Chameleon People - [14]

She stopped and looked at me with teasing eyes, but hurried on obediently when I asked if she could remember what it was her father had doubted. It crossed my mind that we had hit it off remarkably well, despite being so different.

‘Yes, but unfortunately, he was more secretive about that. The strangest thing was the key, he said. The door to the hotel room was locked, but the key was lying on the floor out in the corridor. And apparently the woman only suffered from petit mal. But there were a few other things that were odd about the whole affair. Father, who was otherwise not prone to being abstract, became remarkably vague when he talked about it. It could as easily be suicide or murder, as epilepsy, he said.’

The story had piqued my interest now. I hastened to ask if she knew who else had been there.

‘Apart from my father and the young Eva Bjølhaugen, her boyfriend and sister were there. There was also the young woman whom Father was engaged to at the time, and another friend. So there were three young men and three young women, two couples and one set of siblings. Plenty of opportunity for romance and jealousy there, I reckon. From what I understood, Father and his fiancée broke up soon afterwards.’

‘How strange that there was no autopsy,’ I said.

She nodded eagerly. ‘That is what I thought. Father simply said that there was no autopsy.’

‘And the restaurant visits – where do they fit in?’

Just then, the phone on my desk started to ring. I hoped that it might be information about the suspect’s identity, and answered immediately. I was becoming so focused on the case that it was almost a disappointment to hear Miriam’s voice at the other end.

‘Hi. I just wondered if half past four was still a realistic time to meet, or if we should make it later? I’m sure you’re having a busy day, and I should probably study a little more to prepare for the exam,’ she said.

Miriam still had two and a half months left until the exam. However, her ambitious perfectionism meant that she pretended to have only two weeks left when, in fact, there were two months, and that she only had two days left when it was actually two weeks. I saw no reason to discuss this here and now, and was without a doubt having a busy day. So I gave it five seconds’ thought and suggested that we meet at the Theatre Cafe for supper at half past six.

‘Deal,’ she said, and put the phone down.

‘Apologies, I had to arrange supper with my fiancée,’ I said.

To my disappointment, I saw no disappointment in Ane Line’s eyes, only greater curiosity. She opened her mouth to say something, almost certainly to ask about my fiancée, but I just managed to pip her to the post.

‘Now, where were we? Yes, the meals that the group from 1932 had are more relevant to the case than my own dinner plans.’

‘Yes, they really are quite something, which only underlines how serious the situation was. The other five from the group who were in Oslo in 1932 continued to meet every five years to mark the day that Eva Bjølhaugen died, at the restaurant of the same hotel. They all hoped that someone might say something that would throw light on the tragedy, Father said, but that never happened.’

‘But, if they met every five years and that was in March 1932…’

Ane Line nodded eagerly again. ‘The date was the fifth of March 1932. So the five last met just a couple of weeks ago. It is rather odd, isn’t it?’

She looked up at me from under her red fringe with bright enthusiastic eyes. I nodded with equal enthusiasm. I still could not see any connection between the forty-year-old mystery and the stabbing of Per Johan Fredriksen on a street in Oslo yesterday. My gut feeling told me that there was some kind of link, but my head could not work out what.

‘Very interesting. I will see what I can find about the case in our archives. Do you know if your father had any contact with the four others from 1932 in between these restaurant visits?’

Ane Line smiled again. ‘Well, I know that he certainly had regular contact with one of them. I don’t even know the names of the other three, so I couldn’t say whether he had contact with them or not. But if you find their names in the archives, I’d be more than happy to answer that.’

Ane Line Fredriksen was clearly more curious than most. And her eagerness and openness were contagious. I picked up my pen to write down the name of the one person that her father had had regular contact with. And then promptly dropped it in shock when the redhead exclaimed: ‘Oda Fredriksen! Eva Bjølhaugen was my mother’s little sister.’

We sat and stared at each other for a few seconds. It seemed to me that she was almost teasing me, and enjoying it, despite her father’s death and the gravity of the situation.

‘So let me get this straight: three young men and three young women went to Oslo together in 1932. The young Eva Bjølhaugen, who was the girlfriend of one of the men, was found dead in her locked hotel room in circumstances that have never been clarified. Your father was engaged to one of the other women, but later married Eva Bjølhaugen’s sister?’