I nodded, trying to be sympathetic.
‘Nor do I, really. But I would like to know more about your father, if only to ensure that it has nothing to do with the case.’
He laughed again and shook his head firmly.
‘That won’t be easy. Apparently no one other than my mother knows my father’s name, and she is dead. That was the only bone of contention I had with my mother. I understood from a comment she once made that it was someone that she had had a relationship with for some time, and that it could not have been anyone else, but she never told me his name. I nagged and nagged her when I was a teenager. When things were at their worst, I refused to talk to her for a month because she would not tell me. But Mother was stubborn. The only answer she gave was that he had betrayed her and had never cared about me, so it would only make things worse if I knew who he was. Then, when I was around eighteen or nineteen, I said that I agreed with her and seldom asked after that. I tried to convince myself that if that was how he had behaved, he was not the father I would want anyway. But it remained a big question in my life, particularly when I went to business school and was the only one in the class who could not ask his father for money.’
This was becoming more and more interesting. The question of Kristian Lund’s father was yet another little mystery that I wanted to clear up.
‘And you have no idea either?’
He shook his head.
‘I spent a lot of time thinking about it in my youth. Physically, I am fair like my mother and look very like her, so there was not much to be had there. But one of my science teachers once remarked that with a smart brain like mine, I must have an exceptionally intelligent father. I lived on that compliment for a long time, and it was true. My mother was attractive when she was young, and always kind, but she was not particularly intelligent. She helped me with my homework when I was small, but was not of much help once I had finished primary school. Whereas I was top of my class in practically every subject, certainly in middle school. So it is highly likely that my father was – or is – an intelligent man. But otherwise, I have no idea. I was conceived sometime around May or June 1940, so that leaves a number of options. It could have been a German soldier, a Norwegian Nazi-sympathizer or some other Norwegian. My mother and grandparents spoke very little about that time later, so I do not have much to go on. Nowadays I try to think about it as little as possible. And I hope it is of no relevance to the murder case.’