by Gard Sveen
Bergmann sighed with resignation. It was all a huge mess, a labyrinthine jumble. He was going to have to start from scratch.
He phoned the archive, but hung up before anyone could answer. It was no use. If the case files still existed, they wouldn’t be here in this building, or even in the backup archive. He decided instead to try and find something in the National Registry. He typed in the names, one by one. No hits. He cross-checked “Gustav” with the surnames of the two women. Nothing. Not a single damned hit. People always boasted about how great the system was, but there were plenty of gaps in the records before 1947. Maybe it didn’t really matter—if you were dead, you could neither commit crimes nor pay taxes, so the tax authority and the justice system didn’t give a damn who you used to be, or when you were born. But it seemed that nobody had bothered to demand that these three be officially reported dead after the war, or they would have been on the missing-persons list. That could mean several things. The family might have wanted to believe they were still alive. But it was more likely that no one in their families, if any were still alive after the war, cared enough about them to bother reporting that they were dead. There were only two reasons to have missing persons declared dead: to achieve a sense of peace so the survivors could get on with their lives, or to get hold of their money.
Yet someone had reported them missing in the first place. That was a start. It was most likely this Gustav who had reported the woman with the ring missing. The problem was how to track down this illustrious Gustav’s last name without having to phone every person in Norway named either Gerner or Caspersen.
He got up from his chair and patted all his coat pockets. No tobacco pouch. He swore softly, unable to recall where he had left it. On the roof terrace, he thought. He’d put the pouch down on one of the tables up there.
Just as he took hold of the door handle, the phone on his desk rang. He hesitated a moment and then went back to check the display. It was someone from the archive calling him back. He ignored it and opened his web browser instead. It might be worth a try—certainly better than loafing on the roof terrace. He typed “Agnes Gerner” in the search field. Then he quickly shut his eyes, as if hoping for a miracle when he opened them again.
Nothing. Not a single hit.
Then he typed in “Johanne Caspersen.”
Nothing. Next he tried Gustav with the last names of the two women.
Finally “Cecilia Lande.”
“Did you mean Cecilie Lande?” the search engine responded.
“No,” said Bergmann out loud. “I did not mean Cecilie Lande.”
Once again the phone rang. He picked it up as he stared at the text on the screen.
“I saw you had called?” said the voice on the other end. Bergmann recognized the woman from some summer party he’d attended.
“Yeah” was all he said.
“Did you call to ask me something?”
“I’m working on a case from 1942,” he said, keeping his voice neutral.
She gave a short laugh. “Tommy . . .”
He didn’t reply.
“What sort of case?” she asked.
“The three bodies that were found in Nordmarka.”
“The National Archives,” she said.
“The National Archives?”
“Yeah, the Oslo archive has merged with the National Archives at Sognsvann.”
“Damn!” he exclaimed. “Of course, of course.”
“Excuse me?” she said, but he put the receiver gently back in the cradle.
Of course, he thought. Why didn’t I think of that? Cecilia Lande. He hadn’t yet tried her last name with Gustav. It was worth a try.
He typed the name “Gustav Lande” in the Google search field.
He closed his eyes. He could clearly smell the dug-up dirt from Nordmarka; he could see the child’s hand sticking up between the ribs of the second woman, either Agnes or Johanne.
He opened his eyes and looked at the screen.
Four hits. Four little hits. But the name was right.
“Bingo.”
So this Gustav had been Gustav Lande, and he was the father of Cecilia Lande. That must be the way it fit together. And he must have been married to one of the two women.
Bergmann studied the list. Four hits weren’t much, but they were a hell of a lot better than none. As he clicked on the first link, he sat for a while as though petrified.
Gustav Lande (1905-1944). Businessman and primary stockholder in Knaben Molybdenum Mines, Inc., and Nasjonal Samling (NS) patron. Committed suicide in July 1944. Known for his close association with the Occupation forces. Source: Torgeir Moberg, Those Who Played the Enemy’s Game (1980).
CHAPTER 13
Thursday, May 31, 1945
The Stable
Östermalm Police District
Stockholm, Sweden
He was already at the door when he changed his mind. What had he just done? Detective Inspector Gösta Persson paused for a few seconds on the threshold, clutching the brim of his hat in his fingers. A hard rain was pouring onto the sidewalk. It made the choice easy.
I’m not even hungry anymore, Persson thought, turning on his heel and heading inside. He strode down the corridor with determined steps, looking straight ahead without nodding or greeting the people he passed. By the time he reached the anteroom, sweat had settled around his collar and under his cuffs; his face was undoubtedly flushed because his blood pressure had spiked.
“Do you have the Holt file?” he asked, leaning on the counter with all his weight, which creaked under him.
The secretary stopped typing, turned halfway toward him, and regarded him over the rim of her glasses.
“Yes . . .” she said in a hesitant tone of voice, as if Persson were an idiot.
He motioned with his hand, which prompted her to pick up the light-green document folder next to her. Persson took it without a word and unfastened the thick cord around the folder. He paged carefully through the few documents, starting from the back, and quietly exhaled when he found the note that Holt had supposedly written before he took his life. Nordenstam would have a hard time removing it unseen before the entire file was formally transferred to the C-Bureau. Persson studied the handwriting. If he’d had any sense he would have gone back to Rindögatan and collected all the ballpoint pens to examine them for fingerprints and check whether one was left where Holt might have set it down after writing those two words.
Instead he told his secretary, “Find Holt’s wife’s address in Oslo.”
“But—” She looked crestfallen.
“Call and find out. I’ll wait in the office.”
“His wife? Call her?”
Persson thought it over. He pictured Karen Eline Fredriksen’s eyes, the tucks in her blouse, the budding cleavage between her young breasts. He could still smell the scent of her perfume. He didn’t give a shit that Nordenstam or the baby face he’d had with him had sent Karen Eline Fredriksen to Holt’s apartment.
He leaned over the counter again. Once more it threatened to collapse.
“Call the secretary at the Norwegian legation, not Ms. Fredriksen,” he said quietly, “and ask for Holt’s last address in Oslo. Just say we need it for our report on Kaj Holt’s tragic suicide, nothing more.”
“Okay, I can do that.”
“Great,” said Persson, “and when you’ve got the address, give it to me.” He took the document folder with him and fished out a brown envelope from the shelf. As he turned to go back to his office, he felt the secretary’s gaze upon him.
Once inside, he stopped and leaned against the closed door for a couple of minutes until his heart stopped racing. If she called the station chief, he was done for, there was no doubt about it. He tried to eavesdrop for a while, but the double door made it impossible to hear anything but unintelligible mumbling.
Finally he moved away from the door. He found a bottle of liquor in the filing cabinet beneath his desk. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d ne
eded it. Reimersholms bitters stung like cat piss. With his hip flask in hand, he went over to the bookcase, where the man with the baby face had stood playing with the elephant statue. Persson picked it up the way Baby Face had done, turned toward his desk, and saw the scene as it had played out less than an hour before. He jumped when someone knocked on his door, nearly dropping both the elephant and the flask. He hurriedly set both items on the bookshelf and strode over to the windows before he called out “Come in!” as gruffly as he could.
He heard the clack of the secretary’s heels crossing the floor behind him, but he didn’t turn around. Instead he studied the lousy weather outside and followed the slim lines of a patrol car that glistened in the heavy rain.
“Did you find the address?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I jotted it down for you.”
“Just leave it on the desk.”
Her footsteps stopped in the middle of the room.
Persson still didn’t turn around.
He heard her make a faint sound, but that was all. Finally she moved toward the door, stopped, turned around again, and then exited the office.
Persson copied Holt’s address onto the brown envelope and carefully inserted the note that said “Sorry. Kaj.” as though it were the most fragile thing in the world. One day everyone would know that he, Detective Inspector Gösta Persson, had sent this evidence to Holt’s widow. For now that would have to suffice. At least he had done what little he could.
Before leaving the office, he finished off the bitters in his hip flask. He wasn’t going to do any more work today anyway.
“I’ll take this downstairs myself,” he announced in the anteroom, then left before his secretary had a chance to object. He rushed down the spiral staircase to the basement as if the Devil himself were on his heels.
“You’re lucky, you just made it,” said the mailroom boy.
Persson muttered some response. He needed all the luck he could get today. He wanted to get out of here. He’d never liked the basement.
“To Norway, huh?” the boy said, glancing up at Persson, who managed to return the boy’s feigned smile despite the stab he felt in his chest. With his own eyes Persson watched the boy feed the envelope into the postage meter, stamp it twice, and then put it into the burlap sack beside him.
“Yep, you’re lucky, all right,” the boy said again, hefting the sack onto his back. The outside doors behind him opened and a postal service driver appeared next to a Volvo with its trunk open.
Yep, Persson said to himself. It helps to have a little luck.
He stood out on the loading dock as the sack was loaded into the back of the van. The double doors of the van slammed. Persson watched until it disappeared around the corner.
CHAPTER 14
Monday, May 19, 2003
National Archives
Oslo, Norway
The parking lot at Sognsvann was barely half-full. Tommy Bergmann parked his brand-new service vehicle as close to the footpath as possible. He briefly studied the building through the trees before he took the printout from the passenger seat, rolled down the window, and lit a smoke. Somebody had to be the first to break the no-smoking rule in this damned car.
A mild breeze blew in from the Nordmarka woods, and the pale-green leaves on the nearby birch trees rustled. Then the wind died out and the leaves stopped moving, drooping as if summer were over before it had even started.
Gustav Lande, Bergmann said to himself, looking down at the piece of paper in his lap. All four hits on the Internet had been more or less similar and originated from a website called the Norwegian War Encyclopedia. All the articles referred to the same author, a well-known figure by the name of Professor Torgeir Moberg. He read the text several times as he puffed on his cigarette, trying to put together what little he knew. In September 1942 someone killed the wife and child of the Nazi Gustav Lande, along with another woman. Almost two years later Gustav Lande took his own life.
All right, Bergmann thought. Not much to go on. But he couldn’t stop thinking about that little girl. It seemed clear that she’d been buried alive. Why were the two women shot in the head, but not the girl? Had the person who killed them simply tossed the child into the grave, clinging to her mother?
He shook off the thought and looked at the printout from the missing-persons list again.
Cecilia Lande, born March 16, 1934.
Agnes Gerner, born June 19, 1918.
Johanne Caspersen, born November 5, 1915.
Yes, he thought, Caspersen was probably the mother. She must have been. He had decided not to speculate as to which of the two women was the mother until he had proof, but he couldn’t help himself.
The man behind the counter looked as if he didn’t appreciate people showing up unannounced at the National Archives.
“You need to make an appointment,” he said. “We get a lot of requests, and we can’t just . . .”
The man, whose name was Rolf according to his nametag, let the sentence die out.
“Look, Rolf,” said Bergmann. “I’m sure the two of us can agree on an appointment time . . . say, right about now.”
Rolf merely sighed when Bergmann held up his police badge and laid the printout on the counter along with a copy of a newspaper article about the three skeletons found in Nordmarka. Rolf pursed his lips several times as he studied the names before him.
“September 1942,” said Bergmann.
Rolf sighed again, scratching the sparse beard he’d managed to grow. Bergmann tried to stay calm by looking out the big picture windows off the lobby.
“Well,” said Rolf, “the old case files are probably in the records for the Oslo and Aker Police Department, because the city and Aker County’s departments were combined during the Occupation.” Then he muttered something that Bergmann didn’t catch and began pounding away at the keyboard. He stared at the screen with an annoyed expression on his face. “Let’s see . . . maybe you’ll get lucky,” he said, smiling in a way that Bergmann chose not to interpret. “They could have been shredded.”
You’re the one who’d be lucky if they haven’t been shredded, thought Bergmann.
“Come with me,” Rolf said at last. “Looks like this is your lucky day.”
Bergmann didn’t say a word as he followed him over to the elevators. Down in the basement Rolf led him to a seating area and disappeared into a vast sea of rolling stacks. Yesterday’s Dagbladet dated Sunday, May 18, lay on the low table in front of him. Bergmann recognized the scene in the right column of the front page. The photo had been taken late in the evening on May 16. The white tent illuminated the dark forest, and two figures in white tech overalls stood outside. Bergmann glanced at the caption and “mystery in the woods” caught his eye. He put down the paper without turning to the story inside.
The archivist came back ten minutes later, more sullen than before, if that were possible.
“You have to read them here,” he said, placing an old beige file folder on the table.
For a few minutes Bergmann simply sat there with his hand on top of the old folder. Then he removed the white string holding it together. Inside were three separate files, which he spread out on the table. The top one was from the combined Oslo and Aker Police Department, the second from the National Police, and the last one from the Oslo Police Presidium. The stamp on the cover page revealed that the case had been closed on April 15, 1944, three months before Gustav Lande committed suicide.
He put all the folders back in their original order and opened the top one. The first document was the missing-persons report. It gave him a few answers, but unfortunately raised even more questions.
Police Officer Ragnar Dahl, Vinderen Police Station.
Cecilia Lande, Johanne Caspersen, and Agnes Margaretha Gerner were reported missing at 11:55 p.m. on September 28, 1942. All three individuals live at Tuengen Allé 10C. Reported by Gustav Lande of Knaben Molybdenum Mines, Inc., born: March 8, 1905, status: widower, residence: as above. Engag
ed to Agnes M. Gerner. Ms. Gerner has special permission from the Higher SS and Police Leader North to be on the street from 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. The housekeeper, Johanne Caspersen, does not and is therefore subject to the curfew.
So Gustav Lande was a widower, and neither of the women was Cecilia Lande’s mother. And he was engaged to Agnes Gerner, not Johanne Caspersen. Bergmann felt relieved at having overcome the first hurdle on a path he knew would present many more. Gustav Lande’s first wife, Cecilia’s mother, was dead, and Agnes was his new fiancée. It was no more complicated than that. But it did nothing to change the fact that the child was dead.
The next document was a brief report from the following day, September 29, 1942.
A search was instigated around Lande’s summer house at Rødtangen on the Hurum peninsula. According to Lande, who was on a business trip to Berlin and returned to Oslo late in the evening on September 28, Agnes G. was supposed to help Johanne C. (Lande’s housekeeper) close up the summer house at Rødtangen for the winter on Sunday, September 27. According to witnesses nobody was in the house that weekend. Canvassing on September 29 at Rødtangen and interviews with Lande’s neighbors at Vinderen produced no further information. Lande’s car, a 1939 black Mercedes-Benz 170V, was not found. List of witnesses questioned is attached.
Bergmann skimmed over the witness list, which consisted of the names of only those who had been questioned during the canvassing out in Rødtangen and about ten people who resided on Lande’s street.
At the bottom of the file was a sheet of paper that had obviously served as the basis for the investigation that took place the next day, Wednesday, September 30, 1942. Bergmann carefully read through the descriptions of the two women and child. Only one thing caught his attention. Cecilia Lande, born: March 16, 1934, height: 4’1”, blue eyes and dark-blonde hair, had a congenital hip defect that “gave her a characteristic limping gait.” Bergmann pictured the girl up in Nordmarka. Maybe whoever had killed her knew that she wouldn’t be able to run away. Maybe she’d been forced to watch as Agnes and the housekeeper were shot.