Hans Lahlum - The Human Flies

I then asked if she had blackmailed Harald Olesen and omitted to tell me. She admitted that she had been given money by him, but denied that she had blackmailed him. One day when she had knocked on his door to ask about her parents and Deerfoot, he had handed her a thick envelope, which, to her shock, contained fifty thousand-kroner notes. She had gone back with the envelope the following day, but he had asked her to keep the money and forget the whole thing. She put the money in the bank, but could not forget the whole thing. It had only served to strengthen her impression that Harald Olesen knew more about her parents’ fate than he was letting on.

When I asked if she would like to amend her statement from the night of the murder, she looked confused and stammered that she had nothing to add. She apologized over and over again for lying to me in pure desperation, but she knew nothing more about who had murdered Harald Olesen and had nothing to do with it herself. She had never asked for the 50,000 kroner, and the will had been a shock.

I glanced over at Patricia, who just then tapped her pad with her pen twice. We thanked Sara for her time and asked her to stay in the flat and not to let anyone else in. She slouched in the chair and whispered that she had not murdered Harald Olesen and that she would not let anyone in other than me. She repeated this twice, like an oath, as I wheeled Patricia out of the flat.

‘She still knows more than she is letting on,’ Patricia said, as soon as we were in the lift.

I had to admit that this chimed well with my own gut feeling.

‘So, what do we do now?’ I asked.

Patricia looked determined.

‘Well, we can hope that if she has some time on her own to think, things might improve. She is terrified of something. I am tempted to say that it is either something she has done herself or something she has seen. But she is so frightened and tense that we need more information before we can push her any further. And perhaps we will find that where we are going now.’

It sounded so convincing that I just nodded and asked where we were going.

‘To the second floor,’ Patricia said, and impatiently stretched out her arm and pressed the lift button.

Patricia looked so small and thin in her wheelchair in the confines of the lift, but her voice was just as clear and firm as at home in the big library in the White House.

‘Start by welcoming him back and be nice, then ask him if he was at all sad when Harald Olesen was murdered. Remind him of his old conflict with Olesen and suggest that he moved here because of it, and that he had more than one gun in the flat when he first arrived. And finally, ask him who he saw coming towards Harald Olesen’s flat on the evening of the murder. My hope is that this will prompt some new and interesting information. Now, remember where to position me!’

Patricia’s mood was constantly switching from serious to sardonic. Suddenly she smiled and chuckled quietly.

‘To a certain extent, I understand why Kristian Lund was tempted into an affair – I felt almost jealous of her natural beauty and consummate technique. And by the way, she is, if nothing else, definitely guilty of being unhappily in love.’

My heart beat a little faster when she said that, but I did not want to be distracted by the topic for all manner of reasons. Fortunately, the lift stopped at that moment on the second floor. I pushed Patricia out and rang on the bell of the flat next door to Harald Olesen’s.

Darrell Williams was truly a diplomat through and through. He smiled as soon as he saw me, shook my hand and apologized that his work had forced him to leave the country temporarily. He looked at my companion with greater scepticism, but reluctantly accepted my explanation about an injured secretary. It helped when I assured him that nothing from our conversation would be recorded in the official reports and that the notes were for internal use only.

I parked Patricia in the middle of the floor, while Darrell and I sat down on the same armchairs that we had sat in a few days before. This time, the gravity of the situation was clear. Our host was sober, and there was a large carafe of water on the table between us. I noted a tense nervousness behind our host’s smile that I had not experienced on previous occasions.

‘Welcome back. You no doubt understand that your disappearance, which was contrary to my orders, almost caused a very unfortunate situation.’

He looked at me without answering, waiting for me to carry on. Which I quickly did.

‘That being said, it is a pleasure to see you again, and we all hope that the case can now be concluded without any further complications. But that rather depends on you now giving us, better late than never, complete and truthful answers to our final questions.’

Darrell Williams nodded and leaned forward in concentration. I did not have the feeling that I was sitting opposite a human fly, but rather a lion or a bear or some other beast.

‘First question: did you feel any sorrow whatsoever when you heard that Harald Olesen had been murdered?’

Darrell Williams laughed briefly, then shook his head.

‘Absolutely not. He was a great man but not a good man. The story of his will, his son and his relatives only goes to show that. But I was surprised that he had been murdered. I have no idea who shot him and was definitely not there when it happened.’

He hesitated for a moment, but said nothing more. It gave me no choice other than to push him a little further.

‘But you were accommodated here in the flat next door to Harald Olesen in order to ensure that certain names and information did not get out. In the first months that you lived here, you kept two guns in the flat. Did you or your employer at any point consider murdering him as an option?’

Darrell Williams smiled bitterly and I got the impression that he almost nodded before he answered.

‘I am afraid that I can neither confirm nor deny that kind of question. I would like to reiterate that my accounts with Harald Olesen, both personal and professional, had been settled by the time he died. As you yourself saw when you searched my flat, the guns were no longer here at that point. And from what I understand, neither of them would be compatible with the bullet that killed Olesen in any case.’

I gave a cursory nod.

‘But if I am now to believe that you are innocent, and that you and the embassy had nothing to do with the murder… could you please think carefully through the evening of the murder one more time and inform us if there is anything you may have forgotten to tell us that might help to track down the real murderer.’

He gave an apologetic shrug.

‘Yes, there is, and I should have thought about it earlier. I saw one of my neighbours heading towards Harald Olesen’s flat shortly before the murder. There are several reasons why I have not mentioned this before. The first was that I did not want myself or the embassy to become any more involved than necessary, and I could of course not be sure that the person I saw passing was in fact the murderer. And later my antipathy towards Harald Olesen intensified. The palaver with the will must have been deeply upsetting for the son.’

My patience was dangerously close to breaking.

‘We want the truth on the table now. So this person whom you saw going towards Harald Olesen’s flat shortly before he was murdered was…’

He nodded and picked up the thread.

‘His son, Kristian Lund. It was very unusual to see him up here on the second floor, so I remembered it. It was not long before I went for my evening stroll. I cannot say the exact time, and of course do not know whether he was the one who fired the shot or not. As far as I could tell, he was not carrying a weapon, but he was wearing a winter overcoat that could hide pretty much anything.’