Whether it was intentional or not, she was then racked by a coughing fit that lasted some thirty seconds, only to be replaced by a smile and the pipe moments later.
‘As you can hear, my lungs are about to pack up on me. The cold seeps into my marrow and there is no reason to be frugal with the electricity or the tobacco. I celebrated my hundred and fourth birthday last week, and know perfectly well that it will be my last. I smoked my first pipe here in 1880. I gave birth to my first child here in 1884, while the great men in the Storting were fighting for independence. I was standing down on the harbour with my first grandchild on my arm when the new king and young crown prince came sailing to an independent Norway in the autumn of 1905. So I have been here a long time and seen many things. I got my first pension from the Nygaardsvold government, and have cost the state coffers dear. So I thought that this might be my final chance to do something useful for the country, and I should use it.’
I said that I was very impressed and that her daughter also looked remarkably well for her age if she was born in 1884.
She shook her head disapprovingly. ‘My eldest children died a long time ago. She was an afterthought, and was not born until 1898. Unfortunately, she is not the brightest of the bunch. What nonsense it was not to call the police yesterday. But she is kind and does her best, and she is the only one of my children who is still alive. So I really shouldn’t complain.’
I nodded politely to this and looked at the shrunken, ancient woman in the rocking chair with something akin to awe. All of a sudden, she reminded me of an eighty-year-old Patricia. I said, out loud, that she was absolutely right and what she had seen could be of great interest to the police.
She nodded and took a couple of puffs on her pipe before continuing. ‘My eyes and brain are about the only things that work any more. So, I was sitting here resting on Saturday evening. My thoughts were wandering in the past, but snapped back to the present when I saw something very unexpected on the street out here. Unfortunately, it had started to get dark, so I could really only see shadows and silhouettes, not faces. However, what I saw, clearly enough, was a tall, rather stout chap, who must have been the right honourable Fredriksen, walking towards the station. There was a shorter, slimmer person waiting for him at the corner. Fredriksen stopped when he saw this person and they exchanged a few words. Then suddenly the person drew a knife and stabbed him. He fell to the ground. The attacker ran off down the street, away from the station. Fredriksen was left lying on the pavement. Then another person came along who knelt down and leaned over him. And then some more people came.’
Thus far, it all seemed to tally with what we knew had happened – and with what the newspapers had reported. I asked if Fredriksen had been stabbed once or several times. We had not released this information to the press.
She replied without hesitation, and without blowing any smoke in my direction.
‘Twice. The person pulled out the knife, but Fredriksen remained standing. So he or she stabbed him again, and then he fell to the ground with the knife still in him.’
It felt as though the room was heating up around me. It was true that Fredriksen had been stabbed twice in the chest, just as she described.
I asked whether she had seen a bicycle. She shook her head.
‘No, there was no bicycle when it happened. They were both on foot.’
Which did not necessarily prove anything, I told myself. Tor Johansen may have left the bike somewhere close by and run back to get it afterwards. But if she had seen him running, she should have been able to see if he limped.
‘Even though it was dark, did you notice anything more about the attacker? Could you tell me, for example, if the person ran in an unusual way?’
The old woman blew out another cloud of smoke and looked at me fiercely. ‘Yes, I could, and there was nothing unusual about him or her. The person who stabbed Fredriksen was perfectly normal.’
I started to feel slightly hot around the collar. And I thought to myself that something was not right. Then I heard my own voice asking if she was sure there was nothing special about the way the attacker ran off.
‘No, as I said. The person who stabbed Fredriksen walked perfectly normally and easily. But the first person to the scene afterwards limped heavily on the right foot. It was quite obvious when he came and when he ran away. And I was very surprised when the limping shadow ran off with the knife.’
The words hit me like snow falling from the roof. Suddenly my body felt ice cold, despite the heat of the room.
I sat there, unable to utter a word. The shock must have been apparent on my face, because the old lady in the rocking chair looked at me with increasing concern.
‘I do hope I have not said anything wrong. I only wanted to help, not create more problems. I am too close to the grave to lie and I am absolutely certain that that is what I saw. The person who stabbed Fredriksen moved without any difficulty. But the person who came after, pulled out the knife and took it away. That person limped so heavily on the right foot that I thought he must have a club foot or something.’
I heard myself saying that she had absolutely done the right thing and that this could be very important and I believed every word she said. Then I asked if she had seen any other people down on the street before the second person came.
‘Yes. There was one other person. He stood without moving on the other side of the road and watched the whole incident, the stabbing and then the person with the limp coming along and pulling out the knife. I was rather taken aback, but then thought that perhaps he was either looking the other way or was in a state of shock. The onlooker left at the same time as the person with the limp, only in the opposite direction. I say he, but it could equally have been a woman. It was not much more than a shadow I saw, but he was wearing a man’s hat.’
The hat may have been a coincidence, but I was not convinced that it was. I felt as though I had been winded. The ancient woman in the rocking chair had turned everything upside down in the space of five minutes. Here she was sitting with a vital piece of the puzzle that only proved I had put it together completely wrong.
I had an overwhelming feeling of paralysis, but could also feel the adrenalin starting to surge. There was a strange sense of relief for the boy on the red bicycle and his mother, too, and mounting curiosity as to what had actually happened when Per Johan Fredriksen was killed.
I said that she had been of great help and asked if it would be possible to send a written version of her statement for her to verify and sign.
We looked at each other for a brief moment. Then she started to cough again and said that if it was important, perhaps I should take a written statement straightaway.
‘My cough is getting worse and worse,’ she said. ‘This past week I have been surprised to wake up every morning and realize that I am still alive.’ She chuckled and then lit her pipe again, but it was clearly serious.
I wrote down her statement by hand on a plain sheet of white paper. She read it through, gave a brief nod and then signed her name, Henriette Krogh Hansen, underneath. Her ornate handwriting would not have looked out of place on a scroll from another century. Her gnarled little hand reminded me of an eagle’s claw and it burned like a red-hot poker when I shook it, her eyes unblinking when I said goodbye. Henriette Krogh Hansen was in no doubt as to what she had seen, and I was in no doubt that what she had seen was what happened.
XIII
My boss was supposed to go home at half past five, but at a quarter to six he was still sitting opposite me. Danielsen’s shift had finished at five, which was an enormous relief.
The boss listened in silence to my account of the most recent development. His expression was inscrutable, but it seemed to me that there was something disapproving about him.