by Thomas Enger
‘No,’ Bergan said. ‘But there’s nothing on it.’
‘We need to see for ourselves.’
Bergan continued to hesitate, but then approached the keyboard and tapped in a lengthy code. The screen burst into life.
Lowering his chin, Bergan cast his eyes down to the floor. ‘I’m the only one who lives here,’ he said. ‘Nobody else uses this computer.’
The screen image that met their gaze was of two naked women. One had her hand over the other’s genitals. Blix looked at Bergan long and hard.
‘We know you use the dark net a lot,’ Blix said. ‘Tor.’
‘That’s not illegal,’ Bergan replied.
‘No, but right now we’re trying to find the place where a web camera showing live images of a kidnapped woman is set up. It looks as if the pictures are being sent from a computer on your property.’
Bergan’s mouth dropped open. ‘Here?’
‘Yes, here.’
Wibe and Abelvik entered the room. Blix turned his head towards them.
‘Go through all the rooms,’ he said. ‘Especially the basement. Search for hidden rooms. If you find nothing in here, then check the barn.’
Wibe and Abelvik were already on the move.
‘Well,’ Bergan said, his hairline now showing a gleam of perspiration. ‘This is absolutely insane. I don’t do that sort of thing.’
Blix didn’t reply.
Kovic sat down and opened Bergan’s system files and checked the folders. Judging by the titles, Bergan had a great deal of pornography. Kovic’s fingers raced over the keyboard. She also tapped in the start of the live link address, but the remainder did not appear as an automatic suggestion, so there was no indication that Bergan had opened that address earlier.
‘Do you have any other computers?’ she asked.
‘No, only this one.’
‘No tablet of any kind?’
‘I have an iPad, but I hardly ever use it.’
Blix studied Bergan, who ran a hand through his dishevelled hair. The feeling grew inside him that they were on yet another wild goose chase. A lengthy one this time.
‘What kind of relationship do you have with Walter Georg Dahlmann?’
Bergan stared at them for a few seconds, then his eyes widened and it was obvious to Blix and Kovic that he was at last making the connection between their investigation and the headline news of the last twenty-four hours.
‘I haven’t seen him since we were at school together. Twenty-five years ago, at least. He’s not here, if that’s what you think. And what sort of woman is it that—?’
Blix brushed him off with a hand gesture. At the same moment Wibe and Abelvik returned to the room.
‘There’s nothing here,’ they said. ‘We’re going over to the barn.’
‘Be quick about it.’
Kovic tried a few more computer searches, but soon turned to Blix, shaking her head. ‘Well, it’s possible that something’s here, but if there is, he’s hidden it well. It demands more skills than I have.’
‘Call Krohn,’ Blix told her. ‘Find out if he can help.’
Bergan protested, but trailed after Blix as he left the house and headed for the barn, Bergan still wearing only a T-shirt and underpants. He did stop to pull on a pair of Wellingtons.
Wibe met Blix at the gaping barn door. Little birds flapped their wings under the rafters in the roof.
‘There are definitely no cellars in here,’ Wibe said. ‘Or a room of any kind. She’s not here.’
Blix swore and scanned the perimeter, deep in thought.
He turned round and rushed back to Kovic, finding her sitting with her phone to her ear.
‘Is that Krohn?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Kovic answered. ‘We can’t find—’
Blix took the phone from her.
‘Do you have the feed open?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Nordstrøm is awake.’
Blix stretched forwards and yanked the power lead out of the back of Bergan’s computer. The screen turned black.
‘Do you still see her?’ he asked.
‘Yes, the screen went black for a fraction of a second, but I still have a picture. What…?’
‘Wait,’ Blix said as he headed out into the hallway where he’d seen a fuse box. He opened it and flicked off the main fuse. All the lights in the house were extinguished.
‘How about now?’ Blix asked.
‘No change,’ Krohn reported. ‘What are you up to?’
Blix explained. Krohn sighed.
‘She’s not there,’ he said. ‘This is some kind of intelligent mislead.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That someone has hacked into the computer where you are now and left behind the details that led us there. We’ve been duped.’
Blix cursed under his breath and looked again at the time. It was 10.31 a.m.
Bergan came out into the hallway.
‘Have you had any strangers out here in the past few weeks?’ Blix demanded.
‘Strangers? No, I—’
‘No computer engineers, repair men, electricians…?’
‘No.’ He shook his head.
‘You haven’t had any kind of break-in here either?’ Kovic interjected.
‘No…’ Bergan hesitated a little. It looked as if a vague memory began to stir. ‘But I did wonder slightly whether there’d been someone here not so long ago.’
Blix gave Kovic a fleeting look.
‘Why was that?’
‘It just felt like that one night when I got home from work. That a few things had been moved about.’
‘You don’t have an alarm system here?’
‘No, I’ve never had any need for one. I don’t even lock my door usually; after all, there’s never anyone out here. And I don’t have much to steal, so it doesn’t matter too much.’
‘OK,’ Blix said, striding back into the office. ‘We’re taking your computer.’
Bergan protested as Blix began to pull out the cables. Someone had manipulated this computer, and it needed to be checked more carefully; but no matter what Krohn and his team managed to find on it, time was running out. Sonja Nordstrøm could still be anywhere.
69
Emma had been moved from one office to another, and then to a third – as staff had turned up for work and needed their desks. She had no idea whose office she was using right now, but judging by the photos on the desk, it was someone with a wife and three children.
She had left the office door open a crack. Investigators passed by with hurried steps. From time to time she could hear someone shout or run. The entire police station seemed in a state of hectic activity. Dedicated, focused officers all working towards the same goal – finding Sonja Nordstrøm.
Emma contemplated what she was usually occupied with at work. Kasper was right: celebrities were unimportant in the grand scheme of things, even though having dreams might mean a lot to some people. Once this story was done and dusted, she would have a chat with Anita. See if there was any possibility of working on something else at news.no.
There was less than an hour left until noon. Emma checked her emails. Still no messages or fresh demands. Now and again she visited the live link to see what Nordstrøm was doing, but there wasn’t much to see. She had done some sit-ups and push-ups around nine o’clock. Just before that she’d received a fresh supply of food and water. She’d yelled and screamed at the person who’d brought it, although he was out of view of the camera, so Emma had no idea whether he’d responded in any way. There was no sound on the feed.
A wild impulse made her call Kasper.
‘Well, I never, wonders will never cease!’ he said, with a smile in his voice.
‘Do you never just say hello to people?’ Emma asked.
‘Eh?’
‘You said that the last time I phoned you as well. About wonders never ceasing.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see I’m not original enough for your taste.’
Em
ma laughed this off. ‘How are things?’ she asked, without specifying whether she meant with him personally or with his work.
‘Fine, thanks,’ Kasper replied. ‘I’m just a little confused.’
‘Confused, how?’
‘Well, I felt that you and I maybe … had something. But when I tried to explore that a bit further, you … backed off. Completely. It was just pretty unexpected. And confusing.’
Emma knew what she ought to say, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘Gothenburg’s not home,’ was all she said. ‘It’s easier to let go a little there.’
‘So what you’re saying is that the girl I met in Sweden doesn’t make an appearance in Norway?’
Emma did not answer.
‘Then I hope you’ll pay a visit to Denmark soon.’
Emma laughed. It was good to laugh again – it had been a long time.
‘I’m a bit stuck on this Jeppe Sørensen story,’ she said. ‘I can’t understand why Dahlmann would pick one of his victims in Denmark and bring him back to Norway.’
Kasper hesitated for a few seconds before agreeing that the Danish footballer was certainly the odd one out in the series of victims.
‘Have the Danish police or you Danish journalists looked into his Norwegian connections at all?’
‘The police are probably working on that, on both the Norwegian and Danish sides,’ Kasper told her. ‘We had two hits on Dahlmann in our text archives, but they were from the old case when he killed his ex-girlfriend and her new guy. He’s a maniac who’s been banged up in jail for the past few years. I can’t imagine that he and Jeppe knew each other.’
‘It could be through another Norwegian,’ Emma said. ‘A mutual acquaintance.’
Kasper paused for a moment again before agreeing.
‘Maybe his girlfriend would know,’ Emma suggested.
‘Yes, of course.’
She could hear that she’d given Kasper the spark of an idea.
‘Let me check that out,’ he said. ‘But only if you promise to answer my messages, or even just do something as simple as have a cup of coffee with me before I go home to Denmark. That would be nice.’
Emma considered this for a moment or two.
‘Yes, it would,’ she replied, uncertain whether he would hear the reservation in her voice.
‘I’ll ring you soon,’ he said.
Emma thanked him for his help and hung up. She sat staring into space for a few minutes, overwhelmed by a feeling of restlessness. She hated waiting, hated not knowing. Kasper might well discover something, but she couldn’t just sit still without taking any action.
She opened some of the Danish web pages she was familiar with. Skimmed quickly through some of the countless articles about the Danish footballer’s death, in pursuit of any tiny detail the Norwegian media outlets hadn’t reported. But she found nothing of interest.
She decided to check Kasper’s coverage of Jeppe Sørensen, so she typed both their names into a search engine. It returned a massive number of hits, and she could not be bothered going through them all, since the articles generated by the Ritzau agency always ended up in lots of different newspapers. Emma contented herself with noting that Kasper had done a thorough job.
She was about to wrap up her Internet search when a link from the Dagbladet Holstebro-Struer newspaper attracted her attention. One of the articles seemed to be about the area Jeppe Sørensen grew up in. It focused on the fact that several members of the football team he’d played in when growing up had gone on to do remarkably well for themselves. What caught her eye, though, was Kasper Bjerringbo’s name; but he wasn’t mentioned as the author of the report.
In the photo accompanying the article, five of Sørensen’s teammates were circled in red. One of them was a member of parliament. Another was a high flyer in the financial world and had apartments in both Manhattan and Tokyo. But her eye lingered on the boy kneeling beside Jeppe Sørensen, an arm around him. Even though the picture was years old, it was easy to recognise Kasper Bjerringbo’s face.
It gave a description of his journalistic career, and said that within the Ritzau system he was known as ‘the journalist who didn’t just cover the news but created it himself.’
A cold shudder shook Emma’s body.
She sat up straight. There was nothing wrong with being an old friend of a murder victim. Certainly not.
But why hadn’t Kasper mentioned it?
70
By 11.14 a.m., Blix and Kovic were back at their desks on the sixth floor of the police station.
‘What was it Dahlmann did in Afghanistan again?’ Kovic asked.
‘Don’t recall the details,’ Blix replied as he collapsed into his office chair. ‘But he wasn’t an ICT expert, at any rate.’
All around them was frantic hustle and bustle. Everyone was either on the phone or engrossed in case material. Many were out and about, checking tip-offs. One of the screens was connected to the live images of Sonja Nordstrøm. She sat with her back to the wall with her knees pulled up.
Blix ran his hand over his head, searching though his memories, thoughts that had churned over and over in the past few hours and days, but there were no new threads for him to catch hold of.
‘It’s not too late,’ Kovic told him. ‘We can still post the link.’
‘Fosse will never go along with that,’ Blix said. ‘Nor the chief of police.’
‘Couldn’t we set up a false web page or something?’ she suggested. ‘One that looks as if we’ve posted it?’
‘I’m sure we could,’ Blix said. ‘But he’ll see through that very easily.’
‘How?’
Blix turned to face her. ‘If the feed was real, posting the link would make the Internet explode. The newspapers would latch on to it, and there would almost certainly be extra news bulletins. If we post a false link, none of those things would happen, and the guy behind all this would realise something’s wrong…’
‘It would buy us some time.’
‘No more than ten minutes, though. In any case, we won’t make it. There’s too little time.’
Kovic disappeared into the ladies’ toilets. Blix followed her with his eyes before standing up and moving off to look for Emma. He found her in an office with the name ‘Bjarne Brogeland’ on the door.
‘You’re still here, then,’ Blix said.
Emma put down her tablet but said nothing. He saw her cheeks were glowing.
‘We didn’t find her,’ Blix told her.
It looked as if Emma had something she wanted to say, but she changed her mind.
‘At least you didn’t give him the finale he wanted,’ she said in the end.
‘No,’ Blix said. ‘Maybe not.’
‘So what do you do now?’
Blix had asked himself the same question. ‘We plod on,’ he answered. ‘We may end up being too late to find Nordstrøm, but at least we’ll find Dahlmann or whoever’s behind all this.’
A frown appeared on Emma’s forehead. ‘Or the person behind it?’ she asked. ‘Do you no longer believe it’s Dahlmann, then?’
Blix swallowed noisily, wondering whether he should explain that it was far from certain that Dahlmann was acting alone. But before he managed to say anything, they heard shouts from the main office.
Blix rushed out into the corridor, with Emma following in his wake.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked once he reached the others in the investigation team. Abelvik pointed at the screen image of Sonja Nordstrøm.
‘The clock has gone,’ she said.
Fosse gave Blix a stern look before shifting his gaze to Emma. A comment was about to emerge from his lips, but the next minute everyone’s eyes were drawn back to the screen. It had gone totally black.
‘What’s happening?’ Fosse asked. ‘Did we lose the connection?’
No one had an answer. The screen remained black. Then another clock appeared on the screen: it read 10.00.
‘Ten minutes,’ Blix
said softly, glancing at his own watch. It was ten to twelve.
Then the clock began to tick.
09.59 … 09.58 … 09.57…
‘Oh shit,’ Kovic said.
For the next few seconds, everyone stood rooted to the spot.
‘What the hell do we do?’ Wibe asked.
No one replied. They just stared at the seconds, which had never passed more quickly. Soon there were nine minutes left. Then eight.
‘I can’t bear to look,’ Abelvik said.
‘Me neither,’ another investigator chimed in, but none of them made a move.
Seven minutes became six. Five.
Then a fresh image of Nordstrøm appeared. A still image this time. The same photo that Soleane Publishing had used on the dust cover of Forever Number One: Nordstrøm with her arms in the air as she passed a finishing tape in first place.
Four minutes.
‘What do you think is going on?’ Abelvik said, almost in a whisper.
‘When the countdown is over, he’ll show us another picture of Nordstrøm,’ Wibe said. ‘Dead.’
No one commented on this bit of speculation. Soon the clock was down to three minutes. Blix couldn’t stand still. He looked at Emma. Kovic.
Two minutes.
‘Can’t we just post that fucking link?’ Abelvik said, standing beside Fosse.
He did not respond. Just stared at the screen.
A minute and a half.
Every second closer to zero felt like sharp blows to Blix’s body.
One minute.
More people had gathered. Blix gazed at Fosse. The superintendent had dark perspiration marks beneath his arms.
Forty-five seconds.
Someone upset a cup on Kovic’s desk and coffee spilled all over the desktop. Blix didn’t see who it was, but heard the offending person groan and apologise. Kovic said it was all right.
Thirty seconds.
Wibe coughed into his armpit. Abelvik held her hand over her mouth.
Fifteen seconds.
It was as if all the sound, all the air, had been sucked out of the room.
Ten seconds became five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Then the countdown was over. The clock showed 0.00. The investigators all looked at one another. ‘Nothing’s happening,’ Wibe said.
