‘The boy’s confusing behaviour and the question of the knife are what roused my suspicion. There were soon so many who could have had a motive for killing Per Johan Fredriksen. But it remained a mystery why anyone would kill him with a knife. Unless of course it was the only murder weapon the murderer had or could get hold of,’ Patricia said, slowly.
I had not thought about this before, but started now to get an inkling of where she was going. And if that was the case, I could only agree that it was a terrible story.
Patricia then asked an unexpected question. ‘Did you ever find out more about Hauptmann, whom the boy on the red bicycle referred to the last time you spoke with him?’
Reluctantly, I had to admit that I had not thought about checking it in any more detail.
‘Well, I did, and there is more to it than you might think. The parallels are a good clue, as he clearly wanted to talk in riddles. Bruno Hauptmann had a box of money in his garage that was proved to be the ransom money from the Lindbergh kidnapping, but right up until his death, he claimed that he had never been given it. The boy on the red bicycle stood there with a knife that had been used to commit a murder, but he maintained until his death that he had not used it.’
‘But he was not Fredriksen’s son,’ I said.
Patricia nodded and let out the heaviest sigh I had ever heard from her.
‘No, I know that theory was wrong. But that does not rule out that his mother had a relationship with Fredriksen before he was born – or that Fredriksen later ruthlessly let her down. Perhaps that was the problem: that Fredriksen could have been the child’s father, but was not. You will have to ask his mother for the details. Whatever the case, the picture is not entirely clear: she bore him a grudge, and this turned into pure hate and a desire for revenge when Fredriksen again let her down when she was in such desperate need fifteen years later. It becomes more and more reminiscent of a Greek tragedy. The rich mother kills her own daughter from sheer egotism – to conceal the murder of her own sister. The poor mother kills her former lover out of desperation, and without knowing it, takes the life of her only son at the same time.’
‘So, behind his limp, speech defect and class complexes, the boy on the red bicycle was in fact completely rational?’
Patricia nodded. ‘Completely. From his perspective, it was completely rational to wait for Fredriksen there, to ask him for mercy for himself and his poor mother. He had his back to the wall and had no other hope, so why should he not try? But Fredriksen waved him off and simply referred him to the office manager, as he always did in those situations. The boy cycled off, but stopped – either because he heard the shout, or because he decided to try talking to Fredriksen one more time. Fredriksen did not come. Instead the boy suddenly saw his mother, who was supposed to be visiting his aunt, come round the corner at high speed and run off down the road. He wondered what had happened, limped around the corner and found the dying Fredriksen. The kitchen knife in Fredriksen’s chest was one that the boy on the red bicycle recognized from home. Bruno Hauptmann was, if he was telling the truth, sentenced for a serious crime committed by his best friend. Tor Johansen told the truth and was arrested for a serious crime committed by his best friend.’
Patricia paused and shook her head again furiously. She lit another cigarette, then carried on swiftly.
‘I have coincidentally read the biography of the foreign secretary Bevin that the boy’s teacher spoke about. In a short retrospective, Bevin commented that his mother was the only person he can remember showing any interest or doing anything good for him in his childhood. With a nod to the teacher, the boy on the red bicycle could probably have said much the same. No one had done anything for him, except his mother. Society had definitely done nothing to help him. He could not hand over his mother to upholders of that society, even though he knew that she had done something dreadfully wrong. So he took the murder weapon with him and fled to the home of a hero he had never spoken to before. He hoped and believed that either his mother would give herself up rather than let him take the blame, or that you would solve the mystery without him having to betray his mother. But he fell into despair on the Sunday when his mother did not give herself up and you had not solved the case. He had tried his very best, but still ended up carrying the blame for something he had not done. On Monday morning he was pushed over the edge and took his own life, tragically only a few hours before he might have been saved.’
Patricia stubbed out her cigarette, then sat there staring out into thin air.
I did not feel particularly buoyant either, despite the fact that the last murder case was now solved. My memory of finding the boy dead in his cell returned – along with my bad conscience. If only I had been able to see the connections earlier, I could truly have lived up to his belief in me and saved his life.
To begin with, I was angry with myself, and then angry with Miriam, who had not let me ring Patricia earlier. It struck me then that this was the first time in hours that I had thought about Miriam, and that she should be awake by now. But the thought was interrupted by Patricia’s voice.
‘You must not blame yourself. It was not easy to see the links at the time and we will never know what might otherwise have happened. However, there is one thing that struck me as rather odd, as you are otherwise usually quite observant. Danielsen supposedly gave the pad and pencil to the boy the day before. It is rather strange, then, that you did not notice them when you spoke to him for the last time.’
I had to think back to my last meeting with the boy on the red bicycle. It was painful – and also unsettling. I ran through the meeting in my mind, twice, and then I shook my head.
‘I had not thought about that, what with everything else. But the pad and pencil were not on the table and there were not many places he could have hidden them.’
Patricia gave a thoughtful nod, and lit another cigarette.
‘In that case, you were not the last person to speak to the boy before he took his life after all. You might want to have a word with Danielsen about that,’ she said, with another little sigh.
I said that I should probably speak to both him and the boy on the red bicycle’s mother as soon as possible.
Patricia nodded and said: ‘I do not envy you either of those conversations, so good luck with both of them.’
Then she sat still and stared straight ahead again.
I stopped by the door, turned around and said: ‘Thank you so much for all your help. You are incredible.’
Patricia smiled and waved two fingers, but said no more. On the way out, I realized that she had not asked me to come back, or not to come back, later.
VI
By two o’clock I had rung Edvard Rønning Junior, the lawyer, and agreed that he would meet me at his client’s home as soon after three as possible. I told him that we had important news in relation to the investigation of Per Johan Fredriksen’s murder, and he assured me that he would be more than happy to take a couple of hours out of his Saturday to hear what it was.
I had also informed Fredriksen’s remaining children. I had called Ane Line Fredriksen first. She said that she was shaken by the news of her mother’s arrest, but then quickly added: ‘But nothing in this family can shock me any more’ – and then asked to know the details. I told her, tentatively, that the investigation into the murder of her father would probably be closed in the course of the weekend, and that the guilty party quite clearly had no links to the family. I added that I would have to stop there as I still had to ring her brother. She offered spontaneously to call him herself. ‘We have become a bit closer as a result of all this, but have yet to have a proper talk about the situation. He was in a foul mood yesterday, by the way. As I understand it, things are not going well with his love life. Which is not entirely unexpected, but it’s sad, especially if I never get the chance to know who this secret girlfriend is.’