The Human Flies - страница 7

The American had barely spoken to the young couple on the first floor, so only confirmed that they seemed to be ‘unusually happy and full of the joys of life, even for newly-weds’. On the night of the murder, Kristian Lund had swung through the front door only a few steps ahead of him. Williams had touched his hat, as was his wont, and received a friendly ‘good evening’ in return. That was about the extent of the contact between them: brief but never unfriendly.

Darrell Williams remembered Harald Olesen’s name well from the years 1945 to 1946 and had been quite excited by the fact that he now lived in the same building. Shortly after he had moved in, he had taken the opportunity to knock on his neighbour’s door and was well received. But during his visit and on a couple of later occasions, Williams got the impression that something or other was weighing on Olesen’s mind and he did not wish to burden him further. Olesen had continued to greet him with a friendly smile all the same. However, it had struck Williams more than once that the old war hero was becoming an increasingly isolated and dejected old man.

Williams had not seen Olesen alive on the day of the murder. He had been to a dinner party and did not come home until around eight. After his evening stroll, he had been talking to Konrad Jensen on the stairs for a few minutes when they suddenly heard a gunshot on the second floor. Williams had instinctively started to run up the stairs, with Jensen at his heels. They did not meet anyone on the stairs, nor did they see anyone else in the hallway when they reached the second floor. They rang on Olesen’s doorbell several times without any response. A minute or two later, Kristian Lund had also appeared, closely followed by the caretaker’s wife. The caretaker’s wife had then gone back down to get her keys and to call the police, as they had not heard a sound inside the flat. While she was doing this, Gullestad had come up in the lift. The five of them had discussed whether or not they should open the door, but had agreed to wait until the police arrived. They neither heard nor saw any signs of an intruder in the building, and it was not possible that anyone could have sneaked past them.

Williams could not recall ever seeing a blue raincoat in 25 Krebs’ Street, not on the day of the murder or previously. He responded openly and honestly to my question regarding firearms: ‘I had a.44-calibre Colt revolver and a.36-calibre pistol with me when I came to Norway, but everything seemed to be so safe here that I sent them both back to my home in the USA a few weeks ago now.’

Strictly speaking, he did not have a licence, but I saw little reason there and then to pester a man with an American diplomat’s passport with minor details such as that. The house search the evening before had shown that Williams, like all the other residents, did not have a gun in the building on the night of the murder. But all the same this did not strike him from the list of possible suspects.

Sara Sundqvist proved to be a slim and unusually tall young woman who waited for a moment or two before opening the door and then kept the safety chain on until she saw my uniform. Despite being around five foot eleven, she could not weigh much over nine stone. I felt that her wrists and arms could snap at any moment, but despite her dangerously tiny waist, her figure was in proportion and her bearing elegant. And even though her expression was drawn and anxious, one could not help but notice her feminine curves. The apparently demure and high-necked green dress only served to emphasize a pair of shapely breasts.

Sara Sundqvist was very serious and slightly shaken by the murder, but still struck me as being sensible and trustworthy. She spoke grammatically correct Norwegian, albeit with a gentle Swedish accent. She gave Gothenburg as her hometown, and her age as twenty-four. She had come to Oslo to study English and philosophy the previous August, and had found the flat through a newspaper advertisement posted by the owner. She used her Swedish student grant and money from her parents to pay for the rent, but also worked in the university library a few hours a week in addition to her studies.