When I looked up, it was all I could do to stop myself from pulling back. Petter Johannes Wendelboe controlled himself well and remained sitting in his chair, his face directly in front of mine, and spoke in a hard, low whisper.
‘We now live in a free country and a constitutional state, my young man, which was not the case during the war. I would immediately telephone you or someone else in the police.’ His eyes were suddenly piercing and hard.
‘But the first two murders are already time-barred, and the third will be so shortly. So let us imagine that for this reason or other formal reasons, a case could not be raised…’
‘Then I do not know what I would do. But that has not happened.’
I nodded in agreement. To contradict Petter Johannes Wendelboe in his current frame of mind was not a tempting idea at all.
‘No one is claiming that it has. But it is a possibility that you and your wife have discussed, is it not? That Magdalon Schelderup might himself in some way have something to do with the deaths?’
He nodded and hurried to reply.
‘We did not believe it, but did not dare to rule anything out. The cases were so extraordinary and you never knew what Magdalon might do.’
‘Magdalon was a hard man to fathom.’
‘We know of nothing that might link him to the deaths and we have no idea who killed him.’
‘And the disturbed Resistance man, Arild Bratberg, have you ever encountered him since?’
He shook his head firmly.
‘Never. I went to the trial after the war for a day, and he cut a pathetic figure. It only served to strengthen my belief that it must have been him who killed my brother-in-law. And I have never seen him since, nor wished to.’
This was said with intensity and absolute conviction. I believed him and he felt it. When I thanked him for his help and stood up a couple of minutes later, we were suddenly on an almost friendly footing again.
Wendelboe was once more his normal relaxed and controlled self when he showed me out. I liked him better than I had when I arrived. But I had also seen a glimpse of the other Petter Johannes Wendelboe. The one who had, once upon a time, taken decisions regarding life and death, and then ensured that those decisions were carried through. And in that moment I had understood what people meant when they said that Petter Johannes Wendelboe was perhaps the only person Magdalon Schelderup was afraid of. At the end of the day, I did not think that Wendelboe had killed Magdalon Schelderup or had anything whatsoever to do with Leonard Schelderup’s death. But if I had ever been in any doubt that he might under certain circumstances be capable of killing someone, I no longer was.
