I finished by asking whether my boss, with his formidable experience and skills, could glean anything more than I had thus far from the available information. He smiled and shook his head pensively. The outcome was that I would work overtime on 15 and 16 May, and if no arrests were imminent then we would discuss the case again at some point on the 17 May holiday.
Once out of my boss’s office, I heaved a sigh of relief. Now, if not before, it struck me that there were obviously plenty of colleagues who would only be too happy to challenge my position. And I stopped at none of the other offices on the way back to mine.
If the start of the day had been a bit troubled, the rest of the day was all the better for it. The first telephone call was from Schelderup Hall. It was Sandra Schelderup who rang. Her voice was still friendly and respectful. She wanted to thank me once again for leading the investigation so well, and added that both she and her daughter would be very grateful for an update on the situation if I was able to drop by in the course of the day.
I had no real plans for the day, other than talking to Herlofsen and Wendelboe again. So I replied that I also had a couple of questions that I would like to ask them, and hoped that I could be there around lunch. She said that they looked forward to seeing me.
I had just put the phone down when there was a knock on the door. An out-of-breath fingerprint technician was standing outside, as he wanted to tell me in person about the sensational find from Leonard Schelderup’s flat. On a bureau by the door in the living room, they had unexpectedly found a single but clear and relatively new fingerprint that corresponded to that of one of the women who had been fingerprinted at Schelderup Hall following the murder of Magdalon Schelderup.
The faces of the women who could have been there flashed past me before he said the name. And it was the name that I hoped it would be. Two minutes later I was in the car on my way to Gulleråsen. I turned off before Schelderup Hall. This time I was very interested to hear what Magdalena Schelderup might have to say in her defence.
I arrived at Magdalena Schelderup’s flat with every expectation of solving the case. The result was nothing more than yet another depressing conversation. Either Magdalena Schelderup was a better actress than I thought, or she was genuinely distraught. Again and again she repeated that she had never learnt to tell the whole truth in time and that she should of course have told me this before. With tears in her eyes and desperation in her voice, she also repeated over and over again that Leonard Schelderup had been alive when she left his flat. And that she had no idea who might have killed him or her brother.
