The Last Pilgrim

by Gard Sveen

  He checked his watch one more time as he tried to recall the details of Sara’s nameless mother’s face. Then he forced himself to turn his attention back to his work. He enlarged the picture of the inside of the gold ring on his computer screen. He studied the engraving letter by letter for what must have been the tenth time that day, as though hoping to discover something new.

  YOURS FOREVER. GUSTAV.

  Who was Gustav? Bergmann wondered. And how long will it take before the guy at Kripo calls me back?

  No one was going to make any headway on this case until Kripo decided to send him the entire missing-persons list. It was their domain, and they guarded it well.

  No matter why those three people were murdered up there in Nordmarka, someone must have reported them missing, most likely shortly after they were killed. At first Bergmann, as well as everyone else, had thought the three bodies were a family. But if so, why wasn’t the other adult wearing a ring? Bergmann did not think that it was Gustav lying there beside his wife. But that was as far as anyone on the seventh floor of police headquarters had gotten with the case. Since the case was undeniably an old one, Bergmann knew he’d soon be ordered to drop the case anyway.

  “Finally,” he said when the phone rang. He’d been waiting so long that he’d just about given up hope that the missing-persons list might give him any leads.

  The man’s voice on the other end sounded nasal and self-important. Bergmann managed to control himself. For once he needed Kripo more than they needed him.

  “There’s not a single active missing-persons search before 1988,” the man said. “And you know what that means,” he added. “Not a single open case . . .”

  “Okay,” Bergmann said, feeling like a child. Like everyone else in the department, he knew that the police functioned like any ordinary bureaucracy. The main goal was to put out the big fires first, then search for an excuse to file away the rest. The maximum statute of limitations was twenty-five years.

  “There have been 1,121 missing persons since 1934. But you can forget about any of them before 1988,” the man said.

  Bergmann repressed an urge to spew out a torrent of curses. How many times did this guy have to drum the rules into his head?

  When the Kripo man hung up, Bergmann went upstairs to the cafeteria and stepped out on the roof terrace in an attempt to clear his head. He quickly polished off two smokes. Those skeletons had been out in Nordmarka a long time; a few more minutes wouldn’t matter.

  When he came in from the terrace, he had three new e-mails waiting for him: one from HR, reminding him about the upcoming summer party; a newsletter; and a message from Kripo with an Excel file attached.

  Bergmann said a silent prayer before he opened the spreadsheet. The list was longer than he would have thought, but at least the reports were arranged chronologically. Some clever soul had thought to include a comments field, which made it easier to tell the cases apart. A few terse keywords about each case plus a case number were better than nothing. Bergmann, who had only worked on a couple of missing-persons cases before, had heard that people who went missing during the war were usually declared dead in accordance with an interim law. But after 1947 many who’d been presumed dead were put back on the missing-persons list. In a worst-case scenario, the three people in Nordmarka might have been officially declared dead after that date. Could that be right? Bergmann paused for a second before he picked up the phone, but then changed his mind and put it back down.

  He sat staring at the spreadsheet for a while. They were looking for three people who had vanished simultaneously in Nordmarka, unless they’d been brought from somewhere else and buried in the same grave. But that sounded too improbable. How could the three bodies have been transported so far into the forest? So he had to look for three people who’d been reported missing at the same time. How old were the remains? What was it that Forensics had said? Bergmann paged through the reports, even though he knew the answer. When would it have been most likely for three people to be executed in Norway, deep in the forest? It must have been during the German occupation. Forensics had said they couldn’t make such an old case a priority. Or maybe Reuter had put those words in their mouths. Bergmann knew it was only a matter of time before the case would be shelved. Not even the press would give a damn. If they acted true to form, they’d forget all about it in a few days’ time. Unless the deaths turned out to be a big story for some reason.

  He scrolled slowly down the screen. All manner of miseries flickered before his eyes. People who undoubtedly had committed suicide or been murdered, children who had never had a chance to grow up. He stopped around 1950 just to be on the safe side.

  After half an hour he’d found nothing that matched what he was looking for. There were plenty of children who had gone missing during the war, but none in Nordmarka. He stared at the letters on the screen until they melted together. An idea was trying to take shape in his head, but he couldn’t pin it down.

  Shit, he thought. It can’t be that difficult.

  For a while he just sat staring out the window. The calm of early summer, the bright blue sky over the apartment towers on Enerhaugen, the soundless rustling of the foliage in the trees—all of it was making him depressed.

  He got up from his desk chair and headed one floor up to the cafeteria. He bought himself a soggy baguette and went out on the terrace again. Just as he heard the door slam behind him, he figured out what was nagging at him. He put the cigarette back in the pack and tore open the red door, almost tripping over a man coming out.

  “Sorry,” Bergmann muttered, sticking the baguette under his arm. He jogged past the elevator and dashed down the stairs to his office. There, he thought, tossing the baguette into the wastebasket under his desk.

  He stared at three names glowing on the screen. They hadn’t been reported missing in Nordmarka, or even in Oslo, but in Hurum. There was nothing in the comments field but the words “Hurum countryside?” next to the name of a missing woman, Agnes Gerner. The other two were listed in different columns, separated by other, unrelated missing persons. It had to be them. He scrolled up and down the spreadsheet to make sure there weren’t three other people who’d been reported missing the same day. No, he said to himself. These three were the only ones who’d been reported missing on precisely the same day, September 28, 1942.

  Bergmann scanned the spreadsheet.

  Cecilia Lande, born March 16, 1934

  Agnes Gerner, born June 19, 1918

  Johanne Caspersen, born November 5, 1915

  He fumbled for something to write with, inadvertently pushing a stack of case files onto the floor. He shoved them out of the way with his foot.

  Two women in their twenties and a little girl. Shot at point-blank range.

  He moved his pen over the names he had written down, double-checking them to be on the safe side. He printed out two copies of the Excel spreadsheet and found an empty file folder. He wrote “NORDMARKA” on it in big block letters.

  Now it feels like a real case, he thought, inserting several printouts of pictures of the remains. The three skulls had names. The only problem was that the only skull he could positively identify at the moment was the small one.

  “Cecilia Lande,” Bergmann said quietly as he studied the photo of the skull on the screen. It was the only one that was intact after all these years in the ground. The two adult skulls were so cracked that they needed to be glued back together, but nobody’d had time to do that yet. The crime scene techs guessed that the two skulls had been shattered because they’d been shot in the head. But there was no entry hole in the smallest skull.

  Cecilia, Bergmann thought, staring at the gaping eye sockets of what had once been a child. You were only eight years old. He studied the photos, thirty of them altogether, taken from different angles so that he almost had a 360-degree view of the head.

  No hole or projectiles inside.

  Then something occurred to him.

  Were you buried alive?

>   CHAPTER 11

  Thursday, May 31, 1945

  The Stable

  Östermalm Police District

  Stockholm, Sweden

  Someone knocked on the door of Detective Inspector Gösta Persson’s office. Persson recognized the station chief’s characteristic knock and thought he’d just barge in without waiting for a go-ahead as he usually did. So Persson remained sitting with Kaj Holt’s case file in his lap and his feet on the desk, staring out the ancient windows. Another rainy day. It’ll probably be nicer this weekend, thought Persson as he swung his legs down from the massive hardwood desk. The station chief still hadn’t entered, which was very unlike him. Persson wasn’t stupid. He guessed that the chief must have people with him that he wanted to impress.

  “Come in,” he said, straightening his tie.

  The heavy door slowly opened.

  Persson put Holt’s case file down on the almost empty desktop. The chief tentatively approached across the old plank floor. Two men entered behind him.

  “Well, Gösta, my man,” said the station chief, but then he seemed to have a mental block. He stopped a couple of steps from the desk. Persson raised his eyebrows in anticipation. The chief’s tone revealed a feigned camaraderie that did not suit him. Persson reckoned that it was the man next to him who was making the chief uneasy. He was a tanned, tall fellow about Persson’s age, maybe a little younger, in a much too expensive suit and an overcoat that must have cost what Persson made in a month. The other man wore the same type of coat, and if Persson were to guess, he was no more than twenty years old. Judging by his childlike face, he would have had no problem fitting in with any middle school class. He made no attempt at a greeting, just looked around the room with his soaking wet hat on.

  “Well, Gösta. What exactly happened to that Norwegian . . . Holt?” asked the chief, nodding at the case file on the desk.

  Persson sighed.

  “Who knows?” he said.

  The taller of the two men behind the chief took a couple of steps across the floor and held out his hand to Persson, who made a move to get up and gave him a limp handshake. Although he only introduced himself as Håkan Nordenstam, Persson had already figured out who this man was and what he wanted, someone with an interest in making Holt’s death seem like nothing but a suicide, if not, indeed, the person who had killed the depressed Norwegian. The man with the baby face stood by the bookcase. He gave a slight nod when he noticed Persson watch him pick up a black ivory elephant. For an instant it looked as though he might drop it on the floor. His eyes met Persson’s and he smiled. Without averting his gaze he set the elephant statue back on the bookshelf.

  “Well . . . I had lunch with Kaj on Tuesday,” said Nordenstam. “And he was very . . . depressed.”

  “So you believe that he took his own life?” asked Persson.

  Nordenstam waved dismissively, apparently completely oblivious to Persson’s tone of voice, which held a hint of sarcasm. Enough to make the chief look even more uncomfortable than he already was.

  “Yes. That’s the conclusion we have reached as well,” said the chief. “With the statements of the legation and Nordenstam. And they are weighty statements . . .”

  “I—” Persson began.

  Nordenstam held up his hand and took his newly lit Sibir cigarette out of his mouth.

  “Kaj Holt . . . worked for us, Detective Inspector Persson.”

  “For us?” Persson said.

  Baby Face sat down on the desk.

  “For the C-Bureau. So you see . . .” Nordenstam attempted a smile, the kind one might give a child who didn’t quite understand what was being said.

  “Which means . . .” If Persson had had any doubts before, they were now gone.

  Nordenstam took a deep breath as he rubbed the back of his hand over his prominent, smooth-shaven chin.

  “Kaj Holt”—he paused for effect—“was involved with all the Allied forces.”

  Persson nodded.

  “He had also made contact with some . . . Soviet agents here in town.”

  “So we don’t want to . . .” the chief began, fixing his gaze on Persson.

  “Provoke them unnecessarily,” said Nordenstam.

  Persson and Nordenstam sat gauging each other for what seemed like an eternity. The silence was only broken when a car outside downshifted and drove through a puddle on the street.

  “So, where did you go on Tuesday?” Persson said at last. “You and Holt. Was it enjoyable?”

  The chief cleared his throat. Then he coughed and slid his reading glasses even farther down the tip of his nose. Persson stared back at him.

  “Let me just say that we’ve decided to take over the case,” said Nordenstam, trying for a genial tone in an apparent effort to smooth over the tension that now filled the room. “We’d like to take your report with us. Then we’ll take care of the rest. By the way, we were at the Cecil and stayed afterward for a little . . . private visit”—he winked—“and finished up at Berns. Have a nice afternoon, Inspector.” Nordenstam stubbed out his cigarette in the crystal ashtray on the desk. Then he looked at Persson and smiled one last time, the same trusting smile Persson didn’t quite know how to interpret, except that he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  The three men left the room in reverse order to the way they had entered.

  The chief stopped in the doorway and gave Persson a look that could not be misunderstood. Then he slammed the door behind him.

  Only then did Detective Inspector Persson notice how hard his heart was pounding. The blood was throbbing behind his brow, from one ear to the other, like an arc through his head. He took his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and wiped his almost completely bald pate. With trembling hands he took his comb out of the other inside pocket and brushed the few strands he still had on his head. Then he surveyed his office, the finest in the whole building, even nicer than the chief’s. It had a mahogany bookcase, a little elephant statue he had inherited from his predecessor, and a small sitting area with elegant leather furniture; an oil painting from when the building was new in 1738 hung next to the door.

  Persson took in the entire office, then turned and stared at the solemn black-and-white portrait of King Gustav V that hung in a gilt frame. Should he, Detective Inspector Gösta Persson, give up all this and more for a dead Norwegian?

  He closed his eyes for a moment and knew that this would be a matter between God and himself. Only he, the detective inspector of Stockholm’s seventh police district, would ever know that poor Kaj Holt should have been autopsied, and that the apartment should have been sealed right away. The weapon should have been sent to the crime lab, and all walls, door handles, cutlery, and windowsills should have been dusted for fingerprints.

  He quickly pulled out the top drawer of his desk and took out the overpriced Caran d’Ache fountain pen he’d received from his father-in-law on his fortieth birthday. Then he took out a report form from one of the three file boxes on his desk. Normally he did not fill out the forms himself, but God help him if he had the stomach to order someone else to do it in this case. If he was going to deny the obvious truth, he had to do the job himself.

  The inspector entered yesterday’s date in the top right corner. “May 30, 1945. Captain Kaj Holt found dead at Rindögatan 42. Examination of the scene points to suicide as the probable cause of death. Witness statements confirm this.” Persson opened the case file and studied the note with the words “Sorry. Kaj.” Then he wrote a couple of sentences about the testimonies of the apparently irresponsible girlfriend and Karen Eline Fredriksen from the Norwegian legation. He scribbled his signature at the bottom and slapped the folder shut.

  His hand no longer trembled as he replaced the cap on the fountain pen. Persson closed his eyes and saw himself standing in the kitchen at Rindögatan 42 and staring at the sad little birch tree in the backyard. Don’t tell me adieu, he thought.

  He opened the case file one last time and gazed impassively at
what he’d just written. He wondered fleetingly how he, of all people, had ended up in such a situation. The terse report was patently false, yet he felt only a twinge of guilt, as if his own career were worth more than seeking justice for a dead man who had apparently been murdered.

  Quickly, before there was time to change his mind, he grabbed the file folder, strode across the old, tilting floor, and placed it in the anteroom. The secretary glanced at him over her typewriter. Persson raised an eyebrow at her and gave her a wan smile. Then he hurried down the corridor, past the investigators’ offices, and into the men’s room.

  He’d long ago lost count of how many times he’d washed his hands in near boiling-hot water. Persson stared at himself in the mirror. The day before, he’d looked fresh and rested, as if he’d spent the weekend out on his boat. But now?

  He whispered quietly to his own reflection, “Forgive me, for I know well what I have done.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Monday, May 19, 2003

  Police Headquarters

  Oslo, Norway

  Tommy Bergmann pulled up the photo of the gold ring on the screen.

  YOURS FOREVER. GUSTAV.

  Then he clicked ahead to the photos of the two adult skulls, which were positioned on a metal table at the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

  So which of them had been Gustav’s forever? he wondered. Agnes Gerner or Johanne Caspersen?

  Judging by their ages, it was most likely that Johanne was Gustav’s chosen one. And Cecilia’s mother. But why hadn’t she taken his name? Could Gustav’s wife have survived, perhaps along with Gustav himself?