The Catalyst Killing (K2 and Patricia series Book 3) (15 page)

A few minutes later we stopped outside the cabin where he had so mysteriously disappeared exactly two years and two days ago.

IV

My expectations regarding the standard of Martin Morgenstierne’s cabin were considerable, but it surpassed them. It was more like a large family home with its four bedrooms, kitchen, living room and bathroom, complete with toilet and shower. But it would appear that it had been standing unused for two years now. According to Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen, the bed linen belonged to the cabin and was the same as had been on the beds that fateful night. She still remembered the night in impressive detail, and promptly pointed out the living-room window where she had seen the masked man peer in earlier on in the evening.

We carried on to the bedrooms. Trond Ibsen and Anders Pettersen had each a room to themselves by the front door. Then there was the double room where Kristine Larsen and Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen had slept, and the double room where Falko Reinhardt and Marie Morgenstierne had shared their last nights together.

I made an attempt to sneak past the door without any shoes on, but the floorboards creaked loudly under my feet and Miriam heard me straight away from the bed in the room where she had slept. It seemed unlikely that anyone could have sneaked out that way.

Miriam had been right about the window, much to her relief. It was high up on the wall and no more than twelve inches wide. I had to stand on a chair to reach it, and even then could barely stick my head out through the opening. It would not have been possible for Falko Reinhardt to squeeze his body out through the frame.

In short, two of three possible ways in which Falko Reinhardt could have left the cabin were swiftly eliminated. Miriam looked at me with great curiosity when I said that I had another theory to test. Then she sent me a pleading look when I asked to be left on my own in the room for a few minutes. She was, however, very disciplined and obedient by nature, and took her book out of her bag without protest when I shrugged apologetically and pointed to the living room.

I spent the next quarter of an hour making a crude investigation of the room’s walls, ceiling and floor. Everything looked pretty normal, and I was sceptical of Patricia’s theory to begin with. And my scepticism in no way diminished when I had tapped my way across all four walls, including the cupboard, and across the few feet of open floor.

However, my pulse started to race when I discovered first one and then two more loose nails in a floorboard under the bed where Falko and Marie had slept.

My excitement increased when it turned out that the double bed was not attached to the floor in any way.

I pulled it to one side and took out the four loose nails in the floorboard, and could then confirm that a space just wide enough and deep enough to hide a person had been dug out below. And none of the nails in the floorboard in question, nor the one beside it, had been hammered in properly.

I stood there looking down at the secret chamber. It was easy enough to picture it now. Falko Reinhardt had either discovered or dug out this space himself beforehand, and on the night of the storm, he had loosened the floorboards and slipped down there. I stood for some time and pondered why he might have done this.

I then went to get Miriam, told her about the cavity under the bed and asked her if she had ever seen or heard about it before. She looked at me, impressed, and with naked curiosity peered down into the secret hollow. She shook her head firmly and assured me that it was not something she had heard about – or even imagined existed.

When I asked if it could have been Falko Reinhardt she saw going in the other direction that stormy night, Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen nodded eagerly. The thought had crossed her mind and was certainly not entirely implausible.

‘In which case, he then obviously left the cabin of his own accord, having first planned his escape,’ she remarked in a matter-of-fact voice. I nodded my cautious agreement and said that there was much to indicate that.

There was nothing more to be found indoors. So I asked Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen to show me the way to the cliff where Falko’s shoe had been discovered the morning after he disappeared.

We found it on the third attempt. The distance to the cliff was about a quarter of a mile. When we got there, I saw the stone beside which Falko Reinhardt’s shoe had been found. It was a large white stone, almost three feet tall, and had sheltered the shoe from the wind.

The view from the cliff was spectacular. The drop was about three hundred feet down onto scree, and Falko Reinhardt could hardly have survived if he had fallen over the edge in the storm. Both Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen and I allowed ourselves to be captivated by the view for a few moments. But, as was to be expected, we found no new traces of the missing cabin guest and no new clues as to what might have happened to him.

With Patricia’s help, I had solved the riddle as to how Falko Reinhardt had left the cabin in the raging storm. But the more crucial questions as to why he had left and where he then went remained unanswered.

V

At a quarter to one, we locked the door to the cabin, got into the car and drove on to Henry Alfred Lien’s farm. The journey only lasted a matter of minutes. Miriam gave an understanding nod when I said that I could not take her in with me, and as soon as I parked the car on the driveway up to the farm, she pulled out her book.

The weather had improved and the sun was shining now. As I got out of the car, it struck me that the farm with the mountains in the background would have been a perfect motif for one of the NS propaganda posters of the 1930s.

The farmer himself, paradoxically, would not have fitted in. He was far too old, too grey and a little too fat. Henry Alfred Lien turned out to be a stocky man of around seventy. His gait was confident yet slow as he progressed across the farmyard. His face was serious and stern, as though carved in granite. And his handshake was firm when he invited me, in a not unfriendly manner, to come into the living room in the main house.

I liked Henry Alfred Lien better than expected, even though he was as taciturn as I had imagined he would be. At close quarters, his voice reminded me of a tractor; it was loud, slow and monotone, and made steady, solid progress. He seemed to be a reasonably well-read and cultured man, and switched promptly from his Valdres dialect to a more standard pronunciation.

Stepping into Henry Alfred Lien’s house was like stepping back into the interwar period. The furniture was wooden and dated from around the time of the First World War. The most recent family photograph on the wall was a black and white picture of a far younger Henry Alfred Lien, together with a very serious wife, a son and two daughters. The photograph was dated 1937. It was hanging below an old cuckoo clock that sang out when the clock struck one, just as we were sitting down at the table.

The table was set for coffee and cake for two, and I could see no sign of any other inhabitants. My host almost immediately disappeared into the kitchen and I used the time to have a quick look around his living room. It gave the impression that the elderly farmer had little social engagement and no political views of any sort. There was nothing on the walls or the tables to indicate his fascist past. I noted with some interest that he did not appear to be a hunter. There were no trophies or weapons to be seen.

Henry Alfred Lien returned with some sugar, poured the coffee and then sat down and looked at me in anticipation.

The interview was problematic from the outset. Henry Alfred Lien had already answered negatively to the routine questions on the telephone. With a poker face and booming voice, he still denied any knowledge of or contact with either Marie Morgenstierne or Falko Reinhardt. He only knew their names from the newspapers. He had been at home on the night that Falko Reinhardt had disappeared, and, unfortunately, he had been alone. The farmer’s wife had died many years ago and the seasonal workers on the farm had been given the weekend off. It had been a very unpleasant echo from the past to be unfairly suspected of being in some way involved with his death or abduction.

Henry Alfred Lien was obviously prepared for my visit. From his pocket, he produced a lie detector certificate and repeated once again that he was innocent. He was extremely grateful that his name had been kept out of the papers at the time, and would take dramatic action if anything about the case was now to appear in print. Gossip travelled quickly in these parts, and he had felt ostracized in the months following Reinhardt’s disappearance.

As far as Marie Morgenstierne was concerned, Henry Alfred Lien claimed to have been at home on the evening she was shot, but once again he had no witnesses to confirm this.

A couple of the workers would be able to confirm that he was here when they went home at six o’clock, and again when they returned at eight o’clock the following morning. However, in addition to a small tractor, he owned a large old Volvo and could have driven to and from Oslo within that space of time. So the opportunity was there, but as yet, no motive.

Henry Alfred Lien paused for thought when I asked if he, as a local, had any idea of what might have caused Falko Reinhardt’s disappearance. He emptied his coffee cup and finished a biscuit before his tractor voice rolled calmly on.

‘The mountain has taken lives in mysterious ways before, certainly if one is to believe an old story . . . So I should imagine that perhaps something similar happened here, even though it is hard to understand how. But I’m not sure that you, a young man from Oslo, would be interested in tales?’

He sat still and looked at me askance, then rattled on once I had said that I was interested in anything that might cast light on the mystery. This time he trundled on for some time without stopping,

‘Once long ago, sometime in the last century, there was a boy called Karl. He was the son of a poor farmer, but was said to have a good head all the same. And then, a few years after his confirmation, he turned into a megalomaniac. One day he claimed to be the son of King Karl Johan, the next he talked about flying to the stars and on the third day he suddenly disappeared from work. He had been working on one of the neighbouring farms with some other lads. They didn’t see him again until they were on their way home for the night. Then there he was, standing at the edge of the cliff.’

I looked at Henry Alfred Lien with keen interest. He was encouraged and picked up pace.

‘My grandfather was one of the young lads who saw Karl standing there at the top of the cliff. And according to what my father told me when he was an old man, they heard him screaming as he fell. They saw him plummet head first down onto the scree. But when they got to where he had fallen, he was nowhere to be found. They gathered folk from the neighbouring farms and scoured the area on foot without ever finding a trace.’

Having released the story, Henry Alfred Lien’s mouth slammed shut like an iron gate. We sat looking at each other across the table for a few seconds before I attempted to encourage him to continue.

‘A remarkable story. Was the mystery of this lad Karl ever solved?’

Henry Alfred Lien shrugged.

‘His remains were found a few weeks later. His body was discovered one morning in the middle of the scree where they had searched so many times before, his head crushed. So it’s possible that the fall did kill him, but how it had happened remained a mystery. As long as there was someone alive who remembered Karl, people speculated about murder and gods and devils.’

‘And what do you think happened?’

For a moment, Henry Alfred Lien seemed to be glad that I had asked his opinion. Not that there was a hint of a smile on his face, but he straightened his body when he answered.

‘As you ask, I am a down-to-earth old farmer who does not believe in murder, gods or devils. I think that the lad jumped to his death and someone in his family or a close friend ran to the body and covered it up for a few days in order to avoid the shame of suicide. And it would not surprise me if something similar happened to this Falko chap a couple of years ago. According to what was said in the papers, he was also a young man with some wild ideas.’

I asked Henry Alfred Lien if he knew exactly when the mysterious death of Karl had taken place. He nodded and his face became even graver.

‘I don’t remember if my grandfather ever told me the exact date, but I do remember the year as clearly as if I had been told yesterday. The lad Karl met his mysterious end in the mountains in the summer of 1868. And that is a strange coincidence. I thought that perhaps this Falko had heard the story of Karl’s death and that had somehow tipped him over the edge himself.’

I nodded pensively. My discovery at the cabin did not substantiate the notion of a suicide, but nor did it disprove it. And I had to admit that it certainly was a remarkable coincidence.

But I did not pursue it any further, and instead probed a bit more into my host’s history with the NS.

Henry Alfred Lien sank a little into his chair again as soon this topic was raised. He hunched up his shoulders and replied that it was a phase in his life that he had hoped was now behind him. He had received an unexpectedly harsh sentence after the war, but had taken his punishment and had not had any contact with members of the NS since. Of the names I mentioned, he could only remember having met Frans Heidenberg briefly during the war.

We sat in silence after this. I did not have any more questions and he did not say more than he needed to. So I improvised and asked why he had ended up joining the NS in the first place.

The question seemed to open a tiny crack in his otherwise stony defence. Henry Alfred Lien took a minute to drink some more coffee before he answered. Then suddenly his voice rumbled on a fair distance.

‘There are evidently a great many who say they can’t explain why today. But I can. I have never been a Nazi for ideological reasons, or a man of ideology in any way really. In my youth, I flirted with the Liberal Party, but was not really politically active. In 1940, I believed it was set in stone that Germany would win the war and did what I could to ensure that my farm, community and country would suffer as little damage as possible. I entirely misjudged the situation and ended up as a NS section leader and spokesman, and could then not withdraw later without risking my life. In the last year of the war, I realized that we were hurtling towards an abyss and that it was too late to jump ship. I didn’t dare jump before the war was over, for fear of the Germans – and only hours after they capitulated, the Home Front was at my door. Believe me or not, the choice is yours. But that is the truth.’