The old lady furrowed her brow.
‘Helena Lang, it must have been. Their love for
each other was what caused the tragedy.’
‘What tragedy?’
She stared at Harry and Fritz in surprise and then
looked back at Harry again.
‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’ she said. ‘Because
of the murder?’
86
Palace Gardens. 14 May 2000.
IT WAS SUNDAY. PEOPLE WERE WALKING MORE
SLOWLY THAN usual and the old man kept up with
them as he walked through the Palace Gardens. He
stopped by the guardhouse. The trees were light
green, the colour he liked best of all. All except for
one tree, that is. The tall oak tree in the middle of
the gardens would never be any greener than it was
now. You could already see the difference. After
the tree had awoken from its winter slumber, the
life-giving sap had begun to circulate and spread
the poison around the network of veins. Now it had
reached every single leaf and promoted a luxuriant
growth, which in a week or two would cause the
leaves to wither, go brown and fall, and finally the
tree would die.
But they didn’t know that yet. They obviously
didn’t know anything. Bernt Brandhaug had not
been part of the original plan, and the old man
realised that the killing had confused the police.
Brandhaug’s comments in Dagbladet were just one
of those weird coincidences and he had laughed
out loud when he read them. My God, he had even
agreed with Brandhaug. The defeated should
swing, that is the law of war.
But what about all the other clues he had given
them? They hadn’t even managed to connect the
great betrayal with the execution at Akershus
Fortress. Perhaps it would dawn on them the next
time the cannons were fired on the ramparts.
He looked around for a bench. The pains were
coming closer and closer together now. He didn’t
need to go to Buer to find out that the cancer was
spreading through his whole body; he knew that
himself. It wouldn’t be long now.
He leaned against a tree. A royal birch, the
symbol of occupation. Government and King flee
to England. German bombers are overhead, a line
from a poem written by Nordahl Grieg, made him
feel nauseous. It presented the King’s betrayal as
an honourable retreat, as if leaving his people in
their hour of need were a moral act. And in the
safety of London the King had just been yet another
of these exiled majesties who held moving
speeches for sympathetic upper-class women over
entertaining dinners as they clung to the hope that
their little kingdom would one day want them back.
And when the whole thing was over, there was the
reception as the boat carrying the Crown Prince
moored on the quayside and all those who had
turned out screamed themselves hoarse to drown
out the shame, both their own and the King’s. The
old man turned towards the sun and closed his
eyes.
Shouted commands, boots and AG3 guns smacked
into the gravel. Handover. Changing of the guard.
87
Vienna. 14 May 2000.
‘SO YOU DIDN’T KNOW?’ HELENA MAYER SAID.
She shook her head and Fritz was already on the
phone to get someone to search through old filed
murder cases.
‘I’m sure we’ll find it,’ he whispered. Of that
Harry had no doubt.
‘So the police were positive that Gudbrand
Johansen killed his own doctor?’ Harry asked,
turning to the old lady.
‘Yes, indeed. Christopher Brockhard lived alone
in one of the flats at the hospital. The police said
that Johansen smashed the glass in the outside door
and killed him as he was sleeping in his own bed.’
‘How . . . ?’
Frau Mayer flashed a dramatic finger across her
throat.
‘I saw him myself afterwards,’ she said. ‘You
could almost have believed the doctor had done it
himself, the cut was so neat.’
‘Hm. And why were the police so sure it was
Johansen?’
She laughed.
‘Yes, I can tell you that – because Johansen had
asked the guard which flat Brockhard lived in and
the guard had seen him park outside and go in
through the main entrance. Afterwards he had come
running out, started his car and driven off at full
speed towards Vienna. The next day he was gone
and no one knew where, only that according to his
orders he was supposed to be in Oslo three days
later. The Norwegian police waited for him but he
never turned up.’
‘Apart from the guard’s testimony, can you
remember if the police had any other evidence?’
‘If I can remember? We talked about that murder
for years! The blood on the glass door matched his
blood type. And the police found the same
fingerprints in Brockhard’s bedroom as on Uriah’s