The caretaker could not remember having seen any other friends. To my relief, he looked slightly bewildered when I asked him if he had at any point seen a young woman who read books as she walked.
There was one thing of interest that the caretaker could tell me about the deceased tenant. And it was of great potential interest. On several occasions that spring, both he and his wife had thought they heard unknown footsteps on the stairs that stopped on the first floor, and Marie Morgenstierne’s flat was the only one on that floor that was inhabited. They had both, a couple of times, caught a glimpse of someone they thought was the visitor as he left the building. If it was he, the guest was taller than average, but they could not say much more as he had left in the dark and was wearing a hat and coat. The caretaker was fairly sure that he or his wife, or both of them, had heard the footsteps on three or four occasions – the last time being only a week or so ago.
I remembered Patricia’s conclusions from the night before. So I asked if it was possible that this guest might be Falko, as they remembered him.
The caretaker raised his eyebrows, thought about it for a while, and even went in to ask his wife. In the end, however, he reluctantly had to confess that they could not say yes or no to that. There were so many footsteps to remember in the building and it was a long time since they had heard Falko’s, he explained, apologetically.
When I asked for a spare key so the flat could be examined, I was given one straight away. I had no real hope of finding any technical evidence, as the flat looked too clean and tidy for that. But I did harbour a small hope that a fingerprint might help to reveal the identity of this mysterious guest – even, perhaps, of the murderer.
There was still a fortnight until the start of the autumn semester, and so it was far easier than I had expected to find my way round the university library. I was told that the section where the literature students usually sat had around forty places. Only one of these was occupied at a quarter past eleven.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen, still dressed in blue jeans and a multicoloured sweatshirt, sat in the middle of a deserted landscape of empty chairs like a silent and lonely queen. There was a thick notepad in front of her and around it, an encyclopedia and five French dictionaries.
The sole occupant of the library was reading with such concentration that she did not notice me, even when I was only a few steps away. I stood there for a minute without attracting her attention, before I alerted her to my presence with a half-whispered: ‘Do you perhaps know where I might find Miss Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen?’
