make mistakes, and therefore would rather not give my conclusions before I am as good as 100 per cent certain that they are correct. It might even be a combination. I believe more in one explanation than the other, but only Maria Irene could tell us which one is right. And my guess is that you would not want to ask her.’

  I most certainly would not. It struck me as I sat there that Patricia, despite her obvious mood swings, was both physically and mentally more mature than she had been the previous year. If I had not realized this before, I certainly did at a quarter to twelve when Beate suddenly appeared with a bottle of superb vintage French wine. I took only a small glass, whereas Patricia drank two generous glasses and became increasingly gregarious. After the first glass, she laughed and remarked that she would dearly have loved to have been in the interview room and seen Maria Irene with ‘her mask and trousers finally down’. I could not remember having heard this expression before and strongly suspected that Patricia had made it up.

  It was around half past midnight by the time I got up and went over to Patricia to embrace her goodbye, and discovered something that was indeed different this year. Patricia had not unbuttoned her blouse as far as Maria Irene had two days ago. But she had undone the top two buttons. And I saw that, despite her handicap, she had become a beautiful young woman. My cheek touched hers briefly, and as I pulled back our eyes met for a moment. And I got the same feeling that I had at Schelderup Hall only days before when I was dancing with Maria Irene Schelderup. I somehow instantly knew that if I had tried to kiss Patricia she would not have protested, but rather would have kissed me passionately back. The tension and opportunity lasted for a few breathless moments. This time no one knocked on the door. I turned to the side at the last moment, and so it was a light kiss that I planted on her cheek rather than a passionate kiss on the mouth.

  When I think back to this episode now, it is still unclear to me whether it was the strange similarity with the situation with Maria Irene, Patricia’s handicap, the age difference between us, or something else I do not understand that made me hold back. What is clear is that I did. Then I left the room, somewhat more hastily than planned. I felt an urgent need to get out into the night and to think things through by myself.

  Patricia, of course, stayed sitting where she was, on her own in the wheelchair by the table. When I looked back briefly on my way out, her smile was more inscrutable than ever. Then, with a discreet little yawn, she wished me a good journey home, and in closing said that I should not hesitate to contact her again if I worked on any more interesting murder cases where she might be of help. But by then I was already rushing through the door and out into the safety of the dark night.

  Epilogue

  No new interesting murder cases landed on my desk in 1969. For the rest of the year I could rest on the laurels of the Schelderup case. The story continued to cause a stir in the media, especially during the major court case in the autumn. To my deep frustration, but in line with what the defence had claimed, both Maria Irene and Sandra Schelderup were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.

  My frustration had peaked before the trial even started, however. On 7 October 1969, I awoke to the headline: ‘Eighteen-year-old accused of murder now Oslo’s richest woman’. Underneath was a photograph of Maria Irene. The report stated that her brother, Fredrik Schelderup, had been killed in a crash, in an excessively large car with excessive amounts of alcohol in his blood, on the way from a bar to the beach in Rio de Janeiro. And with that, several months after the main event, another of the satellite people from Magdalon Schelderup’s last supper bit the dust.

  Ingrid Schelderup was admitted to hospital again when the court case caused the circumstances surrounding the deaths of her former husband and her son to be splashed across the front pages of all the newspapers once more. When I called her sometime later, I was informed by the hospital that it was not the best day to disturb her. But when I offered to call another day, I was told that it was not the best week or month either. So I took the hint and never rang back.

  To my surprise, Petter Johannes Wendelboe was in the courtroom on 3 November, the first day of the trial. He looked exactly as he had before, and shook my hand with the same firmness. When I asked after Mrs Wendelboe, he replied shortly that she had unfortunately gone from ‘bad to worse’. She had, as had Ingrid Schelderup, been exempted from appearing as a witness for health reasons. I could not help but ask if he had been in touch with Magdalena Schelderup. He told me curtly that he had apologized on behalf of his wife and himself, and that this apology had been accepted. So Petter Johannes Wendelboe was himself to the last, and a remarkable man in my eyes.

  Hans Herlofsen told me, when I called one day to ask some routine questions, that he had never been better. He had resigned from Schelderup’s company and had found himself a far better-paid job with a company car, thanks to all the coverage the case had been given in the press. The balance of his personal account was already 17,782 kroner. So some of the satellite people from Magdalon Schelderup’s last supper had managed to find themselves a better orbit in the new universe that opened up when the circumstances surrounding his death had been established.

  I received a letter from Mona Varden thanking me wholeheartedly for the ‘somewhat late, but remarkable’ unmasking of her husband’s murderer. There was also a sentence to say that she had now, finally, been able to clear his room. She enclosed a photograph of the grandson who was apparently the spitting image of his grandfather. A few days later, I received a postcard from Maja Karstensen in Rodeløkka, to thank me for redeeming Arild Bratberg’s ‘honour and memory’. There was a PS to say that Bratberg’s siblings had dropped their claim on his flat, following all the coverage of the case.

  On 10 November 1969, I myself stood up in court to bear witness against the Schelderups. And I rather reluctantly had to admit that Maria Irene played her part very well from her place in the dock. She was surprisingly convincing as the remorseful and bewildered offender who had been led astray by her mother. The press even managed to photograph her with tears in her eyes as she spoke about the murder. But when I passed Maria Irene on my way to the witness stand, at barely an arm’s length, I saw the shadow of a lioness’s smile on her lips. Our eyes met a moment later. And I am certain that I detected something that she herself would never admit – that despite the discomfort of the court case and prison, it had been worth it, now that she had the whole inheritance and would have more than enough time to use it when she got out.

  It somehow felt unnatural for me to contact Patricia without an ongoing murder case to discuss. Through the autumn I increasingly pondered over how early on Patricia had realized the truth about how the father and son had died, and how different the story might have been if she had confided in me before the murder of Synnøve Jensen. As far as Maria Irene was concerned, I was eternally grateful to Patricia for revealing her egoism and ruthlessness to me in time. There were occasions later on in November when I even suspected that Patricia might have held back the explanation of the earlier deaths on purpose, in the hope that Maria Irene would commit a murder.

  I never considered asking Patricia about this. I was too grateful to her for all the help she had given me with my first two murder investigations, and too conscious of my own dependency in the event of future investigations. For reasons I have often speculated on without drawing any conclusion, Patricia never contacted me on her own initiative. Our somewhat hasty and confusing goodbye shortly after midnight on Sunday, 18 May 1969 was therefore the last time that we saw each other in the 1960s. It was not until seven months into 1970 that a sensational new murder investigation, which had a very dramatic start for me, brought us together again.

  Author’s Afterword

  This novel, written thirty-five years after her death, is my homage to Agatha Christie, the world’s greatest crime writer, who gave us the most original plots. Without any illusions of having achieved the level of
Agatha Christie’s best mysteries, I have tried in 2011 to capture her style and spirit in terms of the plot, time structure and characters. In doing this, I have based the book on Christie’s views of the good and evil nature of human beings, even though this only in very specific cases tallies with my own personal views.

  I have also, as I did in my first novel The Human Flies, tried to find my own literary crime niche by taking inspiration from three classical crime writers of bygone years. This time, once again, I have written a plot inspired by Christie, with a detective duo who are more akin to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. And again, I go beyond the realms of the British crime tradition of Christie and Doyle, and follow in the footsteps of the great Belgian writer, Georges Simenon, in trying to combine an exciting crime mystery with an engaging story about people’s different fates and histories.

  If my crime novel, The Satellite People, is successful in these endeavours, then it is to a large extent thanks to my good advisors who have worked with me on the manuscript. My editor, Anne Fløtaker at Cappelen Damm, has once again been my most important advisor, but I have also benefited greatly from the input given by Anders Heger and Nils Nordberg. I would also like to give two thousand thanks to my invaluable group of personal advisors, which this time includes my good friends Mina Finstad Berg, Ingrid Baukhol, Ellen Øen Carlsen, Synne Corell, Lene Li Dragland, Anne Lise Fredlund, Kathrien Næss Hald, Hanne Isaksen, Bjarte Leer-Salvesen, Torsten Lerhol, Espen Lie, Ellisiv Reppen, Kristine Kopperud Timberlid, Arne Tjølsen, Katrine Tjølsen and Magnhild K. B. Uglem, as well as my sister, Ida Lahlum. This time, Mina deserves to be mentioned before all others for her enthusiasm from the drawing board to the finished manuscript and for her many important comments on the language and content.

  And finally, I would like to offer a more symbolic thank you to someone I have never met, namely the highly successful singer Lena Meyer-Landrut, who came to Norway last year. Her song ‘Satellite’ has kept me company for many an hour while writing this novel and was in part the inspiration for the title.