Chameleon People - [3]

I asked him if he knew that I was a policeman.

He gave a feeble nod and a sheepish smile.

There was yet another ring on the doorbell. It was longer and louder this time.

I kept my eyes trained on my young guest, as I picked up the intercom.

This time I recognized the familiar voice of a constable. He said that a suspect had disappeared into my building and asked if everything was under control inside.

I answered yes and once again pressed the door-opener.

My guest remained seated on the floor, but had now managed to catch his breath again.

‘I had to speak to you before they caught me,’ he said.

His voice was almost a whisper and was drowned out by heavy steps on the stairs.

‘And what did you want to tell me?’ I asked.

‘That I’m innocent,’ he whispered.

And then it was as if he had said all he wanted to say. He sat there quietly on the floor by the doormat, without another word.

I opened the door when they knocked and assured them that everything was under control. ‘They’ being three slightly puffed policemen, who briefly shook my hand.

I watched them put handcuffs around my guest’s skinny wrists. He did not resist in any way, and suddenly seemed utterly disinterested in what was going on.

The young man had one striking physical feature: a reddish-brown birthmark that covered the greater part of the right-hand side of his neck. Of course, that could not help us identity him there and then. And there was nothing in the boy’s pockets that could tell us who he was. In fact, we found very little of interest. But the one thing we did find was both damning and alarming.

The boy on the red bicycle had a sharp kitchen knife in the left pocket of his jacket and both the handle and the blade were sticky with blood.

I realized then that the situation was serious indeed, but still did not join up the dots until one of the policemen heaved a sigh of relief and remarked: ‘You’ve truly outdone yourself this time, DI Kolbjørn Kristiansen. You have single-handedly caught Fredriksen’s murderer without even leaving your flat!’

I spun round and asked the policeman if Per Johan Fredriksen had died. He looked at me gravely and replied that the politician had been declared dead at the scene. He had been stabbed straight through the heart. It was done efficiently and apparently with a good deal of hate.

Given this information, I looked at the boy on my floor with some scepticism. He did not avert his eyes or blink.

‘I didn’t kill him. He was dead when I went back,’ was the only thing he said.

And he then repeated this three times.

After the third, one of the policemen commented laconically that they could categorically dismiss his statement that Fredriksen had been dead when he got there. Two witnesses who were passing had seen the young man standing at a street corner in Majorstuen as the politician walked by. The young man had been visibly agitated, whereas Fredriksen had calmly exchanged a few words with him, and then carried on.

A few minutes later, the young man had been seen bending over Fredriksen further down the same block, with the knife in his hand. He then fled when three further witnesses rounded the corner. It had taken them a few minutes to contact the police and alert any patrol cars in the area. However, one of them had then spotted the fleeing cyclist in the quieter roads around Hegdehaugen.

We all looked sharply at the young arrestee.

‘I didn’t kill him. He was already dead when I went back,’ he said yet again in a staccato voice.

He fixed me with a remarkably steady and piercing look when he said this.

Then he closed his lips tight and turned his dark eyes to stare pointedly at the wall.

It occurred to me that I had never come across such a clear-cut murder case. And yet the adrenalin was pumping given the evening’s unexpected and dramatic turn in my own home, and the case was not closed yet, as the murderer’s identity and motive were unknown. It struck me as rather odd that the young man had known where I lived. And it was quite simply mystifying that he had chosen to flee here, having murdered a top politician. Consequently, I accompanied them in the car down to the main police station.

III

It did not take long to drive there. The arrestee sat squashed between myself and a constable in the back seat, small and silent. In contrast to the explosive energy and will he had demonstrated only half an hour earlier, he now seemed not only resigned, but as good as disinterested in everything. As we drove past his bicycle, he asked if someone would look after it, then gave a curt nod when I said that it would of course be taken down to the police station. After that, he said nothing more.

I sat and looked at our prisoner for the first part of the journey. The conspicuous birthmark on his neck was close to my shoulder and drew my attention again. I had a strong intuition that this birthmark would in some way be significant to the case, without having a clue of how, what or why.

Just as we stopped outside the police station, I turned to the arrestee and again asked why he had come to my door. A glimmer of interest sparked in his eyes.