The Catalyst Killing - [33]

To this, I asked if Henry Alfred Lien from Valdres was one of the old friends with whom he had kept in touch.

He shook his head in irritation. He had only met Lien briefly a couple of times during the war, and he had never been in Valdres. And what was more, the government and police should stop wasting taxpayers’ money on recording who he kept in touch with or speculating about what he might think about social developments, so long as he paid over fifty thousand kroner a year in tax and did not break the law.

And so I had to stop there for the time being. I had no problem whatsoever imagining Christian Magnus Eggen as a criminal and traitor. He seemed to be the prototype of a bitter old Nazi. Everything he said sounded like self-justification. He was certainly high on the list of people I had met in the course of this investigation who I would be more than happy to arrest. At the top, in fact.

But, unfortunately, he was right: at present, there was nothing whatsoever to link him to Falko Reinhardt’s disappearance, and any connection to the murder of Marie Morgenstierne was even more tenuous.

I did, however, take care to note that he did not have an alibi for the evening of the murder, and that he had a walking stick standing out in the hallway.

‘Age takes its toll, even for an Aryan,’ he remarked bitterly, when he saw me looking at the walking stick.

We parted a few moments later without either of us feeling the need to shake hands.

VIII

It was half past four when I got back to the office. There was a message lying there to say that the head of the police security service had gone home for the day and would be out on a secret mission the following day. If it was in connection with the murder investigation, however, he could give me fifteen minutes at the end of the day tomorrow, at six o’clock, to be precise.

I immediately confirmed this arrangement and silently hoped that the case would somehow resolve itself one way or another in the meantime. The last thing I wanted was a conflict of interest with the head of the police security service.

My last task for the official working day could be completed with the help of a telephone. It was answered by Astrid Reinhardt, at home in Grünerløkka, after the second ring. She was able to tell me straight away that her son’s passport had not been found, but that they did not in fact know where he had kept it before he disappeared. She added pointedly that the family did have a tradition of keeping their passports in secret places.

Her son’s post office savings book had been left in his bedroom. There was seven thousand kroner in the account. He had withdrawn a couple of thousand three months before his disappearance, but they had no idea what he had used it for. His parents had at first hoped that the withdrawal was an indication that he was alive somewhere else. But this hope dwindled as time passed, and now they thought that perhaps the withdrawal of the money had absolutely nothing to do with his disappearance. He might have wanted to give the money to a political cause or a friend in need, his mother said. Both would have been typical of him, she added, her voice filled with maternal pride.

I thanked her for her help, and promised to call them immediately should anything new be discovered.

IX

At five o’clock the calm of my office was disturbed by a knock at the door.

The pathologist was standing outside, once again looking slightly abashed.

‘You may perhaps have suspected this already, but I have just discovered something concerning the late Marie Morgenstierne that I thought you should know immediately,’ he said.

I indicated impatiently that he should continue. But his previous visit had obviously made him more cautious.

‘First of all I concentrated on the bullet wound in her chest, which was clearly the cause of death. The rest of her body was so badly injured that it was not easy to examine. But I have finished the autopsy now. And there is no doubt that when she died she was…’

He looked at me questioningly. I gave an irritated shrug. There was a flash of triumphant relief in his eyes when he carried on.

‘Pregnant! Very early stages, possibly no more than the fourth or fifth week. And we can’t be sure that she even knew herself, though she may have noticed something. Whatever the case, Marie Morgenstierne was expecting a baby when she died. And I presume that that is of interest to the investigation?’

I nodded, and told him truthfully that I had had no idea and that it was definitely of potential interest to the investigation. He seemed very pleased that he had been able to contribute something, and shook my hand with feeling.

Once the pathologist had closed the door behind him, I sat down to spend the next half an hour writing a report for my boss. It was quick enough to give an account of the day’s events, but developments in the case were slower. It was with great relief that I popped the report into my boss’s pigeonhole at ten to six, then got into my car to drive to Erling Skjalgsson’s Street.