The Cabin

by Jorn Lier Horst

  A patrol confirmed that the bus had been stopped east of their position and the motorway had been narrowed to two lanes.

  A heavy-goods vehicle thundered past, whirling up dust from the road.

  ‘OK, get ready!’ the incident commander shouted.

  The team moved into their vehicles, which were hidden behind the petrol station. Wisting sat behind the wheel of the surveillance car. Thule sat down beside him in the passenger seat with his laptop on his knee. ‘One minute away,’ he announced.

  Wisting prepared to slip out into the flow of traffic, his eyes fixed on the road as he waited for the blue Audi to appear.

  Thule spotted it first. ‘Here it comes!’

  It was in the right-hand lane. As it speeded past, Wisting could see the cardboard boxes piled up on the back seat.

  Accelerating, he moved out a hundred metres behind it. The boxes obviously obstructed the couple’s rear view.

  The two unmarked police cars increased speed, overtook the Audi and stayed in the fast lane, parallel to and just ahead of them.

  The traffic began to slow down. The blue Audi moved out to the left-hand lane and signalled to overtake. Wisting saw the patrol cars appear in his rear-view mirror.

  His speed was down to sixty. Behind them, the police cars were gaining on them. They occupied the full width of all the traffic lanes to prevent any civilian vehicles from moving forward and ending up in the midst of all the action.

  Further ahead, they could see the bus used as part of the roadblock.

  The Audi drew back in again as a taxi passed in the public transport lane to the right. The Audi moved across to do the same, but the policeman in the car in front grasped the situation and moved over to block it.

  The Audi flashed its lights and blasted its horn. The speedometer in Wisting’s car crept down to forty. The distance to the stopping place in front of the bus was fast diminishing and, by this time, the couple in the Audi must realize something was going on.

  Then everything happened in the blink of an eye. The entire carriageway was blocked when the two unmarked police cars stopped alongside the bus. Two men leapt out of each vehicle and stormed towards the Audi, with guns aimed at the front windscreen. Shouted commands rang out.

  Wisting saw the reverse lights come on. The Audi swerved towards him but really had no space to make an escape. Behind them, blue lights flashed. To the left, concrete blocks prevented the car from moving into the oncoming carriageway and high noise barriers rendered it impossible to use the ground on the other side.

  Wisting stamped his foot on the brake pedal and braced himself for the collision, but the car in front of him lurched and shot forward, causing one of the armed police officers to jump aside. As the driver tried to force the car forward between the two unmarked cars, the sound of scraping metal rent the air and blue-black smoke belched from the tyres.

  Several police officers came running. One of them tried to wrench open the driver’s door of the Audi, but it was locked. He pulled out a steel baton and struck one of the rear windows. Glass shards flew out but, before he managed to put his hand in to open the door from inside, the reverse lights came on again. The Audi drove back, picked up speed and tried to plough its way forward. Wisting made room for a police patrol car that moved up and drove into the back of the Audi, leaving it no chance to reverse and speed up again. But it received the extra thrust required for it to force its way through. It shot forward out on to the deserted motorway ahead of the roadblock, with the police car following in hot pursuit. Wisting negotiated his way through the same gap.

  The police car immediately behind drove into the side of the Audi and flipped it around 180 degrees. One of the rear doors sprang open and two of the cardboard boxes were tossed out. Dollar notes fluttered out across the carriageway.

  Wisting drove forward and drew to a halt bonnet to bonnet with the Audi. The woman in the passenger seat yelled and shrieked and held her head in her hands. The man behind the steering wheel met Wisting’s gaze.

  ‘We’ve got him,’ Thule said, once another car had blocked the Audi in similar fashion on the other side.

  Police officers in overalls charged forward to tear open the doors and drag the couple out from the car. Lying flat on the asphalt, they were quickly handcuffed.

  74

  A dollar note had caught between two concrete bollards in the centre section of the E18. Wisting shifted his phone to his other hand to draw out the slip of paper. The Director General was on the line.

  ‘We have a patrol car at Aleksander Kvamme’s house,’ he said. ‘The hire car he uses is parked outside. I expect he’ll soon be under arrest as well.’

  The damaged Audi was hoisted on to a recovery truck. A fireman swept up broken glass from the asphalt.

  The Director General was keen to hear more about how the money had ended up in the back room at Bernhard Clausen’s cabin.

  ‘I think it was down to a variety of circumstances,’ Wisting summarized. ‘Clausen was affected by his wife’s death and the fear that the same fate would befall his son. When he came across the money, he regarded it as a lifesaver, an insurance.’

  The Director General cleared his throat. ‘I presume there’s a good deal of truth in the old proverb,’ he said.

  ‘Which one?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘That opportunity makes a thief.’

  One lane was now opened and the traffic began to flow past.

  ‘We also think Clausen was responsible for Simon Meier’s disappearance,’ Wisting said.

  ‘You mean Clausen killed him?’ the Director General queried.

  ‘It’s happened before,’ Wisting commented. ‘People have committed murder to hide another crime.’

  ‘Do you have any proof?’

  ‘We’re preparing a search,’ Wisting answered. ‘We’re going to try to find Meier tomorrow. If we’re successful, it will give us more information.’

  ‘No matter what, we need transparency on this now,’ the Director General continued. ‘How do we break the news?’

  ‘I have a plan for that,’ Wisting answered. ‘But first of all, I think we should solve the Gjersjø case.’

  75

  The steel drill bored down between two of the stone slabs. As one broke and loosened from the ground beneath, a colony of tiny black ants scurried off in all directions.

  Wisting drew back to join the others. A puff of air fluttered the crime scene tape surrounding the ruins and an acrid smell of charred timber wafted towards them.

  ‘How long do you think it will take?’ he asked, turning to face Mortensen.

  ‘Not long,’ he replied above the noise of the drill. ‘The concrete layer isn’t thick, only fifteen to twenty centimetres.’

  Wisting nodded. Clouds of dust enveloped the drill operator. The first layers of concrete foundation were already broken up. Ten days ago, he himself had stood where the man with the pneumatic drill was working.

  Line had brought the photographs taken on the day of the work party. A number of central Party members had gathered at the cabin to undertake a number of tasks, including the building of an outside seating area. In the pictures, the ground had already been dressed with gravel, the shuttering was already prepared and reinforcement irons laid out, and several of them showed the leader of Oslo City Council working the cement mixer while Bernhard Clausen and Arnt Eikanger levelled the wet cement.

  The concrete had been poured that weekend. Later, flagstones were laid and an outdoor fireplace and sizeable barbecue were installed. Line’s theory was logical. Bernhard Clausen had hidden Simon Meier in the same place as the money.

  ‘I don’t think Eikanger ever knew anything of it,’ she said. ‘I doubt he even harboured any suspicions. I think he just thought too well of Clausen to take the tip-off seriously.’

  Thule agreed. ‘We’ll never be able to convict him of anything.’

  Mortensen was engrossed in a phone call. ‘The fingerprint register,’ he explained on his return. ‘
They’ve found Bernhard Clausen’s fingerprints on the padlock for the hatch on the pump-house floor. He’s certainly been in there.’

  After half an hour the compressor fell silent and the drill operator stopped work. Mortensen gave directions to the driver of the small excavator standing by.

  The other four members of the investigation group moved in closer as the excavator scooped concrete and flagstones into its bucket and shifted them aside. Line produced her camera and took several photographs.

  When the excavator had reached down to the gravel, Mortensen jumped up into the driver’s cabin to give instructions. The gravel was moved into a separate pile, with Mortensen monitoring every single bucketful.

  Less than forty centimetres of gravel covered the first human remains. Two grey bones and dark shreds of fabric.

  Mortensen waved the excavator away and continued the excavation with a spade. Adrian Stiller helped. Line snapped a number of photos while Wisting stood observing the activity. Not until they found a skull did he step forward.

  Lifting it carefully from the gravel, Mortensen turned it around and held it up so that the others could see. On the right side at the back of the skull there was a fracture four centimetres long. None of them needed to pass any further comment. The shape of the rough wound was a close match to the steel edge on the machinery in the pump house at Gjersjø lake.

  Mortensen carefully placed the grey skull in a cardboard box and went on with his collection of bone fragments.

  After another half-hour, Mortensen and Stiller climbed out of the ditch. Mortensen closed and sealed the flaps on the cardboard boxes before directing the excavator driver to fill in the hole again.

  ‘We have a visitor,’ Stiller said, nodding in the direction of a car driving across the grass at the end of the track. A tall man in dark trousers, shirt and tie stepped out.

  ‘Who is it?’ Thule asked.

  ‘Jonas Hildre from Dagbladet,’ Line told him. ‘What’s he doing here?’ Her voice contained a touch of irritation.

  ‘I asked him to come and speak to you,’ Wisting said. ‘He’s going to take care of Arnt Eikanger.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Line asked.

  ‘The difference between investigation and journalism,’ Wisting replied. ‘In journalism, the evidence doesn’t have to be weighed by a judge in a court of law. It’s sufficient to put it in the public domain, and that can be enough to stop a political career in its tracks.’

  The Dagbladet journalist made a round of introductions, finally shaking Wisting’s hand. ‘Can you let me in on it now?’ he asked.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘What was really inside those cardboard boxes?’

  Wisting smiled. ‘I think you’ll have to talk to Line,’ he replied.

  76

  Sandersen from VG rang after Line had been credited in two stories splashed on Dagbladet’s online pages. The first was about the police action on the E18. Four men and one woman had been charged in connection with the Gardermoen airport robbery in 2003. The second revealed that the body of Simon Meier, who had disappeared during a fishing trip in 2003, had finally been found.

  Line was anxious to take the call, just to hear what the news editor had to say, but couldn’t spare the time. She was busy polishing her main article, in which she linked the two cases together.

  Just as she sent the story to the news desk, a news flash arrived on her phone to say that parliamentary candidate Arnt Eikanger had resigned from the Labour Party. He would no longer run in the forthcoming general election as he had decided to retire from politics altogether. Within the next few days everyone would learn what really lay behind his sudden decision.

  77

  Wisting glanced down at his grandchild as she played on the floor before laying aside yet another page from the manuscript and beginning on the next one. Towards the end, he found what he was after, something he had already read but had not paid sufficient attention to.

  The final chapter in Bernhard Clausen’s memoir was called Free Will.

  But human beings do not hold sway over all events. They do not exert control in such a way that they are able to exercise freedom in every situation. As far as involuntary actions are concerned, we do not always possess the necessary insight into the consequences of these actions, and in some cases the suffering they will inevitably cause for the individuals concerned as well as others.

  The text emphasized that, in the split second of decision, it was impossible to discern the magnitude of the choice being made.

  Bernhard Clausen’s views on free will ranged over several pages. It was not always easy to follow the thread, but it was obviously something on which he had spent a great deal of energy. The text could be read as a comment on the Gjersjø case, as a defence of his own actions. Clausen had landed in the kind of situation where a person shows their true self, just as some people on board a sinking ship help others into the lifeboat whereas others ensure they secure a place for themselves.

  As he put down the bundle of papers, he caught some mention of the Labour Party on the radio. Their support had increased by 0.2 percentage points in the most recent opinion poll. The story had not damaged them at all. Voters obviously understood that a political party was more than one man alone.

  ‘Woof woof,’ Amalie barked from down on the floor, waving a jigsaw piece shaped like a dog.

  Wisting heaved himself out of his chair, dropped down to his knees and crawled across to her. ‘Moo,’ he said, inserting the cow in the right place.

  Amalie laughed and clapped her hands.

  They had put together this same jigsaw puzzle many times before, but Amalie seemed equally delighted every time the pieces fell into place.

  Wisting smiled. He knew that feeling well.

  ALSO BY JØRN LIER HORST

  A heart-stopping story of one man’s obsession with his coldest case.

  Read more

  WILLIAM WISTING

  WILL BE BACK

  IN 2020

  Read on for a gripping extract …

  Read more

  1

  Line raised her head to peer through the door’s wire mesh window. She could see him at the end of the corridor on the opposite side. Tom Kerr, walking towards her, escorted by prison wardens, one in front and one behind.

  He had changed.

  Immediately after his arrest, and during his trial four years earlier, his face had been splashed across all the media. He was well groomed in an effort to create a good impression. Smooth shaven, with dark eyes and thick, cropped hair. Now he looked more like the man he really was. His shoulders were broader, his chest thrust further forward. A curtain of hair hung over his forehead and his pale complexion was badly flawed. His angry eyes stared straight ahead as he chewed gum with his mouth open, and a froth of saliva had collected in one corner of his mouth.

  When he reached the door separating him from the waiting police officers, Tom Kerr moved his head from side to side, hoisted his shoulders and rolled them back.

  Line glanced across at Adrian Stiller, who nodded in response.

  She lifted her camera and took a step back, ready to film.

  The prison warden opened the door, sending a cold draught into the room. Tom Kerr’s mouth stretched into a smile, as if someone had said something that amused him. As he crossed the threshold, Line caught him in her lens and started recording. He was wearing blue jeans, a grey T-shirt and a dark training jacket.

  Adrian Stiller stepped forward to enter the picture. Half a head shorter than the man facing him, he held a folder in one hand and a radio transmitter in the other, making it impossible to shake hands.

  ‘Tom Kerr,’ Stiller said in a formal tone. ‘You’ve agreed to take part in a crime-related site visit.’ He glanced at the camera. ‘Everything you say will be recorded and form part of your legal statement. However, you can seek assistance from, and confer with, your lawyer as we progress, without that being recorded.’

  Line zoomed out to
include Claes Thancke in the picture. The defence lawyer, dressed in a dark suit, wore a pair of black shoes hardly suitable for the forthcoming expedition.

  He had been involved in many controversial cases and his clients were among the most notorious of criminals, the ones from whom society needed protection.

  ‘I’m the lead officer for the site visit,’ Stiller went on. ‘We’ll both be equipped with a microphone and transmitter to secure a recording of your statement.’ He gestured with the hand holding the transmitter. ‘I’m going to attach this to you now.’

  Tom Kerr answered with a nod. Stiller handed him the tiny microphone, so that he could tuck it beneath his T-shirt and fasten it to the neckband. Then he walked around him and spent some time attaching the transmitter to his belt at the back.

  ‘Can you say something so we know that it’s working?’

  ‘Test, test,’ Kerr complied, speaking in a rough, gravelly voice.

  Line checked the sound input levels on her camera and nodded to Stiller. She had prepared twelve hours’ battery and recording capacity.

  ‘Do you have anything with you?’ Stiller demanded.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kerr asked.

  ‘Do you have anything on you? In your pockets?’

  ‘No.’

  Stiller produced a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket. ‘I have to check,’ he insisted.

  Kerr reached his hands above his head, clearly a well-practised move. Stiller ran his hands over the prisoner’s pockets and the outside of his jeans.

  ‘Open up!’

  Tom Kerr stuck out his tongue and raised it to the roof of his mouth to demonstrate that he had nothing hidden in there.

  ‘Take off your shoes,’ Stiller continued.