I immediately offered to post a constable by the front door, if that would make him feel safer. This prompted an unexpected moment of emotion. Konrad Jensen started to cry when he took my hand.
‘Thank you so much. I never thought that I would hear a policeman offer to guard Konrad Jensen, or imply that Konrad Jensen’s life was worth anything. But it’s the way things are. I’ll have to make sure not to go outdoors and be very careful about who I let in. If my time is up, it will stop, with or without a policeman standing guard at the front door. But it is not a very nice feeling. I always thought that Petter and I would go together, so now that he’s gone, I feel that I’m close to the end too.’
I felt an overwhelming urge to cheer him up a bit – and to get on with the investigation. So I used the opportunity to tell him about our breakthroughs in the investigation and the mystery surrounding the stereo player. Konrad Jensen congratulated me, but found it unsettling that such a calculating murderer was on the loose. He repeated three times that it was definitely not him who had planned it, but recognized that the adjusted time of murder meant that he too was now without an alibi.
To my question regarding his bank account, he replied with a fleeting, humiliated smile that he had nothing to hide. He had inherited little more than 2,000 kroner from his parents and had scrimped and saved the rest from his earnings of around 1,000 kroner a year. Konrad Jensen’s post-office savings book showed a total balance of 12,162 kroner.
‘Given the rise in prices, most of that will now go on a new car. So there goes my dream of watching the football on television one day,’ he added with a heavy sigh.
The question of what Konrad Jensen was actually doing out in the hallway when he met Darrell Williams on the evening of the murder was apparently more complicated. He chewed his lip before finally answering.
‘Nothing at all. I just popped out into the hall because I saw through the window that the American was coming in and hoped that he would stop to chat about the football if I was there. Pathetic perhaps, but true.’
And I believed him. Konrad Jensen was a sorry figure of a man, but he told the truth – as far as I could tell thus far.
Then suddenly he became bashful and hesitated a few times before he said something that I had not expected in the least.
‘When you asked if I had met Harald Olesen during the war or earlier… I may possibly have answered incorrectly.’
I fixed him with gimlet eyes. He held up his hands in defence.