Hans Lahlum - Chameleon People

My boss was sitting in his office, hard at work, when I knocked on his door. Without waiting, I asked if he had seen today’s edition of Verdens Gang.

‘Seen, read, mulled over and called the prime minister’s office about it,’ he said, with a very serious face.

‘And what did the prime minister say?’ I asked.

My boss looked even more serious when he replied.

‘That democracy should take its course, but that to ratify the agreement now would be bordering on what could and should be justified in a democratic country. The Government is ready to present the agreement to the Storting at three o’clock, but the parties have been called to group meetings and the prime minister is currently assessing the situation. He asked to be informed immediately if there is any news about Fredriksen’s murder or the kidnapping of your fiancée. As I understood it, the vote will be postponed if there is a link to either of them.’

This made the situation no less serious. I looked at the clock and calculated that it was six and a half hours until the vote in the Storting. I said that if there was nothing else to report, I should press on with the investigation into Fredriksen’s murder.

When I got back to my office and saw my empty desk, my concern for Miriam and uncertainty regarding Patricia overwhelmed me again. I had to admit that I had no new leads to follow in the Fredriksen case, so I pulled over the telephone and dialled Patricia’s number.

She answered on the first ring and asked in her usual voice if there was any news. I told her that there was and that I would like to see her as soon as possible.

‘Good. Come as soon as you can,’ she said and put the phone down.

I sat there for a few seconds and wondered if I could have made a mistake last night. I had never seen Patricia with an expression like that before. But I had been absolutely certain that it was her I saw driving past me last night. And I still was. I got up and walked with heavy steps out to the car on my way to confront Patricia and ask if she was in fact involved in the case.

The maid showed me into the library and then made a hasty retreat. It was perhaps just my imagination, but I thought she seemed a little more tense today and that she left in more of a hurry than usual.

Patricia was sitting in her wheelchair with a packet of cigarettes beside her on the table. Fruit, biscuits, cake and coffee had also been put out.

She asked, in an unusually gentle voice, if I had managed to sleep well and if I had had breakfast. Patricia seemed to be genuinely worried about me. It did not make my job any easier.

‘So, what have you got to tell me?’ Patricia asked.

First of all, I told her what little we knew about Miriam’s movements the day before.

‘That is not a lot,’ she exclaimed.

Was it just my imagination, or did she avoid looking at me when she said this? I gave myself two seconds, then launched into an attack with a hammering heart.

‘What is of particular interest is that you know something about the case that you are hiding from me. And in a critical situation where my fiancée has been kidnapped.’

It felt like diving into icy water. My body and head felt cold and stiff within seconds. But it was another bull’s eye. For a fraction of a second, Patricia’s face froze into a harder and more egotistical expression. I saw that she too had a predator concealed inside.

For a fleeting moment she reminded me of Solveig Ramdal the day before – a cat caught in a corner. Patricia had no means of escape. She sat there in her wheelchair, with her back to the wall. It only took a moment for her face to return to normal, but her eyes slipped away from mine to look at the bookshelf. And as she looked away, she lit a cigarette with a trembling hand.

‘I do not know who has taken your fiancée or where she is, if that is what you mean,’ she said, finally.

‘That is not necessarily what I said. But you are keeping something from me,’ I countered, with an edge to my voice.

Patricia sighed. She took a couple of drags on the cigarette, but her breathing was no calmer for it. And she was still looking at the bookshelf.

‘I did try to tell you that I should not get involved in the Fredriksen case, in any way. But you insisted,’ she said, in an uncharacteristically slow and thin voice. ‘How did you find out?’ she added, in an even fainter voice.

To tell the truth, I did not know what I had found out, only that I had found something out. And I was becoming increasingly annoyed because on this day of all days, Patricia did not want to tell me what she was hiding.

‘I asked you to help me with the Fredriksen case, yes. But I did not ask you to drive past the spot where Miriam disappeared at around half past eleven last night. And now I demand to know why you were there!’

I said Miriam’s name on purpose – I had realized that Patricia disliked hearing it intensely. And it worked. She started when I said the name, and her eyes swung back to look at me.

‘I see. I sincerely hope that at no point have you suspected me of having anything to do with your girlfriend’s disappearance. That is a preposterous idea. I had a very personal reason for driving past there late last night, and hope you will believe that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the kidnapping.’

This was becoming more and more mysterious – and more and more annoying.

I said that my fiancée had been kidnapped, that I wanted to believe that Patricia knew nothing about it, but asked that she now please give me a credible answer as to why she had driven past the scene of the crime last night.

We sat and stared at each other intensely for a few seconds. A bitter expression, similar to the one I had seen through the car window yesterday, passed over Patricia’s face. She took a last drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out. Then she put both her elbows on the table and buried her head in her hands for a moment or two.

When she lowered her hands from her face, her expression was one of defiance. ‘If you absolutely must know, I was being driven home after having been thoroughly fucked by my, until now, secret boyfriend.’

That was not what I had expected. I sat there like a rabbit in the headlights while she lit another cigarette.

For some reason I had clearly never contemplated the idea that Patricia could have intimate relations with another man. And even now that she had said it, I could not imagine her stretched naked under a man in bed.

And what was worse: I did not like the thought at all. Without having any idea of who her boyfriend was, I immediately felt jealousy, even animosity, towards him. If it was the man who was driving the car yesterday, I had only caught a blurred glimpse of him.

‘That is a remarkable coincidence. Where does your secret lover live?’

Patricia sighed and looked at me in exasperation. ‘Do you still not understand? It was not a coincidence at all. My until-now-secret boyfriend lives in a terraced house by Sognsvann.’

As soon as she said Sognsvann, I understood. It did not make matters any better. The picture of Patricia in bed with him was even worse than the one of Patricia in bed with some faceless man. And on top of all this confusion was now the fear that someone else might know about my contact with Patricia.

‘So the secret boyfriend you have not told me about is Johan Fredriksen?’

She took a long, greedy drag on the cigarette and then stubbed it out, half-smoked.

‘Bingo. But Johan of course knows nothing about my contact with you and I have not said a word about what I know about the investigation. I thought, with those parameters, my relationship with him was irrelevant to the case and it would be better for both you and me if you did not know about it.’