The Cabin

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Will this take much longer? We have to prepare the patient for an MRI scan.’

  Wibe glanced at Wisting, who shook his head. ‘We can do the rest another time,’ Wibe said.

  The three policemen were left standing as Tommy Pleym was wheeled out.

  ‘Hope you got more out of that than I did,’ Wibe commented.

  ‘More or less,’ Wisting answered.

  ‘Would you like to share what this is all about?’

  ‘A misunderstanding,’ Wisting replied. ‘We’re going to try to clear things up. You can suspend your investigation for now.’

  57

  Stiller was standing outside waiting when Wisting swung up in front of the nursing home.

  ‘Waste of time,’ he said, casting a glance at the building behind him as he sat down inside the car.

  ‘Do we still have him under surveillance, though?’ Thule asked.

  Stiller nodded. ‘We’re still none the wiser,’ he said. ‘We don’t know what Jan Gudim wants to say, or who he’s been in contact with.’

  Agreeing, Wisting gave an account of their meeting with Tommy Pleym at the hospital.

  His phone rang as he turned out on to the E6. It was Christine Thiis again.

  ‘Have you found him?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘No, but we’ve traced his phone. It’s somewhere in a group of cabins in Son. That fits with what his partner told us.’

  They passed an exit sign for Vinterbro. ‘That suits us fine,’ Wisting said. ‘We’re only twenty minutes away from there at the moment.’

  ‘I can send a patrol car,’ Christine Thiis offered.

  Wisting checked his watch. They had plenty of time before their appointment at Halden prison. ‘We’ll see to it,’ he said. ‘Send me the exact position,’ he added, before ending the call.

  ‘What was that about?’ Stiller asked.

  ‘Aksel Skavhaug,’ Wisting explained. ‘The arsonist. He didn’t turn up for interview today. No one can get hold of him.’

  He received a text with the precise location of Skavhaug’s phone. ‘Would you key it in?’ he asked, handing the phone to Thule.

  Thule tapped the coordinates into the GPS and they followed the directions that led them down towards the Oslo fjord.

  ‘Three hundred metres,’ Thule commented as Wisting turned into a narrow track of hard-packed gravel.

  They rounded a bend and emerged on to the brow of a hill overlooking the Oslo fjord, where four cabins were situated. A grey van with materials balanced on the roof was parked outside one of them. Wisting recognized it immediately.

  ‘That’s his vehicle,’ he said, pointing.

  Driving forward, he parked beside it and three car doors slammed. Only a week ago, this area would have been buzzing with people enjoying the summer holidays. Now, it was quiet. All that could be heard was the screech of gulls from the sea.

  They walked around to the front of the cabin. The sun was reflecting off the huge panorama windows, making it difficult to see inside.

  ‘Skavhaug!’ Wisting shouted. No answer.

  Adrian Stiller pushed open the verandah doors as Wisting and Thule followed.

  They found Aksel Skavhaug in the kitchen, slumped over a massive oak table with his hands stretched out on either side.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Thule exclaimed.

  Skavhaug lifted his head when he realized there were people in the room. Threads of dribble hung from his nose and mouth.

  ‘Help me,’ he begged.

  It took no time at all for Wisting to grasp the situation. Aksel Skavhaug was literally nailed to the table. A rough square nail had been hammered through each hand into the wood. Blood from the wounds had coagulated and blackened. His phone and a disposable syringe lay between his hands.

  ‘We need a doctor,’ Stiller said, taking out his phone.

  Wisting found a glass in the kitchen cupboard, filled it with water and helped Skavhaug to drink while Stiller moved out into the living room to call for reinforcements.

  ‘What happened?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘They nailed me down,’ Skavhaug began, looking at his nail gun on the floor. ‘Wanted to make me talk. Threatened to give me an injection. I didn’t know anything, you see,’ he continued, sounding desperate. ‘I couldn’t tell them anything. Nothing they wanted to know.’

  Wisting found a couple of dish towels. He dried Skavhaug’s nose and mouth with one before rinsing the other in cold water to wipe his face.

  ‘Who was it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea. It was two men in balaclavas. They came here yesterday, just after I arrived. They must have followed me here.’

  ‘The same guys,’ Thule murmured.

  Stiller entered again. ‘The emergency services are on their way,’ he said.

  Skavhaug groaned and laid his forehead on the table top again. Wisting laid the cold cloth on his neck.

  ‘What did they want?’ he asked.

  ‘They didn’t say.’

  Aksel Skavhaug tried to sit up but grimaced in pain and leaned forward again.

  ‘They said I knew why they were here,’ he went on. ‘That I’d helped Lennart Clausen with something before he died. Something that Lennart had stolen from them, and they wanted it back. They thought I knew where it was. Where Lennart had hidden it. But I don’t know anything about it.’

  He glanced at the syringe on the table in front of him. Wisting followed his gaze. ‘Did they use it?’ he asked.

  ‘Air,’ Skavhaug answered. ‘They threatened to inject air into me.’

  Thule had brought a pillow from one of the bedrooms and placed it on the table for Skavhaug to rest his head on.

  ‘How did you find me?’ he asked, glancing up at Wisting.

  ‘You should have come for an interview today,’ he replied. ‘We traced your phone.’

  ‘Anette has been calling,’ Skavhaug said, peering at the phone in front of him on the table. ‘Probably a thousand times.’

  ‘Do you want me to phone her now?’ he asked.

  Aksel Skavhaug shook his head. ‘I’d rather wait till later,’ he said.

  They heard sirens in the distance. Within minutes, the cabin was filled with paramedics and police officers from the local station. They discussed various methods of releasing Skavhaug. In the end, they injected his hands with anaesthetic and a policeman lay underneath the table and tapped the nails back a few centimetres to create a gap between the head of each nail and Skavhaug’s hands. The heads were then clipped off with pliers so that they could lift his hands free.

  ‘We’re dealing with ruthless criminals,’ Thule commented when the ambulance drove Skavhaug away.

  Wisting glanced at his watch. They would be late for their appointment at the prison but, then again, Jan Gudim wasn’t going anywhere.

  58

  The letters on the screen vanished, one by one, until the entire paragraph was gone. Line usually had no difficulty writing, but this time she was struggling. She deleted, reworked, read through, added and scored out again. In the course of the past few hours she had managed to write just six hundred words. She was probably being premature. They did not have all the details she needed, but she was keen to produce a rough draft, ready to fill in the final, conclusive information.

  Normally, she would have taken her material to VG. Sandersen had encouraged her to return when she had something for them, but after their last meeting she felt more inclined to be published elsewhere.

  She began to construct the article around the three parallel stories that all began on the afternoon of Thursday, 29 May 2003. It started with Simon Meier packing his fishing gear and heading out to Gjersjø lake. At around the same time, two robbers were sitting in a car watching as Swissair flight LX 4710 landed at Gardermoen airport, before they pulled down their balaclavas. In the Ministry of Health, Bernhard Clausen left a meeting with the Biotechnology Advisory Board. She had also included another name: Lennart Clausen. She knew little about hi
s whereabouts at the time but placed him in his garage at home, tinkering with a motorbike.

  At some point, their paths crossed. When and how were details she would have to fill in later, but what was about to happen that day would be pivotal in all their lives.

  Amalie was sitting in front of the TV, watching a children’s channel. Line had to make the most of her time while her daughter was occupied.

  She pieced together a few paragraphs about the anonymous tip-off sent to the Director General. She had been optimistic to think that she might find the sender among the men who had been called in for interview, but they had not made any further progress with that.

  Amalie slid down from the settee, toddled over and tried to catch her attention. They should really go out for some fresh air, but they couldn’t leave the house.

  ‘Mummy has some work to do,’ she tried to explain.

  Amalie turned around, padded into the kitchen and came back with her Grandpa’s iPad. ‘Play,’ she said, handing it to Line. She needed the code.

  ‘OK,’ Line said, smiling, as she keyed in the four digits: 2412. The iPad had been a Christmas present to her father, but he mainly used it for work.

  The onscreen image was still showing the population register from when they had tried to find Henriette’s parents and live-in partner a few hours earlier. She had phoned while they were conducting the search, and they had abandoned it, but now, with the search left open, a name had appeared on the screen: Daniel Lindberg. At first she paid no attention to it, but then her skin started to tingle.

  Daniel.

  The phone number on the note inside the box of money.

  Daniel. One of the robbers, in all probability.

  Amalie tugged at the iPad. Line read the name again to be absolutely certain and took a screen shot before opening her daughter’s favourite game.

  She sat back in her chair and let one thought lead to another. Then something slowly dawned on her. Anxiety gathered in the pit of her stomach.

  If Henriette Koppang had a child and lived with one of the robbers, that explained a lot. She had visited the chief investigator in the Gjersjø case and gained access to the police documents not as a journalist but to discover what had happened to the cash.

  Line felt compelled to get to her feet. Henriette must have told the robbers that Line was working on the robbery case. They had followed her and broken into her home to find out what she knew. Henriette did not have a source. The information she had come up with had been information the robbers had stumbled upon when they broke into her house. They must have seen Lennart Clausen’s name placed in the centre of the noticeboard, with lines of connection to all the people around him.

  Henriette had asked to use her laptop in the café. She had been sitting beside her when she keyed in her password. The robbers knew everything. Everything apart from the money being found in Bernhard Clausen’s cabin.

  She took out her phone. She had to call her father.

  59

  Wisting’s phone vibrated in the plastic tray after he had handed it over to the prison guard. ‘I’ll take the call later,’ Wisting said, waving his hand.

  They were already late. Jan Gudim and his lawyer had been waiting for half an hour.

  A guard accompanied them to the interview room. Wisting stood at the other side of the one-way mirror. Gudim and Harnes, his lawyer, were seated on one side of the table, each with a paper cup. The lawyer in shirt and suit, with his jacket draped over the back of the chair, Jan Gudim in T-shirt and trainers. They stood up when Thule and Stiller entered the room.

  Wisting started the video recording. A red bulb was lit up on the interview-room wall. He stood listening as Stiller apologized for being late before moving on to the formalities: time and place of interview and names of those present, the case to which it referred, as well as Gudim’s right to silence.

  The lawyer leaned forward to the microphone. ‘My client wishes to admit culpability for involuntary participation and subsequent assistance in connection with the airport robbery, as well as a number of lesser offences,’ he said. ‘He is willing to confess his own role in these matters.’

  Wisting sat down, satisfied with the words he had heard. This was a significant first step.

  ‘Tell us,’ Adrian Stiller said, with a nod.

  Jan Gudim shifted slightly in his seat, as if unsure where to begin, or even if he should say anything at all. For a moment, Wisting feared that he had changed his mind and that they would not get their hands on a statement after all.

  ‘I agreed to do a job,’ he finally said. ‘I was to drive a car and then set it alight. I thought it was just an insurance fraud.’

  There was no more. Stiller began to prompt him. ‘What kind of car? What did you do with it?’

  ‘A Grand Voyager, at the Kløftakrysset intersection. On the way to Kongsvinger. I had to check that a plane was on time, and then I was to drive and set fire to the car. It had to happen thirty minutes after the plane had landed.’

  Again, Stiller had to force more details out of him. ‘How was that to happen?’

  ‘I got the car a few weeks in advance,’ Gudim explained. ‘I kept it parked up in a garage. There was room for a little crosser bike in the back of it, a Yamaha YZ125. On the day of the raid I drove the car out, took the bike to the airport and waited in the arrivals hall until I saw that the plane had landed. Then I rode back and set fire to the car.’

  The lawyer leaned forward to the microphone again. ‘I would like to stress that Gudim did not know at this point in time why he was doing this. He had no knowledge of the robbery plans. He just undertook a job.’

  ‘Who gave you this job?’ Stiller asked.

  Gudim glanced across at Harnes.

  ‘My client is only willing to give a statement about his own role in this,’ he broke in.

  Stiller filled a glass of water. ‘What plane are we talking about?’ he asked.

  ‘A flight from Switzerland. It was to land at around half past two.’

  ‘And was your job over once you’d done that?’ Thule asked. ‘When the car went up in flames?’

  ‘I had to pick something up as well,’ Gudim went on. ‘At an old workshop south of the airport. And drive three men to the city centre.’

  ‘On a crosser motorbike?’

  ‘They had a vehicle there. A big van. I left the crosser bike behind. That was the first time I realized what it was all about. They had a lot of black bin bags stuffed with cash.’

  Wisting jotted down some notes. So far, the statement matched what was in the public domain. The diversionary manoeuvre with the car that was set on fire and the workshop where the real robbery vehicle and the crosser bike were parked.

  ‘What did you do with them?’ Stiller queried.

  ‘Drove them to Oslo.’

  ‘With the bags of money, I mean,’ Stiller set him straight.

  ‘I had nothing to do with that. I got out when we reached the city centre and handed the van over to them.’

  Adrian Stiller shuffled a sheaf of papers. ‘But we know now that the cash was stored in the cellar at the old pump house at Gjersjø lake. You were the one who had access to that place. Your father was the manager of the water board. You got them a key.’

  Jan Gudim shook his head. ‘We used the pump house to store narcotics.’

  ‘Tell us about the key.’

  ‘I arranged that years ago,’ Gudim said. ‘Dad got me a summer job at the water board. That was the year the new water treatment plant at Stangåsen was completed. The old pump house was just being closed down. I thought it would be a good idea to have a key for it, so I had a copy made.’

  They ran through the statement once more. This time, it was Thule who led him through what had happened. He managed to winkle a few more details out of him, about the car he had stolen, the fire and the crosser bike, but the main points of the statement remained the same.

  ‘Do you know anything about the boy who disappeared?’ Stiller as
ked.

  The lawyer grew wary. ‘What boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Simon Meier,’ Stiller clarified. ‘He went missing the same day as the airport robbery. All trace of him ends at the pump house at Gjersjø.’

  ‘Now we’re moving on to territory my client has no knowledge of,’ the lawyer pointed out.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Gudim answered. ‘I really don’t.’

  ‘But you must surely have given it some thought?’ Stiller insisted. ‘When the police set up a command post at the pump house? And you knew that the bags of cash were hidden in there?’

  Jan Gudim squirmed in his chair.

  ‘When did you discover that the money was gone?’ Thule demanded.

  ‘I didn’t have much to do with that,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know any more than that the keys weren’t where they should have been and the money was gone.’

  ‘We know you’re lying. The keys?’

  ‘One was to the pump house and the other for a padlock on the hatch on the floor. It was down there that we stored stuff.’

  ‘Where were the keys supposed to be?’

  ‘Under a stone.’

  ‘Were you present when they went to fetch the cash?’

  Gudim nodded. ‘The money must have disappeared before the search took place. The search didn’t start until a couple of days after the robbery, a couple of days after the guy went missing,’ he said. ‘The police were inside the pump house and they didn’t find it. I mean, there were at least seven or eight bin bags. They must have found them if they were there.’

  ‘You must have wondered what had become of the money?’

  The lawyer interjected: ‘We’ll give speculation a wide berth, if you don’t mind.’

  Thule rearranged his papers again. ‘We’ve also charged Oscar Tvedt in this case,’ he said. ‘Do you have any comment on that?’

  The question was directed at Gudim, but it was his lawyer who answered.

  ‘As we said at the beginning, my client wishes to give an account of his own role in this case. He has now done so. I request it be recorded that at this point in time, neither he nor I have had sight of the case documents and this statement is given on a free and independent basis. I expect there to be a follow-up interview, when I will anticipate receipt of copies of all papers pertaining to the case, including statements made by the others implicated in this crime.’