‘There are those who would see that as a possible motive for killing her husband – if it is assumed that the killer was in fact someone else in the Resistance group.’
Herlofsen looked at me with a sudden cold animosity.
‘Well I sincerely hope that no one does. Bjørn Varden was a good friend of mine and I would never have harmed him. What is more, I was myself happily engaged when he died. It is of course not unthinkable that his murderer might have been one of the six surviving members sitting at the table when Magdalon Schelderup died. But in that case, it must have been one of the other five.’
I gave him a friendly smile, and intensified my attack on his crumbling defences.
‘I want to believe you, but you will first have to give me a credible explanation for this document, which I found earlier today in Arild Bratberg’s flat.’
Herlofsen looked at the piece of paper and pulled a grim face. He sat in silence for a minute, sighing heavily twice before starting.
‘Both the name and the date are correct. I should have told you, but I feared that I would be unfairly suspected of murder and estimated that the risk of any traces being left of my visit was fairly slim. The truth is that I visited Arild Bratberg on 12 February this year. I had pondered on it for a long time, because I wanted to find the answer to one of the mysteries from the war. I had heard rumours that he was in a very bad way indeed and thought to myself, well, it’s now or never. Which turned out to be the case. According to the notice in Aftenposten, he died thirty-two days after my visit.’
‘And how was the visit?’
He shook his head sadly.
‘Very difficult. Emotional conversations like that have never been easy for me. The man was very obviously dreadfully ill, slightly intoxicated and smoked incessantly. He struck me as being rather unbalanced. He repeated his story from the trial over and over again and swore on his mother’s grave that it was Magdalon Schelderup and not he who had shot Ole Kristian Wiig on 8 May 1945. He wept as he spoke and, by the end, was almost on his knees, begging me to believe him. It was an extremely uncomfortable experience and I regretted ever going there.’
‘But what did you say to him?’
He looked straight at me, without flinching.
‘In the end, I told him the truth: that I believed him. It made him so happy. I still think the details of his version were incredible. But I knew Magdalon well enough to know that he was capable of doing more or less anything if his own interests were at stake. Arild Bratberg was so deeply unhappy and sincere that I estimated the likelihood that he was telling the truth to be well over 50 per cent.’
He pointed at the piece of paper.
‘He seemed to recognize me as soon as I arrived, even after all these years. I did not say my name and was not sure that he knew who I was. Obviously he did. So even though he was confused about other things, it would seem that the events from the war were still very clear in his mind.’
I nodded in agreement. Hans Herlofsen was a logical man and obviously remembered more than just numbers. I thought I noticed a tremor and was even more ruthless in my attack.
‘During the visit, did Arild Bratberg ask you to kill Magdalon Schelderup?’
I half expected that he would collapse in his chair. Instead, he straightened up. Again I caught a glimpse of the stronger, harder man behind the pleasant façade.
‘No, certainly not directly. He repeated several times that Magdalon was a calculating killer who should have been shot after the war. But he never said a word about killing him now, and did not ask me to, either. He was a broken and resigned man.’
‘Do you know if any of the others involved in the case have been to see him – before or after you?’
He shook his head firmly.
‘No. He did not mention anyone, but he did say that I was the first person to visit him for years, other than the woman next door. I did not contact him again later and none of the others have said that they went to see him.’
We finished the conversation there, on a relatively civil note. I asked him to let me know if he had anything more to tell me. It seemed to me that he hesitated for a second, but then he replied that he had nothing more to tell or declare, as he put it with a small smile. He repeated that he had not murdered Magdalon and did not know who had done it.
We said goodbye fairly politely at five o’clock. His hand was definitely sweaty now.
On the way back into the centre of Oslo, I passed Lysaker station just as a train was pulling out. Standing alone on the platform was a young man in his twenties who had obviously run to catch the train, but not made it. He looked so lonely and bewildered that I hoped his life would not be off-kilter for more than an hour or so. But that image of a completely unknown young man at the railway station stayed with me as an illustration of the tragedy of the now-deceased Arild Bratberg’s life. No matter whether he was guilty of murder or not, Arild Bratberg had been left alone on the platform as the train pulled out after the war with all the others on board. And no matter whether he was guilty of murder or not, his loneliness and confusion were so great that he stayed there for the rest of his life.
As far as Hans Herlofsen was concerned, I knew that he had not had an easy life either, and I did feel some sympathy for him. But all the same, I did not trust that he was not the murderer, in fact even less now that he had told me the truth. When I thought about it, the same was also true of several of those who were still alive. And I would meet one of them very shortly, as I was now on my way to Magdalena Schelderup’s flat in Gulleråsen.
IX
‘Why did you choose not to tell me that your fiancé in 1940 was none other than Hans Petter Nilsen, who was shot by the Dark Prince the following year?’
Magdalena Schelderup looked tired and fractious. It struck me that she appeared to be older and more bitter than when I met her five days ago. She defiantly lit another cigarette before answering.
‘Well, first of all, because I did not think it was relevant any more. And secondly, because I assumed that either the Wendelboes or Herlofsen would have told you already, and that you would ask if you felt there was a need. It is not something that I am proud of. A broken engagement in 1940 with a man who left me because I was a member of the NS, and who then became a war martyr. I have talked about it as little as possible since.’
‘There is much to indicate that the Dark Prince may well have been one of the others who were around at the time. There are no doubt some who might think that revenge on a man who let you down was a possible motive.’
Magdalena Schelderup blew some smoke out into the room and then crushed the cigarette in an already overflowing ashtray.
‘I know more than a few who would dearly love to believe that, yes. But it is pointless all the same. The very idea that it was a crime of passion founders on the fact that I never loved Hans Petter and that he did not leave me for another woman. I did not miss him after he broke off the engagement. But I did cry for several hours when I heard that he was dead. Even though I did not love him, he was a good man. The fact that he had been shot in the dark in his own home by an unknown killer did not make it any easier. After all, I had lain there in that very bed with him only a few months before. So I dressed myself up in black and went to the funeral and have since spent many an hour speculating about who might have killed him. But I have never found a sure answer.’
‘But you had your suspicions about who the Dark Prince was?’
She lit another cigarette. And once again it crossed my mind that there was something odd about her hands.
‘Yes, I have had plenty of time to think about it as I whiled away the hours here on my own. In fact I have had several theories over the years. But there is one that I believe in more than the others. I am going to keep it to myself, though. It is rather tenuous and I do not like spreading rumours.’