The Human Flies - страница 9

Following my visit with the Lunds, one rather mysterious question remained unanswered, which was, when had Kristian Lund actually come home on the evening of the murder? His wife was in no doubt that he’d come home at nine o’clock precisely. He had come in the door just after the start of The Danny Kaye Show on television, which started at five to. Kristian Lund explained that he had had to stay behind on his own in the shop as there was bookkeeping to be done, and that he had left there at around a quarter to nine. This was in line with what the caretaker’s wife had noted, which was that Kristian Lund came home at nine o’clock. But this did not accord with another small and rather confusing detail, which was that Darrell Williams claimed to have seen Kristian Lund come into the building while he was chatting with Konrad Jensen a whole hour before.

Kristian Lund’s anxiety regarding the situation increased when I mentioned this. He repeated several times that he did not get home until nine o’clock. If the two neighbours said otherwise, they must either be wrong about when they came in themselves or have confused him with someone else. His wife immediately came to his aid. She added with great sincerity that she had the world’s most reliable and honest husband, and that he had phoned home several hours before that to say that he would not be back until around nine. I hastily played down my question and withdrew, tactfully, to mull it over.

My next stop was again the caretaker’s wife at her post by the front entrance. She furrowed her brow and insisted that ‘Kristian did not come home before nine o’clock yesterday evening.’ Her writing was absolutely clear with regard to the time, and she had jotted down the residents’ names in the order that they came home. ‘If Kristian came back before Darrell Williams and Konrad Jensen, then it’s strange that I wrote his name on the line below them,’ said the caretaker’s wife. I had to admit that that sounded reasonable. And furthermore, the caretaker’s wife had logged the telephone call mentioned by Mrs Lund when Kristian Lund called to say he would not be home until around nine.

When I looked at the caretaker’s wife’s neat and simple list, I found it hard to believe that she might have made a mistake. But there seemed to be no reason to doubt that Darrell Williams had both seen and greeted Kristian Lund by the entrance an hour earlier. And so the Lunds were not struck from my list of suspects either.

More drama lay in store in the left-hand flat on the ground floor. Konrad Jensen was a short, middle-aged man dressed in a red sweater and gaberdine trousers. He confirmed that he worked as a taxi driver and had his papers at the ready, which showed that he owned the older Peugeot model with a taxi light that was parked on the street outside. Konrad Jensen informed me that he had lived in his flat since 1948, and that, as he was unmarried and had no children, he had lived alone all his adult life.

Konrad Jensen’s hair was turning from black to grey. And in the course of our conversation, his unshaven face also seemed to turn from frustration to despair. His answers got shorter and shorter, and he became increasingly morose in response to my routine questions. Yes, he had definitely come home from work at eight o’clock, a few steps behind Kristian Lund and Darrell Williams. Yes, he was certain that Kristian Lund had gone into the building just before him. Yes, he had been standing by the stairs discussing a football match with the American at a quarter past ten when they heard the gunshot on the second floor. And yes, the two of them had immediately run upstairs and waited outside the door. Yes, Kristian Lund, the caretaker’s wife and Andreas Gullestad had also come up in the course of the next couple of minutes. No, he had never seen a blue raincoat here in 25 Krebs’ Street.

Then all of a sudden he mustered the courage to raise his voice a little.

‘I might as well tell you myself because it will come out sooner or later all the same. I supported the Nazis and was a member of the NS during the war, and served a six-month sentence for it from 1945 to 1946. I joined the party before the war and worked as a driver for the Germans after 9 April 1940. I’ve never denied any of it. But that is the extent of my crimes. I’ve never amounted to anything much, for better or worse.’