The Last Pilgrim (52 page)

He looked at her hands. She was twiddling her thumbs, not quickly and nervously but slowly and sedately. Bergmann could see beneath the cuffs of her sleeves that her wrists were bandaged. He didn’t know why—and he didn’t want to know either.

Reuter set his briefcase on his lap and took out a medium-sized plastic bag with a slider closure. A felt pen had been used to write the case number and item number on the white space in the middle. Bergmann saw that it contained one of the newspaper clippings about Krogh that they’d found in Vera’s apartment. Seeing how the eyes had been cut out reminded him once more of what Krogh’s dead body had looked like in reality.

“Are you the one who did this?” asked Reuter, turning to look at Vera.

She kept on twiddling her thumbs as she opened her mouth and whispered something. It might have been a song or a jingle. Bergmann tried to hear what she was saying, but her words disappeared in the faint hissing from the ventilation system. Reuter glanced at Bergmann, then at the male nurse sitting on Vera’s left.

The nurse picked up the plastic bag with the newspaper clipping from Reuter’s lap. Reuter made a move as if to stop him, but then changed his mind and sat back. A thudding sound was heard through the closed door behind Bergmann, and someone shrieked. Then it was quiet again. Only the hissing of the ventilation system was audible.

“Did you hear what he said?” the nurse said to Vera.

Again, no reaction. Vera stared at her hands as she twiddled her thumbs.

“Did you show any of these to anyone else?” said Reuter.

“No one,” she said instantly, though without looking up. After a moment she raised her head and smiled. Then she began to laugh. The sound made the hair on Bergmann’s arms stand on end.

Just as abruptly she stopped laughing. The junior attorney shifted uneasily on his chair. He looked as if he were seriously starting to regret taking this case.

“Are you afraid of me?” asked Vera, looking right at Reuter for the first time.

“No,” said Reuter. “Why should I be?”

“Everybody’s afraid of me,” she said. “Isn’t that strange?” Her voice was thin and meek, almost like a child’s.

“I’m not afraid of you,” said Reuter calmly.

“Mama’s new husband . . . The first time I was only four years old. Finally I killed him, you know. Killed,” she said, her voice so faint the words almost disappeared.

No one seated at the table made any move to speak. Vera resumed twiddling the thumbs of her scarred hands.

Reuter picked up the plastic bag with the picture of Krogh.

“Did someone else give this to you?” he asked.

Vera shook her head.

Reuter put down the bag. Then he took another one out of his briefcase. Inside was one of the pages they’d found in her apartment. A page torn from a notepad.

Reuter handed it to Birkemoe, who held it up to the light.

“‘We have a rotten apple in the basket,’” he read out loud.

“Notice what it says next to that,” said Reuter. He turned to look at Bergmann. It was clear that he thought the case was closed, so to speak.

You haven’t considered the consequences,
thought Bergmann. How was this case going to turn out if Holt’s daughter killed Krogh because Krogh had killed her father—or gave someone the orders to do it—in Stockholm?

“Did your father write this?” asked Reuter.

Vera nodded.

“I got everything from her before she died.”

“From who?”

“Mama.”

“I’d like to confer with my client,” Birkemoe said, handing the plastic bag back to Reuter. He took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. He was young, maybe eight or ten years younger than Bergmann. He’d obviously been sent over by one of the partners in the law firm that would take over Vera Holt’s defense if it turned out that the case would get media attention.

Reuter nodded.

“I’d just like to confirm one thing,” he said. “Is it true that your client has no alibi for Whitsunday?”

Birkemoe put his glasses back on and nodded.

“As you know, we found a number of newspaper articles about the death of the three females in Nordmarka at Ms. Holt’s home,” Reuter went on. Birkemoe merely grunted, making it clear he thought Reuter was repeating himself unnecessarily.

“Were you at the home of Carl Oscar Krogh on Sunday, June 8?”

Vera didn’t seem to hear the question. She clenched her jaw, chanting that barely audible jingle of hers and staring at her hands, which were still steadily moving in the same manner.

“Well, she’s under arrest,” Reuter told Birkemoe. “And if we could just get her fingerprints . . .”

Bergmann leaned across the table.

“Have you ever spoken to a German named Peter?” he asked quietly.

Vera paused for a moment, not lifting her gaze from the table.

“Peter Waldhorst. Or Peter Ward?”

Only silence. Then Vera once again began clenching her jaw and twiddling her thumbs.

Birkemoe took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose a second time. For a moment he sat there with his eyes closed. Finally he put his glasses back on and motioned toward the door.

Reuter sighed in resignation and then slapped Bergmann on the back.

“Not exactly a dream client,” he said quietly as they went out into the corridor. Abrahamsen was sitting on a chair a few feet away, reading a newspaper. He glanced up at them.

“So?” he said.

Bergmann had an intense urge to get out into the fresh air. He looked down at the newly scrubbed linoleum floor, following it with his gaze until it ended at the far wall with a rectangular window with bars several feet away. He headed down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Outside he stood under the awning at the front entrance. A fierce rainstorm had moved in, soaking the ground in a matter of minutes. The road, parking lot, and lawn all looked as though they’d been inundated by a hundred-year flood.

A few minutes later the door opened behind him. Reuter looked past Bergmann at the torrential rain. Bergmann glanced down at his shoes, suddenly noticing that they were nearly soaked through.

“So that’s done,” said Abrahamsen behind Reuter. A barely discernible smile appeared on his gaunt face. “Two complete sets of fingerprints, Tommy. What do you think? That young lawyer is probably hoping for a lenient sentence because he cooperated, right?”

“Coffee’s on me,” said Reuter, giving Bergmann a slap on the back.

I can’t believe it,
thought Bergmann.

They stood there watching Abrahamsen trot across the parking lot with his flight case in his arms, as though it were his newborn child.

“This is going to be hell,” said Bergmann, tossing his smoldering cigarette butt into the stream of water gushing out of the downspout by his feet.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Reuter said, turning up the collar of his new Polo jacket, which his wife had undoubtedly bought for him to improve his appearance. “Today we’re going to savor this victory, Tommy. We’ll let the chief handle the bad stuff.”

They ran toward the closest building, but were nonetheless soaked through within seconds. Reuter laughed like a boy as they went inside.

Bergmann had a strange feeling as he looked at Reuter. A feeling that Reuter would stop laughing before this day was over. In a lucid moment, Vera Holt may have understood, or been told, that Krogh was the rotten apple in the basket, but where had she gotten that knife? And how had she been able to get away from Krogh’s villa without anyone noticing her? Someone who hardly seemed aware of what was going on inside her own head and who was barely able to take care of herself?

CHAPTER 62

Sunday, September 27, 1942

Villa Lande

Tuengen Allé

Oslo, Norway

She came to a door. Behind her stretched a nearly dark corridor. The light from the wall sconces was so faint that they might as well have been switched off. She’d been running and running along this corridor for hours, maybe even days, in some sort of
pension
or hotel. She turned around one last time and saw the outline of two faceless men who had emerged from the shadows. They were saying something incomprehensible to her. One of them leaned toward her, his breath as rotten as a dead man’s. The words that spilled out of his mouth were backward. She screamed but no sound came out. She turned toward a wooden door with a leaded glass window. A glaring light shone on the other side. She felt one of the men put his heavy hand on her shoulder. She reached for the door handle and tore open the door. She was momentarily blinded by an inexplicably bright light, but then she saw in the distance, beyond the light, a woman her own age walking toward her, holding out her hands. She felt a thick, viscous fluid rise over her ankles.
That light,
she thought.
That light.

Agnes Gerner jolted up in bed.

For several seconds she thought it was only a dream. Then everything collapsed around her.

It was true. It was
all
true.

The blackout curtains were only partly drawn, fluttering at the open bedroom window. She felt the back of her neck, damp with sweat, turn cold. She shivered in the wind gusting through the window. She pulled the quilt around her and quickly crossed the room to fasten the hasps on the window. The trees in the yard below looked like they’d drop their leaves at any moment. The referee’s seat at the tennis court was drooping. Though it was still radiantly sunny, there was no longer any doubt that winter was at the door.

Death is at the door,
she thought.

What day was it? Sunday. How long had she been at Lande’s villa? Since that day. Since Friday evening.

How could she . . .

Yesterday the house had been filled with Germans. Nothing but Sipo officers all day long, and she had been forced to sit among them, with their newspapers and documents spread out all over the tables. “So awful,” she’d said to
Brigadeführer
Seeholz, “so unbelievably awful.” He had assured her that they would find this monstrous female assassin. A dozen people had already been brought in to Gestapo HQ. Agnes had escaped to the guest bathroom in the hall. She had found a package of razor blades in the medicine cabinet and surrendered to a sudden impulse to hold one of blades to her wrist. For some reason, it seemed like a much better way to die than swallowing a cyanide capsule. She had gotten as far as filling the sink with warm water before she persuaded herself that there had to be a way out of all this.

She hadn’t gone to bed until one thirty in the morning. So as not to draw attention to herself, she had kept Seeholz company while he, his adjutant, and a Sipo man continued drinking even after Lande had retired for the night.

She was suddenly aware of sounds coming from the yard.

No one,
she thought as she fixed her eyes on Cecilia running across the lawn after the maid, for some reason dressed in oilskins and boots in spite of the weather, limping and limping,
no one understands what has happened. Except maybe you.
Agnes looked at the maid.

There was definitely something wrong with Johanne. The maid, who certainly didn’t look very intelligent, was probably much sharper than she appeared.
How ironic,
thought Agnes. Last night Seeholz, drunk out of his mind, had kissed her on both cheeks, clicked his heels together, and proclaimed,
“Heil Hitler.”
She had, of course, reciprocated. Only one floor of the house separated the SS officer from the Welrod she had used to kill the research director and his secretary. And only a few centimeters separated him from the woman he was so desperately seeking.

Agnes had done as the Pilgrim had said and hidden the gun in Gustav Lande’s own house. It was now hidden in Cecilia’s room, on the top shelf of a wardrobe that was never used, wrapped in an old towel. She didn’t know whether it was a brilliant idea or sheer madness to hide it here in this house. Nor could she understand why she had had to keep it. Yesterday she’d considered moving it back to her apartment, but she hadn’t dared to leave the house. If Waldhorst followed her, that would be the end of everything. She didn’t dare go back to her place on Hammerstads Gate at all right now. She needed to stay put, hide right here in plain sight, so close to the hunters that no one would ever even think she was their prey.

A sound interrupted her thoughts.

The shower in the bathroom had just been turned off. Was that what had startled her?

The bathroom door was closed, but judging by the sounds coming from under the door, it sounded as if Lande had started shaving.

When was his plane leaving for Berlin? Agnes didn’t remember. She went back to bed and pulled up the covers. Oddly enough she suddenly felt calmer and safer. Here in the eye of the storm, no one could touch her. Absolutely no one. At least not today, when both Lande and Seeholz were going to Berlin. That would give her a full twenty-four hours to think things through.

She rolled onto Lande’s side of the bed and stared at the small framed photograph of his first wife.
I’ll take care of Cecilia for you,
she thought.
I don’t know how I’m going to manage it, but I will. I promise.

A few minutes later Gustav Lande came out of the bathroom, his bathrobe open. The scent of his aftershave overwhelmed her for a moment as he bent down and kissed her. Agnes closed her eyes. The private secretary was staring at her again, screaming soundlessly, dark blood pooling on the oak parquet floor. The glass dropping to the floor, her lifeless eyes.

“Come on,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Come and have breakfast with me before I have to leave.”

This will be the last time I ever see you,
she thought.

The very last time.

CHAPTER 63

Friday, June 20, 2003

Ullevål Hospital

Oslo, Norway

Tommy Bergmann didn’t like the fact that they were so visible sitting there in the cafeteria. Reuter had insisted that they sit at one of the tables right next to the reception area, and Bergmann could do nothing but acquiesce. He would have preferred a more secluded table because he didn’t want to run into Hege, though he didn’t know whether she was still working or had left on maternity leave. All he knew was that he didn’t want to see her right now.