The Last Pilgrim

by Gard Sveen

  All six people in the compartment, four men and two women, looked grim, as though they’d just been informed that they’d contracted some fatal disease. Two of the men were middle aged, much older than those who were in danger of being drafted to the front. They spoke together in low tones about Chamberlain’s speech earlier that day. The other two men, about Agnes’s age, stared vacantly into space. Agnes noticed how exhausted she was. But never in her life would she be able to fall asleep in these seats, and the sleeping compartment farther back in the train had sold out long ago. She would sleep when she boarded the ferry tomorrow morning. She had booked a berth on the last ferry to Norway, the MS Leda, from Port of Tyne to Bergen.

  She had never been to Bergen before. Although she was Norwegian, she had hardly been outside Oslo. She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on the metallic clacking of the wheels over the tracks, the click-clack, click-clack sound, the steady rocking of her body.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that they were already deep in the countryside. Had she really slept? Only an occasional light passed by, like a tracer bullet over a battlefield, revealing a beautiful rolling landscape outside the windows.

  She fixed her gaze on the young woman facing her, who cast her eyes down and began brushing something off her skirt. Her dark curls hid half her face. She seemed to be afraid that someone would recognize her.

  Agnes went back to looking out the window after she found her pack of cigarettes in her handbag. The train began slowing down, and she reasoned that they must be approaching a town because there were more and more lights. Only then, as if she were waking from a dream, did Agnes hear what the men in the compartment were saying. “It’s war,” they said. “Now we’re really at war.”

  That’s what Bratchard meant, Agnes thought, letting the man next to her light her cigarette. If war came to Norway, she would have to be prepared to die. She would probably never return to England. The sound of the air brakes whined beneath the carriage.

  She’d been trained for this. She knew that the job she’d volunteered for could mean the end for her. Still, for several fumbling seconds, that realization felt surprising. That was why Bratchard had pulled her close and forced her into a hug, whispering in her ear as a last farewell, “May God have mercy on your soul.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Whitsunday, June 8, 2003

  Carl Oscar Krogh’s Residence

  Dr. Holms Vei

  Oslo, Norway

  Tommy Bergmann tried to avoid looking at Carl Oscar Krogh for too long. He was lying more or less midway between two big Persian carpets. The pool of blood had reached one of them, and a little puddle of deep red had started to soak into the rug. A wheeled walker stood over by the sofa, and a cane lay on the floor between the open terrace door and Krogh’s body. Bergmann tried to imagine the course of events. The perp had obviously gone around the house and come in through the terrace door, and Krogh had clearly attempted to flee in the other direction, toward the front door or the telephone in the hall. According to what Bergmann had read about Carl Oscar Krogh, he’d been a real hardnose in his day, but both the walker and the cane proved that he’d become physically feeble.

  “Was the door locked?” he asked the housekeeper, who was shuffling along beside him. She too looked as though all the blood had drained from her body.

  “Yes, it was,” she said. “I think he must have tried to get to the chest of drawers, to press the security alarm. Or maybe to his cell phone, which he keeps in the same drawer.”

  “Wasn’t he supposed to wear the alarm around his neck?” Bergmann asked.

  A tear ran down her cheek.

  “He said he didn’t need it. He said it was for old people, not an eighty-five-year-old like himself. And he only carried his cell phone around for a couple of hours in the evening. He accepted the walker to stop his son and daughter from nagging, as he said. But he never used it, even though his hip is . . . had gotten quite frail.”

  “But how spry was he really?” Bergmann asked, though he could guess the answer.

  “He got around all right. But he spent all his energy on the dog,” she said. “It wore him out. A man of his age shouldn’t have a setter. But he still went out walking with the dog . . . Although I was the one who usually took him out.”

  “I understand,” said Bergmann as he knelt down next to Krogh.

  “Did you make these marks in the blood?”

  The housekeeper nodded, though the round bloodstains on her knees made the question superfluous.

  “What happened?”

  “I . . . just couldn’t stand up any longer.”

  Bergmann nodded and leaned over to look at the knife, which lay in the blood next to Krogh.

  A swastika. Even though the medium-sized knife was covered in blood, the swastika in the middle of the shaft was unmistakable. He glanced at the old man’s body.

  Who could have done it? Bergmann wondered. A Nazi? A neo-Nazi?

  The swastika formed the center of a diamond he knew he had seen somewhere before. He racked his memory for a few seconds, then remembered, relieved that his brain still seemed to be functioning in this slaughterhouse.

  “Hitlerjugend,” he muttered to himself with a nod. “The Hitler Youth.” He’d seen a couple of those knives confiscated from neo-Nazis many years ago.

  In the distance he heard a car door slam. Then another. Familiar voices were approaching—Monsen, Abrahamsen.

  “Hitler?” said the housekeeper softly.

  “You didn’t see this,” he said, turning to look at her. She was staring into space.

  “Booties, put ’em on,” Abrahamsen said disapprovingly from over by the door.

  “That’s my vomit in the crapper down the hall,” Bergmann said.

  He expected some snide remark about vomiting from Abrahamsen, but he didn’t say a word.

  Monsen’s eyes widened. Bergmann had never seen him respond like that before. Even Abrahamsen appeared to be almost paralyzed for a moment.

  “Fredrik’s on his way up from the cabin,” Monsen said quietly.

  “Damn,” said Abrahamsen. “The old man.”

  “The gate was open,” said the housekeeper.

  Monsen and Bergmann looked at each other.

  “What do you mean?” Monsen asked. Bergmann could hear that for once he’d been caught off balance.

  “The gate up by the road, it’s never open. But today it was,” the woman said.

  “Nobody touch that gate,” Abrahamsen said, turning on his heel. “Don’t anyone touch that gate.” He pulled one of his rolling flight cases out the front door, which slammed after him in the draft from the open terrace door.

  “Find a blanket to put over him,” Bergmann told Monsen, as if he were the chief of Kripo and not vice versa.

  Three-quarters of an hour later the team leader told the uniforms to run up and down the street with questionnaires. They were short of investigators. Whitsunday was a particularly bad time to be murdered; everybody knew that. Only Easter was worse. Not only were there hardly any people at work down at police headquarters, it was also hard to get hold of any witnesses. Especially in this part of town, high up on Holmenkollen ridge, where almost everyone who could crawl or walk had taken off for their cabins as soon as school let out.

  Bergmann was in the master bedroom on the third floor when Fredrik Reuter came walking across the forecourt. He waved to Reuter, then turned his attention to a dusty photograph of Krogh holding hands with his wife.

  Out in the hall he took off his blue latex gloves as he took one last look at the rooms on that floor, which consisted of an office, four bedrooms, and a bathroom. Everything was painstakingly neat, and Bergmann was fairly sure that almost nothing had been touched since Krogh’s wife had died the year before. It looked as though Krogh himself had hardly been up there. Maybe he’d never made it up the stairs.

  Most likely the perp hadn’t set foot on the third floor either. A large room lined with green wallpaper and hea
vy hardwood bookshelves that had probably been Krogh’s office looked completely untouched.

  No, Bergmann thought, Carl Oscar Krogh was not killed by someone who was out for money. This was not a burglar who had been surprised to find anyone at home. And he’d bet that Krogh was not the victim of a random madman. No, old Krogh had been subjected to such extreme violence that they were probably dealing with a killer who had a strong personal motive.

  Down in the living room, Reuter leaned against the wall, watching Abrahamsen and his team examine the crime scene. One of the assistants looked through the photos on the camera while talking to another tech in a low voice.

  Reuter didn’t turn around when Bergmann entered the room.

  “Holy shit,” he said to himself. Then to Abrahamsen: “He really looks terrible. Get Forensics to patch him up for the relatives. They have to do a clean job. Got that, Georg?”

  Abrahamsen was standing in the terrace doorway looking out at the view.

  “Did you hear what I said, Georg?”

  “It won’t be easy,” he said without turning around.

  “This isn’t good,” said Monsen as he came back in. “This is definitely not good.” He sounded like a boy who had smashed his mother’s porcelain plates.

  “Check whether there are any lunatics on the loose at the moment,” said Reuter, looking around for Bergmann. His face was red as a lobster from too much sun over the holiday. A shiny circle on top of his head looked to have been particularly exposed. He looked downright exhausted in his worn sandals, old T-shirt, and shorts, which had surely fit better ten years ago.

  “Have you got a smoke?” he asked, reaching out to Bergmann. He looked skeptically at Bergmann’s exercise outfit, then began waving his fingers. “I’ve got to have a smoke, Tommy.” His cell phone rang in his pants pocket. Reuter let the phone ring till it stopped.

  Abrahamsen could be heard speaking into a voice recorder. “The head has been almost separated from the body, apparently with a knife. The murder must have taken place with great force, so the perpetrator was probably male.” He held up the knife and went on. “The murder weapon is covered with coagulated blood, tissue remnants, and bone splinters on both the blade and shaft. From what I can see, the words Blut und Ehre are engraved horizontally on the blade in cursive script.” He angled it toward the light from the window. “Vertically R2 M M7/2 1937. Solingen . . .”

  “Solingen?” Bergmann asked.

  “Solingen,” Abrahamsen replied. “Who doesn’t have a Solingen knife in his kitchen drawer?”

  “Shut up,” said Reuter from out on the terrace. “Just shut up, all right?”

  Bergmann couldn’t recall ever having seen him so pale. He shook his head as he fiddled with his phone.

  “The Hitler Youth, right?” Bergmann said at last.

  Abrahamsen nodded, noticeably reticent after Reuter’s outburst.

  “Put it in a bag,” said Reuter as he came back in from the terrace. He put the cell phone back in his shorts. Then he raised his voice. “How many of you have seen this?”

  “Only the two of us, and Bent, the housekeeper, the officer who arrived first, and the other one, his partner,” Bergmann said.

  “Okay,” said Reuter. “All of you! Everyone in here.”

  Five minutes later, the living room was full of people, in violation of every regulation.

  Reuter, whose face had taken on a deep-red flush, said, “Everything, absolutely everything that occurs within these four walls today and in the days to come, must remain within these walls or well inside police headquarters. Those of you who haven’t seen the murder weapon—don’t even ask. Those of you who have seen it, speak only to me about it, or if necessary with each other in my presence. Is that understood?”

  Bergmann figured that everyone in the room felt the same way he did. This case was already a total mess. And Detective Inspector Fredrik Reuter was on the verge of losing control.

  After everyone had left the room, Reuter stood there holding the plastic bag with the knife.

  “Come here,” he said to Bergmann. He pointed at the shaft. Then he glanced over at Carl Oscar Krogh. The blood from his slashed throat had begun to turn black. “Covered in prints,” said Reuter. “What does that tell you?”

  “That the perp’s a real nutcase,” said Bergmann.

  “Or he doesn’t give a damn if he’s caught,” said Reuter.

  CHAPTER 23

  Tuesday, June 10, 2003

  Police Headquarters

  Oslo, Norway

  Tommy Bergmann leafed through the newspaper. Dagbladet had devoted ten whole pages to Krogh, which he thought was inevitable. On Sunday afternoon some idiot in one of the patrol cars had mentioned Krogh’s name over the police radio, and then the whole media circus had begun. He hadn’t expected anything less. But this wasn’t going to turn out well. Maybe he shouldn’t blame people for flying off the handle. And if they’d known what he and a dozen other detectives and uniforms knew, there would have been no chance of saving the situation. Krogh was a former trade minister and a prominent figure in the majority party after the war. Bergmann read in his obituary, “One of the nation builders of Norway has been brutally and senselessly taken from us.”

  He looked up when Fredrik Reuter raised his voice. Everyone in the room turned to look in the same direction. Reuter paused for dramatic effect as a photo of Krogh’s body at the crime scene appeared on the screen behind him.

  “The boss is the only one who will speak to the press. Not a word from the rest of us.”

  “Only Papa,” said Halgeir Sørvaag, making a note to himself. “That’s perfectly fine with me.”

  “I’ll be taking charge of the investigation,” said Reuter. “Halgeir’s and Tommy’s teams will join forces for this one.”

  Sørvaag heaved a big sigh. He and Bergmann held equal positions as team leaders, but Sørvaag was more ambitious than Bergmann, who had never really understood why he had been named a team leader in the first place. He worked best alone, or with one other person, if need be. He now earned more money than he had before, but he spent too much time supervising four other people—people he didn’t always get along with. The fact that Reuter was taking charge of this case was a breach of all organizational protocols and would result in the worst possible leadership within the police force. But Bergmann had seen this happen before. The chief of the Criminal Division simply needed to show that he was a man of action. Although everyone knew that an investigation always suffered under such decisions, it played well in the media. Unlike Sørvaag, Bergmann actually felt slightly relieved by the fact that he wouldn’t be in charge of this case. It would give him the freedom he craved. Twenty-four hours had already been pretty much wasted because Krogh had met his maker on Whitsunday. Only now, almost forty-eight hours later, had they managed to gather a full staff. And potential witnesses and those who knew the victim had only just returned from their country homes and trips abroad.

  A new photo of Krogh appeared on the screen. It was from a newspaper interview conducted only four weeks ago in connection with a VE Day commemoration taking place somewhere in town May 8. Bergmann saw that it had been taken from the terrace where he himself had stood only two days before. Reuter had added a few bullet points to the image. “A little background information about Krogh for those who’d been born after 1975,” he’d explained. Reuter would probably also feel compelled to give them a lecture on the Second World War, describing who the villains and heroes were, and how they were connected. That was something Reuter had taught Bergmann when he came over from the uniformed police. Without villains there would be no heroes. Apparently it was as simple as that.

  “Any thoughts?” Reuter asked the room. “Everything is of interest. There are no stupid questions.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose and briefly closed his eyes in a way that made Bergmann think he’d prefer not to open them again until the day was over.

  “The preliminary autopsy report,” Sørvaag said as he lean
ed across the table and held out a file folder. He grinned, briefly showing his crooked teeth. “I’ll never understand what the hell is so interesting about a person’s last meal or when he ate it, considering that his head was chopped off,” he said.

  Reuter didn’t bother contradicting him. He merely held out his right hand in a peremptory manner.

  “We need to find out who butchered Carl Oscar Krogh on Whitsunday,” said Sørvaag, “and the only thing Forensics seems to care about is what was in the guy’s stomach. Have any of you ever solved a homicide based on the fact that the poor devil had eggs and bacon a couple of hours before he was killed?”

  Sørvaag dropped the folder on the table.

  “Why don’t we try for a more constructive approach.” Reuter’s voice suggested that he was getting annoyed. If Sørvaag kept this up, he might kiss the whole Krogh case good-bye.

  “There has to be a connection,” said Bergmann. “We haven’t found anything else related to Krogh. No disputes, no debts, not a fucking thing.”

  “Connection?” said Reuter, rubbing his face, which could have been described as boyish if not for the fine lines around his eyes. “What sort of connection?” He glared at his soggy baguette and reluctantly took a bite.