The Cabin

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Stiller got to his feet and approached the intercom on the wall. ‘Are you still refusing to speak to us?’ he asked.

  Gudim did not answer.

  Stiller pressed the call button and declared that they were finished. Then he returned to the table and put down his business card.

  ‘You know how it works,’ he said. ‘The first person who talks to us gets a deal.’

  The door opened and a prison guard stepped inside. Stiller and Thule hovered for a moment before following the guard out and leaving Jan Gudim in the room.

  Wisting turned towards the door as Stiller and Thule came in and walked up to the mirror.

  ‘He’s got something to think about now,’ Thule said.

  Gudim sat with his head tilted back, staring at the ceiling. Then he leaned forward, ran one hand over the table and swept up Stiller’s business card. He glanced at it, turning it this way and that, before stuffing it into his pocket.

  They waited in the control room until Gudim was collected and led back to his section, then they were escorted to the exit.

  Wisting checked his phone when he had it returned to him. Two missed calls, but nothing urgent. A guard led them through the various doors. As he opened the final door, his walkie-talkie radio crackled.

  He answered the call.

  ‘Are you still with the police officers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just a brief message from the prison governor: he asked a moment ago to call his lawyer. They’ll know who that refers to.’

  The guard looked at Wisting.

  Wisting nodded. They were well underway now.

  48

  Line parked her car in a marked space at the petrol station and ran through what she knew about Kim Werner Pollen. He had been in Simon Meier’s class at primary and high school. After school he had been employed in a number of different jobs, including one as a baggage handler at Gardermoen airport. Now he ran his own filling station.

  A couple of the petrol pumps were closed down, physically cordoned off, and a man was dismantling them. It looked as if a rubbish bin had caught fire.

  Line waited until fewer customers were around before she switched on her recorder, dropped it into her bag and stepped out of her car. She had not found a phone number for Kim Werner Pollen, but she had called a number registered to the petrol station. One of the employees had answered and told her that Pollen would be in the office today.

  A long-haired girl behind the counter was turning over hotdog sausages.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Kim Werner Pollen,’ Line said.

  ‘In there,’ the girl replied, using the tongs to point at an open door at the end of the counter. ‘The last door on the left.’

  Line followed her directions and found a chubby man in a T-shirt behind a desk.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, knocking on the doorframe. ‘Kim Werner Pollen?’

  The man looked up. A recent graze was evident on one cheek. ‘That’s me,’ he said.

  Line told him who she was. ‘I’m trying to find out what happened to an old classmate of yours,’ she explained. ‘Simon Meier.’

  ‘Then you’ll need to take a course,’ the man suggested.

  Line did not understand what he meant.

  ‘A diving course. Simon Meier’s lying on the bottom of Gjersjø lake. You’ll find him there.’

  Line took a few steps into the room, moving towards an empty chair. ‘I’m writing about the missing-person case,’ she pressed on.

  ‘You shouldn’t bother,’ Kim Werner Pollen interrupted her. ‘All you’ll achieve is to tear open old wounds and create false hope. Maybe it’ll sell a few newspapers, maybe you’ll be able to show off a bit and get some praise from your boss, but it won’t help his family and friends any.’

  His contemptuous comments sounded rehearsed. The arguments sounded learned by heart, as if he had been waiting for her and had prepared to give her the brush-off.

  ‘Were you friends?’ she asked.

  ‘We were in the same class, at any rate.’

  Line refused to budge. ‘I’ve read all the old case documents,’ she said. ‘I got the impression that he didn’t really have many friends.’

  Kim Werner Pollen cocked his head. ‘Is that what you’re going to write?’

  ‘I’m trying to search out a few different angles, and I’m really looking for someone who can tell me what they remember about the day he disappeared.’

  The man behind the desk crossed his arms on his chest.

  ‘Do you remember that day?’ Line asked.

  Kim Werner Pollen smiled condescendingly and shook his head. None of the others Line had spoken to had remembered the actual day Simon Meier had gone missing either.

  ‘It was the same day as the robbery at Gardermoen airport,’ Line went on. ‘Didn’t you work up there at that time?’

  This was a question she had planned. It would seem casual and allow her to watch his reaction when she mentioned the robbery. His mouth opened and his jaw dropped; he blinked rapidly a number of times as the colour slowly drained from his face.

  ‘I wasn’t at work that day,’ he said, and got to his feet. ‘Actually, I’m a bit busy right now, so …’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ Line said, half turning towards the door. ‘It looked as if there had been a fire in one of the bins outside.’

  ‘Just a minor inconvenience,’ Pollen said, skirting around the desk. ‘Someone must have thrown in a cigarette end or something.’

  ‘Have you checked the CCTV cameras?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The CCTV cameras,’ Line repeated. ‘To see what happened.’

  ‘Out of order,’ Pollen said, touching the wound on his cheek and ushering her out.

  ‘It could have been a lot worse,’ she said.

  Pollen followed her out towards the retail area. ‘Yes, it could,’ he answered. Part of the scab on his cheek had loosened and she saw a trickle of blood. ‘Fortunately, it was OK this time.’

  Line wondered whether she should buy something before she left and try to drop Lennart Clausen’s name into the conversation, but Pollen’s tone of voice had changed from sour and sarcastic to somewhat hostile. Mumbling her thanks, she left and glanced up at the nearest CCTV camera before clambering into her car and switching off the recorder.

  The airport robbery was something Kim Werner Pollen was obviously reluctant to discuss. In 2003 he had worked on baggage handling and could have had access to the internal information the robbers required.

  After turning on the ignition, she made her way towards Oslo. As she drove, she played back the entire conversation from the petrol station. She listened to it twice, and the feeling that had come over her in the office was reinforced. Kim Werner Pollen seemed to have prepared what he was going to say, as if someone had warned him that she might turn up. Maybe even heavy-handedly, she imagined, thinking of the cut on his cheek and the fire in the bins.

  She wondered whether she should call her father but decided that she had perhaps read too much into it. She had been travelling around asking questions for several days now but could not envisage who might have put pressure on Pollen. Maybe he had just been having a bad day. He had injured himself and had had to cope with an arson attempt. That was more than enough to make him grumpy. And anyway, her father had other things on his mind at the moment.

  49

  Immediately after they had crossed the River Glomma, Wisting turned off from the E6 motorway and drove into a petrol station. He filled the tank while Stiller phoned his colleagues at Kripos to play back the conversation between Jan Gudim and his lawyer. He connected his phone to the hands-free set-up in the car so that all three of them could hear it:

  ‘Harnes here.’

  ‘It’s Gudim.’

  ‘It’s been a while.’

  ‘You must come down here to see me.’

  ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘I can come down on Thursday.’<
br />
  ‘You have to get in a car this minute and come right now. At once.’

  Silence ensued.

  ‘That’d be difficult,’ was the lawyer’s eventual response.

  They could hear Gudim’s breathing.

  The lawyer cleared his throat. ‘What is this about?’

  ‘I had a visit from two detectives today. One of them was from the Cold Cases Group at Kripos.’

  ‘I see,’ the lawyer said, and suddenly his voice grew cautious.

  ‘The other one was in charge of the investigation into the airport robbery at Gardermoen in 2003.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Did they have any documents with them?’

  ‘Photos and DNA reports, but no charges, if that’s what you’re thinking of. But it seemed as if it’s just a matter of time.’

  The lawyer took a deep breath. ‘Sounds as if I’d better come, then. I’ll be in my car within half an hour.’

  ‘Great.’

  Then the connection was cut.

  ‘Just as expected,’ Wisting remarked. ‘He hasn’t said anything compromising on the phone, not even to his lawyer.’

  ‘I know Harnes,’ Stiller said. ‘Gudim is going to use him to relay messages from the prison.’

  ‘He’ll warn the others in the gang,’ Thule said, nodding. ‘Get them to make sure Oscar Tvedt keeps his mouth shut.’

  Wisting opened the car door. ‘I need a hotdog before we drive any further,’ he said.

  50

  There were no free parking spaces in the streets around the National Library, and Line ended up parking her car as far down as the Vika neighbourhood. While she walked back, she rang Sofie to find out how Amalie was doing.

  ‘We’ve only just eaten,’ Sofie told her.

  It dawned on Line that she felt hungry, too. ‘Sorry for dumping so much on you,’ she said. ‘But this has involved more work than I thought.’

  ‘Isn’t that good, though?’ Sofie asked. ‘You’ll be submitting an invoice for every hour, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I guess so,’ Line assured her. ‘And luckily, she’ll start at nursery next week.’

  ‘You’ll need to get used to that,’ Sofie advised. ‘You won’t be able to travel into Oslo whenever you like. You’ll have to be around to pick her up from nursery every day.’

  ‘I know,’ Line replied as she climbed the steps outside the hundred-year-old library building. ‘Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish up this week.’

  The entrance doors of the huge edifice opened in front of her. She thanked Sofie once again for helping her out before she set foot inside.

  She had been here several times while she worked in VG. Most of the material was held in storage and had to be ordered in advance. She knew that if she phoned before 9 a.m., whatever she was looking for would be available by noon. The bundle of magazines was already laid out in the reading room for her, all in chronological order. Goliat had published twenty-seven editions before it folded in 2012.

  She flicked through the bundle and fairly quickly found Henriette’s name in a report about the crime division of Oslo police. In the next edition, she located a story about security guards and then a report about Norwegian criminals in Spain. In the following issue, the magazine introduced a series of in-depth interviews with known criminals. The first of these was with the leader of Norway’s Hells Angels. In the next number, a prominent alcohol smuggler told his story. This was followed by a gang leader serving a sentence for murder.

  She leafed further through and found an interview in which a man stood with his back to the photographer. He was referred to as ‘one of the most powerful figures in the Norwegian underworld’. He had been acquitted of killing a Pakistani gang leader and the Director General had recently indicted him in a major narcotics case. The report drew a picture of how he had been caught in a network of criminals but had himself never committed any serious crime. It sounded as if this man could be Henriette’s source.

  The homicide case was described in detail and illustrated with archive photographs. Line felt her unease gradually increase as she continued reading. She took her laptop from her bag and opened the folder Audun Thule had collated on the airport robbery suspects. The date of the homicide given in the interview coincided with the murder of which Aleksander Kvamme had been acquitted. This could not be a fluke: Henriette must have interviewed Kvamme. She also noted that the narcotics case was the same one for which Jan Gudim had been convicted.

  Her unease was replaced by a feeling of panic that lodged deep inside her chest.

  The man suspected of being the ringleader of the airport robbery could well be the informer Henriette had been speaking to. She could quite simply be implicated in recruiting Aleksander Kvamme as a source. A tremor ran through Line’s body as she realized what this meant, that Henriette could be in danger.

  She was relieved that she had withheld information about the Clausen link and the discovery of the cash from her colleague.

  Line used her phone to take photos of the pages before hurrying out of the building. She headed for her car and called Henriette, but her phone rang out, unanswered.

  Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she began to write a text message asking Henriette to phone her. Just at that moment she felt a powerful push on her back, propelling her forward and making her drop her mobile. At the same time she was whirled around and someone yanked at her bag. Screaming at the top of her voice, she grabbed hold of her bag and held it close to her body. A man in dark clothing, his face hidden by a motorbike helmet, raised his hand and punched her head. She staggered but did not let go of her bag. The man struck again, this time a harder blow, and she was sent flying, finally landing sprawled on the ground. He tugged at the bag strap and kicked her in the stomach. Line released her grip and covered her head with her arms. Her attacker snatched the bag and ran. When Line looked up, he was on his way into a side street, where he pulled out her laptop, threw away her bag and leapt on to a waiting motorbike. Line struggled to her feet. The number plate was bent, making it impossible to read the registration. With a roar, it was gone.

  Line looked around, but no one seemed to have realized what had happened. Or if they had, no one had paid any attention.

  She picked up her phone. The screen was smashed, but it looked as if it was still functioning. Crossing the street, she retrieved her bag and gathered her scattered belongings. Only once she was settled behind the steering wheel of her car did the reaction come. She shook uncontrollably, sobbed and gasped for breath. Finally, she managed to collect her thoughts. It could have been a random attack, but they had only been after her laptop. Her purse and the rest of the contents of her bag had been of no interest to them.

  Her Mac contained all the information she had accumulated on Simon Meier, Lennart Clausen and his father, as well as photos, notes and all the reports she had written for her father. Thankfully, everything was stored on iCloud, so she could access all of it from her computer at home. But the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that the attacker wanted to know what she knew. The same person who had threatened Kim Werner Pollen to keep his mouth shut at the petrol station. Fortunately, her laptop was password protected. It would not be easy to gain access to it.

  She checked her phone again. Instead of calling the police, she dialled her father’s number.

  51

  It was 5.30 p.m. when Wisting parked outside Abildsø Nursing Home in Oslo. Somewhere along the E6 they would have passed Harnes, Gudim’s lawyer, on his way to Halden prison.

  The nursing home where Oscar Tvedt was a patient was barely distinguishable from the other residential blocks, but it was more rustic, with extensive recreation areas adapted for wheelchair users.

  They met the manager in her office. In addition to a charge nurse, a lawyer from the local authority was also present. She sat stiffly with a grim expression on her face.

  Stiller led the conversation. ‘Thanks for seeing us at such short notice,�
�� he began. ‘As I explained on the phone, we believe one of your patients is under threat.’

  ‘Who are we talking about?’ the manager asked.

  ‘We’ve received information about threats made in connection with a major, ongoing case,’ Stiller continued. ‘It’s very important that no one finds out anything about our presence here.’

  The three women nodded.

  ‘The patient we’re talking about is Oscar Tvedt,’ Stiller went on.

  A short cry of surprise came from the charge nurse. ‘But he’s practically in a vegetative state,’ she protested. ‘And has been for more than ten years.’

  ‘We’re aware of that …’ Stiller replied. ‘But that doesn’t change the level of threat. I can’t go into much detail, but we must take precautionary measures.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘We’ll place two undercover detectives here until the situation is resolved.’

  The lawyer leaned forward. ‘Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to remove the patient and install him in a more secure location?’ she asked, adjusting her glasses.

  ‘We don’t think that would be in Oscar Tvedt’s best interests. This is where he lives, and this is where he receives the daily medical care he needs.’

  ‘What about the employees and other patients?’ the manager asked. ‘The rest of the patients here are elderly and suffer from dementia. Changes in routine can be disturbing for them.’

  ‘That’s been taken into account,’ Stiller assured her. ‘We expect the situation will be cleared up in no more than a couple of days.’

  Wisting felt his phone vibrate inside his pocket. He fished it out and glanced at it. He saw it was Line, but she would have to wait.

  ‘How will you arrange this surveillance, from a practical point of view?’ the charge nurse asked. ‘There are visitors here every day.’

  ‘Our people will look like ordinary visitors,’ Stiller explained. ‘We also intend to equip Tvedt’s room with video cameras to record anything suspicious.’