Hans Lahlum: Satellite People

To my surprise, Petter Johannes Wendelboe was in the courtroom on 3 November, the first day of the trial. He looked exactly as he had before, and shook my hand with the same firmness. When I asked after Mrs Wendelboe, he replied shortly that she had unfortunately gone from ‘bad to worse’. She had, as had Ingrid Schelderup, been exempted from appearing as a witness for health reasons. I could not help but ask if he had been in touch with Magdalena Schelderup. He told me curtly that he had apologized on behalf of his wife and himself, and that this apology had been accepted. So Petter Johannes Wendelboe was himself to the last, and a remarkable man in my eyes.

Hans Herlofsen told me, when I called one day to ask some routine questions, that he had never been better. He had resigned from Schelderup’s company and had found himself a far better-paid job with a company car, thanks to all the coverage the case had been given in the press. The balance of his personal account was already 17,782 kroner. So some of the satellite people from Magdalon Schelderup’s last supper had managed to find themselves a better orbit in the new universe that opened up when the circumstances surrounding his death had been established.

I received a letter from Mona Varden thanking me wholeheartedly for the ‘somewhat late, but remarkable’ unmasking of her husband’s murderer. There was also a sentence to say that she had now, finally, been able to clear his room. She enclosed a photograph of the grandson who was apparently the spitting image of his grandfather. A few days later, I received a postcard from Maja Karstensen in Rodeløkka, to thank me for redeeming Arild Bratberg’s ‘honour and memory’. There was a PS to say that Bratberg’s siblings had dropped their claim on his flat, following all the coverage of the case.

On 10 November 1969, I myself stood up in court to bear witness against the Schelderups. And I rather reluctantly had to admit that Maria Irene played her part very well from her place in the dock. She was surprisingly convincing as the remorseful and bewildered offender who had been led astray by her mother. The press even managed to photograph her with tears in her eyes as she spoke about the murder. But when I passed Maria Irene on my way to the witness stand, at barely an arm’s length, I saw the shadow of a lioness’s smile on her lips. Our eyes met a moment later. And I am certain that I detected something that she herself would never admit – that despite the discomfort of the court case and prison, it had been worth it, now that she had the whole inheritance and would have more than enough time to use it when she got out.

It somehow felt unnatural for me to contact Patricia without an ongoing murder case to discuss. Through the autumn I increasingly pondered over how early on Patricia had realized the truth about how the father and son had died, and how different the story might have been if she had confided in me before the murder of Synnøve Jensen. As far as Maria Irene was concerned, I was eternally grateful to Patricia for revealing her egoism and ruthlessness to me in time. There were occasions later on in November when I even suspected that Patricia might have held back the explanation of the earlier deaths on purpose, in the hope that Maria Irene would commit a murder.

I never considered asking Patricia about this. I was too grateful to her for all the help she had given me with my first two murder investigations, and too conscious of my own dependency in the event of future investigations. For reasons I have often speculated on without drawing any conclusion, Patricia never contacted me on her own initiative. Our somewhat hasty and confusing goodbye shortly after midnight on Sunday, 18 May 1969 was therefore the last time that we saw each other in the 1960s. It was not until seven months into 1970 that a sensational new murder investigation, which had a very dramatic start for me, brought us together again.

This novel, written thirty-five years after her death, is my homage to Agatha Christie, the world’s greatest crime writer, who gave us the most original plots. Without any illusions of having achieved the level of Agatha Christie’s best mysteries, I have tried in 2011 to capture her style and spirit in terms of the plot, time structure and characters. In doing this, I have based the book on Christie’s views of the good and evil nature of human beings, even though this only in very specific cases tallies with my own personal views.

I have also, as I did in my first novel The Human Flies, tried to find my own literary crime niche by taking inspiration from three classical crime writers of bygone years. This time, once again, I have written a plot inspired by Christie, with a detective duo who are more akin to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. And again, I go beyond the realms of the British crime tradition of Christie and Doyle, and follow in the footsteps of the great Belgian writer, Georges Simenon, in trying to combine an exciting crime mystery with an engaging story about people’s different fates and histories.

If my crime novel, The Satellite People, is successful in these endeavours, then it is to a large extent thanks to my good advisors who have worked with me on the manuscript. My editor, Anne Fløtaker at Cappelen Damm, has once again been my most important advisor, but I have also benefited greatly from the input given by Anders Heger and Nils Nordberg. I would also like to give two thousand thanks to my invaluable group of personal advisors, which this time includes my good friends Mina Finstad Berg, Ingrid Baukhol, Ellen Øen Carlsen, Synne Corell, Lene Li Dragland, Anne Lise Fredlund, Kathrien Næss Hald, Hanne Isaksen, Bjarte Leer-Salvesen, Torsten Lerhol, Espen Lie, Ellisiv Reppen, Kristine Kopperud Timberlid, Arne Tjølsen, Katrine Tjølsen and Magnhild K. B. Uglem, as well as my sister, Ida Lahlum. This time, Mina deserves to be mentioned before all others for her enthusiasm from the drawing board to the finished manuscript and for her many important comments on the language and content.

And finally, I would like to offer a more symbolic thank you to someone I have never met, namely the highly successful singer Lena Meyer-Landrut, who came to Norway last year. Her song ‘Satellite’ has kept me company for many an hour while writing this novel and was in part the inspiration for the title.

My articles on this book and other literary topics are freely available (in Norwegian) to those who might be interested on Cappelen Damm’s blog page: www.forlagsliv.no/hansolavlahlum.

Any readers who have questions or comments about the book are welcome to contact me via Facebook, or directly by email: hansolahlum@gmail.com.

HANS OLAV LAHLUM is a Norwegian crime author, historian, chess player and politician. The books that make up his crime series featuring Criminal Investigator Kolbjørn Kristiansen (known as K2) and his precocious young assistant Patricia are bestsellers in Norway. The Human Flies was the first, and was followed by Satellite People and The Catalyst Killing . Chameleon People is the fourth book in the series.