I realized that we might be on to something interesting now – something that could lead to a motive for murder.
‘Given the way things turned out later, did you or Anton ever direct your frustration at Olesen?’
The caretaker’s wife shook her head adamantly.
‘We never felt any ill will towards him. How could we? It was the war, and how could anyone know what would happen to Anton later? We were proud to live in the same building as Harald Olesen, even though we lived in the basement, three floors below him. Even in the past few years, Anton would always pick up and drink less whenever he spoke to his old hero. Olesen never really understood how bad things were with Anton, but he did realize that life was difficult in the basement. And he gave us more and more wonderful presents for our birthdays and Christmas each year. Harald Olesen was a good man, always was, and I haven’t got a word to say against him and cannot understand who would murder him. I cannot think of anyone from the war who might be of importance to the murder, but maybe my husband knows more.’
I nodded. The caretaker, Anton Hansen, who was currently in hospital, was someone I needed to talk to as soon as possible. I only had one crucial question left to ask his wife.
‘But what about Mrs Lund? Did you never think of her?’
‘Of course I thought about her and the baby, and more than once it struck me that what he was doing was an enormous betrayal to them both. But Kristian is a good man, someone who has worked his way up. He works long days and has no doubt found it difficult to live up to the expectations of his parents-in-law. The only time her parents came here, they looked at me and the building in disgust. And Kristian took such good care of his sick mother – the last time she was here, he more or less carried her in. He’s never had a father, you see, so it’s not been easy for him. There is not a bad bone in his wife, and she is very sweet with the child, but she has never been denied anything she wants in life, and she has no idea what it is like to have an alcoholic husband or to grow up without a father. Kristian would have to do something very wrong for me to side with her against him. I have thought many a time that he would be far better suited to the hard-working Swedish student than the doll that he’s married to who has never had a problem.’
I thought to myself that the class war was still alive and kicking, at least in this basement flat in Torshov. And that the more I learned about the residents, the less relations on the stairs were what they seemed. The caretaker’s wife and her ‘absent’ husband could also be far more significant players than I had at first assumed.