Chameleon People

by Hans Olav Lahlum

  X

  It was half past three by the time I got to Lysaker and found the right building. I met a group of three office workers on their way out. The premises of Kjell Arne Ramdal & Co. were clearly larger than those of Per Johan Fredriksen A/S. They had an entire floor of offices, providing more than enough space for the ten or so employees who were still hard at work.

  A receptionist in her early twenties, who resembled an air hostess, smiled broadly at me, but then became more serious when I showed her my police ID. I said that I had to speak to Director Ramdal in person immediately and with a slight tremble in her finger, she pointed me in the direction of the corridor.

  I found him at the end of the corridor, in the largest office on the floor, behind what was, no doubt, the largest desk in the office. He was none too pleased to see me, but held his composure even better than his wife.

  ‘So,’ he said briskly, as soon as I had settled in the chair in front of his desk and politely declined the offers of coffee and mineral water.

  Kjell Arne Ramdal sat with his elbows on his desk like a great shield between us.

  I started by asking whether there was any news on the possible acquisition of Fredriksen’s companies.

  He replied shortly that there was not, but, given developments in the case, he had not expected there to be. He had personally rung Johan Fredriksen earlier in the day to give his condolences on the loss of his sister and had told him that under the circumstances, a twenty-four-hour extension of the deadline was acceptable. It had been a ‘constructive’ conversation, and he was still of the opinion that the takeover would go ahead.

  He spoke confidently and almost enthusiastically about the deal, then stopped abruptly.

  I decided to get straight to the point and said that it would appear that Vera Fredriksen had been murdered. As a matter of procedure, I had to ask both the family and others involved of their whereabouts that afternoon.

  Kjell Arne Ramdal didn’t move a muscle when he answered.

  ‘I was here at the office all day, from nine yesterday morning until I drove home at half past four. Almost all of the staff here attended a conference in the second half of the day, but the office manager and receptionist should be able to confirm that I was here until they left at half past three. Then I was here on my own for the last hour.’

  I noted down that Kjell Arne Ramdal’s alibi had fallen apart in front of my very eyes. Encouraged by this, I took a leap back to 1932.

  ‘The situation regarding Per Johan Fredriksen’s death is still unclear. However, some new information has come to light regarding the death of Eva Bjølhaugen in 1932. We have found some papers that were left by Per Johan Fredriksen and other material that could indicate that he had discovered how she had been murdered and that he suspected that you were behind it.’

  Kjell Arne Ramdal raised his eyebrows, but otherwise remained calm. I was not sure whether to be impressed or frightened by his being so calm in the face of such a serious accusation from a dead friend.

  ‘If Per Johan Fredriksen had found out how Eva was murdered, it would be impressive – we have all given it a lot of thought over the years. The fact that he suspected me is less surprising. A distance had grown between us in the last few years. I figured that he was either jealous of my success or thought that I had something to do with Eva’s death. He had reason to be jealous, but not to suspect me of murder. If I am to give a more informed answer to the accusation, you might like to tell me how she was murdered and why Per Johan Fredriksen thought that I did it.’

  Kjell Arne Ramdal looked at me intensely when he spoke, and it seemed to me that his elbows were weighing more heavily on the desk.

  ‘Fredriksen believed, correctly, that she had been drowned. He suspected you because he had seen you at a quarter past six that day coming out of her room with a glass in your hand.’

  Kjell Arne Ramdal sat behind his desk with impressive and irritating composure. There was not so much as a ripple of surprise to be seen on his face. Although it could perhaps be detected in the ten-second pause he took this time before speaking. And then it was only to say: ‘Should I perhaps call one of my lawyers at this point?’

  I replied that he was more than welcome to do so should he wish, but that there was still no reason to, if he told me the truth and it did not involve a crime.

  He nodded, almost gratefully, at that. ‘Excellent. Then I will. I did not commit a crime of any sort. And what I did was also morally acceptable, given that I was at the time a young man without obligations. It was before I got involved with my wife, who at that point was engaged to someone else. It is true that I was in Eva Bjølhaugen’s room that afternoon. But nothing dramatic happened there. She was alive and unharmed when I left the room at a quarter past six, and I did not see her again until she was discovered dead two hours later.’

  I immediately asked why he had gone to her room and what had happened there.

  ‘It is not a very honourable story. Eva was very beautiful and charming. I was – like all the young men who met her – very attracted to her. I have to admit that I went to Oslo because I hoped a romance might blossom, and I did not want to take the chance that the other two might get in there before me. Earlier in the day, Eva had behaved in a way that gave me reason to believe that this hope might become a reality. She avoided her boyfriend, and was exceedingly friendly towards me. I should have realized that that was just how she was: Eva was a flirt who liked to play different men off against each other. And I made a genuine mistake. I knocked on her door at five past six to offer her my love. I left the room at a quarter past six crestfallen at having been rejected. She turned me down in her characteristically charming way: “Maybe sometime, who knew what the future might hold . . .” but the reality was clear. At one point I tried to put my arm around her and with a scornful smile she shook her head and took a step back. I left without accomplishing my mission. I don’t remember the glass, but it is not unthinkable that I took it with me by mistake in my heartbreak. I was truly nervous that day.’

  Kjell Arne Ramdal did not, however, look nervous today. He finished there.

  I didn’t know what more to say. His version was consistent and plausible. And I was not able to check there and then whether it was true.

  I asked if the bed was still made when he left the room. He nodded quickly.

  ‘The bed was made up and untouched when I came and when I left. It’s fair to say that I had hoped it would not be when I left. But, all the same, it was very definitely made up. I came out with my trousers between my legs, as we say in Vestfold.’

  It was the closest thing to humour I had ever heard from Kjell Arne Ramdal. But the mood was too sombre for either of us to smile. We were caught in a frustrating situation. I could not prove that the bed was not still made up when he left the room and he could not prove that it was.

  In all honesty, I believed that the bed was still untouched and that Eva Bjølhaugen had been alive when he left. And that left an hour and a half afterwards where anything could have happened. Including the possibility that Kjell Arne Ramdal went back and killed Eva Bjølhaugen having built up a jealous rage; a motive which he had just given me himself.

  I said that we also had indications that Per Johan Fredriksen had suspected Hauk Rebne Westgaard, and asked Kjell Arne Ramdal if he knew anything about that.

  He nodded quickly and once again spoke briskly. ‘The extent to which that is true, I am not able to say, but that suspicion was very definitely the case at one point. There is a bit of a history there that I should probably tell you, though I do not like to spread rumours about other people and things that are none of my business . . .’

  He gave me a questioning look. I said that he should certainly tell me everything that might be relevant to the sequence of events and motives.

  He nodded again, almost gratefully, and carried on talking with renewed vigour.

  ‘In that case, the situation was that Eva was beautiful, charming, flirtatious a
nd possibly slightly power-crazy. She loved being the centre of attention. Per Johan Fredriksen had had a brief romance with her the year before, which lasted about a month. After a few drinks, he confided in me that he, despite several attempts, had never managed to take off so much as her blouse, let alone her underwear. Behind her flirtatious front, she was pretty demanding and prudish, he said. She was a woman who often said A without wanting to do B. One day she broke it off and told him that he was not going to get what he wanted so badly, at least not for now. It was a humiliating defeat for him and he was visibly jealous of his childhood friend when she started to go out with Hauk Rebne Westgaard instead. But Fredriksen was not convinced that Westgaard had achieved what he so badly wanted either – even after they had been together for a few months. So, between the two of them, there was a lot of competition and a lot of emotion. Westgaard also had a slight inferiority complex in relation to us: his father was half crazy, their farm was smaller than ours and he had less money. So if Eva treated him badly, or if he believed he was about to lose her to one of us, it is easy to imagine that he might have killed her in a fit of rage. Eva was a girl who played with fire. She could have burnt herself on Hauk Rebne Westgaard. But I have absolutely no idea if that is what happened.’

  And I certainly did not either. The only thing I felt fairly certain about was that I still had no grounds to arrest any of the suspects for anything.

  I said to Kjell Arne Ramdal that it would have made things a little easier if he had told me all this the day before yesterday. He moved his head in a way that, with a bit of goodwill, could be interpreted as a nod. Then I asked if he had anything to add today and he replied succinctly: ‘No.’

  His answer was the same when I asked if he had been in direct contact with Vera Fredriksen at any point after her father’s death. So the question as to who Vera had called remained unanswered.

  I thanked him equally succinctly, then, taking these new thoughts with me, I headed for the door.

  XI

  I had that feeling of general unease when I got back to the station at twenty past four. Things were relatively calm there, though the switchboard had experienced an increase in calls from the media. I prepared a new press release which confirmed that the woman found dead in Ullern was Fredriksen’s youngest daughter and that any possible connections were now being investigated, but that no further comment could be made in light of the ongoing investigation.

  My boss waved me into his office before I was even at the door. He listened attentively to what I had to tell him, and seemed almost relieved that nothing new had emerged regarding the espionage aspect of the case.

  He had given considerable thought to the case and concluded that the investigation should of course continue, but as discreetly as possible for the moment in order not to attract public attention until it was strictly necessary.

  In short, the conclusion was that I should continue to work on the case and would get whatever help I needed, but that I should report directly to my boss and not tell Danielsen anything about the possible spy implications.

  It seemed that my boss was having second thoughts about our meeting with Asle Bryne at Victoria Terrace. He was unusually sombre and said twice that this was a very sensitive case and that I must not betray his trust, now that it was so important. I promised to do my utmost not to do this.

  I made four telephone calls before I left work.

  I reached Miriam at the party office and told her that I would have to work late with the murder investigation, but that we could meet around half past eight. She was very understanding and did not ask for any details – even though I could hear in her voice that she was dying to know more.

  Then I rang Patricia and asked if we could meet sometime around seven o’clock. She replied positively to this and then hung up without wasting any more of her time or mine.

  I still had two hours until I was due to meet Patricia so I called Fredriksen’s mistress in Majorstuen, and then his son at Sognsvann.

  XII

  The door was opened as soon as I rang on the bell at 53B Jacob Aall’s Street in Majorstuen. The woman who answered the door no longer had tears in her eyes, but she still had red cheeks and was wearing a black mourning dress. The photograph of Per Johan Fredriksen remained on the coffee table, with a lone candle burning beside it.

  The clock on the wall in the hall had stopped at half past eleven, and had not been rewound since, which seemed rather symbolic to me. Time had stopped for the moment for both the flat and the woman who lived in it.

  I had some critical questions to ask her and not very much time. But sitting here beside the candle and photograph of Per Johan Fredriksen, I found it hard to get straight to the point.

  So I delayed by asking how she was.

  ‘Not good at all, but better than on the evening he died,’ she said.

  I had to ask her something else, so I asked what her thoughts were about the flat and her future.

  ‘Thank you for asking. I have not been able to face moving the furniture or even a picture yet. It gets harder each day and will no doubt be very painful on Saturday. I just have so many memories of Per Johan here and am constantly finding myself expecting to see him coming round the corner whenever I look out of the window. So I’ve decided I’m going to go and stay with my mother’s family in France for a few months. If I am going to carry on without being weighed down by the past, I have to get away, both from this flat and from Oslo. My current dilemma is whether I should try to sneak into the back of the church for the funeral. It should be possible, as no one in the family has met me.’

  I did not want to share my thoughts on whether Fredriksen’s mistress should attend the funeral or not. So instead I took the chance to ask her if she had ever been in touch with Vera Fredriksen. She shook her head.

  ‘No. He showed me pictures of his children when I asked, and talked about them a good deal – and particularly about Vera. His paternal urge to care and protect was strongest for her. Probably something to do with the fact that she was the youngest, but also, she had suffered more than the other two. I was not in the slightest bit jealous – in fact, I started to care for them because they meant so much to him. It was obvious that I could not meet them before his wife was either dead or they were divorced. So, sadly, I never saw his daughter except in a photograph, and I never heard her voice.’

  I was happy with this answer. It was hard to imagine that Vera Fredriksen would ring her father’s mistress, no matter what she thought might have happened in 1932. Furthermore, it was even harder to imagine that his mistress would have gone to Haraldsen’s Hotel to murder her late lover’s daughter.

  I had thought a little about who Per Johan Fredriksen would talk to if he wanted to discuss his Soviet contacts or his future political plans with someone. And I had come to the conclusion that the two most likely people would be his youngest daughter or his mistress. And what his mistress had to say would be even more interesting now that his daughter was dead.

  So I asked if she had been aware of any ups and downs in her lover’s political life and if he had said anything about his future plans.

  To my surprise, she replied without hesitation. ‘Yes, of course. I should have mentioned it last time you were here, but it seemed so unlikely that his death had anything to do with that. It was something he had been thinking about for a long time and soon he had to make a decision. He was increasingly unconvinced of his party’s scepticism towards membership of the EEC. To begin with, he only said that he could see that there were some advantages to be had with membership, but then through the course of the winter he started to think that there were, in fact, more advantages than disadvantages to joining. He believed that the EEC would grow with or without Norway, and that the terms and conditions would be less favourable if we waited to join. By the new year it was more a question of when, rather than if, he would make it public.’

  I thanked her for this interesting piece of information and said that he must ha
ve been prepared for strong reactions from his own party. She immediately confirmed that that was the case.

  ‘But of course. He was preparing for death threats and comparisons with the devil. He initially thought about changing party, but then decided that it would be better to just let his new views on the EEC be known. The consequences would probably be that he was squeezed out of the party and into a new party, but he decided that that was a better way to leave.’

  It sounded like Per Johan Fredriksen had had a reasonable plan, and some very bad news for his party and the no campaign in general. Something that could indeed be the cause of a politically motivated attack. The question was who else might have known about it.

  I asked Harriet Henriksen what she thought about this, and if she had mentioned it to anyone else. She shook her head firmly at the suggestion.

  ‘I knew no one in his party and never discussed what he told me with others. I was happy about it. After all, I am half French and the rest of my family live within the EEC and have always believed in cooperation inside the Western Bloc. So I was pro and liked to think that I had some influence on him there. And in addition, I thought that if he was going to change his stance on the EEC and his party, then perhaps there was a chance that he would change his mind about his wife as well.’

  She said this with an almost coy smile.

  She was beautiful when she smiled, and despite the fact that I disagreed on the EEC question, I could perfectly well understand that Per Johan Fredriksen had been charmed by her.