Hans Lahlum - Chameleon People

The letter was short, formal and brutal. The tenancy agreement had been terminated as the rent had not been paid. If they did not move out voluntarily within ten days from the date on the letter, they would be evicted. It was signed by Odd Jørgensen, office manager at Per Johan Fredriksen Ltd.

I immediately thought that here was the link I should have seen. And then I thought that Patricia would have seen it.

Lene Johansen seemed to have aged even more during this conversation, and she buried her head in her hands before carrying on.

‘Tor was sitting here with the letter when I came home on Thursday, and was beside himself. He couldn’t bear the thought of moving yet again and asked where we were going to go now. I told him the truth, which was that I had no idea. Tor wanted to go and talk to Per Johan Fredriksen personally. I said that he must never do anything of the kind. Then I went down to the office myself the next morning. I begged on behalf of my sick child, I cried and even got down on my knees in front of them. But there was no sympathy and no hope. I left when they threatened to call the police if I stayed on their floor any longer. So I went to visit my sister in Ski to see if she could perhaps find a corner for us in the meantime. The evening before I went, Tor said again that he would go and see Fredriksen himself. I told him it would only make things worse. And that seemed to make him change his mind. So it’s not such a surprise that he might have tried to find Fredriksen. But I would never have thought that he would kill him. No matter how much Tor has suffered, he has never broken the law before. He was always kind and good like that.’

I took out a sealed bag with the murder weapon inside and put it down on the table. She quickly understood what it was, but looked at it with little interest.

‘That’s not from this kitchen, but there are plenty of other ways he could have got hold of it.’

I nodded thoughtfully. It was a piece that did not quite fit the puzzle, but it was in no way decisive.

‘There is still one thing I don’t quite understand… It is perhaps not so strange that he wanted to talk to Fredriksen. But it seems rather odd that he knew how to find Fredriksen in Majorstuen, and also knew the way from there to my flat.’

She let out a heavy sigh. ‘Sadly, it is perhaps not as strange as it might seem. Tor never had any money, still couldn’t walk properly or talk clearly. So there wasn’t much he could do with the others after school. I had to work a lot in the evenings and he didn’t like it here on his own. So he’d normally go to the library after school and sit there until it closed. Then he would cycle around in town for a few hours. He liked cycling more than walking, as then people couldn’t see his limp. He called his bike Andreas, and used to say that it was his best friend. When I asked him where he’d been he’d say “I’ve been out with Andreas”. They went all over Oslo, the two of them. Tor had a map of practically the whole town in his head. He never dared to talk to famous people, but could always remember where he’d seen them. He sometimes called himself a little spy. So Tor might have followed Fredriksen, if he’d come from the Storting, or waited for him at Majorstuen, if he’d seen him there several Saturdays before.’

That made sense. According to his mistress, Fredriksen had often been there on Saturdays.

I no longer doubted that Tor Johansen had killed Per Johan Fredriksen, but asked his mother all the same if she thought her son was capable of committing such a serious crime.

‘To be honest, I don’t know what to believe any more. Tor was my only child. I loved him, but I never really understood him. He was clever with books and things like that. He often understood much more than I did, and sometimes I just had no idea what was going on in his head. He’s never done anything wrong before, but I just don’t know what he might be capable of any more.’

We sat in silence briefly, before she gave a sombre nod and continued. ‘If he has, it’s because we’re so poor. If my son really has killed someone, it’s another tragic example of what poverty can do to a good person.’

Her voice had an edge of bitterness and accusation against society. It soon disappeared, though, when she carried on speaking.

‘It’s my fault as well, of course. I grew up in a poor family myself, but was quite smart when I was young. Got the best grades in middle school. A rich uncle of my father was impressed and wanted to lend me the money to carry on with school. And I have bitterly regretted every day for the past ten years not taking it. Instead, I got married young, to the wrong man. And stayed with him for as long as he was alive. Despite knowing that he drank a lot and even though for many years we didn’t have children. So it was partly poverty and partly the fact that I made the wrong choices that ruined the life of the only child I eventually managed to have.’

There was another silence. I racked my brains for something to say. Fortunately, she got there first.

‘If you want to talk to someone other than me about Tor… None of the other boys at school knew him well, which is a shame. But he really liked his teacher; Eveline Kolberg, I think she was called. It’s possible she might be able to help you, if you need someone smarter than me who might understand how my son thought.’

I wrote down the name. She asked me to take a note of her sister’s address in Ski as well. ‘In case you come back here and I’ve been thrown out, that’s where you’ll find me. Either there or at one of the schools where I’m a cleaner,’ she said, her voice breaking.

The atmosphere was heavy and I suddenly longed to get out of the flat, away from this street. I felt a great deal of sympathy for the poor cleaning lady, who had now, along with everything else, lost her only son, but I was unable to see what on earth I could do to help her. It seemed inevitable that her son’s story would sooner or later find its way into the press. And he would only ever be remembered as the person who murdered Fredriksen, the politician.

I took great care to assure her that it was never easy to see what the consequences of our choices might be in years to come, and that her son’s tragedy was mostly due to poverty rather than her choices.

She brightened a little when I said this and gave a fleeting smile as she stood up and insisted that I see her son’s room before I leave.

All I really wanted to do was get away as quickly as I could, but I realized that I should look at his room, now that I was here.

The late Tor Johansen’s room was like the rest of the flat: tidy, small and sparse. For a boy who had enjoyed reading so much, he had no bookshelves. There was a shelf’s worth of books lined up on the floor against the wall. None of them looked like they had been published after the war, and they all seemed well-thumbed.

There was not a single picture of the boy who had lived here on any of the walls. There were, however, some other pictures of a person I had not expected to see here. Namely, myself. Three newspaper clippings and photographs about my previous investigations were hanging on the wall. It was an unexpected and almost moving sight.

His mother’s voice sounded brighter when she spoke. ‘It’s so strange to have you standing here now, and such a shame that Tor is not here to see it. He read a lot about criminal cases in newspapers and books. He read everything he could about your cases. When you were investigating, he was outside the library first thing Saturday morning to read about the latest developments. It’s not so strange really that he’d found out where you lived.’

She was right about this and no doubt meant well in saying it. But it felt rather uncomfortable all the same. The boy on the red bicycle had almost instinctively sought me out in his hour of need and trusted that I would solve the case. Now he was dead and if he was innocent, I had not been able to help him in time.