Hans Lahlum: The Catalyst Killing

It was with some trepidation that I dialled the home number of my boss at ten minutes past midnight. I knew that he was a night owl who lived on his own, and he had granted me permission to take advantage of this in the event of ‘murder or suspicious circumstances until just after midnight’.

My boss listened carefully to my brief account. Then, to my relief, he immediately said that given my first-hand impressions of both the victim and the scene of the crime, I was obviously best qualified to head the murder investigation.

‘Do you know who Marie Morgenstierne was, by the way?’ he then asked, with great seriousness.

I had to say no. I still had the uncomfortable feeling that I had heard the name somewhere, but could not remember in what connection.

‘Marie Morgenstierne was Falko Reinhardt’s fiancée,’ my boss said, pensively.

There was silence on the line for a few seconds, before he swiftly added: ‘She was one of the small circle around him, one of the anti-Vietnam activists in the revolutionary youth movement. And she was sleeping in the same bed as Falko Reinhardt on the night that he went missing. She was the first to discover that he had disappeared. A good many people in the police and the public in general, I am sure, would be extremely grateful and impressed if you managed to learn what happened to Falko Reinhardt on that stormy night in Valdres, at the same time as solving the new case. I will have all the papers from summer 1968 sent to your office first thing tomorrow morning.’

I thanked him and put down the receiver.

Then I went to bed, but was unable to sleep. In the course of one and a half hours on what I had assumed would be a quiet Wednesday evening, I had been given responsibility not only for a new murder case, but also the division’s strangest and most talked-about missing person case of the past decade.

Only one thing was clear to me when I finally fell asleep on 5 August 1970 after an unexpectedly dramatic day, and that was who I needed to call before doing anything else when I reached the office the next morning. The telephone number for the disabled professor’s daughter, Patricia Louise I. E. Borchmann, was still written between the emergency numbers for the fire brigade and Accident and Emergency department on my telephone lists, at home and in the office.

On the morning of Thursday, 6 August 1970, I woke before seven and realized that I was far too excited to go back to sleep. Following yesterday’s encounter with the woman on the Lijord Line, I felt some of the same obsessive thrill that I had experienced in connection with my first two murder cases. The first investigation had been at as good as a standstill for two days before I met Patricia Louise I. E. Borchmann, following a very timely phone call from her father. I waited no longer than necessary to call her, and felt a surge of relief when, at twenty past seven, I heard her clear, confident voice after only three rings.

Patricia, of course, did not know about the discovery of a dead woman on the train tracks at Smestad late the previous evening. She listened with increasing interest to my account, and whistled with appreciation when I mentioned the deceased’s name. ‘Falko Reinhardt’s fiancée,’ we both said at the same time. Then we sat in comfortable silence for a few thoughtful moments.

I broke the silence by adding: ‘Which can hardly be a coincidence.’

Patricia sniffed so loudly down the telephone that I could just imagine the look of disdain on her face.

‘I can most certainly promise you that it is not. You have of course already checked the date on which Falko Reinhardt disappeared?’

I had to come clean and admit that I unfortunately had not, but tried to excuse myself by saying that surely the date was of no importance here.

Patricia’s voice held a note of triumph when she replied: ‘Perhaps not. But the fact is that Falko Reinhardt, dead or alive, disappeared into the storm in the Valdres mountains on the night of 5 August 1968. And where I come from, that would certainly not be called a coincidence.’

I felt an icy shiver down my spine as my pulse started to race. And I heard myself agree that suddenly the date was of the utmost importance, and that it would not be called a coincidence in my workplace either.

There was nothing to stop Patricia’s morning inspiration and she fired away: ‘Change is the spice of life, even in murder cases. In the 1960s, we dealt with locked-room mysteries and old men. And now at the start of a new decade, you call me about a young woman and an open-space mystery. I must warn you straight away that this could be more difficult terrain. There were only six flats and a total of seven suspects in 25 Krebs Street. And only eleven people sat down to dine at Magdalon Schelderup’s mansion in Gulleråsen. Whereas, in theory, practically anyone could have been at Smestad station last night. Hopefully there will, in practice, be a more limited number of suspects, and I can already give you the names of some of them, having read about Falko Reinhardt’s disappearance at the time. But it is important that we find out as much as possible about what happened in the last hours of Marie Morgenstierne’s life, and who might have been in the area at the time. Find out what she was doing at Smestad yesterday evening and who she met there, and do not delay in requesting any witnesses who might have seen her walking to the station to come forward. Come here for supper at six o’clock this evening and bring with you anything of interest in connection with Marie Morgenstierne’s death and Falko Reinhardt’s disappearance. Will that be possible?’

It sounded more like an order than a question. I replied immediately that it would.

‘Did Marie Morgenstierne throw herself on the tracks, did she fall, or was she pushed?’ I asked.

I should not have done that. Patricia let out a deep sigh, and answered rather pointedly: ‘No. She was shot.’

Thus I could confirm with alarmed relief that Patricia was clearly as on the ball as she had been the year before. She waited until I asked for more details, and then replied without hesitation, ‘I would be very surprised if Marie Morgenstierne was not shot only seconds after the train you were on pulled away from the station. And I think it is highly unlikely that she was shot with a hunting rifle of this year’s model. But hopefully you will know more about that when we meet this evening.’

I replied that I had every hope that I would. Then I put the phone down and left the flat straight away. My mind was already slightly scrambled, but I did have the clarity to realize that I would not be spending much time at home over the next few days.

At the office I was informed that a routine examination of the scene of the crime and door-to-door enquiries around Smestad had come up with nothing. So I called the national radio station and asked them to make an announcement calling for possible witnesses in Smestad area the evening before. I quickly established that the newspapers had not yet picked up on the death. The headlines were dominated by the new mid-distance running star Arne Kvalheim’s victory in a race at the Bislett Games, and the one hundred or so demonstrators who had set up camp in order to prevent the planned development of a power plant in Mardøla in Møre and Romsdal municipality.

Having looked through the papers, I sat for a while deep in thought. There were no files of any sort on Marie Morgenstierne in the police records and the census records only contained a single sheet of paper that was of little help. She was simply recorded as living at an address in Frogner, the most desirable part of Oslo.