The Last Pilgrim (9 page)

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.

Y
OURS FOREVER
. G
USTAV
.

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?

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 Cecili
e
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 needed 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.