The Last Pilgrim (34 page)

Bergmann lay back down as a wave of disappointment washed over him. For a moment there, he had thought it might be a breakthrough—the numbers might be an encrypted message—but a bank account? What could that have to do with Krogh’s murder?

“In Switzerland or Liechtenstein or the Cayman Islands—” Reuter began, but Bergmann interrupted him.

“You should check to see if the head of the tax authority has an alibi for Whitsunday.”

Reuter gave a strained laugh that sounded much like the shrieks of the gulls outside the hotel window.

After Bergmann hung up, he went down to the lobby and paid for Internet access. Then he started reading through all the same articles about Krogh and Holt that he’d already read countless times before. Who hated Krogh enough to stab the man beyond recognition with a Hitler Youth knife? Did Kaj Holt have any descendants?

He took his cell phone out of his pocket to tap in Reuter’s number, but then changed his mind. What would he say? That he’d come up with the idea that Krogh himself might have killed Holt to prevent him from talking about the liquidations in Nordmarka?
No,
thought Bergmann. Even he hardly believed that.

He studied the text about Holt on the screen of the hotel’s old computer once more.
There’s something here,
Bergmann thought, scanning the article word by word.
There’s something so fundamental here—right before my eyes—that I just can’t see it.
“It’s so damned close,” he murmured, “so uncomplicated, so fucking simple that it’s blinding me.”

When his Internet time was up, the screen switched back to tourist information for Uddevalla.
The beach,
thought Bergmann.
I need to cool off and forget about all this for a few hours.
He asked the woman at the front desk to point him to the closest beach and headed off, picking up some sunglasses and two light beers on his way out. It was on a bay southwest of town, surrounded by old oak trees. Quite picturesque, and not too crowded. With a cigarette in hand, he could hardly have been happier. Unfortunately, this idyllic scenario didn’t last long. After finishing off one beer, he caught sight of a beautiful and very pregnant blonde wading in the water, holding the hand of a naked little boy. Bergmann couldn’t take his eyes off her. She reminded him so much of Hege that he had to leave. Back in town, he sat down on the outdoor terrace of a restaurant across the street from his hotel. Though he was sitting in the shade, he kept his sunglasses on.

Am I any less alone than old Iver Faalund up in that apartment building?
Bergmann wondered.

He lay awake half the night. He knew that he couldn’t live with Hege, or anyone else, for that matter. Including Hadja.

He didn’t fall asleep until daybreak.

For what seemed like an eternity, he dreamed about sixteen numbers hovering over his head, spinning around as though part of a game or a riddle.

At noon he woke up with a pounding headache. Outside he could hear the sounds of an amusement park.
Sixteen numbers,
thought Bergmann as he studied the sunlight seeping into his hotel room, falling softly over the desk, the chair, and the clothes he’d tossed on the floor. Carl Oscar Krogh had hidden small pieces of paper with two sixteen-digit numbers on it. Reuter had said the numbers were most likely bank accounts. The kind of account that only the owner himself and maybe one or two bank employees would have access to. And no ordinary banks operated like that. It had to be a bank in Switzerland or Liechtenstein. Or somewhere even farther away.

Carl Oscar Krogh must have hidden money away.

CHAPTER 38

Saturday, June 14, 2003

Skogslyckan

Uddevalla, Sweden

Several retirees sitting at a plastic patio table nodded at Tommy Bergmann as he walked past.

He headed inside. This time he leaned on the doorbell. He could again hear the TV blaring from the apartment down the hall.

He pressed his ear to the door.

Not a sound came from inside. And there was no peephole in the door panel.

“What happened to Kaj Holt?” Bergmann said loudly from where he stood in the corridor. His words echoed between the walls. “Holt,” he heard. “Kaj Holt.”

Bergmann heard the approach of shuffling footsteps, then the sound of the inner door opening.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” said Faalund through the door. “Get out of here before I call the police.”

“I’m going to sit out here in the hall,” said Bergmann. “Go ahead and call. I’m not going anywhere.”

He squatted down in front of the old door. He glanced at his watch and decided to wait five minutes.

He heard a lock turn and the door to his left opened. An elderly woman stuck her head out and stared at Bergmann with a fearful expression.

“Hello,” he said. There was nothing more to say. She closed her door without a word.

Five minutes later he peered through the mail slot in the door. The old drunk hadn’t closed the inside door this time, so he could see right into the sparsely furnished apartment. There were no knickknacks or souvenirs, as he normally saw in homes belonging to people over eighty. Faalund was nowhere in sight. He must have gone out to sit on the balcony.

“Who
murdered
Kaj Holt?” shouted Bergmann through the mail slot.

He held his breath for several seconds. The draft coming through the narrow slot suggested that the balcony door stood open. Faalund had to have heard what he’d said.

Then he heard the balcony door closing. The sound of glasses being set on the kitchen counter. A faucet was turned on, then off. Then he saw Faalund’s trouser legs approaching from the kitchen. He had on the same trousers as the day before. Then Faalund closed the inside door and Bergmann saw only darkness through the mail slot.

Damn,
he thought.
He’s not going to give in.

He had just sat back down on the floor when the door behind him opened. He jumped up too fast, stumbling a bit from the head rush. For a moment he thought he might actually faint, but he pulled himself together and leaned on the doorjamb. Faalund gave him a skeptical look.

“Thank you,” said Bergmann. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”

“I haven’t said I’d talk, but you can’t sit out here shouting all day.”

Faalund left the door open as he turned on his heel and went back inside his apartment.

“I never thought it would happen,” he said.

“You never thought what would happen?” asked Bergmann, closing the door after him.

“That a Norwegian policeman would ask me what happened to Kaj. Not a single person in authority has ever asked that question before.”

They stood in the middle of the living room, staring at each other. Faalund tilted his head to one side, as though to get a good look at Bergmann.

“Why are you asking about Kaj Holt?” he asked at last.

Bergmann studied the man standing before him. He looked surprisingly lucid, even though he’d probably already had more to drink that day than Bergmann could have handled at Christmas lunch.

“We think there might be a connection to the three bodies we found buried in Nordmarka. You’ve heard about that, right?”

Faalund nodded.

“I can still read,” he said.

Bergmann took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and read the names aloud: “Agnes Gerner, Cecilia Lande, and Johanne Caspersen.”

Faalund’s expression didn’t change. He walked over to the old easy chair next to the window. The blinds were still closed. He turned on the floor lamp and sank down into the chair with a small sigh. Bergmann followed, sitting down on a worn love seat next to the coffee table.

“So why are you asking about Holt?” said Faalund in a low voice.

“Could Krogh have killed them? Those three in Nordmarka?” Bergmann ventured.

An almost shy smile appeared on Faalund’s face. He ran his hand over his sparse hair, then rubbed his chin. A faint rasping sound was audible.

“Why would Carl Oscar have killed them?” said Faalund, downing what looked like vodka from a glass on the side table. He stared into his empty glass. Music could be heard playing from the apartment above. Several kids laughed on the front lawn below. Bergmann kept his eyes fixed on the old man, who was tilting his empty glass back and forth. Finally he raised his eyes and looked at Bergmann.

There’s something there,
thought Bergmann. Something hiding behind Iver Faalund’s shiny, clear eyes. He was seldom mistaken about such things, but the old man had been an intelligence officer before the booze took hold of him, so he was presumably more skilled at disguising his weaknesses than Bergmann.

“Because Agnes Gerner was engaged to a big-time Nazi,” Bergmann said.

Another small smile appeared on Faalund’s face. He set his glass down on the side table, then picked up the vodka bottle and filled the glass to the brim with a steady hand.
His hands probably shake when he’s
not
drinking,
thought Bergmann. He watched the old man grip the small glass in his big hand. Again he knocked back the drink in one gulp and then repeated the ritual. Finally he picked up a pack of Egberts from the table, took out a paper, and rolled himself a perfect cigarette. Bergmann thought he might as well smoke too. He tore the cellophane off a newly purchased pack of Prince cigarettes, but that was as far as he got before Faalund spoke.

“Agnes Gerner was not a Nazi,” he said. Then he calmly lit his cigarette as if he hadn’t said a word.

Bergmann crushed the cellophane in his hand.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. Agnes Gerner was not a Nazi.”

Bergmann shook his head as he took a cigarette out of the pack. He felt more confused than ever.

“I don’t know what she was involved in, but something wasn’t right. She wasn’t a Nazi. Kaj mentioned her name once after the war, but he said he didn’t know much about her.”

Bergmann didn’t say anything.

“But that was probably a lie,” said Faalund.

Agnes Gerner wasn’t a Nazi,
thought Bergmann.
But she was a member of the NS.
There weren’t many reasons for joining the NS if you weren’t a Nazi. He began to think more clearly after taking a few drags on his cigarette. If what Faalund had just said was true, that changed everything. What was it he’d heard about Agnes and the Germans earlier in the case? He couldn’t remember.

“Why haven’t you ever told anyone about this before?” he asked.

“Why should I have said anything?”

“But . . .”

“Because nobody ever asked me. And because no one would have believed a man who was virtually kicked out of the army’s intelligence service fifty years ago,” said Faalund. He refilled his shot glass with vodka. “It would have been my word against the authorities’. And how do you think that would have turned out?” He raised his glass, as if drinking a toast.

“Krogh is dead. Murdered,” said Bergmann.

“And besides,” said Faalund, “I wanted to be left in peace. Ever since I moved here in 1951, all I’ve ever wanted is to be left in peace. I got an office job down on the wharf and worked there until I retired, but I never made any friends there.”

“Why not?”

“As you may have realized,” said Faalund, “I don’t care much for other people.” He got up and walked past Bergmann.

And yet you let me in,
thought Bergmann.
You let me in when I asked you who killed Kaj Holt. That must mean that you’re willing to make an exception for Holt and, by extension, for me.

Marius Kolstad! The thought occurred to him just as he heard Faalund taking a piss in the bathroom. He put out his cigarette in the crystal ashtray. Could Finn Nystrøm be wrong? Maybe Nystrøm had some reason to be so angry at Krogh that he was willing to lie, laying the blame for the Nordmarka victims at Krogh’s feet.

Bergmann got up and went over to the window, opening the blinds enough to look out. Another identical apartment building was on his left. Several lower buildings stood across the road, and to his right was a big forest of old-growth oaks.

Faalund was taking his time in the bathroom, but Bergmann didn’t give it much thought as he walked over to look at the bookshelf in the living room. It was filled with reference works, old novels, and Gerhardsen’s memoirs. There were also a few framed photographs. One showed Faalund with a woman, presumably his wife, taken many years ago. Another photo, much newer, was of a bridal couple. Bergmann assumed the groom must be a grandson, judging by his resemblance. Under the shelves were several drawers. Bergmann was just about to pull one of them out when he heard the toilet flush. Faalund came shuffling toward him. His footsteps sounded heavier, as if something were tormenting him. There was an air of melancholy about him that hadn’t been evident a few minutes earlier.

“If she wasn’t a Nazi, what was she?” asked Bergmann when Faalund came over to stand beside him.

“Who knows?” he said as he sat back down in the armchair. “Why did you really ask me about Kaj?”

“Because I thought you could help with the investigation.”

“I can’t,” said Faalund.

“Yet you opened the door.”

Faalund looked away.

Only now did Bergmann realize that the shiny gleam in the old man’s eyes was not from vodka alone.

“Tell me about Kaj Holt,” said Bergmann quietly. “What do you know about him?”

“Kaj is dead,” said Faalund. “And there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Holt survived for five years as Norway’s most wanted man. Then only three weeks after the war ended, he was killed in Stockholm. And I think you know why.”

“No, I don’t,” said Faalund.

“Then tell me what you do know about him.”

Faalund turned to look at Bergmann. He seemed to have regained control of his emotions.

“Well, Kaj was Carl Oscar’s boss. That’s really all I know. He trained him. They had set up cells with as few as four people in each one, in order to reduce the risk if someone was tortured. The fewer names anyone knew, the better.”