Svendsen had little to tell about Harald Olesen as a private person. Olesen had been devoted to his wife and had on several occasions mentioned that one of his greatest sorrows in life was that they had not been able to have children. His relationship with his siblings had been close, whereas his relationship with his niece and nephew seemed to be increasingly sporadic and strained. Olesen had once sighed when he spoke of them and said that, given his long career, surely he must deserve better-qualified heirs. However, he made no mention of this again, and Svendsen was not aware of any potential dramas in connection with the will.
The greatest surprise in the course of the conversation was when Svendsen me told that Harald Olesen had kept a regular diary in his later years. When asked where these diaries were now, he immediately produced two spiral-bound notebooks from his rucksack, marked ‘1963-4’ and ‘1965-6’, which he had borrowed in order to work on the biography. He added, apologetically, that there was not much to be gleaned from them regarding the murder. Harald Olesen had not taken any great chances in lending out his diaries from those years. His entries consisted of concise factual information about his everyday life. He wrote in a tidy hand about letters and telephone calls from old friends and acquaintances, and had made short notes about current affairs. His niece and nephew were mentioned in only a couple of places, and the neighbours barely at all.
Svendsen had read through the diaries again following the murder, but had found only one thing that might possibly be of relevance. Under the date ‘17 November 1966’, there was a brief note that was conspicuous in part due to the fact that Olesen did not write the full names of the people concerned, and in part due to the dramatic nature of the content: Unexpectedly bumped into S, accompanied by the ghastly N. S is ill and a shadow of what I remember from all those years ago, but still aroused strong memories. A very unsettling encounter.
I read the short entry four times and the feeling that this may be of great significance became more pronounced each time. Without any further indications of the time and circumstances of this meeting with S, it was difficult to know who it was and what this was about. Neither S nor N were mentioned anywhere else in the diaries, I heard Bjørn Erik Svendsen say. He immediately added that it would be interesting to see whether S or N was mentioned again in the most recent diary, which covered 1967 to 1968.