‘He’s parked on the second street to the right, and last night someone wrote, “Nazi murderer,” all over him, the caretaker’s wife told me. And this morning…’
His voice broke and he needed a minute to compose himself.
‘This morning, she came and told me that someone had battered him with a sledgehammer! All the windows have been smashed and the body bashed. This is the end for Petter. It would cost more to repair him than to buy a new car. You’ll have to have a look at him this evening, if you think there’s anything to be gained by it, because as soon as the insurance folk get here, it’ll be the scrapyard for him. I can’t bear to see him like that.’
The tears welled up in Konrad Jensen’s eyes. It seemed that the damage to his car was more of a shock than the death of Harald Olesen.
‘I know it’s pathetic for a grown man to cry over his car, but Petter was the only person I could trust, if you see what I mean. When he goes to the scrapyard, I won’t have any friends. I’ll wait to get a new car until this is all over, otherwise the same thing will just happen again. And I daren’t go out at the moment. I’ve been shopping at the Co-op for twenty years now, but on Saturday, the caretaker’s wife came and told me that they didn’t want to see me in the shop anymore. A number of customers had threatened to go elsewhere if they saw me there. My life is crashing around my ears, just when I had finally managed to get some kind of control!’
I promised to take a look at the car before I left and ask a constable to look into this act of vandalism. Konrad Jensen nodded with resignation, and sounded a touch calmer when he continued.
‘Thank you. I only hope that you find the murderer before the Resistance people or some young louts find me, or before life in here simply becomes unbearable!’
I tried to calm him more by saying that there was surely no reason to fear for his life and body. At which Konrad Jensen hauled himself up from the sofa. He dragged his feet out into the kitchen and came back with a small bundle of letters.
‘Well, I haven’t received any private letters since the card my sister sent for my fiftieth birthday, but yesterday, I suddenly got seven, and they’re not pleasant reading.’
He was absolutely right. The letters were not pleasant reading. The senders of all seven remained anonymous, without signature, and they all took for granted that Konrad Jensen had murdered Harald Olesen. Four of them could qualify as aggravated harassment, and the other three were plain murder threats. Having seen them, it was not hard to understand why Konrad Jensen did not dare to show himself on the street.